Civil Disobedience

How concrete are rules? Really, how much can you bend the rules until without doing something "wrong." What about if the rules are against your morals if you think they are unjust. Do you still have to follow them? Do you have to wait till you have the majority on your side, or do you just start doing your own thing until others catch the drift? These questions were the main ideas addressed in Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.


In Civil Disobedience Thoreau explains how basically the government during his time wasn't doing its job correctly. He told how even though the government at the time was a supposed democracy, it really wasn't because only a small number of elected officials were making desicions for everyone else. Also, Thoreau explained his thoughts on how to and when to protest the government. He used metaphors to describe that if specific laws are just part of the necessary fame work of government, as long as they do no real harm, it's okay to just let them go, leave them be. However, if the laws of the government force you do something that in your ideals is morally wrong, one should immediately protest it.

Like for example, let's say that you think that the idea of waking up at 6 to go to school is just downright outrageous. You want to make the school realize that what they are doing is wrong. I mean come on, it's entirely unfair to make teenagers wake up at 6(who would otherwise wake up at 11 after staying up on their phone all night). So what would you do according to the principals of civil disobedience? You post on your story that as a form of protest, you and all your friends should not go to school until at least 8 o'clock. Then, you do exactly that regardless of the fact of whether other people join in on it.

Comments

  1. I like how you started off with broad questions and then narrowed it down to the reading specifically. Then to sum it up, I like how you related it to the real world by giving an example of civil disobedience that we could relate to.

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  2. I really liked how you started with rhetorical questions in the beginning, just how Thoreau frequently brought up questions during his speech. The example of the starting time for school really brings out what he said about certain things being necessary should be let go. Schools clearly don't need to start that early, and people should protest it to change for the better.

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  3. I really love how you put the moral vs lawful question, because that was a very important factor of the essay. Also the visual representation, very good I approve.

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