HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Sources
Thoreau Reader - http://thoreau.eserver.org/
Life and works - http://www.transcendentalists.com/1thorea.html
Thoreau and the environment - http://www.walden.org/
Quotes - http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Henry_David_Thoreau/
Thoreau Center for Sustainability - http://www.thoreau.org/
The Blog of Henry David Thoreau - http://blogthoreau.blogspot.com/
The Thoreau Camp and Thoreau Center - http://www.thoreau.com/Club/Scripts/Home/home.asp
Ecotopia - http://ecotopia.org/ecology-hall-of-fame/henry-david-thoreau/
The Thoreau Institute - http://www.ti.org/
On Thoreau’s Walden - http://www.stevencscheer.com/thoreau.htm
Stanford University - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/
Henry David Thoreau Foundation - http://thoreauscholar.org/
Henry David Thoreau talks – the good life
If I were to ask anybody what they thought the good life consisted of, they would most certainly mention money. Some would undoubtedly talk about health, the type of home they wanted to live in, their freedom to do as they pleased, and the things that centred around themselves and their family.
Ask Henry David Thoreau, who lived alone in the woods near Concorde, Massachusetts, on Walden Pond, what he thought contributed to the good life, he might answer thus.
Henry David Thoreau: I suppose there are as many versions of what the ‘good life’ consists of as there are people trying to live one. Far be it from me to tell people anything. I can only really answer for myself.
Robert Leslie Fielding: To begin with, that seems to be at the heart of our question. There are as many versions of ‘the good life’ as there are people who think they know what it is and require you and I to follow their shining example.
HDT: That is well said, my friend. I have said many times that that government governs best when it governs not at all. I might add that those who think they know better how to live our lives, would do well to just get with living their own.
RLF: But that is not the way of the world, is it?
HDT: It certainly is not. There is something we Americans call ‘vested interest’, and although we have tried to organize our government in ways that prevent too much encroachment on our civil liberties, and the right of every person to choose to live his or her live as he or she pleases, still we find that we are beset by ‘good advice’.
RLF: What do you mean?
HDT: I simply mean that if there is such a thing as ‘the good life’ and I very much doubt whether it can be quantified or explained in any way that would help us to live it, this version – the one version, in liberal democracies, has to do with prosperity – financial prosperity, and any other view of what the good life is merely gets marginalized and dismissed as so much hogwash.
I can really only say what I know to be true for myself and hope that it works for you. I have spent much time pondering on the meaning of life – my life, here by the side of Walden pond.
I have sat at the water’s edge, here, disturbed only by the pulse of water skaters delighting in that curious phenomenon – the surface tension on water confined by banks. Here, sitting with all the company I ever need – I say to myself, ‘Question authority’, which you might wish to alter to, ‘Always question all authority!’
From those few, simple words comes a world of one’s own making – for what is anything calling itself ‘authority’ is nothing more nor less than opinion masquerading as something grander.
Reality is what we crave. Look at those crazy legged pond skaters, zigzagging between the rushes that litter the water’s edge there. What do they crave? They crave stillness, for without the stillness of the water upon which they skate so precariously, they would be submerged, or have to alight on a bulrush.
So it is with men; we are hurried this way and that, dashing to rhythms that are not of our own making, dashing headlong towards something that doesn’t exist – their ‘good life’, only to expire in the attempt to find it, to reach it and to dwell in it.
RLF: I also think that should any be fortunate enough to reach those destinations to which you allude, they continue to rush past it because of this obsession with movement, with ‘growth’.
HDT: I am reminded of the fisherman lounging in his rickety chair on the shore, chewing a straw, taking a brew, talking to his cronies, left off fishing for the day to enjoy the afternoon with his friends, when a city slicker comes up and asks him what he is doing – why he is lounging about when there are fish to catch, when there is money to be made.
The loafer replies that he has caught enough fish for that day, he has made enough money to keep him and his family, and since, as he says, “The other fish out there aint goin’ no place,” he is sitting chewing the fat with his pals.
But, the city man explains, “You could catch more fish, and earn more money.” The loafing fisherman asks, “Why?”
Our city gent, now in earnest, replies, “To buy another boat, of course, to buy a whole fleet of boats.”
Again, our straw chewing angler asks the same question, “Why?”
Now our man of the world senses he can turn this man’s life around; “So you can make a fortune!”
Again, the question comes, “Why?” and then is added, “What would I do with a fortune?”
The gent smiles knowingly. ‘These simple folk,’ he thinks. “You wouldn’t have to work hard at fishing, you could take time to do whatever you want to do.” He senses that his logic has won the day.
The loafer looks up at the gent, “I’m doing that now!”
Now why would an educated Harvard Business School educated man talk that way? Why is it that he doesn’t see the circularity of his argument? Why is he blind to what is so obvious to all except him?
RLF: He is caught on a treadmill, I suppose.
HDT: That is exactly what he is, my friend. He is caught up in some ‘immense, pecuniary mangle, as my good friend, Charles Dickens once put it in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The mangle grinds exceedingly small and forever grinds those that dare to get so entrapped.
Here is our tardy fisherman, taking the best of the day, the early morning, to do his daily work, and now here he is, having completed that work, taking a well earned rest from his labours, discussing the price of his catch or the heavy burden of tax he is required to pay by the folks in his own state capital.
RLF: Or he is talking of no such things; merely passing the time of day in what the city gent might call ‘idle chat’.
HDT: Let me tell you, my friend; that ‘idle chat’ is no less than the cement to binds this nation together. It is driven only by one man’s interest coinciding with another’s. Once it gains direction, with goals, it becomes something else; it becomes commerce, trade, and trade besmirches everything it touches. This country and most others are built up on it.
‘Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions.’
The first community, the first farmer who made what we now call ‘a surplus’ and thought how he could profit from it started it all. He invested something into those bushels of grain he couldn’t eat – he called it ‘value’, and he invited his neighbours to partake of something they probably had no pressing need of.
RLF: But it is done. We can’t turn back the clocks of history and pretend it isn’t so. Man trades, and lives by what he trades, surely.
HDT: Quite, except that I would go one step further and say that not only does he live by what he is able to trade, but that he also lives for that trade. It is trading, more than living that the man lives for. He is in competition now with his neighbor, and being so, feels himself more of a man if he can be the victor in that competitive activity.
Take our friend, the fisherman. Has he not learned to quell and quiet his desire to win, and decided instead, to live – to work to live, rather than the other way round.
RLF: You said, did you not, that you could well earn enough for your needs by merely laboring for no more than six weeks a year. Did you mean it?
HDT: Of course, I meant it, meant it and still do. A man is judged rich, not by the things he owns, which is the conventional, almost unthinking way of looking at success, but is rich by that amount that he can live without. Desire is pernicious when it is learned, is it not.
Take the desire to be rich – which is nothing much more or less than the desire to have more than one’s fellows. We are enveloped in comparisons, and what is being compared has value only in a culture of greed and material acquisition. Left to our own devices, we would only desire that which we could usefully use to enrich our lives.
So tell me, in what way does a row of zeros in an account lying in a vault, enrich anything? What enriches life is that which gives life – which contributes to it directly, and not what we are instructed to think does so.
Robert L. Fielding
Sources
Thoreau Reader - http://thoreau.eserver.org/
Life and works - http://www.transcendentalists.com/1thorea.html
Thoreau and the environment - http://www.walden.org/
Quotes - http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Henry_David_Thoreau/
Thoreau Center for Sustainability - http://www.thoreau.org/
The Blog of Henry David Thoreau - http://blogthoreau.blogspot.com/
The Thoreau Camp and Thoreau Center - http://www.thoreau.com/Club/Scripts/Home/home.asp
Ecotopia - http://ecotopia.org/ecology-hall-of-fame/henry-david-thoreau/
The Thoreau Institute - http://www.ti.org/
On Thoreau’s Walden - http://www.stevencscheer.com/thoreau.htm
Stanford University - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thoreau/
Henry David Thoreau Foundation - http://thoreauscholar.org/
Henry David Thoreau talks – the good life
If I were to ask anybody what they thought the good life consisted of, they would most certainly mention money. Some would undoubtedly talk about health, the type of home they wanted to live in, their freedom to do as they pleased, and the things that centred around themselves and their family.
Ask Henry David Thoreau, who lived alone in the woods near Concorde, Massachusetts, on Walden Pond, what he thought contributed to the good life, he might answer thus.
Henry David Thoreau: I suppose there are as many versions of what the ‘good life’ consists of as there are people trying to live one. Far be it from me to tell people anything. I can only really answer for myself.
Robert Leslie Fielding: To begin with, that seems to be at the heart of our question. There are as many versions of ‘the good life’ as there are people who think they know what it is and require you and I to follow their shining example.
HDT: That is well said, my friend. I have said many times that that government governs best when it governs not at all. I might add that those who think they know better how to live our lives, would do well to just get with living their own.
RLF: But that is not the way of the world, is it?
HDT: It certainly is not. There is something we Americans call ‘vested interest’, and although we have tried to organize our government in ways that prevent too much encroachment on our civil liberties, and the right of every person to choose to live his or her live as he or she pleases, still we find that we are beset by ‘good advice’.
RLF: What do you mean?
HDT: I simply mean that if there is such a thing as ‘the good life’ and I very much doubt whether it can be quantified or explained in any way that would help us to live it, this version – the one version, in liberal democracies, has to do with prosperity – financial prosperity, and any other view of what the good life is merely gets marginalized and dismissed as so much hogwash.
I can really only say what I know to be true for myself and hope that it works for you. I have spent much time pondering on the meaning of life – my life, here by the side of Walden pond.
I have sat at the water’s edge, here, disturbed only by the pulse of water skaters delighting in that curious phenomenon – the surface tension on water confined by banks. Here, sitting with all the company I ever need – I say to myself, ‘Question authority’, which you might wish to alter to, ‘Always question all authority!’
From those few, simple words comes a world of one’s own making – for what is anything calling itself ‘authority’ is nothing more nor less than opinion masquerading as something grander.
Reality is what we crave. Look at those crazy legged pond skaters, zigzagging between the rushes that litter the water’s edge there. What do they crave? They crave stillness, for without the stillness of the water upon which they skate so precariously, they would be submerged, or have to alight on a bulrush.
So it is with men; we are hurried this way and that, dashing to rhythms that are not of our own making, dashing headlong towards something that doesn’t exist – their ‘good life’, only to expire in the attempt to find it, to reach it and to dwell in it.
RLF: I also think that should any be fortunate enough to reach those destinations to which you allude, they continue to rush past it because of this obsession with movement, with ‘growth’.
HDT: I am reminded of the fisherman lounging in his rickety chair on the shore, chewing a straw, taking a brew, talking to his cronies, left off fishing for the day to enjoy the afternoon with his friends, when a city slicker comes up and asks him what he is doing – why he is lounging about when there are fish to catch, when there is money to be made.
The loafer replies that he has caught enough fish for that day, he has made enough money to keep him and his family, and since, as he says, “The other fish out there aint goin’ no place,” he is sitting chewing the fat with his pals.
But, the city man explains, “You could catch more fish, and earn more money.” The loafing fisherman asks, “Why?”
Our city gent, now in earnest, replies, “To buy another boat, of course, to buy a whole fleet of boats.”
Again, our straw chewing angler asks the same question, “Why?”
Now our man of the world senses he can turn this man’s life around; “So you can make a fortune!”
Again, the question comes, “Why?” and then is added, “What would I do with a fortune?”
The gent smiles knowingly. ‘These simple folk,’ he thinks. “You wouldn’t have to work hard at fishing, you could take time to do whatever you want to do.” He senses that his logic has won the day.
The loafer looks up at the gent, “I’m doing that now!”
Now why would an educated Harvard Business School educated man talk that way? Why is it that he doesn’t see the circularity of his argument? Why is he blind to what is so obvious to all except him?
RLF: He is caught on a treadmill, I suppose.
HDT: That is exactly what he is, my friend. He is caught up in some ‘immense, pecuniary mangle, as my good friend, Charles Dickens once put it in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. The mangle grinds exceedingly small and forever grinds those that dare to get so entrapped.
Here is our tardy fisherman, taking the best of the day, the early morning, to do his daily work, and now here he is, having completed that work, taking a well earned rest from his labours, discussing the price of his catch or the heavy burden of tax he is required to pay by the folks in his own state capital.
RLF: Or he is talking of no such things; merely passing the time of day in what the city gent might call ‘idle chat’.
HDT: Let me tell you, my friend; that ‘idle chat’ is no less than the cement to binds this nation together. It is driven only by one man’s interest coinciding with another’s. Once it gains direction, with goals, it becomes something else; it becomes commerce, trade, and trade besmirches everything it touches. This country and most others are built up on it.
‘Wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions.’
The first community, the first farmer who made what we now call ‘a surplus’ and thought how he could profit from it started it all. He invested something into those bushels of grain he couldn’t eat – he called it ‘value’, and he invited his neighbours to partake of something they probably had no pressing need of.
RLF: But it is done. We can’t turn back the clocks of history and pretend it isn’t so. Man trades, and lives by what he trades, surely.
HDT: Quite, except that I would go one step further and say that not only does he live by what he is able to trade, but that he also lives for that trade. It is trading, more than living that the man lives for. He is in competition now with his neighbor, and being so, feels himself more of a man if he can be the victor in that competitive activity.
Take our friend, the fisherman. Has he not learned to quell and quiet his desire to win, and decided instead, to live – to work to live, rather than the other way round.
RLF: You said, did you not, that you could well earn enough for your needs by merely laboring for no more than six weeks a year. Did you mean it?
HDT: Of course, I meant it, meant it and still do. A man is judged rich, not by the things he owns, which is the conventional, almost unthinking way of looking at success, but is rich by that amount that he can live without. Desire is pernicious when it is learned, is it not.
Take the desire to be rich – which is nothing much more or less than the desire to have more than one’s fellows. We are enveloped in comparisons, and what is being compared has value only in a culture of greed and material acquisition. Left to our own devices, we would only desire that which we could usefully use to enrich our lives.
So tell me, in what way does a row of zeros in an account lying in a vault, enrich anything? What enriches life is that which gives life – which contributes to it directly, and not what we are instructed to think does so.
Robert L. Fielding
Posted 23rd May in:
