On Self-Reliance

So I've been wanting to get my thoughts down on self-reliance for some time now. The concept of self-reliance completely transformed my way of thinking. It sounds self-explanatory and simple, but the nature of self-reliance is actually quite complex and intricate. Many people would readily apply the label of self-reliance to themselves, but I seldom see it in daily life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote an essay in 1841 called Self-Reliance. I read his essay during a... receptive? time in my life. I was interested in human nature and eagerly reading many works to discover why we do the things we do.

Self-reliance is, in a general sense, relying on yourself. It is synonymous with independence. I suspect there are some who will instantly be bored by this topic because it would seem it doesn't apply and must be for other people. To those people, I hope to convince you otherwise, as I was, that we are extremely dependent on the forces around us-- that we are born with a disadvantage in respect to self-reliance; we are born dependent creatures; born reliant on our parents knowledge and beliefs, our cultures, and even our friends. Why else do you think that there is such a chasm between the person we are when we are alone and bored at night and the person at the bar or among friends? Why is there a difference at all between a conversation alone with our best friend and a conversation we have at a party?

Emerson outlines the nature of self-reliance and argues its value on several points. I will argue on a different point: that self-reliance leads to a happier and healthier life. I have also found a ton of overlap between this concept and the scientific study of mind and human behavior. After contemplating the ideas in Self-Reliance, something in me changed. It was a slow transformation, to be sure, but over time the difference between who I am today and who I was became as plain as day and night. Really, it boils down to me becoming a nerd. I started to like school. I loved reading.

I started a blog.
 

It must have opened up apart of me that never understood the importance of self-expression. I never allowed myself to think out loud, to question, to be wrong. All of a sudden I was allowed to wander into fields which dealt with facts, a passion for learning, and I saw a self that was always intimidated by history and deferential to it-- that had not the right relation of identity to circumstance.

Self-reliance is a formidable goal. Its initiative is that each person become free from social embaressment and psychological punishment by eliminating concepts that destroy identity and creating ones that promote fearless self-expression. This is done by understanding three key principles: self-trust, inconsistency, and nonconformity. These three principles will be the majority of the discussion in this post. It is my initial belief that a mastery of these principles will lead to greater mental health, higher self-esteem, and a much more vibrant and coherent world. The possibility of harmony.You will learn to trust whatever thought comes first. Being wrong will become as exhilarating as being right. You will be free:

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost-- and our first thought is rendered back to us us by the trumpets of the Last Judgement... 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. Yet he dismisses [his thought] without notice... because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” -- Emerson's Self-Relaince

Princple 1: Self-trust. Emerson argues that we are reliant on people to think for us. Emersonian self-reliance insists on trusting your self enough to think and speak freely and be afraid of nothing. Sigmund Freud once wrote:

"When I set myself the task of bringing to light what human beings keep hidden within them, not by the compelling power of hypnosis, but by observing what they say and what they show, I thought the task was a harder one than it really is. He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If the lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore. And thus the task of making conscious the most hidden recesses of the mind is one which it is quite possible to accomplish."

These statements by Freud and Emerson both speak about an unspoken force that seems to repress certain thoughts and feelings. However, a recent hydrolics model of the brain suggest that for every emotion repressed, it surfaces in another form. In other words, what we try to keep hidden often leaks out. An example of this notion of repression can be seen in an experiment where a group of people were asked to watch a graphic and disturbing surgical procedure. Half of the group were asked to try and remain expressionless. That group had higher blood pressure, increased heart rate, and remembered more about the video than the half that were given no instructions (free to express their emotions). It's almost like the mere act of repressing their feelings leaked out into their physiological state. Sometimes the concept of "leaked repression" is better served when we remember a time when we really wanted to tell someone a secret but couldn't. Sometimes we can recall giving them hints, phrasing sentences in a way that imply the meaning of the secret, or even displacing the frustration of keeping a secret onto others. We can keep secrets hidden beneath only to have them surface in another form. "Always the inmost becomes the outmost." You might be surprised how easily others can see us. I mean, see us better than we see ourselves. This is most evident when people talk behind our backs. The same things are consistently being said among different people who know us-- and most of them will never say it to our face, and so we will never know what it is that others see so clearly. I think this kind of gossip is a natural thing-- a last resort to communicate frustration about something we are too cowardly to talk about with that person.

But self-reliance demands open communication. To speak, as Emerson says "the rude truth in all ways." He says we should learn to detect our thoughts as they come, and value them. To trust ourselves in thought and feeling, and to communicate it without fear or courtesy. He goes on to insist that this is how great men have stumbled upon genius. Emerson then speaks about a notion of consistency which prevents us from knowing our true selves through self-reliance.

"The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them... I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways... Speak what you think today in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, [al]though it contradict every thing you said today... Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none."

I love the last passage in that quote. I think it basically speaks to the disservice we do to people when we don't tell people exactly how we feel. Because ultimately, when we don't give voice to our thoughts or opinions, we give others less than the truth. This is especially true in communication between couples. The entire quote leads us to the second principle.

Principle 2: Inconsistency. What Emerson is saying is we should actually be inconsistent in what we say and do, or at the very least, not be afraid of being so.

At first, this seems crazy. Be inconsistent in what we say? Consistency is usually valued isn't it? We would never vote for a politician who is inconsistent in what he says (although that's usually the case). One minute he could be a republican, then after a debate, says he was convinced otherwise and now a democrat. We need people to be consistent don't we?

The outside world demands us to be consistent, and rightly so, because others would have no way of knowing who we really are or what we stand for unless we were consistent in what we say and do. We need to be reliable. If we say something, we have to stick by it. We must pick a side: democrat or republican; friend or foe; theist or atheist; love or hate; and all the other dichotomies which paint the world in black and white-- that which polarizes humanity.

But what happens when we're wrong? What happens if we choose the wrong side?

I'll continue to use politics to unravel inconsistency. A very famous airing of CNN's Crossfire revealed how polarized American politics are when Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) went on to argue how the show itself-- a show that prides itself on a Republican versus Democrat ideology-- damages American politics and warps public opinion. This very heated argument is shown in the video. Three months after this interview, the show (which aired for over 20 years) was canceled. A few months later, on being asked if the infamous Jon Stewart interview had anything to do with the shows cancellation, the CNN CEO remarked only that he sympathized with Jon Stewart's criticism.

It takes a special person indeed to be willing to be inconsistent in what they say, to be able to passionately argue a point and at the same time be flexible enough to be convinced otherwise if the truth be on the opponents side. Being consistent often sacrifices reason, forcing us to take sides and to make sure we're always on the winning team. We become wildly defensive, and stand on one of two sides of something that is actually dimensional in nature, consisting of many sides from many angles.

Inconsistency is therefore valued in character. Emeron's notion of inconsistency allows for two critical things which are mostly ignored by self-trust: listening and learning.

Now, this is not advocating ignorance. He is not endorsing the contradiction of principles but advising self-trust-- to trust your voice when it is hesitant to speak, afraid of being wrong, ridiculed, or judged. Allow yourself to be wrong by being able to be inconsistent if need be. Hold an identity that can evolve with any experience that comes your way.

Say whatever it is you wholeheartedly believe to be true, but if the contrary is found out tomorrow, be willing to be inconsistent and amend, adjust, adapt; these are not concepts of ignorance or conformity but fundamentals of wisdom and self reliance. Conformity is doing and thinking as others; inconsistency is doing and thinking for oneself. If this inconsistency leads you to be misunderstood, Emerson reminds us of the great men who were misunderstood-- Socrates, Galileo, Jesus-- and that “to be great is to be misunderstood.”

Just how reliant are we really? Considerable research has been done to explain our behavior in the social world. In what is now called Social Cognitive Theory, evidence suggests that not only is our behavior determined by reinforcement like Operant Conditioning but also by observing the behavior of other people (and the consequences of their behavior). Learning by example. This is very much in accordance with how our brains are wired. If you have ever watched a spider crawl up someone's arm, you may have already realized that we are wired to feel empathy; we are hardwired to react to another person's experience as if we were actually experiencing it. We do not have to have the spider crawl up our own arm to feel alarmed. We don't always have to experience something ourselves to feel it. We have it in us the capacity to anticipate consequences.

Emerson advises solitude as a way to detach from this method of learning (of social conformity) to unlock something greater: self-reliance. Self-reliance's goal is to discover the true self. It seeks to detach from learned behavior and experience life in a more liberating way.

"If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself... If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument...Well, most men have bound their eyes... and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right."

Can you imagine how different our lives would be if we were that person we are when we are alone around everyone else? Maybe that's what really transformed me so much. I was afraid to really be myself. I was fine with being the social actor that we all are, as Sociology is apt to remind us of, but it never occurred to me that I didn't need to be.

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is 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."

The greatest thing about self-reliance is its ability to release all those inhibitions that keep us from enjoying life and living freely. It's like beer for the soul. It counteracts our reinforced rearing, our learned behavior, and instills a way of thinking that relies wholly from within. At least that's what it did for me. One stark fact that I had to stomach was the realization that we are truly alone. It feels good to share a piece of ourselves with friends, family, lovers-- and that's exactly what makes our loved ones so special-- but when it comes down to it, no one can get as close to you as you. And people are only what they choose to show us. In the end, it will be just you. And tomorrow anything can happen. No one is protected from death, no one escapes life on their terms. Even suicide is an expression of despondency. Self-reliance is a way to break free from false securities and appreciate the beauty in this world without condition.

"I shall endeavor to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife,-- but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us out safe at last. But... you [may]...give your friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the same thing."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson