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Self-Reliance: the Lost Art Freeman Ashworth - August 19, 2007
Recently, I re-read Emerson's "Self-Reliance," which was a college reading requirement. You may remember it. It begins, "Trust thyself: Every heart beats to that iron string." Emerson wrote this near the end of the nineteenth century. I point this out in contrast to modern times. "To become a man he must be a non-conformist" that is sage advice in a time when the media leads us around ruthlessly by the nose.
We have heard the statement that we either must follow our personal thoughts or be forced to follow the thoughts of the person who followed his thoughts. True, our society has moved far from the agrarian society that Emerson knew so well, however in so doing, we either have been forced to follow others or try to make it on our own. Life seems so much easier simply to follow the crowd. By mass production methods, one farmer today can produce what a dozen nineteenth-century farmers produced. It is the same with all manufactured products, and is the reason for the giant strides in our standards of living throughout the twentieth century. There really is little room for rugged individualism and self-reliance; however, I feel we are rapidly losing something vital that propelled us, in the first place, into our present modern technology.
I feel that the media of television is one of the greatest of all inventions, however, it usage has almost bordered upon the criminal. Its speed of operation is instantaneous, but the transmittal (or what is prohibited from being transmitted) has much to be desired. Its medium dictates to us what we should and should not think about, and lulls us into a hypnotic state of affairs. A television newscaster spoke one time at a faculty gathering at SUNY Cobleskill. After her speech someone asked, "Does television try to control thinking?"
"No," she answered, "but we try to control what people think about." Of course, there is a difference; however, if we are bombarded with certain messages long enough, we tend to believe them purely by osmosis. The big problem of not being self-reliant lies within our complicity. We eventually acquire the feeling that it is more comfortable NOT to be thinking too much. It wearies the brain. Therefore, we simply 'go along with the crowd.'
However, there are giant problems looming on our horizon that will drastically need self-reliant people capable of resolving them. The first and most evident of these problems is finding alternative fuel sources for our waning sources we presently have. We know there are energy sources available, but we do not know how to harness them. It will need the guidance of some self-reliant individuals to strike out in new areas to resolve these problems.
The issue of global warming my not be anything we can do about it, but we will have to resolve some of its repercussions, and that is something we can do something about. The problems of global warming are already in the laps of people living along seacoasts. An ever-increasing amount of seacoast land will be absorbed by the sea as the oceans rise due to polar ice melts.
However, one of the primary problems we must resolve is our ability to help all people to attain a minimal standard of living. We must either accomplish this or be threatened continually with terrorist or guerilla tactics that are fostered by the earth's have-nots. I personally feel this is a far greater problem to humanity than is the former two I mentioned. Something to think about.
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