The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Ralph Waldo Emerson’

Is there a subject that you have to learn that is quite dull? There are many ways to fill the information gap if you get creative enough. Take me for instance, I do not like history and it has never been one of my favourite subjects, but more and more, I am feeling the information gap and the need to fill it. See Part Two and Part Three of How to Fill the Information Gap series.

There are many people who I wanted to learn more about, many were historical figures and well known, and others were not so well known. The well known figures, I knew their claim to fame but not much else. No one wants others to know, that they are ignorant about anything, myself included. No one wants to ask the “dumb” questions. I decided to educate myself by creating Wisdom of Life Profiles which took on a life of its own. I started off researching people who I was interested in learning more about.

In addition, I learned about people to profile who are mentioned in some of the books that I read. For instance, while reading books from the Rogue Angel series, Alex Archer (pen name) always scatters interesting tidbits about people like Boudica, Joan of Arc, and Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (sculpted the Statue of Liberty). When I researched these people, history unfolded before my eyes. As I read Faye Kellerman’s Hangman: A Decker/Lazarus Novel, I learned about Russian musician Sergei Rachmaninoff who fled from Russia and lost everything during the Bolshevik Revolution. Rachmaninoff was a great pianist and composer who I didn’t know about until I read that novel.

When I researched Ralph Waldo Emerson, I learned that he was against the Fugitive Slave Act and refused to obey it because he felt all people were equal. I also learned about biographer and historian Thomas Carlyle who was a friend of Emerson. What makes learning history this way interesting, is that I am seeing it through the eyes of people I am interested in so I’m likely to remember what I read.

Think of ways to bring a dry subject to life. Is there someone who you respect, who has written about that subject? Are there children’s books on the subject? How about videos or films? What about comics and graphic novels on the subject? For me, I found a starting point, and then I delved into the subject. Tomorrow we’ll review A Short History of the World by J. Milnor Dorey.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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The Precursor to How to Master a Subject
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How to Fill the Information Gap Part Two
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This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist, Poet and Lecturer and Interview with Tina Brillinger.

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In “The Secrets of Creative Problem Solving” Otto Schmidt presents a simple methodology for problem solving, which beautifully ties in with Graham Wallas’ Creativity Model.

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The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë is an early feminist work. It is an important work because it was written in the Victorian age, and for a woman to defend another’s right to leave a disastrous marriage was quite novel and courageous.

Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

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Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leader in the transcendentalist movement. He was a voracious reader, digesting works of Zoroaster, Confucius, Muhammad, the Neoplatonists, Jakob Boehme, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, the Scottish philosophers, Emanuel Swedenborg, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Madame de Staël.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist, Poet and Lecturer

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This week we featured Tina Brillinger, an online publisher of food safety resources. Brillinger has had some interesting experiences which she has generously shared with us. She agrees with the expression, “The world is your oyster,” which means that opportunities are everywhere waiting for us to explore them. Here are Part One and Part Two of Tina Brillinger’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Even though Ralph Waldo Emerson died over a century ago, his work is read and consulted frequently. In 1841 he published Essays: First Series and in 1844 Essays: Second Series, both essay series are still very popular even today. He was an abolitionist and refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Law.

Name: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Birth Date: May 1803 – April 1882

Job Functions: Essayist, Poet and Lecturer

Fields: Education, Literature

Known For: Essay Series One and Two

At the age of 14, Ralph Waldo Emerson went to Harvard College on a scholarship which he made the very most of. At the age of 17 he started journaling, which he continued for over 50 years. When Emerson graduated from Harvard he taught for a while because he was unsure of what to do with himself. Emerson decided to become an ordained Christian minister and enrolled at Harvard Divinity School. In 1826, when Emerson completed his studies, he was offered a junior pastorship position at Second Church in Boston.

Emerson was a voracious reader, digesting works of Zoroaster, Confucius, Muhammad, the Neoplatonists, Jakob Boehme, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Baron de Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, the Scottish philosophers, Emanuel Swedenborg, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Madame de Staël. He also devoured Thomas Carlyle’s pioneering essays on German literature, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection, and Dante’s Vita Nuova.

Emerson married Ellen Louisa Tucker in 1829, a woman whom he loved dearly unfortunately she died about 18 months later from tuberculosis (Emerson later married Lydia Jackson in 1835, and had four children). He was in deep despair about his wife’s death, and organized religion could not give him what he needed during this dark period, so religious doubts arose inside of him. Though the Unitarian church is ideally suited for the questioner, Emerson could not find any solace, and in 1832, he resigned from Second Boston, but this left him with too much time on his hands.

After months of just floundering around, in 1833, Emerson decided to travel to Europe on a 10-month tour to find himself. While he was there, Emerson met with John Stuart Mill, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle who became a lifelong friend.

When Emerson returned to the United States, he discovered that he could make a living as a lecturer. The Lyceum movement provided lectures on various topics to rabid audiences who were willing to pay for the very best lectures. Emerson had found his stride. After giving lectures using the Lyceum platform for a few seasons, Emerson decided that he would organize his own lectures as well. In 1837 – 1838, he offered a group of 10 lectures on the theme of human nature  to the Boston public. These lectures were later turned into essays and then into books. Leading themes in Emerson’s lectures and essays were man, nature and God.

Emerson looked for the essential spirit of religion. He probed into human reality and the world of nature to release men from a mechanistic view of the world. “[Emerson] believed in a reality and a knowledge that transcended the everyday reality Americans were accustomed to. He believed in the integrity of the individual.” He also believed that reality is discovered through thought and not experience, and “the purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.” One of Emerson’s famous saying is “Trust thyself.”

In 1836, Emerson published a pamphlet titled Nature, which pulled a group of people known as transcendentalists to him. That same year, Emerson, George Putnam, and Frederick Henry Hedge founded the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 8, 1836.

In 1841 he published Essays: First Series and in 1844 Essays: Second Series, both essay series are still very popular even today. Emerson followed up with Poems (1847), Representative Men: Seven Lectures (1850), English Traits (1856), Conduct of Life (1860), May Day (1867), Society and Solitude (1870), and Letters and Social Aims (1875). Emerson became a leading transcendentalist in the United States. In addition to Emerson and those who founded the Transcendental Club, major figures in the movement were Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Margaret Fuller, and Amos Bronson Alcott.

As a transcendentalist, Emerson opposed materialism, formal religion and slavery, and spoke out against them. He was particularly incensed with the Fugitive Slave Law passed in 1850 and is quoted as saying, “I will not obey it, by God.” Even though Emerson had been apolitical, he registered as a Republican and voted for Abraham Lincoln.

After the Civil War, Emerson continued on the lecture circuit and wrote more books. Society and Solitude (1870), and Letters and Social Aims (1875) were very well received. His ideas influenced Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Sources Cited/Referenced

Encyclopedia of World Biography

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Encyclopedia of Religion

New Catholic Encyclopedia

Transcendentalism – Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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This is what we talked about on The invisible Mentor Blog this week: Review of Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Babbage, the Father of the Computer and Interview with Phyllis Yaffe.

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This week we reviewed the essay, Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Self-Reliance as used in the essay is living up to your full potential.

Review: Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

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This week we featured Phyllis Yaffe who started in the library and ended up in the executive suite. She had a sponsor who opened doors for her and helped to chart her career path. Mentors are extremely important. Here are Part One and Part Two of Phyllis Yaffe’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson is an essay in the First Series that he wrote in 1841. His essays are freely available on the internet. When printed, the essay Self-Reliance is about 19 pages, size 14 font, but it is packed with a lot of wisdom. Even though this work is very short, to fully savour and digest what’s being said, require time for reflection. I took the time to read Self-Reliance three times to fully get what Emerson is saying.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was a transcendental philosopher from the 19^th century. In this philosophical essay, Emerson shares some big ideas, and from what I have read, self-reliance is really about being your best self.

10 Great Ideas

1. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty: How many times have you had an amazing idea that you failed to act on then later discovered that someone else did? We’ve all been there, take action today.
2. Inmost in due time becomes the outmost: What do you spend your time focusing on? Do you focus on the things that will yield the greatest benefits in your life? What you spend your time on becomes your reality.
3. Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide…The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs: We live in a me-too culture where most conform. What would happen if you took the road less traveled and showed up as yourself? What would occur if you allowed yourself to be your extraordinary, authentic self? What would have happened if the pioneers and innovative thinkers of yesteryear, imitated each other, and suppressed their pioneering ways?
4. Trust thyself: You know what you need to do, so take action. It may be the wrong action, but you are not standing still. And if you didn’t take the correct action, that’s feedback, so try something else. Trust yourself to do the right thing. Thomas Edison found 10,000 ways that the light bulb didn’t work, but he trusted himself that sooner or later he would get it right.
5. 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….What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think…It is harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it: Do not be overly concerned about what other people think about you, trying to impress them. Live your life, and do things because they feed your soul. Live your life to the fullest.
6. A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do…Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus and Luther… To be great is to be misunderstood: It’s okay to change your mind. As we grow and evolve, we think differently and become different people.
7. 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. Perfection doesn’t exist. We’ll make a lot of mistakes and take wrong turns along our journey. That’s okay, all we have to do is course correct and eventually we’ll reach our destination. As Lao-tzu says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”
8. 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…. in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet… 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: To me, this means to be flexible. If something is not working try something else and do not worry about what others may think about you. Never put your life on hold, waiting for the perfect opportunity.
9. Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: People often regret the things they didn’t do. Take risks and live your life to the fullest.
10. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation… Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon? Every great man is a unique…. 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: Each of us has a purpose in this life, that one thing we were born to do, so live your purpose with enthusiasm. Do not try to live another’s life.

These are some of the great ideas in Emerson’s Self-Reliance. I highly recommend this essay, and set aside an hour and a half so that you can think about what you’re reading. Gene Waddell in “Using Rare Books to Inspire Learning Part 2: Drama – Travel” recommends that we also read History, (First Series – 1841) and Nature (Second Series – 1844) by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Emerson Essays

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