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Henry David Thoreau presented several radical ideas in his mid-nineteenth century writing “Civil Disobedience”. The work, published under the title “Resistance to Civil Government” puts forth several profound assertions and questions concerning the law, man and the government. One key subject that Thoreau focused on was whether just men should continue to support the government by complacency with no regard to moral reason? Should laws that are unjust be adhered to, or should they be viewed as moot? His ideas seem like common sense to me, yet his clear and practical ideas would be considered a capital offense in some oppressive nations. I believe that Henry David Thoreau’s ideas are sound in theory. Society has been conditioned to accept ever-increasing taxation without contest except for superficial discoursehow far can we, as a society, be pushed, pulled, punched and sucked while remaining complacent? At what point does one become a co-conspirator of oppression by passive acceptance?

Thoreau gave three general responses one may choose from when faced with the question of whether or not to follow unjust laws. He asks if we should blindly follow all that the government asks of us without question, should voice contempt for the law yet still remain within its bounds, or “Shall we transgress them at once” (Thoreau, 144). I believe it is always within the rights of the individual to subvert authority on the matter of adherence to unjust laws. While I do not share Thoreau’s contempt for those who passively oppose, I find that once the scope of injustices instilled by a government as law becomes brutal, all-encompassing, and deaf to reason and redress, by following the law, one becomes a criminal of the higher laws of morality, reason, and nature.

Thoreau holds contempt for those who voice concern for unjust laws yet comply with them. Thoreau reasons that these people view law violators as hurting their cause resulting in their motivation for adherence (Thoreau, 144). When the severity of the injustice merely extends to the fringes of our freedoms and prosperity, I find that it is the fear of repercussions for breaking the law that causes compliance with moderates.

Unjust laws with far-reaching encroachments should be actively challenged. I share a source of inspiration that Thoreau experiencedspending the night in jail. Few things can so rapidly and thoroughly change one’s pace and train of thought. Also sharing in this experience and views concerning laws against reason and parity is Dr. Martin Luther King. In his renowned writing “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King elaborates on the philosophy of compliance to unjust laws. King holds that freedoms are never voluntarily surrendered by the ruling and will only come by insistence. Relating to the horrors that oppressed African-Americans suffered, King proclaims, “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair” (King). Dr. King lends support to Thoreau’s frustration with the resenting conformer; the practice seems to clearly strike a nerve in both men. On this matter King says,

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will”. (King)

It has been incorporated into American law for the ability of the people to invalidate unjust laws through the process of jury nullification. This philosophy is deep-rooted in American policy and by its practice has done more to arrest the development of tyranny than any other American policy. The United States Supreme Court’s first Chief Justice said, “The Jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy” (Jay). The power of the people to void unjust laws is suppressed by the government in its struggle for control.

In the infamous case, U.S. v Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, 1139 (1972), the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the district court’s ruling forbidding the mentioning to the jury that “moral compulsion” or “choice of the lesser evil” “constituted a legal defense” (US v. Dougherty). In Vin Suprynowicz’s “The Undisputed Power of the Jury to Acquit” he quotes AP writer David Kravets who says that under a 1998 California “snitch” policy “judges routinely order jurors to inform the court if a juror is not applying the law during deliberations” (Suprynowicz). Jurors found by the court not to be basing their opinions on the literal interpretation of the law are often replaced by alternates. If this policy becomes suppressed to a level that completely prevents jury nullification then the final barrier to stop unjust laws with ordered legal procedure is lost. The less one has to lose, the less one has to fear. And when one is stepped on, to the point of breaking, along the way, most will come to point where compliance’s benefits yield less than resistance’s.

Once the law becomes brutal and barbaric in its policy or enforcement, enforcers, and those who live within its bounds, become criminals in the eyes of God, moral reason, natural law, and international treaty. “The Justice Trial”, United States of America v. Alst

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Quite a lot of people believe that in this world there are conformists, a.k.a. “mindless sheep”, the people who do things because “that’s what everyone does” - and, conversely, don’t do something because “nobody else is doing it”. People also believe that there are non-conformists, who supposedly are the opposite of the above. So far, so good.

But a lot of people make a big mistake here - they believe that non-conformists are people who are intentionally different, people who do something because others don’t, and don’t do something because others do. In other words, people who consciously try to be “different”.

And that’s not “non-conformism” at all.

Trying to be different is really the same as trying to be the same - it’s living in function of others. It’s having no personality, no opinions, no tastes, no self. What others do is the basis of what you do, whether you copy it or oppose it.

Many teenagers (but it’s not limited to them) err in this way - one could call it their “rebel phase”, but it’s “rebellion” without a real cause, a real objective - they just want to shock others, to be noticed. They try to affirm their identity by opposing whatever they see around them - no matter if whatever they see is right or wrong.

A “non-conformist” - or, rather, an individualist - does, instead, what he likes, what he believes is right, what he wants. If he does something completely unique, he doesn’t care; if he does something everyone else does, he doesn’t care. What others do is up to them, but he chooses for himself.

For instance, I like a music genre that is completely unfashionable, that almost no friend of mine likes, that isn’e ever heard on the radio. Yet I love chocolate, which most people also love. Do I stop listening to heavy metal to “fit in”? No. Do I stop eating chocolate to be different, to “separate myself”? Nope, that would be quite stupid. Both are my tastes - whether others share them or not didn’t, and doesn’t matter at all.

Pedro Timoteo is a systems administrator and writer, living at Tercena, Portugal. He authors, among others, a philosophical blog, Way of the Mind.

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We have all read or heard the story of the Chinese emperor and the wise man who had helped him build his great empire. He wanted to reward the man for his services and asked him to name his reward. The man brought out a chessboard and asked the emperor for enough rice such that starting with one grain of rice for the first square of the board, the next would have two, and each succeeding square will have the number of grain multiplied by two, i.e. four, eight, sixteen, and so on. The emperor laughed and said that would be easy. When it came to meeting the request the emperor’s granary became empty, he went broke, and the ‘easy’ became impossible.

Let us see the numbers involved. The chessboard has sixty-four squares. Starting from one grain for the first square the number of grains for the last square would be two raised to a power of sixty-three. The total number of grains to meet the requirement would be the sum of the geometrical series starting from one and ending with two raised to the power of sixty-three. This is a colossal number and we have no word to describe it, so let us use some approximations. Two raised to power ten is one thousand and twenty-four. Let us round it out and say it is a thousand. If we were counting money, twenty-four would still be significant but for our purpose it is not that important. After all it is done in computers all the time when we use the term kilobyte.

Continuing with the numbers in the series the twenty-first term would be two raised to power twenty, that is a million (in order of magnitude). The thirty-first term would be a billion, forty-first a trillion, and fifty-first a quadrillion. We still have thirteen more terms to go but let us stop here because we do not have words for those numbers. Million and billion we are quite familiar with and we are just getting to have an idea about trillion with our national debt, but quadrillion is still vague. To put it in perspective we have only to remember that it is a sixteen-digit number - one followed by fifteen zeros. When we get to term sixty-one we add three more zeros. Taking the remaining three terms and adding them all we add another zero. So the total number of rice grains for the reward is (in order of magnitude) one followed by nineteen zeros.

Do we have an idea how much will this rice weigh? Let us assume that one kilogram of rice may contain twenty thousand grains. One metric ton is one thousand kilos. So the number of rice grains contained in one ton will be two followed by seven zeros. The weight of the rice needed for the request will roughly be five followed by eight zeros tons, which is five hundred million tons. This is a colossal amount well beyond the resources of even a great emperor. However, if the emperor knew anything about geometric progression, he would have responded to the request differently. He could have granted it with the condition that the wise man himself does the counting.

Let us assume that a person can count ten grains per second. The number of seconds in one year is approximately thirty one million, an eight-digit number. Even taking just an order of magnitude estimate it would take almost over thirty billion years for one person to count all the rice grains. The age of the universe is estimated to be around fifteen billion years.

Dharmbir Rai Sharma is a retired professor with electrical engineering and physics background. He obtained his M.S. degree in physics in India and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Cornell University. He has taught in universities here and also in Brazil, where he spent sometime. He maintains a website http://www.cosmosebooks.com devoted mainly to philosophy and science.

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