It's an interesting essay and a good call to action for the already non-conformist and independent. Though at the end of the day someone needs to mend your shoes, bake your bread and so on - we can't all be primes if we want to function as a cohesive society.
With regard to the contempt for charity, while you can celebrate that you are the product of your own hard work, you forget that's never really true in a society where we don't all start life with the same level of nutrition, warmth, care, location, education or skin. The track is rockier and longer for some, shorter and smoother for others. While we know charities are inefficient, and putting a dollar in the hand of a beggar won't teach them how to make more purposefully, I'd sooner hand over the dollar than pretend I wasn't the benefactor of circumstance.
That doesn't mean you have to self-flagellate for being fortunate and dedicate yourself to others, it's just honesty.
IIRC (but I can't seem to source it) it was Marshall McLuhan that said that there was nothing sweeter than the gaze of a tyrant. This is what Emerson seems to be preaching against, and how good a sermon it is.
One of the things Emerson was warning about was Dogma:
“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.”
Not only did you get the wrong Concord resident, you trotted out the biggest misconception of the book with the subtitle "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For." Whenever this complaint comes up, it is very clear the writer didn't bother to read the book, or even its most famous passage, where Thoreau explains exactly what he was doing at Walden:
> I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
[+] [-] closetnerd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icanhackit|10 years ago|reply
With regard to the contempt for charity, while you can celebrate that you are the product of your own hard work, you forget that's never really true in a society where we don't all start life with the same level of nutrition, warmth, care, location, education or skin. The track is rockier and longer for some, shorter and smoother for others. While we know charities are inefficient, and putting a dollar in the hand of a beggar won't teach them how to make more purposefully, I'd sooner hand over the dollar than pretend I wasn't the benefactor of circumstance.
That doesn't mean you have to self-flagellate for being fortunate and dedicate yourself to others, it's just honesty.
[+] [-] johnohara|10 years ago|reply
So painfully true.
[+] [-] thanatropism|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] crimsonalucard|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|10 years ago|reply
“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.”
[+] [-] billwilliams|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|10 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9722096
All the more so when the work is beautiful and the meme is about the wrong guy.
[+] [-] justinator|10 years ago|reply
I would highly suggest the essay from Emerson, it's one of my favorite pieces of writing.
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecho|10 years ago|reply
> I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
[+] [-] alayne|10 years ago|reply