Today's soundtrack is The Highwaymen: Highwayman. This afternoon's reading is the first chapter of Selections From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, "Economy; it is a large chapter, so I will read up to page 37 of the book today. Thoreau begins by saying that he wrote this book while living in a house that he built himself, far from everyone, "on the shore of Walden Pond" (p. 9). He lived there for "two years and two months" (p. 9), and says that he lived only from the living he earned by working. While living alone in his hand-built house, he apparently aroused the curiosity of those living in town. He wished to answer those questions with this book. Thoreau compares the lives of his fellow men to holy men doing penance, or heroes undergoing trials - but, he observes, there is no restitution to be earned or villain to be slain. They work to earn more than they need, and then are enslaved by their possessions, and then don't know how to get rid of the things holding them down. Many others are "gasping for breath" (p. 11), unable to afford the necessities, relying on loans to buy food and clothing. He says that we are "making [ourselves] sick, that [we] may lay up something against a sick day" (p. 12); he observes that most of us "lead lives of quiet desperation" (p. 12). But the wise do "not [...] do desperate things" (p. 12). The old are not necessarily wiser for merely having lived. Our ways of living are not the only ways of living. We must seek proof before accepting any method of living as the best way. Perhaps the young man is better qualified to make decisions about how to live than the old man, for the old man "has not profited so much as [he] has lost" (p. 13). Thoreau believed that it would be better for people to understand how we get the necessities of life. He identifies man's necessities as "Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel" (p. 16). There are two ways to go about avoiding lack of necessities: one, make something and convince people that they need it so that you can sell it; two, find a way of avoiding the need to sell anything.
