One Week

I was thinking about preparing this blog a couple of days ago and I had a really nice intro prepared in my head and do you think I can remember any of it?  The summation was, however, that philosophy is important in our lives.  How I came to that conclusion was roundabout (as always) but it was making sense in my head.  That was at 2 a.m. so perhaps that is why I am not recalling any brilliance of mind this morning.

            Whether a person reads or is merely an observer of people and life, philosophy does come in to play even though you may not think that you are being philosophical.  But when you make a statement such as “people are funny” you are observing the nature of people.  If you say “life isn’t fair” or “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” they may sound like clichés but they are also an observation about the nature of things.  People have pondered the world since time immemorial and eventually it boils down to a subject they have named “philosophy”.

            I only took one course of philosophy in university but it was a full year course.  From the first day I noticed a kind of pretension in the language that was used and how quickly students parroted the vocabulary of the professor.  But what did it really mean?  I had a similar experience with Russian history as I found a certain idiom was used in that class and yet it all came down to something very vague.  It worked out very well for me because I could write in vague terms also and ended up with an A but I was very unsatisfied with my Russian class.  I quite enjoyed my philosophy class and I did learn a lot despite poking fun (in my mind) at the language.

            The point of this is that I am reading Walden and I see the same roundabout language coming through.  At the same time I also see a sense of humour that reminds a little of Mark Twain and John Steinbeck.  But what I seem to get out of Thoreau is that he doesn’t like control, particularly governmental control.  I certainly sympathize with him there.  I see this conflicted attitude in America; where on one hand they want to feel free as individuals but at the same time they are cramped in their thinking.  It’s a curious state of being.

            January stretches ahead of me and I think tomorrow will be an anecdote kind of day.  Stay tuned!