Just Say No to Consumerism: The Continuing Relevance of Henry David Thoreau

Nearly 150 years ago, Henry David Thoreau was warning his countrymen against rushing blindly down the road toward consumerism; he warned of the consequences' of putting economics before principles (i.e., the loss of our souls, and with them, the loss of happiness -- the very thing we are pursuing by means of our economies); and he foresaw the irrelevancies and idiocies of the 'Information Age,' which may be said to have begun in 1844 with Samuel Morse's invention of the telegraph. His advice to anyone who would listen was 'Simplify, simplify'-- and his own life exemplified his principles. He took seriously Socrate's maxim (as conveyed to us through Plato's Apology) that 'the unexamined life is not worth living,' and he wished his listeners and readers to take it seriously, too. Nearly one hundred and fifty years after the publication of Walden, and nearly two thousand five hundred years after The Apology of Socrates, we as a society (not just nationally, but also internationally -- the so-called 'global village') are still not taking this maxim seriously, nor have we taken Thoreau's advice and prophecies seriously. But now the negative effects of our headlong rush into the consumer society are becoming more and more apparent -- widespread poisoning of air, water, and land, mountain$ of garbage and nowhere to put it, diminishing resources with higher demands on what few are left, a hole in the ozone layer, global warming -- all these things and more are causing intelligent social critics such as Theodore Roszak and Neil Postman to re-examine the direction in which we are headed. They are also arguing along Thoreau's lines when they critize the mindless hype concerning the computer revolution and the so-called 'Information Age,' as well as the dismal effects on culture and social discourse of television, film, and the new 'multi-media' entertainment industry and its 'edutainment' and 'infotainment.' Many modem social critics are certainly aware of Thoreau's relevance for the many crises facing modem humanity. And some are aware that Thoreau is relevant for our time because he is relevant for all times --he is timeless. In this paper, I would like to focus on Thoreau's warnings against the completely secularized, de-sacralized, rootless, materialist business-consumer culture with its glut of irrelevant information (and information as commodity), and why his message is especially relevant, even urgent, in our day -- while transcending any particular age.