He Has No Time to Be Anything but a Machine

I have been openly critical of Henry David Thoreau in the past. I have called him self-centered, egotistical, and judgmental, and I stand by these statements. However, I will admit that there were two sentences in his essay, “Economy,” that absolutely floored me.
“The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another this tenderly” (Thoreau 116).
This excerpt comes from a paragraph in which Thoreau discusses the tragedy of “the laboring man,” saying that “the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men […] he has no time to be anything but a machine” (Thoreau 115).
In this paragraph, Thoreau concisely addresses what I consider to be the male side of the tragedy of western patriarchy. In the process of distributing power unfairly to men, the patriarchy not only forces women to become powerless, but also forces men to become their power; rather than complete human beings with sensitive, multifaceted emotional lives, men are molded into unidirectional forces, seeking power, status, and wealth above emotional fulfillment or self-realization. As Thoreau says, the patriarchal man “has no time to be anything but a machine.” In fact, while Thoreau’s statement about “the manliest relations to men” may seem patriarchal in today’s vocabulary, the relations that Thoreau is referring to are, in actuality, close, personal, emotionally fulfilling platonic relationships between men. The patriarchal man has no place in his life for such relationships; emotional closeness and openness between men risks much-feared accusations of weakness and homosexuality from their peers, often followed by rejection and ostracization.
In the last sentences of the paragraph, Thoreau delivers a crushing blow to the heartstrings. “The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another this tenderly.” This is the true tragedy of the patriarchal man: the tenderness he deserves from others, he is refused, and his only remaining option is to deny himself tenderness as well, and to even deny that he desires tenderness in the first place.