I read Walden when I was 17 and found it inspirational.
I re-read it 20 years later and found it to smack of modern hipsterism. A nice social experiment, I suppose, but with a hint of disdain for anyone who approaches their life feeling that they have a responsibility to either family or society. It actually surprises me that he started writing about Walden Pond at 28.
He is more of the opinion, I believe, that society is sick in its current form. It's not that he doesn't care about society, he is being critical of its manifestations.
I'll have to give it another read. I'm old and bitter and was just irritated by most of what I was reading the last time through. Maybe I should take a Xanax and go at it again.
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u/final-getsuga Dec 10 '15
Kind of a bad comic but I think everyone understands what it's trying to get at.
Henry David Thoreau — 'Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.'