Passive Income Blog

The second section of “Self-Reliance” offers more suggestions for the individual who wants to achieve the desirable quality of self-reliance. Emerson begins with a directive: “Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet.” Material objects, especially those that are imposing—Emerson cites magnificent buildings and heroic works of art, including costly books—often intimidate people by making them feel of lesser worth. This feeling of inferiority is a mistake: Humans determine an object’s worth, not vice versa.

Emerson now introduces a contrasting idea to the portrait he has drawn of the intuitive individual: the characteristics and behavior of the “thoughtless man,” who cannot see the depth of truth being used by the self-reliant, intuitive person. Thoughtless people cannot understand self-reliant individuals’ seeming inconsistencies because thoughtless people are too worried about being consistent—as society oppressively wants them to be.

In the paragraphs leading up to this section’s conclusion, Emerson moves from analysis to exhortation, offering suggestions on how we should act. Although everyone can become a model of self-reliance for the improvement of society, he asserts that “we”—the lazy, non-self-reliant individuals—are a “mob.” Too many people, he says, are led by suggestions, by desires, and by feelings of responsibility.

Instead of practicing independent self-reliance, we give in to others’ demands. He urges us to place truth before politeness, value integrity more than comfort, and abandon hypocrisy in favor of honesty. Acknowledging that the self-reliant individual risks being misunderstood as merely selfish or self-indulgent, he vows that individuals who rigorously follow their consciences will be more “godlike” than individuals who follow society’s laws.

In the final third of “Self-Reliance,” Emerson considers the benefits to society of the kind of self-reliance he has been describing. His examination of society demonstrates the need for a morality of self-reliance, and he again criticizes his contemporary Americans for being followers rather than original thinkers.

Although we might question Emerson’s relating travel—or culture—to religion, both substitute an external source of wisdom for an individual’s inner wisdom. The person who travels “with the hope of finding [something] greater than he knows . . . travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things.” The reference to youth reminds us that the self-reliant individual is childlike and original, whereas a person who travels for the wrong reasons creates nothing new and chooses instead to be surrounded by “old things.”

The urge to travel is a symptom, according to Emerson, of our educational system’s failure: Because schools teach us only to imitate, too often we travel to experience others’ works of art rather than create them ourselves. In “The American Scholar,” Emerson advises young scholars to break with European literary traditions.

Finally, Emerson urges the individual to be a risk taker. No external event, he says, whether good or bad, will change the individual’s basic self-regard. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” Self-reliance, then, is the triumph of a principle.

Like many thinkers, Emerson’s thought evolved through his lifetime.  He later came to value social reform movements and group action more than he did in his early life. This was perhaps partly due to the maturity one gains in the life cycle, perhaps partly due to the failure of individual phanthropy the increasing social problems of his age, perhaps partly due to the issue of slavery, in which the individual interests of slave vs. slaveholder were in stark contrast.  But certainly, Emerson’s later writing was more interested in relationships among people, and ethical behavior, than early works like “Self-Reliance” may indicate. 

Nevertheless, the worldview expressed in “Self-Reliance” is not, we would contend, one of radical separation of the individual from the rest of the universe, though Emerson has sometimes been accused of that view.

Quotes:

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

My thoughts:

I believe this essay holds more true today then ever.  Today’s society is so ‘brainwashed’ thru so many methods it isn’t any wonder why so many people conform and try to ‘fit in’.  From school to work to media to Hollywood, it seems everywhere you turn someone or something is telling you what to wear and how to act or worse yet, how to think.

For change to occur we don’t need a new puppet President in the White House to dictate to us about change.  Rather, we need to become Self-Reliant and not depend on anyone else or any governent to take care of us or say what is best for us.  We need to start to think for ourselves, express our own personalites, do our own research and not just depend on what some mouthpiece on the 6 o’clock news tells us what the version of reality is that they want us to believe… what the so-called truth is. 

Who ever made the mainstream media the information authority anyway?  And why do so many people care about what goes on in Hollywood and who is dating who? What about your life?  Are you a conformist?

It’s my opinion that one of the reasons society is where it is at today is because too many people have forgotten who they are; individual expressions of the same infinite source energy having a human experience. And we are here to express our own individual genius, not to keep up with the Jones’ next door.  Where is the self expression in that?

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