WEBVTT - How Transcendentalism Works 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.680 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:17.239 and there's Charles w. Chruck, Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Rowland is 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.480 here with us somehow, some way, and this is stuff 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:26.840 you should know. Yeah, transcended to listen men. Were you 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:31.680 into Transcendentalism when you were a teenager? Seems about I was, Yeah, 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:35.040 in college, mainly as an English major, is when I 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.760 kind of got into it. Okay. I discovered these guys 0:00:37.960 --> 0:00:42.519 at age like fourteen and was super into him for 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.559 a while. Could make headser tails of a lot of 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.200 the stuff they were talking about, but I just something 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:49.199 about it just hit me just right. So I think 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.920 I caught like the the ethos of it, but not 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:55.920 necessarily the intellectual aspect of it. But I was into 0:00:56.000 --> 0:00:59.000 him big time. They actually um led me away from church. 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:02.880 Oh yeah, that's good. I met the train, I met 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.000 the Chance and Donallysta. That was it for me in church. 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:09.640 I started going to to the woods on Sunday mornings instead. Yeah, 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:11.559 I mean, this is one that hits home for me because, 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.720 as everyone knows, I love being in the woods and 0:01:13.760 --> 0:01:16.440 I love camping and I love my camp. Um. By 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:18.160 the way, we got a bear. Did I see me 0:01:18.200 --> 0:01:22.920 the picture? No? You go like chained up at your 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:26.840 campground or something. No. I have a trail cam set up, 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.640 which is emotion activated camera that you just strapped to 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:32.639 a tree and hunters use them a lot and stuff. 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.880 But I got one and pointed it towards my like 0:01:36.040 --> 0:01:39.959 my camp area. Uh. And we've been calling it crow 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:43.880 cam because we've gotten four pictures of crows since I 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.320 set it up. Uh. And every once in a while, 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.760 I'll get a picture come through at night the next 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.480 morning and I'll be really excited because like maybe a 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:55.120 box or a raccoon, never anything. And the other morning 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.680 I woke up and it gives a little thumbnail, and 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.080 I saw a little thumbnail. I saw a large creature, 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.160 and I freaked out to like rush to the app 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:07.040 to unto embig in it. And it's a bear, dude, 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.320 pretty net a little blackie. I'm gonna texted to you 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.320 right now, just wandering through the camp and there was 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.679 something about it that just thrilled me to no end 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:22.480 to know that I'm sharing the woods with this squeezy 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.120 little bear. That's pretty cool. Chunk and He's not gonna 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.600 attack me. Don't worry people, he is archie. Uh. There's 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:32.840 never been a bear fatality in Georgia, and I think 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.720 only two in the history of the Southeastern United States. Great, 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:37.560 that's a cute looks like you could take that bear 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.080 anyway if you wanted to. Do you see him? Yeah, 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:42.840 it's cute bear. Isn't that crazy? I'll looking for a 0:02:42.880 --> 0:02:46.400 picnic basket, I guess so. Um, But a long way 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:49.800 of saying that I love the woods and so Transcendentalum 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.840 and transcend Dentalism in college is something that kind of 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.680 hit home. And then for a little while I was 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:59.320 kind of like, but wait a minute, is this just 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:02.720 a bunch of who lazy people in a bunch of 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.320 I hate to say, mental masturbation, but like, what do 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:10.359 they actually do? But then this made me feel a 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:13.520 lot better about it, because the Transcendentalists led to a 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:18.079 lot of great progressive reforms. Yeah, totally, Yeah, that's definitely 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:22.119 phase two of being into transcendentalism is hating the Transcendentalist 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.040 and like, I think it's really resenting them for who 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.119 they were and all that. But this brought me back 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:29.240 to it for sure as well. I'm a big time 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.320 friend of Thorows. Now again, I used to think he 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.800 was just a complete useless waste who just dropped out 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.640 and probably lived off his parents money or something like 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:41.920 that and did what did his own thing. It was 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:43.480 not like that at all. And I think we owe 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:48.320 Thorow an episode. Frankly, I think he's a pretty cool dude. Yeah, 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.480 a lot of myths and legends around Thorow um and 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:53.440 real quick before we dive in, I did post that 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:58.240 picture on my Instagram at Chuck the podcaster, very nice shout. 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:02.960 That was some good social means promotions. All right, So 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:07.440 we're talking about the mid eighteen thirties and this idea 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:12.200 that these people came forward with very anti establishment ideas 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.919 where they basically said, uh, everybody has the light of 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.159 the divine truth, and we should all be self reliant. 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:25.040 We should all look within ourselves define that light, and 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:28.320 we should be self reliant in anyway, spiritually self reliant 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.000 or maybe you want to go out into the woods 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.880 and live and be self reliant on yourself. But basically 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:37.760 everyone is entitled to freedom in this country or back 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:42.920 then supposedly and still the case supposedly, but it led 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.280 to a lot of great things later on with these 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.760 progressive movements, but initially and throughout the sort of the 0:04:48.760 --> 0:04:52.400 heyday of Transcendentalism, it was just a lot of thought 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.640 in talking about and writing about this, these thoughts. Yeah, 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.400 it was a philosophical movement. It was a philosophical movement 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:04.480 associated with action and doing things um as much as 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:08.240 it was about sitting down and writing things out and 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.600 figuring out arguments and theories to root these things too. 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.680 And actually that's where the trans Andelists tripped themselves up 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:19.400 is they took something that was very pure and didn't 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:23.280 really need any rooting in in in um in theory. 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:26.599 It could just be like walking through the woods is 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:29.279 good in and of itself. It doesn't need a theory 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:32.320 that explains why it's good in and of itself. And 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.040 so when they did try to do that, they actually 0:05:34.080 --> 0:05:36.360 kind of shot themselves in the foot because they couldn't 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:39.000 do it. And that's one reason why you know, you 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.640 start to hate the Transcendentalists after you really start liking them, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.600 because a lot of it is just kind of WHOEI 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.359 when they tried to explain it, because it didn't need explaining, 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:55.120 I saw somebody describe it that they it didn't need 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.560 theory anymore than an airplane needs wires to hold it up. 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:01.960 And yet they they tried that because I think they 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.920 wanted to explain it and they wanted to be taken seriously. 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.720 Emerson definitely considered himself a philosopher. Whether he was or not, 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:10.800 I think a lot of people would consider him a philosopher. 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:13.760 But when they tried to ground it in philosophy, it 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.119 kind of got screwed up, like trying to nail jello 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:21.000 to the wall or something like that. Uh. It has 0:06:21.040 --> 0:06:25.680 been called the first sort of distinctive American philosophy, like 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:30.000 truly American philosophy, and it was influenced by a lot 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:33.680 of things though, um like kind of any movement, and 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:37.120 this one starts out with the Puritans who came over, 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:41.080 who said that, you know, they were very much individualists, 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:44.159 and it's sort of that root of individualism that helped 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:48.799 sort of inform the early Transcendentalists. Thoughts, Yeah, the Puritans 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.400 took I guess they we actually kind of talked a 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.880 little bit about it that Protestant work ethic. They also 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:56.760 brought within the idea of self reliance of of like 0:06:57.360 --> 0:06:59.440 you know, Um being able to make your own way 0:06:59.480 --> 0:07:02.960 in the world, and it took it took shape for 0:07:03.080 --> 0:07:05.400 them in the form of religion, where there was this 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:09.000 idea that you know, if you were a good Christian 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:13.720 and studied your Bible, you know, religiously, um, you could 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.000 be as close to God as as if you were 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:19.640 you know, some Catholic in in Italy who you know, 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:21.800 had to go through a priest and a cardinal and 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.320 a bishop in the pope to get to God. That 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.080 that's not how it worked. The individual was able to 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:29.640 connect with God as well. And that was, you know, 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:34.720 a big difference in puritan Um thought. And that was 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.080 one of the big things that that grew out of 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:40.760 it when they arrived here in America was the idea 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.080 of self reliance in the individual and and that very 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:51.400 much Um influenced the Transcendentalists. Yeah, European Romanticism certainly played 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:53.040 a part two they were. That was sort of the 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:59.280 first emo movement where feelings, uh, there were feelings mattered, basically, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:03.120 an emotion mattered. It wasn't all about reason and order 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.240 like it was in the Enlightenment. And things really took 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:11.040 a turn after the Paris Peace Treaty of eighteen fifteen, 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.960 because previous to that, during the American Revolution and the 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.160 War of eighteen twelve, the Napoleonic Wars, you couldn't really 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.680 go to America, or I'm sorry, Americans really couldn't go 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:22.680 to Europe, and didn't even have a lot of great 0:08:22.680 --> 0:08:26.640 access to the literature of Europe. But after that Paris 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:31.040 Treaty in eighteen fifteen, the travel floodgates opened and a 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:35.480 lot of um, sort of scholarly literary types went over 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:40.000 to Europe and started studying Gerta and Byron and Shelley 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:43.600 and Wordsworth, and it became, um, it was like lighting 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:46.439 a fire basically, yeah, which I mean like they missed 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:49.640 out on a you know, the beginning of Romanticism, which 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:53.120 was a big response to like the French Revolution, which 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.400 was in a larger way of response to the Enlightenment, 0:08:56.440 --> 0:09:00.160 because the Enlightenment changed everything. You know, we had a 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:03.480 really good episode about that, if I do say so ourselves, um, 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:09.520 but it placed an emphasis on reason and rationality and facts. 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.000 And then the French Revolution came along and the people 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.280 took control and they weren't able to uphold the ideas 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.199 or the ideals of the of the um, the enlightenment 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:23.760 of things like free speech and you know, freedom of thought, 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:27.360 and instead turned into like bloody fascists who killed forty 0:09:27.840 --> 0:09:31.240 people in a year or two um. And so that 0:09:31.240 --> 0:09:34.360 that led to this recoiling being repulsed by the idea 0:09:34.400 --> 0:09:38.559 of just cold rationalism and an adherence to facts, and 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:47.280 instead it turned into that romanticism that basically said, you know, imagination, beauty, goodness, 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.800 these are the important things. These are the true things 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:54.080 that are there. Are there the eternal truths of the 0:09:54.200 --> 0:10:00.840 universe that bring you to godliness. Forget facts. Facts are stupid. Basically, Yeah, 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:02.720 I find myself the more we've done the show, become 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:09.800 really interested in, like what causes movements to happen, whether 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:14.480 it's uh, a philosophical movement or or you know, knows 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.000 to the grindstone, you know, get out and do something movement. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.520 I just think it's really interesting because it's it's about 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:23.440 a bunch of like minded people coming together in a 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:26.360 very specific time and place, or or it could fall 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:31.559 apart very easily. And in the mid eighteen thirties in Boston, Massachusetts, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.000 a minister named George Ripley got some people together who 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.440 were thinking along the same lines as him, who are 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.320 inspired by these same literary grates of Europe and the Romantics, 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:48.480 and UH formed the Transcendental Club and they eventually started 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:54.320 publishing a three time annually literary paper called The Dial. 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.000 I think they had about three hundred subscribers at its peak. 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:00.679 It costs three dollars and they published it in four 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.600 volumes for about four years, and they said poetry and 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.440 prose and literary and music criticism, and it was, you know, 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:10.760 it was a literary magazine like we think about today, 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.240 but it was happening way back then in Boston. Yeah, 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:16.480 and it kind of UM was focused on beauty and 0:11:16.559 --> 0:11:21.920 imagination UM and transcendental ideals, which was basically that that 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.000 that if you had imagination, that that was the thing 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.320 that kind of brought you to UM, to like a 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:33.280 communion with the universe or God, the divine, whatever, whatever 0:11:33.640 --> 0:11:36.079 higher experience you were looking for, it was going to 0:11:36.200 --> 0:11:38.720 be through imagination. And one of the ways I saw 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:42.840 it Puit Chuck was not that they didn't like facts. 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:45.640 They were kind of slaves to facts, because the fact was, 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.439 there's there's badness in the in the world, there's badness 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.199 in the universe, and they just couldn't account for that that, like, 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:54.160 they just couldn't make heads or tails of it um 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:58.000 because they were so focused on good. But they they 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:02.640 preferred imagination over effects because they considered imagination, the imagination 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:07.120 of the individual, to be more powerful than facts. Like 0:12:07.440 --> 0:12:12.080 facts were that Plato died a couple of thousand years 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:14.240 ago and you will never get to meet him because 0:12:14.240 --> 0:12:18.000 you're separated by time and space. Imagination is that you 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:20.920 can go wrestle, have a tickle fight in a meadow 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.480 with Plato if you want, and that can make you happy. 0:12:25.559 --> 0:12:28.440 You can go experience that if your imagination is is 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:31.160 fine tuned enough. And then doing that that kind of 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:33.960 starts to make you question reality, like just how real 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.640 or unreal was that tickle fight you just had with Plato? 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.680 And your imagination is what took you to overcome those facts. 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:45.280 So to them, society was becoming increasingly industrialized and preoccupied 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:48.400 with money and economy and stuff like that, and it 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:51.560 was losing its way, it was losing its imagination, and 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:53.640 this was a big response to that, and that was 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:57.640 a huge ideal of the transcendentalist that it was the 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.800 imagination of the individual that could make you a happier person, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.760 more tuned to beauty and goodness, and that if you 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:07.200 were off doing that, you're going to connect more fully 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:10.319 with other people. And if enough people did that, then 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.560 you would have a much better society. That was ultimately 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.640 the first goal of Transcendentalism, the earliest, um kind of 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:21.720 goal of the movement was that. That's right and little 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:27.439 known fact, Plato's tickle spot was his thigh inner thigh, 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:29.959 upper inner thigh. It was a thigh like a like 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:33.160 a horse eating corn. Yep, exactly, there's a birthmark there 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.040 to guide the way. Even. All right, let's take a break. 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.160 Then we'll talk a little bit about Walden Pond and 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.880 Thoraux and whether or not he was who we think 0:13:42.880 --> 0:14:16.360 he was. Right after this, all right, Henry David Thurreau 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:19.640 one of the one of the all stars of the 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:25.520 Transcendentalist movement. Enthusiast. He's uh, he was a chin beard. 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:27.840 He was one of these guys. He went to Waldon, 0:14:28.000 --> 0:14:30.480 to Walden to live deliberately, went to the woods to 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.680 live deliberately, as he said, and built a cottage on 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:39.400 Walden Pond near Conquered Mass for a couple of years. 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:41.800 And this is one of those where if you have 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.560 someone who doesn't like Thorow, they will be very quick 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:49.080 to point out a lot of things, like, you know, 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:51.080 he was only a half a mile from the main road, 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:53.560 and he went into town all the time, and he 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.320 was less than two miles from his main house, and 0:14:56.440 --> 0:14:59.520 he ate dinner Emerson's all the time, and his mother 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:01.880 and his ster would bring him baked goods and donuts 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:06.440 every weekend. And those are all true things. So I 0:15:06.480 --> 0:15:09.920 think it bears saying that over the years, the idea 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:15.320 that Thorow was this luddite who just went to live 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:18.880 completely by his own resources, all alone in the woods 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:25.360 like the Great History Channel uh survival competition show. Uh. 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.040 And that is not true. And I don't think he 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.000 ever purported that to be true. He wrote about the 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:32.800 interesting aspects of being out there alone and his thoughts 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:35.680 and his books, and I think people got that confused 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.280 and just said, oh, well, that's all he did out there, 0:15:38.680 --> 0:15:40.880 and he never saw people. He had parties, and there 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:43.960 were people everywhere. He walked into town just about every day. 0:15:44.800 --> 0:15:47.960 That wasn't the whole point of it all was that 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:50.560 he was going to go be self reliant and as 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.720 a survivalist or anti social. He wasn't like turning his 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:57.400 back on society now and he liked some technologies too. 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:01.400 So throw is misunderstood. And think not because of his 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.120 own hand and writings. I think because people have romanticized 0:16:05.160 --> 0:16:08.120 this idea of this like hermit basically, and this is 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:10.760 not the case. Yeah, no, I mean the facts are this. 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.160 He did build himself a one room house on some 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:17.800 of Emerson's property right alongside on the shores of Walden 0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:24.359 pond Um. He spent his time writing UM, reading everything 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:30.000 from the Greek philosophers to um religious texts, whatever he 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.720 could get his hands on UM. And then more than anything, 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.680 walking in the woods, like spending his time out in 0:16:36.880 --> 0:16:42.400 nature UM and just enjoying it on its face, like 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.280 finding the beauty in nature and seeing absolutely everywhere and 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:52.160 letting it like increase the his spirit and and lift 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.200 his spirits. And that that's all he wanted to do 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.800 in life. And then when he needed money, he would 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.320 go work as a surveyor or maybe make some pencils 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.280 in his family's pencil factory. Apparently they made the finest 0:17:04.320 --> 0:17:07.840 in the country at the time UM. And then he 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:10.359 would make that money and then go back and go 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.560 go live by doing what he wanted to do. It 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:17.720 wasn't necessarily to tell people how to live. That's how 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:19.639 he wanted to live. And he went and did it. 0:17:19.880 --> 0:17:23.240 And however you feel about thorow Man, I mean, like 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.520 just the fact that he did that, how many people 0:17:27.600 --> 0:17:29.840 do that, you know, and do it not because the 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.119 CIA's after them or the government's listening in on their 0:17:33.160 --> 0:17:36.080 affairs or trying to keep them off of the pastor land. 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:39.480 If this guy did it for his own purposes. He 0:17:39.520 --> 0:17:42.160 wanted to like go live a life that he found 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:44.919 fulfilling like that, and he went and did it. And 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:48.439 it's hats off to anybody who does that. Yeah, And 0:17:48.480 --> 0:17:50.600 if you're I don't know, if you're maybe a little 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:54.000 bit younger as a listener, and you think, well, that 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:56.760 didn't sound that radical and there are plenty people who 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.640 do that kind of thing today, it's true, but that's 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:03.159 not how worked in eighteen forty five. Like, if you 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:05.560 were a grown, n able bodied man, you like you 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:09.040 were expected to have a job and contribute to society 0:18:09.040 --> 0:18:11.840 and work. You didn't spend time reading and writing and 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.640 taking walks in the woods for pleasure. It just that's 0:18:14.640 --> 0:18:16.000 just not how things were back then. So it was 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.040 a very radical thing back then to do. Um. It 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:22.240 was also very radical to say, you know what, I 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.399 don't want to pay my taxes because you enslave people 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.040 here in the United States and we're in a very 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:32.840 uh awful war against Mexico, and so you know what, 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.280 I'm not gonna fund this stuff anymore with my what 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:39.159 little money I make. So you can stick that in 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.000 your pipe and smoke at u S government. They came 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.240 after him, they arrested him, He spent a night in jail. 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:46.800 Someone paid off his debt. Even who that was, No, 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:49.160 he still didn't he never knew it was a real 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:51.960 and anonymous relative, and he was not very happy about 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.960 that at all, right, because he didn't want to like 0:18:55.040 --> 0:18:57.160 just have someone pay it. That was the whole point, right, Yeah, 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.040 he and they forced him out of jail the next 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:01.560 day and he was like, no, like, I'm trying, I'm 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:04.920 I'm trying to do something here and it didn't work, right. 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.440 But his very famous essay Civil Disobedience kind of grew 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.440 from this experience, and he has a really great quote 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.119 here that kind of hits home to me. Uh in 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:18.439 anyone who thinks they might can change things or can't. 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:22.400 Let every man make known what kind of government would 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.719 command his respect, and that will be one step towards 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:32.359 obtaining it. Again, just not necessarily a blueprint for uh 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.880 An action, although there was plenty of action later, but 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:38.920 just sort of a thought like something to ponder. Yeah, 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:41.399 and on on that poll tax um, I think it 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:45.679 was a head tax um, which yeah, and he did. 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.080 He hadn't paid it for years. Um he was inspired 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:53.440 by another transcendentalist, Amos Alcott, Louis and May's father, who 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.240 was a big Transcendentalist thinker. Um, and he hadn't paid 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.520 poll taxes for several years because the slave as well. 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.360 But then with the Mexican American War of I think 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:09.119 eighteen thirty six, when um Thureau started organizing protests against 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:11.280 it and calling for other people to not pay their text, 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:14.480 that's when he was finally arrested, sought out and arrested. 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:16.879 Um and I was reading a little bit about that 0:20:16.920 --> 0:20:19.840 war and why he and others protested against it. It 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:25.320 was apparently an extraordinarily unjust and unprovoked war where a 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:29.320 lot of American volunteers went down and committed war crimes 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:34.840 and atrocities against Mexican civilians for basically basically unprovoked um 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:37.639 And there was a lot of reason for people to 0:20:37.720 --> 0:20:40.919 oppose it, But that didn't mean that there was a 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:43.480 lot of people opposing it. It's just that you can 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:47.959 really kind of look back historically and and find yourself 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.159 siding with the people who protested against that war. But 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.120 at the time it was pretty radical too to protest 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:57.840 against It was a fairly popular war until the press 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.000 started reporting from the front lines and people started finding 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:04.000 out what was going on down there. Like the people 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.080 in America were whipped up into like this anti Mexican 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:11.199 fervor at the time, and we invaded Mexico, you know, 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:13.199 at the behest of the public. So to stand in 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:15.000 the way of that was a it was a very 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:17.480 brave thing to do. And that's pretty typical of what 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.040 Thorow and the Transcendentalists were into. They would look at 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:25.639 something and say, this is morally wrong, this is not okay. 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:29.360 I'm going to stand up against it. Maybe it'll inspire 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:32.080 other people are not to do that, but at the 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:34.680 very least I will have done what I think is moral. 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:39.040 And I found another quote Chuck from civil disobedience. I 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.320 thought kind of got that point across really well too. 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:45.119 It said that um uh Thorreau believed it is not 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:48.080 a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.720 himself to the eradication of any even the most enormous wrong. 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:54.880 He may still properly have other concerns to engage him, 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.159 but it is his duty at least to wash his 0:21:57.200 --> 0:21:59.800 hands of it and not give it practically his support. 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:02.840 So in that sense, he was like, I'm at the 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:05.080 very least not gonna pay taxes to support this. If 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:07.520 I I might not be able to keep the U 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:08.680 S out of the war, but I'm not going to 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:12.320 give you money to go fight that war. I don't 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:14.840 want to pay Texas anymore either, you know. I mean, 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:17.240 it goes to a lot of fun, savory stuff. So 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.639 there you go. If only were that easy, maybe some 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.840 benefactor would pay my fine, right right, But then that's 0:22:24.840 --> 0:22:26.879 supposed to take you off because that means that they 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:29.560 didn't get your point. Now, they'd be fun with me, 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:32.160 all right. So I guess we should talk a little 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.000 bit about some of the activism that sprung from this movement, 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.800 because all these cool hippie dippie philosophical thoughts and usings 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.520 are great, but action is what is really interesting to me. 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.399 And um, that's something like again, that's something that I 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:50.439 don't think we talked a lot about in college. It 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.080 was more just sort of an English class, right, yes, 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:55.320 type of thing. They should not just be taught in 0:22:55.400 --> 0:22:58.960 English class or even just philosophy class, like they should 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.920 be taught in cystrics in history. Yeah, it's I felt 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:04.760 like that that really does them in disservice. And I 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:06.639 never put my finger on until you just said that. 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:11.000 So thank you, thank you. I'm gonna change the educational system. 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:13.680 And that's where they started to The Transcendentalists knew that 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:16.679 education was the key. They thought it should be free. 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.040 They thought anyone should be able to go any race, 0:23:20.119 --> 0:23:24.760 any creed, that women. It was very radical. A lot 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:27.280