Dependence on Self-Reliance: An Essay Analyzing Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
The Emersonian society is intelligent but not clinical; spiritual and individualistic; in the morning makes its own soap, identifies botany, sews, and in the evenings paints and reads; is a place where love is chosen, not obligatory, and is never diluted to dependence — a society where choice is revered as law. In “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson writes that people must understand themselves in order to understand their role in community. Once done, the society will be as perfect as possible because everyone will live to their potential and therefore yield the most benefits.
Emerson begins his essay with a deconstruction of genius. He says, “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” Emerson’s first critique of society is that it is dishonest. It meets ingenuity with alienation, pushing exceptional people further into isolation. All men, Emerson thinks, know truth when they see it. “To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius.” We all have genius, but how many people are willing to recognize it? People suppress truth to buoy convention, become frustrated when they realize they’ve made this Faustian deal, become bitter, and then choose to proclaim their truth (that someone else speaks) wrong rather than admit their own dishonesty. People then choose to hate, envy, and imitate what they see as genius, therefore neglecting their own; they are trying to conform to genius, which is paradoxical. Furthermore, fans can make just as much a joke out of genius as critics by overcorrecting. By encouraging unpopular opinions to the extreme for the sake of disagreeing, it results in behavior just as dishonest as the bitter critic. Genius can also be corrupted by praise because it seeks likeability and not solely truth.
When genius is persecuted, it stifles creation. To not become dull, people must admit truth, and by nature, admit their own wrongness. People must not only be confident of their genius, but aware of their flaws. This awareness will not lead to a damaged society, but one made of the best parts of people.
Emerson also remarks upon dissatisfaction when trying to appease rather than act on intuition. Social custom is imitation, and Emerson deems imitation “suicide.” He connects our everyday actions with our creative ones, saying that when we act uniformly in public, we can not create independently in private. He says, “It is deliverance which does not deliver,” talking of the rote customs we perpetuate like shaking hands with someone we don’t like or laughing at a bad joke. Like an actor practicing for a play, they need to bring real emotion to their performance. They choose the role they want, and are cast because they can embody that character. They improvise on stage, and make the play truthful. They repeat lines, but only as an avenue to convey their inexplicabilities. This is what people must be to create genius: actors who care, and go off script sometimes. Genius must be allowed to do the same.
Emerson is also skeptical of advice. By listening to advice, we mute ourselves. “Infancy conforms to nobody: all conforms to it,” Emerson writes. A baby does not share because he feels he must, but because he wants to. A baby touches a flame not out of rebelliousness, but because he wants to know for himself why he shouldn’t. In short, taking advice from people who don’t like us is the same as taking advice from those who do — the only difference is that we are more critical of the former and deceived by our love of the latter. We must explore what we don’t know and not be hindered by another’s fears. Emerson writes you “must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore it to be goodness.”
Morals relate to what we feel is right or wrong; since there is no official Human Handbook, we must not comply to something just because we are told what is right or wrong. If we do not feel that it is right, how can it be since the theory of morals is based on empathy and self-preservation? “Good and bad are but names very transferable to that or this” he writes. This inability to use intuition creates an inherently ignorant, oddly unruly, and frankly unnatural society. There is nothing wrong with referencing people for advice, but blindly taking advice can become dangerous.
After genius and the inspiration for genius, Emerson explores virtue. He says, “Your goodness must have some edge to it — else there it is none.” To have conviction means that you stand strongly for your ideas, and will fight to maintain the person you wish to be. Emerson says that we often punish ourselves because of the bad person we think we are rather than fighting to become better. “Their virtues are penances,” he says. “I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.” If you won’t fight for virtue, or you have to die to keep the morals that define that virtue, how can someone really claim that it is worth living for and worth molding your life around? Virtue is about living honestly, not dying out of guilt. The best life is not one that is clinically virtuous but is holy and appreciated. “My life should be unique; it should be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine.” A society that is clinically virtuous is emotionally dead.
Emerson extends his ideas of virtue to other parts of our humanity as well like bravery or meanness. “We pass for what we are […] The force of character is cumulative.” Our society is very reluctant to grant mercy and to admit that even the worst characters are redeemable, maybe because we can’t seem to forgive ourselves. We force people into lives they don’t want and then chastise them for what they become. A murderer is not just a murderer but a solider with PTSD. A rapist is not just a rapist but someone who was molested when they were eight. A hero who saves a man’s life is also the person who bullied a scrawny kid in middle school. A straight-A student is also someone estranged from their parents. The receiver of a prestigious award is also the person who brags about it. A victim can be a perpetrator. An instigator can be an arbiter. We are not the worst thing we’ve done, nor are we the best. We’re a sleeping person who’s running into a building in the rain on the phone eating a cake turning off the lights and turning them back on and looking at trees and couch cushions and art and out windows and driving in the car and running down stairs and smelling smoke and inhaling seawater. We are the person, of the same character, that most words in the book of our life are made of. Although cliche, “As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps.” Emerson claims our society is so scared trying to do the right thing, that they do the same thing.
The most prominent flaw in Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is that his idea of self-reliance relies on other people being self-reliant. One depends on other people to follow this structure, and Emerson argues that if you truly love other people, you should think about how your dependence, and their dependence, affects them. He writes, “I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife — but from these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you.” He will take care of his parents unhappily, will give up his profits to his family, and will be unfufilled by only having sex with his wife. In turn, his parents feel like a burden, his family feel indebted, and his wife is also restrained by their union. We are not only fooling ourselves by following this model, but are also doing a disservice to those we depend on, or who depend on us. Emerson tells the reader that they must break this cycle: “But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.” Dependence equates to a cripplied society: “He is supported on crutches, but loses so much support of muscle.” This is a society where one man must be supported by two others, and those men supported by others, until we form a long, unbreakable chain of suffering around the globe. Furthermore, dependence equates to a discontented society, and “discontent is the want of self-reliance.” Self-reliance, and the independence of everyone, therefore depends on people to reject one structure to follow another, but hopefully one that is more rewarding.
