Self Reliance

Self-reliance is a difficult concept; to be truly self-reliant one must do and believe only what is in their hearts. In society, there is a constant struggle with beliefs that are not the standard. Those individuals who stray from the standard are shunned thus forced caused to conform to society. The true struggle of an individual is between himself and society. There is a constant struggle within man between his beliefs, and the constraints society puts upon him. As Ralf Waldo Emerson states in his essay “Self- Reliance” “our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us” (194). Emerson is trying to open the eyes of society to his insight, how society is making man struggle by causing him to conform to its standards and beliefs. Emerson wants man to think and do what he believes to be true and pure, and not be held back by society.

Society has ways of corrupting its members and molding them into what society wants them to be. Only the greats of society have been able to break society’s grip on them. Often they were shunned and told their ideas were ridiculous, but in later generations, they were revered as geniuses. As Emerson says, “To be

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The word genius has a meaning of a person with extraordinary intellectual and creative power. who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper,…. If man lets society control his life, he will never live it the way he should. “If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened” (194). " I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.

The most important thing for man to believe Emerson says is “the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it” (179). Even though he showed that in the struggle between ones self and society, society wins most of the time, but man only needs that one time for the individual to stand up, for him to be considered a great man. Nobody believed the earth was round except for the great thinkers of the time. Society chose the fate of the genius and he was miserable because he was not where he wanted to be. The sturdy lad took control, where as the genius let people in society tell him he was not good enough for their business. For those who truly want to be an individual or a “genius” as Emerson calls it, they have to struggle with society constantly and not mind being the “outcast” of society. Peer pressure is what young people today face as what society throws at them to get the teens to conform. Emerson shows this struggle to let the reader relate to an everyday occurrence. As Emerson say “But now we are a mob” were the “we” is referring to society (191).

Approximate Word count = 1721
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

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