The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Belknap Press)

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:30:44 -0500

I had never read any Emerson and was excited to stick my toe in the water. This book was a collection of some of his most famous essays. Written in the mid nineteenth century he is one of those early American intellectuals which seemed to have burned brightly and all but disappeared. Emerson was one of the leaders of the transcendentalist movement which started in the 1820s-1830s. These essays do a lot to outline in vague terms the ideas Emerson had about life. Which are essentially romantic, you as the individual are the orthodox of your life. Heaven is not a place out there somewhere, but something that can be experienced in everyday life given the right mindset. Humans are at their best when they are reliant on themselves for their ideas and beliefs. Man is one thing, that an individual rises out of, this is what gives literature its meaning in the sense that it speaks to that common denominator in all of us. “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” These essays covered a wide range of topics my personal favorites were on friendship and self-reliance. This will definitely be a book I am looking forward to getting a hard copy of, because his writing is so poetic as it is probably best enjoyed a sentence or a paragraph at a time. Very beautifully written. Emerson himself was a Unitarian minister when he was younger but ended up resigning largely because his worldview no longer aligned with what the church’s dogma. I respect that, and that American individualism is everywhere in his texts. As a sad side note in his old age about a decade before his death he started suffering from aphasia. Aphasia is the inability to comprehend or formulate speech. A cruel irony.

Biocentrism

Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:33:29 -0500

Finally checked this one of the list, of course that raises the question of what I mean by “finally”. The word obviously indicates a sequence of events and sequence indicates time and time indicates a required conscious observer. So, in a sense I’ve read this book both before, after and not yet. Jokes aside this book raises a lot of interesting questions, making you think about things a little differently than you had before. And that is the most and best that you can ask from a book. The writing in the book is kind of poor and a little self-aggrandizing at points but the ideas are original enough to make that not too difficult to look past. This book also made me want to read Emerson. While some of his conclusions and observations have in recent years been “proven” wrong (most notably the experiment of being able to read someone’s intentions up to 10 seconds before they actually make a decision) there still seems to be plenty of latitude in the field of consciousness to allow for his ideas to have value. Good suggestion has given me a lot to think about.

Ralph_waldo_emerson on George's Blog

The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Belknap Press)

Biocentrism