Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" and MLK's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail": Do not go along to get along, with tyranny

Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, published in 1849, is a natural sequel to the Declaration of Independence, and forebear to Timothy Snyder’s first rule in On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance,” as well as Gene Sharp’s work, including 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action and From Dictatorship to Democracy, and of course the non-violent protests of Gandhi and King. In the course of human events, and in the course of our lives, we all must decide whether to go along to get along, keep our heads down – or refuse and resist, and thereby advance our own thinking, feeling, and relating, and through these, democracy, human rights, and well-being.

A lot’s at stake as we wrestle with conscience, duty, principles, values, and alliances. Perhaps everything. I think that our enemies are ultimately not other people, but qualities of mind. In our era of “warring mind states,” we must cultivate our own mentality, understand others, recognize our duties to the whole, and use our influence, voice, and agency fully.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
— Hamlet, Soliloquy “To be, or not to be, that is the question”

How do we deal with complaints against an authority figure or authoritative groups? Complaints against rulers and rules? Do we bow our heads? Brown nose? Kiss ass? Bend the knee? Kiss the ring? Advise patience and caution, out of fear of blowback? Or do we empathize with complaints? Do we allow ourselves proximity to suffering and distress? Or become remote, aloof, avoidant, distant, and cold to those directly affected by abuse?

Will we lead with empathy or authority? Compassion, or judgment? Interdependence and allyship with the victimized - or supposed “autonomy” masking our compliance and affiliation with an abusive faction? Will we aim for engagement and growth, or insularity and a slow death in stasis? Will we risk anything in order to help others? Will we help even when it’s not clear if we will win? Or must we feel victory is assured before we enter the fray - though the battle has already engulfed us?

Too many people, even now, are resting on laurels and asses, in my humble view, avoiding controversy in hopes of outliving it. But avoiding reality does not make it disappear.

Thoreau makes a case for “if you see something, say (and do) something.”

This attitude defines the core of the Black American experience, as I’ve observed it - and was definitely central to my cultural experience amplified in college at Brown University, allied with Black friends and other minoritized and vulnerable groups, and understanding my own experiences in America and in life. But many people do not come to our moment schooled in standing up or standing out, for a cause greater than themselves. Many of my fellow psychiatrists are, perhaps, experts in many aspects of medicine, but dismally behind the curve in understanding social psychiatry or the impacts of abusive power on mental health and social well-being. In fact, I think they’ve been kept from that education by insiders bent on controlling conversations and limiting psychiatry’s scope to the biological. They claim psychiatry should not stray into political concerns, yet this is a political stance in itself. To be most compassionate, these resistant insiders are not experts or willing learners in social issues themselves, and so dismiss what’s not in their bailiwick.

Most people wish that someone had their back in a moment of need. But instead, too many people are CYA-ing instead of having someone’s back. They would sooner see society crumble and tumble (even further) than lift a finger.

The question of strategy always comes up - and my sense is that no one knows what will finally pay off. We simply have to address what comes to our attention. We have to make our blow, and take our stand against injustice. That action defines our character, our journey, our destiny. And we are all connected. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

We need to pay attention.

A Zen teacher said “attention is love.” Being attentive is being loving. Being attentive helps us understand - and understanding is another synonym for love.

Paying attention and understanding are the only ways to transform the web of trauma into a web of healing. We must each become nodes of healing and transformation in the web that connects us.

It’s just as true that “if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.” Maybe this is one reason why some people resist paying attention to complaints. Paying attention brings emotional risk - of anger, of feeling powerless and out of control, of failure, of being seen as “the problem” rather than the one pointing out the problem, and even of actual physical death. You may even risk loving someone - and then losing them to the abusive monster they are facing and naming. Instead of paying attention, some people practice a learned disregard, finding their own comfort in theories of distance, withholding and personal and organizational “power” and “safety.” They become steadily indistinguishable from the monster itself, because they resist the call of interdependence and allyship.

Distance, dismissal and downplaying are cruelty, plain and simple. They are examples of the “third arrow of suffering” as I have defined it. (The first arrow is the injury itself; the second arrow is what your mind does with the injury; the third is how others treat the suffering you experience and see. It is the chief barrier, I think, to the formation of community, sangha, and even the “beloved community” of King.)

The world is upon us. We are being prompted by the times we share. What narrative will we choose?

Will we answer the call? Or label the one who calls “demanding?” Will we listen to - or shoot - the messengers?

Will we bring othering energy - or togethering energy?

As rhetoric and logic, Civil Disobedience falls short of other protest works, most notably Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail (revisited below) or Frederick Douglass’s 1852 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? Thoreau’s work is foundational and exemplary, but he does not fully build a coherent strategy for societal change - only challenge. But challenge is an important counter to the complacency of an unjust status quo. He makes the important point that once you have settled on a line, and it has been crossed, you must take a stand and actively and visibly resist. This is his foundational insistence, thoroughly of one mind with the Declaration before him, and non-violent protest movements that followed him.

Thoreau (apparently pronounced THUR-oh) opens his essay by saying “that government is best which governs least,” and goes on to proclaim that those who blindly service the state “are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.” One “cannot without disgrace be associated with it [the American government]. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.”

Thoreau pits his conscience against the unconscionable: the system supporting slavery (which would soon include the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850), and the Mexican-American War. When the government stands on such injustice and instincts, Thoreau writes, “I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.” On the question of expediency, Thoreau declares that some matters are worth taking up no matter the cost. “This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.” In fact, the battle to end slavery - the only way to preserve the Union - did cost lives. And it may cost more lives to reclaim the nation from the grip of current militarism, weaponized biases, and election denial. The sooner we take our stands, the less costly this battle will be, based on historical example. But to be sure, we’ve all got skin in the game.

Thoreau argues that the main opponents to his anti-slavery views are not the politicians in the South, but the merchants in his own state of Massachusetts, “who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may.” The near interested in expediency are worse than the distant and obvious tyrant, because they enable tyranny and thwart conscience at our doorstep. MLK would say the same of the “white moderate” more than a hundred years later (see below), and I would say the same of the moderate and moderating psychiatrists and psychiatric organizations interested in regulating an approach to dissent, or legislating against dissent entirely, in the name of self-preservation, “emotional control,” “face,” or a quiet, unchallenging Listserv.

Then Thoreau ups the ante. Do not be an agent in the machinery of injustice. “[B]reak the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

You must be willing to go to jail for disobeying an unjust system. “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.”

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

Disobeying an unjust state may be costly - but it is costlier still to obey, Thoreau writes, echoing Jesus’ words, “what profits a man to gain the world and lose his soul?’ (Mark 8:36) He reports his refusal to pay his annual poll tax for six years, and he is jailed for one night because of it. That wasn’t a big deal, but it certainly qualifies as proof-of-concept. However, his one night in prison disabuses him of his trust in his fellow man.

“I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly propose to do right;”
– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

I might have suggested that perhaps the glass was half-full - most of his fair-weather friends were not directly doing harm, though they chose not to grapple with injustice as he had, at the moment. But as Milgram, Zimbardo, and others have shown, applying authoritative pressure to such fair weather friends can catalyze cruelty - so it is a justifiably fearful prospect to be among bystanders to injustice. “How far in the back of the closet are the hoods hanging?” as my recent essay asked.

Thoreau’s example encourages bystanders to become upstanders, and burn all closeted vestiges of the hood in their own minds and those communally held - in pursuit of a government and society that is equally just to all individuals, and not just some. And this requires us all to forge and amplify our individual consciences with reason, compassion, and relatedness.

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”
– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

You may think, “fine. Take your stand. But how will individual acts add up?”

As I’ve said, no one knows for sure. But under Western and Socratic ideas of agency, one must think out and articulate one’s values, and act. Under social contract theory, the “general will” of the people creates conditions for association, and thus we have to do our part to help press the general will forward, and dissociate from an unjust wills or governmental force when it “crosses a line.” Association is voluntary, and governments can only exist with the consent of the governed. When a line is crossed, consent is withdrawn.

This is what people have done, from Minneapolis to youth protests in India.

India's youth-led 'cockroach' protests expose cracks in Modi's government. PBS News Hour, July 27, 2026

Some would say that’s what they did when they stayed home in November, 2024. Sigh.

Clearly, a lot of monkey wrenches have been thrown into an already dysfunctional system. On the one hand, it looks like a bare majority has consented to government by tyranny, misogyny, and White Supremacy. Perhaps, though, this covers an exasperated, irrational, and uncompassionate means of dealing with difficult to identify suffering. Maybe in this disruption, we can take a better crack at naming our ills.

The main dysfunctions, I think, are still the Giant Triplet named by King: racism, materialism (what Robert Reich terms Supercapitalism), and militarism. “Affordability” issues are a product of the Giant Triplet. Our concrete dollars-and-cents economy, and our emotional economy and ecosystem, are disrupted by greed and abusive power.

Therefore, we must practice civil disobedience by calling attention to injustice, persuading ourselves and others to align with our principles, active non-cooperation with tyranny, and promoting a more transcendent, inclusive vision of the future.

The American Psychiatric Association has thus far, in its enforcement of Listserv rules adopted after Donald Trump’s 2024 election, sided with silencing or stifling attention to injustice, or siphoning it to places where it will not have sufficient persuasive power. They are stand-ins for the “white moderate” King called out in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, and the fair-weather friends Thoreau names.

Some of us feel we are overgoverned and misgoverned on the listservs, at the Annual Meetings, in our scholarly publications, and in our associations with one another. This near-government of ours is (certainly ambivalently) of a piece with the tyranny of Donald Trump, and unacceptable as a status quo. What will shake us out of our ambivalence, that has manifested in measures taken to supposedly safeguard financial health, while mental health and social well-being go under, to the hell which has no bottom?

You may also like this podcast conversation, mainly focused on the challenge of drawing a line in the sand:

290: Civil Disobedience by David Henry Thoreau. Classical Stuff You Should Know podcast, December 16, 2025

King was arrested 29 times, and spent about 30 days in jail. Gandhi spent about 7 years in jail. Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years. See what you did, Thoreau!

In King’s letter, more rhetorically and logically coherent than Thoreau’s essay, King makes his own case for civil disobedience. He gives eloquent examples of the unconscionable tyrannies of racism, and recognizes with Reinhold Niebuhr that “groups are more immoral than individuals” while recognizing he must encourage the group’s moral growth, change, and action. He states “[w]e know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” He proposes a pathway for action:

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification; and 4) direct action.”

King lays out higher moral ground, as well as disappointment in his peers:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection…”

“In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churches stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, “Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern,” and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.”

In this last passage, I could echo King and say:

“In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of social injustice which causes and deepens all psychological injury and misery, I have heard so many psychiatrists say, “Those are social issues with which the DSM and APA have no real concern,” and I have watched so many psychiatric professionals commit themselves to a completely other-worldly practice of medicine which made a strange distinction between psyche and society, the biological and the body of humanity.”

I wish I could give copies of Thoreau’s essay and King’s letter to everyone who’s bugged me with their avoidance and resistance over the last few years. Every person in a leadership position in psychiatry who has enrolled in the machinery of silencing dissent, be it on Gaza, ICE, or Trump’s psychopathy, topics routinely censored to “avoid offense,” yet in the avoidance, allow offense to grow.

It amazes me that so many psychiatrists have retreated into purportedly apolitical “professionalism,” abstinence, silence, and “neutrality,” themselves obviously political stances. Listservs have been censored. Outspoken individuals banned. (I seem to be on the verge of being banned from American Psychiatric Association listservs myself, in addition to being kicked off Psychology Today last year.)

I plan to continue using my voice and agency here - and I am deeply grateful for the support you provide with subscriptions, reads, likes, and shares. Who knows which of our 1,000,000 blows for freedom and conscience will create the crack that finally brings the beast down? I will just keep striking the keys on my keyboard and phone, keep using my voice and agency, and keep marching with all of you, until that day of victory comes.

Thoreau asks us to assess whether we are agents of injustice, actively or passively, and then take drastic corrective action. As the Buddhists say, we should “practice as if our hair is on fire.” Enlightenment and justice - or bust.

A political science professor predicted after Trump’s election that things would not change until more of us felt personally injured by Trump and MAGA. To those who feel as yet uninjured: please, come meet us in our wounds.

More of us need to “drop out” of business-as-usual to get enough heads to turn and face our nightmare and cataclysm.

More of us need to make Thoreau and King proud. Become “creatively maladjusted,” as King advised. Be unafraid of throwing monkey wrenches in the infernal machine intent on our annihilation.

If only we could all stop co-operating with what is detestable, and cut all the cords of complicity with corruption. If only conscience could work its way into the sinews, bones, and marrow of society, from whatever isolated clumps of neurons it now smolders and sparks our cultural imagination.

If only we could build neighborhoods and nations from these neurons committed to conscience and compassion.

If only the general will would tend towards justice, and away from lies supporting abusive power.

Maybe then - conscience could connect and uplift us; make us more sane instead of “driving us nuts.”

Terry Malloy: “Conscience - that stuff can drive you nuts!”
from Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront.

Becoming a paid or founding subscriber allows me dedicated writing and research time. You can also now tip me at Ko-Fi.com/sunmoonlight, or donate to my compassion non-profit SF Love Dojo via PayPal. Thanks, though, to all my readers, free and paid! I very much appreciate the Substack Nation we are forming!

Ravi Chandra is a psychiatrist, writer, compassion educator, and civilizational health shaman in San Francisco, and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is the recipient of the 2025 Kun-Po Soo Award for Achievement in Asian American Psychiatry from the APA and APA Foundation. Here’s his linktree. Please sign up for updates via Substack where you can also support his educational and creative mission by becoming a free, paid or founding subscriber. For fourteen years, he was lucky to have his MOSF posts published by the Center for Asian American Media, and is now at work broadening and building a diverse creative community and coalition through reflecting on culture and psychology for East Wind eZine.See all the East Wind posts here. He writes from the metaphorical intersection of The Fillmore and Japantown in San Francisco, where Black and Asian communities have mingled since the end of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. He literally works there, between two Indian restaurants, go figure. His debut documentary was named Best Film (Festival Director’s Award) at the 2021 Cannes Independent Film Festival. The Bandaged Place: From AIDS to COVID and Racial Justice is available on-demand. His nonfiction debut, Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks, won the 2017 Nautilus Silver Award for Religion/Spirituality of Eastern Thought. You can find him on Psychology Today, Medium, Twitter, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, SoundCloud, or better yet, in the IRL.