Henry Thoreau and Simple living
The Pathology of Consumer Capitalism
Introduction
Thoreau and Walden Background
Last spring, I took the time to reread Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. The book itself is a combined work of fiction, poetry, philosophical treatise, and personal journal. While this sounds like an odd set of qualities for a single text, this structure paints the full picture of the two years Thoreau spent living in a small cabin by Walden Pond in Middlesex County MA, just a short distance from his hometown of Concord. Uninterested in leading a conventional life of drudgery fueled by a seemingly bottomless appetite for material wealth, he took to the woods, built a small cabin by his own hand, and lived, more or less, on his own terms for two years. He wrote Walden during that time, chronicling his thoughts and his time. The text is filled with astute reflections on nature and society. He also made frequent references to a variety of philosophical texts, including those from India and other Non-Western origins, e.g. the Upanishads and the Vedas, which had just recently been translated into English and imparted a significant influence on the philosopher.
From the ideas that Thoreau lays out in the book, he sounds like a bit like an old-timey hippie. Indeed, he shares a good deal in common with many of the qualities present in the counterculture of the 1960s. He had a genuine love of nature and a heartfelt desire to conserve it. Throughout the book, he joyfully basks in the glory of the surrounding woods, describing everything from the songs of the whip-or-wills to the majesty of the seasons. Likewise, he laments what he considers the greed-driven exploitation of nature, the plundering of its resources, and the destruction of its sublime beauty. This reverence extends to inspire his disapproval of hunting and his advocacy of vegetarianism. Like the counterculture, he was fascinated by the aforementioned non-Western and specifically Asiatic philosophical and religious texts and eagerly gleaned wisdom from them. He actively opposed government that he considered immoral or wrong and was once jailed for withholding poll taxes earmarked for military aggression. Perhaps the only stark contrast between Thoreau and the 1960s counterculture is his endorsement of complete sobriety, feeling that even the buzz provided by the early cup of coffee tarnished the glory of the morning.
Thoreau and Simple Living
His most pronounced similarity to the 1960’s counterculture also endures as one of strong relevance to our present age. It is perhaps the most oft-visited and overriding theme in Walden. It is, in fact, the central theme of the book’s most extensive 1st Chapter, “Economy”. Thoreau staunchly attested to the possibility of a minimalist lifestyle, free from the endless cycle of toil and consumption in which most of his contemporaries were entangled. Looking around his home village of Concord and the surrounding areas, he observed farmers breaking their backs in their fields. He witnessed Irish immigrants working themselves to exhaustion on the railroad, only to return to the squalor of their ramshackle shanties nearby. All around him, those same people spent their hard-earned pay on luxuries, goods, and services they could have either produced themselves or toward their ever-expanding estate. To Thoreau, the predominance of this materialistic lifestyle, along with the assumption that a simpler life was not possible, left individuals caught in a cycle of misery and toil at the expense of the enjoyment of a freer or more tranquil lifestyle. Observing these others, he wrote, “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”[1]
Why Did Thoreau Move to Walden Pond?
Thoreau states that he took to the woods by Walden Pond to, “live deliberately.” Yet, he also had a secondary motive. He wanted to prove to anyone who also wished to escape the rat race of his day. He believed that by embracing a minimalist lifestyle, focusing on the bare essentials of life, and rejecting the trappings of luxury, one could live as they pleased, and spend the majority of their time as they wished. Thoreau endeavored to live as authentically as possible, owing to his generous and compassionate spirit, he wanted to encourage other like-minded folks to do the same.
Over the course of two years, Thoreau proved his point. He hand-built a small cabin using earthly materials and old shanty siding purchased from an Irish railroad worker, cultivated whatever vegetables he wished, procured his own firewood, and drank directly from Walden Pond. Outside of the fish he caught, he eschewed meat, ate just enough to sustain himself, and kept his worldly effects to a minimum. Either while building his cabin, or hoeing his bean fields, he worked diligently, yet at his own pace. His simple lifestyle afforded him ample time to do as he wished. He spent this time reading, writing, conversing with passing travelers, and enjoying the outdoors. He only worked as needed in the fall and spring, leaving the bulk of the summer and winter seasons at his complete disposal. Thoreau detailed his expenditures and showed that a life of moderate poverty was certainly possible for anyone who wanted it. During his first and most costly year at Walden Pond, he spent only $2,509, adjusted for inflation.[2]
The Value of Thoreau’s Example Today: Breaking Free from the Cycle of Toil and Consumption
Thoreau’s retreat into the forest was largely driven by his will to escape the materialistic illusions that consumed the lives of his neighbors. It is of some import that such mirages were perceptible enough even in the mid-19th century to inspire Thoreau’s distaste. Most farmers, he observed, never reached a point where they actually owned their farms or felt themselves content with the state that it was in, whether bought or inherited. In almost all cases, they broke their backs for their entire lives, either to pay off debts or expand their lot. This left them trapped in a black hole of labor and indebtedness, a Sisyphean hell of their own making. Thoreau remarked at one point that, “The man who has actually paid for his farm with his labor is so rare that every neighbor can point to him.”[3] It’s probably at the mercy of fate that he lived and died too early to see what our culture would evolve into. If he had beheld it, I would expect that he would have been aghast.
Today, we don’t just concern ourselves with more furniture and larger estates, or gorge our minds on distant trivialities of the daily news at our own expense. Likewise, it’s not only social pressures that push us toward these ends. These days, our appetite for more luxury, more entertainment, and more and better property is bottomless, encouraged by the endless stream of marketing campaigns launched by a commercial industry so sophisticated that it does not only inspire want but routinely employs psychological tactics capable of bypassing our consciousness and planting the seeds of desire in the recesses of our subconscious. The advent of targeted marketing intensifies this effect, pouring customized influence into our ears and eyes. Their efforts are relentless. Whether found on billboards, our phones, mail letters, televisions, and other media and devices, marketing influence is as ubiquitous in our daily lives as the air we breathe. Even platforms like Facebook have shifted from a mode of individual expression and connection with our friends to primarily one of commercial indoctrination.
This desire for more drives a need for more money, which means more work. Such excessive toil only increases stress and the desire to distract oneself from the anxiety and rigors of life. This draws us to entertainment on television and social media, which are all rife with ads pushing the illusion that products make us happy, motivating more consumption and thereby increasing the need to continue working. It is this vicious cycle that both drives the economy and ensnares the masses, who now, more than ever, live “lives of quiet desperation.”
We Can Follow Thoreau’s Footsteps to a Better Life
Thus, Thoreau’s recommendations of simplification and retreat have never been more relevant. Consumerist culture and the slave-like drudgery it fuels have morphed from the nuisance it was in Thoreau’s day to a full-blown cancer. And nearly all of us are sick. Much like the microplastics that now flow through our bloodstreams thanks to modern industry’s benighted drive for profits and aggrandizement, nearly all of us are contaminated by the influences of industries that view us as nothing more than sources of income.
It can be hard to fully sense how toxic their influence can be, or how ill it makes us. This is because we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be well. Much like a city-dweller who can’t smell the noxious fumes of exhaust and sewage, or the rural resident who is no longer affected by the nausea-inducing stench of chicken manure, modern humanity has become so accustomed to commercial pollution that it hardly notices its negative effects. It becomes like white noise, static, a monotone hum that one cannot notice until it is abruptly cut off. Yet it all still seeps into our heads and corrupts our minds.
My own experience with this comes from my deployment overseas while I was in the Navy. I was a Navy Corpsman attached to a Marine tank company that deployed to Afghanistan for seven months. During that time, I had almost no exposure to commercial marketing. Outside of the occasional random Afghan National Army recruitment poster, I was pretty much isolated from advertisements of any sort. Even though we had access to Facebook, it wasn’t full of ads like it is today, and I never went shopping on my laptop. The essential things in life came into better focus. I thought more of well-being. I appreciated the grandeur of my surroundings more. The simplicity of life in the field was unbeatable. I thought more and reflected often. Despite being in a warzone, I found a new level of peace. Unbeknownst to me was that during that time, I was detoxing. I was losing my tolerance for commercial overload.
I didn’t realize that until I returned home. The bus ride from Cherry Point, NC, where our airplane landed, to Camp Lejeune, was when it hit me. At first, we drove down a quiet highway, flanked by trees and open space. I’ve always liked the woods, and seeing greenery after seven months of endless desert was refreshing. Then our bus entered Jacksonville’s market district, and it all changed. Cheesy billboards and gaudy advertisements were everywhere. In all directions, sales were pitched and goods were peddled. Turning on the television later that day, I saw, to my disgust, superficial programming focusing on senseless and redundant themes reflecting the bloodlessness and anemic culture that produced and consumed it. “Is this what people care about?” I thought. “Are our priorities in life really so shallow?” I realized that the superfluous was usurping the essential. Consumer culture was attempting to hijack the mind. For the first time, I understood our culture’s perverse atmosphere for what it was. An obnoxious intrusion upon the peace and autonomy of the mind and soul.
I’ve never forgotten that awakening experience, and this is why I find Thoreau’s example so meaningful, and the need to follow his footsteps so urgent. That’s not to say that we should all sell our property and become hermits in the woods. But we all identify things in our lives that we don’t need and the pointless desires that keep us working long hours and late nights at jobs we hate at the expense of a more ideal life. Taking time off from social media or other avenues by which materialism exerts its influence can and does have a positive effect on our overall mental health. We may not need to take things as far as Thoreau did, even if may want to from time to time. But we can all take steps toward his objective. Each one of us can find some way to disconnect. By taking charge of what grabs our attention and mitigating the influence of media output as much as possible, we can better reflect on what is truly important to us, and what is unnecessary. I know it’s hard in today’s world to completely silence the onslaught of commercial influence for any significant amount of time, but if we can lower the volume enough, perhaps we can finally hear with clarity what our souls are trying to tell us. Perhaps then, one can realize the dream of peace that is so elusive in today’s hustle-and-bustle world.
[1] Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, pg. 5
[2] Total Budget is listed in Walden, pg. 29. Inflation adjustments were made using officialdata.org
[3] Walden, pg. 16