Independence

Independence will be the first thing I write about because it’s been on my mind lately, probably in part because I’ve been reading Walden by H.D. Thoreau. Different types of independence and whether independence is truly possible. I speak of personal independence, not political. Note that this may not make any sense to anyone but myself, but, since I’m probably the only one reading it, does it matter?

The way I see it there are two types of independence. One way is to rip yourself out of the fabric of society. People who I see as having achieved this type of independence are Mike Tyson, Godzilla, Rocky Balboa, Mohammad Ali, Lance Armstrong, and similar types. These people are independent in that they have risen above the average human status. They could either literally (Mike Tyson) or metaphorically (Armstrong) beat the living hell out of surrounding human beings.

The other type of independence is achieved by sneaking under the fabric. In this case a person is independent because he (I’m male so get over it) goes about life unnoticed and thereby increases his range of motion. Perhaps the best example of this Independence #2 is Thoreau. But most examples would be by definition unknown to me or to most people. Here’s another, perhaps better, example: Billy Goat, a (the?) man who has hiked 32,000 miles. Link

I’ll come back to this later.