Non-fiction / Walden: Thoreauly interesting reading

Walden, Thoreauly interesting reading

     As an English major, and as a citizen of the United States, I have been very disappointed by the small amount of quality art that has been produced by my countrymen. Any English major can tell you: the greats of our language usually hail from Great Britain. We have Poe and Hawthorne, Fitzgerald and Faulkner, but no Shakespeare, Milton, or Byron. Where is our Wordsworth or Coleridge? Dickinson and Frost are notable, but after that I’m somewhat at a loss. The sheer number of literary trends and artists belong to Great Britain (if we include the Irish). It is my search for truly interesting American literature that has led me to a romantic infatuation with Emerson and Thoreau. The latter especially has influenced me at a time when my thinking life is beginning to change.
     When I was in high school, I had a short lived little rock band called Two Faced Sun. One day a friend of mine asked me if my band was in any way political. “Yes,” I answered, “but we are much more social,” meaning that I was more interested in seeing change in social institutions, rather then in political ones, though the former will inevitably change the latter with time. Instead of changing the politics, I was much more interested in challenging the source of the politics. The only way to cure a sinner is to turn him into a saint.
     This attitude has remained a part of my life, and the type of literature I am most interested in usually takes a similar view of our social institutions and assumptions. Thoreau’s Walden is no exception, and echoes many of the thoughts I have, and had been having prior to reading it, particularly since I recently moved into my own apartment for the first time. I now find myself responsible as a consumer (that hated word!). I buy my own food and clothing, and so naturally I want to know both where the products I buy come from, and whether or not I really even need the products in the first place.
     I am writing this short little blog mainly to try and convince my friends to read Walden; if not the whole thing, then just the introductory essay called Economy. Its not long, and is full of quotable little phrases of wisdom, wit, and humor. In all, I believe I have read and reread over Economy a total of four or five times this summer alone, filling its pages with underscored sentences and jotting down little notes over the pages. Walden is a piece of American literature that is truly American, in that it betrays a spirit and attitude that once filled the hearts of our citizenry. It is from an age when there was no “The United States,” but “These United States;” we were once a republic, much more then we are today, and the absence of a strong central government allowed an attitude of American Independence: “I heartily accept the motto- that government is best which governs least, and I should like to see it acted upon more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, ”that government is best which governs not at all” (from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, a piece that influenced Ghandi and M. L. K.). Of course, today both major political parties stand for a strengthened central government, whether they proclaim that or not, so that now there are few real Republicans, but everywhere Conservatives or Liberals—neither having anything to do with forms of government, but having to do with the social policies of an already established nation (as opposed to a collection of states, loosely confederated).
     Thoreau and the other major Transcendentalist players were fed up with an America that was increasingly becoming what it is today: an institution. And, as any decent social critic can point out, institutions are created at the expense of individual autonomy and freedom. The biggest thinkers of the last few centuries were intensely interested in this social institution called Western Civilization, from Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and Kierkegaard, to Stalin, Marx and Mao.
     Walden was written as a series of criticisms pertaining to the same idea: that Western civilization has become more about the economy of the social institution then the economy of the individual; both deal in currency, but the currency of one is artificial, while the other deals in the currency of the soul: spiritual wealth. We have sacrificed the pleasure of the inner man for the animalistic pleasures of the outer man. This is what led me to Thoreau and Emerson in the first place: that Americans are great at producing one kind of economy, while they fall way behind the quota in producing spiritual economy. We have Wall Street, but where is our art? The radio station NPR is fond of saying “A great nation deserves great art,” but they have is wrong, for it is much closer to truth to say that “A great nation will be great because it produces great art,” and what greater art is there to produce then the painting of ones life? No greater artists existed then Jesus and Socrates. They are life artists; the inner vision had become their outer action.
     John F. Kennedy once said “think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Ridiculous! Countries exist, as do societies, to enrich the individual, not the other way around. Aristotle said that man is a social animal, but Otto Rank was more clearly sighted to have said that man is first and foremost a religious animal. Society exists not for itself, but to allow the individual more leisure time to develop his spirit. Society serves the individual, but today we’ve got it confused. I am not a cog in some machine, nor am I a public servant, but the public should be the servant of us all. A nation is an abstraction; the people of a nation are tangible and free agents. I do not pledge allegiance to any flag, so long as it is a symbol for a nation, but I pledge my allegiance to myself and to my neighbors (whom I am commanded to love! Thank heaven), to my species and my planet, which sustains me and which I am the caretaker of (we’re botching that one, sadly). America was not created by God, but God did create you and me. I serve not myself as maker, but the maker who made me.
     I am writing this essay on the shores of the Yahoola creek in Dahlonega. The creek has been turned into a reservoir here, and so it resembles a large pond. This is fitting, because Thoreau wrote Walden while living by Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, as an experiment. The experiment was this: to live so simply as to be able to discover what is truly essential and necessary for a man to live. He built his own home, and did so with only the bare essentials. He wrote of his experiences to relay his findings to the rest of society, and, as he says, “Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them.” This is a shrewd understatement, for his findings apply to all men; we are all poor students, so far as spiritual economy is concerned.
     To understand Thoreau, one must first understand this unstated premise: Man has two natures, and both have necessities that must be met in order for them to thrive in a state of health. The physical animal exists only as a shell for the spiritual man; we live only to feed our souls. As a car needs gas only so long as a man needs a place to go, so the body only needs food, shelter, warmth, air, water, etc. This amounts to saying that the animal requires only that which is essential for bodily homeostasis. After the bodily requirements are met, we have leisure necessary for the development of the spirit. The spirit speaks in a language of symbol, and is not readily conveyed on paper. My essay, as well as Thoreau’s, does not go so far as to list the spiritual necessities, so much as pointing out how far we have abused the physical necessities. When man slaves away to produce an excess of his physical needs, going above and beyond his requirements for living, he is more barbaric then civilized, and what we call civilization seems to me to be base barbarity. The business tycoon on Wall Street should be put in a zoo, because he is more animal then man. Man is something more than ape, more then flesh, more than bodily pleasure. This holds logically, regardless of your religious belief (or lack thereof).
     The American dream has been to have freedom, to live out days of luxury by hard work in youth. This is like building giant sandcastles out of our time on earth, is it not? Our parents instill us with a “puritan work ethic,” but this is really an animal instinct, and is anything but pure. I once was able, financially, to not work, and to devote all of my time to my studies at school. My parents immediately recoiled at the idea. This is the same attitude that wishes children to work at burger kings and MacDonald’s while in high school, all so we can own a car. Better to own the free time for “human growth and (intellectual) development.” We work ourselves to dumbness. I am sorry to say that this very philosophy of theirs, that philosophy of the middle classes (that we exist to work rather than that we work only so much as we need to exist) has trapped them into a life of mediocrity. They are miserable with their boringness, and are under the illusion that money will solve their dependence issues. This is a lie! We have luxury, which I define as an excess of physical necessity, and this luxury enslaves us. We work so that we can have excess money for: fill in the blank. All we really require is physical bread and Spiritual bread. Once I fill my mouth with one, I should endeavor to fill my heart and mind with the other, and there is no such thing as a spiritual glutton.
     I love this quote from Walden: “It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave driver of yourself. Talk of divinity in a man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses!”
     The biggest problem with our Western society is that it has not eliminated the need for mundane jobs, but has instead created it. It is nearly impossible for the average American to get by without a forty hour work week, even if he is only striving to meet his absolute necessities. I must buy my food, because I have no land to grow my own. Even if I did have the land (which cost money itself, though God freely gave it to man), I must pay taxes for it.
     The idea of land ownership is a funny one to me. I once walked around the shore of Lake Lanier, enjoying the beauty of the place. I had every intention of walking the entire shore line, but could not because I was blocked by someone’s personal marina. Did the owner of that land create the earth? God created the earth, and used it to create me and you! You have no right to own it, to bar others from entrance to it. I was born on this earth just like you, and have every right to enjoy all of it. Chief Seattle once wrote the most beautiful speech to the American President, in response to an offer on “his land.” It makes me cry when I read it.
     But today, we must own land in order to grow on it—so right there, man has created a necessity. Eden was paradise in part because society had not destroyed the beautiful system of the earth. A natural man is born into a world where all of his physical needs are met for him: he has only to pluck the fruit from the tree and live in a semi-tropical climate (where he comes from) to be able to be alive and reach the highest level of his physical health. Society has destroyed that freedom, and so I wonder if society can at all be called a progress; I rather think that “Civilization” is a regression.
     “The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fools life, as they will find out when they get to the end of it, if not before,” and “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.” By the end of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Illych, the main character looks around at his home, with all of its pompous luxury, and all of his wealth, and realizes, too late, that none of it will save his life, and, in fact, he wasted life away in obtaining it. With this realization, he opens his mouth and screams “OOO” for two days straight and without pause before dying. A wasted life is worse then an uncashed lottery ticket. But this is the Bourgeoisie mentality, the unconscious acceptance of Hegelianism living on in the 21st century. I cannot help but laugh at the modern day business man who, in his youth, was a hippie. Pearl Jam wrote an excellent song about such a man: “Don’t forget the golden rule / If you hate something, don’t you do it too / This is not for you / This is not for you.” A friend of mine told me that it is the hardest thing for an actor to portray a drunk person, because the real drunk spends all of his time and effort convincing himself and others around him that he is not drunk. The Bourgeoisie man is a drunk man, frivolously spending his time in the office to convince himself that he is not spiritually starving. Money is a wine. Live to work, we say, instead of work to live only. “A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is the characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
     Not that I, nor Thoreau for that matter, suggest we do not work at all. A half-intelligent man will clamor for America to become a nation of farmers. An intelligent man realizes that it is not farming that best suits man, but gardening. Adam and Eve were caretakers, not farmers. To farm is to produce, on purpose, an overabundance of food, for wealth’s sake. Overabundance of a necessity is nothing but luxury, and it is, I hold, axiomatic that luxury produces slavery. To tend to the earth without dominating it is the Edenic call; only after the fall did man become an agriculturist. We fell because, funny enough, we ate more then was necessary, and we fall everyday by doing the same.
     “When he (man) has obtained those things which are necessary in life, there is another alternative then to obtain the superfluities: and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radical downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?—for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.” By tending to the needs of the root only, man has “forged his own golden or silver fetters.” Remember that it is the poor who inherit the earth, ye capitalists.
     There was a man who started a commune in Paris, who used to take a candle flame to his hair until it reached its sufficient length, in order to give himself a haircut. It took about twenty seconds and cost not a penny. The man was not burned at all for his trouble. My friend who I told this to remarked at how insane such an action was—why, no one does that; its unconventional! There is a section in Kafka’s “Descriptions of A Struggle” in which a character, known as the supplicant, admits that he prays in church in such a way to get attention from others, because it is the attention of others that he needs to “obtain a body.” This is a truth, rendered in art, which has been formulated in philosophy and proven true through science by way of psychology. Our sense of self esteem is obtained by the reactions, or perceived reactions, of others. “The Other!” How many things do we do, how many things do we not do, because we are afraid of how we will look to others? My God! The same friend who reacted thusly to the mans unconventional haircut had dreams of being a musician, but gave it up for business school in order to make more money; how sad, and you can read the sadness on his face everyday when he talks of his job, instead of the graceful look that comes upon him when he is creating the delicate arpeggios of his guitar, the fragrance of music that wafts through the air like painted colors—like landscapes in music form. Such is the price of stepping on our dreams, but we all do it; myself included. And usually it is from fear of others reactions. If only we could be ourselves, instead of putting on the masks and playing the part that society dictates—tis’ a Greek tragedy, indeed.
     Walden is a call to cultivate not wealth, but ourselves. Cultivate yourself so that you produce fruit fit for divine wine, and get drunk off of that.
     In closing, I hope you read Walden for yourself. I do not suggest that I (nor Thoreau, for that matter) have freed myself from the “golden fetters” of luxury or society, but I am attempting to make some progress. How good it is to know, in a way that is beyond epistemology, the artists truth, that I can rely upon the strength of God rather then myself. I foolishly forget that, and everyday put shackles on my own feet. Sin is a state of being, and not individual acts. The Sin is Satan’s sin: turning away from God in order to find individuality, rather then realizing that God is a Father and Mother who births individuals. Sons of God are not slaves, for slaves have no choice. But God has Knights for servants, and Knights choose their course and master.
     Christian or no Christian, I am convinced of the obvious and blatant truth, that society lends itself to the animal natures, and not the inner life of a man. It is my hope that my generation of American artists will take up this call to change our country for the better. Sadly, most of us, myself included, would rather sit in front of a television screen, with the air conditioning, than tend to our personal gardens and cultivate our divine fruit.