ENGLISH 23
(A.K.A. CLIMATE CRISIS 101)
Deep Dive
Walden
I wasn’t a major fan of this reading. Thoreau stood out to me as very spoiled and at times even racist (Savages?! I mean come on). Still, despite not enjoying reading such a long-winded prose, I can still see how it relates to today. He mentions how buying a house can take ages and that it would be simpler to “buy “ (or build) a smaller one that you can own. One that won’t take you most of your life to pay off so that you may enjoy the fruits of life. Even more relatable was when he talked about college dorms, and how his “house” cost as much as one, except he didn’t need to pay for it annually or have to worry about loud and obnoxious roommates/neighbors. I believe these two things were what intrigued me the most and caused me to go “Ah, okay I see what you mean” after paragraphs of barely understanding what was being said.
“Walden” reminds me of high school in which we had to read this as an assignment. I recall my younger having a deep fascination with the words of Thoreau to leave the prison of society and find solace in nature. However, that was offshoot of my cynicism in which I had a deep hatred for life around me, thinking people are “shallow.” I am a lot older now, and that bitterness is a relic of the past. I realize now that Thoreau is already born in a privileged position to live off-grid. If this mission didn’t work out, he would always have a comfortable home and society to go back to…
Regardless, he makes very prominent points about consumerism. He probably couldn’t have imagined a world where everyone is able to show off their stories with a click of button on small phone. This curated of view of life of pushes people to want the same objects as their favorite influencer, because they want to be happy and content. The script of life is basically written for them every time you crave to be another human on your favorite social media. I don’t think there is going to be a time in which consumerism is not rampant. We are programmed to keep desiring, and rise of technology has amplified that.
Walden is of great importance because it first proposes a thought experiment of living a simple life. I am shocked that this idea is still novel in 2021, while Thoreau promotes it 156 years before. Unfortunately, although looming climate catastrophe gets clear nowadays, not many people actually buy into Thoreau’s ideas. Using his own life experience, Thoreau tries to prove that most people can live a happier life by demanding less materialistic wealth and thus working less hours. According to Thoreau, people only need to work 6 weeks of a year to sustain basic living. If we don’t adapt such a radical shift, we can cut our working hours into half to spend more time on hobbies and cherish moments with families and friends. Some might rebut that the current materials aren’t enough for growing human populations. I have read a book explaining the food and water shortage. The problem isn’t having inadequate stuffs, but the unequal distribution of those materials. I believe we should work on better redistribution of resources rather than producing more stuffs.
I remember doing a project on Henry David Thoreau in eight grade and learning about his time at Walden and initially thinking it was quite impressive that he survived on his own. Then, I learned that he was not really very far from civilization. Now that I know more about the world as I’ve grown up as well, I thought it was interesting that you mentioned that he wouldn’t have been able to do this if he was not a straight, wealthy, white male. That was an aspect of Walden that I had not considered before this class, and it is quite true. Not anyone can move to the middle of the woods and sustain their own life there. Again, you mentioned that this is quite ableist as well, as there are people with medical conditions or disabilities that would prevent themselves from even being able to do this for a week. I think Thoreau’s ideas are quite interesting, in the sense of consumer culture and fashion trends. If Thoreau knew what was going on in modern day society in terms of fast fashion, I don’t even know how he would react. I think his values were a bit ahead of his time, as most people back then in his socioeconomic status would hold vastly different beliefs.
After reading the preface and introduction, I was taken aback by how much I actually enjoyed the first chapter of Walden. When I heard that Thoreau was a wealthy Harvard graduate who lived in the most tame form of wilderness, I set my expectations low for the book and the way I would perceive him. While he still was all of those things, I think that what he did for the two years he spent on Walden Pond was extraordinary. The argument of how privileged he was and how he did not account for the people who were not capable of the same things he was hardly phased me after reading what he had to say because while this may have been an easier task for him to do than someone else, the fact that he did it despite already having so much in the life he left behind is where I found a lot of importance. The way that Thoreau was so far ahead in seeing the issues in consumerism and fast fashion was impressive as I am sure neither of those phenomena were nearly as problematic back then as they are now. In the first chapter he discussed the absurdity he found in the “spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” This part stuck out to me because while it may not have been related to climate change, this way of life so many are used to and plan ahead for may turn from a questionable liberty to virtually no liberty at all if the earth continues to warm in the way it already has been. Liberty will feel quite meaningless if we can no longer reasonably live on the planet we were born on.
It was definitely interesting hearing Ken’s perspectives on Walden and Thoreau. While Thoreau is viewed as a pioneer conservationist and environmentalist, Walden carries Thoreau’s formidable legacy. The facile idea is that conserving and protecting the natural environment will save us from the inevitable devastation ahead of us; however, unlike the common response after reading Walden, the problem and solution lies a lot closer than we expect. The environment that we inhabit accounts for more than 70% of the global CO2 emissions. Simply planting more trees or living near a pond for two years will do nothing. We must act locally. Despite Walden not being entirely relevant now, there are a few important takeaways: originality and simplicity…
Simplify, Simplify. The best-suited word and movement to encapsulate this is minimalism. I see myself as a minimalist to a certain extent. Not everyone needs to go the extreme length to becoming a full minimalist, and while this might actually be necessary because of how bad the current state of our world is, we know that this radical shift is impossible for everyone. That’s why we have no expectations for people to become a full minimalist. Even the people mentioned in some of the films from ENG 22 regarding minimalism weren’t extreme minimalist. The important message is that we need people to simplify, whether it is to an extreme or slight extent, to the point where our actions don’t harm anything or anyone.
When considering “Walden” through the lens of living in an urban area instead of the wilderness (as suggested by Ken in the Introduction), it is exciting to see how Thoreau’s ideas can be applied. Tiny homes, like the ones introduced in the documentary “Minimalism”, come to mind as an improvement to urban life. I think they are a good upgrade from Thoreau’s 150 sq/ft cabin, and are fitted with features to make them more adaptable to fit more people and cater to varying circumstances. Not everyone has the means to invest in a tiny home or build their own cabin, but if eco-friendly spaces were made better available to low-income people, perhaps the minimalist movement can become more accessible and make greater strides.
My high school environmental science teacher used to always talk about Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I never read Walden. I am happy that I was finally able to read it (not because I particularly enjoyed it, but because of its monumental impact on environmentalism). I think it is very interesting that people have been thinking about minimalism since mass consumerism began. For some reason, I always thought of minimalism as a modern practice. It is interesting to read about the mass consumption of products from such a long time ago. I know fast fashion now is an issue but it is strange to hear that it was an issue so long ago. It is also interesting to see that he brought up vegetarianism as the future diet for humans. I had no idea that was even a thought back then. The excerpt where he talked about the man who said there is no way to grow bones while only eating vegetables was very funny. I think that the first chapter of Walden was extremely ahead of its time, but it is impossible to ignore how tone-deaf it is. It is interesting as a historical piece of writing, but I think that more modern pieces of writing give much better environmental advice and are written more clearly.
[Note that the average daily wage in Thoreau’s era in Mass. was about $1.]
Although Thoreau’s “Walden” felt long to read, Thoreau did make some good points in the book. When he talked about clothing, he thought that it wasn’t necessary to buy more clothes to follow current fashion trends because clothing can last for quite a few years. For instance, “a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years.”
Thoreau also made some good points about housing, that it wasn’t necessary to live in a large house. Thoreau himself lived in a small cabin in “Walden,” which was much smaller than the size of an average house during Thoreau’s time and significantly smaller than the size of an average house today. The average house during Thoreau’s lifetime cost more than his cabin. He states that “an average house…costs perhaps eight hundred dollars” and that his cabin, according to a table, cost only $28.12 ½ total. I happen to live in an area where housing isn’t considered to be very affordable, and there are luxury homes not far from where I live. I feel that if there weren’t so many luxury homes in my area and if the houses were smaller in size, more people would be able to live in my area because the houses would probably be more affordable (since smaller houses tend to cost less).
The subject of Walden relating to seeking pleasure from less relates deeply to me. As a student of philosophy, I often think about what happiness is what is the best way to achieve it. Often, what is sold to people is that money/materials is needed to be happy, if not that, then we should seek better relationships with other people, or that we can derive happiness from helping others. There is some truth to that, in that we need food to survive, and if we cannot survive we cannot be happy. But I think a more important lesson here is that we have a good relationship with ourselves. Thoreau may be the first to teach all that something is just a social construct, and really mean it. And it not only applies to fashion, but a myriad of things that people ordinarily think makes you happy. If we can realize how little we truly need to be happy, then we could get off the high carbon footprint lifestyle and truly become climate friendly.