In his seminal
work, ","touts the merits of rugged individualism. Conspiring against this
individualism is society, which is against the manhood of all its members. Emerson
declares,
Society is a joint-stock company in which the
members agree for the better securing of his bred to each sharholder, to surrender the liberty
and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its
aversion.
Emerson states that if a man would truly be a
man, an individual, he must become and remain a non-conformist. As his associate, Henry David
Thoreau, has stated, he must "march to the beat of a different drummer." For Emerson,
conformity--"a foolish consistency"--is the "hobgoblin of little minds," a
fear of rejection or disapproval from society. But, in order to be an individual, in order to
be great, one must be different and, probably, misjudged: "To be great is to be
misunderstood," Emerson writes.
In order to understand truth, one must
be an individual, not a conforming member of society. For, the experience of truth is a divine
one; it is one in which the individual stands alone, above time and space, and even above life
and death.
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