Thoreau: Economy

The day that I actually got out of the apartment and spent some alone time in the middle of the biggest field I could walk to made me think and feel a lot of things, but for the most part I was annoyed with the shrieks and random unintelligible yelling from the group of drunken students hidden somewhere deep in the woods nearby. Don't get me wrong, I am just as sociable as the next guy, but I am unfortunately also three times as cynical. I think that, though for meditation purposes my walk was a failure, it seems being interrupted by a few of the millions of people that always seem to be in my way put me in the right mood for beginning Walden. I found myself sympathizing with Thoreau, not so much for his reclusive tendencies, but because of his indifferent frustration with the state of man and man's disconnectedness from our world. I was trying to make sense of it all out there in the faded glow of the clouds at sunset, trying to listen behind the ambient noise of the town behind the trees and the cars on the highway half a mile away, wondering how long I would have to sit before I could get centered. But all I got was frustrated and some poison ivy on my arms.

As for Economy, I really enjoyed the prevailing concern with having more than we need. Thoreau is so quotable that for every passage you think you can use to illustrate an idea, there are ten more that could illustrate it much more clearly, but I'll recite a few that I found humorous and thought-provoking, at least.

A great example of Thoreau's irritation with over-indulgence is that of the clothes we wear. He says that he sometimes puts people through a "test" by asking them, "Who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee?" Naturally, though Thoreau clearly embellishes the usual answer, the people he asks seem horrified, or they at least act as if it would be an annoyance, to go without buying a brand new pair of pants altogether. In describing a man such as this, Thoreau says "...he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected" and adds "We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches" (19). Not only had I never considered the role that fashion plays in our society's inane preoccupation with our appearance in the eyes of others, but I never really thought about how pervasive this problem is. Though examples of this issue are abundant in Economy, I thought one of the more glaring parallel passages was his distaste for the "ornaments" that a man might build on the outside of his house. The pith of this passage would have to be Thoreau's summation that "'carpenter' is but another name for 'coffin-maker'" (44). I believe that in this passage, as in all of his other passages concerning our infatuation with outward appearance, Thoreau channels his life's experience and all of that eastern philosophy that he read, concluding: try as we might, none of our worldly fascinations will mean anything when we're in the ground.