Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, June 19, 2023

Working at home

"'Walden is a book about a house, a simple one on a pond, but also a not-so-simple one, a disordered one, orbiting the Sun.'

Instead of bank accounts and stock portfolios, the economy was meant to support the cultivation and maintenance of a home, in its most intimate and edifying sense: the ability to dwell in the world as a flourishing human being. Now, at this point, we can imagine the objections: “My bank account does support my home and my ability to flourish.”

But the objection misses Thoreau’s point: a job might fill your bank account and allow you to pay your mortgage and to go on three-day vacations every three months, but it might also squander the majority of your life, even deform your life, a life that seems better spent in the deliberate fashioning of a good home. Take this as literally or as figuratively, as broadly or as narrowly, as you like. It is true in any case. Thoreau believed that a certain type of work allows us to inhabit the world in a way that makes us feel, makes us actually, “at home.” That is the goal of Thoreau’s economy."

"Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living": https://a.co/9w03NHI

No comments:

Post a Comment

Cosmic spirit, down to earth

This is what WJ meant by philosophy resuming its rights with respect to "the earth of things"… Kieran Fox wrote this in his spare ...