Anyway, I thought I'd give Thoreau a read and see if I liked what I saw any better than Emerson.
I didn't.
Thoreau's central idea, it seems to me, is to be as singularly ignorant of all things as it is possible to be. Only then can you attain happiness and "true living". He asks why we should care about events that happen around us and claims that we should attempt to simplify our lives as much as possible. Maybe it's changed recently, but last time I checked "simple" was a euphemism for "stupid." Life isn't simple, that's why we have thousands of strands of DNA in our bodies, all altering the way we live in tiny, tiny ways. That's why we think the universe is infinite, and may even exist as only one of an infinite number of others in a multiverse. That's why we even have philosophers, for goodness' sake, they tell us how to interpret the confusing and complicated thing of life.
Below I am including an excerpt from Walden and an excerpt from my response to a question on it. I think this will help clarify my point.
From Walden:
"Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that theNation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again."
My response to "Explain the extended metaphor in paragraph 2 (the above).":
"The extended metaphor of the railway in paragraph 2 is used by Thoreau to criticize both government and individuals. In the 19th century, railways were beginning to be built throughout the United States, forming the interconnected, speed-obsessed society that we have today. Thoreau applauds certain elements of the railroad of society for resisting, saying “I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.” He criticizes the higher levels of society, lamenting that “if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon.” Thoreau's remedy to this sort of dog-eat-dog society (I hesitate to say capitalist, because I doubt Thoreau would have preferred a socialist, egalitarian society any more) is ignorance. This is, of course, not explicitly stated, and Thoreau would probably take issue with it, but the ideas that he proposes further in the essay amount to as much. He says “if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads?” This statement denies that human society evolves naturally, and claims that if everyone were to simply “stay at home,” tend to their own affairs, and not care about anything or anyone else that existed outside of this insulative bubble (a concept he elaborates on in paragraph 3), society would naturally slip away and the world would be a better place. Perhaps a case study on the Stone Age can enlighten us as to the effects of such a doctrine."
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