Reflections on Walden Pond

Southern Illinoisan, June 10, 2014

 In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden, or Life in the Woods based on the two-year period in the 1840s when he lived in a cabin he built at Walden Pond outside his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. The book detailed Thoreau's experiment in solitary self-sufficiency, mixing close observations of nature with more philosophic musings on the relationship of the individual to his environment, both natural and human. 

In re-reading Walden on its one hundred and sixtieth anniversary, one is struck by how relevant it remains. Environmental scientists, for instance, currently use the information recorded in the journals Thoreau kept during his stay at Walden to measure the rate of climate change. From Thoreau's meticulously detailed records of the blooming time of hundreds of plants, contemporary scientists have determined that spring flowering now comes eleven days earlier than in the mid-nineteenth century.

Moreover, from his solitary outpost, Thoreau was able to offer a trenchant commentary on his social world, one which bears marked similarities to our own era. It was a period of revolutionary change in economics, labor relations, and communications. Thoreau's observation that he lived in “this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial nineteenth century” fits easily in today's hyperkinetic world of globalization, deindustrialization and instant communications. 

At the heart of this fast-paced age, Thoreau discerned a spiritual emptiness. “The mass of men,” he commented, “live lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. . . . A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”

People sought to mitigate this hollowness by immersing themselves in new technology or materialism. But in the dawning era of instant communication, Thoreau observed, “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.” Today, as cell phones and the internet push us to be in constant contact with each other, Thoreau’s cautionary note rings more true than ever. “Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. . . . We live thick and are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications.”

Long before the emergence of the full-blown consumer culture of the twentieth century, Thoreau anticipated the shallowness and ephemerality of popular taste, commenting, “Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

And just as today’s fashion industry often is built on an exploitative international labor market, so did Thoreau link that of his day to sweatshop conditions. At a time when English factories epitomized brutal labor conditions, he remarked, “I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched.”

Regarding the emerging ethic of material acquisitiveness, Thoreau warned, “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind.” As he goes on to say, “Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”

Today we live in a world of speed and impermanence, where success is measured by material possessions and conspicuous consumption. We are constantly bombarded by the relentless commodification of our lives within a consumer society that seeks to colonize even people’s private space, as if the worst thing imaginable is the individual, alone with her thoughts. If Thoreau's call for a life of solitude and simplicity seems like a high standard to expect, then keep in mind his reminder that “in the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”