> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. An

> There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. -- Mario Savio I really think there is something to the idea of not going along because you just cannot. I think sometimes the "no" comes first, and then comes finding or making a way, maybe. Though I think disgust with what one is complicit in, and the sheer inability to go on with it, are ultimately also based on positive values, and on not betraying oneself, so it's always a "no to X, to uphold a yes to Y" IMO. from https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-trial-hannah-arendt https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/marchapril/feature/the-t... > Arendt had removed the guarantee of absolute innocence and automatic guilt from the question of moral responsibility. What did she put in its place? The capacity to exercise an “independent human faculty, unsupported by law and public opinion, that judges in full spontaneity every deed and intent anew whenever the occasion arises.” And who evidenced this capacity? They were not distinguished by any superior intelligence or sophistication in moral matters but “dared to judge by themselves.” Deciding that conformity would leave them unable to “live with themselves,” sometimes they even chose to die rather than become complicit. “The dividing line between those who want to think and therefore have to judge by themselves, and those who do not, strikes across all social and cultural or educational differences.” Hannah Arendt's essay "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship": https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-personal-responsibility-under-a-dictatorship.pdf https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/arendt-pe...