In a day and age like this one too often people conform to whatever other people are doing. I look around I see people conforming to what others say they should do or say, or even think. The political ads are trying to get us to vote for their candidate, fashion ads are telling us how we should dress or how to wear our hair or even our make-up. Too often people think if you don't wear something fashionable you are on the outs. How many shows are out there that tell people how they should be dressing? Teens are too impressionable and songs today are making them think they should be doing things. Going against the grain is basically going against what society wants.
Ralph Waldo Emerson explained it all in his essay "Self Reliance," from the book: Essays and Poems by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He says "a stranger will say what we have thought and felt all the time and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another." Self Reliance is an essay Emerson wrote stressing that we need to learn to think and do things for ourselves. What he says hold true today as much as it did the time he wrote it. He says a stranger can come and tell us what to think and feel and we will take our thoughts, ideas, and feelings from them. We conform to what they want us to think, it happens all the time. Ads, politics, music, and the media all tell us what to think and feel, basically trying to tell us what our opinions should be about different things.
The rest of Emerson's essay talks about gaining our self reliance and honestly going against the grain in society. Daring to be different. He later says "I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names to large societies and dead institutions." Emerson was ashamed that so many people strive to be come like the conformists and strive for the labels and names that society places on different things. People want too much to have that sign of success and establishment. How often do we want a car based on how it looks and the status symbol? It is so easy for us to conform to the world belief when we are living in the world so we need to live outside of the box of the world view.
We try so hard to get things that give us some sense of status: a good college, a good car, a nice house, fancy items and so much more. Why do we do all this? Because society tells us that the way to show your status and success is by material things, the bigger the better. The more fashionable, the better we are or so we're told. The skinnier you are the more beautiful you are or so we are told. I have noticed things in the media, ads and so forth that are there that just make me feel bad about myself and wonder if everyone else feels bad, yet the purpose is to be if you have this you will be better. That is not true!
Look at political ads, they are made to make us think that the other candidate is bad for the country, they are trying to tell us what we should think about each candidate. There are things that try to tell us what to think about other countries, religions and more. Everything in society tries to get us to conform to it's own wills and beliefs. Emerson's essay stressed the idea that we need to form our own ideas, beliefs, and tastes in things. Wear whatever you want, not what fashion magazines tell you to wear. Do workouts you want instead of the ones the celebrities are doing. Christians if you want to do yoga DO IT! Just because there are some Buddhist underlying forms doesn't mean you are denying God.
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Something that Emerson says in his essay that caught my attention and I wholeheartedly agree with is "What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think." When we do things throughout life we cannot think about what someone else will think or if we are going against the grain. How often have you not done something because it isn't the "normal" thing to do? We need to do things because we want to do things not because it's what everyone else is doing. Children mimic things they see on television or hear in music, why? Why do we do things that we see or hear? It's getting to where you look around and everyone and everything is beginning to look and think a like. It's almost as if society tells us what is better for us as if it really knows. I cannot say if this is just an American thing or not.
To often we pay too much attention to what society and everything tells us to do and think. We conform to what society says, but we do it even if we don't think about it. Emerson stressed in his essay the importance of not paying attention to societal norms and finding our own way through life and finding our own way of showing status or success. I define success in the type of person I am, not by my job, money, car, house or anything else. How do you define your success, do you conform to what society says is success or status?
