A Contemporary Example of Transcendentalism

Styx-Man in the Wilderness

The song "Man in the Wilderness" is an excellent example of transcendentalism because of the authors discussion of trying to find himself (optimism), his use of escapism and self-reliance, and his use of individualism.

“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

• This quote connects to the part of the song that says "Another year has passed me by/Still I look a myself and cry/What kind of man have I become?/All of the years I've spent in search of myself" because he is talking about how there is still hope to be better as long as we keep trying and don't loose sight of what is important. In the song they say that another year has passed and even though he is not who he wants to be yet, he has not given up and that is the important part. This part shows optimism because he is still looking for who he is.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately"
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden 

• This quote connects to the part of the song that says "Sometimes I feel like a man in the wilderness/I'm a lonely soldier off to war" because it shows the self-reliance both need to survive in the wilderness. The fact that he says 'lonely soldier' shows that he is alone and has to fight to stay alive much like Thoreau had when he escaped to the woods. It also shows escapism because Thoreau left society to find his roots and Styx feels like they have no choice but to flee and find themselves in the wilderness. 

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

• This quote connects to the ideal of individualism and the quote from the song "Ten Thousand people look my way/But they can't see the way that I feel". This connects because in their time all of those famous people were misunderstood like Styx and they became great. In this part of the song the singer describes how no one understands how he feels and Emerson assures us that because of that he will be great. It is because these people and this singer stay true to themselves that they are misunderstood but it is because of their individuality and self-reliance that they were able to accomplish so many great things. 

The song "Man in the Wilderness" is an example of transcendentalism because it incorporates transcendental ideals like optimism, self-reliance, and individualism, as well as escapism. It talks about how he wants to become his own self, and live his own life as an individual. 

Civil Disobedience

Thoreau outlines the roles and responsibilities of people in response to individuals, communities, and the government in "Civil Disobedience". But what situations today where people are working for change in the name of justice and fairness worth civil disobedience. Due to recent activities in LA some people would say that the answer to that question is fair working conditions and better pay. Walmart workers in LA on November 6th, 2013 decided to hold a protest outside the Walmart Chinatown LA. 500 Walmart workers came in from all over LA to protest Walmart and fifty were arrested. Participants called for an end to low wages, unpredictable part-time hours, and retaliation for speaking out. It is said that instead of hiring full time workers Walmart instead has hired people part time and they can be fired at any time. The main demand though was for higher wages. One man testified that he can barely make ends meet for his family and has to participate in clinical trials and sell his blood plasma in order to pay his rent since Walmart pays him so little.Protesters say that Walmart makes enough money annually to give all full time workers $25,000 a year, and that the Walton's fortune is equivalent to  that of the bottom forty-two percent of American families.

Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
This quote speaks of the people that are protesting. They lived in quiet desperation doing as they needed to get buy and they would have died still tight in money had they not stood up against their oppressors and let their grievances be known.

“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies”
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
This quote describes the way that the workers think that Walmart views them as. They are machines that work and when they cannot function or become to much of a pain they can be tossed aside like scrap. Walmart is not treating their employees like people but as a means to an end and it must stop.


Corrupt businesses like Walmart cannot be allowed to take from people what we rightfully deserve and the workers protesting have every right to ask for what they want. Fair wadges is worth civil disobedience. With this protest we have seen the truth and truth is worth the civil disobedience and difficulties that may come with it. Thoreau knew this so do as you will and find what you are willing to fight for.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was another great great contributor to transcendentalism. Where Emerson would become the teacher Thoreau would be the practitioner. Emerson wrote of going back to nature and escaping society but Thoreau was the one to actually try it. Thoreau believed so strongly in the ideas of transcendentalism that he went out into the wilderness to experience them and a life away from society. He lived in a small shack/house near Walden Pond. While there he wrote of his experiences and great realizations. Thoreau took Emerson's essays and teachings to heart and was now trying to rise above his original awareness in order to transcend and develop a higher understanding of the world around him. Emerson said “But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.”  Thoreau will have taken this idea to heart. Since he journeyed into the woods he must have thought he could cleave himself of the worldly things in his life that had been polluting him and not allowing him to reach his full potential. Thoreau said in Walden "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived" This basically sums up the whole reason why he ventured of into the woods. He wanted to live with a purpose that is greater than he had before. He wanted to learn from life and see what it could teach him. He wanted to truly live, to be alive and infinite in a single moment and not be able to have that moment corrupted or destroyed by society. He wants to think for himself and challenge the things that he knows.

Thoreau practiced Emerson's teachings to the fullest and documented his full experience in detail before he died in the Alaskan wilderness. He is the great practitioner and it it he who truly transcended as he secluded himself from society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

       Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the most influential transcendental writers. His teachings through "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" serve as the building blocks of transcendental ideals as we know it. His writings show many examples of the previously mentioned elements of transcendentalism, optimism, self-reliance, individualism, and intuition. Below I have pulled quotes from Emerson in order to fully explain his impact on these topics.

Optimism

Optimism is the idea that nothing is all bad and there can be a positive outlook on a situation. So those really annoying people that are always happy and have an insanely positive outlook on life... God I cannot stand those people. Anyway that's optimism. In Emerson's "Nature" he says

     "The sun shines today also."-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Simple as this quote may be it says a lot. Emerson expresses optimism in this quote by expressing that the sun will come out today and tomorrow and the day after that. He is putting a positive outlook on life and saying that it will be a good day, just like yesterday and like tomorrow will be.

Self-Reliance

Self-reliance is relying your own abilities rather than those of other people in order to accomplish your goals. This is important to transcendentalism because it requires people to help themselves and make their own choices, rather than depending on society to tell them what is right or wrong. Emerson expresses this ideal when he states the following quote in "Self-Reliance"

          "Envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse"

                                                                                               -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Again Emerson is able to convey the entirety of the ideal of self-reliance. This quote expresses that when we do not say true to ourselves but follow in the footsteps of others we are no longer ourselves. We must stay true to who we are and not rely on others no matter what. If we rely only on ourselves things will turn out for the better.

Individualism

Individualism is being yourself and different from those around you. We are all unique and that is a good thing. The transcendentalists believe that to be your own person was the greatest gift you could give to mankind. No one in history has ever or will ever think or act like you. We are all one of a kind and so there is only one lifetime for an individual to express their ideas and the thoughts that will only happen once. In Emerson's "Self-Reliance"he says...

               "Insist on yourself; never imitate."-Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance 

Here he tells us that we must be true to who we are. As individuals we are so precious and to imitate someone else is to make yourself a fraud. You cannot be the person you were meant to be if you loose who you are along the way because you were so busy trying to be someone else.

Intuition

Intuition is knowing something by a feeling from within rather than by having experienced it. So basically instinct. This is important to transcendentalists because in order to be self-reliant one has to be able to trust themselves. and their decisions. In "Self-Reliance" Emerson states 

              “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” 

                                                                            -Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

This quote tells us that our minds are an important power source and that we should trust it. Its "integrity" is its intuition and if we corrupt that integrity then our intuition is useless. 

Clearly Ralph Waldo Emerson created each building block with his words and because of it we can take to heart his teachings and use them to better ourselves.

What the heck is Transcendentalism?

Great question. Another good one is why I am writing this blog? Well its a final for one of my classes so I don't really have a choice, do I Blake?

     So what is  Transcendentalism? Well I'm glad that you asked. Transcendentalism is going beyond our everyday understanding of the world and questioning how we see things and understand them in order to better understand ourselves and the world around us. It started right after the era of Romanticism and embodied some traits from that era. It really looped back to the age of enlightenment as it challenged the way people thought. The transcendentalist movement was originally inspired from a bunch of European philosophers like Plato, Locke, and Kant. Hehe Kant... I Kant handle his name... Back on track time. Transcendentalism was also influenced by eastern religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and philosophers like Confucius, Vishnu Purina, and Bhagavad-Gita. The biggest contributors to transcendentalism were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Emerson (I just love that we always call these people by their last names) wrote some influential works like "Nature" and "Self-Reliance" while Thoreau was influenced by Emerson and then trucked into the wilderness to live a transcendental lifestyle and wrote "Walden".

       By now I'm sure your wondering what this stuff is actually about. Well mostly its about how you can't be truly yourself while you are being influenced and corrupted by the society that surrounds you, that man was fine until he encountered society and that is when he lost his way, but if we return to our roots in nature then we will be able to find ourselves once more in the rugged wilderness from which we once came. Now I know that's a lot but that is seriously the most dumbed down I could make it. They tend to speak in metaphors and its all very confusing if you dive into to much at once.

       While writing these very long very confusing essays the transcendentalists used a few major ideals as the building blocks for their writing, which are optimism, self-reliance, individualism, and intuition.  These things will be discussed in another post so I'm just going to mention them and move on.

Now since my teacher said I needed to use a transcendental quote to describe transcendentalism here is one by Emerson.

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is a perfect example of transcendentalism because the transcendentalists believed in individualism and that the ever consuming woes of society always try to change us and therefore we must return to nature where we can be ourselves, as I said before.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
This one tells us that the power that we have within ourselves is far greater than anything that has or will happen. This is transcendental because it reminds of the power that we posses. We all have the power to change history and the world if we only try.
          Now I know a lot of you are reading this and thinking "Well if that were really true why have I not?" And to that I say... society man. The transcendentalists were right we conform to what it wants and then we find ourselves going through the motions with some life that won't make it into history books or the news because we did what we were suppose to and we did not dare go against the flow for fear that we would stand out and drown. But we only thought that because that is what society said we would do, so I challenge you, whoever ends up reading this, to dare, to try, to go against the flow, to find yourselves, and to do something amazing because “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”


P.S.
Is it just me or does it seem like whenever I say transcendentalism there should be a booing DUH DUH DUN and the font should get bigger and explode?