According to Thoreau, so many Americans felt a sense of “quiet desperation” because:
Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
The Mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation … A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. … Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.
… The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is … an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour …
… If we do not get our sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build the railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us.
According to Thoreau, so many Americans felt a sense of “quiet desperation” because:
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They worked stultifying jobs in order to acquire wealth and to purchase material things |
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A widening gulf between rich and poor led to jealousy and envy among city dwellers |
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An economic downturn left many men and women without jobs and no way to pay their bills |
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All of the above |
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