"Self-Reliance" Questions

 1.a.  Every person comes to realize that, "envy is ignorance; that imitation is sucide; that he must take himself for better, for worse," and that, "no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his own toil". Emerson is saying that eventually every person realizes that they need to just be themselves and accept it. They realize that trying to be something you're not or copying others is just stupid, and in a way is killing yourself. People will realize that everything isn't just served to them on a silver platter, but that they have to work for themselves and learn to rely on their own abilities rather than those of others.

1.b. Emerson says that envy is ignorance and the imitation is suicide because he is trying to tell people that they just need to be true to themselves. The phrase "envy is ignorance" means that being jealous of others is just living in cluelessness and having an unawareness of oneself. If you are wasting all your time wishing you were like someone else or wishing you had something that someone else has, you fail to spend time reflecting on yourself and truely trusting your own individuality. You focus more on the trivial things like wanting to look like someone else than you do on relying on your own uniqueness and seeing your own merit, and thats just fooling yourself and living in a state of spiritual, mental, and emotional unconsciousness. "Imitation is suicide" means that trying to be just like someone/everyone else is in a sense killing yourself. Imitation may be flattery, but it is a flattery that flatters only one, and degrades the other. If you try to copy others, you lose your own sense of individuality and the traits that make you you.

Emerson recommends that we all learn to trust ourselves, our own abilities and individual attributes, and accept that we are who we are and we can't change that, and shouldn't try to change it.

2.a. The virtue that society asks of each of us is conformity. People should strive for self-reliance instead of conformity, however.

2.b. Emerson advocates nonconformity because it is the true way to live, and because conformity does not give us reality. You cannot live in truth, and be untrue to yourself. By noncomformity, Emerson means not conforming to the "rules" laid down by society. He says that people shouldn't do what everyone else does just because everyone else does it, or believe something just because everyone else believes it. Emerson wants us all to figure things out for ourselves and come to our own conclusions on what is wrong or right, or what we should or shouldn't do, or what is true or untrue. He says that "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind,", meaning that having your own individual strength and being truthful to yourself and to what you honestly in your heart believe to be right is of the highest importance, not trying to fit in with others.

3.a. Emerson says that being an individual, true to yourself, and living noncomformistly is difficult, but essential for greatness. Living a lie and conforming to society is the far easier path as it is the accepted, expected one, as is just being you when you are only around yourself. The alternative path however, nonconformity, is the harder because it goes directly against society and the world we live in. There will always be people trying to tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and why you should do it. 

3.b. By the "independence of solitude", Emerson means the freedom that comes from not worrying about what everyone else thinks, or being aggravated by the masses of people trying to get you to do what they want you to do.

4.a. Emerson says that "To be great is to be misunderstood," meaning that with not conforming to the society of the time or not listening to the people trying to change who you are, comes greatness. He says that all great people were going against the societal norm, and are now considered great, and that is a good thing to be considered misunderstood by the rest of the world. Emerson states that all great people were discontent with the state of the world, thought and acted for themselves, and were stout and earnest.

4.b. Great people would need to be inconsistent with society and the world in order to achieve greatness. They need to be different than everyone else, rather than the same. They need to think and act differently in order to make an impact. If they were consistent with society and the ways things already are going, then we wouldn't have any new ideas. Emerson believes that it is also important to be consistent however; consistent in being your own individual person and standing up for yourself even if you are shunned. He believes that everyone should consistently speak their own minds, and not whatever anyone else tells them to. 

5.a. I certainly agree that it is better to be self-reliant than rely on others for your own values and principles. You can't even have your own values and principles if they come from someone else because then they aren't your original ideas, they came from what someone else told you. I believe that no one should rely on what anyone else tells them unless they have thought it through and rely on it for the sole fact that it indeed is true to themself. I believe that some people have good things to say, but that something that is good for one person may not, and probably is not, good for another, and so anything should only be followed if it agrees with your own sense of truth. The biggest thing that comes up in my mind when I think about being self-reliant is religion. I say I have no religion for example. I believe what I believe to be true and right, regardless of what a group of people or a book tells me. Being self-reliant is not just going against society, because you can be going against society and still not be true to yourself, it is following what you believe to be true and sticking up for your beliefs. 

If you are self-reliant, you have the pleasure of not caring what other people think, and being able to think for yourself. It causes you to have much less worry and stress when you just think about what you want to or are going to do, without having to think about what other people want you to do or expect of you. You can come up with your own ideas and thoughts without having to see what someone else is doing and simply mimicking it. A self-reliant person thinks and acts for themselves, regardless of whether or not others will accept them for it.

5.b. It really is stupid how much society is conforming rather than nonconforming because the nonconformists have the greatest impact on society. You would think that society would then place nonconformity higher on the list because more people would want to be like the nonconformists. That would go against the whole idea of society and nonconformity though, wouldn't it? Nonconformists have the greatest impacts on society because they are different. They are noticeable. They are talked about, be it good or bad. They stay in people's minds and stick out from the crowd. They are able to change society because to society, they are great, and they are considered great because they are different. They are individuals, and society is not used to individuals. Society, in a sense, conforms to nonconformists. Not all noncomformists however are seen as great. Think about any random danger-loving, trouble-causing, anarchist, druggie, punk teenager. They're nonconformist, are they not? They don't follow the "rules laid out by society, and certainly don't do what they're told. (I mean a punk kid who does what he does because he wants to and because he has realized it to be the truth, for himself anyway. I do not mean one of those annoying, wanna-be kids who try to fit in with the "punk" crowd.) That kid will probably never be seen as great however. What makes a non-conformist great is their appeal to society. Maybe, if that kid one day grows up and becomes a speaker for some rising anarchist political group and changes the whole nation, they will be considered great, but chances are pretty slim for that happening. What makes a noncomformist great is whether or not society follows them. So, in a sense, it is still society that is changing itself, but because it is conformist, it needs something nonconformist to conform to. If that makes sense. I believe I've ranted, and gotten a little off topic, but what I'm trying to say is that nonconformists change society so radically because they are so new, innovative, different, interesting, and unique, and if people like what they see, they'll try to be like that to (Conforming to nonconformism? Isn't that an oxymoron?).

The people that come to mind when I think of nonconformists are Kurt Cobain; The Beatles; The Ramones; My Chemical Romance; Joan Jett; William Wallace; all those old explorer, scientist, philosopher dudes; Martin Luther; Gandhi; Tim Burton; the people who originally campaigned for the American revolution; some people from the Bible, like Noah, Moses, and Jesus; all those hippies and anarchists out there; mass murderers; Rise Against; Weird Al; people who don't wear American Eagle, Abercrombie, Hollister, etc. because they simply don't like it (I don't mean those people who don't wear it just to be nonconformist, because thats like conforming to nonconformism. A person cannot be called a conformist if they wear the clothes that they do because they just like them, not because they are trying to be in the "in" crowd.); whoever directed Donnie Darko; and the like. It is debatable as to whether or not some of those are actual nonconformists, or have had a great impact on our society, but those are the ones that come to mind. They are all certainly different, be it in a "good" way or a "bad" way. 

If you couldn't tell, I really get into this kind of stuff.