Am I a Transcendentalist?

After discussing transcendentalism in class, and reading writings by authors who hold different viewpoints on the subject, I don’t feel that I am completely on board with the whole movement of transcendentalism, but I am also not completely against it either.

The one aspect of transcendentalism that I would tend to agree with is the thought that conformity isn’t always good, and you should be your own person and think for yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his Self-Reliance: “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.” Many of the transcendentalist authors held similar views on conformity, which I think to a point is a good thing to think—that every one person should be an individual, and that he or she should not simply conform to fit with the rest of society.

I do believe that transcendentalism does have some drawbacks, and does fall short in some cases as well. I think that the “we” should trump the “I “in everyday life, and that self-centeredness is a dangerous thing. If all people were self-centered and set their focus solely on themselves, I think that a lot of good would be lost in the world. I tend to agree with what Benjamin Anastas said when writing about the flaws of Emerson’s Self-Reliance: “The larger problem with the essay, and its more lasting legacy as a cornerstone of the American identity, has been Emerson’s tacit endorsement of a radically self-centered worldview.” I feel Anastas has a completely valid point. Henry David Thoreau, another transcendentalist author wrote about the fact that he “paid no poll-tax for six years”. Actions such as this I feel are self-centered, and paying taxes is part of being a citizen of the country. If everyone had these thoughts, I feel our country would be dysfunctional.

Map Analysis

http://dlgcsm.galib.uga.edu/StyleServer/calcrgn?browser=ns&cat=hmap&wid=1000&hei=800&style=hmap/hmap.xsl&item=hmap1752b4.sid

The very first thing that caught my eye when I first looked at this map of North America was the amount of detail and city names present along the coast. Not that this surprised me since that was the first portion of America settled by the Europeans, but it was very noticeable in this map. The amount of city names present on the map vastly decreases as you look west of where Appalachia would be.  The second thing that I noticed when reading some of the names of the towns, cities, and states written on the map, was that the names really show that the English felt entitled to ownership of these lands. Places in the new world were named after prominent people in English culture (Delaware for Lord De La Warr, Pennsylvania for William Penn, and Virginia for the Virgin Queen for example). A quote from the Babb chapter we read in class that does a good job of somewhat demonstrating this is as follows: “America suggested a certain inevitability to English control of the North American Continent”.  The last thing that I thought was incredibly interesting about the map was the title shown in the bottom right corner. It reads “A new and accurate map of the English empire in North America representing their rightful claim as confirm'd by charters, & the formal surrender of their Indian friends; likewise the encroachments of the French, with the several forts they have unjustly erected therein by R. Bennett, engraver”. I found it slightly humorous that they called the Indians their “friends” and confidently phrased it to sound as if the Indians also had no problem surrendering and giving up their land to the English population. This title helps to promote English entitlement to the land as well as English superiority.