Moving Toward A New Idea — John D. Silvio

Be yourself. Whether it’s Shakespeare – “To thine own self be true.” - or Lao Tzu – “The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.” – or a punk band from Cleveland, this is a universal idea we’ve all heard before. It’s a self-help cliché, so I think a lot of people just take it as face value and don’t try to dig any deeper into what it might really mean. But for me there may be no idea that is more important. In a world where I’m constantly bombarded with opinions on television, the internet, and social media, it’s hard to tell where my ideas end and others’ begin. Whenever I start to question myself, I go back to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th century speaker, essay writer, and thinker.

In high school more than fifteen years ago, I read Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” for an academic competition. Emerson’s essay is based on two concepts - that you should trust yourself and that what is true for you is true for everyone. “Speak your latent conviction, and it shall become the universal sense.” This message has stuck with me throughout my life, and greatly shaped my view of the world.

Before I was introduced to “Self-Reliance”, I was a conservative Catholic who listened to Rush Limbaugh and got into shouting matches with the hippies in my English class about how abortion was murder. If I met my younger self today, we would probably get into a shouting match with each other. Or not. Even if my social and political views have changed since then, we have a lot more in common than we haven’t. We both love music and our favorite movie would still be The Sting. I am less confrontational and sure of myself and more open-minded than I was then. This allows me, in a way I was unable to before, to empathize with those who do not share my views. Emerson and “Self-Reliance” are largely responsible for that.

America is a divided nation, much like the way my new and my old self are divided. Left and right. Conservative and liberal. Democrat and Republican. Lately, America’s politics have been so divided that Congress spends most of the time in gridlock, reluctant to make even the simple decision of raising the debt ceiling (which, according the U.S. Government Accounting Office, only means meeting its obligations for budget items Congress has already approved).9 If you turn on the TV, pundits for the major news networks, such as Fox News and MSNBC, are probably lying to you just so they can support their conflicting viewpoints (80% and 66%, respectively, of their statements are half-true or worse according to PunditFact, a joint project of the Tampa Bay Times and the Poynter Institute).10 At times it seems America is tearing itself apart.

But America has always been a divided nation. In 1841, when “Self-Reliance” was first published, the abolition of slavery was the hot-button topic. Emerson was a Transcendentalist, a group of liberal American thinkers who believed everyone should think for themselves and that the truths of the universe would be revealed by self-reflection. They were considered radicals, and as a group of independent thinkers might, they often disagreed with each other. However most of them believed in equal rights, and Transcendentalists were vigorously opposed to slavery.5 Twenty years later, their efforts proved so divisive that America had to fight a Civil War. It’s hard to imagine that America is as divided now as it was then. I believe a closer of examination of “Self-Reliance” can help the nation now the way it has helped me - teaching us to think for ourselves yet stay open-minded.

In the essay, Emerson attacked the conformity that society forces on its members and the consistency it requires them to act with. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” He believed that a person should not act or think the way they have in the past just for the sake of keeping up appearances. A person should be open to acting and thinking the way they think best without worrying what others will think. Conformity and consistency are the death of debate - there is no point in arguing with people who won’t change their minds.

These ideas have shaped the man I’ve become. I would like to tell you a story of how I came to some great personal revelation that changed me overnight, but that’s not how it happened. It’s been through hundreds of little changes. For instance, I can admit that Magic Johnson was a better basketball player than Larry Bird (though as a Massachusetts native it pains me to do so). Or that the Rolling Stones are a better rock band than the Beatles. Or even that asparagus is quite delicious. These are all trivial examples, yet their accumulation over the years has turned me into a very different person.

Emerson’s ideas of nonconformity and inconsistency are also dangerous, easily used as an excuse to do what you want. In a 2011 New York Times Magazine article, Benjamin Anastas notes that, “The excessive love of individual liberty that debases our national politics . . . found its original poet in Ralph Waldo.” Anastas tells the story of how his high school English teacher had used “Self-Reliance” as an excuse to teach the class a house-flipping pyramid scheme.1 Reflecting on the early stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of Emerson’s earliest critics, Quentin Anderson wrote, “we might feel licensed to conclude that any claim to be a self and enact inner demands made one guilty, aberrant, destructive, because it cut us off from our fellows.”7

Emerson also recognized the dangers of his nonconformist doctrine: “The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard . . . and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes . . . But the law of consciousness abides.” Just because someone looks inwards for answers, it does not mean he or she will act selfishly.

Emerson and other Transcendentalists believed that people were good, and that truth was universal. This is an essential pillar of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” but is often overlooked by those who use the theory to justify self-centered behavior or who criticize the theory for that self-centeredness. Yet it is necessary to understand that when taken to its logical conclusion, self-reliance promotes the exact opposite. If what is true for one person is true for all others, they have equal rights.

This universality of truth is often the point that many of Emerson’s critics reject. In American Incarnation, Myra Jehlen argues that if self-reliant individuals were truly transcendent, if their “sense of transcendent oneness is absolute,” then they would be incapable of any action because they would be at one with nature, and “the wages of opposing the existing structure of things – since if it exists it must comport to nature’s design – are death.”8 Or as Quentin Anderson stated a bit more bluntly, “To believe oneself the actual focus at which universal and particular intersect is to be a psychotic…”7

But Emerson’s claims of universal truth are not as outlandish as they seem. Our country was founded on a similar ideal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . .” Self-evident. The idea that at least some truths are universal is one of the bedrock principles of America. Lawrence Buell, a Harvard Professor and Emerson scholar, writes, “For Emerson, individual freedom is always prior to social equality. But it does not excuse oppression. It is what makes equality possible.”2

Even if the concept of universal truth is difficult for everyone to accept, people share history and culture, biology and millions of years of evolution. We all eat, sleep, and breathe. We all like hockey. (Well, if you don’t, you should. It brings people together.)

When I was a freshman at college back in 1998, my roommates were a Dominican from the South Bronx and a Muslim African-American from Queens whose family was from Tanzania via India. Back then I believed in more stereotypes than I’d care to admit. At first I was apprehensive. I wasn’t sure we would have much in common. But we did. We all liked music, different music to be sure, but there was rarely a moment in our room when some CD wasn’t playing (Yes, this was back when people still bought CDs). I learned to love hip-hop. We were all into science and engineering (it was MIT). But most of all, we all loved hockey. They were both Rangers fans, but nobody’s perfect.

I don’t think America is as divided as it seems to be. There is a lot of talk about red states and blue states, but in the last presidential election, each candidate got at least 25% of the vote in each state (D.C. was the exception), and in most it was much closer than that.3 While those at the extremes can be stubborn in their views, there are still plenty of Americans who are open-minded. For instance, from 1996 to 2014, Gallup polls indicate support for same-sex marriage has doubled from 27% to 55%.4 Much of that can be explained by demographics, but not all. That represents a lot of people changing their mind on a very divisive issue. Many Americans are open-minded - except for politicians and media pundits. Those two groups are dependent on the opinions of their constituencies and viewers, and therefore not really self-reliant at all.

Ultimately, Emerson leaves us with a contradiction. We all need to be ourselves, yet when we look deep enough inside, we discover that what is true for one person is true for everyone – that we are all the same. It seems only one of these things can be true. I’m not sure what to make of it myself. But perhaps that’s the point. Emerson’s intention was not to provide answers but to provoke questions and make people think. In his day he was considered a heretic and a radical until the tide of history washed away his rougher edges.2 He didn’t want people to take him at his word, he wanted them to prove the things he said for themselves. He would have been disappointed that people took his words and used them for their own purposes without realizing what they really mean. He recognized the dangers of turning to others, including himself, for answers:

We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of granddames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see – painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come to the point of view which those had who had uttered these sayings, they understand them and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can use words as good when occasion comes.

So let the last words on this subject be my own.

I believe self-reliance is necessary for freedom. If people stop thinking for themselves, power is concentrated in the hands of those who decide for them, and what was once a democracy may effectively turn into an oligarchy. During the 2014 election, 37% of voters identified themselves as conservatives, and 23% as liberals. Over 85% of those people voted for the Republican and Democratic House of Representatives candidate in their district, respectively. Yet you will note that 37% and 23% do not add up to 100%. About 40% of American voters are moderates.3 As the major political parties continue to move farther away from the center, a vast swathe of voters are left having to choose between, in the words of a memorable South Park episode, “a giant douche and a turd sandwich.” Despite being larger than either extreme, the center has no voice.

I started by saying be yourself. And while admirable advice, echoed by many great thinkers such as Emerson over the years, it’s not enough. To be yourself means never changing. If you want the world to change, you have to change, too. It can only change one person at a time. So don’t be yourself. Be the person you want to be.

Sources

1. Anastas, Benjamin, “The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’”, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 12/4/2011

2. Buell, Lawrence, Emerson, The Belknap Press, 2003

3. http://elections.nbcnews.com/ns/politics/2012/all/president/#.VFpKJ_TF8pk

4. http://www.gallup.com/poll/169640/sex-marriage-support-reaches-new-high.aspx

5. Gura, Philip F., American Transcendentalism, Hill and Wang, 2007

6. Kateb, George, Emerson and Self-Reliance, Sage Publications, 1995

7. Anderson, Quentin, The Imperial Self, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971

8. Jehlen, Myra, American Incarnation: The Individual, the Nation, and the Continent, Harvard University Press, 1989

9. http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11203.pdf, US Government Accountability Office, Delays Create Debt Management Challenges and Increase Uncertainty in the Treasury Market, Feb 2011

10. http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/nbc, http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox

11. Oh, and “Self-Reliance”