Which of these people would shop at Walmart?

Can you see any of these people shopping at Walmart? What would they do?
Yes, there is a good reason for picking these particular names.

He refused to contribute to the actions of the government due to their support of slavery and the Mexican-American war. His answer was to not pay taxes or participate in government in any way. I'm sure he would have taken the same attitude toward Walmart by not shopping there.

In one of my graduate classes, the prof told us that Thoreau would return home from Walden on the weekends to have his wife do his laundry, get supplies, and get pampered so that he could return to his manly isolation for the rest of the week.

"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind." meh.

Also had a self contained farm so that his commerce would not support the government. He removed himself from a destructive system that violated his principles. You may think he oppressed his wife, but he most certainly would not have supported Walmarts actions by shopping there, for the same reason that he refused to pay taxes.

As it turns out he didn't have a wife. thats how i remembered the lecture, but maybe it was his mother. even more fitting.

If its true, I was just pointing it out that he was perfectly will to take the easier softer way.

Although, since he went to jail, he was willing to make some sacrifices. It sounds like he should have been thinking closer to home as well rather than worrying about the slaves and Mexico all the time.

i was thinking the exact same thing

for it certainly wasn't Thoreau's wife, as he never married.

I'd have to say, you've either misremembered what you were taught or your professor specialized in fiction. . .

I was just about to point that out.

That said the dinner-bell at either his mother's or Emerson's house could be heard from Walden Pond, and he usually showed up for meals.

or maybe its the booze.

he supposedly died a virgin, at least as far as women are concerned, so no wife.

Although Max Weber didn't actually have sex with his wife until they had been married about 20 years.

where I disagree with some of the ideological heroes I admire most like Tolstoy and Gandhi. I don't get their aversion to sex. I often wonder if they had some kind of experience in life that made them view sex as evil, and if that is related to their views on other subjects. Somebody has probably written something about that, but I've never seen it.

but I do recall him saying that he returned from walden on the weekends in a very nonselfsufficient way. Just a tale I heard in school.

who simplified his life to a breech clout, charka, and cotton to spin.

The rest of them might when money got tight, but they wouldn't like it.

That's the choice most Walmart shoppers make.

Tolstoy and Thoreau both supported themselves on their farms so as not to participate in government or pay taxes. They believed that honest men couldn't participate in government because it meant they would be giving support to the governments' actions in war and other policies.

Likewise I'm sure they would have seen shopping at Walmart as a form of support for Walmarts actions. They would never have done so. They believed in non-cooperation with evil.

Sam Adams organized a boycott against Britain in protest of their economic exploitation of the colonies. He would likely have done the same to Walmart.

Tolstoy was one of Gandhi's biggest inspirations, and he named one of his colonies Tolstoy after him. They had similar views about simple living without supporting oppressive economic systems.

while the great man is free to think his great thoughts, woman is stuck with **** work of the world

so what else is new?

Gandhi never shied away from the hard work. It was his wife who thought she was too good to do the work of untouchables, such as cleaning latrines.

sorry i'm a feminist first i guess

i wouldn't clean the damn latrine because hubby wanted to make a political point either

I don't think I could congratulate someone for thinking they are inherently superior than an entire class or race of people because of her heritage, even if it is a woman. That's no better than a man thinking he is superior to all women.

Too often boils down to this. In college I lived with women who felt it was some sort of human rights violation to be asked to do any household task.

It's often the same ones who hold the essentialist views that women are more sensitive and nurturing than men, that they are smarter and better arguers and better at remembering things, that they are more "connected" to the "earth," have more self-control, are less violent, and more sensible. What a joke to anyone who's ever left their little bourgeois bubble world.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico;— see if I would go"; and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it differed one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.

After all, each and every one of them matched their actions to their words. What we have when we have a 'liberal' shopping at one of the most humanly exploitative corporations on the planet is someone who wants the self-congratulatory credit for 'right thinking' without the inconvenience of 'right actions.'

I've yet to hear one of those who complains about a Wal*Mart being the only source of needed supplies within 30-40 miles who formed a car-pool or cooperative shopping network with like-minded people. Cry me a river. There are always alternatives. I refuse to buy gasoline at an Exxon station. That refusal is absolute. I've run out of gas and had to walk. I was (almost) glad to do it. After all, if I surrender what choices I have then I'm merely cooperating with tyranny. Sorry. I refuse to do it. Symbolic? Maybe. It's my choice.

"Never separate the words you speak from the lives you live." (Paul Wellstone)

That remains the best advice from a politician in the last fifty years.

And you rightly perceived my point for this poll. All of these people matched their actions with their ideals, even at great personal inconvenience. Thanks.

i'm afraid most of us can't make a living being political activists or writers, some of us have to do the real work of the world and it doesn't get done if we're walking because our car broke down because we're making some statement that matters to no one by not buying any gas

most of us can't spend our lives organizing stupid car pools just to go shopping, christ, there are only 24 hrs in the day

all of your suggestions involve making the wife a slave, because and we ALL know it, the wife is the one who ends up having to organize all the gee-dee car pools, shopping, etc.

i notice the other poster had a quote from thoreau abt getting off the other man's back

you know what?

get off the woman's back as well, mr great deep thinkers, or don't expect me to be impressed

I don't live in one in which "the wife" does anything in particular. You sound like you are trapped in a prison of stereotypes.

I do all the shopping. I do all the driving. I do almost all the cooking, cleaning, and other care-taking. I do all the bill-paying. I've done so for over twenty years, and even more in the last four years. (The particulars of my personal circumstance are none of your business. I have no obligation to prove shit.) So, just take your dedicated victimhood and nasty insults and peddle it to someone who buys that bullshit.

:nopity:

He would organize against Walmart just like he organized boycotts against Britain, I bet.