Today I at last finished “Walden”, which was both better and worse than I expected. As an observation of nature in New England it was quite compelling. As a seminal philosophical work I was somewhat disappointed. But then I believe that much of what Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists proposed has become such a part of American thought that we probably become familiar with Thoreau’s works without ever having read them.

In any case, Thoreau and I have made our peace. As you likely detected in my earlier posts, I find Thoreau a bit vain and pedantic. His continual criticism of his fellow man grates on my nerves, mainly because he always seems to add an unspoken “unlike myself” to every fault he finds. I can only tolerate so much self-aggrandizement before I stop listening to what one has to say. Fortunately for Thoreau, he intersperses his sermons with nature study, which pulls me back in enough to allow me to listen to him a bit more next time he meanders off to vex his neighbors.

But in the end I do not necessarily disagree with him. We all do live unexamined lives to a large degree; accepting with little question the path society lays before us rather than thinking carefully what it is we want and how to get it–or become it. We live lives “out there”, constantly focused on the world and society around us while paying very little attention to what lies within us. No wonder our society teeters on the brink when so many of us build upon unsteady foundations.

How Thoreau’s Walden experience will impact my own thoughts on self reliance remains to be seen. I have a great deal more thinking ahead of me. I’ve read what Thoreau thinks on the matter. Now it’s my turn. Fairly soon I shall put to pixel my own theory of self reliance–and then proceed to poke holes in it for the next year or so. Even better, I invite you to join me in hole-poking. I highly doubt any thoughts from my head will be solid enough to stand on their own without reinforcement and reconstruction, and I doubt even more in my objective ability to locate all the weak points on my own. I look forward to learning from you–and I hope before I’m through you’ll be able to learn something from me.

But for now the lofty siren song of intellectual exercise must give way to the rustic realities–it’s bath night, and I have my role to play in the cleansing of the children. What e’er thou art, act well thy part.