Thoreau on the Neccessity of Selling Your Work
by Steve ----Bookmark on del.icio.us----I’ve been listening to a downloaded copy of Thoreau’s Walden during my commute and this story stuck. If you can see past the 1840s cultural insensitivity, the story asks a powerful question.
Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off — that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and, by some magic, wealth and standing followed — he had said to himself: I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?
So I have to ask… how does one study to avoid the necessity of selling baskets? What do you think? What did Thoreau mean?
July 31st, 2007 at 8:42 am
Isn’t this but the study of self? A person has to know what is valuable to herself in order to begin to answer that question; it is more than just escaping materialism, which of course is the first argument that would be put out here. No, a person must know what makes them truly happy; what brings misery; what their version of success is; and how they want to be remembered. They have to know their own character. Once you’ve done that, I imagine it is pretty easy to figure out how to live a life of creation without the need to market…or to know that you must market your work in order to meet your goals.
Interesting thoughts to consider, especially as I am faced right now with only working part time and going back to school, and taking on debt to do it. Why am I here, again?
Thanks for another great post, Steve.
July 31st, 2007 at 8:51 am
Kim,
I love your comment…
What makes you happy?
What makes you miserable?
What is your vision?
How do you want to be remembered?
I’ll tell you, this makes me happy!
A conversation on the web. I need to ask more questions on this blog, because I love your answers.
July 31st, 2007 at 10:03 am
It almost sounds to me like he is talking about living a life of simplicity. He says, “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.” Perhaps he is making the point that we don’t need to be wealthy in order to be successful. Instead, we need to determine what we believe is personal success.
Of course, I could just be reading my own thoughts into the piece! ;-)
July 31st, 2007 at 10:09 am
Awesome question, Steve… and I loved Kim’s comment as well. It does have to do with a person’s own goals and how they want to live their life.
One of Thoreau’s main lessons was “Simplify”, so I imagine part of the study of not having to sell baskets would be the questions “Why do you have to? Can another change be made that would eliminate the necessity?”
And thanks for the pointer to Walden on LibriVox. Add another 15 hours to my listening list! :)
July 31st, 2007 at 11:06 am
Excellent question Steve. It is my opinion that in order to avoid having to sell, you need to first figure out what others want and need. Then you make your product/service meet their desires. All that is left is letting them know it is available. They will sell it to themselves, especially if they know that it was their own idea’s you used in the creation.
July 31st, 2007 at 11:12 am
Replace “weaving baskets” with “drawing cartoons” and that’s why I start and run companies to make money, and draw cartoons because I want to ;)
July 31st, 2007 at 11:46 am
“instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.” I see this as a question of how do I order my life to both 1) meet my very real needs (avoiding the “quiet desperation”) while 2) living in a meaningful self-directed way.
“The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind.” Let’s not overlook that successful businessmen are looked upon positively because they tend to create value for society. Also, we’re social creatures and status recognition is likely hard-wired - at least to a degree - regardless of our attempts to downplay its impact.
July 31st, 2007 at 12:37 pm
In one respect, he was learning to simplify his material needs, but it seems more as a means than an end. From what I little I remember of Thoreau - fine, you added to the books I want to get to - his weaving was in terms of a life, learning to live and participate with clarity.
Life Without Principle has much about his feelings on moneymaking.
July 31st, 2007 at 9:22 pm
At one point in Walden, Thoreau is looking at a large box where railroad workers drop their tools for the night, and he muses that we’d all be happier if we lived in those boxes we can just fit into.
I almost died laughing. I thought at first he wasn’t serious, then it occurred to me he was deadly serious, and didn’t realize the irony of the point he was making: those boxes look like coffins.
Now I’m telling you this because I have a bias, and I don’t want to be “look how smart I am” blah blah. I’d rather disclose I have some problems with Thoreau.
Here the number one problem is the question of capitalism and justice. The assumptions the Indian made are assumptions our society forces us as citizens - not just economic actors - to make. We have to believe that to live, we have to be productive.
Thoreau almost explodes this idea. The key sentence is his list of mistakes the Indian made:
He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy.
The middle idea about changing perception is sandwiched between two considerations of necessity. If Thoreau had said that the Indian could have made a sale through persuasion alone - well, he’d be right on the money. Instead he emphasizes being aware of another’s necessity, and then moves to what is necessary for his own freedom, which is being able to create and not care what others think.
What gets buried, obviously, is the question of justice. It isn’t like Native Americans have been treated very well by all those who enjoy freedom here. Maybe making baskets was all this man could do in the face of starvation - Thoreau’s writing doesn’t seem to take that possibility seriously.
Instead, Thoreau assumes something like this: Aristotle heavily implies claims about survival become claims to empire. One starts by trying to list and obtain necessities, and before you know it, everything is necessary. I think Aristotle is exactly right. But Aristotle doesn’t say that claims to survival are wrong; in fact, the only reason why he is a bit dismissive of survival is because he wants a truly just order.
In other words, Thoreau skips from “survival” to “freedom of the intellect,” and misses that in between lies the political problem of “justice.”
What can this teach us about our business affairs? Simple. Darren Rowse makes a beautiful point about blogging, that the more helpful your blog is to people, the more it will be visited.
I, on the other hand, have succeeded in creating a thoroughly useless blog.
The truth is that useful and useless are dependent on the other. Not everything in life can be useful: considerations of justice are most certainly useless. But all of us would fight tooth and nail if we felt we were being treated badly.
August 1st, 2007 at 6:47 am
Oh you have reminded me why I love Walden so much. I may have to take it off the shelf for a fresh read. The way I read this is that we can get so caught up in the search for bigger, better, faster, more that we can end up internalizing culturally dominant beliefs about success which end up ruling our lives. We end up spending so many hours trying to get our piece of the pie, and a nicely sized one at that without every really asking ourselves if we even like pie! That’s the whole dragon slaying metaphor of Nietszche’s that I write about and The Four Agreements deals with this as well. We have to take in those cultural beliefs and images of what we are supposed to want and decide if we really do. There are often more costs than benefits in some of our pursuits. That awareness later in life is what lead so many into the “mid-life crisis”.
August 1st, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Steve I am a long reader of your blog so I have a small suggestion.
Why don’t you make weekends (usually people write less on weekends) “questions days”? I think that would be a real success!
August 1st, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Alex,
What do you mean? I ask questions of readers… like this post? Or readers ask questions and I answer them?
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:08 am
I am talking about you asking questions.
It would be something different from what you’ve done so far, but I think once a week it would do really good.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I think Priscilla makes some good points. Kim’s comments are also right on. It’s crucial to know yourself, this can be tough at times since it requires honesty (and can also be a somewhat negative experience).
AD