Thoreau, Pt. 2

Onwards...

So, after getting through a majority of this essay, I hit this roadblock wherein Thoreau states: "I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a god place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad." I find this to be a bit troubling considering throughout the entirety of the essay, Thoreau is urging people to step up and challenge the government and the injustices it inflicts upon its citizens and other injustices in general. It seems as if he is also prescribing a model for the ideal society, which would be inherently good since it would be ideal (unless, of course, one wishes for a world of evil to exist). Thus, I have a problem with this man over this statement. There is nothing more to it, really, just something I found to be a bit inconsistent considering the rest of the paper.

In going along somewhat of the same lines as the previous paragraph, he also is a strong believer that society is all talk and no action, and what he thinks we ought to do is act rather than just sit and talk about it. This would also go against what he says earlier in the paper (as noted in the previous paragraph) because he claims that he is not on Earth to change the world, he is just meant to live in it. Maybe that is what he is meant to do. Maybe Thoreau personally is not meant to be active, yet he is meant to actively tell others that they ought to be active. It still seems to me that he is a hypocrite in this regard.

A big debate Katrina and I had after reading this and discussing it came from the following quote: "Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue: for money comes between a man and his objects." And another, just a few sentences later: "The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as that are called the 'means' are increased." The first quote Katrina had a major issue with because she asked if that meant the completely virtuous person would have to be dirt poor, with no money at all. I could understand where she was getting this from, but at the same time, the opposite end is not defined either. Thoreau, in this quote, does not seem to mention what a completely immoral person would be either. Thinking of it as a graph, with money on the x-axis and virtue on the y-axis, Katrina thought that the point (0,infinity) was included and was to be deemed the completely virtuous person. What I pointed out, after I disagreed with her, was that there is no such point as (infinity, 0), the completely immoral person. Therefore, it must start somewhere in the middle, or we ought to not think of it in terms of graphs at all. Maybe Thoreau did not intend for us to think of this in terms of a graph, but rather as merely the statement he makes in this essay.

Once we had that issue out of the way, we proceeded to talk about whether the meat of the sentence was true or not. I tended to believe that it was while Katrina thought otherwise. I thought that it was a well stated observation and held some validity. Thinking about many of the famous/rich people in our society, it seems to me that many of them, with their millions upon millions of dollars, do not do virtuous acts as often as the more moderately rich or middle-class or poor. While they donate millions of their dollars to charities, that does not make a person virtuous. Money is easy to give away, time is not. If they were to give some more of their time away, I think that would be a different story, but many simply give money as an easy and lazy way out of donating time. It seems to me that middle class folk cannot give away money as readily, but they can (and often do) give up some of their time to care for others or whatever. Basically, we determined that these quotes were referring to materialism and who is more materialistic. I (and Thoreau) claimed that the rich were more concerned with material items while the poor/middle class were more concerned with being good people (including to others). Katrina argued the opposite, that everyone (including those who are poor) are materialistic. I could also see the logic behind her reasoning here, as those who are not particularly well off in the financial field tend to aspire for material objects, which can be considered materialistic. There is definitely some validity there as well. Many of the people from the lower end of the economic pyramid tend to aspire for bigger, better, brighter items. So, after discussing this, we decided that agreeing to disagree would probably be the best course of action.

To conclude my post and the unit on Thoreau, I will pose a large question that I came to about halfway through this reading. I will also attempt to answer it, but not too in depth because...well...because I don't know what to think about it, quite frankly.

Anyhow, it seems quite obvious that Thoreau was really angry with the American government and its role in society and was decrying its injustices against loyal citizens, but at the same time, it seems that the message throughout the essay was optimistic, providing an answer to the question: What am I to do in this life? What is the purpose of living? I think that Thoreau, between the complaining, ranting, raving, and angsting has provided for us readers somewhat of a purpose/course of action in this life on Earth. I think Thoreau makes us challenge our apathy and inactivity and urges us to become active citizens of whichever nation to which we declare allegiance. Therefore, maybe he is also providing people with a sense of hope and usefulness in their lives because that is what a large portion of philosophy is, at least in my opinion. This question of what we are to do, etc. is a huge question that philosophy tries to provide answers to and tackle head-on. I dunno though. Maybe I am completely off my rocker here.

Stay tuned for the next installment and a reflection of Bertrand Russell essay concerning politics. 'Twas interesting and connected nicely with Thoreau.