Mountain Stream
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.
Today is Henry David Thoreau's birthday. He was born in 1817 and died in 1862. He moved on to his buddy, Ralph Waldo Emerson's land in 1845 and for two years lived on Walden Pond in his famous simple living experiment. He published Civil Disobedience in 1849 and Walden in 1854.
Interesting fella. Happy Birthday, HD.
What's the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
I was born upon thy bank, river,
My blood flows in thy stream,
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream.
If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends...The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
26 comments:
Yes, happiest of happies to all those who follow the simple life.
I've got Walden at reserve at the library for a re-read this weekend.
Very nice post. :)
I did a high school paper on Thoreau and his Walden project. He illustrates the importance of being content with a simple life, rather than a life with a bunch of gadgets.
Yet as much as I like Thoreau (and I do), I really dig the Hubbards, Harlan and Anna.
Thoreau did what he did at Walden as an experiment that lasted two years. The Hubbards moved to Payne Hollow and lived that way for the rest of their lives (~40 years). They are my role models (and the namesake for my blog).
Thanks for stopping by Kim and Chance.
Hail from Peace Camp, Dan! I'm afraid I found the Thoreau of On Civil Disobedience more compelling than the Thoreau of Walden. Unlike some other intentional communities of simple living, Thoreau's experiment did not try to help his neighbors. But the Thoreau who got angry about the war with Mexico refused to pay the war tax and went to jail. Unfortunately, he let someone pay the fine and did not try to organize a wider resistance to the war. Still, he helped give firm philosophical grounding to the democratic practice of civil disobedience.
Hey Michael, having fun?
re: Not helping his neighbors. That's one way of looking at it. But, insofar as one is living in a more sustainable way and less-consumptive way - even if one is doing so in isolation and selfishly - it can be argued that one is helping their neighbor by not contributing to the larger problem of an overconsumptive society. Right?
And besides the functional side of Thoreau's Walden experience, there is just the sheer beauty of his writing...but then, that's a more esoteric matter.
Nice post, Dan. It's my goal to be self-sufficient some day as well!
He was and still is a pioneer of simplicity and truths.
We do agree on a lot of things Dan and I'd love to assimilate myself with his values. I also wouldn't mind living like him either!
Thanks Daddio and NC. So, if we want to live a more sustainable life, what's stopping us?
Seems to me it all comes down to money. You gotta have land to live like that. Land costs money...and then there's taxes.
Aye, there's certainly a rub, if not THE rub. We've created a society that makes it difficult to do.
But then, some people still manage, find cheap land, find land that you can squat on...
Totally related in a non-related kind of way...
Are you going to the Sierra Club picnic on the 18th?
I've copy and pasted the invite that I received down below.
Potluck and Wendell Berry and Bluegrass!
Now, if I can only remember how to get to Hogan's Fountain without ending up somewhere on Dixie Highway. *grin*
~*~*~
YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND THE GREATER LOUISVILLE SIERRA CLUB PICNIC IN THE PARK
WHERE: HOGANS FOUNTAIN, CHEROKEE PARK
WHEN:TUESDAY, JULY 18
5:00 PM-NATURE HIKE LED BY OUR OWN OUTINGS CREW
6:00 PM-POT LUCK DINNER, BRING A DISH TO SHARE
WE PROVIDE THE DRINKS
7:00 PM-WE BEGIN OUR PROGRAM WITH
SPECIAL GUEST SPEAKER
WENDELL BERRY
AFTER THAT-COMMUNITY AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS
WE’LL ALSO HAVE BLUEGRASS MUSIC BY
THE POT LUCK RAMBLERS
ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS
GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO MEET FELLOW ACTIVISTS
AND NATURE LOVERS!
DONATIONS TO GREATER LOUISVILLE SIERRA CLUB
ARE WELCOME
Cool, thanks Kim. Wendell Berry and Bluegrass, can't go wrong!
But it's on the 18th? A Tuesday?
I know a gentleman in Northern Wisconsin that lives without electricity or running water on 17 acres of land. Back in the 1950's, he went hunting with his friends up near Rhinelander and never came back.
I met him for the first time at one of those original hunter's funeral. Point is, he does it and he's the happiest man I know.
That is what the invite says. I get all kinds of things like this from the Cultivating Connections stuff from Metro United Way. I can foward you some of the stuff if you are interested.
I love my hills here in Arkansas. In the past twenty or so years, however, our area has been a magnet for people who have made it their goal to get some cheap land and have the government support them through government disability checks.
What gets me is how so many people can fake disability and fool the government.
Sad, but true.
Ah, the simple life!
I'd suggest that the "disability cheat" - however commonly you hear about it anecdotally - is mostly mythical in nature. Certainly not the norm.
I DID have fun at peace camp, though it was exhausting.
Yes, Thoreau's writing is beautiful and, yes, simple living indirectly helps neighbors. I just think that's not enough. Simplifying is clearly PART of what must be done--but the Walden-type retreat strikes me as an easy cop-out in today's world.
Other communities (Koinonia Partners, Jubilee Partners, Catholic Worker houses, etc.) have far more attraction for me because they combine their simplicity with service--including strong political engagement (e.g., Jubilee's work with war refugees). The Walden-type though strikes me as a retreat--like a monastery--rather than an engagement with the world on different terms.
"I'd suggest that the "disability cheat" - however commonly you hear about it anecdotally - is mostly mythical in nature. Certainly not the norm." --Dan
Come to Izard County. Look around. If you are honest, you'll change your mind about that statement, Dan.
It's almost comical how our little town survives off of welfare!
I would "suggest" that 25% of people who actually WORK for a living in my town do so for a government pay-check. Another 25% DON'T work and STILL recieve a government paycheck.
What's really bad is that Izard County is just one area among many.
How sad. What a terrible testimony of the American way of life.
Hello Dan, you fearless soldier of peace and brotherly love! Few days ago I stumbled on a right-wing blog where I started getting fascinated by your lonely message on behalf of peace. The rest of the comments there tend to be some what hostile to your "defeatist" attitudes and rethoric it causes get quite nasty at times.
I am just wondering, why such an intelligent and caring person as you is willing to fight these "windmills" that in their mind boggling ignorance cannot possibly be converted or even moved for an inch?
Thanks, pekka, both for stopping by and your comments. I reckon I go places like that sort of as a missionary. Our country is terribly divided and we need dialog now more than ever.
A fool's errand? Well, I don't go there so much to convert them as I do to help them see a reasonable voice from the "other" side.
Apparently I fail quite often...
hahahaha on the disability cheat being mythical. More than 1/4 of the population is considered "disabled". Cr*p.
And living simply IS service, IS in itself, ministry. One cannot live simply alone, and one cannot help his neighbors in any other way. What you think is help is a jackboot on your brother's neck.
Thanks for the thoughts, Miss Goddess.
I thought I'd clarify something: Earlier when I said I went to those places as a missionary, it was a joke and I want that to be clear.
It's not that I think I have something they need. I think we all need the conversation to be ongoing. Just to be clear.
I get the feeling much is said in this thread to cross-purposes.
First step back and consider that however "poor" someone in North America appears when compared to the rich of North America, they are still very, very rich compared to most people in the world. Our lifestyle in NA is afloat on a sea of imported fossil fuels for which children in Iraq are bombed. Our collective wealth is dependent on plundering the world, ruining its environment, and oppressing it's people.
When I hear of all the worderful charitable communes and the work they are doing for the "poor", I clearly see the vision of the very rich grabbing all the more from the world's really poor and giving it to the less rich all in the name of Christian Charity.
Let me explain that: Michael's lauded communes of Koinonia Partners, Jubilee Partners, and Catholic Worker Houses all depend on donations for their existence. Koinonia (Greek for "commune") says that it supports its 25 memebers by means of sale of its farm produce? Really? In its store it sells T-shirts, baked goods, coffee and tea, and the auto-admiration articles of books and tapes. Last time I checked wheat, coffee, and tea don't grow all that well in Sumner Co Ga. And I much, much doubt they are growing the cotton in the T-shirts. Those products come about just like the products for any other corproation, by exploitation. No, I don't buy the 'Fair Trade' angle. They operate by environmental and social exploitation in order for the super rich to feel better about themselves by giving some of that plunder to the slighly less rich.
Where do the donations come from? Take a look at Koinonia's shameless panhandling including turning your own children away and giving it all to the Partners:
http://www.koinoniapartners.org/support/index.html
Again, money gained by bombing children in Iraq and starving people in Indonesia so that the Partners can give it to the slightly less rich.
If you could grasp this concept in a twinkling, you'd see that the model of such organizations actually generating the goods that are the object of their largesse without exploiting anyone else to get them ... is that they don't exist. It would become clear then how the Walden dweller is on much higher ground than these erstwhile Robin Hoods that have their boot on the neck of the really poor of the world and give it to the very slighly less rich.
Put another way, when you stand there with your teeth in your mouth, as we say, and you want to disburse that largesse to the needy, how much of that did you bring into existence yourself? Not persuade someone to donate it, not get the government to redirect it, how much did you actually produce so you can commit a true act of charity, give something that isn't yours to begin with?
When you do that, you will find that it is an entirely different world. What do you have to give that is not a fucntion of your having a boot on the neck of the poor of the world?
July 12 was also my birthday. Me, Hank, and Buckminster Fuller. Oh, yeah, and Julius Caesar, George Washington Carver, Pablo Neruda, and Van Cliburn. What an interesting group of people.
Happy Birthday, Doc.
Dan, thank you for answering! It confirms my thoughts about you, and I am wishing you luck in your up-hill battle for trying to reunite your great country. People like you are the real patriots that we hear so much about but are usually not able to identify.
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