Why does Thoreau call the government a machine?
Thoreau compares the government, or “state,” to a machine to highlight how the government can cause individuals to ignore their own conscience and become complicit in immoral acts. They become part of a machine that “produces” slavery and warfare.
What does Thoreau mean by all machines have their friction?
When Thoreau says… All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counterbalance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. he’s saying that all machines have a weak point (friction) – something that counteracts their evil and works against their success.
What is the machine in on the duty of civil disobedience?
Thoreau’s metaphor for the government in “Civil Disobedience” is a machine. Just like a machine, the government has problems that can cause it to break, like friction within its structure.
What does Thoreau say about technology?
Thoreau also saw technology as an often unnecessary distraction. He saw the practical benefits of new inventions, but he also warned that these innovations could not address the real challenge of personal happiness: “our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things…
What does Thoreau’s metaphor of the machine describe?
o At first, Thoreau uses the machine metaphor to describe the way in which a “mass of men serve the state” as non-thinking, non-questioning machines who use their bodies to protect the state (part 1, par. 5).
What does Thoreau mean when he says the right of revolution?
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
What kind of government does Thoreau describe in Civil Disobedience?
In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau wrote that the best kind of government was the one “which [governed] not at all” (Thoreau 1)….
How does Thoreau use ethos in Resistance to Civil Government?
In “Resistance to Civil Government,” Henry David Thoreau uses ethos in order to help his audience gain trust in him. By using ethos in this rhetorical situation, Thoreau is attempting to inspire trust in his readers and establish his own credibility.
What was Thoreau’s point about the telegraph?
“We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas,” Thoreau famously said, “but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”