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Reform And The Reformers
''Reform and the Reformers'' is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau. The essay was never published in his lifetime, and has been cobbled together from existing lecture notes that Thoreau himself picked over for his other writings, such as '' Walden'' and '' A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers''. The essay reflects Thoreau's frustration with the multitude of reformersprohibitionists, utopian communists, free love advocates, religious revivalists, and the likewho were roaming about New England at the time hawking their prescriptions for a better world. Thoreau's audience in Boston were of the open-minded liberal varietypeople who were typically the most interested in and the most vulnerable to the charms of these reformersand so Thoreau begins his lecture slyly with a fairly superficial but probably sympathetic attack on the Reformer's great enemy: the Conservative. Further disarming his audience with a witticism or two, he then turns on them by spending the rest of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading Transcendentalism, transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay "Civil Disobedience (Thoreau), Civil Disobedience" (originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government"), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry amount to more than 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his nature writing, writings on natural history and philosophy, in which he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary language, literary style interweaves close observation of nature, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical Asceticism, austerity, and attent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walden
''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance. ''Walden'' details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near Walden Pond amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau makes precise scientific observations of nature as well as metaphorical and poetic uses of natural phenomena. He identifies many plants and animals by both their popular and scientific names, records in detail the color and clarity of different bodies of water, precisely dates and describes the freezing and thawing of the pond, and recounts his experiments to m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Week On The Concord And Merrimack Rivers
''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'' (1849) is a book by American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). It recounts his experience on a boat trip with his brother on the Concord River and Merrimack River. Overview ''A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers'' is ostensibly the narrative of a boat trip from Concord, Massachusetts to Concord, New Hampshire, and back, that Thoreau took with his brother John in 1839. John died of tetanus in 1842 and Thoreau wrote the book, in part, as a tribute to his memory. While the book may appear to be a travel journal, broken up into chapters for each day, this is deceptive. The actual trip took two weeks and while given passages are a literal description of the journey — down the Concord River to the Middlesex Canal, to the Merrimack River, and back — much of the text is in the form of digressions by the Harvard University, Harvard-educated author on diverse topics such as religion, poetry, and history. Thoreau relates these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technological Utopianism
Technological utopianism (often called techno-utopianism or technoutopianism) is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal. A techno-utopia is therefore an ideal society, in which laws, government, and social conditions are solely operating for the benefit and well-being of all its citizens, set in the near- or far-future, as advanced science and technology will allow these ideal living standards to exist; for example, post-scarcity, transformations in human nature, the avoidance or prevention of suffering and even the end of death. Technological utopianism is often connected with other discourses presenting technologies as agents of social and cultural change, such as technological determinism or media imaginaries. A tech-utopia does not disregard any problems that technology may cause, but strongly believes that technology allows mankind to make so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradise (to Be) Regained
"Paradise (to be) Regained" is an essay written by Henry David Thoreau and published in 1843 in the ''United States Magazine and Democratic Review''. It takes the form of a review of John Adolphus Etzler's book ''The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by Powers of Nature and Machinery: An Address to all intelligent men, in two parts'', which had come out in a new edition the previous year. The essay amplifies such Thoreauvian themes as imploring people to self-betterment and a distrust of humanity's attempts to improve upon nature. Summary Etzler's book is technological utopianism taken to amazing extremes. Etzler believed that the technology of his time was adequate, if astutely applied, to usher in a paradise on earth in which nobody would need to toil, all needs would be provided, and the earth would be transformed into palaces and gardens. He just needed about ten years and some start-up financing; the blueprints were already written up. Thoreau's review ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonresistance
Nonresistance (or non-resistance) is "the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised". At its core is discouragement of, even opposition to, physical resistance to an enemy. It is considered as a form of principled nonviolence or pacifism which rejects all physical violence, whether exercised on individual, group, state or international levels. Practitioners of nonresistance may refuse to retaliate against an opponent or offer any form of self-defense. Nonresistance is often associated with particular religious groups, such as Anabaptist Christianity. Sometimes non-resistance has been seen as compatible with, even part of, movements advocating social change. An often-cited example is the movement led by Mohandas Gandhi in the struggle for Indian Independence. While it is true that in particular instances (e.g., when threatened with arrest) practitioners in such movements might follow the line of non-resistance, such movements are more accur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
