Thoreau: "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

[Zorra]

The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... 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."

[NYC_SKP]

1. Warren 2016 (nt)

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. This.

Everyone is born with a moral code. Injustice only requires us to replace that code with written by those who profit from injustice.

[Igel]

3. But not everybody is born with the same moral code.

Heck, psychology's only just started to replicate cross-culturally some of the standard "games" that have been used to determine psychological universals. Some of these are core ideas about what's just or fair.

They're finding that some of the hard-core "this is part of how all humans" think just isn't so. In some cases the trait is common, and different only in a few marginal groups. In others, the differences are more widespread.

It's a nice conceit that there's a universal set of moral judgments and that we--whether you think "Westerners", "Americans", "Democrats", "DUers," "progressives", or some other nicely bordered group--pretty much have all the "right" judgments and none of the wrong ones. Not much more than a nice conceit.

[Zorra]

4. We can get into a long, complicated philosophical discussion about moral relativism, but it is

easiest to just say for the sake of facilitating communication that different societies and cultures generally have their own commonly agreed on institutionalized and accepted evolving set of mores.

And it appears that each individual is generally responsible for their own moral choices, despite cultural mores.

[Wilms]

5. ^

[DirkGently]

6. Now THAT is some Thoreau. n/t

[Recursion]

7. And this is why I find transcendentalism puerile

I don't know how many Brook Farms have to fail, but clearly at least one more...

[Zorra]

8. The quote was actually relative to slavery.

His very next words, that finish the quote in the OP, were

"I cannot for an instant recognize as my government [that] which is the slave's government also."

[Recursion]

9. Which was also the government that ended slavery at immense cost of lives

Which it couldn't have done if people picked and chose the duty they owed to it.

Thoreau didn't live to see the draft riots, but I've always been curious what his reaction would have been.