Individual Conscience; Collective Action

I wrote this blog in westernmost New York at the Chautauqua Institute. An intellectual and musical center undergirded by social justice, CI played a significant role in both the suffragette and Civil Rights movements.

Featuring one issue per week during the summer, CI selects nine issues of national and/or international salience, issues addressed by experts from across the world. I chose “The Ethics of Dissent.” In addition to the topic of the week, CI offers endless opportunities for recreation, art, music, worship, individual study and more.

 The lecture on Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” which included the notion that “dissent is part of America’s DNA,” moved me the most, evoking my early work in Civil Rights and, most recently, my work helping to co-lead Lewinsville Faith in Action.  Published in 1849 and originally entitled “Resistance to Civil  Government” and guided by his opposition to the Mexican-American war,  slavery and his conscience, Thoreau refused to pay his poll tax. He was jailed.  His friend Emerson visited him in jail saying “Henry, what are you doing in there?” to which Thoreau reputedly said, “Ralph, what are you doing out there?”  Although his aunt bailed him out after only one night in jail, Thoreau felt that conscience could and often would land one in jail, “The only place for a true person of conscience.”

The speaker stressed both Thoreau’s profound impact on leaders including Gandhi and King, and, of greatest importance to me Thoreau’s limitations. Thoreau’s insistence on “conscience” alone left him vulnerable to “conscience vs conscience,” mine vs yours.  Thoreau never defined what an “unjust law” was. Where were the ethics – the application of principles?  It took MLK to bring it home, to define “unjust law.”

King suggested a three-part answer.  First, a man-made law must square with a moral law.  Second, a law is unjust if it is made and enforced by one group, but isn’t binding on that group.  Third, unjust laws are laws imposed on people who have no opportunity to participate in the lawmaking process in the first place.  Thus, as legal segregation fails all three tests not only can unjust laws be broken, but, asserts King, there is a moral and civic imperative to do so.

According to the speaker, MLK also changed the meaning of Thoreau’s essay for the better by underscoring the necessity of turning an individual act into a collective act.  “The biggest challenge Thoreau leaves us with is how to get others to join their hands with ours.  As we read ‘Civil Disobedience’ we realize that conscience is a powerful force in the world, but conscience plus community is what can move proverbial mountains.”

In a toxic era that would pull us apart, demean, sow suspicion and create isolation, Thoreau would spark the individual conscience and King would anchor that conscience in social justice and in community.

To this, I say only, “Bravo!”