"If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your
neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing that you are cheated, or with
saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due;
but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that
you are never cheated again (Thoreau 4)." This quote from Civil Disobedience
expresses the meaning of a philosophical movement that caught fire among
writers and citizens in the United States around the 1800s. Transcendentalists
protest against the general state of culture and society. Their core belief was
in the ultimate divinity of both nature and humans and intense feelings of
self-reliance. The real question is whether or not I would follow in the
footsteps of these important American writers and “conform” to the
transcendentalist movement. Oh the irony!
I would consider myself a half-transcendentalist in the fact
that I don’t want to protest everything my government passes and enforces. I
feel that society needs rules and regulations in order for it to work smoothly.
There is a quote from Self-Reliance by Emerson that comes to mind as a good
example of the exact opposite theory that I believe in, “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 center of
things (Emerson 4)." I do not think we should hurl in the face of custom,
trade, and office. Although that image is extremely graphic, I think these
qualities speak to our character more and that is why we should keep them.
I said I consider myself half a transcendentalist because I
do love the image of all of nature as being the Divine. I'm not really sure
where I got it from, but I have always had an immense respect for the land and
nature around me. It often times reminds me of something so pure and
untouchable; I think that is also why I was able to connect with the idea of
divinity.
In short, I would throw out all ideas of nonconformity with
respects to government, but hold fast to the idea that nature is divine.
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