Transcendentalism

[citizen of industry]

Anyone have anything good to say about Transcendentalism? I've just begun reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Seems like utopian garbage to me. Escaping society by living on the natural private property of a friend. Demonstrating frugality by living off the land, something which can hardly be done today since the land is privately owned, and which is ridiculous when applied to society as a whole. Just spouting off about individualism being the root of all happiness.

Seems to confirm Marx's theory of alienation though. Thoreau was pretty damn happy out there and very productive, when he owned his own tools of production and wasn't producing for someone else.

[syndicat]

it was an attempt to Americanize Hegelian idealism. the principals behind it were unitarians influenced by buddhism who were trying to develop a more multi-cultural form of spirituality to ground opposition to slavery and racism. the idea is that there is some common element of spiritual truth perceived, if incompletely or imperfectly, by the various spiritual & religious traditions. part of an argument that non-Europeans are not inferior. the principals were active in the abolitionist movement. a famous transcendentalist was the unitarian preacher Theodore Parker. he used to begin each church service in the 1850s by holding up a pistol and saying, "Anyone who comes thru that door in search of escaped slaves will face this."

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yes, the transcendentalists and the anti-slavery movement were intertwined. People like Emerson and Thoreau were big fans of John Brown.


I've just begun reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Seems like utopian garbage to me.

I don't know, I like nature. Unfortunately I think a lot of marxists have a very vulgar attitude in regards to "individualism".

[black magick hustla]

jesus, some people have really vulgar and ahistorical perspectives of movements like transcendentalism.

[John Seneca]

Lo.

za-um.blogspot.com/2011/05/as-uncaring-as-universe-itself.html
This seems like an interesting modern take on trancendentalism.

[citizen of industry]

jesus, some people have really vulgar and ahistorical perspectives of movements like transcendentalism.

Yeah, sorry. I just have a vulgar set of vocabulary. It probably came off harsher than I intended. I just started reading it, just wanted a little background from people here. That was just my first impression.

The book I got also came with Civil Disobedience. I'm looking forward to reading that. I'm aware he was imprisoned for opposing the Mexican War, on the grounds it would extend slavery.

I also like nature, I grew up in west. I was just thinking there was a lot more of it back in his day. Now you have to go backpacking in a national park, for example. There isn't a virgin, unexplored continent open to you. It loses some of it's mystique.

He's making some great observations about capitalist society here, i.e; consumerism - we buy clothes based not on their necessity but on how we imagine others will perceive us, that we can repair a broken leg but we wouldn't be seen in a patched pair of pants. Another example; Native Americans were richer than "civilized" people in his time because despite the technological advances of the time, say living in a modern house, we have to rent or mortgage the house and spend a lifetime of wage labor to pay it off. The Native American is freer and much happier in a home that provides equal shelter and can be put up or taken down in a day, and he enjoys his labor. Or that you have to judge a modern society based on the the squalid conditions of the people who built it (slaves in the US, Egyptian slaves who built the pyramids). But his conclusions seem to lean towards primitivism; that we should abandon modern society altogether.