Talk:Scott Nearing

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Longevitymonger's comments[edit]

Anybody want to talk about Nearing's achievements?--Longevitymonger (23:12, 12 April 2003

Many thanks to the individual who inserted the picture of Nearing! Longevitymonger (21:07, 23 April 2003)

About article-merger idea[edit]

I believe the idea of a merger of this article with the Helen and Scott Nearing article is not a good one. Helen & Scott (together) lived a self-reliant life that is interesting and meaningful to many people, regardless of political philosophy or adherence. However, Scott was a Marxist (revisionist) - very politically driven in his personal thought and writing. And yet Helen was from a Theosophical background, was spiritually minded, and - while she may have come to sympathize with broadly socialistic societies (like Scandinavian countries) - was not inclined to revolutionary thinking, in the usual sense.

As a couple, their importance is probably mostly as an inspiration for the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s.

The "rugged individualism" of their shared life commitment and practical philosophy presents a paradox when compared to Scott's radical collectivist philosophy.

Scott was Scott - Helen was not. Keep the articles separate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joel Russ (talk • contribs) (06:54, 9 September 2005)

You mean 'contradiction' rather than 'paradox', surely? In any case, it's hardly clear that there is one, or even that he held "rugged individualist" views. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.112.10.223 (talk • contribs) (18:38, 7 January 2006)

Comment - I agree that Helen was Helen and Scott was Scott. Both are notable in WP terms. Two articles, not one. I'm removing the stale Merger Discussion flag. Carrite (talk) 04:49, 10 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No mention of his work as an educator?[edit]

Article refers to him as an educator, but doesn't say where, or what he did. Noticed in the History of Monopoly article that he was a professor at Wharton, and was dismissed from there. No mention of this in his bio? Seems like a pretty significant omission. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.103.161.118 (talk • contribs) (17:07, 13 December 2006)

Yes, I agree--his position as an assistant professor of economics at Wharton is a very important piece of his biography! He was dismissed by Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania for speaking out against child labor. As for Helen, she is a very important character in history as well. Scott and Helen worked together to write for which Scott is well-known, Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World. Helen continued to write books after her husband's death in 1983. They worked well together as a team, and she should be recognized as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.244.235.99 (talk • contribs) (03:04, 2 March 2007)

Deaths by starvation?[edit]

Do we have a citation for the added category "Deaths by starvation"? It seems unlikely given that he was 100 years old when he died. nirvana2013 (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, that does not make any sense. Neither Helen nor Scott died in that manner. I will delete said category. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 23:56, 22 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a section discussing Nearing's death by voluntary fasting. Whether or not this constitutes starvation is probably largely a semantic question, but it probably makes things more confusing to put him in that rather strange category. Richard Cooke (talk) 09:41, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marriage?[edit]

The article suddenly says "In 1954 he co-authored Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World with his wife Helen." This is the first we have heard that he was married, and the Helen and Scott article doesn't say anything about when they met and married either. This is ridiculous in such a detailed biography and should be remedied. Languagehat (talk) 12:52, 17 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please see below where I expand on this. --P123cat1 (talk) 15:54, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Morris Run/Coal County???[edit]

Hi. I found it very interesting that this erudite man was born in Morris Run, PA. I resided in Tioga County during the early to mid 1990s. In terms of both intellect and political/economic views, I am certain Mr Nearing was a one-off in Tioga County. Pennsylvania has two coal countries: Anthracite, in the region stretching from Wilkes Barre southeast to Pottsville; And Bituminous, starting in Cambria County stretching southwest into West Virginia and Southeastern Ohio. Morris Run is in NEITHER region. Morris Run is in the Northern Central region of the Commonwealth. At one time, there was a large mining operation in/around Duncan Twp and one in the Blossburg area; however, these were isolated deposits and neither of these are located in what Keystone Staters would consider coal country. Hope this clarifies things.User:JCHeverly 15:35, 9 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Blossburg has been holding a Coal Festival for 20 years or so, which suggests that the coal mining in the area had a strong cultural legacy. The Blossburg Coalfield is indeed isolated from the other Pennsylvania mining regions, and its production was generally tapped via New York State rather than flowing south into Pennsylvania, but it's clear from histories of Tioga County (e.g., this 1897 production) that coal production was a major economic and cultural influence in the county's development. (An 1883 history describes Nearing's father as "one of the most colorful figures in the history of Tioga County’s coal".) The fact that the region's culture, demographics, etc. were strongly influenced the practice of coal mining is salient and I think justifies referring to it as "coal country". Choess (talk) 23:53, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

His Marriages[edit]

The article on Helen Nearing says that Helen was Scott Nearing's second wife and cites the dates when they met and married. This article does not mention his first wife at all and glosses over his second marriage; she is only mentioned once where she is referred to as co-author of a book with him. The article on Helen and Scott do not mention his first wife either, and there is no mention of children, in any of the three articles on them. Surely these are glaring gaps in their biographies. The articles would only need the barest facts about his marriages and children, but even those are lacking, except for the relationship dates in the article on Helen Nearing. --P123cat1 (talk) 15:52, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that more information could be added to this article. If you find pertinent information from reliable sources (see WP:RS), you can add it yourself. You might want to use your Sandbox (at the top of the page) to write drafts. You can find additional editing tools if you click on "Preferences", then the "Gadgets" tab, and scroll down to "Editing", and click on "wikEd", and save. You would need to paraphrase information you find so that you aren't copying directly from a source, or, if appropriate, you can add a direct quote in-line, incorporated into a sentence, or a block quote. If you haven't added references before, you should look at WP:REFB and WP:REF for guidelines. If you add new material to an article without a source, it will probably be removed, so you need to add the source properly at the same time as you add the new material. You can ask an experienced editor such as User talk:Dougweller or User talk:Fayenatic london to read your draft in your Sandbox before you add it to the article, or you can add it and it will be looked at. You can also ask them any questions you have. I'll be glad to help you with regard to proofreading, sentence structure, word usage, organization, etc., if needed. By the way, I have a copy of Helen Nearing's cookbook, Simple Food for the Good Life. CorinneSD (talk) 19:50, 27 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I also found this curiously missing. Let us update this article with Personal section. Zezen (talk) 13:17, 12 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned references in Scott Nearing[edit]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Scott Nearing's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "witness":

From Daily Worker: Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 206–207, 218–229, 252–259. ISBN 978-0-89526-789-4.
From Jack Hardy (labor leader): Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 213 (Hardy - Zysman), 536 (Mandel).
From Sender Garlin: Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 196–197, 217. LCCN 52-5149.
From Joseph Freeman (writer): Chambers, Whittaker (1952). Witness. New York: Random House. pp. 217 (background), 219 (Daily Worker), 224 (foreign news), 231–2 (Chambers' wife), 232 (petition), 241–242 (succession, James S. Allen, TASS), 243 (Lovestoneite). LCCN 52005149.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 06:39, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Was his death technically a suicide?[edit]

Apparently, it seems that he stopped eating solid food a month before his death as per his wishes.He stopped eating shortly before death. Is that suicide?2605:6001:E7C4:1E00:7430:E9EC:4061:B669 (talk) 22:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

His five ″four most influential teachers″[edit]

The section Philosophical Ideas contains the following sentence: “Nearing listed his four most influential teachers as Henry George, Leo Tolstoy, Simon Nelson Patten, his grandfather, and his mother.” Which of these five did he list as his four most influential teachers? Or did he list five and not four? Or was he being playful about the number (in which case, is there a direct quote we can add with a sic)? —Lereman (talk) 21:09, 16 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

His ideas on communist countries[edit]

They seem to have been nice people, but - just an aside: it's been quiet some time I read such a lot of complete, bloody, BS. His comments on everything from Soviet Russia to Albania are simply stark raving mad. --Ralfdetlef (talk) 06:34, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Implication[edit]

In reading this sentence in the section Death, it would seem to imply that Helen did more than just feed Scott liquids: "In the years after Scott's death, many people wrote to Helen lamenting the fact that they had tried and failed to emulate Scott's clean and deliberate death, and it was felt that Helen hoped Ellen LaConte would set the record straight after her death." The sources do not back this very striking claim. Set the record straight for what? Helen clearly writes what she did for Scott in his final days and what she fed him. If people wrote to say they also tried this and failed, and her only response was that she hoped a friend would "set the record straight" after her death; this obviously implies that she did something more than just feed him liquids. I'm going to remove it unless someone can explain it based on the sources. The wording is not good. Maineartists (talk) 02:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I removed that content because it didn't make any sense and was poorly sourced. There may be some copyvio issues in the "philosophical ideas" section, I am not so sure that we should be quoting that much text from a 1991 source. Psychologist Guy (talk) 03:31, 14 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]