Egoism In Walden Today

All good things come to an end. It is the unfair and unfortunate reality of life. What may be working well now can and will be eventually overturned by something or someone with or without malicious intentions. A leaf on a tree does no harm, nor does the humble caterpillar who crawls across it. Both harmless beings looking to survive and exist, yet the caterpillar eats the leaf. It is not the caterpillar’s fault that it was hungry, but only its natural instinct to surpass the hunger that it feels for caring about the life of the leaf. From the beginning of all, greater needs cause “out with the old and in with the new,” type mentality and action. For the time of writing that Walden takes place in, building your 10x11 foot cabin near Walden
We call those people retired. Today, life if different from the not so paradise of post industrialization along with the beginning tempers of slavery. Today, we have robots that build robots, machines that think for us, infinitely expanding databases of pure information, and not enough time for anything but what we are trying to achieve for ourselves. Today has become egocentric, much like Henry David Thoreau’s kind of egoism. However, it is no longer “when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they,” but rather “Hey brotato chip check out my new duds they’re way more cooler than yours.” Any kind of egoism is a detriment to those around you who wish also to succeed. At least today you can selectively listen to whatever kind of “brotato” you chose to. But in the glum slump of Thoreau’s time you read whatever came your way because there was nothing better to do at the time. Preaching simplicity in a very simple time was the best cure for lost souls in the timeframe. In our time, we live our lives to the fullest without a need to be simple and without a need to be
Thoreau tells us to appreciate nature “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads” (Walden 223). Now, the message burns clearer today than it ever has. Climate change has finally made itself popular in the news and there was a recent global conference where the nations “pledged their allegiance” to stopping it, while the common man knows better than to believe such publicity stunts. At least we know that it is actually an issue. We have no control over what happens globally, but Thoreau tells us to live with only what we need: “Simplicity simplicity simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count a half dozen,” (Walden 75). Although Thoreau shines light on darker subjects, it broadens our view into a perspective that does not aid our cause. It only shows our insignificance in the matter at hand. We as humans have defiled nature beyond reconciliation and must accept it. Natural appreciation isn’t something that we chose to spend time on. Human appreciation is something we can do chose to partake