Thoughts on Self-Reliance

Last evening I did read the first part of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance." I had expected a feel-good essay full of inspirational thoughts, so I was surprised when it turned out to be, in my view, a rather aggressive, personal rebuttal against the pressure of mainstream thought.

The idea that I particularly came away with is that we each have "genius" (or "inspiration" or "intuition") and that we should listen to it, and not allow ourselves to be intimidated by self-doubt or by the contrary belief of others. Nor should we yield to pressure to conform. Here is a good quotation about acting according to our own instincts, even without an evident course or aim to guide us:

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.

I like this exhortation to be individualistic, and to follow one's instincts. I think that one could argue that instincts are another form of wisdom, anyway, because they may be the expressions of a subconscious reasoning process that is faster than conscious reason -- though it is not safe to rely on them entirely. And I do think that is the trait of genius (in the limited modern sense) to continue seeing the world in one's own way, and acting according to one's own sense of what is fit.

But altogether I thought that Emerson's philosophy here verges on the self-absorbed and grandiose. I think that anyone would be insufferable who truly thought that he was a receiver of truth and "immense intelligence." If I am to consider myself as a medium for some sort of greater wisdom, I, at least, believe that the human a distorting medium. By the time that the beams of justice and of truth have passed through us, as Emerson puts it, they will have been modified by our natures. I started Emerson's essay "History" once, too, and I think that it has the same problem of being very self-centred. He seems to consider history as being a sort of pageant that has been put on for the special benefit of the future reader, instead of being an often terrible reality. I certainly hope that I never develop such a "God's-eye view" of the world.

Similarly, I think that anyone would be insufferable who followed Emerson's suggestion of freely and openly criticizing the world whenever we see something to criticize. I disagree, for example, with this statement: "Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." It reminds me of the lines in the Bible: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" We are, after all, a part of the world (even if we live in erudite New England seclusion), and improvement, like charity, might as well start at home. Well, I think that the world should be criticized; however, I think that we should not see ourselves as being in opposition to the world, or as being raised above it, but rather as being in our own sphere within it, just as everyone else is.

Sometimes I thoroughly misunderstood Emerson, too. For example, he writes: "Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper in the world which exists for him." I thought that he literally meant that the world belongs to everyone and, that every individual has the right to get out of it what he can, however he can, no matter how he harms others. But from the context it seems that he was merely criticizing the class system. Before that he wrote:

Then again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee thou foolish philanthropist that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots, and the thousand-fold Relief Societies;--though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

To me this sounded like Cain's query, "Am I my brother's keeper?" and I was rather shocked. But I'm sure that Emerson meant that generosity and charity should not be given just for their own sakes, but for the sake of doing actual good.

It is rather an irony that, while he discourages expressing one's religion in the words of the Bible, and prefers reformulating it in one's own words, his rather brief, polemical style resembles that of the Bible. Concerning the above quotation, I'd consider that the strong word "wicked" would be better applied if he did not to give any money under any circumstances.

The main reason why this essay interests me so much, even if I haven't finished it, is because it is so applicable to my own life and my thoughts about where it will go. School was, after all, principally about conformity, and, since I could neither conform, nor trust in my own way of thinking and acting, I had a very miserable time of it. I think that one of the most cruel things about conformity is that those who conform treat those who don't as if they weren't in their right minds. As George Eliot puts it in Middlemarch, "Sane people did what their neighbours did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them." I can understand that on a very basic level, because "survival of the fittest" implies fitting in (except in the fortunate case that a new niche emerges), and it would therefore seem that any rational creature would try to fit in. But surely the modern human is more highly organized than that.

Now, at any rate, I do want to act according to my own sense of what is fit, but first I need to fully regain this sense, and I need to reconcile it to reality; I can't act as if I were in a vacuum, because I'm not. In many ways my parents and I have often discussed the above-mentioned ideas of self-reliance, and both Papa and Mama say that I should not let myself be pressured and that I should do only what I really find best, without undue reference to what anyone else thinks or what it is expected that people in my situation do.

Anyway, I should read more philosophy, not only for the obvious reasons but also so that I can train myself to consider and summarize the thoughts of others more dispassionately. I was clearly antagonistic to Emerson's way of expressing himself (though I had forgotten about my unfavourable impressions of "History" when I started "Self-Reliance"), and it probably came in the way of understanding him.