I've finally finished reading Thoreau's Walden (yeah, its about time). I never ended up having to read it in high school (though I did read BF Skinner's Walden Two about Psychology's Behaviorism). I've always wanted to read the original but never got around to it. Dad bought me a copy for Christmas a few years ago and though its taken a while, I'm glad I finally trudged through it.
Why the Walden experiment?
"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, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it".
On 'stuff' making us word hard for things we don't really need:
"But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things".
On personal freedoms (this is why Dad gave me the book; he's always been keen on the 'different drummer' philosophy:
"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? 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. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked in a vain reality".
From Civil Disobedience (an addendum to my book):
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
Though it was tough for me to get through this book reading in spurts here or there I'm glad I finally did it. I'm not ready to quit my job, ditch my house and run off to the woods, but it definitely is inspirational in terms of thinking about what I really do love and what I really do want (versus what's the norm and/or what's easy to fall into). His 'Simplify, Simplify' definitely rings true in today's age of the
http://www.scuppie.com/ .
Next up will be something fluffy, like one of the Dresden Files books . . .
