Gravity Can’t Command You. Neither Can the Law.

Imagine waking up tomorrow and realizing that gravity is no longer mandatory. You stretch your arms, take a leap, and instead of falling you float serenely above your dorm floor. For once, you are untethered from the Earth. Now, at least in this physical sense, you are free. Free from accidental stumbles, free from the burden of Mondays dragging you down — literally. Would you choose to float forever, or would you eventually miss the sweet, familiar pull of the ground beneath your feet?

At first glance, this scenario seems absurd — a whimsical fantasy fit for science fiction or a late-night daydream. But it serves a deeper purpose. It forces us to question what we accept as inevitable, and why. While gravity is non-negotiable, the laws and social norms we live under are created by humans, maintained by humans, and in principle subject to human consent or rejection. Yet we treat them as if they were as immutable as the Earth’s pull. Just as ignoring gravity entirely would likely lead to catastrophe, rejecting all societal obligations is perilous. Yet recognizing the possibility — realizing that one could opt out — forces us to confront the assumptions underlying our participation.

Laws arise from authority, and authority exists only through consent or coercion — either granted willingly (to remove oneself from the state of nature) or forcibly imposed. In this situation, authority can be questioned, denied, or challenged. Gravity, by contrast, offers no such possibility: It cannot be consented to, nor truly resisted. Unlike human laws, which some may find easier to disobey than others depending on circumstance, privilege, or resources, gravity is absolute: It does not and can not bend for wealth, status, or cleverness. Gravity is indifferent to desire or intention, a constant force we must reckon with in every moment of our physical existence, inescapable and unnegotiable to the extent that the idea of rejecting it is absurd. Yet still we frame gravity as a “law” of the universe. This portrayal does not humanize it or render it debatable; rather, it erases the element of choice from governance entirely, likening its rule to that of the forces acting on our bodies, as if it were simply a condition of existence rather than a rule that might be accepted, negotiated, or rejected.

Human experience is fundamentally structured by limits. From the moment we are conceived, we are forced to navigate a world defined by boundaries — some physical, some social, some moral. Gravity is the most obvious one of these constraints. It sets the stage for movement, effort, and balance, establishing a baseline from which all action is measured. But beyond the physical, humans internalize other forms of “gravity” as if they were just as inevitable: laws, social norms, cultural expectations. We seldom question the necessity of gravity — it simply is. Similarly, laws and norms operate in the background of daily life, guiding behavior in ways both conscious and subconscious. To rebel against such constraints is not merely to act differently; it is to challenge a fundamental perception of reality itself.

If gravity represents the inescapable forces that structure our existence, then citizenship functions as a form of societal gravity in the United States. Just as we cannot opt out of gravity, Americans are bound by the obligations and protections that citizenship entails, whether they actively consent to them or not. Citizenship structures daily life, constraining and enabling in ways that often go unnoticed: Access to education, healthcare, and legal rights come paired with responsibilities like taxation, jury duty, and adherence to laws that reflect broader national priorities. 

That gravitational pull is being actively intensified and weaponized in the present political moment. Since returning to national power, President Donald Trump has openly embraced a vision of governance that redefines legality as being loyal to him and criminality as dissenting. In theory, laws derive their legitimacy from the social functions they are meant to serve: creating order without absolute domination, structure without coercion necessarily, and in general frameworks through which rights can actually be exercised. A rule that abandons these purposes ceases to function as law in any meaningful sense. It becomes mere command. What Trump is exploiting is not the inevitability of the law, but its appearance — reshaping legality not around justice or constraint, but around power’s ability to declare itself legal after the fact. In doing so, he does not operate outside the law so much as he empties it of its normative content, leaving behind a shell that demands obedience while discarding any shred of accountability.

Trump has promised to purge the federal civil service through Schedule F, stripping bureaucrats of job protections in order to consolidate executive control; he has deployed the military to suppress domestic protest; and he has repeatedly framed political opponents, journalists, and even judges as enemies of the state rather than participants in a shared constitutional order. At the same time, efforts to restrict voting access under the language of “election integrity,” to weaken judicial independence, and to expand presidential immunity all rely on the same logic: that law demands obedience regardless of justice, and that citizenship obligates compliance even as rights are limited. In this context, citizenship does not merely enable participation — it becomes a mechanism through which submission is enforced, made to feel as natural and unavoidable as gravity itself.

Yet citizenship, like the metaphorical gravity that structures our existence, is not neutral nor absolute — it is caught between competing forces, as historian Frederick Cooper emphasizes in “Citizenship between Empire and Nation.” On one hand, it extends the reach of a state that projects power both domestically and abroad; on the other, it embodies the promise of belonging to a collective with shared rights and mutual obligations. This creates a Hobbesian tension: One cannot simply renounce the state without losing protection, yet participation does not guarantee equity or autonomy. Here, citizenship is more than a legal status — it is a constant negotiation between personal agency and structural force, a kind of social gravity that holds the body, the conscience, and the imagination in orbit around both the promises and contradictions of the American polity.

The Constitution opens with the well-known phrase “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union …” On its surface, these words imply collective agency and voluntary participation. Citizenship, in theory, is a contract. Individuals agree to abide by certain rules in exchange for rights, protection, and representation. Yet the phrasing masks a subtle dilemma: Are today’s Americans truly choosing to participate, or are they born into a system whose gravitational pull is assumed from the moment of birth? Unlike Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan,” where consent may be tacit but deliberate, citizenship today often functions as preordained social gravity, imposed by birth and maintained by law.

Comparatively, Americans enjoy significant formal freedoms: the right to vote, free speech, assembly, and a judicial system designed to protect individual liberties. Yet these freedoms exist within a framework of constraints that cannot be ignored. Citizens cannot opt out of paying taxes, serving on juries, or obeying laws without facing legal consequences. Ultimately, the gravity of citizenship reveals a paradox central to modern liberty: We are both bound and free. The rules are unavoidable in practice, but questioning them — and acting within or against them — is what defines personal and political freedom. 

Freedom has historically been defined not merely as the absence of constraints, but as the ability to act meaningfully within or against them. Freedom is intelligible only in contrast to limits: Without gravity, we could not speak meaningfully of “up” or “down”; without laws or social norms, liberty itself loses its reference point. Constraints, therefore, are not just obstacles — they are the very conditions that make freedom perceptible and actionable.

In principle, one could renounce citizenship, relocate to a different country, or resist certain societal rules, but one would be bound by human-made constructs regardless of location. Opting out of social obligations is technically possible, but it rarely comes without a huge cost. Renouncing citizenship may shield one from taxes or certain legal responsibilities, but it also forfeits protections, rights, and belonging. Moving to another jurisdiction may provide a new framework of governance, but it does not eliminate social, economic, or psychological pressures. Just as literal rebellion against gravity could result in injury or death, metaphorical rebellion against societal structures involves risk like ostracization, financial instability, legal repercussions, and the strain of navigating systems without the implicit support provided by participation.

The challenge, then, is not to eliminate limits entirely, but to understand and engage with them deliberately, striking a balance between liberty and structure, desire and consequence.

I want to be unmistakably clear about what this metaphor demands of us now at this moment. Gravity cannot be refused. Law can — and sometimes must be. And now, it must.

 To treat all law as inevitable is to confuse domination with necessity. The rule of law may be the gravitational force that makes collective life possible, but law itself is not gravity. It is written by humans, enforced by institutions, and sustained only through continued compliance. To me, when law loses its moral legitimacy, obedience is no longer a civic virtue. It is abdication. 

At this political moment, following the law simply because it exists is participation in the exact same system many claim to abhor. A legal system that demands compliance while limiting rights, protections, and democratic accountability cannot be rescued by good faith alone. Fidelity to justice may now require disobedience. This is not a rejection of order, but a refusal to mistake order for justice.

The American political experiment has never been built on passive obedience. It was born in rebellion, sustained through resistance, and periodically renewed by those willing to defy the law in the name of freedom — from abolitionists and labor organizers to civil rights activists and antiwar protesters. These actors were not outside the law by accident; they were outside of it by necessity. They understood that when law becomes a tool of exclusion or control, resistance is not a threat to democracy. Instead, most importantly, it is its condition of survival. To rebel, then, is not to seek chaos or escape all constraints. It is to test the boundaries of legitimacy, to refuse the internalization of injustice as normal. Just as imagining life without gravity reveals how dependent we are on an invisible force, questioning law reveals how much of our obedience is habitual rather than chosen. The danger is not that too many people will resist, but that too many will comply without asking why. Freedom has never meant floating above all limits, it means deciding which limits deserve allegiance and which demand refusal. 

If we are bound, let it be by structures that make freedom real — not by laws that ask us to accept restraint without justice, order without consent, or authority without moral grounding. To be genuinely free, and to be genuinely American, we must be willing to resist when law itself forgets what it exists to serve.