How can I use "Where I Lived and What I Lived For" by Henry David Thoreau to argue that the materialistic culture is preventing us from truly living our life?

Chapter 2 of Walden includes considerable material that can be used to support an argument about the negative effects of materialism. To Thoreau, apprehension of the natural world is considered authentic, and having few possessions is superior to having many. This chapter employs the paradox of seeing material objects as unreal, despite their tactile physicality, while artistic and spiritual things are genuine and authentic. Henry David Thoreau begins with the story of how he came to live on Hollowell’s farm without buying it and deems himself “a rich man.”

I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty.

When Thoreau goes to live at Walden, in his small cabin, he finds each morning an “invitation to make my life of equal simplicity” to that of a shepherd with his flock. He speaks of the freedom to arise each day not indebted to “some servitor.” He sees that man’s task is to make his life “worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.” The passage that follows is highly applicable to the theme of living life honestly.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life . . .

The author continues in this vein, in favor of the idea of living “sturdily and Spartan-like,” thereby defeating everything inauthentic. To do this, he says, he will “reduce life to its lowest terms,” by which he means live as simply as possible, and he will thereby determine if life is “mean” or “sublime” and then let others know his conclusion through his writing.
In the long paragraph that follows, Thoreau states his fundamental ideas in several different ways, as he states, “Simplify, simplify.” The extended comparison he makes between a personal life and the nation includes substantial commentary about extraneous, “superficial” elements. This paragraph lays out a number of material aspects that one could, and should, dispense with; for example, he compares parts of society to extra furniture. “Luxury and heedless expense” are things that lead to ruin. Thoreau again refers to “Spartan simplicity,” which he believes shows evidence of a higher purpose.

The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.

Thoreau advocates being awake and taking one’s time, contrasting these states to “slumbering,” as metaphors for intense awareness or inattention to one’s surroundings. Such awareness involves deliberate choices about rejecting things that are artificial or illusions.

[P]etty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality . . . By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.

He goes on to suggest ignoring the measures of time that interrupt people and organize their day, using a rhetorical question to emphasize that they are irrelevant or even harmful. In contrast to the material objects and luxuries with which most people concern themselves, he richly evokes the idea of physically, and by extension spiritually, planting oneself into the earth’s deep soil.

If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe . . .