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I’m fond of Thoreau, the original guru of simplicity and self-sufficiency:

“Simplicity,simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, andnot a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of thischopping sea of civilized life, such as the clouds and storms andquicksand and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man hasto live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make hisport at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculatorindeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day,if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; andreduce other things in proportion.”

What’s not to love?! But interestingly, if you read on in that passage, it takes a different turn:

“Ourlife is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with itsboundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you howit is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so calledinternal improvements which by the way, are all external andsuperficial, is just such a unwieldy and overgrown establishment,cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined byluxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim,as the million household in the land…”

Thoreau xenophobic,cranky, curmudgeonly? Definitely. In other places we find him railingagainst people who buy excessive new clothes or furniture, work toohard to support “luxurious” lifestyles. Or telling us that the postoffice is useless because no one writes letters worth reading, ordeclaring that “I’m sure I never read any memorable news in anewspaper.” When he starts deriding people who can’t read the Illiad and the Odyssey inthe original Greek, he’s pushing the edge of snobbery. We don’t heartoo much about Thoreau the crank. All those quotes are very preciselycut off just in time to miss his less-telegenic moments.

Lastweek Sue came over for pizza and beer and we got to talking about thetranscendentalist—also one of her favorites. Just that afternoon I hadjust been denied entrance to Walden Pond, which is these days so busythat it is closed periodically for a few hours to limit traffic. Verysensible, but not when it shuts me out on a hot afternoon! I had drivenmorosely past the blocked parking lot and the Walden Shop, lamentingthe fate of Thoreau’s hideaway in a very unoriginal burst of resentmenttowards the modern world.

Sue, who has years of experienceteaching college and high-school English, was unimpressed by mysentimental evocation of the loss of the Walden paradise. “You dorealize that his mother used to bring him casseroles?” she said. “Hewasn’t the romantic loner fighting for survival out in the woods. Helived a few miles from Concord and his mother left food on hisdoorstep.”

Oh.

Sue loves him anyway. She has a picture ofWalden (bought from the Walden Shop) on her kitchen wall, to remind herof serenity and constancy in difficult moments. She’s just making apoint about those traces of irony and hypocrisy that humans are proneto.

The odd thing about reading Thoreau now, is that the livesof the villagers he derides, for their willingness to enslavethemselves to the goal of material prosperity, seem so simple andhumble compared to our own. These are 19th century farmers who growtheir own food and chop their own wood, living in houses they build andrenovate themselves. In other words, Thoreau’s prosperous materialistslived far “greener”, simpler and more frugal lives than anyonecontemplating the same today.

And so, back to hypocrisy--ours.Thoreau’s concession to taking casseroles from Ma is laughable comparedto our attempts to be environmentally conscious by buying organiccosmetics, or off-setting our jet-setting with carbon offsets. Are wedoing our best for the environment, or just gazing at our lives throughgreen-colored glasses?

If this is our best, we may soon have todo better. The economy could force us to. In this fearful moment let’sassume there’s a method to the madness, that the environment and theeconomy are converging, somehow, propelled by a force unknown, to teachus the values of Thoreau: simplify, simplify…

I’m fond of Thoreau, the original guru of simplicity and self-sufficiency:

“Simplicity,simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, andnot a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen,and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of thischopping sea of civilized life, such as the clouds and storms andquicksand and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man hasto live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make hisport at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculatorindeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day,if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; andreduce other things in proportion.”

What’s not to love?! But interestingly, if you read on in that passage, it takes a different turn:

“Ourlife is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with itsboundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you howit is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so calledinternal improvements which by the way, are all external andsuperficial, is just such a unwieldy and overgrown establishment,cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined byluxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim,as the million household in the land…”

Thoreau xenophobic,cranky, curmudgeonly? Definitely. In other places we find him railingagainst people who buy excessive new clothes or furniture, work toohard to support “luxurious” lifestyles. Or telling us that the postoffice is useless because no one writes letters worth reading, ordeclaring that “I’m sure I never read any memorable news in anewspaper.” When he starts deriding people who can’t read the Illiad and the Odyssey inthe original Greek, he’s pushing the edge of snobbery. We don’t heartoo much about Thoreau the crank. All those quotes are very preciselycut off just in time to miss his less-telegenic moments.

Lastweek Sue came over for pizza and beer and we got to talking about thetranscendentalist—also one of her favorites. Just that afternoon I hadjust been denied entrance to Walden Pond, which is these days so busythat it is closed periodically for a few hours to limit traffic. Verysensible, but not when it shuts me out on a hot afternoon! I had drivenmorosely past the blocked parking lot and the Walden Shop, lamentingthe fate of Thoreau’s hideaway in a very unoriginal burst of resentmenttowards the modern world.

Sue, who has years of experienceteaching college and high-school English, was unimpressed by mysentimental evocation of the loss of the Walden paradise. “You dorealize that his mother used to bring him casseroles?” she said. “Hewasn’t the romantic loner fighting for survival out in the woods. Helived a few miles from Concord and his mother left food on hisdoorstep.”

Oh.

Sue loves him anyway. She has a picture ofWalden (bought from the Walden Shop) on her kitchen wall, to remind herof serenity and constancy in difficult moments. She’s just making apoint about those traces of irony and hypocrisy that humans are proneto.

The odd thing about reading Thoreau now, is that the livesof the villagers he derides, for their willingness to enslavethemselves to the goal of material prosperity, seem so simple andhumble compared to our own. These are 19th century farmers who growtheir own food and chop their own wood, living in houses they build andrenovate themselves. In other words, Thoreau’s prosperous materialistslived far “greener”, simpler and more frugal lives than anyonecontemplating the same today.

And so, back to hypocrisy--ours.Thoreau’s concession to taking casseroles from Ma is laughable comparedto our attempts to be environmentally conscious by buying organiccosmetics, or off-setting our jet-setting with carbon offsets. Are wedoing our best for the environment, or just gazing at our lives throughgreen-colored glasses?

If this is our best, we may soon have todo better. The economy could force us to. In this fearful moment let’sassume there’s a method to the madness, that the environment and theeconomy are converging, somehow, propelled by a force unknown, to teachus the values of Thoreau: simplify, simplify…