Walden Part One

      In reading Walden I have found many things I enjoy about Thoreau's writing style, let along what he has to say. I have a hard time reading things out of order so I had to read Economy before I could read Where I lived and What I lived for. In economy, Thoreau talks about many things and kind of rambles from one idea to the next, sometimes putting me to sleep I will admit. Among the sleepy parts there are a lot of good, quality things that Thoreau has to say, sometimes I don't understand how they relate to the economy but nonetheless I enjoyed them. In the premise of this book,
      Thoreau addresses that he is "confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience." The theme being that of his life and how he perceived and went about living it. You can only be you, even if you would wish otherwise, you are stuck, sometimes it feels eternally, within the bounds of your own experience. He goes on to talk about the self and the constraints it has on itself being "the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds." We are in control but we are also enslaved by that control and therefore the control the ideas around us inflict.
       I could very well relate to his line, "when one man has reduced a fact of his imagination to be a fact to his understanding." At the end of our fast-write we did a few weeks ago I came upon the conclusion that most of the time I am confidently saying things that I imagine to be true and I simply speak them into existence. It is a beautiful power but and often thwarted one.
      Another piece that spoke to me, being an anthropology major was "none can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty." Traditional anthropologists believe that they could go into some foreign land, live there for a few years, gain acceptance from whatever tribe was there and then go home and write an exhaustive book or essay about how those people came to be and how they live day to day. This was supposed to help humans figure out how best to live but really it was to convert all that did not live as white folks did to the white folk way. Here is some good stuff from Anthropology and other sciences.