"Self-Reliance," by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Quote:
"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature."
There's a difference between non-conformism and just disagreeing with everything and everybody. The latter is just conformism with polarity reversed.
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Anonymous said...
Emerson's essay 'Self Reliance' is just one of many that can help people to find a peaceful, joyful life. His thoughts helped my wife and I find an incredibly easy and rich life (Ditto for some of Thoreau's essays). Just getting and then living his thought below can make all the difference.
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
Anonymous said...
Emerson's essay 'Self Reliance' is just one of many that can help people to find a peaceful, joyful life. His thoughts helped my wife and I find an incredibly easy and rich life (Ditto for some of Thoreau's essays). Just getting and then living his thought below can make all the difference.
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
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10 comments:
Anyone who would really follow this must reject it as a nonconformist doesn't let others do his thinking for him. Not even Ralph Waldo Emerson.
If you follow your own inner voice authentically, then it's really your own.
Even if somebody else is doing exactly the same, before or after.
Yes, there's a difference between non-conformism and just disagreeing with everything and everybody. The latter is just conformism with polarity reversed.
"The latter is just conformism with polarity reversed."
Very good!
Emerson's essay 'Self Reliance' is just one of many that can help people to find a peaceful, joyful life. His thoughts helped my wife and I find an incredibly easy and rich life (Ditto for some of Thoreau's essays). Just getting and then living his thought below can make all the difference.
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness."
Good one, thank you, I'll use it.
Yes, there's a difference between non-conformism and just disagreeing with everything and everybody. The latter is just conformism with polarity reversed.
Isn't that what you do - disagree with everything and everybody? I've been reading through your blog, just picking and choosing random past topics, and you seem to have an almost paranoid obsession with not doing anything that might be considered even remotely "trendy" as though it would be a crime to have some common ground with people.
Anyone who thinks they are unique has to be delusional. How many people in history have had truly original ideas? Very few. That's why we elevate people like Shakespeare and Newton.
The last point, very true.
And I'll admit to some truth to the first point too. But at least I fight it! I'll make an excuse for posting a popular viral video of cute animals, for instance, but I do it.
And I will openly profess to being a huge fan of some very popular things, for instance Friends, which I'm re-watching right now with great pleasure. Sure, it may have been the most popular sitcom ever, but in my opinion it was also one of the most brilliant ever.
And by the way, I *did* get attacked for liking such "crap" in one post were I praised Friends. This might be a factor in why one can become a bit defensive about it.
FIRST: Anonymous 1: I believe you should have also included the last two sentences of that particular paragraph as I believe that they are just as important
SECOND: Eolake: I agree with you – you can at least try to be aware of it and then try to resist/fight it. As E.E. Cummings once said: “To be nobody-but-myself – in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”
Fighting this battle is a sign you are alive and just the process of trying to search for some truths, (even other people’s truths) can, at minimum, keep you from being part of the great majority who like to think that they are being ‘original’, but in effect they are just parroting what seems to be a good sound-bite they have heard or read somewhere else – something which they think will make them appear clever.
Eric Fromm stated that many peoples’ thoughts and conversation are trivial, certainly not original or unique. They give you chatter instead of talk, and assert cliché opinions instead of thinking. Most people listen to others or even give advice, without really listening. They do not take other peoples’ talk seriously; they don’t even take their own answers seriously either. He called these people zombies – people whose soul is dead, although their body is alive.
Nietzsche stated: “The surest way to corrupt a youth (and his life) is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike rather than those who think differently!” He also felt that most people are lazy and cowards when it comes to thinking. Lazy - because it is easier to just accept other peoples’ thinking rather than do it yourself. Cowards - because they won’t dare to think about anything that clashes against their own customs, privileges or beliefs.
Bottom line: Many negatives in a person’s life are often the result of blindly accepting other peoples’ opinions/beliefs, instead of finding their own.
THIRD: Anonymous 2: Yes, thinking you are unique is an incredibly common and delusional trap. Every thought, invention etcetera is built on something or someone that went before it/them. However, some original thoughts/ideas are often created from new combinations of previous singular great thoughts/ideas. The new combination, by default becomes a type of new thought as it wasn’t there before because no one had that thought before.
Emerson instructed that you should insist on yourself; never imitate. That’s because the imitator can never rise above the thing being imitated. He also felt that people make the mistake that they themselves cannot rise above great ‘original’ thinking, yet there’s nothing to say that they cannot rise above an ‘original’ such as a Shakespeare. The reason why is that we all get conditioned by parents, schools and society to think that we can’t.
FOURTH: Do those ‘original’ thoughts even come from the people who get the credit for those thoughts? Most ‘original’ thinking comes to those who are most open to such new thoughts and they get those them at unexpected times, sometimes when they are not even searching. Many who have been labeled as great ‘original’ thinkers have credited their ‘original’ thinking to something other than themselves.
In ancient Greece, people like Socrates gave credit to their personal Damon. Henry George after writing his master piece ‘Progress & Poverty’ flung himself to the floor and thanked God. Both Edison and Einstein towards the end of their lives made veiled references to God for where ‘their original’ thinking came from with Edison hesitating to use label God “because everyone has their own idea of what that label represents.” Given this, it begs the question: Does any human being have real ‘original’ thought that they can claim as truly their own?
FIFTH: I, like you Eolake, prefer to at least try and ‘fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight’ and I won’t stop fighting it until I die because I know that this is how you keep yourself really ‘alive’ while you are still living!
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