In Walden, Henry David Thoreau recounts his experience spending two years living in a small house he built himself in the woods near Walden Pond. Through this experiment in simple living, he distances himself from what he sees as the exhausting lifestyle of many “civilized” people, such as farmers and carpenters, who work most of their lives just to afford food, shelter, and clothing. Thoreau questions a society in which the cost of these so-called “necessities” demands so much labor that people have little time left to truly live. He challenges the idea that a bigger house, finer clothing, or nicer furniture are worth the amount of life people must trade to obtain them.
Thoreau presents this lifestyle as a choice rather than an inevitability. He suggests that people can choose to pursue the comforts of modern life, paying for them with most of their time and labor, or they can choose a simpler life with fewer material comforts but greater personal freedom. To illustrate this, he contrasts “civilized” society with his idealized view of Indigenous peoples—whom he refers to, using the language of his time, as “savages.” He describes them as “rich” because their way of life allows them to meet their basic needs without the same relentless labor required in industrial society. In this sense, he argues, they possess a kind of freedom that many “civilized” people have lost.
One funny idea (amongst many) in the book is when Thoreau observes that houses constantly collect dust and therefore demand endless cleaning and maintenance, while grass does not accumulate dust at all. This humorous comparison highlights a broader point: the more possessions we have, the more time and energy we must spend taking care of them.
Reading this work made me think critically about my own spending and lifestyle. For example, can I justify working two weeks just to pay my monthly rent? Or could I live with “less”?
Thoreau’s ideas can also be connected to modern technology. In Walden, he suggests that it is not we who own our houses, but the houses that “got” us. In a similar way, we might ask whether today it is really we who own our phones, or if, in some sense, they have come to own us. Just as houses required constant labor and upkeep in Thoreau’s time, smartphones notifications demand constant attention, time, and mental energy, raising the question of whether it is really we who own our phones, or if, in some sense, they have come to own us (and our attention).
Note/disclamimer: thoughts are mine, but worded together nicely-er/processed by GPT