Talking Big Ideas.
Here are five authors worth exploring: three Substack writers, a new philosophy book, and one of America’s most important 19th-century thinkers.
“To be yourself in a world
that is constantly trying to make you something else
is the greatest accomplishment.”
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Economist Tyler Cowen describes himself as mostly utilitarian with a dose of common sense morality. I think this is the correct path for ethics.
When it comes to epistemology – figuring out what is true – I like to draw from Tyler and say that I’m mostly Popperian with a dose of Emerson.
Karl Popper explained how the best foundation for truth-seeking is embracing error-correction. Jonathan Rauch highlights Popper (and his polymath American counterpart Charles Sanders Peirce) in his excellent book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, where he argues the United States is facing an epistemological crisis today as we struggle to determine fact from fiction.
Rauch shows that conformity is at the heart of our struggles.
There is no one better to shake us out of our conformity mindset than the 19th-century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Perhaps America’s greatest champion of individualism, Emerson taught us to ignore gossip and groupthink. To step away from the endless firehose of other people’s ideas and emotions and go outside, recharge in nature, develop our own thoughts and feelings, and live our lives on our own terms.
Reading a little Emerson today, in our heated election year drenched in outrage, is like rediscovering the refreshing wisdom of an old friend. I encourage you to pick up a copy of Emerson’s collected works. I’m a fan of The Library of America edition. Take it with you on a walk in nature.
Emerson’s speech, The American Scholar, is known as our “intellectual Declaration of Independence.” His essay Nature is fantastic. But first I encourage you to read (or return to) Self-Reliance, where he writes:
“To believe your own thought . . . is genius. Speak your latent conviction . . . imitation is suicide . . . society everywhere is in conspiracy against every one of its members . . . the virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist . . . nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Tara Kemp
Emerson had a profound influence on the world. Writers as diverse as Gandhi, Nietzsche, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman all admired and drew from him.
Even Emerson’s family handyman and gardener would become a dedicated Emersonian philosopher and icon in his own right: Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau in turn would influence Tolstoy, John Muir, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless others.
Emerson’s spirit is alive in Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer-winning 1974 classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and, most recently, in several Substacks, including Tara Kemp’s playing human.
Her articles Becoming your own sanctuary and Be Selfish evoke Emerson. From Awareness is overrated:
There is a social expectation and social pressure to show that you, too, are aware of what is happening in the world, and that you are taking the good/right/moral side. Whether on social media or in the ‘real world’, there is a social expectation for you to be aware of whatever dramas are playing out that the media has chosen to highlight at that point in time, and have an educated perspective on them.
Subscribe to Tara here.
Nico Perrino
Emerson encouraged us to develop and speak our own thoughts. He understood free expression and free speech are essential to individual as well as societal progress.
When it comes to highlighting and defending free expression and free speech, Nico Perrino’s work is essential. He’s the Executive Vice President at FIRE, where he runs one of my favorite podcasts, So to Speak, which is published on Substack. From his most recent post, Political violence and speech:
Did overheated political rhetoric lead to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump?
On today’s show we explore political violence: its history, its causes, and its relationship with free speech.
Subscribe to Nico here.
Jason Crawford
I’ve written and spoken about how humans work together to make incredible progress on even the biggest problems we face.
One of the most important things we can do is build a culture of progress for the 21st century – exactly what Jason Crawford is doing at the Roots of Progress Institute.
Jason is a deep thinker and clear writer who is publishing a book, The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, on his Roots of Progress Substack. I’ve written about the need to cultivate awe in our lives – an Emersonian ideal. Note the sense of awe Jason captures in Chapter 1: Fish in Water:
We live in an amazing world, and we should stop taking it for granted. We should never forget how difficult, dirty, and dangerous life was for most people who ever existed. And once in a while, we should look at our world with a sense of awe and wonder that humanity could ever create it. We should look at the world with gratitude to those who came before us, and especially to the scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs who labored, struggled, and fought to build it. This world and the standard of living we enjoy are the gift they left us. We can never pay it back. But we can pay it forward: we can keep progress going, and build an even better world for the generations to come.
Subscribe to Jason here.
Robin Reames
Robin is an English professor and renowned expert in rhetoric.
Her new book, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself, teaches timeless techniques in persuasion. Her objective is not to tell us what to think, but rather, to improve how we think – clearly Emerson would approve!
When we’re thinking rhetorically, we notice the little things . . . we don’t take arguments at face value . . . we don’t get swept up in ideology . . . we sniff out the sources of disagreements between opponents . . . we learn how to disagree better and more productively.
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Quality writers are all around us.
I encourage you to discover new authors: read them, discuss them, and build on their insights.
