“But whether
we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain.” – 60
“Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born?”
“We are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries.”
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Clothing
The purpose of Clothing: to retain vital heat, and to cover nakedness.
Thoreau:
“Yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience.”
He says it
would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken
or ripped clothing.
“We know but
few men, a great many coats and breeches.”
We might as
well address scarecrows as men, since we seem to dress ourselves with the same
haphazard artifice. Our clothes, our adornments are not US, no matter what
Tiffany and Old Navy ads suggest. They no more enhance or convey our
personality than wearing certain kinds of exotic fruits on our heads. Perhaps
this signifies wealth or position in some circles (tribes in Africa), but the
symbols do not necessarily translate cross-culturally, and certainly not when
viewed from Heaven’s eyes. Your pair of converse, or immaculate $200 Nike
sneakers don’t inspire my confidence any more.
The
“accidental possession of wealth” and beauty gleans esteem and respect.
Meanwhile, those born below certain income levels are glowered at.
In many places one can go into a mall and it’s truly hard to tell who is wealthy, who poor as the clothing items have merged the gap. Tacky, frilly, silly, sparkly, glitzy, glam has become accessible to the masses ; and who can really spot a real Coach purse from afar.
Why are we so
desperate to be acknowledged? We feel our value lies in our clothes merely.
Thoreau
posits:
“A man who
has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it
in.”
“But if my
jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes are fit to worship God in, they will do;
will they not?” –But the irony is people now do dress up to worship God; although
that’s not quite right. They dress up to impress their community* more than
they even think what God thinks of their outfit. The logic of trying to impress
God with your outfit is illogical, yet who does not think of Easter or
Christmas Eve and not think it synonymous with dressing up?
On Shelter/houses
Thoreau:
“our houses
are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in
them.”
“the bad
neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. “ “While civilization has
been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to
inhabit them.
“Before we
can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our
lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid
for a foundation. “
“Let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives.”
Work
Thoreau:
“Does wisdom
work in a tread-mill?”
Thoreau
speaks of a man in town who is planning on building a wall. “The result will be
that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to
spend foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and
hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which
yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look
at me as an idler.”
People would
be rather insulted if you insinuated their work as being nothing more than
throwing rocks over a wall and then throwing them back, just to make money. But
“many are no more worthily employed now.” Ouch.
“If the
laborer gets no more than the wages which is employer pays him, he is cheated,
he cheats himself. Those services which the community will most readily pay for
it is disagreeable to render. You are being paid for being something less than
a man.”
Such is sadly
the case.
“I do not
need the police of meaningless labor to regulate me.” “I prefer to finish my
education at a different school”
Henry speaks about someone of Native descent who realizes weaving baskets is something he can do, so he goes out to try to sell them, not realizing there has to be interest in buying. Thoreau also is aware he’s weaving subtler tapestries, but instead of studying how to ensure good buyers, “I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.” And Society over-exaggerates the importance of the life of the Forced laborer.
As Laura Dassaw Walls suggests in the Biography on Thoreau “From ‘an
observatory in the stars,’ would America’s ‘beehive’ of commercial activity really
look like freedom? Hardly.”
Material
goods bind us rather than free us, enslave us rather than emancipate us.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”… “but it is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
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