Embedded Files
"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip."
"I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Awareness
Awareness
Thoreau has many a thought that he shares on being aware, or "awake." Interestingly enough, he spouts some anti-news rhetoric, over and over.
"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
- Walden
- Walden
As well as:
"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."
"I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day."
- "Life Without Principle"
- "Life Without Principle"
So, then, are we supposed to just stop watching the news? Put down our phones and never look at a headline ever again?
Not quite. Thoreau might suggest to stay away from the 24/7 news cycle. That is where the disconnect from your 'native region' comes from; however, Thoreau was a man of political action- he aided slaves through the Underground Railroad and famously refused to pay his taxes as a form of protest. Clearly, then, he cared about national news. What he chose to advocate for here was news of quality, rather than quantity.
In an age of 'fake news' and openly biased news sources, how is one supposed to find a news source to trust?
There are a few things one can do: check where your preferred station falls on Ad Fontes's Interactive Media Bias Chart; ask a local librarian for credible sites; if an article links to a source, check that source to see if it truly corroborates; read beyond the headlines, which are often designed to make you want to click, at whatever cost it takes; and, easily enough, check the date of publication! Articles that are a few years old are often cited as being a current event- unless it's providing further context on a developing situation, you might want to disregard that one.
Protest
Protest
Thoreau has had quite the domino effect on the concept of protest across the globe. To the right, you'll find a good summary of the way it's played out.
More interestingly, however, is a more contemporary question: is civil disobedience effective in our current society?
Erin Pineda, in partnership with Barnard College and Colombia University, did an investigation into civil disobedience politics and global resistance movements. Pineda notes that there has been a significant shift in the conversation around civil disobedience, especially since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020:
"I saw a lot more discussion about the dangers of the disciplining uses of the civil rights example and how it perpetuates racialized assumptions about who does and does not count as “civil,” “nonviolent,” or worthy of protection. I saw a larger, and more engaged, public debate over whether or not property destruction ought to be counted, automatically and without qualification or discussion, as a form of violence. As the protest unfolded in the context of COVID-19, I also saw more nuanced discussions on the forms of violence that don’t often get counted as violent — the forms of “organized abandonment,” as Ruth Wilson Gilmore puts it, that construct the conditions of vulnerability and deprivation routinely faced by marginalized and criminalized populations."
93% of BLM protests from May 24-August 22, 2020 were reported to be peaceful. According to surveys held by the NY Times, it may be the largest period of protest in the United States with 15 million - 26 million people; this is to say nothing of the 74 countries that had similar protests.
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