Off the back of the ideology behind 'The Climate Games', the investigation considered the context of civil disobedience in order to note the social, environmental and economic origins that provide reason for its impactful abilities.

Henry David Thoreau:

'Henry David Thoreau not only wrote Walden; he is also responsible for a small pamphlet titled Civil Disobedience, which recommends that – when a US president is taking a wrong turn – good citizens have a duty to protest.'

"...True patriots were not those that blindly followed their administration. They were those who followed their own consciences, and in particular, the principles of reason. Thoreau wished to redistribute prestige away from blinkered obedience and towards independent thought."

Independent thinking
Radical opposition

"withholding taxes was one example of the many non-violent ways that a democratically elected government could, and should, be resisted, whenever its actions veer into aggression or unreason."

Political passivity

"Thoreau argued that the citizen should never just resign his conscious to the legislation, and put himself t the service of some unscrupulous man in power"

Civil Disobedience

By Henry David Thoreau

1849

"I am too high-born to be propertied,

To be a secondary at control,

Or useful serving-man and instrument

To any sovereign state throughout the world."

"We must affect our country as our parents,

And if at any time we alienate

Our love or industry from doing it honor,

We must respect effects and teach the soul

Matter of conscience and religion,

And not desire of rule or benefit."

Extract:

After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?- in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislation? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments, though it may be,

Conclusion:

Philosopher Henry David Thoreau argues that we are individuals and thus should not give into the elected if they stand for something we do not, but instead practice our individualism and independent thinking.

Citizens must thus disobey the rule of law is those laws prove to be unjust to that individual. He draws on his own experiences and explains why he refused to pay taxes in protest of slavery and the Mexican war. He argues there are two laws: the laws of men, and the higher laws of God and humanity.

Gandhi:

Context; (source: history.com)

On March 12, 1930, Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi begins a defiant march to the sea in protest of the British monopoly on salt, his boldest act of civil disobedience yet against British rule in India.
Britain’s Salt Acts prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a staple in the Indian diet. Citizens were forced to buy the vital mineral from the British, who, in addition to exercising a monopoly over the manufacture and sale of salt, also exerted a heavy salt tax. Although India’s poor suffered most under the tax, Indians required salt.
Defying the Salt Acts, Gandhi reasoned, would be an ingeniously simple way for many Indians to break a British law nonviolently.
He declared resistance to British salt policies to be the unifying theme for his new campaign of satyagraha, or mass civil disobedience.
On March 12, Gandhi set out from Sabarmati with 78 followers on a 241-mile march to the coastal town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea. There, Gandhi and his supporters were to defy British policy by making salt from seawater. All along the way, Gandhi addressed large crowds, and with each passing day an increasing number of people joined the salt satyagraha. By the time they reached Dandi on April 5, Gandhi was at the head of a crowd of tens of thousands. Gandhi spoke and led prayers and early the next morning walked down to the sea to make salt.
He had planned to work the salt flats on the beach, encrusted with crystallised sea salt at every high tide, but the police had forestalled him by crushing the salt deposits into the mud. Nevertheless, Gandhi reached down and picked up a small lump of natural salt out of the mud–and British law had been defied.
At Dandi, thousands more followed his lead, and in the coastal cities of Bombay and Karachi, Indian nationalists led crowds of citizens in making salt. Civil disobedience broke out all across India, soon involving millions of Indians, and British authorities arrested more than 60,000 people.
Gandhi was arrested on May 5, but the satyagraha continued without him.
On May 21, the poet Sarojini Naidu led 2,500 marchers on the Dharasana Salt Works, some 150 miles north of Bombay. Several hundred British-led Indian policemen met them and viciously beat the peaceful demonstrators. The incident, recorded by American journalist Webb Miller, prompted an international outcry against British policy in India.
In January 1931, Gandhi was released from prison.
He later met with Lord Irwin, the viceroy of India, and agreed to call off the satyagraha in exchange for an equal negotiating role at a London conference on India’s future.
In August, Gandhi traveled to the conference as the sole representative of the nationalist Indian National Congress.
The meeting was a disappointment, but British leaders had acknowledged him as a force they could not suppress or ignore.
India’s independence was finally granted in August 1947. Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu extremist less than six months later.

If law fosters untruth, it is one's duty to disobey it.

Satyagraha – 'holding the truth'

5 characteristics:

action from strength rather than weakness
a spirit of love rather than hate
nonviolence rather than arms
possible use against family
abstention from harassment or injury

Consequentialism

'Conseqeuntialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission from acting) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence.

Consequentialism is primarily non-prescriptive, meaning the moral worth of an action is determined by its potential consequence, not by whether it follows a set of written edicts or laws. One example would entail lying under the threat of government punishment to save an innocent person's life, even though it is illegal to lie under oath.'
- Wikipedia.com

The philosophy of consequentialism relates well with that of civil disobedience in its nature of the Self, and for the greater good. We as intelligent humans have the ability to foresee and evaluate situation, thereby the way we respond and act should be from a moral and ethical standpoint instead of one that is (necessarily) obedient and lawful. Its logic focuses on the primary importance of consequence, and that which comes after (impacts, results, repercussions, outcome, by-product).

Context of Practice

Monday, 19 November 2018