A book newly acquired by the Thammasat University Libraries explains how nature can inspire us with social awareness. Henry D. Thoreau: Selected Writings on Nature and Liberty was donated by Ajarn Adul Wichiencharoen and is shelved in the Adul Wichiencharoen Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library. It joins other books by and about Thoreau in the TU Libraries collection, including The Literary Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau; The Living Thoughts of Thoreau; Thoreau’s Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild; and The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. The TU Libraries also own an annotated edition of Thoreau’s most famous work, Walden. This book, written by an American in the 1800s, still inspires readers today. It describes how simple life in nature can encourage feelings of civic responsibility, personal independence, and spiritual understanding. Walden was published in 1854. It is about how Thoreau (1817-1862) lived for over two years in a very basic house near Walden Pond, outside of Concord, Massachusetts. The idea was to think more clearly about social issues by being surrounded by nature. It is understandable that Ajarn Adul Wichiencharoen would be interested in this approach, since he also has enjoyed living a rural lifestyle while thinking about such matters. For example, Thoreau asks whether it is necessary to spend as much money as most people do:

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes… Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Thoreau encouraged his readers to have big dreams, even if they might not work out:

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

He separated people who know about philosophy and the history of thought from people who try to produce original thoughts:

There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

To have the time and energy to develop ideas, Thoreau advised making life as simple as possible:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Naturally, not everyone can or would want to follow Thoreau’s example, and by the time Walden was published, he had returned to city life.

Reading

Thoreau spent a considerable amount of time in a natural setting reading in a concentrated way. He preferred Greek and Latin classics, as well as books about travel. Instead of depending on the entertainment industry – as it existed in the 1800s – to keep him amused, he found enjoyment in such natural sounds as bird calls and the croaks of frogs. He even suggests that people would be better off if they followed a vegetarian diet, even if he did eat fish as well as pork and other meats from time to time. Some of Thoreau’s advice has been criticized over the years, including the American author E.B. White, who wrote:

Walden is the report of a man torn by two powerful and opposing drives—the desire to enjoy the world and the urge to set the world straight.

Some people felt that Thoreau was too concerned with himself and did think enough about practical matters of life. Still, Walden remains widely popular, and in 2012 the University of Southern California started to develop Walden, a Game. According to its website, this is

a first person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau moved to the Pond and built his cabin there. Players follow in his footsteps, surviving in the woods by finding food and fuel and maintaining their shelter and clothing. At the same time, players are surrounded by the beauty of the woods and the Pond, which hold a promise of a sublime life beyond these basic needs. The game follows the loose narrative of Thoreau’s first year in the woods, with each season holding its own challenges for survival and possibilities for inspiration.

Walden, a Game is currently scheduled to be completed at the end of this year or early 2017. Another website to help study the text of Walden and how it was written is Digital Thoreau. It was co-developed by the State University of New York at Geneseo. The video game Fallout 4, released last year, includes a tourist guide to Walden Pond.

Thailand and Thoreau

In 2013, Professor Richard Primack of Boston University, a specialist in the effects of climate change on the timing of seasonal biological events and species diversity, quoted from Walden in a blog, explaining how he was inspired by Thoreau to visit Thailand to study climate change. There Dr. Primack met

enthusiastic young wildlife ecologists who were eager to work with me to prepare conservation biology textbooks for their students. These books will be translations with local examples added in to increase their relevance. In [Thailand and Laos], some of the key topics being discussed are human-elephant conflicts, the impacts of new dams on fish populations, and ways to reduce poaching of endangered animals…The highlight of my trip was a visit to Khao Yai National Park, an outstanding park two hours outside of Bangkok with a large visitor center, extensive accommodations, many trails, and food stalls. Most importantly, the park had abundant wildlife; during my visit I observed pheasants, two species of gibbons, sambar deer, barking deer, civets, four species of hornbills, and porcupines. One afternoon I saw more than a dozen hornbills feeding on fruit trees at the edge of a forest. And while I did not get to see forest elephants, their fresh dropping and trails were common. This was the most wildlife I had ever seen in a national park in the tropics, and demonstrated how numerous and visible animal life can be without any hunting pressure. The rich biodiversity at Khao Yai National Park is an example of conservation in action that will make our Thai textbook practical and relevant to students studying conservation biology.

Other inspiration from Walden in the Kingdom may be seen in Bangkok Tree House, a hotel owned by Jirayu (Joey) Tulyanond, who explained to Travel and Leisure Magazine:

I read a book a while ago, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and it struck me as a very Buddhist way of life. It made me think we should be learning from nature rather than working against it, because nature provides solutions to a lot of the problems we have. We decided to open Bangkok Treehouse to see how much we could push the limits. We wanted to put our heart into it.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).