Thoreau was a Bad Ass (and maybe an Anarchist)

A life of quiet desperation is a life of mediocrity. Quiet desperation is not about trying to be better and get ahead in the rat race. It is about trying to be enough in the rat race. Being ambitious is not quiet. And while it might feel like desperation it’s more proactive.

So the simple life in the woods Thoreau espouses is not about being content with less, that is the definition of quiet desperation. It is about actively rejecting the rat race, the conventional. We as modern readers are conditioned to think of the 1800’s as “the olden days” when the majority of life was all about homesteading and having a quiet little farm house, and so we think of Thoreau going back to nature as just being content with the status quo in his “simpler time” and we modern readers aspire to get back to that simpler time.

But Thoreau’s big cause was actually civil disobedience. He was all about sticking it to the man. He was a contrarian. He was not advocating contentedness with the status quo, he was actively rebelling against it.
Society was demanding that he work 6 days a week and conform as a good citizen, and was saying Fuck you, if you want something from me you will have to come out to the woods and get me. He was more libertarian anarchist than transcendentalist philosopher.

The point of all this digression being that…..

The antidote to a life of quiet desperation that Thoreau is advocating is not to be peacefully simple and content, it is to rebel and stuck it to the man! As long as you attempt to play within the rules of society you will be beholden to that society. You can either play to win or refuse to play the game. Playing just to play and to stay in the game is quiet desperation.
Now as a counselor, we often look at situations where some is ambitious and playing to win but is losing and sometimes try and talk them into playing a longer game and suggest that if they stop trying to win and just pace themselves to stay in the game, they can find some peace and contentment. But maybe all that really does is make their desperation quiet.


So maybe ambition is just “loud desperation.”