In the spirit of this essay, I want to share how I found it and accompanying context1 in case it might actually be interesting to more people than just me.
I've been going through @plebpoet's recent comments—this is a detail I considered to not mention since I don't want @plebpoet to become too aware that I—should I write "regularly"?—visit her profile even though I told her in person already that I sometimes do that but I think I was just projecting onto her my predicted own feelings if someone would tell me that—is thinking that such projecting is wrong wrong according to this essay?—and found this reply to this post. I remembered that I saw this post when it still had zero comments and almost mentioned her in a reply but I didn't. I was curious if my prediction that she would reply by herself would come true which turned out to be the case.
Reading through the comments, I found a link to transcendentalism in #668794 and got hooked by this:
while society and its institutions have corrupted the purity of the individual, people are at their best when truly "self-reliant" and independent.
I then clicked on "self-reliant" and was surprised it led me to an article about an essay. Even though I already know what this word means, I still clicked on it and expected to see a definition of "self-reliance".
After skimming that article, I wanted to read that apparently very accomplished essay and thus searched for it. What I found is what you see. Thanks to the design of that site, I immediately knew that I stumbled into one of the rare original corners of the internet.
After the draft of this post reached this point, I considered deleting everything and waiting until I read the full essay. I didn't read it in full yet because I am very tired (the distance my head travels before I wake up again is increasing) and actually want to sleep but I also want to have a chance to wake up to potential comments from stackers. Oh, and:
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.
So here this is, and here you are.

Footnotes

  1. I watched my first episode of Firefly today. I remembered that the word "companion" was used and I thought it'd be fun if I would use that word in this post, too. I like to lookup the words I use before I use them and realized I didn't realize that companions are courtesans in the show.
1173 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 2 Sep
Thanks for pointing me to this. I've heard of this essay many times, but never read (or even skimmed) it. Now I'm interested in reading a biography of Emerson.
I really liked this section. I think it speaks to the current times, in particular.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing 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.
reply
So much Emerson love in the comments. I live for this shit. Actually reading Emerson and Thoreau in college was like realizing why I'm alive, kinda
reply
267 sats \ 3 replies \ @k00b 1 Sep
I spent a few weeks at 15 years old laboriously painting choice excerpts from this essay on my bedroom wall in 4 inch font.
My mom sold the house a few years later and the buyer liked it and wanted it left as-is.
reply
159 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 2 Sep
There are a lot of good ones:
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.
Many teenagers had this book in the 1970s:
reply
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek OP 2 Sep
Oh, that’s cool! Did you come across this essay in school or by yourself?
reply
102 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 2 Sep
It was in a textbook and I immediately fell in love with it. I hope kids are still running into it.
reply
Emerson wrote how the community is a distraction to self-growth, by friendly visits, and family needs. He advocates more time being spent reflecting on one's self.
Apparently, this line of thought has been disproved by social scientists who postulate that loneliness is deadly and can cost a person several years of his life. So, too much shunning away from social bonding is not ideal
reply
67 sats \ 1 reply \ @plebpoet 2 Sep
nay! retreat to the cabin in the woods! nature is the only truth! (is what Thoreau would say)
reply
You crack me up!
reply
emerson was cool but firefly is forever.
I liked this, felt like a journal entry.
reply
73 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek OP 1 Sep
Maybe I will actually read this essay in full because I posted this.
reply
Ghe great art work ❤️
reply