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Six Key Themes
The Life with Principle DVD-ROM is divided into six thematic chapters.
Each one reflects a concept found in Thoreau's writing:
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Hearing That Different Drummer General concepts:
- independent individual; thinking for yourself
- standing up for your principles; living with your conscience
- self-reliance
- trusting your own thought
- non-conformity; individualism
- knowing oneself
- living with confidence
- polarities: us vs. them; conflict inherent in this structure
- maintaining solitude, even within a crowd
- the importance of having dreams
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Being Awake, Aware, and Alive General concepts:
- being observant
- recognizing the nobleness; seeing the miraculous in the commonplace
- the importance of the journey, not the destination
- being in the present moment
- understanding simplification
- seeing a connection between expectations and being awake
- Emerson's "transparent eyeball" state
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Examining Desperate and Deliberate Lives General concepts:
- lifestyle choices
- what's important; what's not
- simplicity
- deliberateness and mindfulness
- self-examination
- awakening to the possibilities of how one lives
- how to evaluate our choices: what was Thoreau's basis for doing so?
- when to/how to change directions
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Living in Society General concepts:
- being an ethical and responsible member of society
- balancing solitude and community
- the questioning citizen
- confronting injustice and taking the consequences
- civil disobedience
- slavery and freedom
- being able to be a "majority of one"
- determining ones responsibility to take action to correct wrongs
- determining one's connections and responsibilities to others and society in general
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Living in Nature General concepts:
- being an ethical and responsible part of natural world
- nature/human nature
- stewardship, environmental conservation
- fitting into the outdoors
- idea of wildness within and without
- what we define as "nature"
- the connection of all elements of nature with each other
- why nature inspires us
- cooperation and conflict in nature
- what nature can reveal to the human being regarding the purpose of the universe
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Confronting the Mean and the Sublime General concepts:
- the savage and spiritual nature of the human animal
- day-to-day actions (the mean) vs. spiritual goals (the sublime)
- understanding why we act as we do
- violent and peaceful conflict resolutions
- limiting/restricting forces (societal pressures, attitudes, and economy) vs. forces leading to personal expansion/development (e.g. literature, nature, thought, etc.)
- understanding and accepting different, often conflicting, elements of our character
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