This message was self-deleted by its author

[rrneck]

9. I expect it's doable but very difficult.

There is so much more "froth" today than in 1845. Back then even the most dedicated urbanite knew something of how to navigate the world without technology. It seems that today we understand more about Einsteinian physics at the expense of Newtonian physics. Our lives seem to be governed more by attitude and affect than by experience. We see it right here every day; ideas and emotions spun out for their own sake with no real expectation that they mean anything beyond how they make us look to others or to ourselves.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I think when we invest the content of our lives in the real world we are compelled to live deliberately. We might be able to think and feel as quickly as we want, but the real world has a pace of its own that cannot be altered by wishing it so. It is that resistance to our desires that gives meaning to what we do in the world.