Individualism in Transcendentalism
Individualism is a really important idea, and a way of life, for the Transcendentalists. They believed that a big reason people feel unhappy or dissatisfied is that they try too hard to conform. And hey, we can't help it: we live in society, and when we see everyone around us buying trendy T-shirts and big glasses and iPhones, we feel that we have to do it too, even if we think the Android might have better features.
So the Transcendentalists insisted that we needed to ditch all of those social pressures that make us want to conform. We need to follow our own path. If we want to drop our jobs as bankers and spend the rest of our lives fly-fishing, then why not? As long as it makes us happy.
As long as we our true to ourselves and to our own individuality we can't go wrong. Doesn't that sound like the American Dream?
Chew on This
Ralph Waldo Emerson challenges us to trust ourselves and follow our own individual path in his famous essay "Self-Reliance." And why trust? Well after all, "every heart vibrates to that iron string!" Duh.
In his book Walden, Henry David Thoreau argues that we need to lose the world in order to find our true selves. Yep, that's right—off you go to quote #3.