Self-Reliance Blog

 All Comes When You Believe

The piece “Self-Reliance” explains how people are supposed to believe and succeed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson tells that if everyone would believe in their “latent conviction”, then they would have an easier time chasing their dreams or becoming the person they wish to be.  


 



The definition of self-reliance is supporting one’s own ideas and not others.  Emerson writes, “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius” (Emerson 3-5).  What he is saying is that believing in oneself represents true genius for all men.
 

Emerson also makes the idea of self-reliance have a certain way of thinking.  When wanting to express your latent conviction, you have to ignore the consequences and just blurt it out.  Doing this could only help you, which can also be called deontology.  Deontology is when something is done when it benefits and seems right for the person doing it, without thinking of the consequences.  Emerson wants people to be able to speak the words that are feared, without thinking ahead so a person cannot overthink and psyche themselves out of saying what they want to say.

Ralph Waldo Emerson defines self-reliance as being able to count on oneself to come up with new ideas, not for other people to hand over their ideas.  Also, nobody wants to be the one that has the idea, and then doesn’t get the credit.  Emerson says, “Else, to-morrow 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” (Emerson 15-17).  

 

Emerson doesn’t want people to feel shame, but to be able to rely on themselves to speak their latent convictions, their divine ideas, and their spontaneous impressions.  Self-reliance is defined as the ability to be a single person, who values their own thoughts.

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