Transcendentalism

I'm reading Emerson for my ENGl212 class. It's insane and I love it. Don't take any of this stuff as truth because I may not know what the hell I'm talking about.

Here's a basic synopsis: Nothing and everything matters at the same time. You can't do anything to change society, you can only change yourself and possibly inspire others. It's on them whether they change or not. Humans are untrustworthy. You can only aspire to truth by sampling everything and seeking out knowledge without it being a means to an end. Knowledge is an end of itself. You will be seen as weird. You will piss people off. But, you will be better for it. Religion is bullshit because it was created by men, not nature. Nature is truth and beauty. Knowledge and seeking inspiration is more important than love. The individual's journey through inspiration is the most important thing ever. Stop waiting to die and be sent to heaven and just live and aspire to greatness, acknowledged or not. Do what's right by you, follow your own rules of morality that you've formed through intense study of many different avenues.

I think I'm in love. It totally affirms most of what I've been saying for most of my life, except for the way that I'm constantly trying to change people. I do put myself out there for comment though, and I do try to inspire something or other. I know I can't change people, but I can inspire something in them.

It sucks, but America could never embrace this. We need something material for our work. Knowledge, in its purest form, is not material. As long as we are capitalists and believe in God, we can't ever rise above living the same old shit with a different name. Cynical, maybe, but I'm a realist.

Reading list, if you're interested:
Anthem by Ayn Rand, and probably The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
--It's more objectivism than transcendentalism, obviously, but it still had a place when thinking about transcendentalism with a sort of selfish (but not in a bad way) yearning for knowledge. Emerson and Thoreau, more than anything else, were concerned with their own intellectual journeys.

One of my favorite quotes ever, from Anthem:
"And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I.'"

"Walden" and "Civil Disobedience" by Henry David Thoreau.
--Walden is kind of hard to get through, but it's worth it.

"The American Scholar", "Nature," and "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It's long, it takes a long time to read because you need to bring your brain along, but I promise you'll be better for it.

You can also check out Into the Wild. There are a lot of problems and contradictions, and it shows some of the problems with transcendentalism, like the way that you have to leave the people you love if they can't accept you. I don't really agree with that. I also think that Chris McCandless was a little naive at times. But it's a great story that makes me cry every single time. I get him or something.