h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Over the last couple of days I've noticed that I've had this strange-odd feeling of... not quite happiness, not quite joy, but also not quite depression, not quite anything really. It's like that feeling you get when you've been too reflective for your own good, but without the dreading feeling. Like being zenned, but without the touch of those who zen you out. Or something. I'm not sure.

I'm calling it contentment, for lack of any better explanation. I kinda like it in a weird, still putting out feelers sort of way. I should try it more often.

Read Thoreau's Civil Disobediance the other night (mostly cause I had to for philosophy). I kept on having to check the dates the man lived to be sure it wasn't written just the other week. The Walden Wimp is officially cool. I'm not a political science major type (though maybe I should be?), but this sort of thing interests me. Very, very interesting reading. I don't see why they don't require this in high school curriculam like they do Walden. O dear, we might all grow up to be political activists! Or worse yet, anarchists!



I'm finally caught up with all of my school work, and am pondering doing some stuff early if I can. Not because I have to, but because I don't want to get caught in a boring hole again like I'm so apt to do. We'll see. I'm just hoping time flies by after Spring Break, which is next week.

And today, it is exactly 100 days till I see Richard again.

ah yes Mr Henry David isn't it? Didn't want to pay his taxes as I recall....

Yup. Thrown in jail and he *liked* it. His aunt bailed him out.

He's the funniest character I've come across in quite some time.

Thoreau didn't want to pay his taxes to the government while it was engaged in killing Mexicans. He wasn't the only one opposed to the War of Northern Intervention aka Mexican War, but he was one of the few willing to be jailed for his beliefs. I wish there had been and would continue to be more funny people like him.

Exactly. The oddest thing about reading it is that, as I said, it really could have been written a few weeks ago. The references to Mexico seemed odd in that context - I kept on thinking "hang on, not Mexico, wrong part of the world entirely" but of course I knew better.

This is what happens when you read something like that at about 1 in the morning before going to bed.

Contentment and Thoreau are both good!

This is one of the things, Amy, I've been trying to communicate to people for weeks or maybe it's months now.

What is being done globally today, was done before on the American Frontier. And frequently it resulted from American economic problems or perceived economic oppportunity.

The Mexican War occurred at the same time that vast numbers of immigrants were moving west to Oregon. Why were they moving? Because they couldn't make a very good living in the Ohio Valley or wherever. In fact it was so bad they were willing to leave everything behind except what they could load in oxcarts or wagons and walk 2000 miles for a better life.

Now, compared to the Mexicans, most of these Americans had a very good life, but they didn't see it that way and they saw nothing wrong with depriving Mexicans or indians of land or resources in order to get this better life they thought they deserved.

This was probably because they just couldn't live without the consumer goods coming on the market from the factories. That's probably too why Thoreau attempted to encourage the simpler life by writing Walden.

He saw that this problem could ultimately be traced to acquisitiveness and that it would have dire consequences if left unchecked. He correct about that as we are still seeing today.

Precisely.

Darned people who think we've progressed *so* far in the last 200-odd years.

Agreed. Darn it anyway.

Oh I cannot resist the word game in that:
a greed
darn it (as in mend)
any way.