Text on 2nd Chapter: How would Thoreau react to today's more complex, phantasmagorical technological advancements and social media? Are these further-encroaching “shadows and delusions” that we esteem for soundest of truths?

„Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?“ (Thoreau 58) asks Thoreau in the second chapter of Walden “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” talking about the acceleration of life through media like news papers or the post. In his point of view the goal in life is “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, […] to live deep and [to] suck out all the marrow of life, […] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms [...]” (57); thus superfluous “affairs”, “meals”, or “news” are unnecessary and would deviate one from true life.

Thoreau criticizes the unnecessary affluence—which he considers to not even be real—overflowing our daily life. Considering the decade he was troubling his mind on this aspect of sociability, a reader of the 21^st century can only laugh. Television and telephone were still in the very initial phase of creation, not even mentioning the computer or even the internet. Nonetheless his fears were the same than the fears of many people of the 21^st century: the media takes away our time! One might be tended to ask “What time? Time for what?”.

The interview of Paul Miller on CNN from 2012, an editor of “The Verge” who decided to live without the internet for one year¹, is just one example among many showing the great trouble of being depended on the internet and social media. Paul Miller lived without the internet, because it took away his time; thus without he claimed to be more productive. He actually felt relieved living without it. So what scares us? And why is it so hard to get away from it?

Thoreau responses to this fear: being committed to something brings you into a relationship from which it is hard to escape. It creates a dependency to which you relate to, which becomes your truth. However, the danger is to base your life on something which is not true. “As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the country jail” (53). The philosopher in the woods actually refers to “simplicity” (55-7) enabling the finding of the truth, where on the contrary news, media, and todays internet actually lead away from it.

However, Thoreau was as much feared by the media of his time than a person of the 21^st century is. Both are overtaxed with the mass of information and are scared to feel lost in the eternity of overwhelming absent-mindedness created by it. Only a few people are able to withdraw themselves from this strudel of meaningless information. Thoreau would have escaped today's media the same way he escaped 1845's media—maybe in another forrest, on a different lake.

1 CNN. “Going Offline”. Web. 23 Nov. 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oASA1RBGjp8.

2 Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. USA: Reada.Classic, 2010. Print.

Text on First Chapter: Compare and contrast these two perspectives. Are they contradictory or complimentary?

Henry David Thoreau and Marilynne Robinson could be considered as “baffled humanists”, because both find themselves in separated rooms—Thoreau in his hut next to Walden Pond in 1845, Massachusetts and Robinson in her bed at home in 2011, maybe Idaho—to think about humanity, society, and the sense of life. Considering their dissimilar standpoints like century and time as well as place and gender, they seem to ask the same questions: “What are we? Why do we act as we do? And what has and will become of our society?”.

Thoreau takes the educational system under a closer look and explains how students would achieve more education if less money would be spent, for example for student housing. Further more he claims if both sides—the students as well as the heads of University—would organize themselves better, there would be a greater achievement: an improvement of education and a reduction of costs. In other words, following Thoreau's train of thought, if students would shoulder more responsibility, they would value their education more and would develop into better persons: “[...] they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youth better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?” (Thoreau 32).

Not how to become better persons, but how we can live together in its best means, Marylinne Robinson introduces four characteristics to achieve this state: “[...] [to] respect, educate, inform and trust one another” (Robinson 5). However, Robinson describes that society is in the process of “losing the ethos that has sustained what is most to be valued” (Thoreau 5), whereas Thoreau practically claims that society has already lost all its ethics: “We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb” (Thoreau 24).

Nevertheless, there is another major difference in the points of view of Robinson and Thoreau; Robinson seems to have rather positive associations with her society and culture than Thoreau. She describes that “Western society at its best expresses the serene sort of courage that allows us to grant one another real safety, real autonomy, the means to think and act as judgment and conscience dictate” (Robinson 5). On the contrary, Thoreau as a rather negative view on his society and criticizes various aspects, for example his parents who cannot give him any valuable advice (Thoreau 7), the worship for fashion (Thoreau 17), or the unnecessary luxurious shelter we mean to have to build ourselves (Thoreau 22).

However much Robinson and Thoreau criticize society generally and specifically, they are not willing to give up on it. Both claim that if the people are only willing enough to care for one another and live a self-conscious life humanity can achieve its best characteristics. Thoreau says: “In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one's self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely [...]” (Thoreau 44), where Robinson argues “[...] to let ourselves be the reflective, productive creatures we are, unconstrained and uncoerced. Eliminate the overwhelming cost of phantom wars and fool's errands, and humankind might begin to balance its books” (Robinson 11). Where Thoreau might be arguing on the economic level, Robinson stays on the political level. However, both deduce to concentrate more on ourselves to contribute to a better civilization. Furthermore, it is interesting to realize that both authors are actually talking about the same society.

1) Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. USA: Reada.Classic, 2010. Print.

2) Robinson, Marilynne. “Night Thoughts of a Baffled Humanist”. The Nation 8 Nov. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.