Economy
I had heard Thoreau's quotation "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" but didn't grasp the extent of its meaning till I had begun to see the denominator in all faith-based religions: man is flawed, imperfect, fallen; salvation or redemption or reincarnation or a glorious afterlife await those who live in accordance with certain guidelines. The guidelines are always set forth by other people who claim to have communed with a higher power directly, or are familiar with another who had. Humans can teach one another the method for salvation, but are only capable of saving themselves by making choices aligned with the tenets of civilization.
The quiet desperation rankles outward from the "factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life." We work as penance, living in accordance with abstract structures (think church, school, government, economy), while our genetic makeup whispers to us that there is an easier way to live, a simpler way to be. Building his cabin in the woods, Thoreau seeks an existence that doesn't assume that humans are imperfect creatures condemned to lives of servitude. He sets off to prove that one can choose to be a sojourner in civilized life, and embodies the alternative for two years and two months.
He readily sees the trappings of artifice in modern man: "The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors." The quandary is, what is apparent to Thoreau is transparent to his community. In striving to be instructive, he stays connected to the nearby town, not going to such an extreme as to be dismissed as an eccentric.
If, like Thoreau, we believe our lives to be precious-not flawed-we view ourselves as the commodity being traded for a chance to participate in an economy. "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it." A century and a half later, the modern person still must "spend the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it."
Alternatives from prehistory and indigenous tribes and cultures (soon vanquished by civilization) abound. "When we consider what ... are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left." Speaking through the narrowness of my own experience, for most of my life I didn't know there was a choice. But "it is never too late to give up our prejudices."
I often hear others describe how they must support themselves through numerous jobs. The effort required to sustain the growing bloat of economy bears heavy upon all those touched by civilization. Thoreau is not idealistic, but realistic when he asserts "To maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime." If we look to the anthropological record, before food production led to the governance of property, there's a significant precedent.
The pecuniary anguish we grope with, the social anxiety to keep up with fashion-it is all a fabrication unique to our way of life. "The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition." Think about it. Most stories are built upon a generalized oppression that the hero must overcome, whether incarnate as external evils, hapless obstacles or, as in sitcoms, our own folly. We are entertained because we know the story, and we anticipate the resolve of success through determination, cleverness, or dumb luck.
When Thoreau rails against philanthropy, it is because the concept ought not to exist. It treats the symptoms and not the cause, masking the greater need. External generosity is unnecessary in a mode of fiscal governance modeled upon ecosystems, where stewardship and reusability are valued rather than growth and disposability.
In an individual pursued "his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor's," he would be free of the pressures to buy fashionable new clothes, free to refuse to pay taxes in support of a government's war, and free to build a cabin in the woods. Thoreau pursues his own way, and implores us consider that there is a choice to do the same for ourselves.
The quiet desperation rankles outward from the "factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life." We work as penance, living in accordance with abstract structures (think church, school, government, economy), while our genetic makeup whispers to us that there is an easier way to live, a simpler way to be. Building his cabin in the woods, Thoreau seeks an existence that doesn't assume that humans are imperfect creatures condemned to lives of servitude. He sets off to prove that one can choose to be a sojourner in civilized life, and embodies the alternative for two years and two months.
He readily sees the trappings of artifice in modern man: "The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors." The quandary is, what is apparent to Thoreau is transparent to his community. In striving to be instructive, he stays connected to the nearby town, not going to such an extreme as to be dismissed as an eccentric.
If, like Thoreau, we believe our lives to be precious-not flawed-we view ourselves as the commodity being traded for a chance to participate in an economy. "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it." A century and a half later, the modern person still must "spend the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it."
Alternatives from prehistory and indigenous tribes and cultures (soon vanquished by civilization) abound. "When we consider what ... are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left." Speaking through the narrowness of my own experience, for most of my life I didn't know there was a choice. But "it is never too late to give up our prejudices."
I often hear others describe how they must support themselves through numerous jobs. The effort required to sustain the growing bloat of economy bears heavy upon all those touched by civilization. Thoreau is not idealistic, but realistic when he asserts "To maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime." If we look to the anthropological record, before food production led to the governance of property, there's a significant precedent.
The pecuniary anguish we grope with, the social anxiety to keep up with fashion-it is all a fabrication unique to our way of life. "The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition." Think about it. Most stories are built upon a generalized oppression that the hero must overcome, whether incarnate as external evils, hapless obstacles or, as in sitcoms, our own folly. We are entertained because we know the story, and we anticipate the resolve of success through determination, cleverness, or dumb luck.
When Thoreau rails against philanthropy, it is because the concept ought not to exist. It treats the symptoms and not the cause, masking the greater need. External generosity is unnecessary in a mode of fiscal governance modeled upon ecosystems, where stewardship and reusability are valued rather than growth and disposability.
In an individual pursued "his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor's," he would be free of the pressures to buy fashionable new clothes, free to refuse to pay taxes in support of a government's war, and free to build a cabin in the woods. Thoreau pursues his own way, and implores us consider that there is a choice to do the same for ourselves.