Summary Of Thoreau's A Good Newspaper I Lived For?
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“A good newspaper I suppose is a nation talking to itself,” a quote by Arthur Miller that explains how news, specifically a good news would be a nation informing itself of important events rather than a bad newspaper that would would be unimportant. The argument made by the author, Thoreau, in his work “Where I Lived and What I Lived For,” is that fast paced modern living needs to be completely abandoned. More specifically, Thoreau argues that communication is unnecessary. He writes “all news, as it is called, is gossip,” (278). In this passage, the author is suggesting that news is not necessary to live a fulfilling life. The author has some valid points however the extreme he takes his argument to is too far removed from society for this…show more content… While Thoreau would argue that new being constantly present in one's life is distracting and takes away from life the access for people to find out information is beneficial. The constant bombardment of information as Thoreau states in excessive news is unimportant and that we as people do not need to read articles that have the same topic multiple times. This is accurate in that news has become a far too integrated part of life that now makes people upset with the shape the world is in. Thoreau is accurate in stating that “there are very few important communications made through it,”(Thoreau 278) while there are few important communications some are still necessary. Technology gives humans easy access to news which is beneficial that way news does not have to travel slowly nd by the time the news would have reached person it would have been old news. However the excess and constant bombardment of news on the public is not healthy. There needs to be enough news present in order to keep the public educated on social issues yet not so much news as to overwhelm the public and take away from the important stories. The public does not need to know story about “one lot of grasshopper in the winter,” (Thoreau 278) however the public does need to know about any social injustices and technology allows the public to have access to that information. Without technology we wouldn’t be able to read about issues that need addressing as quickly as we