Not Thoreauly

I plowed through one page of Brothers Karamazov. These Russian Winter Novels stop another invader in his tracks. I may resume it after I finish off Walden by Thoreau. I adopted my iPhone Kindle app to read it, a book that most people read when younger. 

Usually, as I have noted before, I read classic novels this way. No hurry, no speed reading, take time to smell the word roses. Walden is of course somewhat non-fiction although it has novel-like qualities. Thoreau is liberal in his chronology, parsing and copying and pasting events into a pond of consciousness.  His reflections are quite narcissistic yet also insightful.  

There is much to commend in the book of course. His insistence on simplicity, the joy of nature, working to live not living to work (or not work in his case), and just sheer good writing.  I suppose I knew this before from my infrequent sips of the prose but one thing impressed upon me is that Thoreau out-Puritans the most joyless Calvinist stereotype in regards to worldly things, seeing them as snares on the trail of life.

He rails against: Coffee, Tea, Wine (or any alcohol), Work, and even Music. Why he makes Cotton  Mather look Manichean by comparison. These Transcendentalist threw out the baby of theology but drank down the bathwater of eschewing pleasure. I suppose that is why Thoreau only stuck to ascetic ways in Walden for a couple of years and change. I bet he was jonesing for a sip of tea or a puff of a cigar or pipe.

Christianity of course has its share of Legalists. Although, to be fair, we are more Libertine in our consumption of food, like a tranquilizer. We show no more self-discipline and restraint than our culture as a rule. I suppose Trump is a picture of who we have become. Fat, Tweeting, Erratic, Consumerist, Know-It-Alls. The Seven Deadly Sins look like our To-Do Shopping List. I wonder if COSTCO sells them in bulk? Plus toilet paper of course.  

I will continue to rail on Trump until he passes from the scene like a kidney stone in our urinary track society. And all his true believers (not all who voted for Trump are true believers). I expect better from the inheritors of Burke. Modern-Day Left-Leaning Rousseaus are so addled as to not even register as being credible agents of redemption. Trillions and trillions of dollars in debt. You'd think we'd get the hint that we have lost our way. Men without chests but having man boobs.            

So, how do we negotiate the tension between pleasure and being puritanical (granting that it is an over-generalized super-sized caricature)? My own take is the crafting of paradox. Have enough work to make you feel purposeful and enough pleasure to make work worth it. Pleasure is a reward for doing right things, not necessarily a destination in and of itself, but something that sweetens the sometimes bitter waters of life. A solace from the storm. Not this or that but both in some proportion that promotes a true version of health and wealth, and not our craven culture's poor substitute.