In the excerpt from “Economy,” Henry David Thoreau discusses his simple way of life at the Walden Pond. He compares it to our conventional way of life. He implies that his simple way of living is better than our traditional way of living. Thoreau is a believer of personal independence. In “Economy,” he emphasizes on personal independence. He is personally independent in Nature. Even though he isn’t completely independent, he is more independent than a conventional human being. He still uses some technology to get himself started, yet he doesn’t depend on it everyday like us. I agree with Thoreau when he argues that his way of simple life is better than our conventional way of life. Moreover, I believe that Thoreau relies more on Nature while we rely more on technology. To be dependent on one thing too much is not good. In our conventional way of life we depend on technology for almost everything. Thoreau points this out while singing: “…they have taken wings— The arts and sciences, And a thousand appliances;”He is implying that we depend on thousands of appliances, which is true. We depend on technology so much that we wouldn’t know how to survive without it. We use appliances for everything. From the moment we wake up we depend it. We depend on: an alarm to wake us up; a stove, a microwave, an oven, the fridge, and the grocery store for food; vehicles for transportation, etc. If the power were to go out in the entire world, leaving us with no ability to use technology, we would become a stampede. We would be scared out of our minds because we wouldn’t know how to survive without it. While if we weren’t so dependent on technology this problem would never arise. Technology isn’t bad, but being too dependent on it is. For this reason, Thoreau’s way of a simple life is much better than our traditional way of life. Thoreau trusts Nature, which is mor...
