{"id":159380,"date":"2020-04-10T07:11:51","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T11:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=159380"},"modified":"2020-03-31T16:51:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T20:51:05","slug":"op-ed-walden-can-tell-us-social-distancing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2020\/04\/op-ed-walden-can-tell-us-social-distancing\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-Ed: What ‘Walden’ Can Tell Us About Social Distancing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeking to bend the coronavirus curve, governors and mayors have <\/span>told millions of Americans to stay home<\/a>. If you\u2019re pondering what to read, it\u2019s easy to find lists featuring books about <\/span>disease<\/a> outbreaks<\/a>, <\/span>solitude<\/a> and <\/span>living a simpler life<\/a>. But it\u2019s much harder to find a book that combines these themes.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

As the author of <\/span>three<\/a> books<\/a> about<\/a> essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, I highly recommend \u201c<\/span>Walden<\/a>,\u201d Thoreau\u2019s 1854 account of his time <\/span>living \u201calone\u201d in the woods<\/a> outside Concord, Massachusetts. I qualify \u201calone\u201d because Thoreau had more company at Walden than in town, and hoed a bean field daily as social theater in full view of passersby on the road.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Published in over 1,000 editions and translated into scores of languages, \u201cWalden\u201d is the scriptural fountainhead of the modern environmental movement, a philosophical treatise on self-reliance and a salient volume of the American literary canon. In his introduction to the <\/span>Princeton edition<\/a>, John Updike claims that Thoreau\u2019s masterpiece \u201ccontributed most to America\u2019s present sense of itself\u201d during the cultural renaissance of the mid-19th century, yet \u201crisks being as revered and unread as the Bible.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Another reason to read or reread \u201cWalden\u201d during trying times is that it gushes with sorely needed optimism and is laced with wit. And Thoreau befriends you by writing in the first person.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Reality lies within us<\/span><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

As governments mandate <\/span>social distancing<\/a> to protect public health, many readers may be coming to grips with solitude. Thoreau devotes a chapter to it, extolling the virtue of getting to know yourself really well. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should I feel lonely?\u201d he asks, \u201cis not our planet in the Milky Way?\u201d Elsewhere he clarifies the difference between what we need and what we think we need, writing, \u201cMy greatest skill has been to want but little.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWalden\u201d doesn\u2019t have to be read straight through like a novel. For readers who have previously given up on it, I suggest rebooting in the middle with \u201cThe Ponds,\u201d which opens thus: \u201cSometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell\u2026\u201d Thoreau then retreats away from the mindless distractions of community life toward an immersion into Nature, with water at its spiritual center. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Next, flip back to the earlier chapter \u201cWhere I Lived and What I Lived For.\u201d Here Thoreau invites readers on a downward journey, from the fleeting shallows of their social lives to the solid depths of their individual lives: <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality\u2026\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Our brains build that reality \u2013 yours, mine, everyone\u2019s \u2013 by integrating external sensory signals with internal memories. Thoreau\u2019s point \u2013 which is supported by 21st-century cognitive and neuroscience <\/span>research<\/a> \u2013 is that the real you precedes the social you. Your world is built from the inside of your skull outward<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The elusive simple life<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Thoreau\u2019s retreat to Walden Pond is often mistaken for a <\/span>hermit\u2019s flight deep into the woods<\/a>. Actually, Thoreau put some distance between himself and his home and village so that he could understand himself and society better. When not in town, he swapped human companionship for the \u201cbeneficent society\u201d of Nature for long enough to make \u201cthe fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Today mandatory social distancing is wrecking the global economy, based on traditional metrics like gross domestic product and stock prices. Viewed through \u201cWalden,\u201d this wreckage may look like a long-overdue correction for an unsustainable system. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Thoreau feared that the economy he saw was headed in the wrong direction. His opening chapter, \u201cEconomy,\u201d is an extended rant against what he viewed as a capitalistic, urbanizing, consumption-driven, fashion-conscious 19th-century New England. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Of his neighbors, Thoreau wrote, \u201cBy a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book\u201d \u2013 meaning the Christian Bible \u2013 \u201claying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool\u2019s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast, his recipe for a good economy is one of \u201cWalden\u201d\u2018s most famous quotes: \u201cSimplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

That was easier said than done, even for Thoreau. When he conceived \u201cWalden,\u201d he was an unemployed, landless idealist. By the time it was published, he lived in a big house that was heated with Appalachian coal, earning income by <\/span>manufacturing pulverized graphite<\/a> and <\/span>surveying for land developers<\/a>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, the world\u2019s population has more than quintupled and developed nations have built a global economy approaching <\/span>US$100 trillion per year<\/a>. Human impacts on the planet have become so powerful that <\/span>scientists have coined the term Anthropocene<\/a> to describe our current epoch.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Finding perspective in solitude<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

Some Americans have tried at least halfheartedly to follow \u201cWalden\u201d\u2019s idealistic advice by living deliberately, being more self-reliant and shrinking their planetary footprints. Personally, although I\u2019ve downsized my house, walk to work, fly only for funerals and cook virtually every meal from scratch, in my heart I know I\u2019ve also contributed to the world\u2019s swelling population, <\/span>burn fracked natural gas<\/a> and am hopelessly embedded in a consumer economy. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, after several weeks of social distancing, I\u2019m rediscovering the value of two of Thoreau\u2019s key points: Solitude is helping me recalibrate what matters most, and the current economic slowdown offers <\/span>short-term gains<\/a> and a <\/span>long-term message for the planet<\/a>. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

These benefits don\u2019t compensate for the incalculable personal losses and grief that COVID-19 is inflicting worldwide. But they are consolation prizes until things stabilize in the new normal. On my daily solitary walk in the woods, I am mindful of Thoreau\u2019s words: \u201cNext to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.\u201d <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Henry David Thoreau’s classic meditation on life’s essentials finds new resonance in the age of social distancing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":159382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2213,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-159380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-23 16:01:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159383,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159380\/revisions\/159383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/159382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159380"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=159380"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=159380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}