Henry David Thoreau is the fella who brought you civil disobedience and Walden Pond, and he's the other big name associated with Transcendentalism. Like his fellow Transcendentalists, Thoreau was into nature. He was also big on individualism. In fact, he was so individualistic that he decided to go off and live in the woods on his own. For years and years. Pretty free-spirited, we'd wager.

Thoreau's also known as a social reformer. He was an outspoken abolitionist who wrote a lot about that terrible institution—slavery—that was still in place back in the first half of the nineteenth century. He also wrote about ponds, being in jail, and how to live really, really simply. Forget running water, forget toasting your bread in the morning, and you can sure as heck forget about your smartphone.

Walden

Walden, published 1854, is a book that chronicles Thoreau's experience living alone in a cabin in the woods of Massachusetts near a pond of that name. Ironically, the pond is now a big-deal tourist attraction for folks visiting Massachusetts, which is pretty much exactly the sort of conformity, consumerism, and nature-disrespect Thoreau would have hated. Take that, TripAdvisor.

Anyway, Thoreau built the cabin himself, then spent years living there without talking to a soul. He had birds for company, at least. He probably taught them to say "Polly want social reform."

Anyway, the book reflects many of the key Transcendentalist themes, including the importance of individualism, the necessity of maintaining a connection to nature, and spirituality. And don't forget the talking birds.

"Civil Disobedience"

We have this essay by Thoreau to thank for the concept of "civil disobedience." We all know what that is: when we disobey our government because its laws aren't fair laws, so we take a stand to show what fairness really is.

The most famous practitioner of civil disobedience is probably Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who used acts of civil disobedience to protest segregation and the treatment of African Americans during the Civil Rights era).

Well, we bet Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., read Thoreau's essay. It's in this essay that Thoreau first argues that we owe no allegiance to our government if it misbehaves itself. For instance, if it allows for the enslavement of people (as the U.S. government did when Thoreau was writing)—after all, better to disobey the legal laws while upholding your morals.

Chew on This

In Walden, Thoreau argues that individualism is good for us. Only when we learn to rely on ourselves (hey, sound familiar? Echoes of Waldo…) will we be able to become wise. He's even cool with getting lost in the woods—hey, getting lost is one of the best ways to find yourself.

Where would the Civil Rights movement be if it weren't for Thoreau? In "Civil Disobedience," he says that sometimes we have to disobey our governments when they do things that aren't just (see quote #3 here). Plus, he's not so into slavery either. Quite the man for stickin' it to the man.