Category Archives: dreams

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On unpacking my library

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Dedicated to the memory of Walter Benjamin. I moved from one office to another last week, which means I had to take down all my books, put them on carts, and unpack them in my new office. A simple enough task, but handling each book, picking a new location for it, tugs at the heartstrings and stirs old ideas from hibernation. You see, no one remembers all of the books that they have. This particular copy of “1984” was left on my desk in chemistry by someone–never knew who–in the spring of ’76. They had written my name it. My copy of “Ghost Story” came from the English book section of Casa de Libro in Madrid in 1979. Over the course of even a few years, one forgets individual volumes that were acquired in odd ways in dark, smelly, book shops off of equally dark and smelly streets deep inside a grimy urban setting. A copy of Borges’ short stories was a birthday gift from a beloved friend and still bears her dedication. I found a copy of Dante’s “Inferno” which was inscribed “To Helen, completely unforgettable, London, 1961.” I had completely forgotten several titles which I had never gotten around to reading, but I was warmly surprised to see old friends that I had indeed read, albeit decades ago. Having an analogue library, though quite superfluous today, appeals to my medieval sensibility of scribe. The physical presence of the books reminds me of how much there is to think about just being human. Flipping through familiar pages, reading familiar passages, gazing on forgotten book covers, I am often reminded of other periods, other times in my life when I lived in other towns and knew other people. My worries and concerns were different when I first read “Don Quixote” or “The Name of the Rose.” While I was unpacking I was assailed by both nostalgia and pathos, remembering a warm rainy afternoon in Madrid when I found that one book about Cervantes that I always wanted to read. Or perhaps it was a copy of “Cien años de soledad” that I found abandoned in a train station in Toledo (Spain). Some books had been gifts, and others had been borrowed by me, but never returned. I found an old, beat-up paperback of “Dr. Zhivago” that I bought for fifty pesetas from an outdoor vendor in the plaza of Alonso Martínez, which I read during the winter of ´84′-’85, one of the coldest winters in Madrid’s history. My copy of Shakespearean sonnets which was bought for less than a dollar out of a remainders bin at a mall in Mankato, Minnesota over thirty years ago which still bears my innocent marginalia of my youth. I had to throw away, with much regret, several books with broken spines and molding pages. At one time this would have horrified me, but these works are easily recovered given the digital nature of the internet. I noticed that I now have two copies of “The Lord of the Flies,” but that I still haven’t read it after all these years–I suspect I know what it’s about and don’t want to stare at the horror of humanity unleashed. I have dropped an ancient copy of “Beowulf” on my desk–a discard from my high school library. I first read this book when I was fifteen, so it will be a new read for me when I pick it up later this week. I will donate three boxes of books to the local library sale to make way for new titles because space is always finite for a book lover.

On vertigo

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Vertigo is a strange unbalanced sensation that makes you want to throw up. Climbing around spooky old Spanish castles and cathedrals, I’ve had my share of strange experiences, looking down from high stone keeps and creepy pigeon-infested bell towers, climbing weird spiral staircases, and crossing flimsy medieval catwalks. I didn’t understand poor Jimmy Stewart until I looked over the wall and into the moat from atop the main keep of the castle in Segovia–straight down almost two hundred feet. My palms get sweaty, my neck gets goosebumps, and something odd happens to my stomach. It’s not so much I’m afraid of heights, but I also hate walking on transparent floors which you can see through. I don’t mind flying, proof of which are my more than seventy trips to Europe in thirty years. Yet, looking over the edge from some high-up place–a rocky, mountain path with no railing, a glass elevator, a very high suspension bridge. Vertigo is more about how your brain is trying to deal with the imminent danger it seems to be perceiving. It’s almost as if your body is bailing out at the worst possible moment, just when you need strong legs and a clear head, both things seems fail. Seeing birds fly below your horizontal line of sight is unsettling and a little nerve-racking. I can’t watch high wire acts or trapeze artists, and rock climbers give me the heebie-jeebies. I have no idea why people try to climb vertical walls using only their hands and feet. Although I drive over freeway fly-overs, the bay bridge in Tampa gives me second thoughts. I once drove over it by accident. Sky-scrapers don’t give me second thoughts, but I won’t look down a stairwell from the twenty-seventh floor. Heights don’t paralyze me, don’t leave me speechless, but they leave me thinking. As long as I don’t have to look down into the abyss of empty space in front or below me, I am very happy with being up high. Vertigo, however, always catches me by surprise, robbing me of my courage. I know it’s totally irrational, but rationality has nothing to do with it. So don’t ask me to skydive, bungee jump off a bridge, repel down the side of building, or ride a scary roller-coaster that turns its victims upside-down. Perhaps my sense of self-preservation is too great for high-risk behaviors or dangerous hobbies. Vertigo is a physiological response, however, which is very real regardless of what provokes it. As a child I never liked the slides in parks, but I didn’t mind climbing the rope up to the top of the gymnasium, touching the iron ring on the ceiling, and coming back down, even though that climb was forty or fifty feet. Yet, looking off of a balcony into all that empty space between me and the floor makes me sweat. I suppose that rock climbers and hang gliders who have no fear of heights, no vertigo, won’t understand this strange feeling of utter helplessness and blind numbing fear. Yet, the vertigo that Jimmy Stewart feels in Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller about dopplegangers and simulacra is very real, paralyzing, strange. So I avoid scaffolding, catwalks, multi-floored stairwells, glass elevators, transparent floors, high places with low railings, scary theme park rides, balconies, high suspension bridges. I just don’t know how the birds do it–having wings helps I assume.

On vertigo

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Vertigo is a strange unbalanced sensation that makes you want to throw up. Climbing around spooky old Spanish castles and cathedrals, I’ve had my share of strange experiences, looking down from high stone keeps and creepy pigeon-infested bell towers, climbing weird spiral staircases, and crossing flimsy medieval catwalks. I didn’t understand poor Jimmy Stewart until I looked over the wall and into the moat from atop the main keep of the castle in Segovia–straight down almost two hundred feet. My palms get sweaty, my neck gets goosebumps, and something odd happens to my stomach. It’s not so much I’m afraid of heights, but I also hate walking on transparent floors which you can see through. I don’t mind flying, proof of which are my more than seventy trips to Europe in thirty years. Yet, looking over the edge from some high-up place–a rocky, mountain path with no railing, a glass elevator, a very high suspension bridge. Vertigo is more about how your brain is trying to deal with the imminent danger it seems to be perceiving. It’s almost as if your body is bailing out at the worst possible moment, just when you need strong legs and a clear head, both things seems fail. Seeing birds fly below your horizontal line of sight is unsettling and a little nerve-racking. I can’t watch high wire acts or trapeze artists, and rock climbers give me the heebie-jeebies. I have no idea why people try to climb vertical walls using only their hands and feet. Although I drive over freeway fly-overs, the bay bridge in Tampa gives me second thoughts. I once drove over it by accident. Sky-scrapers don’t give me second thoughts, but I won’t look down a stairwell from the twenty-seventh floor. Heights don’t paralyze me, don’t leave me speechless, but they leave me thinking. As long as I don’t have to look down into the abyss of empty space in front or below me, I am very happy with being up high. Vertigo, however, always catches me by surprise, robbing me of my courage. I know it’s totally irrational, but rationality has nothing to do with it. So don’t ask me to skydive, bungee jump off a bridge, repel down the side of building, or ride a scary roller-coaster that turns its victims upside-down. Perhaps my sense of self-preservation is too great for high-risk behaviors or dangerous hobbies. Vertigo is a physiological response, however, which is very real regardless of what provokes it. As a child I never liked the slides in parks, but I didn’t mind climbing the rope up to the top of the gymnasium, touching the iron ring on the ceiling, and coming back down, even though that climb was forty or fifty feet. Yet, looking off of a balcony into all that empty space between me and the floor makes me sweat. I suppose that rock climbers and hang gliders who have no fear of heights, no vertigo, won’t understand this strange feeling of utter helplessness and blind numbing fear. Yet, the vertigo that Jimmy Stewart feels in Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological thriller about dopplegangers and simulacra is very real, paralyzing, strange. So I avoid scaffolding, catwalks, multi-floored stairwells, glass elevators, transparent floors, high places with low railings, scary theme park rides, balconies, high suspension bridges. I just don’t know how the birds do it–having wings helps I assume.

On happiness

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If happiness were a thing, an actual item, everybody would be buying it, and everyone would be happy. Very few ever choose to be unhappy on purpose. I suspect, however, that happiness is more a state of being than actual commodity. Yet, it is also nearly impossible to explain happiness in any concrete way. Sometimes I wonder if it is really the absence of sadness, strife, conflict, and melancholy, or is it more than that as well? The writers of the Declaration of Independence felt that happiness was something that all men might pursue as if it were some sort of esoteric goal—a cauldron of gold at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps for some, happiness is exactly that, an impossible pursuit. I would suggest, however, that happiness is best described as a series of moments, perhaps characterized by success in which some plan comes to fruition. Plans may take any shape or form—a trip, a museum visit, a well-cooked meal, a date, a well-written paper or essay, a cold gin tonic on a warm summer afternoon, a nap, reading a good book, sleeping all night, a clean, well-pressed shirt, a conversation with an old friend. These are examples only, and I would not limit happiness to any of them or their analogues. Happiness, outside of childhood, however, is made up of moments, is discontinuous, fragmentary. We are too worldly and cynical to understand the world in any other way. Our day-to-day experience is too broken up to maintain happiness, and we all experience, loss, conflict, violence, hate, discrimination, isolation, loneliness and disappointment on a regular basis. Happiness just drifts in from time to time to make everything else worthwhile. I would love to say that I am happy all the time, but I am also sure that this sensation would devaluate my truly happy moments. When I am not happy per se, I do not see myself as necessarily unhappy—this is a false dichotomy. When I am not happy, I hope that I have found a neutral ground upon which I might live while I get everything else together again. So I look for my moments, pursue those situations that give me pleasure, create a new piece of art. There is no doubt that there are those would sell their souls to recover their lost happiness, a nostalgia for a time that neither existed in the past, nor will it ever exist in the future. To be totally honest, happiness is probably about the moment, yet we fool ourselves into believing that some golden time in the past was better. Waiting for happiness to happen is a fool’s errand. We must always work on our happiness in the here and now with the people around us now and skip the hypothetical what if’s and mythical maybe’s, which are the dead ends of the eternally unhappy.

On happiness

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If happiness were a thing, an actual item, everybody would be buying it, and everyone would be happy. Very few ever choose to be unhappy on purpose. I suspect, however, that happiness is more a state of being than actual commodity. Yet, it is also nearly impossible to explain happiness in any concrete way. Sometimes I wonder if it is really the absence of sadness, strife, conflict, and melancholy, or is it more than that as well? The writers of the Declaration of Independence felt that happiness was something that all men might pursue as if it were some sort of esoteric goal—a cauldron of gold at the end of the rainbow. Perhaps for some, happiness is exactly that, an impossible pursuit. I would suggest, however, that happiness is best described as a series of moments, perhaps characterized by success in which some plan comes to fruition. Plans may take any shape or form—a trip, a museum visit, a well-cooked meal, a date, a well-written paper or essay, a cold gin tonic on a warm summer afternoon, a nap, reading a good book, sleeping all night, a clean, well-pressed shirt, a conversation with an old friend. These are examples only, and I would not limit happiness to any of them or their analogues. Happiness, outside of childhood, however, is made up of moments, is discontinuous, fragmentary. We are too worldly and cynical to understand the world in any other way. Our day-to-day experience is too broken up to maintain happiness, and we all experience, loss, conflict, violence, hate, discrimination, isolation, loneliness and disappointment on a regular basis. Happiness just drifts in from time to time to make everything else worthwhile. I would love to say that I am happy all the time, but I am also sure that this sensation would devaluate my truly happy moments. When I am not happy per se, I do not see myself as necessarily unhappy—this is a false dichotomy. When I am not happy, I hope that I have found a neutral ground upon which I might live while I get everything else together again. So I look for my moments, pursue those situations that give me pleasure, create a new piece of art. There is no doubt that there are those would sell their souls to recover their lost happiness, a nostalgia for a time that neither existed in the past, nor will it ever exist in the future. To be totally honest, happiness is probably about the moment, yet we fool ourselves into believing that some golden time in the past was better. Waiting for happiness to happen is a fool’s errand. We must always work on our happiness in the here and now with the people around us now and skip the hypothetical what if’s and mythical maybe’s, which are the dead ends of the eternally unhappy.

On the past

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Spilled milk, water under the bridge, a crumbled cookie, all metaphors for things that have already irremediably happened for which there is no recourse. The past in a different country for which we lament and think fondly. In light of current circumstances we often feel encouraged to idealize the past, change it so the present feels less painful. In the past, people who may have been lost in some tragic way are still alive and we are still happy. I think all of the time travel stories in which people return to the past so that they can meet up with people who are long since passed away. The past can often be an illusory refuge, a temporal mirage, when we were happier, or more complete, or less lonely. There is almost always a time in the past that we idealize as some sort of golden age when everything was better, when the food was tastier, the wine, sweeter, the people, still alive. Current circumstances, often clouded by job, pressures, bills, circumstances, people, fears, and conflicts, never seem to bring together the requisite parameters that form that strange state we might call happiness. We fight deadlines, difficulties, and dead ends, we rage against the machine, only to find it is not the machine but the ghosts in it that make our current lives difficult. We risk everything by living in a past that never existed because it looks more appealing than getting up on any given morning and driving off into the rain. This is, of course, an illusion. The past is an illusion. Seldom are we either honest or sincere about how difficult our lives might have been in the past. We repress the sadness and the difficulties of the past without truly examining how problematic nature of the past. There are some who try to alter the present by invoking the past, especially when it comes to social change and the attempts by some to keep change from happening. Change is the only constant that links the past with the present, and change is the only unalterable facet of both the past and present that will continue into the future. People hate change, but change is inexorable, unavoidable, inevitable, like taxes and death. By trying to reclaim the past as some sort of golden, idyllic era of perfect values or ideal behavior, some people falsify what the past was all about. The problems that people might have today, they have always had–greed, envy, hate, jealousy, insecurity, ire, pride, sloth. Our oldest stories, even Cain and Abel, are about the those kinds of problems, and the story of Eden is the grandest venture into nostalgia that has ever been written or imagined, a perfect place which is never hot or cold, where the food is plentiful and tasty, where nothing is ever lacking. Nostalgia is phony prison of badly remembered times and reformulated memories that chain us to a fake existence that never really was in the first place. The only way the present is tolerable is if we see it through a clear crystal lens, rejecting rose-colored glasses and dark mirrors which change and deform the past in ways that change and deform our present. To live freely in the present, the past must be analyzed honestly and critically, and one must be willing to accept the change inherent in the passage of time. Yearning for a past that never really existed only serves to frustrate and weaken our sense of the present. So the past is past, and nothing can be done about changing it, but looking at it with a cold eye of objectivity may bring it to life and inform our present.

On nights like this

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Darkness has descended upon the landscape. Wind buffets the house. The temperature is dropping. On a night like this one must count one’s blessings that the furnace is working, the windows are solid, the insulation is effective, and the fire in the hearth is bright and warm. It’s on nights like this when the stars are spinning overhead, light years away, frozen at absolute zero, swirling in cosmic dust and random space rocks, that one feels the pull of existential angst, that one feels small and lonely standing on the edge of the universe, watching time unfold before your very eyes. Time stretches out in front of you, infinitely unfolding as the wind howls in your ears. On a night like this you wonder about what you do for a living, pondering the importance of your life in the grand scheme of things. Frost is forming on the windows, the moon hangs icily on the horizon, the night deepens, you sigh deeply and think dark thoughts. My muse bustles into the room, drinking whiskey, and wearing a sprig of mistletoe in her hair. “You worry way too much. Makes you a bit of a holiday wet blanket, you know.” December, despite all of the holiday lights, is a dark month, and many people hate the holiday season, all that cheer, eggnog, Christmas presents, music, songs, inflatable snowmen and lawn decorations. Sometimes the holiday cheer is just a little too cheerful for words. On a night like this on the shortest day of the year, when daylight is as a premium, your thoughts turn morbid and dark. Personal philosophies, the meaning of life, your great reason for being all seem so trivial when surviving seems like a good priority. This is what winter is all about–the long winter’s nights when not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse. On nights like this, the mice a especially quiet because they know that their very survival depends on their ability to sleep away the dead of winter. Their own simulacrum of death is the same thing that keeps them alive. Perhaps on a night like this, it is the mice who understand what making it through the winter is all about. My muse sips her whiskey and glances over my shoulder. “Are you getting all morose and nostalgic, thinking deep thoughts about existentialism and death? You know, nobody wants to read about that stuff. You need to be writing about medieval existential stuff that nobody in their right mind will ever read. Or drink more. You never drink enough.” On a night like this, one struggles to understand the way the world works, random violence, accidents, war, strife, conflict, the fiscal cliff. Nothing particularly funny about any of that. Or the Mayan prediction that tomorrow will be the end of the earth. The mice are sleeping soundly because they know that tomorrow will be another day, that nights like this are always followed by another day when the sun comes up, and everyone starts over. Maybe the meaning of life is so simple that any attempt to describe or explain it only serves to obscure it even more. So I should work more, worry less, and let my muse do her stuff. Perhaps it is our very resistance to the universe which hides its strange beauty to us. Perhaps it’s on nights like this when the universe stands before us, clear, cold, frosty, magnificent, mysterious, an enigma if there ever was one.

On civil disobedience

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It is rather intimidating to write on a topic that has already been covered by the of Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr., yet the relationship between the governed and the government, however that relational metaphor works itself out, is intrinsic to most human relations at both the micro and macro levels, where few or maybe millions may be involved. Governments are most necessary so that disorganized groups of people may live in relative harmony, observe laws that uphold basic rights to life and liberty, avoid chaos and anarchy. Harmony, laws, and order are in and of themselves good things, but you cannot avoid, then, impinging on the rights of some who do not feel that laws and rules apply to them. Government makes policies, tries to implement them, screws things up, blames the wrong people, and resolves nothing in the long run. In the meantime, most citizens forgive their government for wrong-headed thinking, short-sited policies, poor social and economic plans, and a host of other mistakes which usually includes wars at some point or another. Where governments really fail miserably is when they try to legislate reproduction, the consumption of controlled substances, and marriage (on any level). Civil disobedience rears its ugly head when a large number of people, or maybe just one, decides that a government and its policies are wrong, immoral, unethical, wrong-headed, repressive, cynical, or illegal. Civil disobedience comes in many forms, shapes, sizes, levels and incarnations. Mr. King had to change the thinking of an entire country that was enjoying and constantly rebuilding an institutional form of apartheid that had split a country in two, creating an entire underclass of citizens that were suffering in unfair and unjust conditions just because of their skin color. Mr. King’s civil disobedience was to disregard both a series of social practices and the laws that upheld those practices. I would not agree with Mr. Thoreau’s thesis that the government that governs least, governs best, but he wasn’t too far from the truth. We all need some form of government, some rules that tame our anarchic ways and boundaries that keep our boundless self-interest from destroying us. When the rules are unjust and unfair, when tyrants seem to get away with things, when the people making the rules are not following them, civil disobedience may be called for. I’m not talking about a revolution or hard core violence, but protesting that which is unjust cannot be called a mistake. Mahatma Ghandi had to throw out the entire British Empire, and although he suffered mightily at the hands of the British, he never raised his hand in anger. He understood that blind obedience to his oppressors was not a solution for his nation or his people, but that a violent revolution would also cost countless lives and still risk being unsuccessful. The “civil” in civil disobedience is a double entendre referring both to society at large and to the “reasonable” application of that disobedience within the context of a larger social context. These men and their ideas about change and revolution within the practice of civil disobedience walked a fine line between social anarchy and blind collaboration, and their efforts to improve their worlds often bordered on illegality and criminal action. Yet, as Thoreau says, “I believe–“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” So even Thoreau knew that living without government would be a disaster, but civil disobedience was a check, nay, a balance, against unjust or unfair laws and practices.

On civil disobedience

Posted on by

It is rather intimidating to write on a topic that has already been covered by the of Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Ghandi, and Martin Luther King Jr., yet the relationship between the governed and the government, however that relational metaphor works itself out, is intrinsic to most human relations at both the micro and macro levels, where few or maybe millions may be involved. Governments are most necessary so that disorganized groups of people may live in relative harmony, observe laws that uphold basic rights to life and liberty, avoid chaos and anarchy. Harmony, laws, and order are in and of themselves good things, but you cannot avoid, then, impinging on the rights of some who do not feel that laws and rules apply to them. Government makes policies, tries to implement them, screws things up, blames the wrong people, and resolves nothing in the long run. In the meantime, most citizens forgive their government for wrong-headed thinking, short-sited policies, poor social and economic plans, and a host of other mistakes which usually includes wars at some point or another. Where governments really fail miserably is when they try to legislate reproduction, the consumption of controlled substances, and marriage (on any level). Civil disobedience rears its ugly head when a large number of people, or maybe just one, decides that a government and its policies are wrong, immoral, unethical, wrong-headed, repressive, cynical, or illegal. Civil disobedience comes in many forms, shapes, sizes, levels and incarnations. Mr. King had to change the thinking of an entire country that was enjoying and constantly rebuilding an institutional form of apartheid that had split a country in two, creating an entire underclass of citizens that were suffering in unfair and unjust conditions just because of their skin color. Mr. King’s civil disobedience was to disregard both a series of social practices and the laws that upheld those practices. I would not agree with Mr. Thoreau’s thesis that the government that governs least, governs best, but he wasn’t too far from the truth. We all need some form of government, some rules that tame our anarchic ways and boundaries that keep our boundless self-interest from destroying us. When the rules are unjust and unfair, when tyrants seem to get away with things, when the people making the rules are not following them, civil disobedience may be called for. I’m not talking about a revolution or hard core violence, but protesting that which is unjust cannot be called a mistake. Mahatma Ghandi had to throw out the entire British Empire, and although he suffered mightily at the hands of the British, he never raised his hand in anger. He understood that blind obedience to his oppressors was not a solution for his nation or his people, but that a violent revolution would also cost countless lives and still risk being unsuccessful. The “civil” in civil disobedience is a double entendre referring both to society at large and to the “reasonable” application of that disobedience within the context of a larger social context. These men and their ideas about change and revolution within the practice of civil disobedience walked a fine line between social anarchy and blind collaboration, and their efforts to improve their worlds often bordered on illegality and criminal action. Yet, as Thoreau says, “I believe–“That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.” So even Thoreau knew that living without government would be a disaster, but civil disobedience was a check, nay, a balance, against unjust or unfair laws and practices.