From Walden, By Henry David Thoreau

In today’s world, many people believe that technology’s sole purpose is to draw young people away from the real world and reality. Just because you do not realize it, it does not mean it is not happening. If you think back to when you were younger, was technology the same as today? However, technology is forever changing and improving. It affects everyone, not just the young group of people. Technology changes our brains, souls, and our very being. Once technology sucks you into the whole of its essence, you will have a hard time changing your life style.

Furthermore, I agree with Turkle that technology is overtaking our lives in a way that we might not even notice. Most everyone has one has a cell phone. Whether we are texting, reading emails, or playing Angry Birds, we are so absorbed into a virtual world. Even though we may not realize it, many of

In order to be heard by the government policies speak up for yourself. Speak up and let it be known what you want when you feel it’s right. “Let every man make known what of government would command his respect”. Just like what Thoreau believed to speak up and stand up for your voices to be heard. Thoreau was a man that believed that the government shouldn't be in your life business. Also a man that believed in how he could live by himself in nature and escaped from society. He wanted to be an independent person living a peaceful harmony and nature in which he focused the most on. Life was a waste of time if you rushing it in which he shows in “Walden”. “Lead lives of quiet desperation” meaning his life by living in a simple lifestyle was bringing

Thoreau is making a point that a new moral law is being established when following ones’ intuition. He suggests that, “He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded and interpreted in his favor in more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a high order of beings.” This quote means that when man continues to pursue their free will to follow the path that is intended for them based on their intuition, it will push more societal boundaries and create new moral laws. These moral laws are concerned with ideals of equality and humanitarian reforms. Therefore, when man has pushed the boundaries to create these moral laws, they eventually work out for man.

In perhaps his greatest reflection, Walden, Thoreau states “be it life or death, we crave only reality.” The excerpt from pages 49 to 50 focuses on the quest for this elusive truth. Serving both as a call to action as well as an instructional guide, this passage takes readers through a cleansing of all the superfluities of life. He laments how life has corrupted the natural state of purity he was born with, but with intellect as his primary tool, he has tried to truly find himself. In this passage, Thoreau instructs his readers to discover their reality, and from this point, build a foundation to begin their own journey of self-discovery.

Imagine waking up one day not having access to any technology of any kind, and have to survive in a small shack just off the shore of Walden pond. Not being able to check the weather or your facebook page. Well an extraordinary man named Thoreau did just that. Thoreau was able to survive in a small shack for two months without the advantages of technology. He used a farm a couple miles away from him for food and kept busy by stacking firewood and splitting it. Despite having the technology offered to him, Thoreau felt that living in the woods in a shack that he created transformed him into a better man. And was able to overcome the challenges of survival without the perks of technology in his current era.

He thinks a once driven society has been destroyed by industrial innovation allowing for non-necessities to be common place. To him, these items serve as distractions to the utmost priorities in life, and society will continue to head astray unless certain conditions are met that force the layman to revert to a simpler lifestyle. He further backed up this philosophy with a questioning of the need for progress and an economy in general. Thoreau, just after delivering his testament to the fact that we should live with simplicity then attempts to explain why. In doing so, his bias is further established. Thoreau declares, “Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through the telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain” (Thoreau 86-87). Members of society believe that in order to thrive, there needs to be steady consumption. They need to be able to ride quickly on trains and communicate quickly and have many other materialistic needs. Thoreau concurs that we are living like unintelligent creates who think what is not is essential is. Society is convinced they are needed, but human-kind has lived without them before and have been fine. He thinks, this possesion of new modern technology needs to be decreased in order to achieve the beauty from simplicity. However, he

There are many writers that wrote transcendentalism.Transcendentalism is a philosophy which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and material things. Henry David Thoreau is one of the writers that write about transcendentalism.He wrote Walden and “Civil Disobedience”. Henry David Thoreau exemplifies transcendentalism the strongest.

In the year 1845 writer Henry David Thoreau experinsted his thoughts on how the world is today and how it could be. Henry wanted to test and see the absolute necessary facts of life. We could live without technology or even save money by eating one meal a day. We don’t need half of the things we use today to live. We do live off of these thing because we’re so used to it in our everyday life we don’t know what to do without it. Man are a big part of our life they do the big thing as in build railroads, our houses, the big things women can’t do. We don’t need some things we buy it because we want it not because we need it.

What’s crazy to me is everything Thoreau was saying relates to now, so many years ago and it’s still relevant. I think we have twice as many distractions as the people who lived when he did. We have more advanced technology cell phones, tablets, computers, but what makes it worse is the internet. This is mainly directed to the younger generations because we know how to use it and what people put on the internet most of us will believe just because it’s on the internet, the older people will think more on something before they’ll believe it. Even the news where you expect everything to be true isn’t, people watch the news to get lied too and do things they think is good for them but it’s not. What’s even worse is the government, they are so

Thoreau believed that the government should not be ruled by the minority just because “they are physically the strongest,” instead, we should be ruled by conscience. Furthermore, Thoreau stated that “…a corporation has no conscience,” because the corporation only cared about money, without caring about the multitude. This is still happening even nowadays. For instance, the cigarette companies are still selling cigarettes to the multitude even though they know that there are some carcinogenic materials in cigarettes that smoking cigarettes can cause cancers. They only care about money, without caring about the people who buy their products. As a result, most of the corporations had no conscience. Besides, people should also be conscientious. We should use our brains to think before we act. For example, the soldiers of the army had no conscience because they act like machines without thinking what they were doing. “The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines.” In brief, Thoreau believed that we should be ruled by conscience instead of the inexpedient government which had no conscience. Besides, we should do something to stop the “machine.”

As so he thinks that we need to be on Nature's time instead of rushing it. Thoreau says,"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." He is basically saying that we should slow down by giving ourselves some space to think about our values and where it's taking us. I do agree with him on this one. My reason is because, now days we do stick our noses in our cell phones. We get lured into it more and more as we use them. The messaging and the calling distracts us from the old fashion way. I loved the past when they would speak to each other face to face 24/7. The messaging took place of the old fashioned hand written letters. If we focus too much on the New advanced technologies, I do think that we will become distracted on what the past has brung us. He says,"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at." I don't think technologies are toys because, they do come in handy most of the time. One thing they do is distract us. You rarely see kids playing outside anymore because they're now busy playing video games. Nature is how we started off and we should respect

The epigraphs on page 117 in chapter twelve basically express that money does not mean happiness, which I think we can all relate to. The first epigraph was from Walden, or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau. Chris had highlighted that section from the book and had written the word “truth” on the page. I support the idea that money cannot buy happiness, but I also believe that money can make you happy for short periods of time. I think Chris was in a time of happiness bought buy his parent’s money. When he discovered his joy was not sincere he wanted to figure out who he really was and what would make him feel true bliss. The second epigraph is short but meaningful, “For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked

The book ‘Walden’ by Henry David Thoreau was published in 1854. The book is a detailed critique of how modern man is living his life. This life is not fulfilling as people are too busy chasing material items that really do not add value to their lives. The main theme in this excerpt is simplicity. When you live a simple life you get to have the opportunity and the time to enjoy life’s precious pleasures. Life becomes more fulfilling if it is lived in this manner. Henry David Thoreau wrote the book while living in isolation in a cabin near Walden Pond. The author has been described as being one of the greatest transcendentalists to ever live.

“Walden” has a very strong meaning, probably deeper than anything we have read this past lesson. The central ideas of the excerpt is about learning new things and trying to find the meaning of life or a more simple life. The way Thoreau proposes the story “Walden” is through questions and answers about life. Thoreau has an effect on his readers by the way he explains himself, his discoveries, and his details and thought out questions. In “Walden” Thoreau convinces the reader that life is best lived in simplicity and in reflection.