Thoreau had an aversion for work. His idea of transcendentalism is embodied in the ideal that the life of the poet and philosopher is the keystone to contentment.

He missed an obvious fact that one can perform "work" they love and earn money to live a good life. That was something he never mastered because he never saw it being obsessed with naturalism and escapism.

He was, as expected, unable to finance a good life through writing contemplation or philosophy. His form of communion with nature was to retread from life and the company of men into a drab, drafty,  mud-floored cabin, and call that some quintessential form of liberation! I call it silly.

No wonder Ellen Sewall rejected his proposal for marriage. Who wants an unwashed ascetic with no loot? From her, rebuff he ran into a life of repressed sexuality, confused enough to be wracked with sexual fantasies for  his best friend's wife and also even for two fellows who had the temerity to visit with him in his retreat at Walden. I bet he would jump a moose if it wandered close!

The idea that men are ants is to be looked at from the perspective of an iconoclast  naturalist who abhor formalized society or material things. It was his way of rationalizing his failures or perhaps his incapacity to be social.

He discovered  no hidden truths but missed apprehending a fact that the creative enterprises can be rewarding and material goods can serve to ease the crush ( if ever)  of the routine drudgery of  modernity. He also missed the self evident fact the good life is not necessarily the obsessively compulsive preoccupation with finding happiness outside cohesive human communities.

He failed to see that as social beings with gregarious dispositions life can find fertile soil  in a middle way. Such a life need not be one of a daily grind but can also be punctuated by drunken debauchery with three women under satin sheets or with ones beloved in blissful monogamy under a coarse Chinese made Walmart comforter. This is by far  better than the forlorn escapism into a life time of asexual ascetic contemplation in drafty environs.

I like what he said about a right to civil disobedience than this silliness about ants and men. Every Guyanese should read about that as in it one finds his eternal legacy. It guided Gandhi and so can motivate us to drive those PPP crooks from office. 

I wonder if Rev ketch that? hehehe

Let me be as simplistic as I can without being condescending.  You are quite silly that an academic conclusion  by a writer is ever about  an eternal understanding of the world. Men see what is a reflection of their lives and in the state of affairs he wrote of are his and never about all of us if it is about some of us. Thoreau sought to rationalize meaning in his own way.

Further, no religion would exist if men are so un free that they are to be seen drones stuck in place. The reality is the world is of appearances and appearances are about movement and movement and with respect to humans is in multidimensional and intricate ways. It is not limited to the mundane conclusion of drudgery on  a lifelong  treadmill of work ie antlike.

Every human if not inordinately dull, morbidly pessimistic and possessed  with functioning brains ( not brains in vats) will say they apprehend the sunrise, feel the wind of the sea on their faces and grasp a sense of freedom. One remembers the story of Voltaire about the good Brahmin and the old woman. The Brahmin, a studious, contemplative, ascetic man, pondered the understanding of how his little finger worked and discovered he could not grasp it's function and cascaded into a state of deep despear and lamentation. The old woman who cared little for contemplation but only dreamed of completing her daily chores in time so she can wash herself in the holy river. There she giggled and laughed and unlike the contemplative Brahmin was happy in her work.

I like Thoreau. I take him as I tale Tolstoy, Gandhi and Dr King. They are great men but I do not want their lives. Their is a great sense of sadness in them as human and great courage for them having lived it. There is truth in their quest, be it environmentalism, or civil rights but they are people for their times responding to the rhythms of life as they experienced it. I have my own and I will not be bogged down with a thought it is as an ant. I will worry about the sanctity of the earth but I am not going to retreat into hut in the woods.

There is no rightness or wrongness in this. It is a perspective no less than one given by hundreds of others who have explanations for the human condition.

Stormy:

You can pontificate and sermonize and pass judgment all you want. You can go off on tangents all you want. But the god's honest truth is Thoreau was dead right:

"MOST PEOPLE LIVE LIKE ANTS"

Now stormy, was Thoreau belittling the lives of ants ?

The answer is a clear no!

THINK ABOUT THE LIVES OF ANTS:

* Ants are industrious

* Ants are hard workers---always busy doing their chores

* Ants are loyal and dedicated to their boss(the Queen of the ants colony)

* Ants are enslaved by routine and repititiveness

* Ants eat, live, shyt, sleep, work and then die

DO YOU SEE THE PARALLELS BETWEEN THE LIVES OF ANTS AND THE LIVES OF MAN STORMY ?

BOTTOM LINE:

The Rev suspects you are jealous of the lives ants live stormy.lol

Rev

Um....ok, never mind

 You can think what you wish and that alone would lift you above the level of the pheromone driven ant. My response to you was with an aim to broaden  the scope of your thinking and and inform you that there are many metaphors on the ground state of the human condition to kick start you epistemology but if you like the one of antlike men in perpetual slavery to convention and social rules, then  go right on ahead.

Stormy:

I think you are slowly beginning to accept the fact that Thoreau was right:

"MOST PEOPLE LIVE LIKE ANTS."

Well done stormy! It's admirable of you to demonstrate some rare benevolence and broad-mindedness in the social club of GNI.

Rev

If that is that you think then you miss my objection  in its entirety. That is not completely unexpected. 

Stormborn:

Did someone steal your handle or did you run out of words ? The Rev is shocked by your brevity.lol

Rev

 One does not hit one's head on a stone. There is dynamite for that.

Storm:

Getting back to Thoreau, he once wrote:

"In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high." Thoreau

It surely looks like the majority of men don't aim at anything---take a closer look at the lives of most men on this planet---many are just existing---just going through the motion---taking what has been given to them--not aiming for anything at all.

Once again, Thoreau was right---people live like ants---they just simply accept their lot in life---do what they have to do to survive.

The Bible says, "to accept your lot in life and to enjoy what you do---that is a gift from God."

Maybe the masses of men are happy---they have accepted their lot in life and are contented slaving away for a dollar.

Rev

 Sir, I would say you are as shallow as a pond but Walden is a deep pond and its inspiration to Thoreau was profound and you missed it on account of latent hard headedness. Just test your thesis by your audience ;, ask anyone on the site if they see themselves as an ant!

They saying you quote is a metaphor to illustrate the disconnect the writer feels for the de-culturization ie the disconnect from a naturalistic morality (with its basis in respect for man and his environment) in the industrial age of his era. He knows men are not ants and so went on a personal quest to demonstrate exactly that. His two years at Walden was to illustrate that man at his core is a moral being and  for him to achieve self realization this must be nurtured in a natural world to maximum effect. He believed  that the institutions of modernity can lead to a kind of the enslavement of the individual and not that men are by nature prone to be thoughtless dullards.

You need to read the work, understand the man and then  you can make an informed commentary as to what he thinks is the nature of the human condition. He is not saying that that men are everywhere mentally enslaved.  Further, had you read his work with the respect it deserves you would not fortify us with the bullshit of your selective preference for haute couture ( watches, shoes and sushi) and sat it exemplifies the road to the good life. That is exactly the kind of stupid pretentiousness that Thoreau insists makes life "prosaic, hard and coarse" and disassociates a man from his true nature. It is what transforms the latently worthy life into a slave like dependency on "things" ie makes ants of men.