Order by Chaos

Order by Chaos

Throughout the discussions this week on Henry David Thoreau’s work, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, as a class we talked through many of the ideas and concepts he demonstrated in this piece on how he viewed the government and how he thinks the American citizens should act toward it.  His central idea, around which many of his ideals were based on, comes from the motto he refers to in his work, “The government is best which governs least.” At the time in which Thoreau was alive, this idea was simply a concept of how an optimal government should be handled. Even in today’s day and age with our social and technological advancements, a nation run by those ungoverned is still an idea far beyond our grasp. So under which circumstances then, would Thoreau’s ideal government then work in? The way that Thoreau intended his motto to be viewed is that in a perfect world, and a nation filled with perfect people, who commit no crime or injustices, and always manage to reach important decisions together, are the people for whom the government that “Governs least” is intended. However even here in 2016 we are far from this endpoint described by Thoreau, and as a society we cannot function without a functional government to provide the nation with a stable backbone.