Thoreau And Transcendentalism

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Henry Thoreau was one to emphasize that people should be more focused on their time on Earth than their avarice. Someone can work their whole lives out and not even realize that they did not take the time to enjoy themselves. Thoreau himself states “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately... and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” (Thoreau 101). This circumstance is seen both in the affluence of some and the workers that are tied down to their jobs and virtually have no time to benefit from what life has to offer. Thoreau and many transcendentalists alike thought that one could find themselves and seek lifes fruits in nature itself. However, with the great demand of productivity and money from corporations …show more content…
People may be conformists and do not want to break societal standards. Eventually people pass on, not knowing that they had even wasted their own time. This theme still matters today because people still devote most of their time to their work without truly enjoying themselves. Now, Thoreau did not mean to abolish society and its economy by saying that nobody should work, but he meant that a people should take time to go out in nature and discover their own identity. The quiet desperation that Thoreau mentions ties to the materialism of some mentioned earlier. The greed of some to want more leads people to that desperation and never ending greed. According to professional Leon F. Seltzer Ph.D., clinical psychologist and author of “Paradoxical Strategies in Psychotherapy”, “What perpetual wealth production inoculates them[materialists] against are underlying, and barely recognized, feelings of distress—such as depression, anxiety, guilt or shame—which stem from a belief that deep, deep down they may not be good enough at …show more content…
Recent studies have proven this true in the way that work overload affects household and family life. Mark Promislo, management professor at Rider University in Lawrenceville New Jersey and published author of “Valuing Money More Than People: The Effects of Materialism on Work-Family Conflict”, found that “materialism was significantly associated with the measures of family interference with work, and also their experience of work-overload--the perception of having too many things to do and not enough time to do them.”(Promislo par. 4). Like Thoreau, Promislo noticed that people sometimes value tangible materialistic items over family life. People like this see family as a hindrance to their personal gain to prosperity. When working hard toward a goal it is vital to remember what Thoreau stressed in “Walden” and that was to make life simpler. Work should not occupy someone's life forever and all the while be living in desperation. Nor should work and materialism be a priority over life necessities, like family and personal thought. Henry Thoreau's experiment out in the woods advocated and proved that a simple life away from a lot of work was a good thing in
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