Henry David Thoreau's classic, Walden, touched me in many ways. This book is the end product of 2 years Thoreau spent on Walden Pond, just outside of Concord, Massachussets. He delves into virtually every concern of Mankind - economy, meaning/spirituality/philosophy, right livelihood, nature, human development, education, government and relationships. The book is divided up into 15 or so chapters/essays. My favorites were Economy, Higher Laws, Spring and the Conclusion. I recommend this book to anyone in the midst of soul-searching; anyone in the Matrix; and anyone at a loss for what to make of modernity.
I'm buzzing. Thoreau varies his subject, style and demeanor so widely, as to totally through you off at every turn. Many times he's angry, sometimes sad, often curious and expectant and mostly awestruck by what he observes. Nowhere is he more at home than in the role of stand-up comic. He just looks at modern life (1850's - surprisingly not much different than today), especially in Economy, and remarks how strange it is! We've come so far, but as he remarks, this distance has been traveled to targets far off our intended course.
His wisdom is unparalleled. It is probably not surprising that he is well read and fluent in the Greek and Latin, often referencing the classics, but what may be surprising is how familiar, if not intimate he is with Eastern culture. He quotes the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas moreso than the Western classics!
Economy
In Economy he rails against the government, society and education. He believes virtually every pursuit of man to be totally worthless, that though we strive to the contrary, our efforts are actually doing much more harm than good. He cannot stand how stupidly we behave in society, virtually enslaving ourselves to society's expectations and literally to it's institutions, through mortgages, taxes and the like. He is of the firm belief that old people know nothing. He believes there are no more wise men or exalted communities of scholars or elders.
I found this quite amazing, as I had romanticized his day of being full of such transcendentalist beings, like Thoreau himself and Emerson. Apparently, in contrast to the Elizabethans and Greeks, New England of the 1850's was quite the cultural cesspool. Has it become worse in this regard? Or have our means of awareness expanded to such an extent that the state of affairs just seems more ludicrous?
I underlined a good portion of the 80-page Economics essay. Agriculture was the main industry of the day, so to make these quotes relevant, substitute farm, soil, oxen, land, etc. for corporations, society, expectations, conformity, jobs, computers, meetings, etc. I'll share a few choice quotes with you.
"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil?... Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?"
"The better part of man is soon ploughed in the soil for compost."
"It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver yourself."
"What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors."
"To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live life according to its dictates, a life of simpliciity, independence, magnanimity, and trust."
"While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings."
"When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture."
"But lo! Men have become tools of their tools."
"We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten."
"I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, as their farm is so much the larger."
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve."
"I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse."
It would be easy enough to glean all of this by watching the documentary, "The Corporation," and see for yourself how we are still slaves to the beliefs of our predecessors. However, reading it here in Walden, as one of the first essays depicting how misled man is in America, is a treat. Over 150 years later, the slavery continues.
Higher Laws
In Higher Laws, he builds the foundation for what he believes to be a true and just life. He lays some of the first groundwork for eating a vegetarian fare, claiming the work required to afford meat, requires meat to be eaten - a truly vicious cycle that man inexplicably choses. He talks of the hassles, preparation, cleaning, smells etc. of flesh procurement and consumption, and that should man decide not to eat meat he may at once have more leisure in his life. He frames it in an evolutionary context as well, as we are evolving towards more civility, less brutality, more consciousness, less meaningless sport, etc. Though I love how ahead of his time he is with respect to diet and consciousness, I'm a fan of Higher Laws, primarily for the following passage:
"Chastidy is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established..."
"All sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with impurity."
Another great passage from Higher Laws:
"Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."
He makes the same case for all consciousness-altering substances, like alcohol and caffeine, asserting that water is the drink of the holy man, the thinker, the lover of life. He talks about his own experiences of being made dull by their consumption, and worse, their addiction.
Spring
In Spring, he explores in great detail the cycles of life - night and day, the seasons, the moon. It seems that reality is in constant motion from one extreme to the next, never pausing, from total expression, differentiation, materialism and ego in the day and Summer to total oneness, unity, spiritualism and God in the Winter and evenings. Man needs both to be healthy and whole. Man must express and interact and create, but he must also be nourished spiritually and emotionally and retreat to the hearth, only to be reborn again come day/Spring.
Thoreau's Conclusion
Lastly, his Conclusion, is a timely and needed call to humanity to wake up and begin looking at the man in the mirror. Most of the essays were fun and odd, but this one is a challenge, and rightly so, to every man and woman, to turn inward and explore the great beyond beneath. Some choice pickings from his conclusion...
"Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought."
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live a life which he has imagined [as opposed to principles and methods observed], he will meet with a success in uncommon hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings."
"If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
"Most think they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable."
"Do not seek so anxioiusly to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humanity like darkness reveals the heavenly lights."
"I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me; not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less, not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me."
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
"As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect."
Peele's Conclusion
While Thoreau spent probably too much time contemplating the movements and philosophies of chickadees, moss and ice, his hurculean effort of awareness, introspection and post-conventional thought is nonetheless groundbreaking. Still. Walden is at once a sythesis of all wisdom and introspection, and a clear call that the materialist focus of modern society is not only futile and illusory, but lays to waste such vast sums of human potential, and generally makes us miserable.
I did not expect to see so many references to Eastern texts (perhaps my love for this book is no surprise), thus affirming my hypothesis that the finger of the seeker ought to turn both inward and to the East. I'm not advocating we all make out for Asia, just that Eastern wisdom predates and is infact more sophisicated (as any spiritual scholar will confirm), complete and inspiring than anything Mesopotamia has churned out. Thoreau, while a revolutionary in his day, is actually no more that a tour guide through Eastern thought, as applied to Western society. This is also a great beginner's book into the world of post-conventional thought. Give it a go and you'll be happy you did.
"In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them." --H.D.T.
Brandon Peele is Founder of
Namaste Economics, a set of economic principles defining the path of conscious business.
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