---
title: "083-henry-david-thoreau"
aliases: 
tags: 
- podcast/philosophizethis
---

trancendentalist

graduated harvard, got a job as a school teacher. He was against corporal punishment and quit. opponent of slavery, conservationist. 

how to persuade people to agree? 

are you oblisged to agree with the majority ina democracy or the opposite.

read self reliance by ralph waldo emerson. meant to teach the importatnce of being an "individual" - "there comes a time in every mans education, when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide that he must take himself for better or for worse as his portion" 

as a human we need to find out who we are. none of us are born with this knowledge so we conform with what others are doing. but imitation is suicide of you individuality. 

best thing to do is figure it out for yourself. objective truth is hard to define

trancendentalism -> takes other ideas, and creates an approach to life needs meaning, and that one must find this meaning himself. aim to understand personal truth about the way things are. 

society is in conspiracy againt the manhood of its members. 

society promotes conformity, protects the mentally and physically lazy. obstacle blocking living individualy

the more you own , the more your stuff owns you. 

try to "fix yourself using material things". not only material things, also e.g. travel. 

when people are given freedom they act like everyone else.


 