Scan barcode
A review by akemi_666
Walking by Henry David Thoreau
2.0
Strange mix of primitive anarchism and American exceptionalism.
I really like Thoreau's disdain for private property and utilitarian instrumentality. Like, he feels pretty Taoist at times, emphasising the embodied experience of walking, in and for itself, against walking as a tool towards a dissociated ends. Same with private property; its enclosure desolates the wild and entangled energy that made the land desirable in the first place. Wilderness cannot be captured nor instrumentalised. It is the exuberant excess of every capitalist project.
But then he has these weird passages about how humans have always progressed to a higher state of being by moving westwards, which seems to implicitly justify American imperialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Cough syrup Hegel can fuck off.
I'm totally for having a dismal swamp as a front yard tho.
I really like Thoreau's disdain for private property and utilitarian instrumentality. Like, he feels pretty Taoist at times, emphasising the embodied experience of walking, in and for itself, against walking as a tool towards a dissociated ends. Same with private property; its enclosure desolates the wild and entangled energy that made the land desirable in the first place. Wilderness cannot be captured nor instrumentalised. It is the exuberant excess of every capitalist project.
But then he has these weird passages about how humans have always progressed to a higher state of being by moving westwards, which seems to implicitly justify American imperialism and the genocide of indigenous peoples. Cough syrup Hegel can fuck off.
I'm totally for having a dismal swamp as a front yard tho.