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Originally Posted by nomadicfollower
Got into Waldan today - holding off on the Rand. Thoreau's ideas are interesting, but they seem like tried ideas. To rid oneself of superfluous things, lead a solitairy - but not completely isolated life - to enjoy the fruits of labor-in fact, to just enjoy labor to increase the fruits; essentially to live only with necessities.
I might just feel this way because these are ideas I've toyed with for some time. The thought of creating and fully enjoying your surroundings could only enhance your life.
Anyway, I'm only 40+ pages in, so who am I to criticize?
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I felt the same way reading Thoreau, especially in the classroom. Now, I'm sure most of the creeps I went to school with never gave any of those topics a single thought prior to that, and I sure as hell wasn't going to elaborate on any of the points outloud because they would just steal my observations for use in the inevitable essays we had to write. I mean, you should have seen them when the teacher tried to address the issue of conformity. Just imagine a room full of blank faces, and you've got the right idea. And what am I supposed to say? "I've been out of the social loop my entire life, and not by choice." And anyway, everyone conforms in their own way, but that much is painfully obvious. Reading Thoreau was more exhausting than it was anything else, just because the topics he addresses are things I've encountered while reading other things that aren't, at their core, lectures. I love plot, I love characters, and if I can have those things and still be as "challenged" as I would when reading Thoreau, then I really do not want to read Thoreau.