January Thoughts on New Beginnings

I thought I would start out by reviewing some of the inspirational writers of the past and one of the most common American philosophers quoted is Ralph Waldo Emerson.  I first encountered Emerson through the writings of Louisa May Alcott whose father was one of those free thinkers who thought they could philosophize 10 hours a day and somehow food would still be put on the table despite not using animals on a farm, eating meat or wearing wool or leather.  Needless to say this did not seem like a group of men I thought I could learn from!

            I have since opened up my mind to venturing into Emerson’s work with the idea of understanding American intellectualism.  How does America go from a reverence for a free thinker like Emerson (a man who dared to question established religious thought) to being a country filled with ultra conservative thinkers who, 200 years after the birth of Emerson, still question evolution.  Emerson’s work on Self-Reliance is interesting considering he was writing circa 1830 about an individual’s need to avoid conformity and false consistency.  I sat down to study it again yesterday and chewed on it for quite a while.  It is easy to see how one can twist the thoughts around to mean something which I don’t believe was intended.

            The truth, unhappily, is that most people resemble a school of fish, they follow along without really comprehending where the current is taking them.  It is rare to find a lion among the fish, one who thinks alone and moves away from the current trend.  As Betty Smith described the characters in her book, individualists are not easy to find in any century and with the sway mass media has on people today I suspect it is rarer today than ever before.  Emerson says that “the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude”.  It is true it is not an easy thing to stand out against the politically correct view at a cocktail party where one doesn’t wish to start a disagreement and embarrass the hostess.  But when a fish throws out a sentence such as “smokers should pay double the health care costs” or something of like nature it’s hard for me to let that roll over the group as though I accept it is a universal truth.

            I have been thinking quite a bit about his thoughts on consistency as I found that a bit unusual but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it really jives with the old Viking philosophy that one could only be true to a vow for a year because after that things change.  In the same way, as the world changes and circumstances change perhaps some “universal truths” may also change.  So happily I can blog along inconsistently from day to day, month to month and year to year and simply point out that Emerson believed it was a beautiful thing to be inconsistent.