Please consider how the act of observing nature may transform IT and YOU. Also, think about what makes him a "man of his time" and whether you would have been able to do what he did (meaning, live out on your own, as well as be able to do it as a woman in that time period, etc.).It felt good to have read a “classic” and be able to comment on it now in conversations with others.
Some of the quotes didn’t seem as impressive when read in context, like “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
As much as we all felt we “love nature” and would identify as having a strength in the “naturalist” intelligence, according to Howard Gardner’s research, we also weren’t as moved by Thoreau’s writing as we thought we would be. We had a discussion about why this might me. Some thoughts included that his “philosophy” put him into a different realm than just merely an observer of nature. Other “spiritual” people and religious beliefs talk about the importance of “simplicity” as a way of life, a way to “let go” and have deeper meditation, a path on the road to nirvana. This is akin to going to the woods for a religious experience, rather than to observe nature.
Here's a quote that seems to capture what we were thinking of Thoreau in these moments, "The more you advance toward God, the less He will give you worldly duties to perform."
- Sri Ramakrishna
And we weren’t sure we agreed with everything he said, and thought maybe he had some psychological things going on or was even a little arrogant, given that he was a white male of privilege able to make decisions and still be respected for them (living in the woods), when a poor person or woman would probably not been respected in the same way.
“To have but few desires and to be satisfied with simple things is the sign of a superior man.” - Gampopa
We asked ourselves some questions which generated interesting conversation…
What do you think Thoreau’s psychological state is? Anti-social? Aspberger Syndrome?
Who is his audience? Is “getting back to basics” and “simplifying your life” a talk for the wealthy?
“It is never too late to give up our prejudices.” (his “pep talk” for others?) Economy
If you lived a that time period, who would you want to be? Abigail Adams? Anne Bradstreet? A woman from Concord? Bronson Alcott’s wife?
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” Are you really what you think you are? Or can someone (slave/master, employer) or something (addiction) have control over you?
His philosophy/view of the world was pretty clear…
And we weren’t sure whether we agreed with it all. Living cheaply isn’t necessarily a goal we can all ascribe toward.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.” Higher Laws, 1854
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.”
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.”
“Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them.” Economy, 1854
“Live simply and provide for yourself.”
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
“When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.”
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.” Reading, 1854
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
“What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.”
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison.”
“Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.”
“The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?”
“My friend is one... who take me for what I am.”
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
“The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”
There were things we admired, respected, and even liked…
His observations of nature were beautiful. There was some indication that you can affect nature just by observing (animals get used to your presence and thereby may lose some natural fears which would protect them from hunters). His attempts to make bread and learn from his mistakes felt “real.” The way he adapted and the general adaptability of humans was apparent. The language of the time was interesting. He used “savage” to describe Native Americans, even though he spoke pretty respectfully of their “lodges” (the appropriate word for a home of this area) and lifestyle. There was truth in his statements about “transacting private business with the fewest obstacles” in that many folks who meditate or go on “walkabouts” or “vision quests” do so for several days, in order to clear the mind of daily tasks and let deeper ideas come into focus.
“In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.”
“It is as hard to see one's self as to look backwards without turning around.”
“Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth!”
“Things do not change; we change.”
“What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”
“Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.”
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.” Chapter 1: Economy
His analogies were interesting…
“Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.”
“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.”
There were other things we couldn’t reconcile or found annoying…
We thought that everybody had a spiritual plane that they are working at, and working on (whatever they perceive to be their own work).
He also seems arrogant (hands off) in the way he isolates himself and puts down other people for not being able to live more simply.
You can’t tell a recent immigrant with children who is working two jobs to take off into the woods.
He met with other transcendentalists and lectured, so he had a social status. Folks made $1 per day for labor jobs. One book group member had her grandmother’s diary (50 years after Thoreau) and SHE writes about making $1 per WEEK as a chamber maid. Now what does THAT say about women and their roles/jobs in society?
We have moments in our life, where we can “live simply” and enjoy nature and meditate, but we can’t do it all the time and didn’t like him telling us we should do it all the time.
We could view the book with the lenses of classism, racism, sexism, and ask ourselves, “Why can’t I do that?” Some answers are questions: Would a woman be seen as a witch? As asexual (no real woman would do that)? As a loose woman? Could a poor person be respected (as he was) if they chose to live alone? Could a person of color?
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
“Men are born to succeed, not fail.”
“Men have become the tools of their tools.”
“I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”
“It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.”
“Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”
“That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”
Closing quotes
“However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.”
“If a 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.”
OTHER THOREAU QUOTES
“But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
“He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate.”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 11, 1840
“Man is the artificer of his own happiness.”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1838
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau, Journal, July 25, 1839
LANDSCAPE
By Mary Oliver
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky -- as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
By Mary Oliver
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky -- as though
all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.
