“A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” -MLK

Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  Little did he know, Martin Luther King Jr. would tell us the unimpassioned life is not worth living either.  These men, who were centuries apart in life but contemporaries in philosophy, are two of the greatest example of standing up – and ultimately dying – for something they so strongly believe in.

Socrates was a philosopher far ahead of his times.  The Athenians were threatened by him and tried him unfairly.  He was unsubstantially found guilty with corrupting the youth and not believing in gods, and was executed.  But in fact, what the Greek philosopher was trying to teach was that those who think they know are ignorant, and those who know they are ignorant really are wise. The Greek leaders of the time were guilty of this and decided to demolish their greatest threat completely.  MLK was no different.  He stood up and preached about civil rights and equality.  He had a “dream,” and shared it with the world. He was assassinated because those who were in power – or at least thought they were – felt threatened as well.

Are Socrates and MLK’s similar messages a coincidence?  No. In fact, they support a universal truth.  Without their lives we never would have learned it.  But without their deaths, we never would have understood its importance.

Erica Gonzales