Chrisonomicon

Monday, February 4, 2002

I have a thing with reformatting my computer. A whole day can be dedicated to this, and I am perfectly comfortable with the sacrifice. I like to erase everything, repartition the drive, reinstall the OS and all of my software, and organize everything in its appropriate directory. I feel a little like Amélie's parents (see Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain), who enjoy emptying, cleaning, and putting everything back.

While I was waiting for the drive to format, I picked up an old copy of Thoreau's Walden I had laying around and thought I'd dive through it. I've been wanting to read it for a few years now (one of probably sixty books I have sitting in front of me). Just thought I'd post a few excerps from "Economy":

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superflously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them... He has no time to be anything but a machine.

That particular idea struck me rather forcefully, maybe due to my mental state at the time I was reading, but I started to feel incredibly friviolous, particularly in regards to my computer habit, which isn't to say anything about sitting eight hours a day in front of a computer in a cubicle. I know I've gone through this line of thought before, and have come to the conclusion that I should, in a way, "pay my dues" in the working world. After all, wasn't Thoreau 30 before he wrote any of his major works? Another excerpt:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind... But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When I read of "games and amusements," the first thing that came to mind was the Superbowl fanatica of yesterday, which has struck me before as an ever-evolving method of self-deception: in that we believe we have found meaning and release through a game. It has taken on a significance and weight of its own. The popularity of football has done nothing for me but reveal the frivolity of our preoccupations — dare I say, out of "desperation."

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.