So far, the one thing that's screaming out at me with Thoreau's 'Walden' is not its description of nature and solitary living, but its personal anarchism and his ruminations on human nature. On a couple of occasions, Thoreau asserts the state threatens him more than any living person can.
It's very much the base of what libertarians believe; that state coercion is or can be violent and destroys individual liberties.
In order to be liberated, sounds like, one has to drop out of society and pull a "Thoreau." So he thinks. I think. Even if you have the luxury of bringing your laundry to mom.
My friend and I often joke about "packing up and leaving for Barbados or some other island." Set up some lousy kiosque and live, well, happy. The folks who do it down there seem happy anyway.
The joke is either a cry for help or the desire to become deadbeats. Although, I'm not sure I agree doing so points to some deadbeat impulse.
Thoreau advocates a farcical anarchy. He was independent the way boy scouts out on a camping trip are survivalists.
ReplyDeleteBy those standards, every pothead without a job who lives in a shitty house surrounded by trees would be a noble, civil disobedient philosopher.
Convo down in the village:
ReplyDelete"Is that Henry the wannabe?"
"Hey, Henry you're momma called. Your shirts are ready!"
Something tells me you don't like him much.
Still, the literature is pretty darn good.
I think the Transcendentalists were a horseshit, fraudulent, pastiche who swiped from Seneca and even Epicurus and tried to create their own "personal pan pizza utopia." They were smug and self righteous, and as a self-righteous person myself I resent the competition, but I also believe they offered little but an idealised No. American imitation asceticism, from which they could throw rocks at all dissenters.
ReplyDeleteThe insideous state has allies in such phonies. They sound so right, but they lead their followers to cynical withdrawl and isolation -- thus from taking responsible steps to meaningfully participate in he society, and protect liberties.
Just my mild opinion.
He does come off as a little "judgmental."
ReplyDeleteAnd come to think of it, as I read, I wouldn't recommend what he did.
Tough crowd.
What Zeus said.
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