Excerpt

Thoreau and Emerson are frauds! They may preach the idea of self-reliance, but do they go out and practice it, no they don’t. They should be out there living on their own like survivor man Les Stroud, but instead they are relying on others like some sort of Bear Grylls. Emerson was the worst of the two, as he didn’t even attempt to live on his own in nature. Thoreau went out to nature, but still made annual trips back to town, interacting with others, to pick up provisions. If they really believed that one has to rely on oneself to get farther in life, then they would have done exactly that and hunted for food themselves. Maybe build a bow and arrow out of a nice branch of a tree, or set some traps crafted from wood pulp.

A real transcendentalist wouldn’t chicken out of life alone after two years such as Thoreau did. A real transcendentalist would commit to the cause of self-reliance. Take Richard Proenneke for example, he lived in Twin Lakes, Alaska by himself for thirty years. He built a cabin by himself, he hunted for his own food and he didn’t speak to another human being for the entire time he was out there. The cabin he built was all natural resources, from the floorboards to the hinges on the door. Thoreau’s cabin was built from mainly outside resources that he brought out with him. Looking at a comparison of their two cabins, Proenneke’s was a log cabin with no windows and a moss roof for insulation, Thoreau’s had a window, a brick chimney, and a shingled roof. Building a cabin like Proenneke will keep you more in tune with nature.

If I were a transcendentalist, and I wanted to set an example for future followers, I would practice what I preached and go build my own cabin, hunt for my own food, and only ever rely on myself, and what God put on his great Earth. Sure I would love to believe in what Emerson and Thoreau tried to teach, but it makes it hard when they aren’t trying to prove that it is the proper and better way for a man to live.