Lessons for the Internet Age: Thoreau, Transcendentalism
and Conversation with the
World
On May 8th
Chuck Lanigan will lead a discussion from
As a young man
Thoreau went into the woods to live deliberately, as he put it. His writings,
especially Walden, became a touchstone for American literature and thought.
Only sixty years after the Revolutionary War, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William
Ellery Channing and other New England transcendentalists sought a second,
spiritual revolution against the mindless acceptance of inherited European
cultural and religious values. Thoreau became part of that revolution.
The Internet is
promoted as an agent of change and a way for people to connect and relate globally.
The reality is more mixed. Today we experience our lives in an increasingly
mediated way. Many of us interact with the world and get our information almost
exclusively through electronic means such as television, cell phones, e-mail
and online networking. Marketers compete for our attention using these media.
More information and messages surround (if not assault) us than we can process
comfortably. Some of these messages are benign; others are overtly manipulative
and corrosive to our sense of self and well-being. Often they are for the
monetary benefit and advance the agenda of some other individual or
institution at our expense. They distract us from our true selves, from a
direct relationship with the world and others, and from considering deliberately
and mindfully what is important to us
Each of us has the
possibility each day of engaging in another revolution of thinking against the
received wisdom and mindless acceptance of assumptions that surround
us. Thoreau’s writing and that of his spiritual descendants provide us
with more than a source of aphorisms and a cliché of solitary living.
His conversational style and ideas can inspire us across one hundred
and fifty years of history to live our own lives deliberately and mindfully
in choosing our paths and our relationship between the world and
ourselves.
Outline
for Discussion:
- Thoreau: The Myth and the Man
- Personal Connection
- The Legacy of Thoreau's Thought and Writing
- Lessons for Living Today
Two
Quotes:
"All
our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end."
–
Henry David Thoreau
"Why
should we not also enjoy an original relation to the universe?"
–
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some
Suggested Links and
Emerson
(Dense and pompous in places, but articulates much of
the transcendentalists' thought)
Nature
Self-Reliance
Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Coming to Our Senses: Healing the World and Ourselves Through Mindfulness
Christopher
Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (sobering stuff, written in the late 1970s )
Orion Magazine in general, and in
particular:
Richard
Louv, Leave No Child Inside
E.
F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful
Thoreau,
Walden (two chapters in
particular: Where I Lived and What I Lived For and Solitude)
Facilitator’s Background
Chuck Lanigan teaches, writes and
consults on workflow and collaborative computing. He holds an MA in
instructional design and technology. His thesis was titled Literacy,
Critical-Thinking and Computer-Mediated Work. He has taught at the