Civil Disobedience
Posted by Don Henry Ford Jr. - March 4, 2007 at 6:42 am
Henry David Thoreau wrote the best essay on non-violent but effective resistance to social ills I've found. If you've read it, it's worth revisiting. If not, then perhaps now is the time.
Many great leaders found inspiration in this work and the list grows.
Oddly enough, the man was considered unpublishable in his day. I can relate to that.
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Curiosity
Submitted on March 7th, 2007 by Kimberly DieserAuthors regularly accept criticism, perhaps even gratefully, from their peers and editors. As a general rule, they know full well that the open flow of opinions will spark adaptation and foster improvement. By contrast, protestors and participants of civil disobedience are derided or thought of as traitors, as though the acknowledgment of a fault entails immorality and malice.
Even in the scope of theory, of academia, one who speaks a minority view is often shunned without anything more than nominal attention paid to his actual argument. Would you happen to have a hypothesis as to why?
One answer
Submitted on March 7th, 2007 by Benjamin MelançonCriticisms are accepted because they make an idea or institution better. Civil disobedience and some criticism are rejected for the same reason: they would make society better, but in a way that would inevitably harm an elite.
That's why comedy that makes fun of politicians as buffoonish can be accepted, or the endless media appraisal of candidates' performances– but satire or analysis that undermines the structure that enriches a few at the expense of the many – or fundamentally threatens the privilege of any group with power – faces shutout and harsh attack.
Most people are like herd animals
Submitted on March 8th, 2007 by Don Henry Ford Jr.Anyone daring to be different finds rejection from the herd. When the herd is going over a cliff, rejection can be a good thing.
Yet Another Reason
Submitted on March 9th, 2007 by Christopher FeeEven creativity is controlled and censored in societies to different degrees, since too much creativity can lead to new ideas, and discovery of new truths, which may threaten the legitimacy of any system no matter how open to the truth it may claim to espouse. For example in ancient Greece during the time of Pythagoras a mathematical religious style cult had formed around Pythagoras and his followers having a substantial amount of power and influence. The Pythagoreans' even knew mathematical equations which could disprove their idea of reality, but these formulas were not to be spoken of or revealed, doing so would most likely result in death. The concept of the number 0 was considered too dangerous at the time and ignored, as well as for another 1500yrs, though one mathematician at the time Zeno, used a mathematical paradox with a partial concept of 0 in it, which could not be proven wrong, giving the Pythagorean reality a thorn in its side. Zeno's use of a riddle is what most likely kept him safe for criticizing such a group, similar to what Ben explained above about the use of satire and comedy as a form of criticism. Some good historical examples of this would be In Praise of Folly by Erasmus which helped start the Reformation or Voltaire's writings such as Candide, which helped to contribute to the Enlightenment. This list could go on forever, and many people who have threatened the status-quo of any society have usually found themselves imprisoned, exiled or killed. Academia and other artists or writers are no exception to this rule; very few people defended Machiavelli, De Sade, or Shelley. They all paid a price for telling the truth: Shelley was thrown out of Oxford University for his essay The Necessity of Atheism which attacked the moral authority of his time, Machiavelli was tortured and exiled for simply explaining how a political power structure works in The Prince, and De Sade imprisoned for using pornographic symbolism in his works to show the true vulgarity of any power or social structure in society, which still applies to this day. Also, the attacks against women's rights throughout history are yet another example of censoring truth, and in this case half of the human race by gender (one's biology). The prevailing reality for centuries enslaved women as second class citizens and property; they were thought to be incapable of doing much more than making beds and babies. Even in the so called enlightened West women still have yet to be free from the untruths imposed upon them by modern reality; only a few years have passed since women were given full suffrage in Switzerland in 1990.
So, in the end truth and reality are at odds; reality is usually simulated by a society or culture to maintain it's control, and methods employed such as, censorship or more extreme measures will be taken, in order to prop up the prevailing reality. The repression is carried out usually with the help of those who follow the herd or "sheep and goats" as Don Henry Ford states in the above comment. My conclusion would be that any truth one may wish to unleash in order to enlighten the world will be meet with resistance, and the more threatening the truth the greater the response to repress it, and at times even form unlikely allies between so called traditionalists and radicals at any given period in history.