“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”
A few essays back, I ruminated on what Peggy Noonan called a certain idea of America. I avoided making a definitive assertion about what it is because it’s an enigmatic notion, open to speculation to those who muse about what America was, is, and will be. I did, though, wax philosophically and nostalgically about America’s broad ideas: freedom and opportunity. But there’s more to America than the grand ideas. America is a confection of practices, notions, idiosyncrasies, and other characteristics that collectively form the American ethos.
Merriam-Webster defines ethos as “the distinguishing character, sentiment, moral nature, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or institution.” For clarity, I’m adding nation.
I asked a deep-thinking friend if he could capture the American ethos in one word. His reply: Self-reliance. Brilliant, I thought. Ralph Waldo Emerson would agree. The Father of Transcendentalism addresses that in his essay “Self-Reliance.”
I proposed “frontier,” which defined America literally during the expansion period of the nineteenth century and to a degree figuratively afterward. We were both spot on. But we could’ve easily cited other qualities, like certainty, ingenuity, individuality, and self-confidence, which have been part and parcel of the American mindset…at least once upon a time. The question is whether they still are and if so, to what degree.
Emerson was a staunch advocate of individualism, which he considered to be an essential aspect part of Americanism. Individuality was what separated us from Europeans who at that time were all subjects of a crown. As subjects they were members of a mass, each knowing their place and role to fulfill. We were and are citizens beholden to no king. Hence, Americans don’t bow, curtsy, kneel, or prostrate themselves before any public official.
But Emerson sensed a disturbing trend in the young nation: a creeping inclination to suborn individuality by succumbing to pressures to conform. Accordingly, he preached a gospel of nonconformity, which Henry David Thoreau expounded on in Walden, or Life in the Woods.
“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist,” Emerson firmly states. He asserts society is an “aversion,” a repugnancy for individuality. The hard truth is that the toughest way to be in America is to be different.
“Society everywhere,” he continues, “is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each stockholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater.”
Consider the analogy. Rather than citizens, he’s suggesting Americans are in danger of becoming stockholders in a Corporate States of America.
The New York Stock Exchange—NYSE—was founded in 1792 when a group of stockholders met under a tree on Wall Street. It formalized itself in 1817 as the New York Stock & Exchange Board. Twenty-four years later in 1841, having witnessed increasing dependency on the corporate financial world, Emerson wrote “Self-Reliance.”
What gave Emerson and the Transcendentalists hope, however, was the world of nature and the burgeoning frontier. It seemed limitless, unbounded. Except for the brutally enslaved and indigenous peoples who already called that land home, it was a promising time. It was the day of mountain men, trappers, and pioneers. The transcontinental railroad and telegraph would soon shorten the distances. Manifest Destiny became a national credo.
But like a contagion, big money and industry first followed then subsumed. And with that, the spirit of can-do Americanism took a hit. The pressure to conform and suborn one’s individuality to the corporate whole—business to cultural—grew, slowly at first then over time, exponentially. And here we are today with conformity and herd mentality rampant across the spectrum. Who now dares to be different?
The good news, however, is that even though the spirit of individuality—non-conformity, free thinking, live-and-let-live perspective, etc.—is lying dormant in certain groups, quarters, and sections of the country during this period of entrenchment, it’s not dead. It’s alive, even vibrant in others. Plus, the current attempt to barricade and lockdown America is doomed because a closed system is ultimately a dead one. And we’re not a nation of suicidal lemmings.
“A man is relieved and gay,” Emerson says, “when he has put his heart into his work and done his best.”
The question for each of us is whether we‘re doing the hard work, doing our best in the face of buffeting winds. If not, it’ll be like what Cassius tells Brutus in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar – “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
