Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Economy by Thoreau
Excerpts from "Economy" Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The above is an set of excerpts from Henry David Thoreau's famous work Walden, also known as A Walk in the Woods.
Please read the full text, and find a total of five quotes at least one full sentence in length, and then explain what you think they mean, and what they inspire you to think of. Each interpretation/explanation should be at least 3-4 sentences in length to full articulate what you are getting at.
Assignment due tomorrow, October 12.
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"But men labor under a mistake" Before Henry made this statement, he goes to express that men work their life away, working for so much more to provide then they actually need. I feel like in this statement, he is trying to express that they truly don't understand what they are doing is a waste of time and they are creating so many extra things that are not necessary.
ReplyDelete"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" I believe in this statement Henry is trying to say that humans in general give up on things when it doesn't go as planned, they feel hopeless and feel as if they have no meaning, which by the way they are living and wasting their resources, he believes they are in a degree right to be feeling that way.
"The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful" He says there is no beauty in things man made that don't fulfill the most basic needs. Thoreau questions whether anything in a home is beautiful if the foundation of the house is not begot from honest labour and toil.
" I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot." What he goes on to say is that the man going by transportation will get to the destination quicker, but use all his money he made that day from work to get there, and that is such a waste.
" I
desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one
be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his
neighbor’s instead." I love what Henry is trying to get across here! He is trying to express not to live the life someone has mapped out for you, but the life you feel God is trying to imprint on your life.
1. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
ReplyDeleteI think the modern Implications of Thoreau’s quotes is in rooted in the idea that individuals should listen to their own sense of voice. Henry is zealous about his idea and break free from conformist notions of the goods. And I think its holds a lot of ways in modern implication.
2. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
It’s a difference physiological needs include water, sleep, food. Basic psychological needs encompass love, understanding, hope. It is the psychological needs that keep us going when the physiological needs are not being met. And when both kinds of needs ARE met, that's when mankind has time to think and deliberate, ponder and evaluate, imagine, and create, wish, and dream.
3. “From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
60 Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.”
I think most people are miserable, even when they appear to be content. But they're stuck in a rut, working for luxuries that they cannot afford. The Way how is to be a total downer, Including Thoreau.
4. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof.
It’s said that Thoreau wants us to challenge our beliefs, and to put them on the test of personal judgment and experience. The proof is in the pudding.
5. “Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails.”
I think Thoreau tells that he went to the woods and live deliberately, also nature can provide a model for how Thoreau had just done.
1). “So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind
ReplyDeletethem, and not seeing where they fell.”
In this sentence, Thoreau observes how a man lives his life. He sees that every man is deceived, and they are taught to believe to work, and gain profit. He sees them going through life “throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.” He sees them(man) going through the motions and actions to becoming financially stable, without caring to see what troubles they have caused—such as destroying another man’s life by cheating him, or crushing relations with another for the sake of his own life. He calls man careless.
2). “In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want
of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out.”
Thoreau points out the necessities of man, and expresses his ideas about it. He talks about the essential heat that humans have to have to survive. Not only does this have a literal sense—of having actual heat to keep us warm—but this also represents the wealth and money of a person. In “cold weather,” a man eats more. In times of financial depression, a man has to work more and desires more wealth and money. During “warm weather,” a man takes it easy and sees that he doesn’t have to work as hard, and recognizes that he is comfortable. Yet if a poor man “gets too warm too fast,” in gaining money and wealth, he wouldn’t know what to do with the wealth, and it can lead to an even greater depression. Those who have too much wealth can be burnt out in a moral aspect, as they might get a big head, and also start prioritizing wealth more than other things. Of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum, a person who has no money will die in a literal sense.
3). “Yet not the less, in my case,
did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s
while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.”
I would think of this as a proverb of a sort. If doing “A” would have you end up doing “B,” and how you do “A” would affect “B,” then you’d be too worried on how to properly do “A.” He teaching that instead of worrying about doing “A,” you should find an alternative way so you don’t have to do “A” at all, and therefore you wouldn’t have to do “B.” I can use basketball as an analogy. If you choose to become a shooter, then you must shoot well to score. If you can’t shoot well, and instead of worrying about that, then you can do another thing, such as passing, or driving it into the basket, so you don’t have to worry about shooting at all.
4). “While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.”
DeleteThoreau mentions this in a literal sense. He sees it as futile to build a better house, if the person who’s living inside of it is still an idiot, a slob, too proud, and still doesn’t improve. The house doesn’t affect the society, but the men who lives inside it do. This may also work as another analogy. We could be improving our “shelter” in a physical manner, as in getting stronger, having a better job, and continuing to build a better life, but we take no action to improve ourselves morally, and our values can still be crap. So there’s no point in having a better life, if we are sucky people.
5). It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life.
He compared man to the snake, sitting dormant until something bothers it. It takes no initiative, and it won’t react. Man is like that, he lives life normally, and continues to live a pointless life, and he sits around until something comes up that he has to react to it. He could altogether fix this problem, by taking initiative, and taking precaution to prevent the problem in the first place. This could range from adding gas to an empty tank to prevent running out of gas, or even something as killing Hitler, to prevent World War II.
6). It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.
Work smart, not hard. Live smart, not hard.
“I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.”
ReplyDelete- I really liked this quote. He’s acknowledging that his view of the world, his opinions that he’s voicing, are all very limited to his experience and his mind. He’s couldn’t write anyone else’s story because he doesn’t know them as well as he knows himself. Also. Thoreau is super snarky, and I just appreciated the frankness of this quote.
“It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, 80 called by the Latins “æs alienum”, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offenses; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little. “
-*(This is one full sentence.) Thoreau’s point here is how futile a “good” life is, when trying to accumulate wealth. You borrow, you loan, you do everything that isn’t “illegal” to gain what they want, only to perish tomorrow and reap none of it. You scramble and steal from Peter to pay Paul just to have something to squirrel away for when you’re sick, no matter how small. It’s almost silly when you think about it.
ReplyDelete“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. ……. As if you can kill time without injuring eternity.”
-I LOVE THIS ONE. Basically, he’s saying that, in the end, no matter what cards you’re dealt in life, it’s your will, your determination, that decides your fate. If you waste your time, and pretend not to care, you are wasting your destiny. So carpe diem takes a new light when you think of life in this light.
*The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode. . ..”
-This is another snarky Thoreau quote I kinda love. A lot of the text surrounding this is is talking about how shelter is necessary to survival for warmth, and that it is truly only necessary in the colder climates. These cultures in colder climates build their lives around these luxurious shelters, and many strive to surround themselves with more crap in their shelters to keep them warm. Their pride benefits from their frivolous warmth as well. But Thoreau makes his point in a snarky way. Living well above your means just makes you fashionably, uncomfortably warm.
“Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race.”
-At this point in time, there was a greater distinction between cultures on one continent. The Americans compared themselves as superior to the natives because they had no official civilization of their own. He states here that the difference between the Europeans and the primitive Natives was the cultural institution for furthering their offspring’s chance at survival and a “happy life”.
“Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings.”
-Here he states that anyone can make a house, but they can’t improve the lives and characters within the walls. Our culture has tried to buold up the quality of life so that people can accomplish bigger and better things and become more perfect people, but we’re still just people. A palace doesn’t produce a king.
“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.”
- I just realized that this is the seventh quote, so Imma keep this short. This is pretty self contained as the point of the whole essay.
~Golda
"Necessary of life" is a term he explains as what man needs to have a necessary life and how they choose to live it. Man just needs the basics to live out their life but overtime they have increased to a more luxury way a living after inventions. Shelter is necessary because if you don't take care of the people under the shelter then there is no need to have the shelter.
ReplyDelete“As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.” He is saying God swore an oath to man but man basically rejected him and made God represent them for it.
"The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another." He's saying according to how the classes are treated depends on how much you are valued.
"I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing." You only need the basics to survive and it is troubling that man has to do so much to make clothing so you have the basics to survive.
"We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and
recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him." If you were in that persons shoes you would want someone to care for you. Caring for someone else is more fulfilling than letting them fail.