NP -The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’

[David Morris]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/riff-ralph-waldo-emerson.html?_r=1

The excessive love of individual liberty that debases our national
politics? It found its original poet in Ralph Waldo. The plague of
devices that keep us staring into the shallow puddle of our dopamine
reactions, caressing our touch screens for another fix of our own
importance? That’s right: it all started with Emerson’s
“Self-Reliance.” Our fetish for the authentically homespun and the
American affliction of ignoring volumes of evidence in favor of the
flashes that meet the eye, the hunches that seize the gut? It’s
Emerson again, skulking through Harvard Yard in his cravat and greasy
undertaker’s waistcoat, while in his mind he’s trailing silken robes
fit for Zoroaster and levitating on the grass.