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The wisdom of Walden Pond applies today
By Wan Lixin |
April 28, 2010, Wednesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
IN an article published in Thursday's Shanghai Daily, Greg Cusack expresses his admiration for ancient Chinese wisdom.
He also observes that the United States, by contrast, is a very new country.
My argument is that while the US has a very short history, Americans need not look very far back to profit from the insight of their wise compatriots.
Only the cluttered and enslaved modern existence makes it difficult to heed these calls from the wild.
In a recent book review (March 27) I wrote of Louis Halle's 1945 account of the natural beauty of Washington, DC, in his "Spring in Washington."
His near-religious love of nature, compared with our pride in our insulation from nature, suggests how such epithets as progress and prosperity prevent us from appreciating his sensuous indulgences in nature.
If we turned the clock one century back from the time when Halle cycled around Washington as a bird watcher, we have still greater surprises.
In about 1845, when the British fleet of gunboats were forcing open the Chinese market by supporting the opium trade, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was experimenting with a life quite distinct from "the lives of quiet desperation" led by the mass of men.
In a little one-room cabin he had built with his own hands on Walden Pond, Massachusetts, Thoreau began his two-year test of the ultra-simple life.
The key is to simplify: simplify the needs and ambitions, delight in simple pleasures, and reject the common definition of success.
Many have preached these principles, but Thoreau stood out as one who actually put them into practice.
His lack of worldly ambition puzzled even Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was in a sense his mentor.
Thoreau's test proceeded from his dissatisfaction with increasing social and mechanical complexity, and the popular belief that "the cure for the evils of complexity is more complexity still."
Thus, he advocates a kind of individualism, in the sense that individuals must reform themselves if society is to be reformed.
In some sense, this view is not too different from the Confucian outlook.
The central Confucian tenet is individual moral cultivation, which then leads to the regulation of the family, then the government of the states, and finally world peace.
We have abandoned such teachings.
Ever since a small minority have been encouraged to get rich first, we have been puzzled to see that we are falling steadily further from the ideal of "common prosperity."
The same is also true of the situation in the US.
Here our debate is usually focused on the wealth "disparity," not wealth itself.
We are still consoled by the distant blessing of having wealth being equally shared by the people.
A curse
To Thoreau, "a high standard of living" is a curse, no matter how widely, or evenly, distributed.
His experiment aimed to test a simple belief, that "plain living and high thinking" and a life in communion with nature far exceed the cheap joys extracted from material abundance.
But Thoreau's depreciation of "factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors" can be debated.
In an extensively circulated classic anthology, "Guwen Guanzhi" ("The Ultimate Edition of Classics"), there is an article about an aristocratic widow lecturing her son, an official, on the virtue of labor.
"In the olden times, the king would prefer to have the people live off meager soils, where the people have to exert themselves," she began.
"Hard labor inclines people to reflect, and such reflections beget kindness. By comparison, leisure begets luxury, and luxury, vice," she explained.
Today in Shanghai a huge number of former peasants have become a leisured and pensioned class as they have been handsomely compensated for their land appropriated for development.
Whenever these ex-peasants get together they habitually recall the former days when they had to earn their living by the sweat of their brow, thus illustrating "how bitter a life we used to live."
That was a time when early rising and physical exertion were required in obtaining a simple fare.
This perception of the good life can be likened to a caged and well-provisioned bird scoffing at fowl forced to fend for themselves.
The ex-peasants lose touch with the inner serenity that comes to those who toil with their hands, and the totality of experience in working the fields.
Similarly we celebrate the abundance of carbonated drinks, and commiserate with our former selves when we have not yet lost our taste for water.
My experience with peasants convinces me that their good feelings tend to be borrowed.
Could it be that their lack of engagement with life at its simplest leads to atrophy of their mental faculties?
Serenity
Life in the Tibetan plateau would strike some as undesirable, when it is realized that even the oxygen there is only a fraction of what we have in the coastal areas.
But we know now when people there are exposed to higher oxygen levels, they would experience intense physical discomfort.
Similarly, many of us pity those poor Tibetan pilgrims who prostrate themselves every few steps on their journey.
We are definitely the wealthier.
While they have only one faith, we have faith in many a brand.
We know many ambitions, while they know only their place in the universe.
Who is more privileged?
Thoreau's remarks may serve to answer this question.
"This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used," he said.
We are very proud of the superlatives we continue to create - tens of millions of urban inhabitants in one megacity, bullet trains, a double-digit GDP - but we have become very indifferent to the lot of a single individual, whether it is a migrant worker or an office worker eager to get ahead, or a lonely child.
He also observes that the United States, by contrast, is a very new country.
My argument is that while the US has a very short history, Americans need not look very far back to profit from the insight of their wise compatriots.
Only the cluttered and enslaved modern existence makes it difficult to heed these calls from the wild.
In a recent book review (March 27) I wrote of Louis Halle's 1945 account of the natural beauty of Washington, DC, in his "Spring in Washington."
His near-religious love of nature, compared with our pride in our insulation from nature, suggests how such epithets as progress and prosperity prevent us from appreciating his sensuous indulgences in nature.
If we turned the clock one century back from the time when Halle cycled around Washington as a bird watcher, we have still greater surprises.
In about 1845, when the British fleet of gunboats were forcing open the Chinese market by supporting the opium trade, Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was experimenting with a life quite distinct from "the lives of quiet desperation" led by the mass of men.
In a little one-room cabin he had built with his own hands on Walden Pond, Massachusetts, Thoreau began his two-year test of the ultra-simple life.
The key is to simplify: simplify the needs and ambitions, delight in simple pleasures, and reject the common definition of success.
Many have preached these principles, but Thoreau stood out as one who actually put them into practice.
His lack of worldly ambition puzzled even Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was in a sense his mentor.
Thoreau's test proceeded from his dissatisfaction with increasing social and mechanical complexity, and the popular belief that "the cure for the evils of complexity is more complexity still."
Thus, he advocates a kind of individualism, in the sense that individuals must reform themselves if society is to be reformed.
In some sense, this view is not too different from the Confucian outlook.
The central Confucian tenet is individual moral cultivation, which then leads to the regulation of the family, then the government of the states, and finally world peace.
We have abandoned such teachings.
Ever since a small minority have been encouraged to get rich first, we have been puzzled to see that we are falling steadily further from the ideal of "common prosperity."
The same is also true of the situation in the US.
Here our debate is usually focused on the wealth "disparity," not wealth itself.
We are still consoled by the distant blessing of having wealth being equally shared by the people.
A curse
To Thoreau, "a high standard of living" is a curse, no matter how widely, or evenly, distributed.
His experiment aimed to test a simple belief, that "plain living and high thinking" and a life in communion with nature far exceed the cheap joys extracted from material abundance.
But Thoreau's depreciation of "factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors" can be debated.
In an extensively circulated classic anthology, "Guwen Guanzhi" ("The Ultimate Edition of Classics"), there is an article about an aristocratic widow lecturing her son, an official, on the virtue of labor.
"In the olden times, the king would prefer to have the people live off meager soils, where the people have to exert themselves," she began.
"Hard labor inclines people to reflect, and such reflections beget kindness. By comparison, leisure begets luxury, and luxury, vice," she explained.
Today in Shanghai a huge number of former peasants have become a leisured and pensioned class as they have been handsomely compensated for their land appropriated for development.
Whenever these ex-peasants get together they habitually recall the former days when they had to earn their living by the sweat of their brow, thus illustrating "how bitter a life we used to live."
That was a time when early rising and physical exertion were required in obtaining a simple fare.
This perception of the good life can be likened to a caged and well-provisioned bird scoffing at fowl forced to fend for themselves.
The ex-peasants lose touch with the inner serenity that comes to those who toil with their hands, and the totality of experience in working the fields.
Similarly we celebrate the abundance of carbonated drinks, and commiserate with our former selves when we have not yet lost our taste for water.
My experience with peasants convinces me that their good feelings tend to be borrowed.
Could it be that their lack of engagement with life at its simplest leads to atrophy of their mental faculties?
Serenity
Life in the Tibetan plateau would strike some as undesirable, when it is realized that even the oxygen there is only a fraction of what we have in the coastal areas.
But we know now when people there are exposed to higher oxygen levels, they would experience intense physical discomfort.
Similarly, many of us pity those poor Tibetan pilgrims who prostrate themselves every few steps on their journey.
We are definitely the wealthier.
While they have only one faith, we have faith in many a brand.
We know many ambitions, while they know only their place in the universe.
Who is more privileged?
Thoreau's remarks may serve to answer this question.
"This curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient; more beautiful than it is useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used," he said.
We are very proud of the superlatives we continue to create - tens of millions of urban inhabitants in one megacity, bullet trains, a double-digit GDP - but we have become very indifferent to the lot of a single individual, whether it is a migrant worker or an office worker eager to get ahead, or a lonely child.
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