Self Reliance Part 4

Ultimately, listening to the silence of yourself and achieving self reliance, is not a very fashionable thing to do. This sort of behavior is not so easily transmitted via the ether to any give social media platform. This sort of behavior is not the sort of thing that marketers can cater to. It's tough for the outside to get in. And it may be too difficult to define to the outside what is happening on the inside.

In 1841 when Ralph Waldo Emerson published his essay Self Reliance he summed up all of this themes very articulately. He meant to say to the world that each individual needs to avoid conformity and false consistency, and simply obey their own instincts and ideas. Emerson was very critical of society. He was critical of the church despite being an ordained Unitarian minister himself. Self reliance to Emerson is a very personal journey. To Emerson, we all have the capability of self reliance.

I believe in the Emersonian view of self reliance. I'm in it totally, subjected to the thoughts of a man who specifically told me not to let anyone think for me, including Emerson himself. But even following the ideals of Emerson or the greater community of the American Renaissance writers like Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman or Melville, can only go so far in our modern times.

I don't suppose that humanity has changed all that much since the beginning of time. I believe that ancient humans were just sophisticated and just as deep thinking as we are today. I believe the human curiosity and human intellect built the pyramids at Gyza and the library at Alexandra. I also believe that it was human intellect and human destruction that destroyed the library at Alexandra or any number of cities from Famen Temple to New York's World Trade Center.

What has changed, I suspect, is how much there is. I mean there is more of everything than Emerson would have imagined. The population of Concord may not have grown much, but think about the population of Boston or Massachusetts or the United States and especially the world.

When I think about Emerson and especially his essay on self reliance, I have to wonder what he would think about the way the world has turned out. I think he would be baffled at the notion of not one but two World Wars. I think he would be baffled that there have been men on the moon. If he knew we were still reading him in schools across the world, I think he would laugh and tell us that we should be realizing our own self reliance and not subscribing to the ideas of society, even if it is his society.

What would he think about the current trends in digital realm where we all seem to exist? What would he think if he wandered into a restaurant, say, or a bus station, where no one is speaking and everyone is staring into a glowing little box. What would be his notions be now about self reliance and not letting the establishment think for us?

My thoughts, of course, drift far away from what I think the establishment wants for me. But I am not free from it, not entirely anyway. When I look at anything on the Internet, the Internet seems to know what it is I want to see next. Either that or it wants me to do or be something next and I too often follow. We all do. But we don't have to do. Or, like me, we can be somewhat conscious of it and know what is happening or at least suspect we know what is happening.

Still others of us may want to unplug altogether. Unplugging altogether will do something profound, it will increase the number of hours you have in the day to do all the things you'd rather be doing. I think to get unplugged entirely will increase your chances of thinking for yourself and living in the present. I do not mean to insist that unplugging from all the devices: phone, computer, TV will make you actualize any sort of self reliance, but it will probably help to realize it.

And being unplugged may seem very lonely. When you see the world and the people of it in real time, you just may be alarmed to see them with adverted eyes aglow with the device in their hands that has made them captive.