Emerson on Talent vs. Character, Our Resistance to Change, and the Key to True Personal Growth – The Marginalian

“Cut back on this and cut off the potential creative side effects,” Denise Shekerjian wrote reflecting on the ability to “not loose” many of MacArthur's similar intellectuals. “Beguile the disorder that offends, and deprive yourself of the raw material that feeds the imagination.” And yet part of the human paradox is that even in the face of overwhelming evidence of this uncomfortable reality, despite the full intellectual awareness of it, we continue to seek certainty and resist change, stunting our personal growth by insisting on self-righteousness and deeply despising the very discomfort that comes from overdoing it.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson's Articles and Lessons (public library; free download) — the same critical volume that gave the great philosopher two essential requirements for true friendship — comes with an 1841 essay that is immeasurably layered and insightful. “Circles,” exploring the pillars of personal growth and how we can learn to stop resisting the very things that help us overcome our self-imposed limits.

A century and a half before psychologists explored the “backfire effect” of our stubbornness, Emerson looks at how we arrive at our beliefs and why we have such a difficult time with the uncomfortable luxury of changing our minds:

The key to everyone is their imagination. Strong and defiant despite his appearance, he has an assistant he listens to, an idea that behind all his facts is divided. He can only be changed by showing him a new perspective that controls his own. Human life is a self-changing circle, which, from an imperceptibly small ring, runs in all directions to new and larger circles, and never ends. The degree to which this generation of circles, a wheel without a wheel, will move, depends on the strength or truth of each soul. Because it is the idle effort of each thought, it has created for itself a circular wave … piling itself on that ridge, and solidifying and fencing in life. But if the soul is quick and strong, it bursts over that boundary on all sides, and expands another deep channel to a great depth, which also rises to the higher waves, by trying again to stop and bind. But the heart refuses to be bound; at its first and smallest blow, it is already looking out with great power, and great and incalculable expansion.

The balance of intensity and spontaneity that jazz legend Bill Evans saw as necessary for his art, Emerson sees as necessary for the art of personal development:

Let me remind the reader that I am only an observer. Put no small value on what I do, or at least despise what I do not do, as if I pretended to fix any thing as true or false. I solved all the things. No truths are sacred to me; none are impure; I am just trying, an endless seeker… But this endless movement and progress that all things take will never make sense to us but contrary to some goal of stability or stability in the soul.

In the sense that Bertrand Russell would agree nearly a century later in his timeless ten commandments for learning— “Don't be afraid to have different opinions, because all the opinions that are now accepted were once absurd.” – Emerson considers our resistance to change, as individuals and as a culture:

All the main truths are the first in a new series… The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those who live in the old, it comes as a doubt from the abyss.

[…]

In nature every moment is new; the past is always swallowed up and forgotten… Nothing is safe but life, change, the spirit that gives strength. No love can be bound by an oath or a covenant to protect it from a higher love. There is no truth so good but it may be less tomorrow in the light of new thoughts. People want to be resolved; only where they are not strong is there hope for them.

Life is a series of surprises.

But Emerson's most pressing point has to do with how this courage to embrace uncertainty and change — especially unwelcome change — is the foundation of what we call character:

The difference between talents and character is the last subtlety of creation and trampling, and the strength and courage to make a new road to new and better goals. The character makes a powerful gift; a happy, serious hour, which strengthens the whole company, by making them realize that much is possible and that the best has not been imagined. The letter dulls the perception of certain events. When we see a conqueror, we do not think so much of a single battle or success… A great man does not tremble or suffer; events pass over him without much thought. People sometimes say, 'Look at what I have conquered; look how happy I am; see how I have completely triumphed over these dark events.' Not if they still remind me of a dark event. The true victory is to cause the tragedy to cease and disappear, like the first cloud of insignificant consequence in so great and developing a history.

It goes back to the idea of ​​an automatic life cycle:

The one thing we want with an insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to wonder at our own merits, to lose our inner memory, and to act without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without passion. The way of life is strange: it is abandonment. The great moments of history are resources for working with the power of ideas… They call for the help of unbridled passions… a kindling of flames and generosity of heart.

This is Emerson's place Articles and Lessons it's a wonderfully rewarding read, full of timeless wisdom about discipline, language, love, beauty, ethics, deception, confidence, and almost every other important aspect of the human experience. Fill it with fifteen ideas for self-improvement with age wisdom, including one from Emerson himself.