[lbo-talk] Re: RIP, Dr. Fraud

[Carl Remick]

>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>This is where my man R. W. Emerson comes in.  I prescribe a hearty dose of 
>>self-reliance.  On the journey of self-discovery, I don't think you need 
>>some kibitzer with a medical degree charging $100/hour to show the way.  
>>In fact, I think such practice is self-defeating because it causes you to 
>>doubt your own judgment and encourages protracted dependence on the 
>>aforesaid MD.
>
>Ralph Waldo Emerson, the consummate American narcissist? The "transparent 
>eyeball"? The one who awoke with a hunger so intense he could devour the 
>universe? The fellow who asked "are they my poor?" The cold alien who could 
>barely have a human relationship, who renamed his wife, who quit preaching 
>because of an attack of hysterical blindness? He's a model?

But that's just it.  Emerson *isn't" a model.  The entire point of his 
writings is to state:  Don't be me; be *yourself.*  E.g., from 
"Self-Reliance":  "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. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, 
because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected 
thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. ... There 
is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that 
envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for 
better for worse as his portion ...."

Carl

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