If you've posted in forums you might remember writing some decent responses. I usually spend a lot of time polishing my discussion forum responses depending on the subject or who I am talking to. Often I want to remember what I said about something, but finding the original post can be difficult. So it makes sense to capture the better responses for later review. Welcome to Clint's Reposts.Thursday, February 26, 2004
What do people think about civil disobedience? (Politics Forum)
> Are there times when conscientiously, peacefully breaking the law is justified as a means of effecting social change?
I am quite familiar with civil disobedience from when I became a conscientious objector in the Navy during the Vietnam war.
If you are true to your objection, you become elevated with a lightness and truth of purpose that perhaps rivals a religious experience.
In a way, you become untouchable by day-to-day events, though all around you face the spears of those you offend. Because of your faith and belief in what you are doing, you rise above the conventional wisdom - you know, or at least feel completely, that what you are doing is "right".
Thinking back to that time, I see that it requires a certain critical mass of people of like mind to enhance the experience. No doubt, the members of Al Qaeda feel the same emotions as any other civil disobedient person.
Dwell on that for awhile and you see that civil disobedience is emotional, yet primal in nature. It does effect change, as does the movement of the sun across the sky, and the changing of the seasons, and tectonic plate movements. But whether the object about which people become disobedient has a righteous, cosmic, lotus flower acceptance by God #1 is open to debate.
Clint
I am quite familiar with civil disobedience from when I became a conscientious objector in the Navy during the Vietnam war.
If you are true to your objection, you become elevated with a lightness and truth of purpose that perhaps rivals a religious experience.
In a way, you become untouchable by day-to-day events, though all around you face the spears of those you offend. Because of your faith and belief in what you are doing, you rise above the conventional wisdom - you know, or at least feel completely, that what you are doing is "right".
Thinking back to that time, I see that it requires a certain critical mass of people of like mind to enhance the experience. No doubt, the members of Al Qaeda feel the same emotions as any other civil disobedient person.
Dwell on that for awhile and you see that civil disobedience is emotional, yet primal in nature. It does effect change, as does the movement of the sun across the sky, and the changing of the seasons, and tectonic plate movements. But whether the object about which people become disobedient has a righteous, cosmic, lotus flower acceptance by God #1 is open to debate.
Clint
