PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN THE SHADOWS OF POVERTY AND MEANNESS GATHER AROUND US, “AND LO! CREATION WIDENS TO OUR VIEW.” HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN WALDEN: However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not PEOPLE OF shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find WALDEN faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town’s poor seem to me often to live the most independent of lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate property like garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: “From an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.” Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.” We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Crœsus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul. JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1775 July 11, Tuesday: William Bartram arrived at Yuch Town on the Chattahoochee River. Birth of José María Blanco y Crespo, who would become a theological poet known in England as “Joseph Blanco White” and be quoted by Henry Thoreau, in Seville, Spain, in an Irish Catholic family that had there settled, and married with an Andalusian lady of noble descent and small property. At first he would be put in training for a mercantile career in his uncle Philip Nangle’s counting house, but would prefer playing his violin. IT IS A PROBLEM, FOR A “PHILOSOPHER OF HISTORY” SUCH AS MYSELF (AUSTIN MEREDITH), THAT PEOPLE WHO HAVE HEARD THAT THERE IS SUCH A THING AS “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” –PEOPLE WHO MAY EVEN HAVE GONE TO THE LENGTHS OF CONSULTING ONE OR ANOTHER “HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY” SUCH AS THAT CREATED BY UEBERWEG IN THE 19TH CENTURY– HAVE NEVER SO MUCH AS CONTEMPLATED THAT THERE MIGHT BE SUCH A THING AS ALTERNATIVE PHILOSOPHIES OF HISTORY BASED ON DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDINGS OF THE NATURE OF TIME. THE GIST OF MY PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY, BASED ON MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF TIME, IS AS FOLLOWS: OUR SO- CALLED HISTORIANS ARE DOING IT EXACTLY WRONG. IN THEIR FABRICATIONS ABOUT HISTORY, THEY ARE CHRONIC ANTICIPATORS. THEY PERPETUALLY OFFER TO THEIR UNSUSPECTING AUDIENCES THAT ACCOUNTS THEY HAVE PATCHED TOGETHER IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS ILLUMINATE OUR PRESENT CONDITION. THEIR CONSTRUCTED PASTS BECOME OUR PREAMBLE FOR OUR PRESENT AGENDAS. THESE ACADEMIC PSEUDO-HISTORIANS WHO ENGAGE IN THIS ANTICIPATION AGENDA ARE WELL PAID BUT THEY OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. ANY HISTORY CONSTRUCTED IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS CAN AMOUNT TO NOTHING MORE THAN SPURIOUS MAKE-MAKE-BELIEVE, SPECIAL PLEADING. The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN THE WARNING OF THE HIPPIE WAS “NEVER TRUST ANYONE OVER 30!” THE WARNING I PROFFER IS: “DON’T CREDIT ANY HISTORY THAT IS CREDIBLE. WHEN ANY OF THIS BEGINS TO MAKE ANY SENSE, DOUBLE-BEWARE!” TO BE SPECIFIC, THIS KOUROO DATABASE IS JUST CHOCK-FULL OF HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES. IF ANY OF THESE PROFFERED HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGIES ARE MORE THAN MERELY ACCURATE, IF ANY OF THEM OVER AND ABOVE THEIR ACCURACY BEGIN TO APPEAR TO YOU TO PROVIDE ANY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS OF OUR PRESENT CONDITION, THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR SUSPICION- ANTENNAE BEGIN TO VIBRATE AND HUM. BIGTIME! I AM NOT CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION. I AM CREATING THESE ACCURATE CHRONOLOGIES TO HELP YOU NON-GROK YOUR PRESENT CONDITION. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1781 The preacher at the final auto-da-fé in Seville was a Father Vega. This Father Vega would become one of the directors of a Catholic retreat attended by the young José María Blanco y Crespo (in later life in England, when he would attempt to write a history of the Spanish Inquisition, he would discover that the topic was too nerve- wracking and he would need to drop this project). THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED. The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1787 When, at the age of 12, José María Blanco y Crespo, desiring to escape from the drudgery of a career in the family counting-house, declared his intent to become a Roman Catholic priest, his mother induced his father to consent. BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS. The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1789 In Spain, at the age of 14, José María Blanco y Crespo, took the “four minor orders” and began studies in philosophy at a Dominican college. FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E. The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1790 October: José María Blanco y Crespo chanced upon the writings of Friar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, who had attacked the scholastic philosophy dominant in Spanish Catholic colleges. He was induced to revolt against the repulsive teaching of his masters. Nevertheless, he would be allowed to enter the university. HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT A PARTICULAR INFANT WOULD INVENT THE SEWING MACHINE, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM. THE HISTORIAN IS SETTING CHRONOLOGY TO “SHUFFLE,” WHICH IS NOT A PERMISSIBLE OPTION BECAUSE IN THE REAL WORLD SUCH SHUFFLE IS IMPOSSIBLE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET. THERE IS NO SUCH “BIRD’S EYE VIEW” AS THIS IN THE REAL WORLD, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD NO REAL BIRD HAS EVER GLIMPSED AN ACTUAL HISTORICAL SEQUENCE. The People of WALDEN: “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN 1796 At the age of 21 José María Blanco y Crespo took subdeacon’s orders in the church of Spain — although he would be heard to complain at the length of the services which he was thus obligated to attend.