HS #71 2021.6.10
Pros and Cons of Self-Reliance
Nine score years ago Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his American-spirited essay “Self-Reliance.” His thoughts echoed those of his soulmate, Henry David Thoreau who went off to Waldon Pond to live it out.
Self-reliance was brought to mind recently when riding in an elevator. Pushing the “2nd floor” button brought back a memory of early childhood. As a young child riding the elevator in the Golds Department Store in Lincoln Nebraska, a lady sitting in the corner shut the steal gate door and pushed the button to the requested floor.
Remember others who helped us out? Going to the filling station meant a young man pumping the gas and washing the windows. Dad was appreciative of those who removed all the bugs without leaving a streak. Dairymen brought our weekly milk and eggs.
Banking became largely self-sufficient with the addition of ATM machines. Grocery stores followed suit with self-check-out lanes. When is the last time that you called a travel agent to buy your plane ticket for a trip? I stopped going to the barber years ago – just as easy to shave my own head. Recent TV ads encourage even men with hair to do their own grooming.
Higher education has long lauded the goal of developing “lifelong learners,” but it is only the last generation or so that has fully embraced that notion. I recently asked a college coed her plans for the summer. She had just bought an old school bus and was planning to refit it into a camper. How? YouTube. Everything you want to know is on YouTube. Increasingly we rely on ourselves – with the help of YouTube or Seri - for the answers.
But Thoreau and Emerson were envisioning something deeper than self-reliance in the mundane affairs of life. The reason for self-reliance is to keep oneself uncorrupted from the depravities of society. Although Thoreau lived it, Emerson was pithier in stating their shared realization that “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members” and “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.” Once when I was feeling pressed to conform, I made a shirt with those two quotes. Wearing it was my silent rebellion against the system.
That was tame compared to one of my heroes, the mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell who was imprisoned at age 89 for his anti-nuke protests. Although an atheist, Russell lived his life according to a Bible verse he found highlighted in his grandmother’s Bible, Exodus 23:2: “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.”
Or consider Russell’s kindred spirit who hailed from Hope College. A. J. Muste, who also spent time in jail at age 74 for climbing over a 5 ft fence into a missile construction site, was once asked by a reporter, “Do you really think that you are going to change the policies of this country be standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?” Muste replied, “Oh, I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.”
All of these were self-reliant. They had their own moral compass and lived accordingly. However, did any of these visionaries of independent thought see the downside?
Downside?
Reliance on others instills a sense of humility, an appreciation of community and a deference to those with knowledge and authority. In contrast, self-sufficiency facilitates a disdain towards authority which started with The Enlightenment.
Just one example. For the first time since polls were taken, less than half of Americans attend/belong to a church. Sunday morning sermons, at the very least, provide a stabilizing influence in society by being mortar which holds individual bricks together, building a common structure. Even if the sermon is dissected on the way home, at least all are pondering the same ideas.
Is there an Aristotelean Golden Mean which melds rugged individualism with a respect for the views of others? Perhaps the proper balance between self-reliance and blind submission was best articulated by one whose life overlapped with all of those above: Rudyard Kipling. In his inspiring poem “If” (which every teenager should read), he sages invaluable wisdom:
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too.
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, if all men count with you, but none too much –
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son.
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ReplyDeleteA few rambling thoughts:
ReplyDelete1) Emerson tells us to be non-conformists. Does this include not conforming to the non-conformist teachings of Emerson himself? (head explodes)
2) I had a HS English teacher who was ate up with Emerson and Thoreau to the point of making us memorize quotes from each. In many ways, he was a great teacher. But I couldn't help thinking that some of my fellow high schoolers fancied themselves non-conformists because they looked, talked, dressed and acted like all their other non-conformist friends.
3) I was reminded, in the early days of COVID, about the sheer ridiculousness of material self-reliance. I made myself a deli sandwich for lunch, silently congratulating myself that the bread was bread we baked ourselves, still warm from the oven. But we did not grow this wheat from seeds, nor did we mill it to make flour. We actually had tomatoes and green vegetables starting to grow in the garden. But to make a self-reliant sandwich, you'd not only need all of the above, but you'd need pigs in your backyard that you domesticated yourself and then slaughtered, cleaned and cured for ham; cows for milk and gear for turning it into cheese; mayonnaise made with eggs from your own chickens and oil from corn you've been growing so you could distill the oil with your own at-home gear; mustard grown from seeds that take decades to make a fruit-producing tree; and a greenhouse to store the avocado tree for my non-indigenous avocados. Ooh, also, to peel the avocado as well as slice the ham, cheese and tomatoes, you'll need to find or make a nice sharp rock, assuming you haven't mined and smelted your own metals into cutlery.
Me, I like technology, society, and knowledge that gets passed down through generations. I also like YouTube.