One of my all-time favorite American writers and thinkers is Henry David Thoreau. I first encountered him in small doses during High School back in the years when “anti-establishment” thinking was the mental subliminal hum of an entire generation. Throughout college I nibbled at Walden until one year I had to read all of it for an honors English class. I discovered to my chagrin that I had totally missed the point of his whole experiment.
 Replica of Thoreau’s cottage, which he built for $28.12 1/2. Photo by the author. |
Like many people who superficially know of Thoreau and perhaps have even read some excerpts from Walden, I assumed that he went to live in the woods out a desire to be alone with his thoughts, away from nattering society. But Walden itself makes clear that Thoreau had nothing against society per se; only the dull kind. Indeed, he devotes an entire chapter to the subject of “Visitors” and apparently was not above walking into town to visit a local barroom or enjoy a meal with friends.
It make take some of the bohemian romance out of the Walden experience, but the experiment was not about meditative solitude. It was mostly about economics. More specifically, Thoreau wanted to see if, by reducing his overhead as much as possible and seeking the most “appropriate” ways to make up any monetary shortfall, (mostly by farming) he might maximize his time to spend doing what he really loved; nature study, writing poetry and essays, reading Homer, playing the flute, and occasional forays into town. In fact, even during the years when he was not living at Walden Pond, he would routinely work six weeks to build up the funds he needed to live the rest of the year. Granted, he lived simply, he had a sister who would take care of laundry, and often got a free meal at the home of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. But that was part of this support structure, and it worked very well for him.
| View from the shore of Walden Pond, Fall 2004. Photo by the author. |
The avocational scholar or amateur scientist will eventually feel a time or resource crunch that threatens to put a damper on his or her work. Can today’s guerrilla scholar benefit from Thoreau’s experience? Maybe. Cutting overhead is one way to improve your personal bottom line, but you can only cut so much before the cuts end up costing you time and money in other ways. How to strike that balance informs the Voluntary Simplicity movement, which could rightly be considered an heir of the Concord School of economics. If we’re talking about freeing up the means to do your study or experimentation, in today’s world the answer might also include finding more money. Taking another job defeats the purpose, as you have even less time for science or scholarship. But web-based businesses require remarkably little overhead and if you already have a computer the startup costs are trivial compared with a traditional business. They also require less technical savvy all the time. The right business model can bring in enough cash to make the difference, with surprisingly few demands on your time.
Does that make Thoreau obsolete? Well, one can argue that if following the beat of one’s personal drummer meant collecting rare art or some other money-intensive avocation it wouldn’t have worked out in his day anyhow. But his experiment was a worthy one; it enjoins guerrilla scholars everywhere to be very aware of their finances and pay close attention to your bottom line. At the same time, it explicitly values your time, doing things that matter to you over the needs of your job. That’s something we all need to be reminded of now and then.