The Art of Manliness - #417： Expect Great Things — The Mystical Life of Henry David Thoreau

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00:01:14.180 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:01:32.600 Henry David Thoreau is one of America's most influential thinkers and writers.

00:01:36.820 164 years after it was published, Walden continues to inspire readers to get out into nature

00:01:41.040 and march to the beat of their own drummer.

00:01:43.520 But what was the worldview of the man who wrote those immortal words?

00:01:46.360 Well, for one thing, Thoreau believed in the existence of fairies.

00:01:50.120 Yes, fairies.

00:01:51.080 That's one of the insights my guest mind as he explored the intellectual and spiritual life

00:01:54.340 of Henry David Thoreau.

00:01:55.440 His name is Kevin Dan and in his book,

00:01:57.320 Expect Great Things, The Life in Search of Henry David Thoreau,

00:02:00.600 he takes readers on a tour of the inner life of a uniquely American philosopher.

00:02:04.580 Today on the show, I talked to Kevin about the mystical life of Henry David Thoreau

00:02:07.700 and why Kevin would actually say that mystical is not quite the right word to describe Thoreau.

00:02:12.340 And yes, we dig into Thoreau's belief in fairies and how,

00:02:15.240 despite his magical outlook on life, Thoreau is also a very keen scientific observer.

00:02:20.200 You're never going to read Walden the same way after listening to this episode.

00:02:22.940 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash expectgreatthings.

00:02:27.860 Kevin Dan, welcome to the show.

00:02:41.400 Thank you, Brett. Great to be here.

00:02:43.340 So you got a biography out about Henry David Thoreau.

00:02:47.320 This is a quintessentially American character that a lot of people have written about him

00:02:52.900 because he's had such a big influence, not only on American letters,

00:02:55.960 but just, you know, people, I mean, a big cultural impact worldwide.

00:03:00.500 I'm curious, how is your biography different from all the different Thoreau biographies that are out there?

00:03:05.720 Oh, well, let's put it this way.

00:03:08.980 Let's cut to the chase.

00:03:11.000 When the Wall Street Journal headlined their review of my book

00:03:18.620 with Thoreau believed in fairies.

00:03:24.500 I guess that says it all.

00:03:28.360 You know, I'm caricaturing it, but my,

00:03:31.460 I would like to say that I practice,

00:03:33.760 my biography is different from all the others

00:03:35.720 in that I actually practice a Thoreauian manner of studying Henry,

00:03:42.800 the way Henry approached the world.

00:03:46.920 And that was my intention.

00:03:49.400 I don't know how, how faithful I was to that method,

00:03:52.640 but yeah, I would say that I,

00:03:54.860 I tried to read Thoreau like he read the world.

00:03:59.060 Yeah. I mean, cause you dig in,

00:04:00.460 it's, it's basically the way I,

00:04:01.740 I would describe when people were at,

00:04:03.640 when I was telling people I'm reading,

00:04:04.500 you know, reading this book and I'm having you on the podcast,

00:04:06.580 it is basically a biography of Thoreau's,

00:04:09.800 we could say mystic beliefs that influenced his, his writing.

00:04:14.020 Okay. Now I want to take you to the mat on this right away, Brad.

00:04:17.140 Okay.

00:04:17.880 And please don't take it personally.

00:04:20.980 Mystic. This is a, this is a slippery word.

00:04:24.800 Right.

00:04:25.220 And I was thinking, did I use the word mystic?

00:04:29.320 I saw it in all of the reviews and even my own editor probably,

00:04:34.160 you know, woven in there, but I don't think I myself used it.

00:04:38.900 Now Thoreau famously,

00:04:41.420 when he replied to the,

00:04:43.000 when the American association for the events in science asked him to,

00:04:46.720 you know,

00:04:47.680 say what he was since he was a member of the triple AS.

00:04:50.700 And he said, I'm a mystic,

00:04:53.680 a natural philosopher and a transcendentalist to boot.

00:04:58.280 You know,

00:04:58.540 he himself used it,

00:04:59.660 but probably the word that I would use to describe him is he was a

00:05:05.520 phenomenologist.

00:05:06.300 Now that's a,

00:05:07.760 that's too many syllables,

00:05:08.820 right?

00:05:10.080 For us to,

00:05:11.000 to get our,

00:05:11.640 our lips and our tongue around,

00:05:13.580 but that,

00:05:15.040 you know,

00:05:15.580 simply put it,

00:05:16.860 he is somebody who aimed always at describing what was in front of him

00:05:25.200 without theory,

00:05:26.940 but to let the,

00:05:28.080 let the phenomena themselves be their own theory.

00:05:31.220 And when you're a biographer,

00:05:33.200 this is my first crack at a biography.

00:05:35.540 That's a really good rule of thumb to approach a subject is to let the

00:05:40.600 phenomenon,

00:05:41.440 the,

00:05:41.740 the,

00:05:41.980 the life of the character you're studying,

00:05:44.120 let that be the driver.

00:05:47.180 Let that be all,

00:05:49.740 always the beacon that guides your own inquiry rather than bringing,

00:05:53.600 you know,

00:05:53.920 a bunch of your own inner subjectivity to it.

00:05:57.920 So yeah,

00:05:59.260 mystic,

00:05:59.860 I feel like,

00:06:00.760 especially for you,

00:06:01.660 you,

00:06:01.940 you,

00:06:02.380 you,

00:06:02.680 you formed this very nicely at the beginning about him being an American

00:06:06.340 character.

00:06:07.100 Well,

00:06:07.520 America doesn't really have a mystical tradition,

00:06:10.620 a really strong and,

00:06:12.220 and well-grounded mystical tradition.

00:06:14.520 And I would like to think of Thoreau as having instead founded a new,

00:06:20.760 a new nature study that we,

00:06:23.160 that really to this day,

00:06:24.660 we haven't followed up on.

00:06:26.320 But with that,

00:06:26.880 I mean,

00:06:27.020 I guess I was reading,

00:06:28.000 I guess you said,

00:06:28.400 I was reading it from like my modern perspective.

00:06:30.660 And as you read Thoreau's journal entries,

00:06:33.920 and then we can get into some of the things that were going on in America at the

00:06:37.180 time of his,

00:06:38.140 you know,

00:06:38.380 his youth and when he was really prolific.

00:06:40.940 But we would think that,

00:06:42.440 that I guess surprised me was,

00:06:44.980 I mean,

00:06:45.220 I would describe it as mystic.

00:06:46.840 I would,

00:06:47.120 you could all say magical,

00:06:48.500 right?

00:06:48.680 Because we live in such a very scientific and,

00:06:51.780 that like,

00:06:53.760 you know,

00:06:54.000 some of the things that,

00:06:55.060 you know,

00:06:55.240 you talk about Thoreau believing in fairies,

00:06:57.480 right?

00:06:57.620 He talks about fairies as sort of the phenomenal,

00:06:59.360 phenomenal,

00:06:59.780 phenomenal,

00:07:00.160 phenomenal experience that he had.

00:07:01.520 And it wasn't just Thoreau.

00:07:02.740 I mean,

00:07:02.940 there were,

00:07:03.440 you know,

00:07:04.200 pockets in America that were combining all sorts of interesting things with,

00:07:09.860 you know,

00:07:10.580 astrology and,

00:07:12.340 and,

00:07:12.800 and religion and Christianity.

00:07:14.300 And it was just,

00:07:14.980 it was a completely,

00:07:16.160 I guess I would say foreign world for us living in the 21st century.

00:07:20.080 Yeah.

00:07:20.180 That's a,

00:07:20.760 that's a beautiful way to describe it.

00:07:22.100 Yeah.

00:07:22.400 You know,

00:07:22.740 the,

00:07:22.940 the present always reads itself into the past and,

00:07:26.620 you know,

00:07:27.380 look at this,

00:07:27.880 we've become a totally non-magical,

00:07:30.400 non-enchanted,

00:07:31.980 alienated America.

00:07:34.920 So,

00:07:35.580 and that,

00:07:36.300 that didn't just start,

00:07:37.580 you know,

00:07:37.820 now I'd say the previous generations of biographers of Thoreau were sharing that experience.

00:07:44.760 But it was,

00:07:46.220 it was very,

00:07:47.300 very strange to me that none of them had,

00:07:51.320 had caught the fact that,

00:07:53.960 yeah,

00:07:54.260 that what was central to his biography from,

00:07:56.820 from his youth on was the fact that he did with clear and exacting eyes,

00:08:05.220 look upon the natural world.

00:08:07.980 And in it,

00:08:09.360 he,

00:08:09.600 you know,

00:08:09.900 he had this empathic,

00:08:12.220 sympathetic,

00:08:13.140 to use a,

00:08:13.720 an antebellum,

00:08:15.140 a favorite keyword,

00:08:16.880 sympathy,

00:08:17.740 which was through the heart forces,

00:08:19.840 not through the head.

00:08:21.180 But he was,

00:08:22.560 he was looking at the world,

00:08:24.160 studying it in great detail,

00:08:25.820 in exacting detail.

00:08:27.380 And in a way,

00:08:28.720 you know,

00:08:28.960 had a conversation.

00:08:29.960 He had a heartfelt conversation.

00:08:31.440 It was a,

00:08:31.880 it was very much a romantic science.

00:08:33.700 It was not a head science and,

00:08:35.800 and argued both explicitly,

00:08:38.300 implicitly for that.

00:08:39.560 And I think that that's what,

00:08:42.280 that's what every generation of young people responds to.

00:08:45.200 It's a very,

00:08:46.160 very complex voice that he has,

00:08:48.500 but it's unmistakably universal.

00:08:51.860 And I think timeless.

00:08:53.700 So this,

00:08:54.960 this love affair with Henry is not going to end.

00:08:57.260 It's going to carry on for,

00:08:58.540 you know,

00:08:59.200 centuries and centuries.

00:09:00.660 Absolutely.

00:09:01.580 Right.

00:09:01.680 Cause I mean,

00:09:01.940 when you read Thoreau,

00:09:03.040 like you feel like,

00:09:04.600 yeah,

00:09:04.760 you,

00:09:05.100 you feel that re-enchantment,

00:09:06.580 right?

00:09:06.780 You think,

00:09:07.120 Oh my goodness.

00:09:07.600 Like the world is full of possibility.

00:09:09.660 It's full of mystery that can be explored.

00:09:12.180 And that maybe not,

00:09:13.100 doesn't even have to be explored.

00:09:14.420 You can just enjoy the mystery.

00:09:16.240 Oh,

00:09:16.600 I think that's the perfect way to describe it.

00:09:19.240 That an enchantment in the,

00:09:21.840 like in a Renaissance sense of the world word,

00:09:25.520 it means a kind of a binding,

00:09:28.400 a binding of oneself in a very,

00:09:31.220 very heartfelt way to the,

00:09:34.500 to the phenomena,

00:09:35.460 the possibility that,

00:09:37.000 that there's a reciprocity,

00:09:39.200 that there's actually,

00:09:40.620 the outside out there is in you and you can be in it.

00:09:44.900 And I guess that,

00:09:45.840 you know,

00:09:45.980 to circle back to my,

00:09:47.380 my little,

00:09:48.360 you know,

00:09:49.720 harsh stance about mystic,

00:09:51.140 the mystic to me goes inside in order to reach God.

00:09:57.060 And clearly Thoreau and transcendentalism is about going outside,

00:10:01.700 going,

00:10:02.120 going into one's surroundings.

00:10:04.600 And through that,

00:10:05.940 to go through the,

00:10:07.060 the,

00:10:07.380 the illusion,

00:10:08.200 the,

00:10:08.380 the appearances to the higher,

00:10:10.840 the higher realm.

00:10:12.140 That's the thing that America seems cut out to do.

00:10:15.880 You know,

00:10:16.680 it,

00:10:17.080 there's not,

00:10:18.820 we don't have too many,

00:10:20.040 X X games level mystics,

00:10:24.460 you know,

00:10:24.720 people who go inward.

00:10:26.020 We're not,

00:10:26.900 we're not that good at meditation and at inner exploration,

00:10:30.760 but we're man.

00:10:32.800 Oh man.

00:10:33.180 Are we crazy for,

00:10:34.400 for,

00:10:35.000 for outer exploration,

00:10:36.360 exploration,

00:10:37.560 you know,

00:10:37.920 whether we,

00:10:39.760 you know,

00:10:39.960 we got these characters sending up,

00:10:41.700 you know,

00:10:42.300 things into outer space and so on.

00:10:44.320 And,

00:10:44.840 and I think that that was that Thoreau pioneered that,

00:10:48.940 that path,

00:10:49.640 which is a kind of Rosicrucian ancient path of through nature to God.

00:10:54.760 Well,

00:10:54.860 let's talk about this development of this worldview of his.

00:10:59.200 What was his childhood like?

00:11:01.620 Did,

00:11:01.800 did Thoreau hint that he was going to be this guy that would write Walden and write these poems about nature?

00:11:08.780 Or was this something that developed,

00:11:10.620 you know,

00:11:11.400 as he entered young manhood?

00:11:13.500 Oh,

00:11:13.900 great question,

00:11:14.620 Brett.

00:11:14.840 I mean,

00:11:15.740 this is the,

00:11:16.640 this is the interesting thing about,

00:11:19.260 about becoming a biographer is do the,

00:11:25.400 do these signatures,

00:11:27.020 do these hallmarks,

00:11:27.900 do these gestures,

00:11:29.280 do they leap out immediately?

00:11:31.580 Certainly with Thoreau,

00:11:33.040 you have a,

00:11:33.720 an incredibly generous subject in that he wrote 2 million words into a journal,

00:11:41.980 you know,

00:11:42.180 starting when he was just a teenager.

00:11:44.080 So I would say,

00:11:46.040 you know,

00:11:46.280 the gesture that I,

00:11:47.400 that I felt from the very beginning that his life showed is he had a gift for expansiveness,

00:11:53.580 expansiveness for ecstasy.

00:11:57.440 He had a gift for relationship and it was there,

00:12:02.820 you know,

00:12:03.360 my own daughter,

00:12:04.560 the minute she could walk,

00:12:05.900 she was dancing and singing,

00:12:07.800 you know,

00:12:08.480 and boom,

00:12:10.200 you know,

00:12:10.500 she's now 41 and she's dancing and singing.

00:12:13.060 And,

00:12:13.220 and I,

00:12:13.920 you know,

00:12:14.060 I think that each of us,

00:12:16.020 especially if we're expressive,

00:12:17.760 the gestures,

00:12:18.860 the main gestures we carry out of the cosmos into our human being,

00:12:22.760 and they show up really early.

00:12:24.740 And,

00:12:25.220 you know,

00:12:25.600 one of the cool things was that when he was just in his early twenties,

00:12:28.560 he sat his mother down and he interviewed his mother.

00:12:31.520 He was,

00:12:32.020 he had a very intense and wonderful relationship with his mother closer than,

00:12:36.240 than to his father.

00:12:37.460 And he would catch these,

00:12:40.160 he'd catch these little things in his journal over a,

00:12:43.000 about a month period of time where he's,

00:12:46.120 he's getting the stories of his own childhood from,

00:12:49.320 from her.

00:12:49.680 Something that is so telling for a young adult when both,

00:12:54.760 what does their mother say about them?

00:12:57.060 And then what do they,

00:12:58.540 what do they then hold close?

00:13:00.220 And I think that there was a real consonance between what his mother remembered was his essence

00:13:05.860 and what he took in as being his,

00:13:08.740 his,

00:13:09.200 his own life's journey,

00:13:10.700 his own life's imprint.

00:13:12.180 Yeah.

00:13:12.220 I think one of the stories I remember reading was,

00:13:14.640 you know,

00:13:14.900 as a boy,

00:13:15.420 I think his mother said that he went off and you just go look at the stars for hours on end.

00:13:21.400 Well,

00:13:21.720 even that the,

00:13:23.060 the thing that he records in his journal is that they had a trundle bed and this'll,

00:13:29.680 this'll help take us back,

00:13:30.980 you know,

00:13:31.240 out of the 21st century into the 1820s.

00:13:34.740 You know,

00:13:35.480 it wasn't uncommon for people to share beds back in the day.

00:13:40.300 You know,

00:13:40.740 a lot of people in smaller spaces than bigger families.

00:13:45.240 And,

00:13:45.460 uh,

00:13:45.920 even though there were just three children in the,

00:13:48.460 in the Thoreau family,

00:13:49.740 he and his brother,

00:13:51.000 John slept in what was called a trundle bed.

00:13:53.920 It pulled out from underneath the parents' bed,

00:13:56.460 like a Murphy bed,

00:13:57.280 kind of a thing out of the wall.

00:13:59.220 And that,

00:14:00.820 you know,

00:14:01.180 she would,

00:14:01.980 she would catch him at the window at night,

00:14:04.040 you know,

00:14:04.280 having left the bed and looking out at the stars.

00:14:07.040 So,

00:14:07.640 yeah,

00:14:07.840 it was a deep yearning in him from infancy practically.

00:14:11.300 I mean,

00:14:11.460 did his family,

00:14:12.560 were they,

00:14:13.420 I mean,

00:14:13.720 how would I say this?

00:14:14.480 Were they romantic,

00:14:15.420 poetic,

00:14:16.300 religious,

00:14:17.100 did that kind of help flesh that stuff out in Thoreau's life?

00:14:21.380 Well,

00:14:22.560 my,

00:14:22.820 the,

00:14:23.460 the picture I,

00:14:24.500 I very much got is of,

00:14:27.160 you know,

00:14:27.500 a father who had mouths to feed.

00:14:30.180 He had a,

00:14:31.020 had a family.

00:14:31.840 He was a man on the make at a time when,

00:14:34.720 you know,

00:14:35.080 in New England,

00:14:35.620 when the economy was shifting and he had to be,

00:14:39.760 he had to be light on his feet to figure out how to,

00:14:42.940 how to prosper.

00:14:44.380 And he,

00:14:45.100 he really didn't have the luxury of,

00:14:47.300 of reading Greek philosophy.

00:14:50.020 You know,

00:14:50.540 he didn't have the,

00:14:51.380 the higher education that,

00:14:52.820 that Henry was able to get at Harvard.

00:14:55.540 He was,

00:14:56.360 he was a working father,

00:14:57.560 you know,

00:14:57.840 really,

00:14:58.380 really working.

00:14:59.440 And his mother,

00:15:00.740 I think,

00:15:01.580 had a very romantic,

00:15:03.080 poetic soul.

00:15:04.320 And they,

00:15:05.100 you know,

00:15:06.040 Henry famously said,

00:15:07.160 I was born in the nick of time and in,

00:15:09.980 let's say,

00:15:10.300 well,

00:15:10.440 excuse me,

00:15:10.940 I was born in the right place and the right time,

00:15:16.060 you know,

00:15:16.520 that there was a,

00:15:18.180 in a sense,

00:15:18.640 I think that that has to stem,

00:15:20.720 not just from the conquered,

00:15:23.560 but his own family.

00:15:25.140 He had a sense that they gave him just what he needed to,

00:15:28.600 yeah,

00:15:28.940 to become himself truly.

00:15:31.640 What I thought was interesting too,

00:15:32.900 when you highlight,

00:15:33.920 I mean,

00:15:34.080 it's not only a biography of Thoreau,

00:15:35.460 it is a biography of early America,

00:15:38.560 particularly New England.

00:15:40.240 What I was,

00:15:41.460 I thought it was really fascinating was the culture in New England.

00:15:44.460 It was,

00:15:46.080 there was a lot of magic going on.

00:15:47.560 I guess like,

00:15:47.940 there was like a magic worldview going on,

00:15:50.320 like,

00:15:50.780 like folk magic,

00:15:51.640 I guess you could call it.

00:15:52.420 Like farmers would use the almanac that had,

00:15:55.080 you know,

00:15:55.440 you need a plant under this certain moon because it's going to reap a better,

00:15:59.500 whatever.

00:16:00.780 And they,

00:16:01.240 they kind of like everyone had that.

00:16:02.520 They kind of lived by it,

00:16:03.520 but also was side by side was like the Bible and Christianity.

00:16:06.640 And now today us Americans think those things are incompatible,

00:16:09.320 but somehow people in New England at the time thought,

00:16:11.460 no,

00:16:11.620 it's perfectly compatible.

00:16:13.100 Oh,

00:16:13.480 well,

00:16:13.680 yeah.

00:16:14.160 I mean,

00:16:14.380 I think,

00:16:15.140 I think here's the picture that we could,

00:16:18.200 we could very,

00:16:19.180 very safely assume that what was the book that more households had than any other

00:16:25.760 book,

00:16:26.220 you know,

00:16:26.660 between 1820 and 1850 was the Bible.

00:16:30.500 And yes,

00:16:32.040 there were all these amazing folk practices.

00:16:34.320 Probably I would,

00:16:35.660 I'm this,

00:16:36.260 I'm inventing this right now.

00:16:37.520 It's just completely on a hunch,

00:16:39.060 but I'd say the most common form of divination,

00:16:42.620 the most common form of folk magic was to flip the Bible open,

00:16:47.720 to inwardly ask a question and then flip the Bible open and then put your finger on a passage.

00:16:53.200 Yeah.

00:16:53.460 I think people,

00:16:54.060 yeah,

00:16:54.280 I think people still do that today.

00:16:55.620 That was the,

00:16:57.360 I don't know what the,

00:16:58.320 the modern day equivalent would be,

00:16:59.860 but there you go.

00:17:01.360 Boom.

00:17:01.860 Everybody was doing that.

00:17:03.220 Isn't it like bibliomancrasy?

00:17:04.540 Is that what it's called?

00:17:05.780 Biblio?

00:17:06.140 You know,

00:17:07.100 the old,

00:17:07.620 the old term for this was the sortus Virgilantes,

00:17:11.800 which in,

00:17:13.000 in,

00:17:13.620 in classical times,

00:17:15.080 they use Virgil,

00:17:16.300 the great Roman poet.

00:17:18.560 Instead of,

00:17:19.460 you know,

00:17:19.620 they,

00:17:19.820 they saw his knowledge as being so cosmic and,

00:17:24.820 and all encompassing that the answers would be there.

00:17:29.100 And the thing about divination is that anything can be a divination device.

00:17:35.580 You know,

00:17:35.780 certainly the internet can be a divination device.

00:17:38.960 In fact,

00:17:40.260 that's,

00:17:41.060 you know,

00:17:41.420 that's,

00:17:41.880 uh,

00:17:42.360 the most interesting thing is to think about how in a world of digital texts,

00:17:49.120 rather than,

00:17:49.920 than printed texts,

00:17:51.800 if magic is real,

00:17:53.800 then it's still got to be operative in whatever the technology of the times is.

00:17:58.640 And so I think that the prophecy divination,

00:18:02.280 these,

00:18:02.540 these questions about how am I going to get along?

00:18:05.040 Who am I?

00:18:05.920 You know,

00:18:06.080 what's going to happen around the bend there,

00:18:07.660 the universal questions.

00:18:09.360 And you're,

00:18:10.400 you know,

00:18:11.460 you're,

00:18:11.860 you're pointing to my contextualizing Thoreau in this way.

00:18:16.800 A big part of that was,

00:18:18.600 a signature I found right away was this sense,

00:18:22.020 you know,

00:18:22.180 I used it for the title of the book,

00:18:24.100 expect great things.

00:18:25.600 So his mantra was that he said in a hundred different ways,

00:18:30.860 in the long run,

00:18:32.040 we find what we expect.

00:18:33.280 We shall be fortunate then if we expect great things.

00:18:36.480 And whether it's astrology or reading tea leaves,

00:18:42.260 the operative principle of magic is that what we think manifests in the world as being real.

00:18:49.640 And that's what his,

00:18:50.420 that's what his mantra was,

00:18:52.540 expect great things.

00:18:53.900 Now that's,

00:18:56.500 that's a great challenge if in,

00:19:00.620 in a personal way,

00:19:01.780 but also in a national way,

00:19:03.400 because a lot of what I tried to do in the book was to consider this with,

00:19:07.800 because Thoreau had a certain sense of himself as a prophet and a prophet has to be,

00:19:13.360 has to be approved and in a sense designated by his community or her community.

00:19:19.980 But the prophetic tradition was strong enough in his lifetime.

00:19:25.800 It was carried mainly through poetry.

00:19:27.860 And that was a lot to do with his relationship with Emerson and the expectation that,

00:19:32.760 that poetry would carry that prophetic,

00:19:35.680 that prophetic tradition forward and would,

00:19:37.880 would ennoble the people as they,

00:19:40.860 they strove to be this new nation.

00:19:42.980 I mean,

00:19:43.140 yeah,

00:19:43.560 it sounds like that worldview,

00:19:45.340 I mean,

00:19:45.620 I guess the way it contrasts this as I was reading is Thoreau,

00:19:49.240 Emerson and a lot of people living in New England and in America at the time,

00:19:53.820 it was the,

00:19:54.720 the sense of self was very porous,

00:19:56.860 right?

00:19:57.080 Like the self could influence the outside world in,

00:20:00.680 I don't know,

00:20:01.680 unexplainable ways.

00:20:02.680 And the outside world could also influence the self.

00:20:06.420 I think,

00:20:06.740 I think,

00:20:07.520 yeah,

00:20:07.580 that's a,

00:20:08.020 that's a beautiful way to put it.

00:20:09.440 Absolutely.

00:20:10.340 Yeah.

00:20:10.700 I think today we're very rigid.

00:20:11.800 We think like,

00:20:12.400 well,

00:20:12.520 there's,

00:20:12.880 there's us and then there's the outside world and that's,

00:20:16.400 that's it.

00:20:16.900 Like they're separate and there's no real interaction.

00:20:19.240 Or play going on there.

00:20:20.920 Yes.

00:20:21.440 And,

00:20:21.800 and I mean,

00:20:23.180 it's ironic as you say this,

00:20:24.680 Brett,

00:20:24.880 because what immediately came into my mind,

00:20:28.180 particularly was in relationships and close friendship,

00:20:32.860 because the emphasis and the,

00:20:35.840 the quality of friendship in that era was,

00:20:39.380 was very,

00:20:41.520 very amazing.

00:20:43.060 I think if you study,

00:20:44.740 you know,

00:20:45.540 people of letters of that time,

00:20:47.800 which is the easiest way to do it.

00:20:50.500 And,

00:20:51.100 you know,

00:20:51.520 we pride ourselves on all of our kind of openness about gender and,

00:20:57.460 and so on about relationship,

00:20:59.820 but there was a tremendous amount of real intense love relationship between men,

00:21:06.520 between women at that time was,

00:21:09.000 which was,

00:21:09.880 was seen as,

00:21:11.060 as really a high ideal,

00:21:14.260 a great high ideal.

00:21:15.600 And I,

00:21:15.860 and I think about,

00:21:17.220 you know,

00:21:17.780 the poorest,

00:21:18.780 as you said,

00:21:19.420 the,

00:21:19.580 the poorest self,

00:21:21.780 you know,

00:21:22.380 we have a certain,

00:21:24.500 you know,

00:21:25.060 today we have all of these avenues and technologies to play with the self.

00:21:32.840 And seemingly for the self to be porous,

00:21:35.800 but the self isn't strong enough.

00:21:39.320 The,

00:21:39.420 the,

00:21:39.640 the identity formation seems to be weak to meet these technologies in a way.

00:21:45.840 It feels to me,

00:21:46.720 and I,

00:21:47.400 you know,

00:21:47.620 I forgive my own romanticism here,

00:21:49.620 but I got a sense of the antebellum era.

00:21:53.740 They were,

00:21:54.740 by the time they were 18,

00:21:56.640 by the time they were 20,

00:21:58.580 these young adults had identity formations that were,

00:22:02.840 they were so strong that that kind of,

00:22:05.160 to lose oneself into another or to lose oneself into a philosophy or to lose

00:22:11.140 oneself into nature were,

00:22:13.380 were benign and possibly life enhancing both for,

00:22:18.360 for the individual and for the community in a way that is much more

00:22:23.740 problematic today.

00:22:24.720 I think.

00:22:25.480 Yeah.

00:22:25.600 I think we kind of keep things at arm's distance today.

00:22:27.660 And we're,

00:22:28.300 we're,

00:22:28.640 I think that's where I irony comes in and we use irony as a way to protect,

00:22:31.880 the self,

00:22:33.540 right?

00:22:33.740 It's like,

00:22:34.380 you never want to admit that you're idealistic because if,

00:22:38.300 if it doesn't work out the way you,

00:22:40.220 you thought you'd be,

00:22:41.620 well,

00:22:41.800 I was just,

00:22:42.440 I was just joking.

00:22:43.460 Right.

00:22:44.780 It's sort of,

00:22:45.560 I see a lot of that going on.

00:22:47.280 I mean,

00:22:47.480 I find myself doing that too.

00:22:49.820 Well,

00:22:50.260 no,

00:22:50.540 I know it's the,

00:22:51.420 the,

00:22:51.740 the rhetoric and the stance of irony is,

00:22:54.340 it's a deeply tragic,

00:22:56.740 I,

00:22:57.160 this,

00:22:57.560 this is,

00:22:58.060 this is really crazy,

00:22:59.280 but I can remember the very first college class I,

00:23:04.280 I taught.

00:23:05.440 And this would be,

00:23:06.860 you know,

00:23:07.500 back in the right,

00:23:09.900 right around 1990 probably.

00:23:12.000 And I had been a bit of a Luddite.

00:23:15.000 I,

00:23:15.140 I prided myself on not having a television,

00:23:17.260 but teaching college,

00:23:19.840 you know,

00:23:20.600 it was,

00:23:21.200 it was all about whatever was on,

00:23:22.820 on TV.

00:23:23.720 And I remember coming in one Monday,

00:23:26.580 this was a,

00:23:28.200 an undergraduate class,

00:23:29.920 a little community college in Burlington,

00:23:31.820 Vermont.

00:23:33.160 And the,

00:23:34.780 all of a sudden somebody said something like not,

00:23:38.300 they said something,

00:23:39.220 they said not.

00:23:40.340 And I didn't,

00:23:41.140 and it was the beginning of,

00:23:44.240 I don't know if it's still around,

00:23:45.820 but I think it'd come from Saturday Night Live or something.

00:23:48.580 It was stating something as a positive very strongly and then going not

00:23:53.180 almost like pulling the rug out from under you.

00:23:56.140 It's a,

00:23:56.720 it's a dirty trick.

00:23:58.740 If it's not irony,

00:24:00.680 healthy irony can be strong and life enhancing,

00:24:03.280 but this was a kind of a,

00:24:05.360 I think the,

00:24:07.140 the beginning of the road to the kind of relativism and,

00:24:11.300 and crazy inability to distinguish reality from illusion that we,

00:24:15.580 that we swim in today.

00:24:16.720 Yeah.

00:24:17.240 I think today the,

00:24:18.200 it says saying not,

00:24:19.560 I remember,

00:24:19.940 I remember when that happened because I remember as a middle school kid and

00:24:23.060 you do that all the time because.

00:24:24.560 Oh,

00:24:24.960 as a middle school kid.

00:24:26.160 Yeah.

00:24:26.460 Now,

00:24:26.620 can you imagine,

00:24:27.700 I mean,

00:24:28.060 forgive me my,

00:24:30.100 my,

00:24:30.720 you know,

00:24:31.480 my Pollyannishness,

00:24:33.000 but no,

00:24:34.660 a middle school kid,

00:24:35.540 a middle school kid,

00:24:36.880 that's not fair to have,

00:24:39.980 to have,

00:24:40.320 you know,

00:24:40.560 it may be in very,

00:24:42.100 very intimate situations where the one to whom you're practicing irony has a strong enough relationship to you as a friend that,

00:24:53.740 you know,

00:24:54.120 you can be learning about yourself through playing with those things.

00:24:57.620 But I think,

00:24:58.980 you know,

00:25:00.580 we're steeped in this from such a youthful age.

00:25:04.000 How do we find,

00:25:05.120 how do we swim towards the truth when we're just surrounded by tropes?

00:25:10.500 And yeah,

00:25:11.940 it's,

00:25:12.280 it's a very,

00:25:13.080 very,

00:25:13.540 it's a very,

00:25:14.740 very difficult time in this way.

00:25:17.260 No,

00:25:17.680 it is.

00:25:17.940 I think today instead of not,

00:25:18.980 it's,

00:25:19.240 you know,

00:25:19.480 LOL JK,

00:25:20.680 which is laugh out loud,

00:25:21.660 just kidding when you say something.

00:25:23.900 But yeah,

00:25:24.340 as a kid,

00:25:25.120 like I've got two young kids.

00:25:26.760 One of the things that's so refreshing about kids and one of the great things about having kids when they're at this young age is you see how unabashedly,

00:25:34.100 like they throw themselves into it.

00:25:35.680 Like there's no,

00:25:36.220 there's not a hint of guile at all.

00:25:38.980 Yes,

00:25:39.260 absolutely.

00:25:40.040 And I,

00:25:40.280 I guess that was like the challenge of Thoreau.

00:25:42.320 Thoreau was like,

00:25:43.980 his life's work is how can I keep that even as I move into adulthood?

00:25:47.260 And I learn more about the world and where you can get cynical and jaded,

00:25:51.860 but like not get cynical and jaded.

00:25:54.120 Yeah.

00:25:54.760 Well,

00:25:55.520 it,

00:25:56.420 it,

00:25:57.300 this is so,

00:25:58.100 such an interesting turn of the conversation because I,

00:26:01.720 all of a sudden I feel like I want to go back and rewrite the biography in,

00:26:05.240 in light of these questions you're asking because they have become so,

00:26:11.360 so pressing upon us at this time.

00:26:14.360 And he himself in,

00:26:18.240 you know,

00:26:18.620 in studying him,

00:26:19.880 he kept them at bay because you really,

00:26:25.420 I mean,

00:26:26.000 he had his struggles,

00:26:27.020 um,

00:26:28.060 as a,

00:26:28.980 as a young man in terms of what society expected of him and reconciling his own

00:26:35.180 ideas of,

00:26:35.960 of true,

00:26:37.740 true success.

00:26:38.920 Um,

00:26:40.040 he,

00:26:40.320 you know,

00:26:40.500 he had a,

00:26:41.000 a,

00:26:41.280 a positively acid disdain for bourgeois norms that,

00:26:48.200 you know,

00:26:48.460 put him in trouble with,

00:26:49.820 with lots of people from the very beginning.

00:26:51.880 But I think he had a sense of himself as so divinely favored that nothing that could come at him would have shaken his conviction.

00:27:03.060 He just,

00:27:04.100 he really had a strong sense that he was divinely favored,

00:27:07.620 but not in a way of narcissistically,

00:27:10.620 but truly in a way of,

00:27:12.580 as a servant of,

00:27:14.180 of his community,

00:27:15.440 of,

00:27:15.840 of humanity in the larger sense that he was gifted by,

00:27:22.440 by this sense of being supported by the invisible world in a,

00:27:28.940 in a,

00:27:29.720 you know,

00:27:29.980 it just never wavered.

00:27:31.240 That never wavered his,

00:27:32.880 his own ability to carry out his,

00:27:36.060 his writing ambitions,

00:27:37.720 you know,

00:27:38.000 his goals and,

00:27:39.340 and creatively that he may have faltered,

00:27:43.060 but the other never,

00:27:45.420 ever wavered.

00:27:46.500 And,

00:27:46.680 you know,

00:27:47.020 he never got it from any institutional church.

00:27:49.380 He,

00:27:50.020 he cultivated that just through his experience of,

00:27:56.560 of spiritual beings.

00:27:58.880 I think visited him on a regular basis.

00:28:02.220 I think that it's as clear as that.

00:28:04.060 And that's,

00:28:04.520 that's the place where I run afoul and where my biography is different.

00:28:08.700 I consider spiritual beings to be real.

00:28:11.100 I have,

00:28:12.680 it's my experience,

00:28:13.800 my whole life.

00:28:14.560 And,

00:28:15.260 and so why wouldn't I,

00:28:17.200 why wouldn't I accept that as being,

00:28:19.640 when he says it,

00:28:21.060 I know it's true.

00:28:23.040 You know,

00:28:23.380 I don't gloss over it.

00:28:24.820 I don't ignore it.

00:28:26.160 I take it to be central.

00:28:27.680 It's the central thing that all,

00:28:30.240 that a century and a half of biographies just missed,

00:28:33.700 you know,

00:28:34.060 totally missed.

00:28:35.120 Yeah.

00:28:35.620 I mean,

00:28:35.880 this kind of nice leads nicely to that idea,

00:28:38.240 exploring,

00:28:38.800 you know,

00:28:38.980 the wall street journals headline,

00:28:40.500 Thoreau believed in fairies.

00:28:41.820 And you dig,

00:28:42.500 you get into this a bit where he would be out on a walk in nature and with a

00:28:48.900 child or within another person.

00:28:50.960 And he would say,

00:28:51.960 I saw a fairy there,

00:28:53.580 or there's,

00:28:54.320 there's some sort of being here.

00:28:56.720 And I think a lot of people,

00:28:58.080 you know,

00:28:58.480 I think the modern 21st century approach would be like,

00:29:00.940 well,

00:29:01.120 he's being metaphorical,

00:29:02.860 but I mean,

00:29:03.220 you make it the case.

00:29:03.700 No,

00:29:03.880 he actually,

00:29:05.220 he actually,

00:29:05.720 he believed in those spiritual beings that were there.

00:29:08.460 And they,

00:29:08.760 well,

00:29:09.180 or,

00:29:09.900 you know,

00:29:10.880 what I wanted to say to the,

00:29:12.020 to,

00:29:12.940 uh,

00:29:13.800 to the wall street journal was no,

00:29:15.240 he didn't believe in fairies.

00:29:17.000 He communicated with them.

00:29:18.940 They communicated with him.

00:29:20.040 He had,

00:29:20.640 you know,

00:29:20.840 the problem is the word fairies.

00:29:22.400 I think,

00:29:22.800 Brett,

00:29:23.420 I,

00:29:24.160 I like the word elemental beings,

00:29:26.420 but you know,

00:29:27.140 every single culture throughout history up and through modernity,

00:29:33.260 has had these experiences.

00:29:35.260 And he was living in a time when they certainly the,

00:29:41.940 his rural neighbors,

00:29:43.700 his uneducated neighbors were steeped in this.

00:29:46.740 They,

00:29:47.040 they had those experiences too.

00:29:48.780 And they weren't afraid to speak of them.

00:29:50.580 In fact,

00:29:50.860 they were very central to their,

00:29:52.720 to their lives,

00:29:53.700 but educated people were increasingly not supposed to talk about that.

00:30:00.920 And,

00:30:01.120 you know,

00:30:01.800 so my own,

00:30:02.480 what I think was the central discovery,

00:30:05.920 here's how it happened.

00:30:07.660 Uh,

00:30:07.780 you know,

00:30:08.140 I,

00:30:08.700 what I did when I was,

00:30:10.540 when I was given the task,

00:30:11.820 uh,

00:30:12.400 to write a biography with Thoreau,

00:30:13.960 I,

00:30:14.120 I elected to write this book,

00:30:16.900 being invited to write about any environmentalist of my choosing.

00:30:19.960 So I chose my own boyhood hero,

00:30:22.680 uh,

00:30:23.400 Henry.

00:30:24.040 And when I opened,

00:30:25.900 I thought the first thing I'm going to do is going to read his journal.

00:30:29.140 I thought that was,

00:30:30.400 would be the most immediate way to put myself in his shoes,

00:30:33.680 not by the essays and not certainly not by the books that I had read and fallen in love with,

00:30:39.660 but just,

00:30:40.220 just to go to the journals.

00:30:41.740 And at the very beginning of his journal,

00:30:44.600 he tells this little story about being out with his brother walking.

00:30:48.560 And it happened about six weeks before he wrote about it in his journal.

00:30:53.600 He said,

00:30:53.900 a curious thing happened the other day.

00:30:55.840 And here he was six weeks later and it was,

00:30:57.840 it was bugging him.

00:30:59.240 He didn't understand it,

00:31:00.360 that he was out on this walk and he,

00:31:02.780 uh,

00:31:03.740 was making a little rhetorical flourish about Tha Tawin,

00:31:07.080 the,

00:31:07.260 uh,

00:31:07.680 the Wampanoag chief then locally.

00:31:09.900 And he said,

00:31:10.660 there stood Tha Tawin's hut.

00:31:12.940 And here is Tha Tawin's hour head.

00:31:15.760 And he reaches down for this stone and he picks up the stone.

00:31:18.580 And when he flourishes it to his brother,

00:31:20.360 John,

00:31:20.720 he's looking at a perfectly shaped arrowhead.

00:31:24.020 So he tells this little story.

00:31:25.620 It's the,

00:31:25.860 it's the first story in his whole journal of two million words.

00:31:29.020 First time he actually tells a personal story.

00:31:31.380 And he says,

00:31:32.220 you know,

00:31:32.440 this basically saying,

00:31:33.860 you know,

00:31:35.420 what,

00:31:36.000 how did that happen?

00:31:37.440 He,

00:31:37.720 he,

00:31:37.980 he,

00:31:38.280 he,

00:31:38.580 he intuits that he had a thought and then his thought became manifest.

00:31:43.540 And it was a magical action and he doesn't have an explanation for it.

00:31:48.840 Well,

00:31:49.240 I've had lots of things like that happen to me in my life.

00:31:51.660 And I was similarly mystified.

00:31:54.100 What the heck is going on?

00:31:55.860 You know,

00:31:56.160 and you can't turn to anybody.

00:31:58.700 You know,

00:31:58.880 there's nobody who can explain it for you.

00:32:00.760 You basically have to just pay attention to your own life and start studying it.

00:32:04.840 And then you'll find the answer.

00:32:07.460 You know,

00:32:07.600 that's what,

00:32:08.100 that's what living in a disenchanted age will do.

00:32:11.040 And so lo and behold,

00:32:13.900 you know,

00:32:14.540 having him caught my attention because I had a similar question in my mind when I found,

00:32:21.280 you know,

00:32:21.520 I began to find these poems where he's basically secretly divulging his relationship with these beings.

00:32:30.740 You know,

00:32:31.420 I could completely under,

00:32:32.940 I could hear,

00:32:33.580 I could hear them because I had,

00:32:36.160 I had come through the same mystery.

00:32:38.080 I'd come through the same path.

00:32:40.780 And,

00:32:41.560 you know,

00:32:42.620 it's a,

00:32:43.060 it's a pretty solitary path in the modern world.

00:32:46.860 Right.

00:32:47.040 Because I think the explanation that we would give like,

00:32:49.320 well,

00:32:49.420 that was just a coincidence.

00:32:50.680 Right.

00:32:51.200 And,

00:32:51.720 you know,

00:32:52.060 I have a little book I wrote called How Things Find Us.

00:32:55.380 That is,

00:32:56.420 is my explanation that everybody I talk to,

00:33:02.020 eventually I can,

00:33:03.360 I can get them,

00:33:04.920 even if they think they haven't had elemental beings working for them.

00:33:09.920 I can get them to tell me a story that,

00:33:11.960 you know,

00:33:12.160 where things were,

00:33:13.460 and they use this word synchronicity.

00:33:16.120 You know,

00:33:16.760 Carl Jung's word.

00:33:18.720 It's a complete black box.

00:33:20.900 Synchronicity is a,

00:33:22.060 it's a faint.

00:33:22.980 It's a,

00:33:23.520 it's not a helpful explanation.

00:33:25.260 It's a non-explanation.

00:33:26.400 It's a way of a materialist mindset using a Greek word that sounds scientific.

00:33:32.360 It means absolutely nothing.

00:33:34.360 It's actually a tautology.

00:33:36.260 We are afraid in the modern world to talk about beings,

00:33:40.440 about spiritual beings,

00:33:42.080 you know,

00:33:42.780 and that's the last frontier.

00:33:45.300 Until we,

00:33:46.040 until we begin abandoning this insipid language,

00:33:49.820 this new age language of,

00:33:51.200 of energy and forces and talk about beings.

00:33:55.660 We're doomed.

00:33:56.340 I think we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

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00:35:52.660 As I was reading about his,

00:35:55.020 you know,

00:35:55.440 his conception of these beings reminded me,

00:35:57.340 it's very Roman,

00:35:58.240 very Greek.

00:35:58.800 Like the Romans believed in a genius that everyone was assigned or the,

00:36:02.060 the Greeks,

00:36:02.820 the diamonds,

00:36:03.740 the,

00:36:03.900 you know,

00:36:04.560 demons,

00:36:05.120 I guess,

00:36:05.420 or like,

00:36:05.960 but like good demons.

00:36:06.880 Like they're a little,

00:36:07.300 like they're kind of like the,

00:36:08.860 they're that like help you inspire you,

00:36:10.660 muses,

00:36:11.260 et cetera.

00:36:11.580 Yeah.

00:36:12.140 And they were,

00:36:12.980 they were close enough.

00:36:15.680 Look,

00:36:16.220 you know,

00:36:16.380 the average,

00:36:17.100 all the,

00:36:17.500 all those Harvard undergrads,

00:36:19.460 you know,

00:36:19.880 Emerson's generation,

00:36:21.140 Thoreau's both,

00:36:21.880 and maybe a generation after him,

00:36:23.760 they all had to read the ancients.

00:36:25.840 They had to read them in the original Greek and Latin,

00:36:27.860 you know,

00:36:28.120 and,

00:36:29.060 and it brought them very close to that world.

00:36:32.680 You know,

00:36:33.640 Nathaniel Hawthorne,

00:36:34.680 their,

00:36:34.840 their peer,

00:36:35.480 their peer,

00:36:36.320 you know,

00:36:36.660 his undergraduate pen name was Oberon,

00:36:39.260 the King of the Fairies,

00:36:40.540 you know,

00:36:41.300 Louisa May Alcott,

00:36:43.280 you know,

00:36:43.860 she wrote a fairy books for the,

00:36:46.440 for the kids.

00:36:47.480 They were all steeped in that world.

00:36:49.300 And when they,

00:36:51.000 when they went over the border from childhood to adulthood,

00:36:54.760 they didn't give it up easily because they were still,

00:36:58.120 they're still kind of close to a kind of sense of that.

00:37:03.400 These were,

00:37:04.040 these were relationships.

00:37:05.320 They weren't imagined,

00:37:06.520 but they were,

00:37:07.140 they were real.

00:37:08.180 And I think that that's really the,

00:37:10.900 you know,

00:37:11.140 this is the,

00:37:11.900 what's the greatest diagnostic of this,

00:37:15.820 that,

00:37:16.100 that Harry Potter is the biggest publishing phenomenon of all time.

00:37:21.720 Kids,

00:37:22.520 kids are magical beings.

00:37:24.040 Children are magical beings.

00:37:25.720 They,

00:37:25.980 they come into the world,

00:37:28.120 to do magic and to be magical.

00:37:30.940 And then unfortunately we've presented them a muggle,

00:37:34.900 a muggle world.

00:37:36.240 You know,

00:37:36.820 the,

00:37:37.500 the unfortunate thing is that it was presented as a fiction and that JK Rowling

00:37:42.140 herself doesn't actually understand magic,

00:37:45.120 doesn't understand the principles.

00:37:46.200 you know,

00:37:47.200 if I were to,

00:37:48.020 if I were to,

00:37:48.200 if I were to set up my,

00:37:51.000 my ideal university,

00:37:52.760 my Hogwarts,

00:37:53.980 I'd start kids out with,

00:37:55.640 with,

00:37:55.940 with Walden and with Thoreau.

00:37:59.020 He's,

00:37:59.860 he knows the flora and the fauna backwards and forwards as well as anybody could.

00:38:03.720 He is as grounded in the phenomenal world in a rooted and real way as,

00:38:11.100 he's a better naturalist than any naturalist that's out there today and discovered more laws and principles than,

00:38:18.840 you know,

00:38:19.800 your EO Wilson or any of these other characters.

00:38:23.500 And he,

00:38:24.820 he also understood that thoughts are things thoughts influence the world.

00:38:29.540 And that's the essence of magical,

00:38:31.680 a magical,

00:38:32.340 uh,

00:38:32.760 worldview.

00:38:33.640 Yeah.

00:38:33.780 And this reminds me a lot of,

00:38:35.020 uh,

00:38:35.220 we've had a guest on talking about CS Lewis and Tolkien and their inkblot society.

00:38:41.440 And like,

00:38:42.020 they were writing about the same type,

00:38:43.580 like fairy,

00:38:44.100 like that was the thing they talked about.

00:38:46.180 And like Tolkien's sole object with the,

00:38:50.060 the Lord of the Rings was to reintroduce,

00:38:52.660 enchant the world.

00:38:53.840 Like they,

00:38:54.320 both these guys saw,

00:38:55.240 you know,

00:38:55.360 they saw the horrors of world war one of mechanized warfare,

00:38:57.760 what it did to the environment.

00:38:58.940 And Tolkien wanted to create this world,

00:39:01.800 the middle earth where it wasn't like that.

00:39:04.460 And like,

00:39:04.900 you could sculpt your world in a way that's idealistic and romantic.

00:39:11.220 And,

00:39:11.240 uh,

00:39:12.480 absolutely Brett.

00:39:14.540 And again,

00:39:15.880 I may be completely talking out of my hat here,

00:39:18.020 but so if you think about the inklings in the twenties and,

00:39:22.200 you know,

00:39:23.360 in,

00:39:23.600 in between the wars and they were educated enough and living close to the

00:39:31.700 land enough,

00:39:32.580 um,

00:39:33.760 in a pre-digital age that through the literary imagination,

00:39:40.080 uh,

00:39:41.640 they were,

00:39:42.320 they were basically creating worlds,

00:39:45.080 right?

00:39:45.400 The problem has been that the 21st century has taken these creations and they've turned

00:39:55.020 them into virtual realities,

00:39:56.500 right?

00:39:56.880 So that young and old are entering them as substitutes for developing the relationships.

00:40:06.940 Whereas a hundred years ago,

00:40:08.660 I think they were portals.

00:40:10.860 And even maybe when I was,

00:40:12.720 uh,

00:40:13.740 you know,

00:40:14.060 when I was a teenager and I was first reading the Lord of the Rings,

00:40:17.300 you know,

00:40:18.100 decades after it had been written,

00:40:20.400 but in the milieu of the late sixties,

00:40:23.300 early seventies,

00:40:24.200 there was the possibility of that re-enchantment that you're speaking of.

00:40:30.980 But now we have these cinematic and highly pixelated simulacra that present themselves as they're,

00:40:44.740 they're wonderfully rich and inviting landscapes for the imagination,

00:40:50.600 but they don't do,

00:40:52.900 I think what,

00:40:53.540 what Tolkien and,

00:40:55.440 and Charles Williams and,

00:40:57.420 you know,

00:40:58.440 C.S.

00:40:58.780 Lewis were doing,

00:40:59.620 which was they were doing like what Thoreau was doing with Walden.

00:41:04.000 They were,

00:41:04.760 they were trying to,

00:41:06.180 to paint pictures with words that invited people into the spiritual world.

00:41:13.320 And in a way,

00:41:16.720 the world of Hollywood is a spiritual world.

00:41:19.660 It's been generated from human beings,

00:41:22.560 from their imagination.

00:41:24.440 But I,

00:41:25.500 I feel it's a fallen spiritual world that what Thoreau offered and that era between,

00:41:32.360 um,

00:41:33.660 uh,

00:41:34.000 let's say between 1800 and 1850,

00:41:37.420 that romantic era,

00:41:39.360 it,

00:41:40.320 there was a possibility for a difference,

00:41:42.280 natural science,

00:41:44.000 a different way,

00:41:46.240 which would honor actual beings that by,

00:41:50.340 by opening up to them as an,

00:41:53.380 and inviting conversation with them,

00:41:55.520 then one could build and restore and redeem nature in a way that now we stand largely out of it.

00:42:03.240 We don't have a conversation with it.

00:42:04.820 We have a,

00:42:05.860 with the beings of nature,

00:42:07.340 um,

00:42:08.360 we have a kind of reductive analytical relationship.

00:42:11.780 We have an extremely reductive science,

00:42:14.180 and then we have an extremely,

00:42:15.800 a sort of luciferic,

00:42:18.560 imaginative dream life that is,

00:42:22.260 is given digital expression.

00:42:25.380 And in between,

00:42:27.220 we need to bring the human heart into conversation with the beings,

00:42:31.500 because our children still,

00:42:32.860 our children more than ever are having relationships with these beings,

00:42:35.800 and we got to wake up to it.

00:42:37.020 Let's talk about what exactly Thoreau did to commune or his,

00:42:42.600 because like,

00:42:43.280 as you said,

00:42:43.820 Americans aren't like contemplatives in say Europe,

00:42:47.180 where they,

00:42:47.760 you know,

00:42:47.940 go to a monastery and they're just sitting there meditating.

00:42:51.580 Ours is more,

00:42:52.720 it's outward turning.

00:42:53.660 So what sort of outward meditations did Thoreau take part in where he got these insights,

00:42:59.980 but not only was he doing,

00:43:01.240 getting those insights about the spiritual life,

00:43:02.840 like he was getting incredible insights about just the natural world and how it worked.

00:43:08.280 Yeah,

00:43:08.680 it was,

00:43:10.000 you know,

00:43:10.220 I hate to be,

00:43:11.200 I hate to oversimplify,

00:43:12.760 but it was close observation.

00:43:14.840 It was faithful,

00:43:18.320 repetitive observation.

00:43:21.560 His method,

00:43:22.920 if he had any method,

00:43:24.880 it was describe,

00:43:27.820 describe again,

00:43:28.720 and describe a third time.

00:43:31.660 And out of that description would emerge an answer to a mystery.

00:43:38.680 So,

00:43:39.360 you know,

00:43:39.720 let's,

00:43:40.520 the,

00:43:40.720 the most spectacular and,

00:43:42.940 and delightful example is,

00:43:45.360 is Walden Pond.

00:43:47.640 You know,

00:43:47.940 I think every kid who grows up in the suburbs in America grows up with places that are supposed to be unfathomable.

00:43:56.200 You know,

00:43:56.880 it's where the boogeyman lives or,

00:43:59.000 you know,

00:43:59.480 there's something,

00:44:00.500 something that the whole community feels like there be dragons,

00:44:05.600 even in this disenchanted age.

00:44:07.760 And for him and,

00:44:09.060 and conquered Walden Pond was supposed to be bottomless.

00:44:13.820 And just think of this,

00:44:15.320 you think of this as a gesture that generation after generation grows up with this,

00:44:21.660 you know,

00:44:22.700 hearsay that Walden Pond is bottomless.

00:44:26.880 And,

00:44:27.440 you know,

00:44:27.700 once he's built his cabin on Emerson's land out there and spent his two years,

00:44:31.760 the first winter he goes out with a plumb bob and a line,

00:44:35.480 and he drills a couple of hundred holes in the pond.

00:44:38.760 And not only does he discover that it ain't bottomless,

00:44:42.660 and that you can map out the cartography of the bottom of Walden Pond,

00:44:48.400 but he discovers a law.

00:44:51.620 He discovers that the intersection of the shortest dimension across the pond and the longest dimension of the pond will be its deepest place.

00:45:01.360 And then geologists and other observers after him discovered that this is a,

00:45:06.580 this is a general law.

00:45:08.060 He didn't go out looking to discover a general law.

00:45:11.360 He went out to answer a local mystery.

00:45:14.440 And by measurement,

00:45:15.780 he found the answer.

00:45:17.460 And the answer actually opened out to a general law.

00:45:21.260 This is a deep lesson for us that live in a world of abstraction and theory.

00:45:26.480 If we would just pay attention and just make repeated observations,

00:45:31.120 we could turn natural science inside out.

00:45:33.860 That was sort of the interesting,

00:45:35.620 I don't know what you call it,

00:45:36.400 a paradox,

00:45:36.760 because,

00:45:37.220 you know,

00:45:37.300 as you read Thoreau's writing,

00:45:39.320 it's very romantic,

00:45:40.280 very spiritual.

00:45:41.620 But at the same time,

00:45:43.360 he wasn't,

00:45:44.440 he wasn't a humbug.

00:45:45.640 I wouldn't call him that,

00:45:46.260 but like,

00:45:46.800 he wanted to really know how the world worked.

00:45:49.220 He didn't,

00:45:49.500 he wasn't,

00:45:50.160 he wanted his spiritual life to be based in reality.

00:45:53.260 Would that be a fair way to describe it?

00:45:54.900 Like,

00:45:55.080 he didn't want to,

00:45:57.140 because I did that perfect example right there.

00:45:58.800 If he was just a complete,

00:45:59.880 you know,

00:46:00.440 romantic,

00:46:00.920 he would go along with,

00:46:01.840 oh yeah,

00:46:02.400 Walden Pond is bottomless,

00:46:04.080 but he's like,

00:46:04.420 no,

00:46:04.560 I'm going to actually find out what's going on here.

00:46:06.760 No,

00:46:07.400 I mean,

00:46:08.380 I wish I had all of the quotes at my tongue,

00:46:13.160 but in this,

00:46:14.220 you know,

00:46:14.520 in this seemingly new world of fake news,

00:46:17.040 right,

00:46:18.080 shams and delusions are deemed,

00:46:21.040 you know,

00:46:21.300 that,

00:46:21.740 that his era was paying attention to shams and delusions and that the actual,

00:46:29.220 the actual,

00:46:30.820 you know,

00:46:31.060 put your foot,

00:46:32.300 his,

00:46:32.480 his,

00:46:32.940 his philosophy was put your foot through the shams and delusions and touch bottom.

00:46:37.480 The bottom is always there.

00:46:40.740 You just bring your soul forces to bear on it and you will discover the fact behind the illusion.

00:46:46.560 It's,

00:46:47.000 it's that simple.

00:46:48.580 So,

00:46:49.900 he never failed to,

00:46:51.920 to practice that.

00:46:53.720 And I think that he lived in a kind of,

00:46:56.340 there was a certain explosion of,

00:47:00.080 of,

00:47:00.780 of a lot of illusion at that time.

00:47:04.060 They put him at odds with,

00:47:06.200 with his fellow,

00:47:07.860 with his,

00:47:08.440 both his neighbors and,

00:47:09.880 and certainly as a,

00:47:11.800 as a philosopher,

00:47:13.940 you know,

00:47:14.220 he was,

00:47:14.780 he was a great wordsmith and what love wordplay.

00:47:20.120 And most,

00:47:21.800 most of his greatest revelations are kind of hidden between the lines.

00:47:25.900 So he was,

00:47:27.120 he was using,

00:47:28.260 in a sense,

00:47:29.020 he was using the oldest rhetorical craft in the book,

00:47:32.520 which was to make the reader work,

00:47:37.900 make the reader discover the truths,

00:47:41.900 not make them,

00:47:42.920 but invite the reader into the kind of play that he had.

00:47:48.220 And with both in the world and his observational practice and in his science,

00:47:53.720 and in the way he worked as a literary person,

00:47:57.040 it really put him at odds,

00:47:58.540 which was more his,

00:48:01.180 the,

00:48:01.320 the mainstream was to,

00:48:03.420 to dazzle and to not to illumine,

00:48:07.260 but to falsely illumine very much his entire,

00:48:12.060 I think,

00:48:12.280 and this is why he's,

00:48:13.340 he'll be universal is that he got to the,

00:48:16.480 the truth in a timeless fashion,

00:48:19.420 not through theory,

00:48:20.960 but through observation.

00:48:22.600 And the way he observed,

00:48:23.740 I mean,

00:48:23.880 that's people think,

00:48:24.800 well,

00:48:24.840 that's really easy.

00:48:25.560 No,

00:48:25.740 it was really hard work.

00:48:26.660 Like I'm,

00:48:27.180 I think I read encountered one thing where he'd like,

00:48:29.340 just stare and look at a tree or a pond for 10 hours.

00:48:34.480 Like he just sitting there looking and,

00:48:38.160 you know,

00:48:38.260 to me living in the 21st century where my brain has been destroyed by all this

00:48:42.020 distraction,

00:48:42.720 like that just seems like really hard to do.

00:48:46.440 Really,

00:48:47.000 really,

00:48:47.440 really hard to do.

00:48:48.740 And,

00:48:48.980 you know,

00:48:50.380 to historians love counterfactual arguments.

00:48:53.440 They love to,

00:48:54.560 you know,

00:48:55.660 if,

00:48:56.180 to,

00:48:57.020 to put some counter scenario into the past and then run it forward in time.

00:49:03.460 And,

00:49:04.120 you know,

00:49:04.860 I studied science before I became a historian and,

00:49:07.580 and practice science and,

00:49:09.040 and taught science.

00:49:10.300 And in a way,

00:49:12.540 I feel like there was an alternative natural science fully efflorescing in,

00:49:21.120 in that antebellum era,

00:49:22.980 both in Europe and in the United States.

00:49:25.500 And it certainly was in those places.

00:49:27.320 It wasn't anywhere on any other,

00:49:29.240 you know,

00:49:29.500 any other place in the world where it was,

00:49:31.760 was being developed.

00:49:34.560 And it could have been what I,

00:49:39.260 when I went to school,

00:49:41.080 when I took biology and I took physics,

00:49:43.560 that could have been my pedagogy.

00:49:45.520 It could have been your pedagogy and it would have been our children's.

00:49:48.940 And unfortunately it's rarely,

00:49:53.860 it's very,

00:49:54.840 very difficult to find a phenomenological scientific practice.

00:50:00.360 Besides the,

00:50:01.120 the observation,

00:50:02.240 the intense observation you talk about,

00:50:04.080 oftentimes we think of Thoreau as just sort of this guy that hung out by a

00:50:06.520 cabin,

00:50:06.860 but he was a really hardy guy.

00:50:08.580 Like I was amazed at some of the walks he would go on.

00:50:11.220 Like we think of a walk,

00:50:12.400 like I'm,

00:50:12.680 it's around the block.

00:50:13.400 It's a mile.

00:50:14.220 Like he would go on 20 mile hikes basically to get to someplace.

00:50:18.280 He wouldn't go by horse or carriage.

00:50:19.940 He would just,

00:50:20.460 he would walk there if he needed to get someplace.

00:50:22.160 And like along the way he was making observations as well.

00:50:25.940 Yeah.

00:50:26.460 I mean,

00:50:26.780 it was a,

00:50:27.380 it was a habit with him.

00:50:30.080 I think that he,

00:50:31.460 he knew very on the early on the deep pleasure of just the rhythm of,

00:50:36.660 of simple walking.

00:50:37.700 And he also knew in that era that the rewards of walking were immense,

00:50:46.720 that you encountered things that you,

00:50:49.820 you couldn't encounter on horseback or certainly on the,

00:50:53.300 on the railroad.

00:50:55.300 And yeah,

00:50:56.440 I don't,

00:50:56.800 I think that in a way,

00:50:58.280 if you think about whether it was on Cape Cod or in Maine or,

00:51:04.020 you know,

00:51:04.840 walking to Fitchburg or,

00:51:06.680 or walking.

00:51:09.040 Here's,

00:51:09.600 here's the thing.

00:51:10.240 When he was 17,

00:51:12.280 18 years old,

00:51:13.160 if he had a deep question and he thought that he might find the answer in

00:51:18.160 the library at Harvard,

00:51:19.680 he'd walked,

00:51:20.460 he'd walk to Cambridge from Concord.

00:51:24.960 Just think of that.

00:51:27.080 Forgive me.

00:51:27.780 I got,

00:51:28.080 I just got to tell a story.

00:51:29.180 I remember when my daughter was like,

00:51:31.420 I don't know,

00:51:31.900 nine years old and we were,

00:51:35.240 this was up in Vermont and we lived on a,

00:51:37.240 on this long dirt road.

00:51:39.100 And I had told her we were doing the shopping and I told her,

00:51:42.960 you can't have any candy.

00:51:44.740 You know,

00:51:44.960 the kids are always reaching for the candy.

00:51:47.400 And sure enough,

00:51:49.100 she wanted the candy in the checkout line.

00:51:50.580 I said,

00:51:50.740 okay,

00:51:50.960 but you cannot have it,

00:51:52.560 you know,

00:51:53.260 till tomorrow or whatever.

00:51:55.080 And sure enough,

00:51:55.780 we're in the car driving home and she reaches back and she gets the,

00:51:58.460 so I take it and I throw it out the window.

00:52:01.160 This is a little kid,

00:52:02.120 tiny little legs.

00:52:03.080 We pull into,

00:52:03.980 you know,

00:52:04.280 at home and she walks a half a mile and goes into the swamp and finds it,

00:52:08.520 you know,

00:52:08.760 brings it back.

00:52:10.480 That kind of,

00:52:11.520 that incredible determination a kid can have.

00:52:14.600 So now think of a 17,

00:52:16.220 18 year old Thoreau.

00:52:17.060 He has a question and he walks to Cambridge to the library at Harvard to,

00:52:21.000 to help answer the question.

00:52:22.560 And he'd never lost that.

00:52:23.920 If he had a question,

00:52:25.640 yeah,

00:52:26.080 he,

00:52:26.320 he would walk there to,

00:52:27.520 to get the answer.

00:52:29.140 And,

00:52:29.360 and so it was a habit that he developed early.

00:52:32.780 And,

00:52:33.260 um,

00:52:33.840 it's a beautiful habit.

00:52:34.960 It's a,

00:52:35.360 it's a timeless habit.

00:52:36.380 It's,

00:52:36.680 it's one that,

00:52:37.940 you know,

00:52:38.380 I,

00:52:39.140 in a way,

00:52:40.140 if I were to say how,

00:52:41.300 how Henry gave me a model for my life,

00:52:44.860 I've,

00:52:45.320 I've been walking places to answer questions my whole life.

00:52:48.380 I,

00:52:49.160 instead of doing a book tour for this biography,

00:52:51.700 I,

00:52:52.040 I walked from the foot of Broadway up to,

00:52:55.060 up to Walden Pond and then wrote a book about it.

00:52:58.200 you know,

00:52:59.300 so like this man has made a deep impact on me.

00:53:02.580 That's for sure.

00:53:03.720 Yeah.

00:53:03.960 I think there's something about walking.

00:53:05.600 We've written about this on the,

00:53:06.660 the website.

00:53:08.000 There's a Latin phrase,

00:53:09.340 solvitare abilando is solved by walking.

00:53:12.700 Beautiful.

00:53:13.420 Beautiful.

00:53:13.780 Amazing.

00:53:14.400 Whenever you go on a good walk,

00:53:15.660 what,

00:53:15.940 what sorts of ideas you get that you don't get when you're driving in a car or in

00:53:19.740 the shower.

00:53:20.700 It seems like,

00:53:21.700 I'm sure like I'm throwing when he was going to Harvard,

00:53:23.780 walking to Harvard,

00:53:24.300 I'm sure he was coming up with answers even while he was walking.

00:53:27.420 And then he found some insight.

00:53:29.460 And on the way back,

00:53:30.740 the walk allowed him to digest that and even gain even more insight.

00:53:36.880 Yeah.

00:53:37.140 And,

00:53:37.700 and I would say,

00:53:38.720 Brett,

00:53:38.980 that,

00:53:39.300 you know,

00:53:39.800 I used to,

00:53:40.300 I walked from one time from,

00:53:41.680 from Montreal to Manhattan and I,

00:53:44.780 I did programs at schools along the way.

00:53:47.260 And I would tell the kids,

00:53:48.600 because people would ask me,

00:53:49.900 can I walk with you?

00:53:50.700 And I said,

00:53:51.080 sure.

00:53:51.840 You know,

00:53:52.180 I'd go for a 10 mile,

00:53:53.640 you know,

00:53:53.800 somebody joined me for 10 miles or something.

00:53:55.440 And when they,

00:53:57.040 when we parted,

00:53:57.800 we would have the bosom friendship,

00:54:00.600 a bosom love that was quite intense for a short period of time,

00:54:04.780 you know?

00:54:05.620 So I would say to the teenager,

00:54:07.320 I say,

00:54:07.740 you know,

00:54:08.100 do me,

00:54:08.500 do yourself a favor this summer and take a long walk with a stranger and

00:54:12.660 then let them become a bosom friend.

00:54:15.720 And I think what I missed until I started to say this to you just now is that is,

00:54:22.360 that is also the way to cultivate a relationship with a spiritual world.

00:54:27.100 It,

00:54:27.660 it creates a,

00:54:29.260 a deep,

00:54:30.200 deep bond that,

00:54:31.740 that is a,

00:54:32.220 it's a very simple practice.

00:54:34.580 It's a very simple practice and one that,

00:54:36.560 that yields immense results.

00:54:38.060 I think.

00:54:38.960 We haven't really talked about Emerson and the other transcendentalist and Thoreau's

00:54:43.120 relationship with him.

00:54:43.920 We ought,

00:54:44.140 we know that Thoreau had a really intense relationship with Emerson.

00:54:47.120 He lived with him and his family for a bit,

00:54:49.960 lived on Walden Pond,

00:54:51.280 but as you described in the book,

00:54:53.240 it seemed as the men,

00:54:54.720 as these men got older,

00:54:56.820 they,

00:54:57.020 there was sort of an estrangement.

00:54:58.600 Like Emerson went one way,

00:55:00.320 Thoreau went another.

00:55:01.620 It often seemed that the other transcendentalists that they worked with,

00:55:05.340 like they didn't really get Thoreau.

00:55:08.180 I mean,

00:55:08.840 what,

00:55:09.060 what,

00:55:09.280 how was Thoreau different from these other guys and what,

00:55:11.840 why did these other guys didn't totally accept or,

00:55:15.940 or just,

00:55:16.440 yeah,

00:55:16.600 understand what Thoreau was doing?

00:55:17.940 Yeah.

00:55:19.160 It's,

00:55:19.880 it's a deep tragedy.

00:55:23.400 Really.

00:55:24.180 He had a capacity for friendship that was immense,

00:55:28.160 immense.

00:55:29.440 And we have this,

00:55:30.680 we have this caricature view of him today that he was a misanthrope.

00:55:35.520 Right.

00:55:35.680 And it's,

00:55:36.940 it's still,

00:55:37.840 it still hangs on.

00:55:39.700 And I,

00:55:40.800 I'd hate to see it,

00:55:42.880 say it was just,

00:55:44.740 you know,

00:55:45.460 that traditionally is described as,

00:55:48.100 well,

00:55:48.800 Emerson was disappointed that Thoreau did not become that great,

00:55:52.860 uh,

00:55:53.720 bard that,

00:55:55.220 you know,

00:55:56.040 Emerson,

00:55:56.640 Emerson himself,

00:55:58.620 you know,

00:55:59.380 you always have this generational thing where,

00:56:01.300 a great man wants to see his own boyhood or,

00:56:06.520 you know,

00:56:06.680 youthful dreams fulfilled in another as he's maturing into his own path.

00:56:12.520 You know,

00:56:12.840 it's,

00:56:13.140 it's odd with Emerson because Emerson right at the cusp at age 30,

00:56:19.260 which is a very,

00:56:20.320 very pivotal biographical year in any,

00:56:23.820 anyone's life.

00:56:24.640 You know,

00:56:25.260 Emerson had had this mystical vision at,

00:56:28.380 at the Jardin des Plains in,

00:56:30.040 in Paris where he said,

00:56:32.340 I will become a naturalist.

00:56:33.760 And,

00:56:34.060 you know,

00:56:34.560 this was a turning of the back on,

00:56:36.100 on theology on becoming a Unitarian divine,

00:56:39.320 like was expected of him.

00:56:41.560 And of course,

00:56:42.660 no,

00:56:43.020 he didn't become a great naturalist.

00:56:44.800 It was Thoreau became a great naturalist.

00:56:46.860 And I would say that his own poetic aspirations,

00:56:50.920 you know,

00:56:51.440 Emerson wrote some pretty good poetry,

00:56:52.760 but you just take one,

00:56:54.640 any,

00:56:54.920 any one of,

00:56:55.720 of Emerson's best known poems and then take any Thoreau poem,

00:57:00.580 which are completely unknown.

00:57:02.280 And Thoreau's are the better,

00:57:03.460 you know,

00:57:03.680 Thoreau's are modern.

00:57:04.640 They're,

00:57:04.800 they're sprightly and,

00:57:06.080 and full of force.

00:57:08.020 So Thoreau,

00:57:09.080 both poetically and in terms of being a naturalist,

00:57:12.100 he did,

00:57:12.760 I believe,

00:57:13.920 completely fulfill these,

00:57:16.740 these prophetic and deeply held Emersonian desires.

00:57:20.960 I think it was just that Emerson kind of became victim to a kind of bourgeois

00:57:28.700 expectations.

00:57:30.600 You know,

00:57:30.740 he was a guy who moved in,

00:57:32.160 in somewhat aristocratic,

00:57:34.620 intellectual and social circles.

00:57:36.680 And Henry was a ne'er-do-well.

00:57:39.220 Henry was a guy who went naked,

00:57:40.840 you know,

00:57:41.640 and wore his straw hat,

00:57:43.460 went in the buff across Concord River and the Acid River and,

00:57:46.680 and was still collecting frogs,

00:57:49.700 you know,

00:57:49.920 when he was a grown man.

00:57:52.060 Thoreau remained childlike and spirit in a way that his,

00:57:57.420 Emerson's own children and the children of Concord knew instantly and responded to instinctively.

00:58:02.420 And,

00:58:04.020 you know,

00:58:06.060 I,

00:58:06.580 this is something we,

00:58:08.180 is true today.

00:58:09.720 The child man will always end up being the,

00:58:13.020 the kind of,

00:58:16.280 he will not be looked upon kindly by,

00:58:19.820 by any community just because of our own sort of bourgeois ideals about what it is to be a man.

00:58:26.500 I mean,

00:58:26.760 here we're coming to the heart of your,

00:58:29.600 you know,

00:58:31.200 a theme of,

00:58:32.720 of your,

00:58:33.420 of your work.

00:58:35.040 And,

00:58:35.400 you know,

00:58:37.020 we've,

00:58:37.320 we've grown in a lot of ways to,

00:58:39.460 to expand the ideal of,

00:58:41.640 of manhood.

00:58:43.060 I think Thoreau had an expanded,

00:58:46.420 a more expanded and a more divine manhood within him that exceeded the expectations of his time.

00:58:56.500 In a way that they just couldn't,

00:58:58.780 they couldn't take it in.

00:59:00.180 Well,

00:59:00.340 I mean,

00:59:00.640 so you've,

00:59:01.080 you've mentioned that,

00:59:01.920 you know,

00:59:02.320 after writing this biography,

00:59:03.700 you've changed,

00:59:04.940 you know,

00:59:05.220 when you go on walks,

00:59:06.720 the way you observe,

00:59:08.120 but I'm curious,

00:59:09.060 do you think it's possible for us moderns here living in our digital world to re-enchant and see the world like Thoreau did?

00:59:16.660 Or do you think the toothpaste is out of the bottle?

00:59:19.300 And there's no going back to,

00:59:22.260 to that.

00:59:23.640 Oh man.

00:59:25.320 Oh,

00:59:26.260 um,

00:59:26.900 there's no alternative.

00:59:30.000 We have to,

00:59:30.960 we have to.

00:59:32.640 And,

00:59:33.240 you know,

00:59:33.640 I would that there,

00:59:36.540 maybe,

00:59:36.920 maybe young people could tell me who for them,

00:59:41.440 you know,

00:59:42.040 is,

00:59:42.560 is fulfilling this role as a kind of model.

00:59:46.560 But maybe,

00:59:47.660 maybe we're,

00:59:48.240 we're post models at this point.

00:59:50.180 We have to be our own models.

00:59:52.080 And I do absolutely believe that every generation,

00:59:56.340 and particularly in America,

00:59:58.100 because we have such a karmic burden as the most technologically addicted and spreading illusions around the world.

01:00:07.500 And we,

01:00:09.020 we have the karmic responsibility to pioneer and practice faithfully.

01:00:17.480 And then if,

01:00:19.480 if so called to share with,

01:00:22.400 with others,

01:00:24.000 an enchanted science and one that,

01:00:27.500 that discovers,

01:00:29.720 rediscovers the reality of the elemental world,

01:00:32.400 the fairies that understands there's a relationship between the angelic world and,

01:00:39.140 and the elemental beings.

01:00:41.020 You know,

01:00:41.360 I,

01:00:41.500 I read Richard Powers,

01:00:42.680 The Overstory.

01:00:44.480 Have you read it?

01:00:45.660 I have not.

01:00:46.960 But,

01:00:47.360 you know,

01:00:47.560 it's,

01:00:47.820 it's a,

01:00:48.500 he's in it.

01:00:49.100 He's,

01:00:49.600 he's an incredibly gifted writer and it's a,

01:00:52.820 it's a beautiful book.

01:00:53.820 And,

01:00:54.380 and I think captures the,

01:00:59.800 captures in a sense,

01:01:01.140 your question in a,

01:01:02.460 in a novelistic fashion that for both my generation and,

01:01:07.000 and for,

01:01:07.520 for young people today that is,

01:01:09.880 would be very arresting.

01:01:12.640 And yet,

01:01:14.060 I,

01:01:15.100 as I read it,

01:01:16.020 I felt like,

01:01:17.240 you know,

01:01:17.560 for all of the,

01:01:18.560 it's a,

01:01:19.180 it's a,

01:01:19.540 it's a tragic story about dedicated activists seeking to give nature,

01:01:26.680 specifically trees standing,

01:01:28.920 you know,

01:01:29.160 to give those beings,

01:01:30.280 the being,

01:01:31.000 the trees as,

01:01:32.320 as individual beings,

01:01:34.780 a kind of ability to,

01:01:38.020 to hold sovereignty the way the human being does.

01:01:41.800 And,

01:01:42.340 it's going to be a,

01:01:44.020 a long time coming,

01:01:47.140 but I think children know,

01:01:49.060 I think every generation of children know,

01:01:51.620 know these things.

01:01:53.080 And,

01:01:53.740 we will,

01:01:55.040 you know,

01:01:55.380 we'll eventually come around to providing them the Hogwarts that they,

01:02:00.040 that they're asking for.

01:02:01.500 We have to,

01:02:02.120 nature is,

01:02:03.400 is,

01:02:03.820 is showing us that,

01:02:05.440 that we can't,

01:02:06.980 we can't go forward in the way we have in the past.

01:02:10.220 So,

01:02:10.760 it's,

01:02:10.940 it's totally possible.

01:02:12.300 And,

01:02:12.840 and I have to echo Henry's,

01:02:14.940 Henry's motto,

01:02:16.700 you know,

01:02:17.780 expect great things.

01:02:19.080 If we expect them,

01:02:20.420 they will come.

01:02:21.440 Believe me,

01:02:22.020 they will come.

01:02:23.360 Well,

01:02:23.440 Kevin,

01:02:23.680 this has been a great conversation.

01:02:25.140 Is there anywhere someone can go to find out more about your work?

01:02:27.680 Sure.

01:02:28.100 I'm,

01:02:28.600 drdan.com,

01:02:30.540 D-R-D-A-N-N.com.

01:02:33.340 And all my books are there,

01:02:34.740 and all my essays.

01:02:36.520 And,

01:02:36.660 yeah,

01:02:38.180 I invite people to look for,

01:02:40.340 in July 12th,

01:02:41.360 on Henry's 201st birthday,

01:02:43.540 Penguin's bringing out a book called The Road to Walden,

01:02:45.980 which is about my walk from a foot of Broadway up to Concord,

01:02:50.340 up to Walden Pond.

01:02:51.280 And my dialogue,

01:02:52.980 my inner dialogue with,

01:02:54.120 with Henry.

01:02:55.060 And it's been such a great opportunity to chat with you,

01:02:57.720 Brett.

01:02:57.860 I really appreciate it.

01:02:58.900 Well,

01:02:58.920 thank you so much time.

01:02:59.660 It's been a pleasure.

01:03:00.700 My guest today was Dr.

01:03:01.560 Kevin Dan.

01:03:02.200 He's the author of the book,

01:03:03.520 Expect Great Things,

01:03:04.720 The Life in Search of Henry David Thoreau.

01:03:06.740 You can find that on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.

01:03:09.020 You can also find out more information about his work at drdan.com.

01:03:12.360 And he's got a new book coming out in July about his walk to Walden.

01:03:16.360 It's from Manhattan to Walden Pond.

01:03:18.100 It's coming out July 12th.

01:03:19.280 It's called The Road to Walden.

01:03:20.420 So check that out if you are interested in that.

01:03:22.600 Also check out our show notes at AOM.IS

01:03:24.520 slash expectgreatthings where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

01:03:28.140 into this topic.

01:03:28.860 Well,

01:03:41.400 that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

01:03:44.120 For more manly tips and advice,

01:03:45.260 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.

01:03:47.960 And if you enjoy the show,

01:03:48.980 I appreciate it if you take a minute or two to give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.

01:03:52.040 Helps out a lot.

01:03:52.760 And if you've done that already,

01:03:53.700 please share the show with a friend or family member who you think gets something out of it

01:03:57.080 or they enjoy it,

01:03:57.940 that would really help us out a lot as well.

01:03:59.620 As always,

01:04:00.300 thank you for your continued support.

01:04:01.540 Until next time,

01:04:02.240 this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

01:04:04.200 And

01:04:06.140 have a great saying.

01:04:07.540 Thank you.

01:04:09.340 Bye.

01:04:10.920 Bye.

01:04:23.880 Bye.

01:04:24.640 Bye.

01:04:25.500 Bye.

01:04:26.020 Bye.

01:04:30.480 Bye.

The Art of Manliness - June 26, 2018

#417： Expect Great Things — The Mystical Life of Henry David Thoreau

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