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.
"Alexander’s prose ably replicates the rhythms of speech—and life—in the 1920s South... readers will find themselves hooked by the more dramatic elements of this coming-of-age tale... A richly embroidered story of early 20th-century rural life in South Carolina." -from the Kirkus Review of 'Tapestry: A Lowcountry Rapunzel'.
