Neither Emerson nor Thoreau, but Most of All not Gladwell…

 Emerson and Gladwell are polar extremes, but if we could get their better ideas to meet up in the middle, we might have something reasonable to work with. Maybe.  –S.A.

I was horrified a few years ago when I read Malcolm Gladwell’s famous book Outliers after it was assigned to my child at school for required reading. His disdain for individual genius and hard work was insufferable. He argued away well-deserved merits as being merely a product of one’s day, one’s location, one’s society. He wanted to delay education—though personally, despite being born in June (at the end of the school year), I would have been devastated at having been held back an entire school year and always secretly hoped I might get to skip a grade. Even his podcasts made me livid: the last one I listened to bashed a university for offering local, fresh produce and organic, even gourmet foods; he thought they could reduce tuition if they stuck to fast food, it seems—never even mentioning the greater environmental costs nor their worsened health as considerations, so myopic was his vision.  Every time I hear or read him, I want to scream, which is an urge only fed by the praise continually heaped upon him.  What’s maddening, too, is that he appears to be well-meaning—and of course he’s right there are many potential geniuses who never get the opportunity to express their genius in a productive way, but that certainly doesn’t negate the brilliance of those ‘fortunate’ or clever enough to be successful, which seems to be what he tries to do…

In contrast, I found Ralph Waldo Emerson to be so inspiring. I’d here and there hear brilliant quotes attributed to him, and one day about a decade ago I looked up (online) his essay on Self-Reliance, only to be inspired at every word.  Sheer brilliance, expressing ideas as I’d never thought of them. I got shivers at “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”—seriously! It challenged my beliefs entirely. What I didn’t realize, however, and only just found out, was that the version of his essay that I read seems to have been a lovingly edited version of his full essay, which has notions taken to the opposite extreme from Gladwell, giving society no credit whatsoever for the making of geniuses. Emerson ends up being uncharitable and pompous—quite awful, in fact, mocking those who dedicate their lives to helping others and claiming that genius comes solely from within, not from teachers (as if our ideas aren’t inspired by others’ ideas).

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

My husband pointed out how important a good editor is after listening to me lament today over praising Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance for so many years, shamefaced at the thought that I might have inspired someone to actually read his full essays for inspiration—which, again, I hadn’t actually realized until now had not been the case for me with “Self-Reliance”, that it had been beautifully abridged. Even had I realized, the possibility never would have occurred to me that his messages would so disintegrate in their fuller forms.

Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps I should have suspected it, though. I’d known already that Emerson was a mentor to Henry David Thoreau, fourteen years his junior, and I listened with dismay to Thoreau’s On Walden Pond several years ago (see my previous, somewhat more charitable blog here). He’s so adored, but to me he sounded like a spoilt, college-age philosophizing brat squatting on someone else’s land, disdaining those who work hard and have families to support—even while he was receiving assistance from those in town to support him in his own little hermit, nature-centered lifestyle. His ego just bowled me over. I struggled to comprehend how he’d gained Emerson’s approval, but now I get it so much better.  Emerson likely encouraged such pig-headedness, focusing on the idealism beyond it.  No doubt I could be inspired by select quotes from Thoreau’s book, too (and likely have been, given how I do like the idea of getting closer with nature—and many of his other ideas, actually), but I took offense to his attitude, which is unfortunately similar to Emerson’s, after all.

Sigh. I’m sure there’s much inspiration to be had from Emerson, Thoreau, and even Gladwell. My takeaway suggestion? Be inspired by quotes and their more positive ideals then leave it at that. Especially with Emerson. I do believe he has elements of genius, and the way he expresses isolated ideas leaves me brimming with intellectual excitement at seeing them in a new light. But don’t waste your time on his full essays—the better ones seem to extend his brilliant notions into uncharitable conclusions, and the worst sound like the ravings of a lunatic, frankly. Perhaps you’ll come across excerpts of his essays, though, and they could inspire you in a good way. 

As for Malcolm Gladwell, you’ve probably surmised that I’d like to stuff everything I’ve ever heard of his in the rubbish bin—but that’s because he seems to be trying to tear down anything or anyone that is inspired and otherwise impede those who have any sort of advantage, I suppose in a sort of even-the-playing-field urge. As a result, I become defensive of our geniuses and heroes. I take it he feels theirs is just one aspect of the experience of the ‘common man’, their unfair advantages negating their personal achievements, which could and would eventually have been successfully completed by loads of other people (in his opinion, though I’d argue certain events are too time-sensitive for that)… and while the metamessage to spread advantages more universally might be beneficial, I can’t bear watching the reputations of inspired, well-meaning people be squashed—no matter how I’m criticizing these particular ones all so much in this blog! Yes, I can be a bit of a hypocrite at times, I suppose, but better that than letting a foolish constancy be a hobgoblin to my mind, which we must hope is not so little, right?

What brought me back to Emerson presently, at this point, so many years after reading his essay? Well, after hearing in First Principles (see this blog entry) of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s criticisms against focusing on the Classics too much, I remembered how inspiring he’d been and so bought a book of his full essays (after a Bookbub ad offered me a suspiciously-timely deal). The beginning was disappointing, so I skipped to re-read “Self-Reliance” first, hoping to get in the right frame of mind. After that unpleasant surprise, I jumped over to his essay on the “Over-Soul”, which frankly sounded like he was high. 

Quitting that, I decided to read his essay on “Love”. There he began to redeem himself. I liked when he said:  “In giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his family and society; he is somewhat [removed]; he is a person; he is a soul.”  Oh wow, right?  Like I said, Emerson does have some genius. He even alleviated some of my pique with him by speaking thus: “The soul… detects incongruities, defects, and disproportion in the behavior of the other. Hence arise surprise, expostulation, and pain. Yet that which drew them to each other was signs of loveliness, signs of virtue; and these virtues are there, however eclipsed.”  Thus mollified, I kept reading.

If only he’d left it there—and to his talk about how love arouses him to ‘aspire to vast and universal aims’! Oh, but no. He obliterates our inspired feelings at the end by saying, “Though slowly and with pain, the objects of the affections change,” and goes on to claim that what was really important was the progress of the soul, as though the person he was in love with had merely been a replaceable Muse!  Seriously depressing, Waldo! 

See what I mean by him taking a lovely, inspiring idea and ruining it? His idea of the benefits to the self of falling in love is a novel, inspiring, true idea—but then to make that the whole point of love entirely? Agh!  Well, I suppose it could be a consolation for some, but he didn’t present it as the ‘consolation prize’ for those who were no longer in love, but more as an inevitable outcome.

Perhaps I should have better listened to Emerson’s disdain for ‘the Classics’ and skipped him, too! That replaceable Muse… But then we land on Gladwell. So perhaps instead I should go read modern interpretations of the Classics… or simply find modern thinkers I better appreciate.