4 - Political Asceticism

Summary

Thoreau’s perspective on time and its utility was contrarian in the context of New England society. Poking fun at forms of economic thinking in which work could not be sacrificed for leisure, Thoreau wrote, about his life at Walden: “There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands” (IV, 2). In this, he reversed a piece of economic wisdom common in the work ethic of the culture in which he lived – that work should always be the first priority, and that other ways of using time were only available if they could be “afforded.” As I discussed at the end of Chapter 2, the long, descriptive middle of the book puts forward another hypothesis.