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No one hands you self-reliance — you have to build it against the current. This lecture from Academy of Ideas examines why Ralph Waldo Emerson’s great ideal is so rare. Schooling trains obedience instead of independence, our tribal past punishes those who stray, and conformity still feels safer than standing alone. But Emerson, Montaigne, and Nietzsche all insist the prize is worth the fight: the freedom to own yourself. As Kipling wrote, to be your own man is hard business — but no price is too high for it.
Full Video Transcript
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.
Self-reliance of the type alluded to by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the passage just quoted is not a capacity we are born with, rather it is one which must be cultivated.
In our childhood, it exists as a dormant seed, but as we mature into adolescence the first roots of it take hold.
Whether the potential for self-reliance flowers or withers depends on the individual,
but sadly in the modern world there are many forces impeding its development.
The virtue in most request is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion.
In this video, we will examine why self-reliance is such an underdeveloped capacity.
If there is one social institution most to blame for the lack of self-reliant individuals,
the modern schooling system would be a prime candidate.
Spending well over a decade of our most formative years in this institution, we are not encouraged to develop autonomy, but instead trained in the art of obedience.
We are not taught to explore, criticize, question, and play with ideas, but memorize and regurgitate the dogmas of the day.
This indoctrination leads many down a lifelong path of dependency and servitude and impedes the progress of even the most promising young minds.
Our mind moves only on faith, wrote the 16th century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne,
being shackled and constrained to what is desired by someone else’s ideas,
a slave and captive under the authority of teaching.
We have been so subjected to leading reins that we take no free steps on our own.
Our vigor and liberty are extinct.
Most never outgrow the influence of their schooling.
Rather, they remain submissive to the demands of others in various subtle ways.
For example, they never stray far from the belief system imposed on them by the schooling system,
nor their family, peer group, religious sect, the media, or the government,
and thus perceive reality through a worldview that is not their own.
As a result of ignorance, laziness, and cowardice,
they prefer the certitude of psychological chains over the ambiguity and tension of freedom.
Even when they have their own opinion, they don’t voice it in the presence of others,
but out of a fear of ridicule, keep it to themselves.
Their desire for acceptance and the respect of others far outweighs their commitment to
the truth and hunger to speak their mind.
This timidity and refusal to speak what they feel to be true stunts the development of
their mind and renders their character weak and scattered.
Well, most men, wrote Emerson, have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief
and attached themselves to 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. One who is self-reliant in contrast values intellectual independence
and is tortured more by the smallest strings than others are by chains. They liberate themselves
from the beliefs imposed on them and use their critical capacities to forge a worldview they
can call their own. I must create a system, wrote William Blake, or be enslaved by another man’s.
Believing, with Emerson, that truth is handsomer than the affection of love,
they are unafraid of the insults and contempt their opinions may incite, and undeterred by
the standards of social and political correctness which keep most confined to a narrow range of
belief and opinion. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition. I ought to go
upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. Your goodness must have some edge to it,
else it is none. For most of human history our ancestors relied on maintaining homogeneity in
belief and behavior to ensure all were tied to a common purpose and thus able to work together to
survive in often harsh environments. Individuals could only stray so far from the accepted tribal
paradigms without threatening in-group harmony, and those who did not toe the line were often
punished with ostracism, exile, or death. In other words, for most of our history self-reliance was
viewed not as an ideal to strive for but as a curse to avoid. But during the longest period
of the human past, wrote Nietzsche, nothing was more terrible than to feel that one stood by
oneself, to be alone, to experience things by oneself, neither to obey nor to rule, to be an
individual. That was not a pleasure but a punishment. One was sentenced to individuality,
Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself.
In the modern day, far removed from the living conditions our ancestors were forced to endure,
this sentiment lives on.
Most today not only spend their life within the safe confines of the status quo,
but also chastise all who show signs of deviation from the norm.
Therefore, those who choose to proceed upon the path of self-reliance must be prepared to endure hardship.
Yet if able to persevere despite the struggle,
one will eventually be able to discard the deep human need to obey and conform,
and in the process, attain the highest form of health there is.
The individual, wrote Rudyard Kipling,
has always had to struggle from being overwhelmed by the tribe.
To be your own man is hard business.
If you try it, you will be lonely often and sometimes frightened.
But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Source: Academy of Ideas