"[[Thoreau]]’s ultimate hope was that **if enough individual people decided at once to exercise their moral judgment instead of continuing to play the game, then the game might actually change for once**. This jump from the individual to the collective entails another version of what I’ve so far been describing as voluntate, studio, disciplina. "In [[Diogenes]], [[Bartleby]], and [[Thoreau]], we see how discipline involves strict alignment with one’s own “laws” over and against prevailing laws or habits. But successful collective refusals enact a second-order level of discipline and training, **in which individuals align with each other to form flexible structures of agreement that can hold open the space of refusal**. This collective alignment emerges as a product of intense individual self-discipline—like a crowd of Thoreaus refusing in tandem. **In so doing, the “third space”—not of retreat, but of refusal, boycott, and sabotage—can become a spectacle of noncompliance that registers on the larger scale of the public**." ([Location 1476](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07RHWKD7N&location=1476)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[personal-values]], [[peaceful-resistance]], [[saying-no]], **Source** -- [[20251230081807 - B - How to Do Nothing]]