First, Thoreau did not drink alcohol, much less hang out in pubs socializing…he was more of a solitary personality. On alcohol, Thoreau wrote: “I would fain keep sober always… I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor… Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?”

In fact, Thoreau led a very disciplined lifestyle…he didn’t smoke, never married, and didn’t even drink coffee. He was mostly a vegetarian as well.

As for the part about his mother bringing over home cooked meals, that seems a bit far fetched as well. BTW, Thoreau’s mother, as was Thoreau, as was his entire family, was very active in the abolitionist movement.

Thoreau in many ways was way ahead of his time, and championed 3 major movements: the environmental movement, the anti-slavery movement, and the philosophy of non-violence and civil disobedience. Both Ghandi and Martin Luther King credit Thoreau as being a major inspiration. In advocating land preservation, Thoreau was an influence in creating our national park system.

Thoreau was not just some guy who hung out in the woods living a simple life; he truly had an enormous historical impact, largely through the force and purity of his ideals.

It reminds me of something my mother once said to my 20-something brother who was still living at home while working a bit and trying to find himself. She said that he was able to do what he did because she did what she did.

Brad- thanks for the reference to Murakami! It’s definitely a book I’m going to look into. His philosophy and outlook has definitely piqued my interest.

~ J.

I want very MUCH to go away for awhile and live in the woods and am not sure how the logistics would work. Perhaps a post about that?

To not covet Stuffitis…Good
UnaBomber Cabin…Bad

Wonderful essay, Mr. Cunningham. Thanks!

That being said, some people (myself included) need a little crutch: live with what you think is beautiful, then re-enter the life you want.

I think simplicity is a noble aim, but difficult to reach. As others have noted, there’s a difference between simplicity and “doing without”. I think Leo at Zen Habits does a great job of showing what modern simplicity can look like. He’s all about the power of less.

Also, it’s important to note that there’s a difference between frugality/simplicity and actual poverty. The first is a conscious choice; the latter is not.

I need to re-read Thoreau. It’s been a decade. His ideas are central to the modern simplicity movement, and it would be interesting to discuss him here.

I think that living simply, if it means only doing and having the things that you love, is great.

On the other hand, getting rid of stuff for it’s own sake, and making life difficult in the process, is probably less good.

I’m in the middle of reading Jay Rubin’s excellent book on the work of Haruki Murakami, “Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words” (Rubin is one of Murakami’s translators, I’d say the best of his translators in English), and he quotes this great line from Murakami’s first novel:

“In order for there to be true art, there necessarily has to be slavery. That’s how it was with the ancient Greeks: while the slaves worked the fields, prepared the meals, and rowed the ships, the citizens would bask beneath the Mediterranean sun, rapt in poetical composition or engaged in their mathematics. That’s how it is with art. Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do.

The relevance of that passage, for me, is not that we need slaves, but that we need to use technology and our own wits to reduce the amount of time we have to spend dealing with all the mundane tasks of daily life, so we can live more simply and have richer lives. Technology should be our slave; too often it ends up the other way around.