Thoreau is really a very interesting character to me. I find myself often baffled by the things he says. Not because I find them to be offensive but rather because of my complete opposite reaction. I agreed with what he had to say in economy and I agreed with much of what he says to say on the unalienable rights and freedoms of man. I find myself smiling at his depictions of the woods because they remind me of what it was like to visit my dad every weekend on Verona Island. There is a certain quality in those woods, much like in Thoreau’s, that makes a person wonder at how small we really are. In comparison with the woods we are a mere fraction of the second. It throws into sharp reality all of the comments that Thoreau makes against following society. I think he says it best on page 305 when he says, “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 measure or far away.”
All of the agreeing I did made it hard for me to understand why the critics were, and still are, so hard on him. I mean sure, he said he lived all alone in the woods for two years when in reality he was only a couple miles from town and maybe he is very egotistical but he makes a lot of good points. While I was on my walk mulling this over, it hit me. Thoreau has a lot of good ideas and they make sense to me because I am a product of my generation. Thoreau was living in a time when society was everything to everyone but himself. He is a writer who in many ways is way ahead of his time. He actually says this for me on page 305 when he writes, “If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute?” He was made to live in time that had not happened yet.
This of course brought me back to the introduction of the book that we read at the beginning of our discussion on Thoreau. Bill McKibben definitely seems to agree with me here. McKibben says, “He [Thoreau] posed the two intensely practical questions that must come to dominate this age if we’re to make those changes: How much is enough? And How do I know what I want?” (xi). These questions, (at least in America) have a lot to do with our culture of consumption. Thoreau is completely against doing what society expects us to do. He wants us to spend more frugally, he wants us to love the Earth we live on, he wants us to reserve our company only for those we enjoy and he wants us to treasure our freedoms enough that we want to share the, with all. He does not want us to just along with things because that would be the easy thing to do. He wants us to love our lives. This is completely against everything going on in his time period.
Personally, I've wondered if Thoreau were to have been born in 'our' time whether or not he would venture into town to go to farmer’s markets and buy ‘green’ products and recycle. I realize it sounds rather cynical of me (and maybe it is) but aren’t we just consuming his ideas the way he doesn’t want us to consume them? I keep finding myself in this weird and annoying paradox of: “I should live like Thoreau and embrace his ideas about life but not steal his ideas because they must be my own to be true.” I’m not sure he’s made for our time, or his own time, I think it might be an alternate dimension sometimes actually, but is he really for a future, our future? (red pill or blue pill?) How does Thoreau’s reality translate to electricity and the internet and grocery stores?
ReplyDeleteI’ve also wondered if in his reversals, he actually knows what he wants. In the same way that commercialism conditions us to ‘want’ things, doesn’t the absence of such also condition us to ‘want’? Is simple reversal enough to dismantle the expectations and inherent machinations of society? Can we truly separate want from need, and if we do, does that mean spending hours sitting in a doorway watching the sunlight?
(I swear I’m not an anarchist, social radical, pessimist, or anything else. I’m actually quite a happy person, really.)
Ha ha. I think Thoreau would be appalled by the world today. He thought that the world was going to crap in his time, I can't imagine what he would think of our new consumerism on crack. But I think his message came way too soon. People weren't ready to hear about the evils of consumerism. They were too happy accepting that consumerism was now the "it" thing to do in society. I think that today we are ready for the message because we have come to realize that there are some serious consequences (see global warming) to being a society so focused on consuming. On the other hand, I think you are right. I think Thoreau does a very good job pointing out the dangers through his literary reversals but he does not offer a real "cure" for today's world. We are so overcome with it that I don't think we can turn back. Thoreau suggests that we ask ourselves what we want and how we know we want it. We can no longer do that. We are too bombarded by media all the time now. There was an escape in his time (the woods) but now there is no escape. Media can find us everywhere. Sure we can throw out our cellphones, turn off the tv, and stop buying the newspaper but I don't think any of us would think of living without running water or stoves at the least. There are others who can't imagine their lives without electricity or internet (this of course is the biggest source of media today). However, I think we are more willing to accept Thoreau today because society has changed. It now leaves room for individualism. Thoreau's did not.
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