Post #2

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think" -Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

This turned out to be a really popular quote in my class, so I almost didn't write about it for the blog (though I did for the original assignment), but in reflection there was stuff I wanted to say so let's roll, shall we? To paraphrase the above quote, "I only worry about what I have to do, not what people will think of me for doing it." The most obvious theory concerning the apparent popularity of this quote is that we're all a bunch of teenagers and so it's easy to apply it to our own lives, but I've chosen a slightly different route. Enough exposition, let's get to the good stuff.

Concerning this quote, I think this standard that Emerson holds himself to is evident throughout all of his work. He's always trying to do away with the idea of conformity in order to become self-reliant (see what I did there?). This, of course, explains why so many of his ideas initially set off our common sense alarms, then begin to make more sense when we actually stop to think about them. After all, in our culture it would be considered uncouth to, say, refuse to ever thank any one for things. I can almost guarantee that when you read the last clause of that sentence (unless you are already familiar with Emerson which, in all probability, you are) you thought to yourself, "That sounds really rude and selfish". In truth, however, by not thanking people, we remove a chance for them to qualify our gratefulness. We do not show either that we are only saying thank you to be polite, which would be meaningless, or we express too much emotion and flatter the do-gooder who has earned such gratitude. Moving away from the example and back to the main point, Emerson's unorthodox approach to matters comes from his creed of discovering things on his own. On a more basic note, writings that merely confirmed all the common ideas and thoughts on matters such as gift giving and friendship would hardly make for interesting reading. Instead, Emerson spurns the very idea of holding himself to such societal norms, going so far as to cite the aforementioned practice which, notably, is Buddhist in a predominantly Christian environment. Under such circumstances, writing that traditional values are wrong and being willing to look to other religions for guidance is admirable. The resolve to write thusly comes from his strong belief in his natural identity. He puts his personal feelings and beliefs even before common morality, going so far as to write that if "he is the devil's child, then [he] will live for the devil." That's commitment to an idea! To break it down a little more, I once read a book by Scott McCloud (who is a pretty cool guy) who referenced someone else's (can't remember whose, exactly) division of all thought into four basic groups that were something along the lines of Sensation, Emotion, Intellect, and Intuition. Whereas many writers, including myself at this very moment, largely utilize Intellect (which is based on knowledge) to dissect issues, Emerson is determined to rely solely on Intuition. This is, essentially, the crux to all of his writings and all of his beliefs. In the past, other philosophers have chosen to focus on one of the other two schools of thought to other conclusions (the Epicureanists and Sensation come to mind), but Emerson chooses Intuition as his guiding star, and it is this that allows him to ignore the opinions others have of him, to not rely on what we think of as "common sense", and to give such unexpected and useful insights on all topics throughout his writing.