I have been re-reading HD Thoreau's Walden (1854) - starting at the very beginning with the chapter "Economy". (I've been reading this book, on-and-off, for fifty years!)
First, I was struck afresh by the muscular brilliance of the writing - this is prose of the highest level!
But secondly, it struck me how modern is the expressed perspective of Thoreau. He writes from the position of mainstream modern alienation, one which looks-out upon the world and deliberates how to get the best deal from our interactions.
And Thoreau's idea of a life-well-lived is rooted almost wholly in feelings; in his own responses to ideas and situations. And, much like New Age spirituality; Thoreau seeks to engineer his environment, and himself, such as to achieve the highest possible level of personal gratification - and minimize the inevitable degree of personal suffering.
The chapter is called "Economy" because it focuses on how to get the most gratification from life - which for Thoreau entails as much unstructured time as possible, to be spent in and around Concord and often alone; while paying for this with the least investment of of time and unpleasant-effort in "work".
This attitude was something new in mid-nineteenth century USA when the book was written and published, because so individualist; even Thoreau's direct-mentor RW Emerson (just c. 14 years older) was much more communal and social in his perspective.
Yet nowadays the argument of "Economy" is (more or less) what almost every adolescent considers at some point; although the conclusions most modern Westerners reach are typically very different from Thoreau's idea of reducing his material needs to the lowest minimum, so that he needed to perform the least amount of paid labour.
I would call Thoreau's attitude to the world "instrumental" - he was trying to use the world to attain his ends - to get as much as possible back from the least possible investment; even though Thoreau used his freedom to pursue a Romantic agenda - and it is as "a poet of nature" that he is most remembered.
And Thoreau is a pioneer and exemplar of the "hedonic" morality of mainstream modernity, in which goodness is calibrated against the current feelings of the observer.
Only in terms of a kind of pantheism does Thoreau depart (somewhat) from mainstream modernity - I mean that he seemed to assume a deistic, ordered, and therefore meaningful (although not purposive) backdrop of ultimate reality.
Consequently, because reality is not a creation, nor is it going anywhere; Thoreau was a "contemplative" - which we might term a "consumer" rather than a creator.
His aspiration was to enjoy nature; not to participate in creation.
He saw no role for himself or other individual persons in shaping reality - because that reality was going nowhere.
Therefore his highest spiritual experience was to forget himself and time and the world in extended-moments of ecstatic bliss: each of which was understood as an epiphanic-revelation of the ultimate stasis of oneness - the realization that he was part of this oneness, and had re-joined it, for a while.
Of course, I am exaggerating the simplicity and clarity of Thoreau's perspective and aspirations; because he was of course a mortal Man - and one who had been brought-up and educated in a Christian nation, town and city that retained considerable Theistic Calvinistic elements, as well as a more recent deistic Unitarianism.
Nonetheless, Thoreau is a strikingly modern figure; although his early death somewhat prevented the full implications of his world view from working themselves out in his life...
Post-Civil War USA - which Thoreau did not live to experience, starkly revealed many of the unpleasant consequences of Thoreau's perspective and assumptions - although he may of course have denied and ignored most of these ill-effects, as did most of his circle.
But I feel that Thoreau's mind-set was an inevitable phase in human history; one analogous to the arrival of adolescence.
Thoreau was, then, an expression of the adolescence of Mankind - emerging, in his era and culture, for the first time in a recognizable form.
And there is nothing intrinsically wrong with spiritual adolescence! - so long as it is indeed a phase, leading towards spiritual maturity; and does not become (as it has in the modern West) a lifelong state.
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