Get Back to Nature, With Henry David Thoreau
Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
I remember reading Walden in high school. I had this very specific mental image of the whole thing: Thoreau out there in the woods, building his little shack. Nothing but silence and the beauty of nature. "A mile from any neighbor," the man wrote.
I have to admit, it's probably on my own head that I took Thoreau's narration there to be an example of poetic understatement. I'd assumed he really meant "miles". Turns out, he was being quite literal, almost down to the foot. But Earth Day is coming up and if you're feeling burned out on modern society, there's definitely a couple of things you can learn from Thoreau. I've summarized them here (and in Be Amazing) for your benefit.
First: Choose Your "Wilderness" Carefully
You'd hate to end up communing with the Earth someplace...rural. Shudder. That certainly wasn't a problem for Thoreau. Despite what impressions he might have given you, Thoreau's Walden Pond had more in common with Central Park than with Yellowstone. Damn near exactly a mile away from bestie Ralph Waldo Emerson's house, Thoreau was often called to meal times by Mrs. Emerson's dinner bell. From his hand-built cabin, Thoreau could see a major highway and hear the train that ran along the opposite side of the pond. In fact, Concord Village was close enough that he walked down there nearly every day. In a lot of ways, Walden is really similar to that time you "ran away from home" to live in the garage. Of course, you were 5.
Second: Don't Let Yourself Get Bored
Turns out, there's plenty of room in the vast wilds of nature for all your friends and acquaintances to come over. Besides regular weekly visits with his mother and sisters (who brought baked goods and pre-made meals, lest Thoreau be forced to do something drastic, like hunt and gather) and frequent (and also frequently food-related, see a pattern here?) sojourns to the Emersons', Thoreau's idyllic, natural lifestyle also included numerous house parties. He hosted galas for political groups, dinners for luminaries like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Bronson Alcott, and once managed to pack 25 people into his one-room cabin.
Accurate illustrative wood-cut print provided by Mr. Michael Rogalski, esq.
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I like to "go to the cottage" by closing the front door and opening the back.
I have been telling people that Thoreau was a fraud for YEARS.
Considering that Thoreau went into deep debt at that point in his life (one of the hazards of self-publishing), living the simple life definitely had its advantages (Good luck trying it today).
why all the Thoreau hate? I just thought it was about slowing down a little, that life doesn't have to move a million miles an hour to be worthwhile.
I'm surprised to see this post on my favorite blog hot on the heels of a program on the same subject by my favorite podcast. According to Clay Jenkinson, your missing the point:
http://makochemedia.com/files/Show%20764%20Walden.mp3
It always surprises me when people assume Thoreau was off alone somewhere. There is nothing in his 'Walden' to make one think such a thing. He was no loner. His book is about extreme personal and physical connection to one's surroundings. He was not removing himself from society, he was engaging in it to a profound degree.
It is a serious misreading of Thoreau to place much importance on the cabin. That is to miss his point. The cabin is just his trick. It fools 99 percent of his readers, just as he intended.
I would have really liked knowing Thoreau if I'd been in his time because I like tricksters who can make us all see things that aren't there.
The point isn't "Thoreau-hate", but given that the whole point of his philosophy was "self-reliance", it is pretty damn hypocritical to live on land owned by his rich friend Emerson and to eat with them rather than gathering herbs and mushrooms for dinner or something.
I think the problem is that people day take Thoreau seriously, when it is clear that Emerson and friends just saw him as amusing eccentric on the order of Emperor Norton.
"The point isn't "Thoreau-hate", but given that the whole point of his philosophy was "self-reliance", it is pretty damn hypocritical to live on land owned by his rich friend Emerson and to eat with them ..."
Which all goes to show you probably didn't read his book, which also contains chapters concerning finances, and how he was able to grow enough things to pay for his food, construction of the cabin, etc., and either eat them or sell them.
In all this, he managed to prove what he'd set out to prove, among other things that it was (and is) possible for a person without large family obligations to get by with next to no money, enabling him to live doing next to no money-related work.
Now, why on Earth would he stop visiting friends and family to make this point? Like another commentator said, his point was about being able to live without working your head off, not about isolating himself from the community, which he appears to have had no desire to do.
Taking Thoreau literally is a youthful mistake, and one that Chris McCandless made when he tried to live in the Alaskan Bush. Thoreau played it up, but he used enough support so that he could actually write, rather than spend 24-7 trying to survive. Removing all of society's connections becomes counterproductive at a certain point, but removing some is certainly a valuable exercise.
#6 Jonathan,
Emerson most certainly did not think of Thoreau as an amusing eccentric. He considered him to be a genius. Thoreau was a writer. That's what he was. He liked to write in a small room in his friend's backyard. Every writer has his favorite chair.
He picked his friends very well indeed. If you were living in Emerson's backyard you can pretty well assume that you were the only man on the face of the earth that Emerson would have allowed such a privilege. I think that Emerson is actually one of the founding fathers of our country's intellectual life. Emerson knew what he had near him when he became close to Thoreau. He knew this was a wild untamed genius of poetic thought. He allied himself with that genius.
There is very little hypocrisy in Thoreau. He plays tricks but he never lies. Never. He points at that little cabin and says, 'Hey look at that cabin I built with my bare hands!' But meanwhile, he's watching your boot heel squash a berry on the road. The cabin is just his magician's hat. Get it?
It shouldn't be "Buckstars", it should be "Stunkin' Bucknuts".
That is all.
@Agger
Of course I read the book -- it's a standard in HS English classes. And yes, I remember him talking about growing things and selling them. But the book made it look like that's how he lived -- it didn't mention mooching off Emerson at all. The fact that other sources show this (and I don't see it even being controversial at this point even among Thoreau admirers) is why the charge of hypocrisy sticks.
@Alessandro
Emerson was not at all a "founding father of our county's intellectual life" -- for one thing, he lived about a century too late, and second of all, he was into transcendentalism and other mystical nonsense that directly contradicted the secular Enlightenment values of the actual intellectual founding fathers like Franklin, Jefferson and Paine.
Yeah, this type of analysis annoys me. It says nothing of the book's message but simply attacks the messenger. This happens all the time, especially when someone points out any of the negative impacts of our current technology/culture. Rather than counter the arguments being made, people fall back to "well...you use toilet paper, and you're typing on a computer, so you're part of the problem, therefore nothing you say matters".
I'm glad they set the land aside for a public park. The cabin might be 1 mile from Concord -- easy walking distance in almost any weather! -- I have to say that it continues to be pretty darned quiet on the land. Train or no train.
#11 Jonathan,
Oh. Dear. To be so wrong. Does it hurt? Is a century too late? Poor ancient land of ours.
Mystical nonsense is my favorite kind of nonsense.
You know, Mr. Thoreau could have split your head in half with what he knew about scientific method. You should read 'Walden.' High school reading requirements ain't cuttin' the butter, mister. Read it when you're awake. Not a day before.
[He] "...once managed to pack 25 people into his one-room cabin."
Fraternity prank? Otherwise, bullshit.
Good point, Badger, about the "intellectual elite."
I think ol' Hank was banging Emerson's wife.
A fella I know named John Pipkin wrote a novel that's coming out in a couple of weeks about young Thoreau. It's called Woodsburner and deals with the time Thoreau burned down 300 acres of forest. Oops.
There are a couple of great points in Walden:
"Possessions own the man, not the other way around,"
and
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."
Only not so quiet nowadays.
It's easy to mock the transcendentists--Louisa May Alcott skewers her father and friends in "Transcendental Wildoats", a funny, very angry book--but they were on the right side of the big questions of the day; slavery, and less consistently, women's rights.
Badger: Little minds experience great pain when confronted with the intricacies of great minds.
Besides, I think what we see in "Walden" *is* to all intents and purposes how he lived, the way an autobiographical and philosophical essay is always redacted. And, eating in your friend's house from time to time is hardly "smooching". And, since Thoreau probably would have gone to Emerson's anyway, even if he'd kept his job as a teacher or pencil maker, so if he did it while staying in the cabin too is rather beside the point.
Anyway, Thoreau's Walden experiment wasn't about living by yourself in the wilderness all rugged like, it was about being able to live as a philosopher, writer and human being with very little effort in the way of sustaining himself. And he did prove as much - like Cima said, you should probably reread the book - all of it, I mean :-)
As to many of the other nitpickings ... like Whitman said:
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself (I am large, I contain multitudes)
Emerson was not at all a "founding father of our county's intellectual life" -- for one thing, he lived about a century too late, and second of all, he was into transcendentalism and other mystical nonsense that directly contradicted the secular Enlightenment values of the actual intellectual founding fathers like Franklin, Jefferson and Paine.
Is that why sexism and racism are cornerstones of American life? The transcendentalists were abolitionists and proto-feminists. The founding fathers, not so much.
And Agger, it's mooching, not smooching. Unless you're talking about Thoreau/Emerson slash.
Antinous: :-) guess us forriners ought to notice the spelling some more before we try to imitate the natives's slang words :-)
@Antinous and Anonymous
Actually, the founding fathers were more into abolition and feminism than you realize. In fact, Franklin was president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Paine also wrote scathing words about slavery. And even Jefferson, despite being a slave owner, was no real friend of slavery and knew it had to come to an end sooner or later.
As for feminism, although it is easy to quote-mine Paine for passages that are sexist by today's opinion, he was considered a radical Leftist on the female issue for his time, admiting that society had oppressed them.
Badger, you cannot not be a friend of slavery and own slaves. Not on the planet I know. Jefferson was a raging hypocrite who used slaves for sex. He wrote some nice things and had a lot to say about freedom which was wonderful. But he was back in the barn putting the wood to the slaves and you damn well know it.
Thoreau wasn't running down the road to rape the nearest non-white he could find. He meant what he wrote. I like him. He frightens me. The dude was one scary mofo. I really really like that. He's maybe by first rock star hero.
You know, apparently he could not drive nails very well. They excavated under his little cabin and found thousands of bent and broken nails from bad hammer hits. That always makes me smile. That's partly why I say the cabin was red herring. He was a literary man, not a carpenter.
Living off the land works best when you're actually a skilled hunter-gatherer - it takes them a surprisingly short amount of time to meet their needs... an average of 4-5 hours per day if I remember my anth class correctly.
For most of the rest of us, it'd be hell.
Thomas Jefferson *knew* democracy was incompatible with slavery and openly admitted it -- he spent quite a bit of effort trying to devise ways of ending slavery. The problem is that he wanted to preserve the agrarian culture of the South while doing it, and that was an impossible goal. This was different from the hypocrisy of, say, the later Confederate leaders who claimed that slavery was good and part of their "liberty" to maintain.
"I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder."-Werner Herzog
When you get your food direct from Nature you soon discover Mother is a bitch. Farming or hunting, all too many times She does choses NOT to provide and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. I like the cushion built into our big, complex global society. I gives me choices.
I choose to see this glass as half full. A little separation is good for the soul. You don't have to run out run hundreds of miles out into the wilderness and eat roots and berries. You don't have to eschew all of technology and human companionship. Which is good, because given modern population densities, that wouldn't be possible for the vast majority of us anyway.
A little space, a little quiet, a little simplicity can make a big difference. Much more obtainable.
@Takuan #28
are you serious?
Considering that thoreau, whilst accompanying a moose hunting party, considered himself a "conscientious objector" i don't think hunter gatherer would be a good label.
hdt wasn't about getting back to the old ways, or being a rugged survivalist, as he was about finding a better way to do things.
read civil disobedience - if more americans had read it i doubt you guys would be in the trouble you are now.
you mean the typos? Or the sentiment?
24 Alessandro,
So you discount the notion that Tom and Sally were actually a loving couple? Are there any Jefferson-sired claimants other than Sally's? I mean, if he was tomcatting ALL those slaves....
the sentiment
and I'm not trying to be a jerk...i honestly couldn't tell if there was sarcasm in your statement not
Ah, good old Thoreau. As important for his influence on more politically active men, as for anything that he actually wrote.
An American "taoist" (and yet himself, as far as I am aware, ignorant of the writings of Taoism itself): that is, a man observant and heedful of Nature (as are the classical Taoists), and arriving at similar conclusions, I think, as a result thereof.
Above all else, Thoreau was a naturalist. Just glance through his unedited Journals, should you ever have access to a set thereof: full of diagrams and personal observations from nature...after all, he died from pneumonia contracted as a result of spending time out in snowstorms counting tree rings on stumps!
But a man observant of Society too: relatively less heedful thereof, though. Kind of like the Taoist hermits, who nevertheless occasionally became politically active in periods of turbulence.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. And one should govern a great nation like one fries a small fish.
I used to live near Concord and Walden Pond, and I was always struck by the different ways one could see the place. For Thoreau, it was a retreat, a place to think and re-evaluate life. Remember, New England was changing at the time with Lowell, just a bit up the river, with its mills and factories.
Of course, Walden Pond itself was surprisingly industrial. It was famous for its ice, which was exported throughout the U.S. and to England where it was a selling point for shaved ice confections. There was also a clay works mining the local mud, and a village where the railroad laborers had worked putting the rail line.
I always wondered what Walden would have been like if Thoreau had not been retreating, but rather engaging. Remember, he was a successful inventor, having developed and sold a new type of drawing pencil. He saw the lake and sensed a place apart. He could just as easily sensed the world in flux, with railroads enabling new industries and dispersion to bedroom communities, international commerce and a new level of interconnectedness in the world.
Thoreau both ate food he farmed himself, and some food he was offered by relatives and friends. Sounds like a sound dietary strategy. He lived in a cabin and visited the town when he got lonely: smart man! And he founded limnology, and wrote a way better book than anyone could have expected. Win for all.
if you are truly prepared to live the real Real Life then, sure you don't need the city. I am not ready to die though, at the first moment my body wavers. Which is Real Life.
When I lived off what I speared out of the sea, I marvelled at the beauty and perfection of what I saw and killed. After a time it came to me that the reason I saw nothing imperfect or ugly was because the other perfect life ate it the moment it weakened. Family is another consideration. How do you feel as a parent, watching your sick child, knowing your choice put that child too far from a hospital?
The only thing I feel I need to add to this great thread is the existence of "Walden II." It's this trippy, quasi-space opera/set in the near future utopia written by I can't remember whom. I loved it! Where Thoreau chats with bluebirds, these guys are martialing their children's labor pools. For the life of me I don't even know if it was named exactly that. It's a weigh in on this topic though. The author was golden age sci-fi, with the prevalent cold war notions, etc. etc.
Oh, and now I'm gonna revel in the fact that I can pee outside. peace.
#39 Takuan: Nicely put.
Thoreau's point(one of his points) is living successfully(defined as morally, happily, in sufficient comfort) as part of modern society, not living out some Robinson Crusoe fantasy of wilderness survivial.In his Maine book he encounters true wilderness, but his sensibility is that of a modern backpacker, not a hunter gatherer.
#39
ask your grandparents, they likely remember.
my great grandmother always joked that when she wanted to visit family as a young girl, she went to the graveyard.
Takuan:
humans lived without cities, or hospitals and got their food "direct from nature" as you put it, for most of our existence. Many people still would live this way if our "big, complex global society" hadn't destroyed so much of the landbase.
a Hobbesian state of nature? Yes, we did. And we were old at twenty five and dead by thirty.
#40 JoshP,
Um, maybe you'd like to Google "Walden II"'s author?
B.F. Skinner was one of a handful of truly important psychologists of the 20th century.
Walden and now Walden II. Skinner was certainly more of a fool than Thoreau.
I say this with a certain amount of authority as the only time I have lived a mile to the nearest neighbor was in a Walden II inspired commune. The dilapidated park model RV was missing two windows, had a cracked wood stove, and resident possum I was never completely successful in evicting. The rustic nature fit into a partly tranquil lifestyle in which I would walked a mile and a half through the forest each day to do mostly computer work, then walked home to cook, typically, over an open fire. It was a sanctuary from the insane drunkards who expected me to keep 8 computers running for nearly 80 "communards" while spending under $400 a year.
Skinner was badly mistaken about how an egalitarian society might actually function, or not. Thoreau noted, at least, that a simpler life might provide refuge from the quiet desperation of a more modern world.
It cheers me to see that, for all the commenters here who completely misunderstand Thoreau and Walden, there are also quite a few who do understand them and have tried to clarify the matter. The point was not to escape society, but to show that one could live much more simply within it.
As for the "Emerson's backyard" thing, I've heard this phrase before, and it makes me wonder where all these people get it from. Emerson did own some land at Walden Pond, but by no means was the pond in his backyard.
Lastly, I haven't read Walden Two, but I always see other writers referring to B. F. Skinner as some kind of authoritarian, the epitome of why "utopia" rightly has negative connotations. Nothing I've ever heard about him sounds as if his thought could have been similar to Thoreau's.
Bender wrote: "It shouldn't be "Buckstars", it should be "Stunkin' Bucknuts"."
Certainly, like most places in Massachusetts and New England generally there is a Dunkin Donuts every mile or so on route 2.
The Boston Globe had an interesting article about the time Thoreau accidentally set the Concord woods on fire: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/04/12/woods_burner
It gives a short summary of his life til that point (this was before he wrote Walden).
Takua:
You buy Hobbes' version of things? That explains a lot. it's no wonder you cling to this culture of waste, obesity, poison, cancer, wage-labor, autism, loneliness, suicide, rape, overconsumption, overpopulation, starvation genocide and inevitable crash.
you can get all that with a hunter-gatherer existence too, its just a question of degree. There is a middle ground, Moss, that is where most of us live.
Cultivate the wisdom to know what to take from either end of the spectrum. Travel helps. Most of the waste associated with an industrialized lifestyle can be avoided by simply not consuming. Most of the worst aspects of a primitive existence can be eliminated by intelligent use of the knowledge and tech accumulated in the process of destroying much of the Earth.
Anyway, it's all moot, the Extinction Event sized asteroid is already on the way and we've done nothing.
"you can get all that [waste, obesity, poison, cancer, wage-labor, autism, loneliness, suicide, rape, overconsumption, overpopulation, starvation genocide] with a hunter-gatherer existence too"
no, these are all primarily diseases of civilization.
"Most of the waste associated with an industrialized lifestyle can be avoided by simply not consuming."
Not sure what you mean by this. Production, consumption and waste more or less define our culture. If everyone stopped consuming, would there still be an industrialized lifestyle?
"Most of the worst aspects of a primitive existence can be eliminated by intelligent use of the knowledge and tech accumulated in the process of destroying much of the Earth."
so "primitive" cultures which lived sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years could be improved by the technology which we discovered while destroying most of the earth?
- and you realize that it's not just the discovery of these technologies which destroys the earth, but their continuation as well, right? so...
"Anyway, it's all moot, the Extinction Event sized asteroid is already on the way and we've done nothing."
ahh, the classic deflection. We would have also accepted "but the sun is going to burn out one day anyway, so nothing we do now matters"
Thanks for the laugh, Mosswatson. Um, "Go Rousseau, go!" whatever.... The alphabet won, get over it....
you're right. i was totally judging cultures by the wrong criteria. Obviously, the ability to effectively commit genocide and rapidly destroy your landbase is what determines an "advanced" society. Yay for the "winners"
MossWatson,
If you can't have a discussion without hurling polemic, take the day off.
Keep it up, Moss, keep it up! :D
I mean, really, wow, you might want to read up a bit on the subject. It's a bit more greyscale than the black-and-whites you're painting in. Clearly, you accept computers and the Internet, so don't expect us to take your neo-Rousseauian humbug seriously. If you do, kindly show us how much less rape there was among those utopian hunter-gatherer sustainable societies you're fantasizing about.... Ditto on those low starvation numbers.... O WAIT YOU CAN'T!!!
These problems are more serious than you imagine, and shouldn't be left to cheap rhetoricians spamming away on the 'Nets. I mean, damn, at least quote some Jared Diamond at us, or something....
I'd like to clarify my point, if I may.
I was responding the the comment (#24 from takuan)that "When you get your food direct from Nature you soon discover Mother is a bitch."
my point was/is that many people (for most of human existence) have lived off the land (ie: in cooperation with nature) very successfully, and whose societies were much more stable than ours, which seems to be rooted in a desire to control/dominate nature.
I'm not saying that they were perfect, but their system worked, they lasted much longer than it seems ours will, and I find it arrogant to claim that our society is somehow more "advanced" or "higher" than these other cultures.
also, i am not saying that rape did not occur, but that it was far less widespread in many tribal cultures. This is based on studies by Peggy Reeves Sanday, which you can read
here
as for your (tdawwg) reference to my use of a computer, please see my original comment (#13) on this thread.
some questions of direct experience if you would indulge me please:
1. Have you ever grown the food you need to live substantially by yourself?
2. What is the smallest unit of self contained society you have ever lived in?
3. What is the most grave medical emergency you treated yourself?
4. Have you hunted or fished for most of your protein?
If you could elaborate just a bit on the foregoing it would perhaps give us some common ground for discussion of practicalities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mallika-chopra/1500-farmers-in-india-com_b_187457.html
Takuan,
I have, for the sake of this argument, no experience living outside of civilization, and none of what I've said was meant to imply otherwise. I'm simply pointing out some of the problems I see with our culture. If you feel that makes me a hypocrite, fine. But it doesn't change the fact that the problems exist. (nor would me living in the woods, hunting/gathering all of my food change the fact that the problems with our culture exist).
Moss, if you think having an average human lifespan in the thirties or, at best, forties, is sustainable and successful, then more power to you. I'll take our more advanced, better culture, thanks, over paleolithic gangbangs any day. I mean, shit, do you want to go back to fighting dinosaurs?
I'd humbly assert that the reason why many people have called you out for your Rousseauean posturing while living in an advanced technological society is that we're simply pointing out a major flaw in your argument. You must admit it's quite a contradiction: a back-to-the-woodser who blogs about prehistoric societies, yet who admits to having zero practical experience with the kind of societies he/she talks about. BS, in a word.
There's a reason most of humanity lives in cities, has writing, etc.: not to do so absolutely fucking sucks. Whyn't you try talking about our current issues without the romantic ahistorical Rousseauean lens? If the alphabet got us into this, it's also our best tool for getting out, no?
not a hypocrite, just not acknowledging that separating the good from the bad of a technological society is difficult at best. We got to where we are now for many good reasons. Every generation has deplored the losses of the natural world they witnessed in their lifetimes, but by consensus we have moved on.
Polarizing arguments don't help, we all have accept some things are better now and some things are worse and what we do need is intelligent, open-minded debate that hears all.
I was quite serious about the asteroid by the way. It is not a question of if, just when. Or some other world ending event. I myself like to frame discussion about the pros and cons of diminishing our "natural" (as in starting)world in terms of species survival - not just personal philosophic preferences.
I used to like the expression: "We do not inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children." Lately I'm looking for an aphorism more about our duty to survive as a species. At all. I would dearly miss the Earth, but if we had to move to the Moon, L-5 colonies, the Asteroids and even the near planets and their moons in order top continue, I'd do it.
Nothing lasts forever. Even if we clean up our act and preserve this biome, if we rely only on it, we will ultimately fail.
Is anyone still reading these comments besides those who have gotten into a debate about things that having nothing to do with Henry David Thoreau? Anyone interested in talking about why simply bringing up Thoreau gets people arguing about primitivism and such things that have nothing to do with the man?
There are two Thoreaus. One is the Thoreau who lived and who left a vast, detailed record of his thoughts in his journals and published works. The other is the Straw Man Thoreau who exists only in the minds of people who obviously have read little or nothing by or about Thoreau and for some reason have all these notions that Thoreau was some kind of hypocrite for not cutting off all contact with society and for not living strictly off the land, though he advocated neither of those things.
At first, there was an even mix of people reciting the usual rhetoric of the Straw Man Thoreau camp, and other people who have actually read Thoreau correcting them and explaining what Thoreau actually thought and wrote. But that discussion was obliterated by this debate about whether technological society is wonderful or abysmal. Such a debate occurring in response to a post about Thoreau only reinforces the confused notions that Thoreau had anything to do with advocating a primitivist lifestyle, which he did not.
The discussion that ought to take place now is, why does this always have to happen? Why does Straw Man Thoreau dominate any discussion that occurs whenever Thoreau's name is mentioned?
well? let's have some Thoreau then.
a wiki pellet:
During a leave of absence from Harvard in 1835, Thoreau taught school in Canton, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1837, he joined the faculty of Concord Academy, but he refused to administer corporal punishment, and the school board soon dismissed him. He and his brother John then opened a grammar school in Concord in 1838. They introduced several progressive concepts, including nature walks and visits to local shops and businesses. The school ended when John became fatally ill from tetanus in 1842[17] after cutting himself while shaving. He died in his brother, Henry's, arms.[18]
Disprofessional,
From my experience (recent and otherwise) it seems that people are extremely sensitive to any criticisms of our culture/technology/civilization, and rather than talk openly about the criticisms, they personally attack whoever happens to be bringing them up - as if any fault in that person somehow diminishes the problems they are bringing up.
and you are right...this conversation has gotten way off topic. Takuan, I would love to address your most recent post, but I'm thinking that maybe this is the wrong place for this conversation.
see you on another thread.
well, someone say something then.
My intention wasn't to shout down the debate and impose a contrived discussion about Thoreau. I was simply pointing out that at first the discussion here was an important one: far too many people believe in the Straw Man Thoreau (wherein people who seemingly have not read Walden and know little about the man first suggest that he advocated things he never advocated, and then suggest that he's a hypocrite or a fraud for not having done those things himself) and it was encouraging to see how many people were speaking for the accurate story (all too often I've seen Straw Man Thoreau completely dominate.) Many of those people already made many good points about what Thoreau actually thought and wrote. And if one wants to know more, reading Walden itself is a good first step.
I would simply add that Thoreau was an intelligent adult and of course he never thought of Walden Pond as wilderness. The Walden experiment was never about wilderness. Nor was Thoreau a utopian who wished to impose some particular way of living on others. He simply wanted to see if he could figure out how to live in such a way that he could spend his time doing the things that he enjoyed, rather than waste his life "getting a living" through activities that didn't matter to him.
But the discussion I think really needs to take place is, What is the origin of Straw Man Thoreau? Why do so many people insist on believing in this mischaracterization and repeating it as if they know what they're talking about? I just don't understand what their motivations are.
people like to talk. Thoreau's old enough and big enough to be archetypal, so who cares about historical precision? Also, this is the web; all discussions are meta after the first exchange.
On the other hand, this is the web; be as pedantic and expert as hard as you can, that is well loved too.
It's interesting to note how people project current ideas about distance and travel onto Thoreau. I grew up in a small town in New England (17.8 miles from Walden Pond according to Google maps.) Never went there until I was in my 30s and living in California. Where I grew up was a whole 27 miles from Boston. Never made it there until I was 16. In fact, I didn't go more than five miles from my house even once a year for my entire childhood and adolescence. That was in the 1960s and 70s. Subtract a century from that and extrapolate to get an idea of the psychological perception of distance in Thoreau's time.
You may also want to read Billie Sue Mosiman's "Life near the bone"; a short horror story about someone who takes the whole bare-minimum sufficiency a little too far...
B F Skinner also wrote 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity', a very odd rambling text about how his behaviourist ideas could be employed to benefit mankind using a 'technology of behaviour'.
Unlike Thoreau, he was not a very good writer.
@Disprofession The so called "straw-man" Thoreau is the Thoreau he himself creates in _Walden_. If he didn't think it wasn't hypocritical to life off of the largess (and land) of his rich friend then why didn't he *mention* it among all his boastings of building his own shack and growing his own vegetables? Honestly, it isn't that the critics haven't read Thoreau -- if we haven't, his hypocrisy wouldn't be apparent to us.
I remember Walden mentioning plenty of Thoreau's visits to town and visits from friends in his cabin. I don't remember specifically whether he mentioned visits to the Emerson house. But what exactly is your concern? He makes it very clear in the book what the reasons for his experiment at Walden are, and they have nothing to do with living without any connection with other human beings. The notion that visiting Emerson's house every week for pie was hypocritical does in fact suggest that either you didn't read the book or you didn't understand it. If you're curious, I suggest re-reading even just the first chapter, Economy. In it Thoreau explains his reasons for his two year experiment at Walden Pond.
I'm not saying that Thoreau claimed he was a hermit -- I'm saying that Thoreau was claiming that anyone could live this alternative lifestyle by building their own house and growing their own food. It's bogus if this lifestyle is not sustainable without outside support from a rich patron, and hypocritical if this support isn't openly acknowledged. The issue isn't pie, the issue is that Emerson subsidized the entire venture, down to the very *land* the shack was built on. Given that most people do not have rich friends to give them the permission to use their lakefront property, the entire premise of Walden is invalidated.