Speaking of the top ten hot words in 2021, the antonyms of "lying flat" and "inner volume" are most likely on the list.
For some people, lying flat is no longer enough to describe the degree of abandonment. Now there is a new word called "pendulum", which refers to feeling that things cannot be developed in a good direction, simply inaction, and let it deteriorate.
However, lying flat and swinging reflects far more than an individual's mental explosion or excessive anxiety.
On the contrary, behind this social phenomenon, to a large extent, people's resistance to the inner volume and the silent struggle against reality are reflected.
This is not a phenomenon of the 21st century, but the model of the "lying flat" is the case with the 19th-century American philosopher and literary scholar Henry David Thoreau.
Thoreau differed from many other philosophers or writers in that he not only intellectually contemplated a more "free" life, but also experimented with his own philosophical ideas in reality—living in seclusion on the shores of Walden lake for more than two years and writing about this experience as the famous Walden.
◎ Autumn view of Walden Lake.
Image credit: Lonely Planet
Thoreau seems to lie down the most flat, but if you look closely, you will find that he is actually the most disobedient.
He was a radical abolitionist on the one hand, and criticized the injustice of the War waged by the United States against Mexico on the other, and in 1846 he was even imprisoned for protesting against the government's actions.
In order to express his dissatisfaction with the government, Thoreau wrote the famous "On The Disobedience of Citizens", which proposed the concept of nonviolent resistance, which had an important impact on the subsequent civil rights activists.
Thoreau once said:
"You have to live as long as you can to be free, and it is better to live without attachment. Obsessed with a pastoral garden, there is no difference between being locked up in a county government prison."
Why, then, did Thoreau live a seemingly contradictory and "divisive" life?
Is there consistency in the content of his two books?
◎ American philosopher Henry David Thoreau.
Image credit: Biography
/ 01 /
"Nature leads to a higher reality"
Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts.
His father was a pencil maker and had three siblings in the family, but several of his children died prematurely from diseases such as tuberculosis and tetanus.
Like the philosopher Kierkegaard, who was roughly his contemporary, Thoreau spent almost all of his intellectual life in the small town where he was born.
He studied rhetoric, classical literature, philosophy, science, and mathematics at Harvard University in his early years, and took a year off because he could not stand stereotypical studies.
After graduating from Harvard, Thoreau forged a deep friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson.
From Emerson, Thoreau learned about the transcendentalist idea of "nature," which guided his later "social experiments," the experience of living at Walden Lake.
◎ Emerson was a representative figure who established the spirit of American culture and a representative thinker of New England Transcendentalism. His masterpiece " On Nature " is considered the Bible of New England Transcendentalism " , while " The American Scholar " is hailed as " a declaration of independence in the field of American thought and culture " .
Image source: Wikipedia
As a transcendentalist, Thoreau believed that nature was solemn and noble.
In most cases, we can find some sort of "higher reality" by transcending nature.
In his view, the material world is connected with the spiritual realm, and there is a divine meaning in nature that can be directly perceived.
Therefore, Thoreau tried to find God in nature.
He understood the universe as an organic whole, and that spirit and matter are inseparable.
We are sentient beings immersed in the world of the senses, and only when we immerse ourselves in the reality around us, such as using our senses to perceive vision, sound, and texture, can we learn the basic facts of life.
Thoreau compared the human potential to the divinity embodied in the ripening of seeds, and in his view, in the natural economy, seeds are more precious than diamonds because they contain the principles of growth or life.
The fact that seeds can grow into trees or other plants proves that nature is full of creative geniuses, and that the best qualities of human nature need to be preserved as well as they are with flowers.
Unlike the rationalists, Thoreau believed that the senses were important in the process of acquiring knowledge, and that man's direct perception was an important connection between man and what he knew.
Mechanically summarizing and deducing the rules of things can only find the meaning of the surface of things.
As a result, he argues that scientists are studying a "dead" language — they'd rather study dead fish kept in jars than live fish in nature.
Although he also admired the precision of science, he always thought that the precise information conveyed by science was less poetic than "vague".
Thoreau wanted to get closer to the source of nature's truth, so he observed the sunrise and sunset, the battles between red and black ants, and made the details of everyday life a dual training of the senses and intellect.
For Thoreau, developing an acceptance of the beauty of the universe was a lifelong job.
He believed that the perception of beauty was a moral test. How many beautiful colors and things, because we are too busy with mundane things to see.
Thoreau often lamented that nature did not appreciate its human beings.
/ 02 /
Walden: A Philosophical Experiment
This reverence for nature itself made it difficult for Thoreau to settle for living in a crowded town.
In 1845, Thoreau acquired a piece of land next to Walden Lake from his friend Emerson. There he built a 3×4.5-meter log cabin.
He said he wasn't trying to escape, he was just facing the basic facts of life. There he farmed, chopped firewood, fished, walked, and lived alone.
◎ A replica log cabin next to Walden Lake.
Image credit: The Irish Times
Walden is a record of this "reclusive" life, the book is not a novel, there is no storyline, Thoreau narrates everything in Walden in a prose way.
In the book, he talks about the small things he observes every day, such as the worm fish playing by the lake, and the lake water that thaws in early spring.
Although Walden has always emphasized the importance of solitude, contemplation, and closeness to nature, it is not an ordinary autobiography, and it is full of critiques of consumerism and materialism in contemporary Western culture.
In the first half of the 19th century, the United States was in a period of rapid industrialization and modernization. Thoreau's native new England is undergoing rapid urbanization.
From 1780 to 1860, Massachusetts' commodities underwent a change from household production mode to factory production mode, and during the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1820 and the 1860s, Massachusetts's production method gradually shifted from agriculture to industry, from about 60% of the population at the beginning to 13% by 1865.
Economic changes have changed people's values and lifestyles, and more people are addicted to pursuing and enjoying more and more exquisite luxury goods.
Victorian tedious clothing, dwellings, and home furnishings became popular among the wealthy civic class.
The peasant class gradually disappeared, and the simple way of life also disappeared.
Thoreau was always skeptical of the new matter that civilization brought, saying in his book:
"Our inventions are often beautiful toys that only grab our attention and get us out of serious things."
Regarding property, he concluded that we could work only one day a week.
That's because, for example, if you take a day to walk 30 miles, it takes more than a day to earn 30 miles of train ticket money through work, so the rewards that people don't stop working have long been lurking around them.
During his two years at walden Cabins, Thoreau did not excavate vigorously in the face of the abundant nature, but chose to live a very simple life.
Thoreau spent a total of $28.125 to build his tiny house, and spent only 27 cents a week — the expenses he needed to live in Walden for a year, which he earned in just 6 weeks.
Thoreau always lived alone on Walden Lake, occasionally talking to nearby farmers and passing tourists.
◎ Aerial view of Walden Lake.
Image credit: Pinterest
Thoreau says that he is occasionally lonely, but most of the time, loneliness is good for health, he said, "Because with a companion, even the best companion will soon get tired and make it bad."
For ordinary people, Thoreau understands that they need the company of others from time to time, but he believes that people often need the company of others in order to fill the inner emptiness.
People are afraid to live alone and dare not be themselves, so he encouraged ordinary people to "stick to themselves and never imitate".
This "experiment" of living on the outskirts of the city was an intensive test for Thoreau. Because his experiment of being close to nature is likely to end in failure.
Thoreau practiced his thinking on transcendentalism in reality. For him, philosophy is not only an intellectual exercise, but also a way of life.
/ 03 /
A revolt of a lying flats
Although Thoreau criticized consumerism, materialism, and the hollowness of technology, he moved to the countryside to live a secluded life.
But Thoreau was politically aggressive, which was one of the reasons he eventually left Walden.
In the United States in the first half of the 19th century, on the one hand, slavery had not yet been abolished, and the number of slaves after the founding of the country was even higher than in the early days of the founding of the country.
According to statistics, on the eve of the American Revolutionary War, there were about 500,000 slaves in the North American colonies, but by 1860, there were as many as 3.953 million black slaves in the south.
On the other hand, in the 1840s, when the American "theory of destiny" prevailed, Americans considered themselves to be the "chosen son" and actively expanded their territory.
Between 1846 and 1848, the United States waged war against Mexico, losing nearly half of its territory (2.3 million square kilometers).
Throughout his life, Thoreau openly opposed slavery and the War waged by the United States against Mexico.
An active abolitionist, he went underground to protest slave law and support the abolitionist John Brown and his party.
John Brown, the leader of the abolitionist movement in the United States, believed that the abolition of slavery was a "sacred duty." Since the U.S. Declaration of Independence states that everyone is equal, the emancipation of slavery is also the practice of this supreme principle.
◎ John Brown.
So he led an uprising of 21 whites and blacks in 1859, arrested some plantation owners, freed many slaves, and brought the abolitionist movement to a climax.
At the time, most Americans living with Thoreau in Massachusetts were acquiescing to slavery.
Although they prayed in church every day and greeted each other politely when they met them on the street, morally impeccable, they tacitly accepted the maintenance and continuation of slavery in the United States.
This infuriated Thoreau, who denounced the acquiescence to political misdeeds that prevailed among his contemporaries.
Thoreau supported all of Brown's actions, defending him and arguing that one should not be seen as insane because one opposes the majority.
Brown's anger came as he realized the inequities of slavery.
Human rights, the fundamental human right of human beings, have double standards among law-abiding citizens in Massachusetts.
Thoreau condemns his fellow citizens for acquiescing in evil and believes that passively and quietly allowing injustice to continue is tantamount to cooperating with evil.
Thoreau's political views are in line with his naturalistic ideas.
His understanding of nature influenced his socio-political thinking: nature is a reference point outside the city-state, providing valuable moral guidance for humanity and reminding us that society is not the yardstick by which everything is measured.
Returning to nature allows us to look at the state in a broader context and envision ways in which social values and political structures can be fundamentally improved – including reform of unjust laws and rejection of unjust governments.
/ 04 /
What should citizens do if the government is unjust?
In protest against slavery, against the atrocities committed by the United States in the Mexican-American War and the War against the Indians, Thoreau repeatedly refused to pay the government's poll tax.
In 1846, a constable in Concord, Massachusetts, asked Thoreau to pay back the taxes he had previously owed, but Thoreau refused and spent the night in prison.
After his release from prison, Thoreau gave a speech entitled "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Government" in 1848, which he compiled in 1849 as an essay entitled Civil Disobedience.
Thoreau begins the article by writing:
"I sincerely endorse the motto, 'The best government governs the least,' and I would like to see it implemented more quickly and methodically. When it's implemented, it ultimately means, and what I believe, "the best government doesn't rule anything."
Thoreau believed that the best government did not exist and that people could only choose the inferior. Governments are at best expedient, and most governments, sometimes all, are often misplaced.
This can be proved in the United States Government, which is unjust in the war waged by the United States Government against Mexico and that the people have the right to object to the war waged by the State.
The government itself is only an instrument chosen by the people to carry out their will, and while the people depend on it, the power of the government is in danger of being abused and corrupted.
Although Thoreau's view seemed to deny the existence of government, he actually demanded a better government.
He refuses to recognize a government that has been morally corrupted, just as he refuses to recognize a government that has lost popular recognition.
In Thoreau's view, a truly free and enlightened government should recognize that the individual has a higher independent power from which all the power and authority of the government derive, and treat its people in an appropriate manner.
A truly just government has laws that are more sacred than social laws to obey, and this higher law is "not in conflict with the moral conscience of the individual."
So, what should the people do when confronted with an unjust government?
Thoreau advocated nonviolent forms of resistance.
If the "state apparatus" acts in disregard of justice, or enacts unfair laws, the people can create "reverse friction" by not accepting it and not fulfilling their obligations, so that the "machine" can stop.
Thoreau's theory of civil disobedience was later more clearly defined by the philosopher John Rawls:
"[Civil disobedience] is an act of openness, non-violence, a decision of conscience, but at the same time political, contrary to the law, often carried out to bring about changes in laws or government policies. This is done in order to respect the sense of justice of the majority of the people in society..."
The political philosopher Hannah Arendt, who also wrote the same name for Civil Disobedience, re-tedozed Thoreau's tradition of civil disobedience from a jurisprudential perspective.
Arendt argues that individuals can refuse to fulfill their civic duties based on their conscience and moral responsibility, and that U.S. law should give citizens the right to "disobey."
In either case, civil disobedience is never the same as indulging in crime; it is carried out in a non-violent form, unfolding under the established authoritative framework and legal system.
The American women's suffrage movement in the late 19th century and the Egyptian Revolution led by Saad Zaghloul in the early 20th century, as well as Gandhi's resistance to British colonialism and the American civil rights movement in the 1960s were all influenced by Thoreau's ideas.
Not only that, but he also influenced the hippie movement of the 1960s and later minimalist life, and when Haizi died, he carried a copy of Walden with him.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, revered as Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Liberation Movement.
Image source: Wikiwand
For people today, Thoreau is equally worth reading.
As the American ecocritic Lawrence Buell put it, Thoreau shows people a being outside of humans, one that transcends any member of humanity.
Thoreau's transcendent attitude and closeness to nature provide a path of reflection, not only about himself, but also about the government and the country.
Although Thoreau is often regarded as a Tao Yuanming-style hermit, he never really lay flat, after all, a person builds a house by a lake that is inaccessible, lives alone, reads, thinks, and writes, which is far more than the meaning of lying flat itself.
Thoreau was essentially an actor.
As the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte encouraged, the key is action, and the embodiment of thought is action—from Walden to Concord's prison, Thoreau never stopped acting, never obeyed. ■
Resources
Henry David Thoreau. Walden. Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2006.
Henry David Thoreau. On the Disobedience of Citizens. Wikisource, 2021-06-28.
WANG Chunxia. On the "Economics of Life" in Walden. Journal of Ocean University of China:Social Science Edition, 2020-03.
XIE Weihui. Wilderness and Civilization: Ecological Writing in Walden. Chinese Character Culture, 2020-04.
SUN Xiao. Religious Allusions and Ecological Writing: Centered on Thoreau's Walden. Shandong Social Sciences, 2019-12.
POLITICAL THEORY. “Henry David Thoreau”. Youtube, 2015-04-10.