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Dinesh

Dinesh club

Posted: 21 Jun 2013

Taken: 13 Jun 2008

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The Future of Lifew •
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E O. Wilson •

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At Walden June 2008 (Replica)

At Walden June 2008 (Replica)
A Replica of Thoreau's cabin
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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
A Letter to Thoreau

Henry!

May I call you by your Christian name? Your words invite familiarity and make little sense otherwise. How else to interpret your insistent use of the first personal pronoun? I wrote this account, you say, here are my deepest thoughts, and no third person placed between us could ever be so well represented. Although 'Walden' is sometimes oracular in tone, I don't read it, the way some do, as an oration to the multitude. Rather, it is a work of art, the testament of a citizen of Concord, in New England, from one place, one time, and one writer's personal circumstance that manages nevertheless to reach across five generations to address accurately the general human condition. Can there be a better definition of art?

You brought me here. Our meeting could have just as well been a woodlot in Delaware, but here I am at the site of your cabin on the edge of Walden Pond, I came across of your stature in literature and the conservation movement, but also -- less nobly, I confess -- because my home is in Lexington, two towns over. My pilgrimage is a pleasant afternoon's excursion to a nature reserve. But mostly I came because of all your contemporaries you are the one I most need to understand. As a biologist with a modern scientific library, I know more than Darwin knew. I can imagine the measured responses of that country gentleman to a voice a century and half beyond his own. It is not satisfying fantasy: the Victorian have for the most part settled into a comfortable corner of our remembrance. But I cannot imagine your responses, at least not all of them. Too many shadowed residues there in your text, too many emotional trip wires. You left too soon, and your restless spirit haunts us still. Xii (Prologue) - Excerpt: "The Future of Life" ~ Author - Edward O. Wilson

The Future of Life
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