CANNON-BALL!!! Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essay “Self-Reliance”

There comes a point in an individual’s life when they must take into account all that they’ve been taught—by tradition, parents, teachers, and popular society—and decide whether they will passively accept these teachings or reevaluate them for themselves. It’s at this point when that individual either chooses conformity or what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls Self-Reliance. This self-reliance comes from the ability to express oneself—one’s “genius”—whether or not it conforms to other expectations.

Emerson is very reminiscent of the Romantics. No, I’m not talking about that romance “literature”! I’m talking about the Romantic movement of philosophers like Rousseau, a view of life that emphasized emotion and instinct over logical reasoning. 

Instinct is so significant to Emerson that he says it’s okay to contradict yourself so long as you “speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls.” In other words, as long as you express yourself genuinely at the time, it doesn’t matter if the sum of all moments produce a contradictory whole. 

(What would Emerson say about blogs, I wonder…?)

The problem with this obsession with the individual is that more than one individual exists in the world. If every person on the planet took Emerson’s advice and expressed his/her emotions without any effort at consistency, the world would be chaos. One day the news would report one thing, then contradict it the next. A just government would be impossible to practice since no politician’s stances would be reliable from one moment to the next.

(Wait, how is that different from today?) 

However, inconsistency must be allowed to be human nature. We are by nature changeable.  Maybe the reason Emerson is saying it’s okay to be inconsistent is because then at least we’re being inconsistent of our own merit. We’re not just blindly following someone else’s lead in behavior or opinion.  Emerson says that “Man is timid and apologetic. […] He dares not to say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” The problem that arises from this is that no saint or sage is perfect and reliable, either.    

Emerson’s point isn’t to go around saying and doing whatever you want as long as it’s you “in the moment.” His point is that we should rely on our own valuation of things, to be self-reliant even if that means challenging our inconsistencies and faults. In short, to quote the Magic School Bus’ sage Ms. Frizzle, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy. It’s the only way to learn.”