What is the point of Thoreau's joke?
• |̶̿ ̶̿ ̶̿ ̶̿| •••• \͇ Λ ͇/• | • ͇\̿\̿ ̿ • |̶͇̿ ̶͇̿ ͇̿ •••• Ǥ•€•€•Ҝ •••• Ş•Ŧ•Δ•Ŧ•€•Ş• This phrase is basically a proposal, and the speaker is offering to pay to hear the listener's thoughts. It is an idiom, of course, and not meant literally so no real payment generally takes place. The idea, however, is that the person who says "a penny for your thoughts," wants to know what the listener is thinking about and is showing interest through a symbolic offer of payment. It is also commonly used when someone seems to be deep in thought or troubled by an idea, as a polite way of giving the person an opportunity to express his or her ideas or concerns.
Did Thoreau believe in God?
To say that Thoreau believed in “God” might be misleading, (1) because his version of God is not Christian, not judgmental, not separate from life, and (2) because it seems to be not so much something that he believed as something he experienced.What is God to Thoreau? Look around the room you’re in… this is God. Everything is the manifestation of God, not as creations from which God is separate but as forms in which God is appearing.Simply put, Thoreau was a Pantheist, from the Greek meaning “all God.” The evidence here is that he wrote a letter to Horace Greeley saying he was “born to be a pantheist.” (I believed this can be found in Alan Hodder’s Thoreau’s Ecstatic Witness—great book on Thoreau’s spiritual life.)This is why he says things like “The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision.” (Walden Ch. 3). . . . To say it was ‘I in him’ and ‘he in me’ speaks to ONE being performing these different actions. So we could say Thoreau’s God keeps with the other Transcendentalists in that everything is a Unity.Thoreau seems to have reached this conclusion through his own experience. He had mystical experiences of “altered states” beginning in his 20s, which he wrote about in his Journal. These kind of experiences seem to be timeless not in the sense that they always have a kind of relevance, but rather, that they occur in a space of timelessness. “God himself culminates in the present moment” (Walden Ch. 2).
What are your thoughts on: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." - Henry David Thoreau?
This quote just seems so relevant to our society today.I mean, it just seems like whenever there is an issue in society and people want to help and fix it, most of them fixate on the trivial aspects of that problem, applying band-aid fixes that completely ignore what causes the problem to happen in the first place.Thousands will rally around condemning a minor thing and congratulate themselves on their victory when they shut down that thing. This is all well and good, but many people just stop there, thinking that they have contributed to solving the problem. In reality, they are not considering how they can further their crusade by taking more substantial action.Insulting someone on Twitter makes a person feel like a hero. Its effects, like cutting a branch off of a tree, is more demonstrable and it is easier to feel like you have made a difference. Cutting the roots of the actual issue, be it racism, sexism, or whatever you choose, is dirty, arduous work. You can saw for days and barely make a dent. You probably will never fell the tree in your lifetime, so what is the point?The point is that someday, the tree will fall. Maybe not in your lifetime, but it will fall for someone. If the tree still stands, the branches will always grow back. When the roots are cut, the tree will die forever. Which do you prefer? Being a root-cutter isn’t glamorous work, but it is necessary. Take up your saw and choose your place. Will you join into the Sisyphean effort of branch-cutting, or will you leave a lasting legacy by hacking at the roots? The choice is yours.
What does this quote from Thoreau mean?
"I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it."
What does this Thoreau quote mean to you?
I love Thoreau quotes! We are but a small piece of a big jigsaw puzzle! There's so much more to this universe than just little ole' us! I like those pictures that show a picture of people on a street-up to looking down on earth-to looking at the solar system, milky way and into infinity...that's where we live amongst all the billions of other masses floating around out there!
What is your interpretation of these lines by Thoreau "Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."?
Thanks for the A2A."Never lie" is moral. But lying, although immoral, to save an innocent life, which is good, is preferable to telling the truth, which is moral, which costs innocent life, which is bad.In short, Thoreau reminds us that first and foremost we are social beings. Our ultimate worth isn't just about abstract self-perfection but includes and in some sense is exceeded by how we have helped the well-being of others. His point is that morality, properly understood, arises entirely FROM the demands of doing good and in no meaningful way exists outside of and independent of that.He would remind us that an ascetic monk sitting atop a tall column for years in constant prayer is only technically moral. In every way that counts, such a man is nothing as compared to the worldliest of men who cares enough to pass a crust of bread to someone starving.
Resistance to Civil Government - Thoreau?
I think Thoreau objected to the fact that there was a body of civil government that could exercise authority over him. What I mean is - he objected to the idea that someone could tell him what to do. But the government then was not what it is now. Back then, it had much less venom (so to speak) compared to today. He wanted to live free from under the microscope of government. He wrote like he was an independent and free-wheeling spirit writing his ideas out there in the woods. The fact is he never lived further than 18 miles from where he was born. And he never lived more than 12 miles from his mother. It was his mother that brought food for him out to his cabin while he was writing every day. The image I have of him is a guy trying to be tough on government and aspects of society, and really tough as long as his mom was around.