Assignment 2 - Chap. “Where I Lived, and What I lived For” - How would Thoreau react to today's more complex, phantasmagorical technological advancements and social media?

       Once upon a time, long before facebook, smartphones, and the all mighty Internet itself—to be precise in the year 1854, over 150 years ago—the philosopher Henry David Thoreau criticized the lack of many people to be able “to steadily observe reality only, and not allow themselves to be deluded” (Thoreau 62) by so called ''news'', which Thoreau debunks as gossip (cf. Thoreau 61). Considering how this is in fact not a fairytale, how might Thoreau react if he had ever been confronted with the world we currently live in? Social media, technological advancements like smartphones, or television; a society based on complex networking in today's rush of information, much of which I have hardly ever seen any poof of to be true, have made the world far more surreal, than I often realize. Might this be Thoreau's worst nightmare?

        In the second chapter of his book Walden, namely “Where I Lived, and What I lived For”, Thoreau explains how he considers the main problem of the deluded people of his time is, that their “vision does not penetrate the surface of things” (Thoreau 62). But what does this mean? What is under the surface? What is it that they, and possibly also the people of today's word, are not seeing? The way I understand Thoreau, is, that what the people see lacks the implied whole of fascination and upcoming questions behind it. At the same time, there is no real truth to be found, only the right questions and thoughts are supposed to be raised in ones mind, to lift the shadow of simply consuming information, instead of questioning and thereby actually understanding it. I therefore think that, confronted with today's society, he would still criticize it in the same way. More information is possible to gather, but little experienced and little scrutinized. Growth of the mind and what Thoreau considers a ''worthy living'' might be harder than ever in contemporary society.

        Personally though, I am not sure if I would agree with Thoreau, simply because he bases his argumentation on this assumption: “In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime” (Thoreau 62). As a philosopher of course, this is something he can easily say, but as a (not yet graduated) sociologist I rather assume, that ''truth'' is created in a sociological process and never sublime in itself. In this sense, social media and such is not god nor bad in itself, but just a modern tool used for creation of reality and truth—as both is not static and needs to be constantly recreated to keep ''existing'' at all.

E.J.

Works Cited:

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New York: Cosimo Classics, 2009. Print.