inspectorgadget
19 Nov 2006, 09:13 PM
From his book Lock the Lock, Tommy Trantino, a poet and artist on death row, wrote...
i was in prison long ago and it was the first grade and i have to take a shit and . . . the law says you must first raise your hand and ask the teacher for permission so i obeyer of the lore of the lamb am therefore busy raising my hand to the fuhrer who says yes thomas what is it? and i thomas say I have to take a i mean may i go to the bathroom please? didn't you go to the bathroom yesterday thomas she says and i say yes ma'am mrs parsley sir but i have to go again today but she says NO . . . And I say eh . . . I GOTTA TAKE A SHIT DAMMIT and again she says NO but I go anyway except that it was not out but in my pants that is to say right in my corduroy knickers goddamm. . .
i was about six years old at the time and yet i guess that even then i knew without cerebration that if one obeys and follows orders and adheres to all the rules and regulations of the lore of the lamb one is going to shit in one's pants and one's mother is going to have to clean up afterwards ya see?'
Imagine that child. Imagine you are that child, in first grade - you have to seriously go, you let the teacher know, but she says no still... it's the "rules." But the "rules" suck, they are completely illogical and wrong.
We are taught from an early age to be obedient. But at what point is it okay to be disobedient? It seems that there are justifications for disobedience when the rules and the laws themselves do not represent justice but in fact promote the opposite...
I could have quoted something from Henry David Thoreau who exercised Civil Disobedience when refusing to pay his taxes that would have supported the war with Mexico... or maybe Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Jail.
Has anyone here exercised any civil disobedience of their own? Have you witnessed any civil disobedience that you thought was perfectly justified? How important do you feel it is to be disobedient to unjust laws?
i was in prison long ago and it was the first grade and i have to take a shit and . . . the law says you must first raise your hand and ask the teacher for permission so i obeyer of the lore of the lamb am therefore busy raising my hand to the fuhrer who says yes thomas what is it? and i thomas say I have to take a i mean may i go to the bathroom please? didn't you go to the bathroom yesterday thomas she says and i say yes ma'am mrs parsley sir but i have to go again today but she says NO . . . And I say eh . . . I GOTTA TAKE A SHIT DAMMIT and again she says NO but I go anyway except that it was not out but in my pants that is to say right in my corduroy knickers goddamm. . .
i was about six years old at the time and yet i guess that even then i knew without cerebration that if one obeys and follows orders and adheres to all the rules and regulations of the lore of the lamb one is going to shit in one's pants and one's mother is going to have to clean up afterwards ya see?'
Imagine that child. Imagine you are that child, in first grade - you have to seriously go, you let the teacher know, but she says no still... it's the "rules." But the "rules" suck, they are completely illogical and wrong.
We are taught from an early age to be obedient. But at what point is it okay to be disobedient? It seems that there are justifications for disobedience when the rules and the laws themselves do not represent justice but in fact promote the opposite...
I could have quoted something from Henry David Thoreau who exercised Civil Disobedience when refusing to pay his taxes that would have supported the war with Mexico... or maybe Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Jail.
Has anyone here exercised any civil disobedience of their own? Have you witnessed any civil disobedience that you thought was perfectly justified? How important do you feel it is to be disobedient to unjust laws?