individuality and independence essay

What does Emerson say about self-reliance?

In Emerson's essay “ Self-Reliance ,” he boldly states society (especially today’s politically correct environment) hurts a person’s growth.

Emerson wrote that self-sufficiency gives a person in society the freedom they need to discover their true self and attain their true independence.

Believing that individualism, personal responsibility , and nonconformity were essential to a thriving society. But to get there, Emerson knew that each individual had to work on themselves to achieve this level of individualism. 

Today, we see society's breakdowns daily and wonder how we arrived at this state of society. One can see how the basic concepts of self-trust, self-awareness, and self-acceptance have significantly been ignored.

Who published self-reliance?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the essay, published in 1841 as part of his first volume of collected essays titled "Essays: First Series."

It would go on to be known as Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance and one of the most well-known pieces of American literature.

The collection was published by James Munroe and Company.

What are the examples of self-reliance?

Examples of self-reliance can be as simple as tying your shoes and as complicated as following your inner voice and not conforming to paths set by society or religion.

Self-reliance can also be seen as getting things done without relying on others, being able to “pull your weight” by paying your bills, and caring for yourself and your family correctly.

Self-reliance involves relying on one's abilities, judgment, and resources to navigate life. Here are more examples of self-reliance seen today:

Entrepreneurship: Starting and running your own business, relying on your skills and determination to succeed.

Financial Independence: Managing your finances responsibly, saving money, and making sound investment decisions to secure your financial future.

Learning and Education: Taking the initiative to educate oneself, whether through formal education, self-directed learning, or acquiring new skills.

Problem-Solving: Tackling challenges independently, finding solutions to problems, and adapting to changing circumstances.

Personal Development: Taking responsibility for personal growth, setting goals, and working towards self-improvement.

Homesteading: Growing your food, raising livestock, or becoming self-sufficient in various aspects of daily life.

DIY Projects: Undertaking do-it-yourself projects, from home repairs to crafting, without relying on external help.

Living Off the Grid: Living independently from public utilities, generating your energy, and sourcing your water.

Decision-Making: Trusting your instincts and making decisions based on your values and beliefs rather than relying solely on external advice.

Crisis Management: Handling emergencies and crises with resilience and resourcefulness without depending on external assistance.

These examples illustrate different facets of self-reliance, emphasizing independence, resourcefulness, and the ability to navigate life autonomously.

What is the purpose of self reliance by Emerson?

In his essay, " Self Reliance, " Emerson's sole purpose is the want for people to avoid conformity. Emerson believed that in order for a man to truly be a man, he was to follow his own conscience and "do his own thing."

Essentially, do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society.

Why is it important to be self reliant?

While getting help from others, including friends and family, can be an essential part of your life and fulfilling. However, help may not always be available, or the assistance you receive may not be what you had hoped for.

It is for this reason that Emerson pushed for self-reliance. If a person were independent, could solve their problems, and fulfill their needs and desires, they would be a more vital member of society.

This can lead to growth in the following areas:

Empowerment: Self-reliance empowers individuals to take control of their lives. It fosters a sense of autonomy and the ability to make decisions independently.

Resilience: Developing self-reliance builds resilience, enabling individuals to bounce back from setbacks and face challenges with greater adaptability.

Personal Growth: Relying on oneself encourages continuous learning and personal growth. It motivates individuals to acquire new skills and knowledge.

Freedom: Self-reliance provides a sense of freedom from external dependencies. It reduces reliance on others for basic needs, decisions, or validation.

Confidence: Achieving goals through one's own efforts boosts confidence and self-esteem. It instills a belief in one's capabilities and strengthens a positive self-image.

Resourcefulness: Being self-reliant encourages resourcefulness. Individuals learn to solve problems creatively, adapt to changing circumstances, and make the most of available resources.

Adaptability: Self-reliant individuals are often more adaptable to change. They can navigate uncertainties with a proactive and positive mindset.

Reduced Stress: Dependence on others can lead to stress and anxiety, especially when waiting for external support. Self-reliance reduces reliance on external factors for emotional well-being.

Personal Responsibility: It promotes a sense of responsibility for one's own life and decisions. Self-reliant individuals are more likely to take ownership of their actions and outcomes.

Goal Achievement: Being self-reliant facilitates the pursuit and achievement of personal and professional goals. It allows individuals to overcome obstacles and stay focused on their objectives.

Overall, self-reliance contributes to personal empowerment, mental resilience, and the ability to lead a fulfilling and purposeful life. While collaboration and support from others are valuable, cultivating a strong sense of self-reliance enhances one's capacity to navigate life's challenges independently.

What did Emerson mean, "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide"?

According to Emerson, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to you independently, but every person is given a plot of ground to till. 

In other words, Emerson believed that a person's main focus in life is to work on oneself, increasing their maturity and intellect, and overcoming insecurities, which will allow a person to be self-reliant to the point where they no longer envy others but measure themselves against how they were the day before.

When we do become self-reliant, we focus on creating rather than imitating. Being someone we are not is just as damaging to the soul as suicide.

Envy is ignorance: Emerson suggests that feeling envious of others is a form of ignorance. Envy often arises from a lack of understanding or appreciation of one's unique qualities and potential. Instead of being envious, individuals should focus on discovering and developing their talents and strengths.

Imitation is suicide: Emerson extends the idea by stating that imitation, or blindly copying others, is a form of self-destruction. He argues that true individuality and personal growth come from expressing one's unique voice and ideas. In this context, imitation is seen as surrendering one's identity and creativity, leading to a kind of "spiritual death."

What are the transcendental elements in Emerson’s self-reliance?

The five predominant elements of Transcendentalism are nonconformity, self-reliance, free thought, confidence, and the importance of nature.

The Transcendentalism movement emerged in New England between 1820 and 1836. It is essential to differentiate this movement from Transcendental Meditation, a distinct practice.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Transcendentalism is characterized as "an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson." A central tenet of this movement is the belief that individual purity can be 'corrupted' by society.

Are Emerson's writings referenced in pop culture?

Emerson has made it into popular culture. One such example is in the film Next Stop Wonderland released in 1998. The reference is a quote from Emerson's essay on Self Reliance, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

This becomes a running theme in the film as a single woman (Hope Davis ), who is quite familiar with Emerson's writings and showcases several men taking her on dates, attempting to impress her by quoting the famous line, only to botch the line and also giving attribution to the wrong person. One gentleman says confidently it was W.C. Fields, while another matches the quote with Cicero. One goes as far as stating it was Karl Marx!

Why does Emerson say about self confidence?

Content is coming very soon.

Self-Reliance: The Complete Essay

Ne te quaesiveris extra."

Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat; Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance Summary

The essay “Self-Reliance,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is, by far, his most famous piece of work. Emerson, a Transcendentalist, believed focusing on the purity and goodness of individualism and community with nature was vital for a strong society. Transcendentalists despise the corruption and conformity of human society and institutions. Published in 1841, the Self Reliance essay is a deep-dive into self-sufficiency as a virtue.

In the essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson advocates for individuals to trust in their own instincts and ideas rather than blindly following the opinions of society and its institutions. He argues that society encourages conformity, stifles individuality, and encourages readers to live authentically and self-sufficient lives.

Emerson also stresses the importance of being self-reliant, relying on one's own abilities and judgment rather than external validation or approval from others. He argues that people must be honest with themselves and seek to understand their own thoughts and feelings rather than blindly following the expectations of others. Through this essay, Emerson emphasizes the value of independence, self-discovery, and personal growth.

What is the Meaning of Self-Reliance?

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to think that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light that flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Great works of art have no more affecting lessons for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance that does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, and the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields to us in this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. The lintels of the door-post I would write on, Whim . It is somewhat better than whim at last I hope, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. Wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. The primary evidence I ask that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. For myself it makes no difference that I know, whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. The easy thing in the world is 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.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? With all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, do I not know that he will do no such thing? Do not I know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some 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. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — 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.

I suppose no man can violate his nature.

All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; He should wish to please me, that I wish. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust.

Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; 'I think,' 'I am,' that he dares not say, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; not see the face of man; and you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates is that the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power, not confidence but an agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence , personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. To nourish my parents, to support my family I shall endeavour, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs that I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions if you are not. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct , or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society , he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate , where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart.

Men say he is ruined if the young merchant fails . If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it , farms it , peddles , keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; education; and in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. It is prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —

"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; Our valors are our best gods."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect . They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such as Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. The Vatican, and the palaces I seek. But I am not intoxicated though I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate, and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; Shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments, but our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other and undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous,  civilized, christianized, rich and it is scientific, but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two, the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little, and the whole bright calendar of the year are without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic, but in Christendom, where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than anyone since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Which quotation from "Self-reliance" best summarizes Emerson’s view on belief in oneself?

One of the most famous quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" that summarizes his view on belief in oneself is:

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

What does Emerson argue should be the basis of human actions in the second paragraph of “self-reliance”?

In the second paragraph of "Self-Reliance," Emerson argues that individual conscience, or a person's inner voice, should be the basis of human actions. He writes, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." He believes that society tends to impose conformity and discourage people from following their own inner truth and intuition. Emerson encourages individuals to trust themselves and to act according to their own beliefs, instead of being influenced by the opinions of others. He argues that this is the way to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life.

Which statement best describes Emerson’s opinion of communities, according to the first paragraph of society and solitude?

According to the first paragraph of Ralph Waldo Emerson's " Society and Solitude, " Emerson has a mixed opinion of communities. He recognizes the importance of social interaction and the benefits of being part of a community but also recognizes the limitations that come with it.

He writes, "Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." He argues that society can be limiting and restrictive, and can cause individuals to conform to norms and values that may not align with their own beliefs and desires. He believes that it is important for individuals to strike a balance between the benefits of social interaction and the need for solitude and self-discovery.

Which best describes Emerson’s central message to his contemporaries in "self-reliance"?

Ralph Waldo Emerson's central message to his contemporaries in "Self-Reliance" is to encourage individuals to trust in their own beliefs and instincts, and to break free from societal norms and expectations. He argues that individuals should have the courage to think for themselves and to live according to their own individual truth, rather than being influenced by the opinions of others. Through this message, he aims to empower people to live authentic and fulfilling lives, rather than living in conformity and compromise.

Yet, it is critical that we first possess the ability to conceive our own thoughts. Prior to venturing into the world, we must be intimately acquainted with our own selves and our individual minds. This sentiment echoes the concise maxim inscribed at the ancient Greek site of the Delphic Oracle: 'Know Thyself.'

In essence, Emerson's central message in "Self-Reliance" is to promote self-reliance and individualism as the key to a meaningful and purposeful life.

Understanding Emerson: "The American scholar" and his struggle for self-reliance.

Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09982-0

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Other works from ralph waldo emerson for book clubs, the over-soul.

There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

The American Scholar

An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837

Essays First Series

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Alex Zakaras on The Roots of American Individualism

By Alex Zakaras November 04, 2022

Individualism is a defining feature of American public life. Its influence is pervasive today, with liberals and conservatives alike promising to expand personal freedom and defend individual rights against unwanted intrusion, be it from big government, big corporations, or intolerant majorities.  The Roots of American Individualism  traces the origins of individualist ideas to the turbulent political controversies of the Jacksonian era (1820–1850) and explores their enduring influence on American politics and culture.

What are political myths, and what led you to focus on them in this book?

AZ: Broadly speaking, political myths are widely accepted stories that help us make sense of political events and experiences. In the book, I focus on a certain kind of political myth, which I call foundational myth. A foundational myth paints a glorified portrait of the nation and its people. It tells a story of national origins that explains who its people are and who they are meant to be. It often does this by contrasting them to some threatening other—some antagonist or rival, or some source of pollution or decay.

For example, one of the foundational myths I explore in the book is the myth of the self-made man. This longstanding myth tells us a story about what America is and who Americans are. America, it says, is a land of limitless opportunity founded by those fleeing hierarchy and oppression in the Old World. For over two hundred years, this myth has taught us that our country is uniquely fluid and classless and that individuals invariably get ahead through hard work, ingenuity, and perseverance. It tells us, moreover, that Americans are a bold and enterprising people with the resolve and self-discipline to chart their own course in the world.

I chose to focus on foundational myths because they are such powerful forces in our politics and culture—and because they haven’t gotten enough attention from historians and political theorists. Like religious myths, foundational myths help us find meaning in the world and a sense of shared identity and purpose. In doing so, they shape our political beliefs, making us receptive to certain political viewpoints and instinctively resistant to others. So if we want to understand why Americans believe what they do about politics, these myths are a good place to start.

Why do you describe the Jacksonian Era as the “crucible” of American political myths?

AZ: The Jacksonian Era was a time of tremendous upheaval and change. One key change was political: it was during this time that mass democracy was born. People often forget that the American founders were no great admirers of democracy. They believed in property qualifications for the vote, they abhorred political parties and electioneering, and most of them hoped that ordinary people would, by and large, leave the business of governing to more “enlightened” elites.

By the Jacksonian Era, these views had been swept away by a rising tide of populist, egalitarian sentiment. Property qualifications had given way to universal white male suffrage, and the first mass political parties were born. The leaders and organizers of these new parties began reformulating the patrician ideals of the American founding for this new, more democratic age. Meanwhile, a vast expansion of the country’s print culture was bringing cheap newspapers into American homes and giving wide reach to partisan ideologies. These circumstances facilitated the rise and popularization of a powerful set of national myths that celebrated the freedom and self-reliance of the ordinary white farmer, settler, and craftsman. The book focuses on three of these myths in particular: the myth of the independent proprietor, the myth of the rights-bearer, and the myth of the self-made man.

You emphasize the white supremacist fervor that shaped Jacksonian politics. How does this relate to your main theme?

AZ: American individualism was—and still is—deeply entangled with racial and gender hierarchy. In Jacksonian America, the free individual celebrated in the nation’s mythology was almost always a white man, and the broad freedom he asserted included the freedom to subordinate women, to expropriate Native American lands, and to enslave and oppress Black Americans. In recent decades, historians have written a lot about the construction of white identity during this period, and how individualistic traits—including rationality, self-reliance, and self-discipline—were assimilated into the ideas of whiteness and masculinity. At the same time, these traits were denied to women and people of color, who were continually represented as naturally irrational, dependent, and undisciplined. For many Americans at the time, asserting individualist ideals was therefore a way of justifying the exclusion and oppression of women and people of color.

The book explores the religious origins of American individualism in some detail. How exactly did Protestant religion contribute to the rise of individualistic ideas and myths?

AZ: This is a complicated question, so let me focus on just one aspect of it. As I immersed myself in the newspapers, political speeches, and sermons of the Jacksonian Era, I was struck by the ardent free-market rhetoric that was already circulating there. Jacksonian Democrats in particular had the habit of describing the market as a natural phenomenon—its laws akin to the laws of physics. At the same time, they presented government as an artificial entity, which was constantly intruding and upsetting the market’s natural equilibrium. So I set out to uncover the origins of this view.

It turns out that early American economists and their popularizers were drawing heavily on an idea called natural religion: the belief that God had created the world using a harmonious and benevolent plan that could be discovered through reason. Free market enthusiasts during this period tended to believe that economic laws were features of this divine creation and that if they were left alone, they would bring not just prosperity and individual freedom but also fairness: that is, the market would reward the virtuous and punish the lazy and dissolute. One striking implication of this view, which is spelled out explicitly by Democratic editors and pamphleteers, is that interfering with the free market is something akin to heresy. This powerful fiction, which presents government as an ungodly meddler in the naturally harmonious economic domain, has shaped American politics for centuries, and it’s still with us today.

You are very critical of American individualism in the book, but you don’t reject it—why not?

AZ: Let me offer two answers to that question. First, American individualism is a surprisingly diverse and malleable constellation of ideas. That’s the good news in the book. Although it has often been used to rationalize profound inequality and harsh exclusion, individualism also has powerful egalitarian strains. Many abolitionists, for example—Black and white alike—defended a deeply compelling ideal of human rights. They asserted the moral dignity and equality of all men (and in some cases, women too). And they interpreted individual rights in broad and innovative ways. They argued that everyone had a right, not just to be shielded from oppression and discrimination, but also to enjoy the opportunities that would allow them to unfold their talents and shape the course of their own lives. In my view, such expressions of American individualism are worth preserving and defending.

My second answer is that I don’t think we can afford to reject American individualism. The mythology of American freedom remains a powerful political resource today. Those who successfully present themselves as its standard bearers win a significant political advantage. So as we confront the deep crises of our age—including rising threats to democracy and vast economic and political inequalities—we cannot afford to cede this resource to right-wing oligarchs and chauvinists. We have to tell our own alternative story of American freedom that points toward equality and inclusion.

Alex Zakaras  is associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont and the author of  Individuality and Mass Democracy: Mill, Emerson, and the Burdens of Citizenship . He lives in Burlington, Vermont.

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Background Essay: Applying the Ideals of the Declaration of Independence

Guiding Questions: Why have Americans consistently appealed to the Declaration of Independence throughout U.S. history? How have the ideals in the Declaration of Independence affected the struggle for equality throughout U.S. history?

• I can explain how the ideals of the Declaration of Independence have inspired individuals and groups to make the United States a more equal and just society.

Essential Vocabulary

In an 1857 speech criticizing the Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), Abraham Lincoln commented that the principle of equality in the Declaration of Independence was “meant to set up a standard maxim [fundamental principle] for a free society.” Indeed, throughout American history, many Americans appealed to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence to make liberty and equality a reality for all.

A constitutional democracy requires vigorous deliberation and debate by citizens and their representatives. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the meanings and implications of the Declaration of Independence and its principles have been debated and contested throughout history. This civil and political dialogue helps Americans understand the principles and ideas upon which their country was founded and the means of working to achieve them.

Applying the Declaration of Independence from the Founding through the Civil War

Individuals appealed [pointed to as evidence] to the principles of the Declaration of Independence soon after it was signed. In the 1770s and 1780s, enslaved people in New England appealed to the natural rights principles of the Declaration and state constitutions as they petitioned legislatures and courts for freedom and the abolition of slavery. A group of enslaved people in New Hampshire stated, “That the God of Nature, gave them, Life, and Freedom, upon the Terms of the most perfect Equality with other men; That Freedom is an inherent [of a permanent quality] Right of the human Species, not to be surrendered, but by Consent.” While some of these petitions were unsuccessful, others led to freedom for the petitioner.

The women and men who assembled at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention , the first women’s rights conference held in the United States, adopted the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions , a list of injustices committed against women. The document was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, but the language was changed to read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident : [clear without having to be stated] that all men and women are created equal.” It then listed several grievances regarding the inequalities that women faced. The document served as a guiding star in the long struggle for women’s suffrage.

The Declaration of Independence was one of the centerpieces of the national debate over slavery. Abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Abby Kelley all invoked the Declaration of Independence in denouncing slavery. On the other hand, Senators Stephen Douglas and John Calhoun, Justice Roger Taney, and Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens all denied that the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply to Black people.

Abraham Lincoln was president during the crisis of the Civil War, which was brought about by this national debate over slavery. He consistently held that the Declaration of Independence had universal natural rights principles that were “applicable to all men and all time.” In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln stated that the nation was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

The Declaration at Home and Abroad: The Twentieth Century and Beyond

The case of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) revealed a split over the meaning of the equality principle even in the Supreme Court. The majority in the 7–1 decision thought that distinctions and inequalities based upon race did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment and did not imply inferiority, and therefore, segregation was constitutional. Dissenting Justice John Marshall Harlan argued for equality when he famously wrote, “In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our constitution is colorblind.”

The expansion of American world power in the wake of the Spanish-American War of 1898 triggered another debate inspired by the Declaration of Independence. The war brought the United States into more involvement in world affairs. Echoing earlier debates over Manifest Destiny during nineteenth-century westward expansion, supporters of American global expansion argued that the country would bring the ideals of liberty and self-government to those people who had not previously enjoyed them. On the other hand, anti-imperialists countered that creating an American empire violated the Declaration of Independence by taking away the liberty of self-determination , or freedom of government without foreign interference, and consent from Filipinos and Cubans.

Politicians of differing perspectives viewed the Declaration in opposing ways during the early twentieth century. Progressives [a political and social reform group that began in the late 19th century] such as Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson argued that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were important for an earlier period in American history, to gain independence from Great Britain and to set up the new nation. They argued that the modern United States faced new challenges introduced by an industrial economy and needed a new set of ideas that required a more active government and more powerful national executive. They were less concerned with preserving an ideal of liberty and equality and more concerned with regulating society and the economy for the public interest. Wilson in particular rejected the views of the Founding, criticizing both the Declaration and the Constitution as irrelevant for facing the problems of his time.

President Calvin Coolidge disagreed and adopted a conservative position when he argued that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence should be preserved and respected. On the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, Coolidge stated that the principles formed the American belief system and were still the basis of American republican institutions. They were still applicable regardless of how much society had changed.

During World War II, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan threatened the free nations of the world with aggressive expansion and domination. The United States and the coalition of Allied powers fought for several years to reverse their conquests. President Franklin Roosevelt and other free-world leaders proclaimed the principles of liberty and self-government from the Declaration of Independence in documents such as the Atlantic Charter , the Four Freedoms speech, and the United Nations Charter.

After World War II, American social movements for justice and equality called upon the Declaration of Independence and its principles. For example, in his “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., referred to the Declaration as the “sacred heritage” of the nation but said that it had not lived up to its ideals for Black Americans. King demanded that the United States live up to its “sacred obligation” of liberty and equality for all.

The natural rights republican ideals of the Declaration of Independence influenced the creation of American constitutional government founded upon liberty and equality. They also shaped the expectation that a free people would live in a just society. Indeed, the Declaration states that to secure natural rights is the fundamental duty of government. Achieving those ideals has always been part of a robust and dynamic debate among the sovereign people and their representatives.

Inspired by the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, many social movements, politicians, and individuals helped make the United States a more equal and just society. The Emancipation Proclamation ; the Thirteenth , Fourteenth , and Fifteenth Amendments ; the Nineteenth Amendment ; the 1964 Civil Rights Act ; and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were only some of the achievements in the name of equality and justice. As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51 , “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained.”

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Our Individuality: It's a Collective Thing

Honor private consciousness, but acknowledge its social foundations..

Posted October 3, 2019 | Reviewed by Matt Huston

We Americans pride ourselves on our individuality. Growing up, most of us experienced what anthropologists call “independence training.” That is, our parents expected us to develop our own thoughts and judgments, manage our own feelings, and learn new skills pertinent to a changing world. As we got older, they allowed us to go places and do things. All this with the recognition that one day we would be on our own, living with self-chosen mates away from the families that raised us.

That general credo—that individuals should pursue life, liberty, and happiness on their own terms—is an important feature of this country’s value system. Most of us make our way through school, find jobs, pick places to live, seek friends and intimate partners, and make religious commitments as we see fit. We believe that other people should not tell us how to live. We vote, and otherwise express our opinions, according to personal standards. We treasure that independent spirit or soul that seems deepest within us.

That same value system teaches us to resist collectivism. The most dangerous examples of this, or so we believe, are countries with totalitarian governments. To use twentieth-century examples, that meant places like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. Countries like that, we learn, supervise and curtail, rob individuals of their rightful expressions and rewards, and ultimately turn their citizens into masses. Even today, dimly understood concepts like “communism” or “socialism” are ideas that one explores at one's peril. The specter of Big Brother, the supervening authority, haunts us.

In much the same way, we learn to mistrust bureaucratic organizations in other social institutions, especially large business “corporations.” Big organizations pursue their own goals and set terms for the involvement of their members. They direct and manage. At worst, they turn persons into “personnel.” Much criticized then was the corporate lifestyle of the twentieth century. We are becoming, or so it was claimed, “organization men” (William White), a “nation of sheep” (David Riesman), and “cheerful robots” (C. Wright Mills). Organizations have grown too big, and too firmly established, for us to challenge their authority. They dazzle us with their advertisements. The other Big Brother, with the soul of an accountant, secures our compliance.

Of course, these are extreme views. But there is a general suspicion of collectivism. We do not care for “crowd” or “mob” psychology, wild aggregates who have lost their independence of judgment. Some people even question the legitimacy of labor unions with their supports of seniority, stable positions, and wage-guarantees. Individuals, or so the thinking has it, should manufacture their own circumstances and reap the rewards that their talents bring to them.

Is it any wonder then that we are adherents of psychology? After all, that discipline focuses on the mental and behavioral qualities of individuals. It teaches us that we must be attentive to the thoughts and feelings that swirl within us.

Who of us is not impressed with the privacy of his or her own consciousness? Powerful is the sense that others cannot read our thoughts. Our pleasures and pains feel deeply our own. We dream our own dreams. We lie awake at night scheming and reminiscing. Each day, we confront the person before us in the mirror and acknowledge our commitment to them.

However, it is also fair to say that the content of those imaginings is not entirely our own. Nor do we live in isolation, splendid or otherwise. The following, then, describes five ways in which our thoughts, hesitations, mannerisms, and outbursts are public as well as private affairs. As we depend on the sustenance of the natural environment, so we exist in a social surround. We belong to groups like families and friends. We live in communities. We work for organizations. We attend gatherings of religious bodies and associations. We observe the laws of governments. We partake, in uncountable ways, of what society offers us.

1) Groups create and maintain the information systems we operate in . However much we prize our independence of thought, we should acknowledge that most of our strongly held principles—beliefs, values, and norms—are held by other people as well. Some of these other people teach us directly; we learn also from books, magazines, and electronic media. To be sure, we filter that information through our life experiences; but even that filtering process is socially influenced as others encourage and reprove our choices. One can say much the same about the material resources we cherish. Even our ability to express ourselves follows social patterns. The toys we want for Christmas, our visions of “the good life,” even our expletives when we hit our thumb with a hammer are predictable enough,

2) Groups provide us with identity and status . Our understandings of who we are and what we can do depend heavily on our placements in relationships. Those comprehensions give us the confidence to act—and to think and feel—in certain ways. We need not be in the physical presence of those other people to experience these effects. Instead, we understand fully that we are spouses, mothers, friends, and the like, and we operate accordingly. We seek to maintain, and ideally advance, the standings we hold with the people we admire. And we harbor animosities toward certain other people and groups; that “negative” stance is also important to who we are.

3) Groups give us emotional support . Psychic life features ceaseless combinations of thought, image, and feeling. Amid all this evanescence, some sense of personal stability is necessary. Erik Erikson argued that quest for coherence features our attempts to resolve existential feelings like mistrust, shame, guilt , inferiority, identity confusion, isolation, self-absorption, and despair. To be sure, social relationships often produce these feelings of uncertainty and incompetence. But other people also help us establish the platforms of stability we need to live confidently. Most of us have the capacity to lurch between Erikson’s extremes (such as trust and mistrust or hopefulness and despair), sometimes with little warning. However, just as other people wound us, so they give us comfort and support. Sometimes, it only takes a brief word or gesture to set us aright.

4) Groups give us direct feedback on our behaviors . Through trial and error, we learn what is effective/ineffective, pleasant/unpleasant, correct/incorrect, ethical/unethical, and so forth. Social interaction is probably the most important setting in which people play out the consequences of their expressions. We act; others react; we react to what they have done. An early social psychologist, George Herbert Mead, even had a theory of mind based on this. Mentality, as he saw it, was an internalized “conversation of gestures” in which we invent certain lines of behavior in our minds and then consider the likely responses of others to these actions. Trying out our schemes publicly, we learn that social existence is a pattern of scolding, praising, teasing, shunning, gossiping, shaming , and the like. Commonly, we resist other people’s attempts to correct us; nevertheless, we learn about the “reality” of public culture and what makes our own commitments different from those of our associates.

5) Groups set agendas for daily behavior . An often-idealized life, at least in this culture, is one in which individuals go and do as they please. In reality, there are jobs to go to, people to meet, groceries to buy. Some of us may wish for a private retreat, perhaps soaking alone luxuriously in a large tub. But our human involvements ground us. Our identities derive in large part from the hard-wrought set of commitments, strategies, and reminiscences that reflect a lifetime of challenges.

How different are we from other people? Clearly, there are times when we self-consciously emulate the people we admire, perhaps taking some of their qualities for our own. Alternately, we oppose and revile. More typically perhaps, we drift along, mostly conforming to the norms and values of those we respect and making little adjustments that suit our circumstances and personal “style.”

Even when we act defiantly (perhaps declaring that we reject our parents’ political or religious beliefs), we sometimes discover that we have not rejected, indeed have embraced, more basic, less easily assailable things (perhaps their dogmatism or love of orderliness). So pervasive and ineluctable are social traces.

Of course, most of us try hard to be our “own person,” to be distinctive and worthy in ways we can embrace. But let us also acknowledge the importance of other people to who we are and the degree to which our life circumstances are shared with countless others. In that light, our personal problems are also social problems. Our wildest dreams are the fantasies of the millions.

Thomas Henricks, Ph.D., is Danieley Professor of Sociology and Distinguished University Professor at Elon University.

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Individuality and Self-Worth: Feminist Accomplishment in Jane Eyre

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• Ph.D., English Language and Literature, Northern Illinois University
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Whether or not Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre is a feminist work has been widely debated among critics for decades. Some argue that the novel speaks more about religion and romance than it does of female empowerment; however, this is not a wholly accurate judgment. The work can, in fact, be read as a feminist piece from beginning to end. 

The main character, Jane, asserts herself from the first pages as an independent woman (girl), unwilling to rely on or relent to any outside force. Though a child when the novel starts, Jane follows her own intuition and instinct rather than submitting to the oppressive statutes of her family and educators. Later, when Jane becomes a young woman and is faced with overbearing male influences, she again asserts her individuality by demanding to live according to her own necessity. In the end, and most importantly, Brontë stresses the significance of choice to the feminist identity when she allows Jane to go back to Rochester. Jane eventually chooses to marry the man she once left, and chooses to live out the remainder of her life in seclusion; these choices, and the terms of that seclusion, are what prove Jane’s feminism.

Early on, Jane is recognizable as someone atypical to the young ladies of the nineteenth century. Immediately in the first chapter, Jane’s aunt, Mrs. Reed, describes Jane as a “caviller,” stating that “there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in [such a] manner.” A young woman questioning or speaking out of turn to an elder is shocking, especially one in Jane’s situation, where she is essentially a guest in her aunt’s house.

Yet, Jane never regrets her attitude; in fact, she further questions the motives of others while in solitude, when she has been put off from questioning them in person. For instance, when she has been scolded for her actions toward her cousin John, after he provokes her, she is sent away to the red room and, rather than reflecting on how her actions could be considered unladylike or severe, she thinks to herself: “I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.” 

Also, she later thinks, “[r]esolve . . . instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression – as running away, or, . . . letting myself die” (Chapter 1). Neither actions, having to suppress backlash or considering flight, would have been considered possible in a young lady, especially a child of no means who is in the “kind” care of a relative. 

Furthermore, even as a child, Jane considers herself an equal to all around her. Bessie brings this to her attention, condemning it, when she says, “you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed” (Chapter 1). However, when Jane asserts herself in a “more frank and fearless” action than she had ever before displayed, Bessie is actually pleased (38). At that point, Bessie tells Jane that she is scolded because she is “a queer, frightened, shy, little thing” who must “be bolder” (39).  Thus, from the very start of the novel, Jane Eyre is presented as a curious girl, outspoken and conscious of the need to improve her situation in life, though it is required of her by society to simply acquiesce.

Jane’s individuality and feminine strength is again demonstrated at the Lowood Institution for girls. She does her best to convince her only friend, Helen Burns, to stand up for herself. Helen, representing the acceptable female character of the time, waves Jane’s ideas aside, instructing her that she, Jane, need only study the Bible more, and be more compliant to those of a higher social status than she. When Helen says, “it would be your duty to bear [being flogged], if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear,” Jane is appalled, which foreshadows and demonstrates that her character will not be “fated” to subservience (Chapter 6). 

Another example of Jane’s courage and individualism is shown when Brocklehurst makes false claims about her and forces her to sit in shame before all her teachers and classmates. Jane bears it, then tells the truth to Miss Temple rather than hold her tongue as would be expected of a child and student. Finally, at the end of her stay at Lowood, after Jane has been a teacher there for two years, she takes it upon herself to find a job, to better her situation, crying, “I [desire] liberty; for liberty I [gasp]; for liberty I [utter] a prayer” (Chapter 10). She does not ask for any man’s assistance, nor does she allow the school to find a place for her. This self-sufficient act seems natural to Jane’s character; however, it would not be thought of as natural for a woman of the time, as demonstrated by Jane’s need to keep her plan secret from the masters of the school.

At this point, Jane’s individuality has advanced from the eager, rash outbursts of her childhood. She has learned to keep true to herself and her ideals while maintaining a level of sophistication and piety, thus creating a more positive notion of feminine individuality than was displayed in her youth.  

The next obstacles for Jane’s feminist individuality come in the form of two male suitors, Rochester and St John. In Rochester, Jane finds her true love, and had she been any less of a feminist person, any less demanding of her equality in all relationships, she would have married him when he first asked. However, when Jane realizes that Rochester is already married, though his first wife is insane and essentially irrelevant, she immediately flees from the situation.

Unlike the stereotypical female character of the time, who might be expected to care only about being a good wife and servant to her husband , Jane stands firm: “Whenever I marry, I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival, but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne; I shall exact an undivided homage” (Chapter 17). 

When she is asked again to be married, this time by St John, her cousin, she again intends to accept. Yet, she discovers that he, too, would be choosing her second, this time not to another wife, but to his missionary calling. She ponders his proposal for a long time before concluding, “If I join St. John, I abandon half myself.” Jane then decides that she cannot go to India unless she “may go free” (Chapter 34). These musings pronounce an ideal that a woman’s interest in marriage should be just as equal as her husband’s, and that her interests must be treated with just as much respect.

At the end of the novel, Jane returns to Rochester, her true love, and takes residence in the private Ferndean. Some critics argue that both the marriage to Rochester and the acceptance of a life withdrawn from the world overturn all efforts made on Jane’s part to assert her individuality and independence. It should be noted, however, that Jane only goes back to Rochester when the obstacles which create inequality between the two have been eliminated.

The death of Rochester’s first wife allows Jane to be the first and only female priority in his life. It also allows for the marriage that Jane feels she deserves, a marriage of equals. Indeed, the balance has even shifted in Jane’s favor at the end, due to her inheritance and Rochester’s loss of estate. Jane tells Rochester, “I am independent, as well as rich: I am my own mistress,” and relates that, if he will not have her, she can build her own home and he may visit her when he wishes (Chapter 37). Thus, she becomes empowered and an otherwise impossible equality is established. 

Further, the seclusion in which Jane finds herself is not a burden to her; rather, it is a pleasure. Throughout her life, Jane has been forced into seclusion, whether by her Aunt Reed, Brocklehurst and the girls, or the small town that shunned her when she had nothing. Yet, Jane never despaired in her seclusion. At Lowood, for example, she said, “I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much” (Chapter 5). Indeed, Jane finds at the end of her tale exactly what she had been looking for, a place to be herself, without scrutiny, and with a man whom she equaled and could therefore love. All of this is accomplished due to her strength of character, her individuality.

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre can certainly be read as a feminist novel. Jane is a woman coming into her own, choosing her own path and finding her own destiny, without stipulation. Brontë gives Jane all that she needs to succeed: a strong sense of self, intelligence, determination and, finally, wealth. The impediments that Jane encounters along the way, such as her suffocating aunt, the three male oppressors (Brocklehurst, St. John, and Rochester), and her destitution, are met head-on, and overcome. In the end, Jane is the only character allowed real choice. She is the woman, built up from nothing, who gains all she wants in life, little though it seems.

In Jane, Brontë successfully created a feminist character who broke barriers in social standards, but who did it so subtly that critics can still debate whether or not it happened. 

Bronte, Charlotte .  Jane Eyre (1847). New York: New American Library, 1997. 

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The Awakening

Edna pontellier's emancipation to individuality and independence veronika mikec college.

Edna Pontellier was brought up in a male-dominated society, where her role as an individual was decided in advance. As a woman of the late nineteenth century, Edna is required to act accordingly to a set of prescribed (though mostly unspoken) social rules, standards, and expectations of the upper-class Victorian era. During the early stages of her marriage to Léonce Pontellier, Edna is “unaware that her oppression is founded on gender ideology [...] [which] works through the construction of female identity [and] defines women as weak, impotent and inferior to men” (Sittichane 2009, 43). She is subconsciously accustomed to living in a patriarchal society, where a woman is expected to view her family, i.e. her husband and children, as the primary focus and aspect of her life; this contributes to the justification of the domestication of women and prevents them from building careers other than motherhood. Because of this, Edna naturally assumes that she must live and die accordingly to these rules, though she subconsciously does not necessarily follow them; already in the very beginning of the novel, the female protagonist does not act how one would expect an average Victorian wife and mother to behave, though she herself does not...

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6.3 Adolescence: Developing Independence and Identity

Learning objectives.

• Summarize the physical and cognitive changes that occur for boys and girls during adolescence.
• Explain how adolescents develop a sense of morality and of self-identity.

Adolescence is defined as the years between the onset of puberty and the beginning of adulthood. In the past, when people were likely to marry in their early 20s or younger, this period might have lasted only 10 years or less—starting roughly between ages 12 and 13 and ending by age 20, at which time the child got a job or went to work on the family farm, married, and started his or her own family. Today, children mature more slowly, move away from home at later ages, and maintain ties with their parents longer. For instance, children may go away to college but still receive financial support from parents, and they may come home on weekends or even to live for extended time periods. Thus the period between puberty and adulthood may well last into the late 20s, merging into adulthood itself. In fact, it is appropriate now to consider the period of adolescence and that of emerging adulthood ( the ages between 18 and the middle or late 20s ) together.

During adolescence, the child continues to grow physically, cognitively, and emotionally, changing from a child into an adult. The body grows rapidly in size and the sexual and reproductive organs become fully functional. At the same time, as adolescents develop more advanced patterns of reasoning and a stronger sense of self, they seek to forge their own identities, developing important attachments with people other than their parents. Particularly in Western societies, where the need to forge a new independence is critical (Baumeister & Tice, 1986; Twenge, 2006), this period can be stressful for many children, as it involves new emotions, the need to develop new social relationships, and an increasing sense of responsibility and independence.

Although adolescence can be a time of stress for many teenagers, most of them weather the trials and tribulations successfully. For example, the majority of adolescents experiment with alcohol sometime before high school graduation. Although many will have been drunk at least once, relatively few teenagers will develop long-lasting drinking problems or permit alcohol to adversely affect their school or personal relationships. Similarly, a great many teenagers break the law during adolescence, but very few young people develop criminal careers (Farrington, 1995). These facts do not, however, mean that using drugs or alcohol is a good idea. The use of recreational drugs can have substantial negative consequences, and the likelihood of these problems (including dependence, addiction, and even brain damage) is significantly greater for young adults who begin using drugs at an early age.

Physical Changes in Adolescence

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty , a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body, culminating in sexual maturity . Although the timing varies to some degree across cultures, the average age range for reaching puberty is between 9 and 14 years for girls and between 10 and 17 years for boys (Marshall & Tanner, 1986).

Puberty begins when the pituitary gland begins to stimulate the production of the male sex hormone testosterone in boys and the female sex hormones estrogen and progesterone in girls. The release of these sex hormones triggers the development of the primary sex characteristics , the sex organs concerned with reproduction ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). These changes include the enlargement of the testicles and the penis in boys and the development of the ovaries, uterus, and vagina in girls. In addition, secondary sex characteristics ( features that distinguish the two sexes from each other but are not involved in reproduction ) are also developing, such as an enlarged Adam’s apple, a deeper voice, and pubic and underarm hair in boys and enlargement of the breasts, hips, and the appearance of pubic and underarm hair in girls ( Figure 6.9 “Sex Characteristics” ). The enlargement of breasts is usually the first sign of puberty in girls and, on average, occurs between ages 10 and 12 (Marshall & Tanner, 1986). Boys typically begin to grow facial hair between ages 14 and 16, and both boys and girls experience a rapid growth spurt during this stage. The growth spurt for girls usually occurs earlier than that for boys, with some boys continuing to grow into their 20s.

Figure 6.9 Sex Characteristics

Puberty brings dramatic changes in the body, including the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics.

A major milestone in puberty for girls is menarche , the first menstrual period , typically experienced at around 12 or 13 years of age (Anderson, Dannal, & Must, 2003). The age of menarche varies substantially and is determined by genetics, as well as by diet and lifestyle, since a certain amount of body fat is needed to attain menarche. Girls who are very slim, who engage in strenuous athletic activities, or who are malnourished may begin to menstruate later. Even after menstruation begins, girls whose level of body fat drops below the critical level may stop having their periods. The sequence of events for puberty is more predictable than the age at which they occur. Some girls may begin to grow pubic hair at age 10 but not attain menarche until age 15. In boys, facial hair may not appear until 10 years after the initial onset of puberty.

The timing of puberty in both boys and girls can have significant psychological consequences. Boys who mature earlier attain some social advantages because they are taller and stronger and, therefore, often more popular (Lynne, Graber, Nichols, Brooks-Gunn, & Botvin, 2007). At the same time, however, early-maturing boys are at greater risk for delinquency and are more likely than their peers to engage in antisocial behaviors, including drug and alcohol use, truancy, and precocious sexual activity. Girls who mature early may find their maturity stressful, particularly if they experience teasing or sexual harassment (Mendle, Turkheimer, & Emery, 2007; Pescovitz & Walvoord, 2007). Early-maturing girls are also more likely to have emotional problems, a lower self-image, and higher rates of depression, anxiety, and disordered eating than their peers (Ge, Conger, & Elder, 1996).

Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Although the most rapid cognitive changes occur during childhood, the brain continues to develop throughout adolescence, and even into the 20s (Weinberger, Elvevåg, & Giedd, 2005). During adolescence, the brain continues to form new neural connections, but also casts off unused neurons and connections (Blakemore, 2008). As teenagers mature, the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for reasoning, planning, and problem solving, also continues to develop (Goldberg, 2001). And myelin, the fatty tissue that forms around axons and neurons and helps speed transmissions between different regions of the brain, also continues to grow (Rapoport et al., 1999).

Adolescents often seem to act impulsively, rather than thoughtfully, and this may be in part because the development of the prefrontal cortex is, in general, slower than the development of the emotional parts of the brain, including the limbic system (Blakemore, 2008). Furthermore, the hormonal surge that is associated with puberty, which primarily influences emotional responses, may create strong emotions and lead to impulsive behavior. It has been hypothesized that adolescents may engage in risky behavior, such as smoking, drug use, dangerous driving, and unprotected sex in part because they have not yet fully acquired the mental ability to curb impulsive behavior or to make entirely rational judgments (Steinberg, 2007).

The new cognitive abilities that are attained during adolescence may also give rise to new feelings of egocentrism, in which adolescents believe that they can do anything and that they know better than anyone else, including their parents (Elkind, 1978, p. 199). Teenagers are likely to be highly self-conscious, often creating an imaginary audience in which they feel that everyone is constantly watching them (Goossens, Beyers, Emmen, & van Aken, 2002). Because teens think so much about themselves, they mistakenly believe that others must be thinking about them, too (Rycek, Stuhr, McDermott, Benker, & Swartz, 1998). It is no wonder that everything a teen’s parents do suddenly feels embarrassing to them when they are in public.

Social Development in Adolescence

Some of the most important changes that occur during adolescence involve the further development of the self-concept and the development of new attachments. Whereas young children are most strongly attached to their parents, the important attachments of adolescents move increasingly away from parents and increasingly toward peers (Harris, 1998). As a result, parents’ influence diminishes at this stage.

According to Erikson ( Table 6.1 “Challenges of Development as Proposed by Erik Erikson” ), the main social task of the adolescent is the search for a unique identity—the ability to answer the question, “Who am I?” In the search for identity, the adolescent may experience role confusion in which he or she is balancing or choosing among identities, taking on negative or undesirable identities, or temporarily giving up looking for an identity altogether if things are not going well.

One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia (1980). In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, religion, and sexual behavior. The responses to the questions allow the researchers to classify the adolescent into one of four identity categories (see Table 6.4 “James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development” ).

Table 6.4 James Marcia’s Stages of Identity Development

Source: Adapted from Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of adolescent psychology, 5 , 145–160.

Figure 6.10

Adolescents search for stable attachments through the development of social identities.

Russell Mondy – Mission vs. Balboa – CC BY-NC 2.0; Gage Skidmore – Teen Titans cosplay – CC BY-SA 2.0; Toni Protto – Mistura Freak – CC BY 2.0.

Studies assessing how teens pass through Marcia’s stages show that, although most teens eventually succeed in developing a stable identity, the path to it is not always easy and there are many routes that can be taken. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more promising possibilities (foreclosure status). Other teens may spend years trying on different possible identities (moratorium status) before finally choosing one.

To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers may well try out different identities in different social situations. They may maintain one identity at home and a different type of persona when they are with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single self-concept and a comfortable sense of identity (identity-achievement status).

For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-concept. For instance, in response to the question “What were you like as a teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?),” posed on the website Answerbag, one teenager replied in this way:

Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are developing their self-concepts and self-identities and how they rely on peers to help them do that. The writer here is trying out several (perhaps conflicting) identities, and the identities any teen experiments with are defined by the group the person chooses to be a part of. The friendship groups (cliques, crowds, or gangs) that are such an important part of the adolescent experience allow the young adult to try out different identities, and these groups provide a sense of belonging and acceptance (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). A big part of what the adolescent is learning is social identity , the part of the self-concept that is derived from one’s group memberships . Adolescents define their social identities according to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports, religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

Developing Moral Reasoning: Kohlberg’s Theory

The independence that comes with adolescence requires independent thinking as well as the development of morality —standards of behavior that are generally agreed on within a culture to be right or proper. Just as Piaget believed that children’s cognitive development follows specific patterns, Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) argued that children learn their moral values through active thinking and reasoning, and that moral development follows a series of stages. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:

Video Clip: People Being Interviewed About Kohlberg’s Stages

As you can see in Table 6.5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning” , Kohlberg concluded, on the basis of their responses to the moral questions, that, as children develop intellectually, they pass through three stages of moral thinking: the preconventional level , the conventional level , and the postconventional level .

Table 6.5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Reasoning

Although research has supported Kohlberg’s idea that moral reasoning changes from an early emphasis on punishment and social rules and regulations to an emphasis on more general ethical principles, as with Piaget’s approach, Kohlberg’s stage model is probably too simple. For one, children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of problems, but revert to lower levels in situations where doing so is more consistent with their goals or beliefs (Rest, 1979). Second, it has been argued that the stage model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western, samples in which allegiance to social norms (such as respect for authority) may be particularly important (Haidt, 2001). And there is frequently little correlation between how children score on the moral stages and how they behave in real life.

Perhaps the most important critique of Kohlberg’s theory is that it may describe the moral development of boys better than it describes that of girls. Carol Gilligan (1982) has argued that, because of differences in their socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas females value caring for and helping others. Although there is little evidence that boys and girls score differently on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development (Turiel, 1998), it is true that girls and women tend to focus more on issues of caring, helping, and connecting with others than do boys and men (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000).If you don’t believe this, ask yourself when you last got a thank-you note from a man.

Key Takeaways

• Adolescence is the period of time between the onset of puberty and emerging adulthood.
• Emerging adulthood is the period from age 18 years until the mid-20s in which young people begin to form bonds outside the family, attend college, and find work. Even so, they tend not to be fully independent and have not taken on all the responsibilities of adulthood. This stage is most prevalent in Western cultures.
• Puberty is a developmental period in which hormonal changes cause rapid physical alterations in the body.
• The cerebral cortex continues to develop during adolescence and early adulthood, enabling improved reasoning, judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning.
• A defining aspect of adolescence is the development of a consistent and committed self-identity. The process of developing an identity can take time but most adolescents succeed in developing a stable identity.
• Kohlberg’s theory proposes that moral reasoning is divided into the following stages: preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.
• Kohlberg’s theory of morality has been expanded and challenged, particularly by Gilligan, who has focused on differences in morality between boys and girls.

Exercises and Critical Thinking

• Based on what you learned in this chapter, do you think that people should be allowed to drive at age 16? Why or why not? At what age do you think they should be allowed to vote and to drink alcohol?
• Think about your experiences in high school. What sort of cliques or crowds were there? How did people express their identities in these groups? How did you use your groups to define yourself and develop your own identity?

Anderson, S. E., Dannal, G. E., & Must, A. (2003). Relative weight and race influence average age at menarche: Results from two nationally representative surveys of U.S. girls studied 25 years apart. Pediatrics, 111 , 844–850.

Answerbag. (2007, March 20). What were you like as a teenager? (e.g., cool, nerdy, awkward?). Retrieved from http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/171753

Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1986). How adolescence became the struggle for self: A historical transformation of psychological development. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 3, pp. 183–201). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Blakemore, S. J. (2008). Development of the social brain during adolescence. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 , 40–49.

Elkind, D. (1978). The child’s reality: Three developmental themes . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Farrington, D. P. (1995). The challenge of teenage antisocial behavior. In M. Rutter & M. E. Rutter (Eds.), Psychosocial disturbances in young people: Challenges for prevention (pp. 83–130). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Ge, X., Conger, R. D., & Elder, G. H., Jr. (1996). Coming of age too early: Pubertal influences on girls’ vulnerability to psychological distress. Child Development, 67 (6), 3386–3400.

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Goossens, L., Beyers, W., Emmen, M., & van Aken, M. (2002). The imaginary audience and personal fable: Factor analyses and concurrent validity of the “new look” measures. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 12 (2), 193–215.

Harris, J. (1998), The nurture assumption—Why children turn out the way they do . New York, NY: Free Press.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108 (4), 814–834.

Kohlberg, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: Essays on moral development (Vol. 2, p. 200). San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Jaffee, S., & Hyde, J. S. (2000). Gender differences in moral orientation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 126 (5), 703–726.

Lynne, S. D., Graber, J. A., Nichols, T. R., Brooks-Gunn, J., & Botvin, G. J. (2007). Links between pubertal timing, peer influences, and externalizing behaviors among urban students followed through middle school. Journal of Adolescent Health, 40 , 181.e7–181.e13 (p. 198).

Mendle, J., Turkheimer, E., & Emery, R. E. (2007). Detrimental psychological outcomes associated with early pubertal timing in adolescent girls. Developmental Review, 27 , 151–171; Pescovitz, O. H., & Walvoord, E. C. (2007). When puberty is precocious: Scientific and clinical aspects . Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

Marcia, J. (1980). Identity in adolescence. Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 5 , 145–160.

Marshall, W. A., & Tanner, J. M. (1986). Puberty. In F. Falkner & J. M. Tanner (Eds.), Human growth: A comprehensive treatise (2nd ed., pp. 171–209). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Rapoport, J. L., Giedd, J. N., Blumenthal, J., Hamburger, S., Jeffries, N., Fernandez, T.,…Evans, A. (1999). Progressive cortical change during adolescence in childhood-onset schizophrenia: A longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56 (7), 649–654.

Rest, J. (1979). Development in judging moral issues . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 571–645). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Rycek, R. F., Stuhr, S. L., Mcdermott, J., Benker, J., & Swartz, M. D. (1998). Adolescent egocentrism and cognitive functioning during late adolescence. Adolescence, 33 , 746–750.

Steinberg, L. (2007). Risk taking in adolescence: New perspectives from brain and behavioral science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16 , 55–59.

Turiel, E. (1998). The development of morality. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology: Socialization (5th ed., Vol. 3, pp. 863–932). New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Twenge, J. M. (2006). Generation me: Why today’s young Americans are more confident, assertive, entitled—and more miserable than ever before . New York, NY: Free Press.

Weinberger, D. R., Elvevåg, B., & Giedd, J. N. (2005). The adolescent brain: A work in progress. National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Retrieved from http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/BRAIN.pdf

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Does individualism bring happiness? Negative effects of individualism on interpersonal relationships and happiness

Yuji ogihara.

1 Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Yukiko Uchida

2 Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

We examined the negative effects of individualism in an East Asian culture. Although individualistic systems decrease interpersonal relationships through competition, individualistic values have prevailed in European American cultures. One reason is because individuals could overcome negativity by actively constructing interpersonal relationships. In contrast, people in East Asian cultures do not have such strategies to overcome the negative impact of individualistic systems, leading to decreased well-being. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the relationship between individualistic values, number of close friends, and subjective well-being (SWB). Study 1 indicated that individualistic values were negatively related with the number of close friends and SWB for Japanese college students but not for American college students. Moreover, Study 2 showed that even in an individualistic workplace in Japan, individualistic values were negatively related with the number of close friends and SWB. We discuss how cultural change toward increasing individualism might affect interpersonal relationships and well-being.

INTRODUCTION

The literature on cultural values has discussed the sizable cross-cultural differences between personal and interpersonal social values, such as individualism/collectivism ( Hofstede, 1980 ; Triandis, 1995 ), and independence/interdependence ( Markus and Kitayama, 1991 ). Theories and evidence have repeatedly suggested that individualism or independence is more frequently observed in European American cultural contexts whereas collectivism or interdependence is more frequently observed in East Asian cultural contexts.

However, globalization – “a process by which cultures influence one another and become more alike through trade, immigration, and the exchange of information and ideas” ( Arnett, 2002 , p. 774) – has been a powerful and unstoppable force in recent decades ( Chiu et al., 2011 ) and cross-national or cross-cultural distinctions may be getting smaller. Globalization enables greater mobility of people, objects, money, and information across countries. Especially since the 1980s, international trade by transnational companies and enterprises has been expanding, and the ongoing developments in improved transportation and information technologies have created a globalized world. Globalization is not only making societies more international, but also more Westernized or European-Americanized. Indeed, globalization is sometimes called Americanization or Westernization (e.g., Guillen, 2001 ) and lay people perceive globalization to be related to the Western cultural values ( Yang et al., 2011 ). This means that European American culture is one of the most potent cultures in the world that has a strong influence on other cultures due to the political and economical strengths of Western cultures, which continue to export not only products, technologies, and economic systems but also values, ideas, and beliefs. As a result, there have been many cultural changes, especially in East Asian cultures, that have been affected by the spread of westernized cultural values, ideas, practices, and systems. In this research, we investigated how psychological tendencies might be affected by cultural changes, with a specific focus on the spread of individualism.

INDIVIDUALISM IN THE EUROPEAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CONTEXT

Individualism – “a social pattern that consists of loosely linked individuals who view themselves as independent of collectives” ( Triandis, 1995 , p. 2) – is one of the most influential “global values” ( Pilkington and Johnson, 2003 ). Importantly, individualism has long been fostered in European American cultural contexts. For instance, previous studies suggested that individualism is fostered over time by economic systems (i.e., the lifestyle of herders compared to those of farmers and fishermen; e.g., Uskul et al., 2008 ), the Protestant ethic (e.g., Weber, 1920 ; Quinn and Crocker, 1999 ), the philosophy of ancient Greece (e.g., Nisbett, 2003 ), the decreased prevalence of pathogens, and voluntary settlements (e.g., Kitayama et al., 2006 ).

Individualistic systems or environments are believed to have positive influences on individuals (e.g., Waterman, 1981 ). For example, individualistic systems enable individuals to act autonomously and choose freely ( Triandis, 1995 ), with high social mobility such as being able to choose desirable persons to interact with (e.g., Schug et al., 2009 ), which tends to increase happiness ( Inglehart et al., 2008 ; Fischer and Boer, 2011 ). Furthermore, people in individualistic cultures can have strong sense of self-efficacy ( Kitayama et al., 2004 ).

However, such individualistic systems or environments can also have potentially negative effects. In particular, individualistic systems urge people to pursue personal achievement, which creates competition between individuals ( Triandis, 1995 ). These systems can also result in high social mobility, which lead to high social anxiety ( Oishi et al., 2013 ). In addition, the focused attention on personal achievements can bear a significant cost on interpersonal relationships ( Park and Crocker, 2005 ).

Even though having costs, individualism brings benefits such as enjoying free choice and strong sense of self-efficacy. One strategy to buffer against the negative affects of individualistic systems is developing interpersonal skills, usually employed in European American cultures, contexts, including seeking new interpersonal relationships ( Oishi et al., 2013 ), engaging in self-disclosure ( Schug et al., 2010 ), explicitly seeking social support ( Kim et al., 2006 ) or maintaining a high relational mobility by choosing desirable persons with whom to interact ( Schug et al., 2009 ; Yuki and Schug, 2012 ). In short, in European American cultures, people are independent from each other ( Markus and Kitayama, 1991 , 2010 ) but still actively seek interpersonal relationships. Such interpersonal skills are probably acquired over an extended period through socialization, and allow people in these cultural contexts to enjoy interpersonal relationships while maintaining their independence.

INDIVIDUALISM IN A JAPANESE CULTURAL CONTEXT

Through globalization, Japanese society has been influenced by European American cultures. This is especially true for the aspects of Japanese society that are adopting the individualistic systems imported from European American cultures. For example, the number of companies introducing pay-per-performance systems in Japan has increased ( Institute of Labor Administration, 2004 ). Moreover, it has been argued that education that fosters children’s autonomy has recently been emphasized in schools ( Doi, 2004 ). With the increase of individualistic environments in Japan, people have also become more individualistic in certain respects 1 . For instance, the average family size has decreased, the divorce rate has increased, and independence in child socialization has been increasingly prioritized ( Hamamura, 2012 ).

However, it has been argued that individualism in Japan might be qualitatively different from the individualism in the European American cultural contexts ( Kitayama, 2010 ). Individualism in these cultural contexts means being independent from others but still actively making social relationships. By contrast, to be independent and achieve “individualism,” the Japanese might feel the need to distance themselves from interdependent relationships. Indeed, connotations of individualism in Japan are more negative than are those in the U.S. Specifically, in the U.S. individualism is perceived to be unique or independent, while in Japan individualism is regarded as being selfish and feeling lonely ( Ogihara et al., 2013a , b ). Unlike in European American cultural contexts, relational mobility is relatively low in East Asian cultural contexts; that is, people tend to interact with others with whom they already have a connection ( Yuki and Schug, 2012 ). Hence, the Japanese are more likely to commit to a long-term relationship rather than to seek new relationships ( Yamagishi and Yamagishi, 1994 ). However, long-term, pre-existing interpersonal relationships can bind and restrict individuals because these relationships are often rule-based, not autonomy-based. Therefore, it might be necessary for Japanese individuals to cut off traditional relationships to be independent. Moreover, once these relationships are cut off, it is difficult for the Japanese to develop new relationships. Even under the motivation to be independent, the Japanese do not actively create new relationships because they are not equipped with appropriate strategies for making and constructing new social relationships, such as actively engaging in self-disclosure ( Schug et al., 2010 ) or explicitly seeking social support ( Kim et al., 2006 ). In European American cultures, individualism has been fostered over a long period, so people have adequate strategies which have been acquired through socialization. In contrast, Japan was not an individualistic culture and the exposure to individualization is comparatively recent. Therefore people in Japan might not have the strategies which are appropriate in an individualistic culture. As a result, under individualistic systems, Japanese tend to cut off interpersonal relationships but do not actively build new close interpersonal relationships. Thus becoming more individualistic might decrease Japanese happiness because interpersonal relations are an important source of happiness in Japan (e.g., Uchida et al., 2008 ).

PRESENT STUDY

We examined the relationship between individualistic values, subjective well-being (SWB), and number of close relationships in Japan and the U.S. Study 1 tested the hypothesis that individualistic values would be associated with a decrease in the number of close friends and SWB in Japan, but not to close friends and SWB in the U.S. Furthermore, to examine the effect of individualistic values and structural systems, Study 2 tested if decreases in the number of close relationships and SWB would be found in a sample of adults working in an individualistic environment in Japan. We predicted that even in a workplace that has individualistic systems and requires individualistic values, individualistic values would be negatively related to the number of close friends and SWB for Japanese workers.

Study 1 investigated whether individualistic values would have different effects on SWB across cultures. We predicted that (1) an individualistic orientation would decrease SWB in Japan, but not in the U.S., and (2) fewer close relationships would mediate the negative effect of individualistic values on SWB in Japan, whereas individualistic values would not be related to the number of close relationships in the U.S.

PARTICIPANTS AND PROCEDURE

One hundred and fourteen undergraduate students at Kyoto University in Japan (62 male, 52 female; M age = 19.5, SD age = 1.77) and 62 undergraduate students at University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S. (29 male, 33 female; M age = 19.3, SD age = 1.17; 60 White and 2 Hispanic born in the U.S.) participated in this study.

Individualistic and collectivistic orientations

We used the revised version of the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale 2 ( Crocker et al., 2003 ; Uchida, 2008 ). This scale assesses 11 domains of self-worth (e.g., academic competence, relationship harmony). Factor analysis in each culture indicated that 9 of the 11 domains fell into two factors, namely, individualistic orientation (e.g., academic competence, and competition; α Japan = 0.92, α US = 0.89) and collectivistic orientation (e.g., relationship harmony and other’s support; α Japan = 0.89, α US = 0.81).The other two domains (support of family and virtue) were dropped from the analysis because of the low factor scores. A sample item in individualistic orientation is “Doing better than others gives me a sense of self-respect,” and an example of the items in collectivistic orientation is “I can’t respect myself if I break relationship harmony within my group.” Participants reported the degree to which each statement applied to them (1 = strongly disagree , 7 = strongly agree ).

Subjective well-being

Participants completed four scales to assess their SWB. First, we measured life satisfaction by using the Satisfaction With Life Scale ( Diener et al., 1985 ; five items; e.g., “In most ways, my life is close to my ideal”). Second, the Interdependent Happiness Scale ( Hitokoto et al., 2009 ; 32 items) was used to measure individual differences in interdependent happiness gained by maintaining harmony with significant others (e.g., “I believe that I and those around me are happy”). Participants answered these two measures on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree , 7 = strongly agree ). Third, we assessed positive and negative affect. Positive affect was measured with 11 items (e.g., happy, satisfied) and negative affect was measured with 15 items (e.g., depressed, sad). Fourth, we measured somatic symptoms (11 symptoms; e.g., headache and stiff joints). Participants reported how frequently (1 = never , 5 = very often ) they experienced each of these affective states and somatic symptoms. All of these items have been successfully used in a survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. (MIDUS; Brim et al., 2004 ). All of these scales had satisfactory internal consistency (0.72 < α s < 0.90).

Number of close friends

The number of close friends was measured using a sociogram ( Kitayama et al., 2009 ). The sociogram is a simple diagram that shows an individual’s interpersonal relationships. Participants were asked to draw circles representing themselves and their friends on a paper and to connect related persons with lines within 10 min. After this was done, they were asked to identify the friends with whom they feel comfortable. The “close friend” variable was defined as the number of people with whom the participants felt comfortable.

ORIENTATIONS IN JAPAN AND THE U.S.

The average raw scores of individualistic and collectivistic orientations are shown in Figure ​ Figure1 1 . We conducted a 2-way (orientation and culture) ANOVA and found main effects of both orientation [ F (1,174) = 11.68, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.06] and culture [ F (1,174) = 8.97, p < 0.01, η p 2 = 0.05]. In addition, the interaction between orientation and culture was significant [ F (1,174) = 12.57, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.07]. The individualistic orientation score was significantly higher for the U.S. participants than for Japanese participants [ F (1,173) = 17.80, p < 0.001], whereas the collectivistic orientation score was not significantly different across cultures [ F (1,173) = 0.26, p = 0.61].

Raw scores of individualistic and collectivistic orientations in Japan and the U.S. (Study 1). Bars represent the standard error.

EFFECTS OF ORIENTATIONS ON SWB

Due to generally consistent results across the four SWB measures, a single SWB index was developed using a principle component analysis ( Table ​ Table1 1 ). Multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine how individualistic and collectivistic orientations affected SWB in each culture 3 . In Japan, an individualistic orientation negatively affected SWB, whereas a collectivistic orientation did not affect SWB ( Figure ​ Figure2 2 ). In contrast, in the U.S., a collectivistic orientation negatively affected SWB, and an individualistic orientation did not affect SWB.

Standardized regression coefficients predicting subjective well-being in Japan and the U.S. (Study 1). ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.

Principle component scores of SWB index in Japan and the U.S. (Study 1).

MEDIATION EFFECT OF NUMBER OF CLOSE FRIENDS

We conducted a mediation analysis to test whether the number of close friends mediated the effect of an individualistic orientation on SWB. The distributions of the numbers of close friends were positively skewed. Thus, we transformed the values by computing their common logarithm (plus 1), which produced an approximately normal distribution (using the same analysis proposed by Kirkpatrick et al., 2002 ). In Japan, an individualistic orientation was associated with fewer close friends. Moreover, the number of close friends positively predicted SWB, even after orientation was controlled. Therefore, in Japan the number of close friends mediated the effect of an individualistic orientation on SWB ( Figure ​ Figure3 3 ). Furthermore, a Sobel test ( Sobel, 1982 ) indicated that the mediating effect of the number of close friends was marginally significant ( z = -1.75, p = 0.08). In contrast, we did not find such a relationship in the U.S.

Mediation effect of the number of close friends between individualistic orientation and SWB in Japan and the U.S. (Study 1). Path coefficients on the left side of the arrows from individualistic orientation to SWB indicate standardized regression coefficients when individualistic orientation is a single independent variable. Those on the right side of the arrow indicate standardized regression coefficients when both individualistic orientation and the number of close friends are independent variables. Gender and age were controlled. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.

As predicted, in Japan an individualistic orientation was negatively related to SWB, but not in the U.S. In addition, in Japan, the number of close friends mediated the negative effect of an individualistic orientation on SWB. This suggests that if people in Japan try to be independent and achieve individualism, they will have difficulty forming and maintaining close friendships. Interestingly, however, there was no relationship between an individualistic orientation and the number of close friends in the U.S. Therefore, we concluded that the effect of individualistic values differs between Japan and the U.S. Specifically, individualistic values in Japan were associated with a deterioration in close relationships and a decrease in SWB, whereas individualistic values in the U.S. did not have a negative effect on close relationships and SWB.

Study 1 revealed that in the U.S. an individualistic orientation did not influence SWB and interpersonal relationships, whereas in Japan individualistic orientation was negatively associated with SWB and the number of close friends. However, these results might be questioned if the negative impact of individualistic orientation in Japan was due to the conflict between individualistic orientation in personal level and the collectivistic social structure.

Therefore, in Study 2, we chose a sample of women working in an individualistic-orientated workplace to examine whether negative impact of individualism found in Study 1 could be generalized to an individualistic-oriented working environment in Japan. We examined whether people with individualistic orientations working in an individualistic social structure would exhibit the same negative effects of individualism as exhibited by the Japanese participants in Study 1.

Thirty-four women ( M age = 26.6, SD age = 6.19, 22–51 years old) who worked for a large insurance company in Japan participated in the study. The data of two participants who reported they had lived abroad for more than 5 years were excluded. In this insurance company, performances and achievement-oriented goals are explicitly displayed on the wall (e.g., how many contracts each individual secured in the past 1 month); such displays are perceived as competitive. Participants answered the same questionnaire used in Study 1; all scales had satisfactory internal consistency (α individualistic orientation = 0.90, α collectivistic orientation = 0.87, 0.79 < α SWB scales < 0.95).

ORIENTATIONS IN ADULT SAMPLES AND STUDENT SAMPLES

Raw scores for individualistic and collectivistic orientations in the adult and student samples are shown in Figure ​ Figure4 4 . We conducted a two-way (orientation and group) ANOVA and found a main effect of orientation [ F (1,144) = 17.97, p < 0.001, η p 2 = 0.11]. In contrast, the main effect of group was not significant [ F (1,144) = 0.89, p = 0.35, η p 2 = 0.01] nor was the interaction between orientation and group [ F (1,144) = 2.07, p = 0.15, η p 2 = 0.01].

Raw scores of individualistic and collectivistic orientations in adult samples and student samples in Japan. Bars represent the standard error.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALISTIC ORIENTATION, THE NUMBER OF CLOSE FRIENDS, AND SWB

The results were consistent with Study 1; an individualistic orientation was negatively associated with both SWB and the number of close friends ( Figure ​ Figure5 5 ). Although the number of close friends positively predicted SWB (β = 0.41, p < 0.05), when the effect of individualistic orientation was controlled, the effect of close friends on SWB became weak (β = 0.17, p = 0.42). However, importantly, individualistic orientation had a negative relationship with both SWB and the number of close friends.

Effect of individualistic orientation on SWB and number of close friends in Japanese individualistic-oriented environment (Study 2). Path coefficients on the left side of the arrow from individualistic orientation to SWB indicate standardized regression coefficients when individualistic orientation is a single independent variable. Those on the right side of the arrow indicate standardized regression coefficients when both individualistic orientation and the number of close friends are independent variables. Age was controlled. ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05.

We found that an individualistic orientation was negatively associated with the number of close friends and SWB even for women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace. This result was the same as in the college sample in Study 1; however, we did not find a mediating relationship of close friends. One explanation for the lack of relationships between the number of close friends and SWB might lie in the sample; specifically, for the women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace, the achievement of individualistic goals required in the workplace may be more important to SWB than positive relationships with others. The result suggested, however, that even in an achievement-oriented environment in Japan, achievement-oriented individuals feel lower SWB and have fewer close friends. Thus, it is indicated that Japanese with individualistic orientations have fewer close friends and feel lower SWB.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

We examined the effect of individualistic values on SWB in two studies. Study 1 demonstrated that an individualistic orientation was not associated with decreased SWB in the U.S., whereas an individualistic orientation was associated with fewer close friends and lower SWB in Japan. Furthermore, Study 2 showed that an individualistic orientation was also associated with a decrease in the number of close friends and SWB for adult women working in an individualistic-oriented workplace. These results suggest the negative effect of an individualistic orientation in Japan might be due to the lack of a “buffer” against the negative impact of individualism within individuals (i.e., developing new interpersonal relationships).

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF INDIVIDUALISM IN EAST ASIAN CULTURAL CONTEXT

The results showed that an individualistic orientation dampened close interpersonal relationships and SWB in Japan, suggesting that individualism has a negative effect in East Asian cultural contexts. Although this study examined individualistic values in Japan, the results may generalize to other East Asian countries (e.g., China and South Korea) since a number of studies have shown that East Asian countries have traditionally interdependent or collectivistic cultural norms (e.g., Choi et al., 1997 ).

Recently, Japanese systems and environments are becoming more individualistic, but people in Japan may not respond well to these new systems. Why is there a gap between the environments and individual’s psychological tendencies such as personal values? We expect that this gap between environments and individuals’ psychological tendencies is due to unsuccessful attempts to adapt to new environments (i.e., individualistic systems in Japan) without effective behavioral strategies. To be more specific, when individuals in Japan try to be independent, they may cut off their existing relationships, and may not possess strategies to actively build new interpersonal relationships, unlike independent individuals in the European American cultural contexts where actively building new interpersonal relationships is common (e.g., Schug et al., 2010 ; Oishi et al., 2013 ).

Individualism in the European American cultural context is based on shared values and the notion that individuals are “independent from each other,” but still “connected with each other.” In European American cultural contexts, this sense of values and behavioral strategies are fostered through long historical periods (e.g., Nisbett, 2003 ;). In contrast, it is only recently that individualistic systems or environments have been drastically imported to East Asian cultural context. Therefore, these environments are comparatively new, and the Japanese imported individualism might consist only of parts of Western individualism. For example, even though Japanese companies or schools use personal achievement systems, these systems are not backed by the personal values that govern these systems in European American cultural context, such as active interpersonal strategies, religious ideas, or high self-efficacy. Therefore, it remains difficult for East Asians to buffer the negative effects of individualistic systems or environment.

The novelty of this study is that it separetes values and interpersonal strategies, especially as seen in the results of Study 2. Although the Japanese might espouse individualistic values, they might not be able to achieve the same positive consequences of individualism that are observed in European American cultural contexts because they are not equipped with the strategies necessary to buffer the negative interpersonal effects of individualism. Although some researchers have theoretically distinguished social structure from values (e.g., Dimaggio and Markus, 2010 ), no research has treated values and strategies as separate constructs. Our findings reveal the simplicity of structure versus values distinction by highlighting the importance of the strategies that people use to act out their values. Transplanting both the structure and the values of one culture into another might not work if individuals do not have the strategies to adaptively act out their values in the given structural setting. It is especially important to consider that the recent rapid changes of social structures and values may not be accompanied by behavioral strategies, which take longer to develop through many social training. Although cross-cultural differences in social behavior are well established, much less is known about how cultural change influences individuals. Further research should be conducted to examine the effect of cultural changes on human psychology and behavior.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH

We explained that in individualistic cultures, such as American culture, people acquire strategies to deal with the negative interpersonal consequences of individualism through long-term socialization. By contrast, in Japan, it is comparatively recent that society has become individualistic and, even when people have individualistic values, they are not well equipped with appropriate strategies to buffer the negative effect of individualism. However, another interpretation is possible; having an individualistic personal orientation might conflict with Japan’s traditional collectivistic values in Japan. In order to conclude which is the better explanation, it may be important to examine the buffering effect against individualism, such as by collecting data from people who appear to have better buffers against the negative effects of competitive working environments.

We examined the relationships between an individualistic orientation, the number of close friends, and SWB in Japan and the U.S., but we did not test the causal relationships directly (i.e., an individualistic orientation decreased the number of close friends and, as a result, SWB decreased). It is possible that having a small number of friends leading to individualism and lower SWB. Investigating the causal associations between an individualistic orientation, social relationships and SWB by longitudinal survey study or using the accumulated archive data could be a focus of future research.

Although not part of our hypothesis, we found that a collectivistic orientation was negatively associated with SWB in the U.S. We could not find evidence to suggest reasons for this decrease (in contrast to finding the connection to the number of close friends in Japan). This point should be explored further.

IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBALIZATION

Our findings provide insight on the effect of globalization in the case of not only individuals but also nations. Of course, globalization has many benefits for individuals and nations. We can get together frequently due to transportation innovations, products that are made in distant locations are readily available, and we can learn almost anything via information technology. However, there are also some negative effects. Globalization may cause maladaptive responses and deviations from mainstream culture, especially outside European American cultures (e.g., Asian or African cultures). It may be that such deviations from the cultural mainstream are linked to current social issues, such as social withdrawal (e.g., hikikomori in Japan who isolate themselves into their own bedrooms from 6 months to decades at a time without interacting with others, sometimes even with their own families; Norasakkunkit and Uchida, 2011 ). In addition, values and systems that are adaptive in European American cultures may not necessarily be adaptive in other cultures (e.g., Oishi, 2012 ). Thus, it might be necessary for each nation to select which values and systems to endorse, or introduce new ones in ways that are compatible with their culture. For instance, Bhutan, a small Asian country located between China and India, has gained much attention because of its distinctive policy against globalization ( Center for Bhutan Studies, 2012 ). The Bhutan government explicitly states that not only the physical happiness (Gross National Product) but also the psychological happiness (Gross National Happiness) of citizens are key policies of the country.

In a more globalized world, culture matters more than ever before. Therefore, the effect of globalization (in particular, the effects of individualism) on individuals and nations should be examined from a cultural perspective in more detail in the future.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Yuji Ogihara and Yukiko Uchida jointly carried out all the empirical work and wrote the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

Yukiko Uchida received financial support for the research (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Kakenhi, Grant Numbers #23730578 and #25285113). We would like to thank Brooke Wilken for her assistance in data collection. We are grateful to Takeshi Hamamura and Krishna Savani for their invaluable suggestions on our manuscript. We also thank Kosuke Takemura, Vinai Norasakkunkit, Yuri Miyamoto, Takashi Kusumi and Steven Heine for their helpful comments on the earlier version of our article.

1 It should be noted that there were some indices which did not show that Japanese have become more individualistic ( Hamamura, 2012 ). However, all the indices that did not show the increase in individualistic tendency were self-report items of beliefs and values. In contrast, behavioral measures (i.e., average family size, divorce rate, and proportion of people living in urban areas) documented an increase of individualism. Previous research suggested that self-report items have some problems. For example, people tend to compare themselves with individuals in their culture rather than those in another culture (the reference-group effect; Heine etal., 2002 ). Therefore, even though one may have become more individualistic, they might not realize their increase of individualism due to a reference-group effect.

2 We chose this scale because it can successfully measure individualistic and collectivistic orientation with relative implicitness. If we used a more direct measure, that included items such as “I like doing better than others” or “I do not like breaking relationship harmony within my group,” participants might not report their actual orientation or attitudes because of social desirability.

3 We conducted a multiple regression analysis with independent variables of individualistic orientation, collectivistic orientation, culture, the interaction term between culture and individualistic orientation, the interaction term between culture and collectivistic orientation, age, and gender, with SWB as the dependent variable. We found a significant effect of individualistic orientation (β = -0.22, p < 0.05), but the interaction term between culture and an individualistic orientation was only close to be marginal (β = 0.16, p = 0.105).

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Conformity Vs Individuality in "Fahrenheit 451"

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The conformity dilemma, the quest for individuality, symbolism of books, freedom and consequences, contemporary relevance, conclusion: the balance between conformity and individuality.

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Harrison Bergeron

Kurt vonnegut, everything you need for every book you read..

In the futuristic world of “Harrison Bergeron,” the government applies physical and mental handicaps to individuals with above-average strength and intelligence in order to guarantee that all people in society are equal. While equality is often regarded as a positive condition of democratic society, Vonnegut’s dystopian portrayal of an absolutely equal society reveals how equality must be balanced with freedom and individualism in order for society to thrive.

Although in the story all people are “finally equal” in “every which way,” Vonnegut suggests that forbidding individualism causes society to suffer. For instance, the distribution of mental handicaps prevents citizens from thinking critically or creatively. In the case of George , who has “way above normal intelligence,” citizenship in an equal society comes at the price of his ability to critically question the world around him. George clearly has the impulse to question the invasive nature of government regulations on equality, particularly with regards to the handicaps’ negative effects on the arts (he watches shackled dancers on TV who are forbidden from displaying any above-average talent), yet the presence of his own mental handicaps prevents him from pursuing this line of thought: “George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped,” Vonnegut writes. “But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

Harrison Bergeron is the only character in the story who defies the government’s handicap regulations, and the degree to which the government and news media villainize him shows that individualism, in addition to making society more vibrant, has the power to challenge the totalitarian government. Harrison proves capable of disrupting state power through demonstrations of his individuality—both in strength (his escape from jail and destruction of “scrap-iron handicaps”) and intelligence (his ability to think for himself and rebel against the government). The state recognizes that Harrison’s individuality will threaten the status quo of society, and the administration justifies his imprisonment and eventual murder on the grounds that he is “extremely dangerous” and is “plotting to overthrow the government.” From this, readers can assume that Harrison’s displays of individualism are deeply threatening to the efficacy of a government that seeks to maintain equality.

The interplay between individualism and equality is clear in the juxtaposition between Harrison and his father George. Harrison’s embrace of his extraordinary strength and genius mark him as an outlaw, while his father’s acquiescence to the law of the Handicapper General (despite his above-average strength and intelligence) renders him ordinary. While Harrison is considered dangerous for his difference, he is also capable of extraordinary feats, such as his escape from jail and his ability to think for himself. Conversely, although George is able to fit into society, he loses his ability to think or act for himself. By the end of the story, Harrison’s death, coupled with his parents’ inability to mourn or question the nature of his death, suggests that individualism has been lost to absolute equality. 

By exploring the suppression of individualism in favor of equality under a totalitarian government, Vonnegut reveals that governments that do not balance their pursuit of social equality with a commitment to personal freedom and individualism can impede the well-being of a state and its citizens. Given the time of Vonnegut’s writing (post-WWII and during the Cold War), his story can be seen, in part, as a comment on the danger of totalitarian regimes that suppress expressions of individualism and dissent on the ideological grounds that invasive governmental policies are for the “common good” of the country.

Equality vs. Individualism ThemeTracker

Equality vs. Individualism Quotes in Harrison Bergeron

George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn't be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.

“The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?” If Hazel hadn't been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn't have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head. “Reckon it'd fall all apart,” said Hazel.

The music began again and was much improved. Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while-listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it. They shifted their weights to their toes. Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers. And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

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Guest Essay

There’s No Such Thing as an American Bible

By Esau McCaulley

Contributing Opinion Writer

The presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, who weeks ago started selling shoes , is now peddling Bibles. During Holy Week.

What’s special about this Bible? So many things. For example, according to a promotional website, it’s the only Bible endorsed by Donald Trump. It’s also the only one endorsed by the country singer Lee Greenwood. Admittedly, the translation isn’t distinctive — it’s your standard King James Version — but the features are unique. This Bible includes the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and part of the lyrics of Mr. Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Perhaps most striking, the cover of the Bible does not include a cross or any symbol of the Christian tradition; instead, it is emblazoned with the American flag.

While part of me wants to laugh at the absurdity of it — and marvel at the sheer audacity — I find the messaging unsettling and deeply wrong. This God Bless the USA Bible, as it’s officially named, focuses on God’s blessing of one particular people. That is both its danger and, no doubt for some, its appeal.

Whether this Bible is an example of Christian nationalism I will leave to others. It is at least an example of Christian syncretism, a linking of certain myths about American exceptionalism and the Christian faith. This is the American church’s consistent folly: thinking that we are the protagonists in a story that began long before us and whose main character is in fact the Almighty.

Holy Week is the most sacred portion of the Christian calendar, a time when the church recounts the central events of our faith’s narrative, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That story, unlike the parochial God Bless the USA Bible, does not belong to any culture.

Holy Week is celebrated on every continent and in too many languages to number. Some of the immigrants Mr. Trump declared were “ poisoning the blood” of America will probably shout “Christ is risen!” this Easter. Many of them come from the largely Christian regions of Latin America and the Caribbean. They may have entered the country with Bibles in their native tongues nestled securely among their other belongings.

One of the beauties of the Christian faith is that it leaps over the lines dividing countries, leading the faithful to call fellow believers from very different cultures brothers and sisters. Most of the members of this international community consist of the poor living in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are more Spanish-speaking Christians than English- speaking ones .

If there are central messages that emerge from the variety of services that take place during Holy Week, for many Christians they are the setting aside of power to serve, the supremacy of love, the offer of divine forgiveness and the vulnerability of a crucified God.

This is not the stuff of moneymaking schemes or American presidential campaigns.

It was Pontius Pilate , standing in as the representative of the Roman Empire, who sentenced Jesus to death. The Easter story reminds believers that empires are more than willing to sacrifice the innocent if it allows rulers to stay in power. The church sees Christ’s resurrection as liberating the believer from the power of sin. The story challenges imperial modes of thinking, supplanting the endless pursuit of power with the primacy of love and service.

Easter, using the language of St. Augustine, represents the victory of the City of God over the City of Man. It declares the limits of the moral reasoning of nation-states and has fortified Christians who’ve resisted evil regimes such as fascists in South America, Nazis in Germany, apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States.

For any politician to suppose that a nation’s founding documents and a country music song can stand side by side with biblical texts fails at a theological and a moral level. I can’t imagine people in other countries going for anything like it. It is hard to picture a modern “God Bless England” Bible with elements of British common law appended to Christianity’s most sacred texts.

I am glad for the freedoms that we share as Americans. But the idea of a Bible explicitly made for one nation displays a misunderstanding of the story the Bible attempts to tell. The Christian narrative culminates in the creation of the Kingdom (and family) of God, a transnational community united by faith and mutual love.

Roman Catholics , Anglicans and Orthodox Christians, who together claim around 1.5 billion members, describe the Bible as a final authority in matters of faith. Evangelicals, who have overwhelmingly supported Mr. Trump over the course of three election cycles, are known for their focus on Scripture, too. None of these traditions cite or refer to any American political documents in their doctrinal statements — and for good reason.

This Bible may be unique in its form, but the agenda it pursues has recurred throughout history. Christianity is often either co-opted or suppressed; it is rarely given the space to be itself. African American Christians have long struggled to disentangle biblical texts from their misuse in the United States. There is a reason that the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that between the Christianity of this land (America) and the Christianity of Christ, he recognized the “widest possible difference.”

And while Christianity was used to give theological cover to North American race-based chattel slavery, it was violently attacked in places like El Salvador and Uganda, when leaders including the archbishops Oscar Romero and Janani Luwum spoke out against political corruption.

The work of the church is to remain constantly vigilant to maintain its independence and the credibility of its witness. In the case of this particular Bible, discerning what is happening is not difficult. Christians are being played. Rather than being an appropriate time to debut a patriotic Bible, Easter season is an opportune moment for the church to recover the testimony of the supremacy of the cross over any flag, especially one on the cover of a Bible.

Esau McCaulley ( @esaumccaulley ) is a contributing Opinion writer, the author of “ How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South ” and an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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