“Self-Reliance” and Parable of the Talents

You all know how I feel about Lauren’s quest to start a new religion and gain followers. But, I am not so stubborn as to overlook and appreciate the philosophical intellect she offers. This particular segment stands out to me:

“I don’t know how to do it. That scares me to death sometimes – always feeling driven to do something I don’t know how to do. But I’m learning as I go along. And I’ve learned that I have to be careful how I talk about all this, even to Acorn. Bankole isn’t the only one of us who doesn’t see the possibility of doing anything he hasn’t seen done by others.”

Right away I connected this idea to one presented in an essay by the brilliant Ralph Waldo Emerson. In the first paragraph, he states:

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,- that is genius . . . the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought.”

Lauren might have had fatal flaws, she might have made mistakes, but this is almost irrelevant in this respect… We can still learn from her. We can learn from her bravery to believe in her own ideas, to do things that others have not. From her ability to believe in possibility.

To speak “not what men” but what she thought.

Imagine if we all took the chance to trust our own intellect, rather than running it through the filter and approval of the past.

One thought on ““Self-Reliance” and Parable of the Talents

  1. Just some crazy connections I noticed — later in the paragraph mentioned Emerson says “a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.” Bards and Sages happens to also be the name of a publishing company of – get this – speculative fiction. It is also owned and run by women.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *