Life Without Principle (or Interest)
With this post we inaugurate CommonSensical, a periodic feature here at Soul Shelter, in which we’ll offer commentary from thinkers and artists old and new on the timeless subject of balancing fortune and fulfillment, or maintaining a livelihood while having a life.
In previous posts, I’ve mentioned a guru of mine, Henry David Thoreau (see “Simplify, Simplify!”). Old Henry will inevitably pop up on this blog from time to time, for he had no shortage of things to say about earning a living in America, most particularly how to do so without allowing one’s soul to be crushed.
I recently revisited Thoreau’s “Life Without Principle.” It’s one of his most cogent, funny, tell-it-like-it-is pieces of writing. In fact, it’s impossible to read “Life Without Principle” today without noting its relevance to our office-bound, overworked, under-vacationed, gridlocked, media-saturated culture.
Thoreau talks about the importance of doing work one can be personally invested in (“getting a living by loving”). He encourages us to avoid the empty, draining pursuit of earning wages for wages’ sake. He talks about the fallacies of relying upon circumstantial “luck,” and the importance of locating the “gold” within the mine of one’s own talents. Ultimately, he urges us to make the most of every day we’re given.
Hard to believe Thoreau’s essay was published (posthumously) way back in 1863, but so it is. The industrial revolution had sent its waves through our national culture by then. Clearly its impact is with us still, felt on a daily basis in the workplace. Here follow extracts from “Life Without Principle,” with a few remarks sprinkled in.
Thoreau begins with a bang, tackling the problem of what we would call “the rat race” today:
Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.
This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work….
If a man was tossed out of a window when an infant, and so made a cripple for life, or scared out of his wits by the Indians, it is regretted chiefly because he was thus incapacitated for—business! I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business….
Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now….
The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself…. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man…. The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work…. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
Thoreau goes on to further address the value of working at something you love. He speaks from experience, for he solved the problem his own way early on. Because he loved being out in the fresh Concord air, he made a living of roaming the local countryside, working as a surveyor.
… Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery….
If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living…. You must get your living by loving.
It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living; how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious; for if getting a living is not so, then living is not. …
We’re all familiar with the more modern refrain, “Love your job and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
Our book, The Prosperous Peasant, explicitly explores this very subject through the parable of Jiro and Gonsuke, two peasants in sixteenth-century Japan who set out to change their destinies. All their lives they’ve known only servitude and monotony, but at the start of the book they undertake a quest to fulfill their personal dreams. Jiro implores his friend, “Why not admit your deep longing to become a merchant and act upon it? Why pretend we’re content to slave in the fields? If we fail to grasp our purpose today, where will we be ten or twenty years from now?”
Thoreau continues with an exploration of luck, and the fallacy (from both the moral and the financial standpoints) of relying on easy ventures and chance fortune.
The rush to California, for instance, and the attitude, not merely of merchants, but of philosophers and prophets, so called, in relation to it, reflect the greatest disgrace on mankind. That so many are ready to live by luck, and so get the means of commanding the labor of others less lucky, without contributing any value to society! And that is called enterprise! I know of no more startling development of the immorality of trade, and all the common modes of getting a living. The philosophy and poetry and religion of such a mankind are not worth the dust of a puffball. The hog that gets his living by rooting, stirring up the soil so, would be ashamed of such company. …Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance, reward us with lumps of gold?
(Note: Though Thoreau invokes the religious tone here, it should not be mistaken for conventional piety. He was no churchgoer. His religious views were nonconformist and deeply subversive of the religious establishment.)
… The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it make whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer….
With that vision of the diggings still before me, I asked myself why I might not be washing some gold daily, though it were only the finest particles,— why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine…. I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence….
Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful. Is not our native soil auriferous? Does not a stream from the golden mountains flow through our native valley? and has not this for more than geologic ages been bringing down the shining particles and forming the nuggets for us? …
That’s my favorite part of the essay. We must ask ourselves: What riches (worldly or otherwise) do our own talents, passions, and interests already supply–or promise to supply–us and the world around us? How can we harness the inspiration to access that wealth (or continue accessing it) and possibly inspire others by doing so?
…A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the getting of his bread…
You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day’s devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day…. It is for want of a man that there are so many men…
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality…We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not the Times. Read the Eternities….
Today, it’s not hard to imagine Thoreau exhorting us to smash our televisions.
America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant…What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?…
We are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.
And on that salutary note, we’ll leave off with old Henry.
In preparing this post, I told Tim that I found the following observation by Thoreau particularly striking, and dismayingly true, even today:
Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render.
Many of us notice this in our day: often it’s the sterile, soul-draining work that seems to bring the greatest material rewards, while more gratifying, fulfilling, or creative labor pays but pennies (not to mention socially important labor, such as teaching, nursing, etc).
So I asked Tim, “Why do you think the fun or important jobs pay so comparatively little, and the boring or less essential ones pay so much?” He had an interesting take on this subject, which he will offer here in his Thursday 1/24 post. See you then!
(In the meantime, visit the full text of “Life Without Principle” here).
See also: “Simplify, Simplify!”
