Henry David Thoreau Was Egotistical and Stupid
And we should be too
Caught in a snow storm, Thoreau ducks into what he assumed to be an empty cottage, but instead meets the Field family — Irish immigrants who work for the owner of Baker farm — and in their lovely conversation, Thoreau heads off into a tangent about how the father should leave his low paying job on the farm, and move his family to the woods, because… well because it worked for Thoreau.
He even does some back of the napkin math to show the farmer that he would be more successful on his own plot than working the job he was working right now.
But Thoreau forgets to add in two factors to the math he based on his own situation — the initial investment required to get land, build, a house, and plant crops, and that Thoreau himself went home to have his laundry washed on the weekends.
For the Irish immigrant — there was no time or money to invest. Of course he would make more money on his own plot, that is clear. But before his plot was useful, he and his family would die of starvation — if they were even able to secure the plot in the first place. And although Thoreau certainly lived very happily on his own plot, he had a cushion to fall back on whenever he decided it was too much work. The Field family had no such cushion.
Thoreau wasn’t only egotistical, but much of what he says in his famous memoir Walden is also entirely irrelevant. He goes on for pages about the depth of the lake, the ants marching by, and his beans — and no one could care less.
But somehow his book is incredibly popular. Many students read it for literature in their high school classes despite its questionable grammar, offensively long paragraphs, and complete ignorance of topical writing.
Ironically — I too love Walden. Reading it at times required a Herculean effort to keep my focus through the paragraphs and the logical leaps — but I genuinely enjoyed the book.
Why? Because it was so profusely honest.
Walden is a mere collection of Thoreau’s thoughts. He never edited them so we could stomach them, he didn’t write away his completely irrelevant musings, nor did he hide away the moments in which he was less than sensitive. He wrote exactly what he was thinking or doing without regard for his future readers.
In this regard, I think we could all handle to be a bit more like Thoreau.
Stop caring and just do
We are so concerned with how we look to other people — do they think I’m stupid? rude? oblivious? — that we edit everything that comes out of our mouths with whatever filter we attach for the person we are with.
If we have a friend who believes differently than we do on a particular topic — we filter out all things that may bring that disagreement up. Or when asked to give feedback on a project, we can only seem to eek out strained compliments.
Maybe we just join the majority in whatever they think at the moment, because that is the best way to ‘fit in.’ The best way to stay on the down low, to avoid an awkward situation.
But Thoreau doesn’t do this. He writes about his awkward situations and brings up topics that were certainly uncomfortable for his day — as well as some that still are today. He not only wrote this way, but he also lived this way.
He went out and became the kook in the woods because that’s what he thought he needed to think. He said whatever was on his mind to the Canadian lumberjack, his birch tree, or the Irish immigrant. Even though he wasn’t always right and there were times he should have kept his mouth shut. He did have some genuinely good ideas.
Mixed in with all the irrelevant junk, the rude rants, and the “no shit Sherlock” moments, he had a lot of good things to say about justice, society, and the importance of backing away from life for a bit.
They weren’t only good ideas either, they were ideas that put him at the forefront of transcendentalism. He was second only to Ralph Waldo Emerson himself as a philosopher in the movement.
Even if we never reach such prestige, we all have good ideas mixed in with our crap, but most the time we’re too caught up in potentially sounding stupid or offending someone that we withhold the good ideas along with the bad and leave people drowning even when they ask for our advice.
But here’s the thing about looking stupid, no one will remember but us.
No one cares that that pearl arose out of some parasite or dirt that entered the oyster — they just care that it is gorgeous.
That one good idea will probably outweigh the many stupid ones we dismissed without a second thought — and that one stupid idea may just be the basis for our pearl of wisdom.
People don’t read Walden because it’s beautifully written — his sentences and paragraphs are much to convoluted. They don’t read Walden because it has a nice story to tell — there is no plot per se. They don’t read it because it clearly expresses… anything in particular.
In short we don’t read Walden for any of the reasons we would read any other book. We read it for the transparent process. The book makes a fool of Thoreau and a philosophical god of him. It makes him both arrogant and humble, sharp and dull, consistent and inconsistent.
It takes a figure head and makes him an honest and quirky human being.
No one only has good ideas, and with Thoreau’s book we see the process he uses to get to his good ideas. In short — a lot of time and bad ideas.
We get to meet one of the foremost transcendentalist thinkers and philosophers of his time and the picture is less than pristine. He isn’t brilliant or considerate all the time. So much so that an average 15 year old can pick out the inconsistencies and the stumbles he made along the way.
But that’s honesty for you. Its a complete bearing of ourselves and the picture is rarely perfect. But most of the time, the only person who can see the smudged background or the poorly mixed palette is us.
Everyone else just sees a painting worth spending time with.
