Self-reliance

[Skybird]

I occasionally tinker with the writings of R.W. Emerson, that part of them that is available in German, I have two such collections which I really appreciate. Today I stumbled over an early essay by him which struck me more intense than he usually already does, leaving me touched by something that I can feel but hardly name, but speaking like from my inner core, or speaking through my inner core. Felt struck and quite thankful to have found this essay, which I understand from follow-up research is seen as one of his most famous pieces of works, if I understood that correctly.

Thought I share it with you.

http://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

Felt as if he was talking directly to me and explaining why I am in so much conflict with the world I need to live in. I held Emerson in high esteem already before - but now even more.

[Takeda Shingen]

Non-conformity in the age of 24-hour news media, talk radio and the internet? Unthinkable.

In seriousness, Self-Reliance is one of my favorite essays. Emerson was on to something there; something that has been lost today. People in our society are almost programed to think one way or another. Read some political threads and you'll see what I mean. When you can predict what the person's argument will be before the argument is made, we come to a point where everyone should read Emerson. What we are left with is not reason or free thought, but the mere caricature of those things.

[Skybird]

I know exactly what you mean, Tak. The anonymous group-pressure making people to streamline themselves, and thinking of it as an expression of their individuality, because they do it themselves.

Amen to what you say above.

I have a good text, a promotion paper I think, that unfortunately is not available in English, but the title of it already announced the message, and it points at the same direction. By Michael Sonntag, "The soul as a political issue. Psychology and the production of the individual". It is as if it is a focussing of Emerson's essay on the special issue of the - worth to be criticised - relation of psychology and wanted views of human nature as demanded by political ideology, and governments with an interest to manipulate opublic oinion for purposes of controlling public opinion and social life.

From declaring solidarity unconditional, to gender mainstreaming, from unlimited tolerance for all and everybody to denial of fundamental cultural differences of people loacted in different parts of Europe, from social all-inclusive nursing no matter the costs and no matter the loss of self-responsibility this means, to declaring unwanted criticism as pathologic and demonising it in an effort to make it unavailable to the being accepted as an issue that deserves to be debated. Whatever it is that Emerson means in this essay - the place I live in seems to be determined to become exactly the opposite of it.