On Chapter 1 (“Economy”) of Walden
TLDR: Everyone should read Thoreau.
As some of you know, I have been fasting from Twitter (and YouTube) lately. Part of this is to find my own independence of thought. As strange as it may sound, it is refreshing to be alone in my own mind again, where I can hear only the sound of my own thoughts.
And so, to find some inspiration, I started reading Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden.” I will admit that the first ten pages or so bored me to death for two reasons: the overly-long sentences (by today’s standards), and the random, self-praising rants. But, once I got over that hurdle, I couldn’t stop reading sixty-odd pages in less than a day (a recent record for me). I couldn’t go back to sleep because of this guy, even though I had woken up after seeing what I mistook for a ghost.
Thoreau believes that there are four basic necessities for life from which all else follow: Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel. In this chapter, he discusses how he met at the least the first three for 8 months to 2 years. (There is a surprising reason why Thoreau went to Walden in the first place.)
So as to give you a taste for the book, let me recall a few memorable paragraphs in no chronological order:
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”
“The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”
“When the soldier is hit by a cannon-ball, rags are as becoming as purple.”
“But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage [of the life of a civilized people as an institution] is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage.”
“You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent.”
“But how happens is that he who is said to enjoy these things [spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things] is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage?”
“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man — and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages — it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take up from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family — estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less; — so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam [Ed: Thoreau has great respect for the lifestyle of the American-Indian “savages”] will be earned.”
“And if the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?”
“I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.”
“I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart, with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breath a malaria all the way.” [Ed: NYC subway, anyone?]
“The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage.”
“In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, of tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.”
“There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have build, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks of life came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.”
“But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes… What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder — out of some unconsciousness truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life.” [Ed: Thoreau giving the very repetitive and strangely anonymous “@WrathOfGnon” a run for his money, like, a century before.]
“I thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense of not greater than the rent which he now pays annually… At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student’s room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars a year, though the corporation has the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a resident in the fourth story… These conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management of both sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme… How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where anything is professed and practised but the art of life; — to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar... Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
Thoreau wrote his scathing criticism of academia and architecture in 1854, and it still holds true today — imagine that! I was especially admonished by his scoldings for the Spartan life, as I had recently moved into a more fancy apartment myself, though my furniture remains frightfully minimal (I still have no bed, and sleep without pillows). Wittgenstein supposedly had very little furniture himself.
One of the most amazing things is how little Thoreau spent building his own house and raising his own craps, with which he sustained his lifestyle. He was probably one of the last few true American pioneers. How many men in America today would know to build a house left to their own devices in the woods today with nothing but an axe? Certainly not I.
He looks down on farming, and talks about how most farmers (particularly in his town) have much worse lives than he does, because he is able to live without debt, and they make themselves subservient to strong animals (e.g., oxen) in order to exchange for… flour. Thoreau also has a not-so-secret Lindy recipe for bread without leavening (yeast)!
Of course, Thoreau is wrong about a few things, such as his disregard for elderly wisdom, his penchant for mostly vegetarian food, his admiration of tattoos (little did he know how it would be abused now), but such is the Yankee “can-do” attitude, for which much can be forgiven. He may a bit preachy, but Thoreau is a true self-made American genius. There are so many original, independent thoughts encapsulated in one chapter that I cannot possibly do it justice here.
