Resolve To Serve No More
This comes from Étienne de La Boétie, boyfriend of the essayist Montaigne:
You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
From The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, which has much to say about “leaders” and liberty.
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About Robert Wringham
Robert Wringham is the editor of New Escapologist. He also writes books and articles. Read more at wringham.co.uk
I’ve sometimes wondered myself if this would work, not so much with tyrants but the capitalist / ad-funded farrago we live with. I sometimes consider my approach to frugality to be a ‘one-man recession’ – a sort of middle finger to the system. I can’t avoid supporting capitalism in some way if I want to eat, but if everyone did what I do then it would probably have to ask itself some tough questions.
Also, thanks for the link to that library site. I gets around the weakness of the Internet Archive that seems to only have downloads as the original tricky-to-parse scans. I’ve downloaded the ePub!
A one-man recession, that’s it exactly. I love that. It comes close to the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm. If you can’t change the whole system, at least withdraw you support for it.