Northern Arizona University/Environmental Ethics/Journals/Thoreau and His Great Experiment

After reading through the first few chapters of Henry David Thoreau's Walden, I admire his approach in running an experiment on himself to pursue the origin of virtue. Is it possible that with everything that has been incorporated in our lives and the superfluous complexities that have accompanied our progression through time enable us to understand and see virtue? His case seems to stand on the grounds of getting back to the basics.

When I look out at today's cultural setting it would seem that we are moving backwards by moving forwards. It would seem that we are exacerbating an end by a manufactured means. Rather than individuals pursuing independent spiritual freedoms and sharing in that experience with others we are merely synthesizing a spiritual polymer to create a manufactured soul! The dividing lines between the upper echelons of society and those falling behind are creating an illusory mode of social acceptance. If you purchase a product and display its name for the world to see then somehow that is supposed to give the purchaser a sense of societal acceptance. Yet spiritually they have sacrificed a personal part of their being in order to separate a piece of their identity onto a product that does not breath or live. Strip a person naked of all material possessions and what does one have left?