Thoughts on Self-Reliance Thoughts on the Frontier in American History Essay

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Self-Reliance....Thoughts on the Frontier in American History.

Reaction paper: Self-reliance

The concept of self-reliance is extremely important in the discourse of politics today, as people argue that self-reliance from the federal government is a very important value. For Ralph Waldo Emerson, however, the world had a different meaning and resonance. First and foremost, self-reliance for Emerson meant the citizen was true to his or her ideals, versus conforming to the ideas of the past. What is uniquely great about America is the fact that it is not bound to tradition like Europe, and every American can create new ideas. Americans are self-reliant upon their inner truths. According to Emerson: "the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages."[footnoteRef:1] To be great, Emerson argues, America must make a virtue of is newness, and not seek to imitate Europe. [1: Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-reliance," The Literature Network, http://www.

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online-literature.com/emerson/588 / (September 10, 2012)]

As part of his argument, Emerson famously makes the statement that "whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." Every American must decide what is his or her own truth. This can be potentially troubling for a society, however, because if everyone is truly a nonconformist and totally ignores the ideas of the past and the ideas of others, it is very difficult to have a functional community, much less a functional democracy.

It is true that Emerson says: "And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance."[footnoteRef:2] However, Emerson's philosophy is not fundamentally anti-government (except in the sense that government is a collective) and is equally anti-materialist as it is nonconformist. Emerson's values are rooted what he sees as America's unique capacity to allow for a more expansive, personalized development of the human character. America must not become attached to material values, because this breeds a need for bureaucracy and conformity to laws. Instead, America must focus on its spiritual legacy of nonconformity. [2: Ibid.].....

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