Thoreau: the Walden Pond Punk

Going back more than twenty years ago, a conversation with a colleague about punk led me to connect the life and work of Henry David Thoreau with the rebellious music and subculture which arose in New York and London in the 1970s and 80s. For many years, whenever I started a unit on transcendentalism in my English classes, I would play Bad Religion's "You Are (the Govt)" as I introduced Thoreau as the original American punk rocker. Recently I developed some writing on that idea, which included a conference paper at the recent Midwest Popular Culture Association conference in Chicago, and this shorter magazine piece for Pop Matters.  

Henry David Thoreau has played many roles as an American writer and philosopher – environmentalist, abolitionist, progressive, libertarian, and punk rock poet. While the punk label is less well known, if acknowledged at all, it’s every bit as valid and worthy of discussion. The punk of Thoreau, the transcendental punk whose lineage runs throughout American history, is not the stereotyped punk of spiked hair, tattered clothes, anarchy symbols spayed across leather jackets, mosh pits, slam dancing, and loud, fast, riveting guitar rock. It’s the punk of individual liberty, authenticity in the sense of self, and the rejection of conformity amidst a mindless society.

Those ideas from “The Punk Manifesto” by Bad Religion frontman Greg Graffin remind me of Thoreau’s essays on individuality and self-reliance. Similarly, Thoreau’s philosophy resonates with countless punk rock songs and tenets of punk subculture. Thus, for as long as I’ve been teaching transcendentalism in my English classes, I have always introduced Henry David Thoreau’s ideas through Punk’s philosophy. 

Years ago, while teaching high school in southern Illinois, I spoke with a colleague and former punk musician in the ’80s St. Louis scene about Punk, punk rock, and various punks at our school. Some kids he mentored were always in trouble, drinking, fighting, and cutting class. He tried to help by explaining what Punk meant to him. “I tell them,” he said, “It’s never been about the music or the clothing or the clubs or the fighting or anything like that.” It’s always been about the attitude – the sense of self amidst a society that seeks to conform and crush it. 

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Read the rest here on Pop Matters.