“You do not become a ‘dissident’ just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances….It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.” Vaclav Havel
Quoted by Matthew H. Young, Lessons in Revolution from the Republic of Professors | First Things.
Havel was a playwright in Communist Czechoslovakia, and his plays got him into trouble with the leftwing authorities, which in turn led him to jail time and eventual leadership in the anti-Communist dissident movement.
What are some other cases in which “an attempt to do your work well”–an aspect of vocation–can lead to cultural or political dissidence?
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