Essentially we like him because he was like us: hypocrites? As the article says he was full of him self. He was a liar. He didn’t live on his own. People cared for him out of their own pocket. Those who love home do so because they want to be like him: a lying moralist that hypocritically says that we are better than you so listen to us. I hated him at 14. I hate him now.
I read Walden when I was 16 without knowing anything about him. I’ve never felt so enlightened as that time. I don’t care about the literary critiques and background information. That book lit a fire in my young mind
I don't know why you're getting down voted. Thoreau was a world class slacker and leach. A friend of mine did a paper on him back in college. If you read through his correspondence with R.W. Emmerson it's obvious how he was coddled.
EDIT: I think the hyper judgemental part about people liking him wanting to be like him. That part might be disingenuous, if only because he didn't really espouse his own actual lifestyle in his writing.
And, so commonly, oblivious to any of this himself. Next stop Ayn Rand.
I've tried to expunge Walden from my mind, but I'll note that it was pretty useful getting dates in college ("university", said EU)
I think you can disapprove of the man and it sounds like it is correct that he was disingenuous with backing his message with action, but isn’t it conceivable that the message was still worth something and that the message still speaks to us?
Long time ago I have read Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson. They are almost all shown as misguided hypocrytes but still some of them did caught spirit of the time and inspired people.
> A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, and Noam Chomsky, among others, are revealed as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.
- His brother died of tetanus, death by muscle spasm, with no knowledge of modern disease.
- Death by disease, such as the plague, was the fault of a weak constitution or evil spirits.
- The Unix epoch is 50 years old today. Thoreau's Unix would have been oxygen. When he was born, electromagnetism has yet to be developed. Alchemy was still a thing.
- Criminal punishment? Hard labor or just run you out of town, right after a horrible corporal punishments and public executions. The British dumped prisoners from over capacity gaols. They may have stopped bringing them to America, just like South America stopped the drug trade.
- Napoleon just invented conscription.
- Multiple presidents died horrible deaths or had death hang around them.
- Everyone was getting ready for the big one, either ourselves or Europe, again.
- A horrible frontier of death mostly from exposure.
- Impressment and crimping was a thing.
It's a good insight of what people do when pushed. He lived through a collapse in theory agreed since Aristotle.
Another important question to ask is, how are you guilty of the same thing Thoreau did to others? Very little sympathy for Lee or Jackson today. They were in many ways the exact opposite of Thoreau. They did what others around them asked of them, gave their lives. The Halls of Montezuma, that was all them, going so far to weaken even the presidents between Jackson and Lincoln.
By attacking Thoreau, do you defend them?
They had zero ability to know it was wrong, see above. Before you say slavery negates everything, more people suffer under worse slavery today. Before you negate them as traitors, Jeffersonian Democracy presents a very different US Congress, hands-off, more like the UN today, one in which the monarchs of Europe and emperors of Asia could have sent delegates.
The goal of life is to lessen enemies, not create them. Anyone else you want to tear down? Any other political slogans I need to follow before you horribly murder million Americans?
The submitted title was the HTML doc title ("Why Do We Love Henry David Thoreau?"), which is a perfectly legit choice for an HN submission. But it seems to be having a baity effect, so I've changed it to the least baity substring of any of the titles options above. Please let's react to the actual article now.
I feel this article is more of a critique of character than it is that of Thoreau's writing.
I stumbled into Walden in my 30s and figured I'd continue my classic exploration. After a month of trying to get through the first few chapters, all I could tell myself was that I hated this book, and couldn't figure out why in hell people were praising it. I wanted to make sense out of it, get a grand picture: I wanted to extract the wisdom Thoreau was surely pouring through the pages!
I was miserable, my experience was horrible. Reading felt forced, the text itself dense and unenjoyable.
After some thought, I resolved to just get through the pages, and not try to make sense out of it, just cruising through.
From then on, the pages and the words took on a different meaning - it wasn't about an idea to be extracted, but about simply enjoying the words on the pages.
The moment I stopped trying to make sense out of the book, I started enjoying the words on their own, and they turned out to be the most beautiful friends through my reading.
"Walden" is my favorite book to this day.
If you try to analyze it, you might get lost in the weeds - I feel this is what happened with the author of that article here - there's a story in it: Don't focus on it, just let your mind wander and enjoy the pure, humble beauty laid bare throughout.
Thoreau's philosophy is an existential one. It is rooted in his ethos. As such, an ad hominem attack is a valid rebut to his system. The man extolled the virtues of living on one's own. On reducing to the essences life by means of a certain self-reliant stoicism. The man did not practice what he preached. Therefore his entire view is bollocks. It's not humble, it's narcissistic meanderings.
Maybe the point is that he would have liked to be able to put what he preached into practice, but wasn't. Maybe he couldn't even admit that to himself. Still, this longing might make his preachings resonate with others sharing that same desire. Just speculating here.
What would Thoreau be doing in his cabin today? Back then he did a little surveying as gig work (in between support from family and Emerson). In the late 1990's I pictured him as a freelance web designer. Would the Thoreau of 2020 be dispensing wisdom from a hut on Bali, doing a little drop shipping on the side?
The author has the merit of having actually read Thoreau rather than taking him for granted because of his reputation. However, am I going to get rid of Two Weeks on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers because I know that he has limitations? No.
There are only flawed authors. The question is what the author provides that one can't as readily find elsewhere. For Thoreau, the answer I think is, A fair bit.
22 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadEDIT: I think the hyper judgemental part about people liking him wanting to be like him. That part might be disingenuous, if only because he didn't really espouse his own actual lifestyle in his writing.
> A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sartre, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, and Noam Chomsky, among others, are revealed as intellectuals both brilliant and contradictory, magnetic and dangerous.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55302.Intellectuals
- His brother died of tetanus, death by muscle spasm, with no knowledge of modern disease.
- Death by disease, such as the plague, was the fault of a weak constitution or evil spirits.
- The Unix epoch is 50 years old today. Thoreau's Unix would have been oxygen. When he was born, electromagnetism has yet to be developed. Alchemy was still a thing.
- Criminal punishment? Hard labor or just run you out of town, right after a horrible corporal punishments and public executions. The British dumped prisoners from over capacity gaols. They may have stopped bringing them to America, just like South America stopped the drug trade.
- Napoleon just invented conscription.
- Multiple presidents died horrible deaths or had death hang around them.
- Everyone was getting ready for the big one, either ourselves or Europe, again.
- A horrible frontier of death mostly from exposure.
- Impressment and crimping was a thing.
It's a good insight of what people do when pushed. He lived through a collapse in theory agreed since Aristotle.
Another important question to ask is, how are you guilty of the same thing Thoreau did to others? Very little sympathy for Lee or Jackson today. They were in many ways the exact opposite of Thoreau. They did what others around them asked of them, gave their lives. The Halls of Montezuma, that was all them, going so far to weaken even the presidents between Jackson and Lincoln.
By attacking Thoreau, do you defend them?
They had zero ability to know it was wrong, see above. Before you say slavery negates everything, more people suffer under worse slavery today. Before you negate them as traitors, Jeffersonian Democracy presents a very different US Congress, hands-off, more like the UN today, one in which the monarchs of Europe and emperors of Asia could have sent delegates.
The goal of life is to lessen enemies, not create them. Anyone else you want to tear down? Any other political slogans I need to follow before you horribly murder million Americans?
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/thoreau-radical-se...
"Walden" is my favorite book to this day. If you try to analyze it, you might get lost in the weeds - I feel this is what happened with the author of that article here - there's a story in it: Don't focus on it, just let your mind wander and enjoy the pure, humble beauty laid bare throughout.
Maybe the point is that he would have liked to be able to put what he preached into practice, but wasn't. Maybe he couldn't even admit that to himself. Still, this longing might make his preachings resonate with others sharing that same desire. Just speculating here.
There are only flawed authors. The question is what the author provides that one can't as readily find elsewhere. For Thoreau, the answer I think is, A fair bit.