You might not have been paying attention at the time, but some teacher along the way probably introduced you to Emerson through his Self-Reliance, in which he advocated one’s thinking for oneself.* For you as a kid struggling with peer pressures, the message should have rung true, but then, you were a kid struggling with peer pressures.
Thinking for oneself isn’t always easy, what with all the voices that tell us what and how to think. It might be, in fact, a nearly impossible task. Apparently, it was a problem way back in Emerson’s time, also, at least it was according to Ralph Waldo.
Can we really “think for ourselves” when just about every thought is a compilation of what we learned directly or indirectly. Is self-reliance just a myth? Are some people who seem to be in control as independent thinkers either lucky that no one challenges their thought or merely arrogant enough not to care?
“What do you think?” you ask.
“First, we should probably ask what self-reliance means. I can see categories and conditions. How many of us are completely self-reliant? Second, we should look for examples. Let’s do the second first. Take Mick Dodge, star of the reality show The Legend of Mick Dodge on the National Geographic Network. I’ve seen an episode. Mick’s out there finding berries and other edibles in the Hoh rainforest. But Mick seems to have a Dutch oven and some glass jars. There’s an episode in which Mick makes hard tack, that indestructible bread of old. His Dutch oven has a wire-wrapped handle that eliminates the need for a pot holder. It looks, therefore, like an improved Dutch oven, such as the one might have bought within the last twenty years or so. He has a Mason jar of flour. A jar of honey. And—where did he get it?—a jar of oil (canola? olive? Wesson?). Nick mixes his ingredients in the oven with a stick (very primitive), and then asks the cameraman, “Do you want to lick the ‘spoon’?” He then makes a pit in sand and a fire nearby, putting embers in the sand pit, sticking the pot on them, adding a few more embers to the top of the oven, and covering the whole with sand and bark to conserve the heat. There! That’s self-reliance, isn’t it?”**
“That’s not a good example,” you say. “Mick Dodge has equipment produced by others—the mason jars, the oil, the honey, and the Dutch oven; therefore, he isn’t completely self-reliant. He’s just a guy who knows something about surviving on what the rest of us would call ‘the minimum.’ When products serve his purposes, he relies on them. Why didn’t Mick make an oven of stones? Why didn’t he cook out some oil from a strangled or clubbed critter? Vegetable oil! In a Mason jar! This guy is hardly an example of pure self-reliance. But I’ll admit that I couldn’t live like him. I’m not dressing in rawhide.”
“I guess I could go to Namibia to follow some Bushmen into the wilderness to see how they survive, but then, I guess they rely on one another for survival. ‘It takes a village,’ they say with clicks. I guess true self-reliance in physical matters is difficult, tales of Robinson Crusoe being fictional accounts for the most part, with any ‘real’ self-reliant lifestyles being relegated to temporary circumstances. Where’s a feral child when you need one to make a point? Truth is, living a feral existence doesn’t necessarily lead to a state of Noble Savagery one might envision in an Emersonian way and in the vision of nineteenth-century poets. Not that eating berries, roots, and shoots isn’t all right for some, but in a world crowded by seven billion of us, getting away from conformity and dependence of some kind is nearly impossible. Two people make a society, so the life of a complete hermit is the only truly self-reliant existence, and if one comes by the hermitic life after exposure to the world of people, then any ‘self-reliance’ takes on a studied form.
“Okay,” I admit, “I can’t think of a perfect example. But aren’t rich people self-reliant? Those of ‘means’ probably say they are self-reliant. They don’t need anyone’s financial aid, and, freed from that obligation, they can go in any direction they choose.”
“That seems to be true,” you acknowledge, “but they have the wherewithal to hire others to do their bidding. Is self-reliance a matter of economic power? If you’re rich enough, for example, you don’t have to have insurance to pay funeral expenses. Although, in a litigious society, a jury could award someone else all another’s wealth.”
“Well, then let’s address the first matter, the definition of self-reliance. Let’s limit it to thinking. Can one be a self-reliant thinker in any society without simply being cantankerous, stubborn, or elitist?”
“Now there’s something to consider,” you add.
“I spent some four decades in Academia and in government research, where I saw a good number of people who appeared to be self-reliant thinkers. In many instances, what on the surface seemed to be self-reliant thinking was, in fact, blatant pretension and arrogance. When there’s no accountability with regard to mistakes and even fudged and false claims, when tenure and unions protect one from consequences, supposed ‘self-reliance’ is easy. No risk, no true glory. Professors and government officials rarely ‘face the music’ in tests of their self-reliance. Everyone needs to remember Newton’s ‘standing on the shoulders of others’ comment.
“Yet, I suppose that we could find some self-reliant thinkers in the Newtonian sense, those who stand on the shoulders of others but who think in a new way, who approach a problem in a novel way. We see examples in fiction, philosophy, and physics mostly. All those court dramas, where the lawyer takes an approach that almost gets him or her a night in jail for contempt, but that, by the end of the program becomes the reason for or against a conviction or an award. Or, we see someone try to abandon an acceptable philosophy to think in a new way. Heidegger tried that. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, also. And physicists like Maxwell, Planck, and Einstein might stand as examples of self-reliant thinking, but as for all those who came after them…well, didn’t they mostly just elucidate and elaborate?”
You throw up your hands. “So, there’s really no true self-reliance?” you ask.
“I wonder how Emerson would evaluate our current society. Are we the fulfillment of everything he warned against? He does have a couple of sentences worth our consideration, such as, ‘What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.’ That’s become a cliché, but it draws attention to our lives as framed by social media. Emerson also says that it’s easy to follow the ‘world’s opinion,’ and easy ‘in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.’
“So, I guess we can be as much Mick Dodge in the city as we can be Mick in the rainforest.”
*If you want to reread the essay, you’ll find it online in numerous sites, including https://math.dartmouth.edu/~doyle/docs/self/self.pdf
** http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/u/kdi9Ld0QAu2atUYfdOZVLRjqsM_VJNm1ectKu2BpkL17udVU42PqREqIsaJqGIe_JaKv0DxYE4U/
Thinking for oneself isn’t always easy, what with all the voices that tell us what and how to think. It might be, in fact, a nearly impossible task. Apparently, it was a problem way back in Emerson’s time, also, at least it was according to Ralph Waldo.
Can we really “think for ourselves” when just about every thought is a compilation of what we learned directly or indirectly. Is self-reliance just a myth? Are some people who seem to be in control as independent thinkers either lucky that no one challenges their thought or merely arrogant enough not to care?
“What do you think?” you ask.
“First, we should probably ask what self-reliance means. I can see categories and conditions. How many of us are completely self-reliant? Second, we should look for examples. Let’s do the second first. Take Mick Dodge, star of the reality show The Legend of Mick Dodge on the National Geographic Network. I’ve seen an episode. Mick’s out there finding berries and other edibles in the Hoh rainforest. But Mick seems to have a Dutch oven and some glass jars. There’s an episode in which Mick makes hard tack, that indestructible bread of old. His Dutch oven has a wire-wrapped handle that eliminates the need for a pot holder. It looks, therefore, like an improved Dutch oven, such as the one might have bought within the last twenty years or so. He has a Mason jar of flour. A jar of honey. And—where did he get it?—a jar of oil (canola? olive? Wesson?). Nick mixes his ingredients in the oven with a stick (very primitive), and then asks the cameraman, “Do you want to lick the ‘spoon’?” He then makes a pit in sand and a fire nearby, putting embers in the sand pit, sticking the pot on them, adding a few more embers to the top of the oven, and covering the whole with sand and bark to conserve the heat. There! That’s self-reliance, isn’t it?”**
“That’s not a good example,” you say. “Mick Dodge has equipment produced by others—the mason jars, the oil, the honey, and the Dutch oven; therefore, he isn’t completely self-reliant. He’s just a guy who knows something about surviving on what the rest of us would call ‘the minimum.’ When products serve his purposes, he relies on them. Why didn’t Mick make an oven of stones? Why didn’t he cook out some oil from a strangled or clubbed critter? Vegetable oil! In a Mason jar! This guy is hardly an example of pure self-reliance. But I’ll admit that I couldn’t live like him. I’m not dressing in rawhide.”
“I guess I could go to Namibia to follow some Bushmen into the wilderness to see how they survive, but then, I guess they rely on one another for survival. ‘It takes a village,’ they say with clicks. I guess true self-reliance in physical matters is difficult, tales of Robinson Crusoe being fictional accounts for the most part, with any ‘real’ self-reliant lifestyles being relegated to temporary circumstances. Where’s a feral child when you need one to make a point? Truth is, living a feral existence doesn’t necessarily lead to a state of Noble Savagery one might envision in an Emersonian way and in the vision of nineteenth-century poets. Not that eating berries, roots, and shoots isn’t all right for some, but in a world crowded by seven billion of us, getting away from conformity and dependence of some kind is nearly impossible. Two people make a society, so the life of a complete hermit is the only truly self-reliant existence, and if one comes by the hermitic life after exposure to the world of people, then any ‘self-reliance’ takes on a studied form.
“Okay,” I admit, “I can’t think of a perfect example. But aren’t rich people self-reliant? Those of ‘means’ probably say they are self-reliant. They don’t need anyone’s financial aid, and, freed from that obligation, they can go in any direction they choose.”
“That seems to be true,” you acknowledge, “but they have the wherewithal to hire others to do their bidding. Is self-reliance a matter of economic power? If you’re rich enough, for example, you don’t have to have insurance to pay funeral expenses. Although, in a litigious society, a jury could award someone else all another’s wealth.”
“Well, then let’s address the first matter, the definition of self-reliance. Let’s limit it to thinking. Can one be a self-reliant thinker in any society without simply being cantankerous, stubborn, or elitist?”
“Now there’s something to consider,” you add.
“I spent some four decades in Academia and in government research, where I saw a good number of people who appeared to be self-reliant thinkers. In many instances, what on the surface seemed to be self-reliant thinking was, in fact, blatant pretension and arrogance. When there’s no accountability with regard to mistakes and even fudged and false claims, when tenure and unions protect one from consequences, supposed ‘self-reliance’ is easy. No risk, no true glory. Professors and government officials rarely ‘face the music’ in tests of their self-reliance. Everyone needs to remember Newton’s ‘standing on the shoulders of others’ comment.
“Yet, I suppose that we could find some self-reliant thinkers in the Newtonian sense, those who stand on the shoulders of others but who think in a new way, who approach a problem in a novel way. We see examples in fiction, philosophy, and physics mostly. All those court dramas, where the lawyer takes an approach that almost gets him or her a night in jail for contempt, but that, by the end of the program becomes the reason for or against a conviction or an award. Or, we see someone try to abandon an acceptable philosophy to think in a new way. Heidegger tried that. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, also. And physicists like Maxwell, Planck, and Einstein might stand as examples of self-reliant thinking, but as for all those who came after them…well, didn’t they mostly just elucidate and elaborate?”
You throw up your hands. “So, there’s really no true self-reliance?” you ask.
“I wonder how Emerson would evaluate our current society. Are we the fulfillment of everything he warned against? He does have a couple of sentences worth our consideration, such as, ‘What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.’ That’s become a cliché, but it draws attention to our lives as framed by social media. Emerson also says that it’s easy to follow the ‘world’s opinion,’ and easy ‘in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.’
“So, I guess we can be as much Mick Dodge in the city as we can be Mick in the rainforest.”
*If you want to reread the essay, you’ll find it online in numerous sites, including https://math.dartmouth.edu/~doyle/docs/self/self.pdf
** http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/u/kdi9Ld0QAu2atUYfdOZVLRjqsM_VJNm1ectKu2BpkL17udVU42PqREqIsaJqGIe_JaKv0DxYE4U/
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