thoreau has been a life-changing experience.

the first time i read him, as a silly sophomore in high school, i was truly 'inspired' by him; for a whole week, i declared myself a transcendentalist, and talked in serious tones of dropping out of school and living with nature.

well anyway... now it comes to me as a very good foundation on which to build a life and personal philosophy.

it just made me reconsider: why exactly have i chosen politics as my career, not only as a job but a wholehearted, single-minded devotion? didn't i come to love it for something more than the west wing and a great government teacher? don't i study it for something more than the fact that it's 'interesting' and i have a knack for it?

already, at age 19 and before i've even entered the field, i've come to accept the reality of politics. it's how i can not only enjoy but agree with both rousseau and machiavelli. it's how i say, rousseau is a nice ideal but machiavelli is a reality. why have i just accepted that? aren't i too young yet to be disillusioned and lose faith in the potential of government? it's too soon to have given up hope on the good it can do. i'm not going to dc to do a job; i'm going to change something.

of course, to thoreau, the ideal situation would be no government at all. obviously we don't see eye to eye on this, as i am a proud big-government-with-a-capital-40-pt-font-G liberal. the idea of people ruling themselves by their own moral compass is a virtuous one... i just don't trust most people to do this. yes, thanks, dad, i'm a true liberal if i don't trust the people to take care of their own business. obviously the government has a role in useful things we could never have otherwise. i don't think you can trust corporations to see beyond the material and use environmentally sound technology and hire and pay employees fairly without someone giving them a strong incentive (ok, forcing them) to do it.

but to demand just government, yeah, i can get with that. the first priority of every citizen should be to make sure government is treating every human within its borders equally and that each person has the same freedoms. i believe that the people should actively challenge a goverment whose practices they believe are fundamentally unjust. and thoreau, i'm totally with you: government should never decide issues of moral rightness. that is not it's place.

government does need to be more responsive to what the people are concerned about and to society's true ills. it needs to allow more americans to participate in the political process (hello campaign finance reform) and encourage interest in voting. but that's also the people's fault for being apathetic and unthinking, and a lot of the time it is the people's own fault for being uninformed. you can't just attack government as unresponsive and corrupt if you know nothing about it.

i wouldn't go quite as far as thoreau in his ideas of civil disobedience, but the people do need to act when they think something is wrong. simply pledging your allegiance to a country that promotes something you believe is wrong, he says, is as good as supporting it. you shouldn't wait for tyranny or absolute abuse in government to revolt! stop it where it starts. it's not enough to think virtuously. act. don't wait for someone else, or the government itself, to fix the problem. it's our civic duty.

the one case in which thoreau and i really part ways - and it's a small portion of what he has to say, but it's huge for me - is his advice to have nothing to do with government whatsoever if you feel it is unjust. if you work for government and find it unjust, quit. i can't believe this - obviously not, if it is my dream to work in government. but i believe you can change government from the inside as well as boycotting everything it is about. i don't think you need to completely deny allegiance to your country. i love everything my country is about, but there are things it does wrong. i could not turn my back on it entirely; i would just seek to better it - and from within, not without.

and beyond the political, i do agree with a lot of the transcendentalist ideals. i wish to find my spirituality in nature, in the natural world around me. i wish to live simply. material acquisitions mean nothing to me; i'm never going to need a more comfortable living arrangement than i've had all my life, or even than i have now, which is not saying much. in fact, i'm prepared to, expecting to, content to have much less at the start of my professional life.

but even more than that... i feel nothing less than disgusted with self-serving economic principles at the moment. i'm feeling out of tune with what beloved kreiner says, that everyone is basically out for their own self-interest so you should be too, you should seek the highest-paying job you can find, invest, and be comfortable. that may be the reality of the world, but i don't want any part in it. i don' want to live that way and i don't want to just accept others living that way. i can't suffer the thought of being an economist anymore. basic market principles are making me physically ill at the moment.

good as it may be for me, i'm seriously considering dropping my economics minor at the moment on philosophical grounds. i think thoreau would say to study it is to promote it, and i do not. i don't want to learn about that dark, money-hungry side of people. and you just can't change economics. economics is fact. politics may involve some dark stuff, but it can be changed, and that is my calling.

thoreau's words have reminded me of the purposes and goals i have set for myself and why i have chosen politics as my means for carrying that out. there is so much potential for change in politics, and so much change to be made. that is the place for me, and i'm sure of this for substantial reasons. i am not disillusioned with government or the world, not just yet.

anyway, as dhs said herself, beyond his ideas, thoreau is just a really great writer. and immensely quotable:

if one were to judge these men (legislators) wholly by the effects of their actions and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.

i ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.

the only obligation which i have a right to assume is to do at any time what i think right.

it is not so important that many should be as good as you as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere.

there are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man.

if i devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, i must first see, at least, that i do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. i must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

i came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

it costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the state than it would to obey.

if a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.