Forgive us our trespasses

According to my 1966 Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, the word trespass derives from the Latin trans, beyond, + passare, to go. Similar combinations yield transgress, from gradi (to step), transcend, from scandere (to climb), and the related exceed, excel, surpass, surmount, outdo.

Of these "go beyond" words, only trespass and transgress have taken on negative connotations, and these mostly in the context of law and religion. But what if the law or the religion is unjust? Then is to trespass not to excel, to transcend?

Disclaimer: Even as my heart races with excitement and my mind jumps to Thoreau's principles of civil disobedience, I have a confession to make. This entry was not inspired by causes any greater than skiing and parkour. A couple months ago LL and I committed a barbed-wire trespass in the pursuit of telemark ski turns—further confession, I committed the trespass and dragged LL along with me. Then a few weeks ago, inspired by a Sports Medicine CME at which I was introduced to the label "parkour" for the brilliant environment-interactive free-running highlighted in the French action movie District B-13, I scaled a 30-foot concrete wall using the overgrown spillover branches of a tree only to find myself in one of Seattle's gated communities giving an impromptu parkour explanation to one of Seattle's gated community watchmen.

But even as I make this disclaimer I cannot help but think of what is happening in Egypt and Libya, not to mention Wisconsin, of the protest against unjust governance, the trespassing and transcendence happening with each voice raised. One of Thoreau's central points in Civil Disobedience is the connection between the small, daily, unexamined allegiances most of us contribute to the status quo at home, and the actions that that same status quo achieves remotely. With our wages we condone harm. By our taxes, by our purchases of household items, by our silence, we enable the violence that our government and our corporations commit.

"I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, cooperate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. ...It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump."

Before writing this today I had not read Thoreau’s essay. I would not have been able to articulate any of his ideas, beyond this: “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?” But there is so much more here! Set in opposition to slavery and to America’s imperialism in invading Mexico, Civil Disobedience questions the nature of a government that promotes stagnation over reform.

“Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?”

It would be easy and not untrue to say that we are living in both scary and exciting times. Even as the few work to consolidate power—a rabid dictator in the Middle East, a no-less rabid governor in the Midwest—there is a recognition from the many that this is unjust.

What would be untrue is to call the situation novel. It is the struggle between the propertied and the property-less. It has been going on ever since men began to lay claim to particular pieces of earth and extract everything possible, rather than living in equilibrium with ourselves and our world. What Thoreau does is to call our attention to how much our wealth comes at cost to others, in a way that has always been true but has become much less transparent. It is simple (and requires no change in behavior) to look backwards and see that the slavery of the 19th century was wrong. It requires more work to make the connection between a Coke I might drink or a shirt I might wear or a computer I might type on, and the often unjust (not to mention environmentally unsustainable) conditions under which those items were produced.

"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders."

If the injustice of our world requires our daily support to continue, then it is time for us to practice parkour. It is time to trespass, to transgress, to excel.