Out of Egypt:

Thoreau and the Art of Living: An Appropriate Pre-Break Topic

All right, so I need to develop this more. It was a journal entry for CHOW class, give me a break. (Which is coming in a day, in fact...)

I am definitely ambivalent about Thoreau (if such a state is possible - it's sort of like being adamantly neutral). I've heard much about him, of course, but this is the first time I've ever actually read him. Now I suppose I'll just have to read the whole thing.

I thought this, although originally just an assignment I tossed off tonight, would be an appropriate thing to blog before break, since at least in my mind, break is going to be about leaving academic things behind and just thinking about life, appreciating nature. I plan to write a good bit (poems, etc.), but not blog much. I plan to reacquaint myself with all the little beauties of Lancaster County farmland. Hopefully, it won't be wintry still.

So I'm not a party hearty kind of guy, OK? But knowing some of my friends they may try to convince me otherwise...

Anyway, without further ado...

Thoreau: Con and Pro

Thoreau is a brilliant writer; even when I question his arguments, they strike me as beautifully expressed. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” Thoreau writes. This is a sentiment both distinctively modern and distinctively American: a romantic individualism, which sees finding oneself as the highest duty of humanity. I suppose the Greeks are the originators of this view of life, but writers like Thoreau have popularized it. Only in America has the phrase “Carpe diem,” of Dead Poets Society fame, generally been put into practice.

Thoreau’s delighted unconcern with the affairs of the outside world is attractive, but it strikes me as an evasion of responsibility. It may work very well for him, it may please him, but it is no ground on which a society could be established. The simple life takes on brighter colors to the one for whom it is a choice, not a necessity. To appreciate simplicity as Thoreau does, one must first have some knowledge of luxury. Those who must live simply may be happier than the idle rich, but their happiness is of a different, purer character than those who adopt simplicity as a fashion.

“The value of a man,” Thoreau writes, “is not in his skin, that we should touch him.” I wonder where Thoreau believes it to lie. In Walden, he speaks only of the foolishness of humanity. Nature and himself are the only subjects he finds worthy of praise. I agree rather with the Christian theologians who have said that without society, there is no humanity. “It is not good for man to be alone.”

Yet even after I have said all this, I still find Thoreau worth reading. While these serious flaws are often overlooked by his readers, the virtues are seen by all. His independence is refreshing – if only it were not joined to such a strong distaste for society. His love of nature, as with the Romantics, is inspiring – if only it aspired to something higher than nature.

We would do well to imitate Thoreau in some matters, even as we would be foolish to imitate him in others. To avoid being weighed down with care, with concern for material goods – this is not only Thoreau’s teaching, but the teaching of the Gospels. Inasmuch as observing Thoreau’s way of life can help us avoid living “lives of quiet desperation,” as he put it, it is a worthwhile study. While only living life in love of God and neighbor can give the satisfaction Thoreau sought, the simplicity in which he lived is a good beginning.

We do not and should not have to retreat from the world physically, as if we must be hermits or monks to save our souls. Yet we should retreat from the world spiritually, setting up a mental barrier between ourselves and the way of life we see prevailing around us. The simplicity that we need is not an outer simplicity of circumstance but an inner simplicity of desire. For it is not what is outside a man that defiles him.