RE: Thread for the Analysis of Henry David Thoreau's Writings
July 25, 2019 at 2:36 am
(This post was last modified: July 25, 2019 at 3:05 am by vulcanlogician.)
(July 24, 2019 at 4:32 pm)Alan V Wrote: I've been thinking about what you wrote, and I agree. Even today, authoritarian-leaning Republicans are prioritizing fossil fuel industries and their party ahead of the interests of their country. We need more Republicans to think like Thoreau, to take a stand for what is true over what is convenient.
THIS!
I mean, Thoreau heartily accepted the motto: "That government is best which governs least." Conservatives can jive with that, right?
As I've argued before, Thoreau hated capitalism, but even if you LOVE capitalism, you have to admit, nature makes capitalism and free enterprise possible. Try opening a Wal-Mart in the sewer. I bet business there will suck. That's a good argument (capitalist or Marxist) for not turning the world into a sewer.
(July 21, 2019 at 10:09 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Perhaps he was rationalizing his confinement in terms amenable to his internal narrative. That he felt more free is certainly a metaphoric sense of freedom in contradiction to the plain reality of his situation.
He would have been uniquely aware of that fact, and in the calculus of appraising his situation it’s not surprising that the many frustrations and anxieties he was experiencing rounded up to some sort of success in principle in the face of a practical defeat.
It’s a thing we do, particularly when we lose.
What if somebody hated slavery and wished to abolish it?
What if, even when they failed to abolish it, when somebody came around to try to make them participate in it, they told them to fuck off. And told them so successfully.
So what? That might not seem like so much of a victory to most of us, and even less so if one ends up in a jail cell. But to someone like Thoreau (and to someone like me) participating in injustice is the only way to lose.... really lose... We are freer giving the finger from a jail cell than we are giving a salute from the openest of pastures.
That's why Thoreau felt so free in his cell.
