Recent searches
Search options
Administered by:
️(he/him) 1/ I was rereading some #Walden, looking for a specific passage that relates to something I'm thinking about writing on, and, after finding it, was even more excited because the context of the passage makes it even better than I remember. It reads, in part:
"Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine.
2/ cont.
How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? ... The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly."
I am struck by the way Thoreau relates labor, capitalism, relationships, ignorance, and leisure. It's spectacular!
3/ and later he points a finer point on it:
"It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender."
4/4 Similarly, how can you sustain a true relationship to another if you haven't done the requisite labor? But relating to others as commodities destroys their essence, rubs the bloom from their skin. Only with tender and delicate handling, with ignorance and leisure, can we sustain a relationship to another.