Thursday, March 09, 2006

Civil Obedience

From Darren Kuropatwa:
This has nothing to do with education. It's simply brilliant. Obeying the speed limit. An Extraordinary Act of Public Obediance. It's a 5 minute video. The best part comes at about 3 minutes 45 seconds in. Watch for it. Hmmm ... I said it has nothing to do with education but maybe it does. Isn't this what our school system is designed to produce? And isn't it also the way some people react?

Students, don't try this at home. Seriously.

I'll refrain from commenting at this point. Your thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. I loved thi...I mean...*cough* dangerous things are bad. But, if I were a non-minor, I would say that this is brilliant. It's perfect in the sense that they're using simple methods to demonstrate the futility and potential danger of dumb laws. A perfect demonstration of creative thinking to get a point across.

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  2. Hmmm - an interesting addition to next year's discussion about absolute truth during the Greece unit in Western Civ. (A few of the questions posed: "Breaking the law is wrong." - Is this an absolute truth? If so, why are people like MLK, Jr. upheld as heroes? If not, how can a society survive? If you say that it is alright to disobey unjust laws, who decides what is unjust? If the above is not an absolute truth, is there an example of an absolute truth?) But . . . I wouldn't want to be controversial . . .

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  3. So, if you're a rebel, is it good to bad or good to be good?

    In high school, my friend's dad taught driver's ed. Just before I took the driver's test, she told me to always drive 5 under the speed limit just to be safe. Given the source, I listened and drove 35 in all the 40's, etc. I passed with flying colors. The one and only black mark on my score was that I was "driving too slow, and it was ok to keep up with the flow of traffic!" How ironic!

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  4. It all comes back to Thoreau and "Civil Disobedience"--what happens when the law conflicts with your conscience? Which one are you obligated to obey?

    I like to drive fast (I average between 80 and 85 on 470 in the morning). And I have complete confidence in my driving abilities; the only time it feels unsafe is when other people are driving the speed limit. I don't like to spend time in transit; I like to be where I want to be. Would I drive this fast on a residential street where I could potentially hit someone? Never. But I know that I can safely navigate a somewhat empty highway at fast speeds. After spending many months driving in Manhattan and Chicago, I know my personal perameters of safe driving.

    Of course, on the flip side, the people in the video who were enraged at the slow drivers seemed absolutely ridiculous, and I know that this is what I look like when I'm having one of my road rage tantrums. Reading this video in a practical and un-metaphorical way, I would say that the biggest lesson I could take is to relax and get some perspective.

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  5. Crosby... I have to agree with you... this is a great addition to the discussion of absolute truth!

    As for my own driving, I have to agree with Kristin. I have never been so enraged that I have caused an accident, but i think that this will be in the back of my mind as i drive down 1-25 (between 70-77 miles an hour) in the morning, having fits of 6:00am, I have not had my starbucks, get out of my way law obiding people, freak outs! It does put my road rage fits in perspective.

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  6. I read somewhere that people driving judge others in one of two ways: If the other drivers are slower than they are, then they are morons and if they are speeding past them, they are idiots. It seems like everyone thinks that their way is the only correct way.

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