The ideal would be for human beings to be free, perfectly free, but this is not possible, Rousseau notes, given that a totally savage and free world means that the strongest person dominates the weaker people around him -- and the strongest will eventually establish a tyranny to serve his own aims, not the needs and rights of others. Locke also believed that a collective society was necessary to protect life, liberty, and property, and so long as ethical individuals enforced the system according to a rule of law, this was superior to a total state of nature. This form of collective protection often subtly threatened freedom, Thoreau believed, in a way that was just as damaging as political oppression, so he left for Walden to isolate himself from all of society.

Thoreau attempted to live an ideal, and to make his life meaningful, not living a slave to conventions...
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