Thoreau was the first hippy of America. Like many hippies, he never grew up. His legacy is an anti-Christian environmentalism, which has been slowly undermining America for the last 40 years.
Don’t blame him for what’s been done with his legacy. He was not anti-industry at all and would not tolerate today’s Environmental wackos.
Thoreau was largely a dumbass. I could never understand what people saw in his “philosophy” which was little more than warmed over 19th century romanticism.
Very true. At the same time, Emerson and Thoreau were original, and were correct in identifying the American virtues of self-reliance and individual ownership with fidelity to the truth and moral responsibility. Many of the entrepreneurs of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who were not hippies, but very self-disciplined men, quoted them frequently. Thoreau can be quite annoying and is justly parodied—a subsidized romantic like all hippies—but he was a good observer.
What's especially hilarious is that eccentrics keep reinventing human cultural movements. We who come after them assume the one we've heard of was the first—even if the original guy knew perfectly well what his precedent was.
French Enlightenment types like Rousseau blazed Thoreau's intellectual wilderness a century earlier, asserting that the natural (primitive) man is the real one—implying that civilized man is an intruder, not an authentic participant, in the world. The contrast between the hurly-burly of city life vs. the reverence that comes over us when we take a vacation at the sea, or take some time off to appreciate the farm or forest, is a staple of ancient Roman writing. Thoreau surely read these earlier writings.
The Cathars (Albigensians) who rebelled against Catholic teaching in France and Italy in the early Middle Ages were greenies in almost every sense. "Cathar" means "pure one." They believed man was bad and nature good. They believed in socialism, and rule by an elite who alone knew the truth. They said meat-eating was bad, and vegetarianism was the highest state. Marriage was bad, they said, and only adultery was good. These were also the views of the Manichees of St. Augustine's time, nearly a millennium earlier.
We can't make this s#$% up, in a sense, since some other idiot did, centuries before us.
when i was a teener i once told my dad that I did not wish to show up after school and help him in the family business...further i informed him that indeed my time was private and i found more fun and fullfillment layin on the bed listenin to my elvis collection whilst maintainng a journal of my important thoughts...also i told him i preferred my meals delivered to this, my work site, in order to facilitate the continuation of my chosen pursuits, uninteruptedly you see. He informed me that i, indeed HAD no private time and that if i did not show up to work on time, every time...i would not get ANY meals at ALL let alone DELIVERED meals....BWAHhaahaahaha dad Thoreauly unThoreaued me in no time atoll...atoll....thank GOD!
While Henry might have inspired LEO my dad inspired me....he taught me lessons that transformed a rudderless kid into an astoundingly successful adult.. I did better than either HENRY OR LEO..so...there’s that...