Masculinity Studies | Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a mid-19th century poet, lecturer, philosopher and essayist. A staunch individualist and social critic, he wrote many written works regarding society and its overreaching desire for conformity and collectivism at the expense of free thinking individuals. Emerson was the leader of the Transcendentalist movement, a counter movement against religious dogma and tradition. He believed that God, nature, and humans were all interconnected and inseparable from each other, and that greater truths can only be discovered through subjective intuition rather than objective empiricism which was a cornerstone of Enlightenment thinking. Despite criticisms from his contemporaries, he went on to write a successful series of essays. One of which included his most seminal work titled: Self-Reliance.
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
In our masculine studies series, we will explore the depths of the male psyche to discover what makes a man a Man. Emerson describes in detail throughout his essay, in poetic prose and fashion, an observational truth about man’s inherent belief, that only the individual alone has the power to change one’s circumstances and that truth can only be found within oneself.
“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
While such a statement might seem baffling to more rational men, the context behind this phrase within the larger scope of his essay demands scrutiny. In many passages, he attempts to elucidate a common problem that befalls all men, namely the tendency to conform to society’s standards at the cost of one’s individual principles and ideas. Indeed, the more homogenous a society becomes, the more men will comply with its social norms and way of thinking.
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
A civilized society must civilize men to perpetuate its existence. Men’s savagery and wild impulses must be tamed; their individual interests corralled for the greater good of the common man. Men must forfeit their self-reliance for codepedependence. A civilized society succeeds only by convincing its men the virtues of conformity.
In Rollo May’s “Man’s Search for Himself” he regards conformity, not cowardice, as the antithesis to courage:
“The opposite to courage is not cowardice: that, rather, is the lack of courage. To say a person is a coward has no more meaning than to say he is lazy: it simply tells us that some vital potentiality is unrealized or blocked. The opposite to courage, as one endeavors to understand the problem in our particular age, is automaton conformity.” - Rollo May ²
Men who shun self-reliance risk turning into herd-like creatures who forever squander their potential. It is not so much a conscious act as it is a conditioned one. Social institutions like modern education are designed to suppress, not invigorate free thinking or individual growth. You destroy a man’s self-reliance not when he’s fully grown but while he’s still a fledgling boy. Men are much easier to control when conditioned early because their natural docility makes them more susceptible to instructions that, if and when disobeyed, lead to swift punishment. The United States education system in particular was modeled after the Prussian system, a system designed to produce automaton workers not vibrant thinkers. Is it any wonder why boys are falling behind in school now more than ever(1)? A boy’s education must include how to become self-reliant if he is to have any hope of becoming a man who stands out among the masses.
However, since the decline of corporal punishment in the West, a more pernicious punishment has grown in its place: apathetic obedience. Boys are forced to follow a curriculum designed not to educate—but to instill obedience. The United States education system in particular was modeled after the Prussian system, a system designed to produce automaton workers not vibrant thinkers. Is it any wonder why boys are falling behind in school now more than ever(1)? A boy’s education must include how to become self-reliant if he is to have any hope of becoming a man who stands out among the masses.
“Whatever an education is, it should make you a unique individual, not a conformist; it should furnish you with an original spirit with which to tackle the big challenges; it should allow you to find values which will be your roadmap through life; it should make you spiritually rich, a person who loves whatever you are doing, wherever you are, whomever you are with; it should teach you what is important, how to live and how to die.” - Joseph Taylor Gatto ³
From boyhood to manhood we are conditioned to conform to the ringing of school bells, to the punch-in and punch-out of time clocks, to the typing of keyboards that echo inside our cubicle prisons we call office spaces and think somehow we are free—that we came out of childhood unscathed—yet all we have really done is trade our cotton bib for a silk tie leash. Whether parent, guardian, teacher, or boss, our dependence on authority still lingers deep within the recesses of our mind because the last thing we want to do is to upset them and those who follow their leadership lest we be judged or persecuted even if we are forced to go against our better natures.
Emerson asks us to consider why offending such authorities should bother us. After all, any man who has ever stood for something was always targeted as the odd man out. A great man, thus, has many detractors.
“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
A self-reliant man is one who stands by his own convictions and principles regardless if he is understood or not. But why should the male psyche be tailored to oppose societal norms? And if so, should it be done regardless for its own sake? To answer this, we must first accept that Man is also an animal. And like all animals, they are wild, untamed creatures driven by basic instincts. However, higher consciousness has given us the ability to reason and make decisions that extend beyond self-interest and pure survival. However, human ingenuity is a double-edged sword. We sacrifice our wildness for civilization, our self-reliance for convenience, and our individuality for conformity.
“The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
Despite these opposing forces, taking a nonconformist stance for its own sake is not the answer. Paradoxically, it only manifests as groupthink which conforms to the opposing ideology of what is meant to be nonconformist. Consider, though disputed(2), one of the longest words in the English language: antidisestablishmentarianism, in reference to the conflicts surrounding the officiality of the Anglican church in Britain during the 19th century. Those who supported the ruling authority of the church at that time could not have done so without the opposing views of establishmentarianism and disestablishmentarianism. Of course, both the word and position become nonsensical because it is self-evident that it is just a subgroup within establishmentarianism making it no longer nonconformist and thus loses all meaning and purpose other than to exist for its own sake.
Emerson himself explains this contrast but offers a counterpoint:
“The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
The law of consciousness, the human gift of intellectual discernment filters our preconceived notions to discover what is real. In other words, free thought and calculated rejection of what a man knows to be wrong, despite social norms and conventions, is what he must strive for above everything else; the Truth. If the individual man cannot reign supreme in thought and action to find Truth for himself, then men as a whole will crumble to their knees and become beholden to the ideological whims of whoever happens to be the ruling authority. But why do men give up their individual freedoms and self-reliance so readily to authority? It is because desperate men would rather rely on bureaucracies to secure what they currently have in exchange for their self-reliance that comes with the possibility of losing everything.
“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
Indeed, we regard our possessions as a measure of our self-worth. And in the West, our penchant towards materialism and private ownership become muddled with our desires for existential fulfillment and security. It always seems that Man is at war with himself—between what he should want versus what he does want—and each battle he faces is a constant struggle between the ideals of defiant individualism and compliant collectivism. But these struggles are impositions from outside forces; a man must look from the inside out before looking from the outside in. A man is not ruled by his external circumstances but by his internal convictions. Self-reliance, is thus, the shield that protects us from the slings and arrows of unnecessary compromise—from the friendly, imposing smile that speaks broken promises of protection and security. Don’t be fooled by such trite attempts. A man must keep his edge and sharpen it daily or else he will become dull and ineffective. And in the process, become like every other man who forgot what it meant to be self-reliant.
Remember,
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
Because,
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ¹
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