How Disobedience is The Foundation of Liberty

When I was 13, I learned there are certain topics someone shouldn't mention to other people. The three forbidden topics: politics, sex, religion. People don't mention these topics for how personal they are but by how controversial they can be. If opinions clash into each other, your opinion can go against popular sovereignty. Opinions, choices, studies, or life process are consistent with the principles that govern society had given to them. This can be explained by the term disobedience-ignorance of the consequences of showing one’s opinions that may be taboo to the group ones in and share them anyway. However, Irish author Oscar Wilde observed that disobedience promotes social progress. In fact, disobedience is not only a valuable human trait to promote social progress, but also, as Henry David Thoreau states, is the true foundation of liberty. 

As children and then adolescents we have to decide what rules to obey and what authority figures to follow. Conscientious parents teach kids to obey authority without realizing that, at a young age, our surroundings are revolved around the counterpart - disobedience. Our parents might teach us society’s way of good and bad - “listen to your parents and your life will be good”, “listen to authority, they are a major force”, or “do what you are supposed to do, that the only right way”. But at the same time, we are in contact with disobedience in every way, one being movies. Mulan is a Disney movie which shows the life of Mulan, a young woman trying to find who she is since she feels she doesn't fit in the Chinese cultural role of women. When her dad is called to go to war, she knows he is too weak and not be able to make it back, so she goes instead of him, knowing that the penalty of finding out she is not a man is dead. Mulan disobeys her family and the whole Chinese's society to save her country and in the way, she found her true self. There are several movies that are based on social disobedience. This movie shows that not doing what you are told, not doing the more “moral”, more “effective”, and more “human course” way, one might found themselves. 

Another example of adults telling teenagers whats right it takes place at school. In US history class, students are taught of the historical events that happened in order for the US to be what it is today. However, history was made with the help disobedience, which helped create the US. We are often told that the laws are meant to follow and obey, although some laws are unjust, we are, as a society, supposed to live by them. Yet, history shows that disobedience provides a check against totalitarianism by showing that citizens won't follow unjust laws. Disobedience is not bad or good either by nature or by deduction. Disobedience’s just a trait that every living species posses that can increase power to resist the flaws of society. Rosa Parks was a black woman who is considered to be the mother of civil rights. She was sitting on a bus, waiting for her stop when a white man got into the bus and she was asked to stand up. The buses at the time where segregated, which means there is a higher place to gold (white) than to silver (black). She disobeys the order and was sent to prison. A bus boycott was taken in place which eventually leads to the fight of civil rights to all the people that was depraved of their natural rights.  

According to history, a form of disobedience - social or civil - has to be done in order for the world to change, in order for the world to progress. As Oscar Wilde affirms, “it is thourgh disobedience that progress is made, through disobedience and through rebellion”. Disobedience is, without a doubt, a “man’s original virtue” to progress and obtain the liberty that society has brutally taken away, just for the people to take kit back.