Ralph Waldo Emerson's Resistance To Civil Government

A major philosophy of Transcendentalism is the importance of time and how if you focus your life on the past then you will never succeed in the future. Unlike those who believe that we should stand on the shoulders of giants, Ralph Waldo Emerson would prove otherwise and would want Americans to focus on the future and not rely on the past to impact their lives. In his book Walden, he states “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” (Emerson 893). Emerson means to say that we are constantly in a hurried state and we never stop to realize what we have right now. We are waiting to be given what we need before we even need to have those things. I told my mother two weeks ago that I needed a new computer but my old one had not completely died yet. A working computer now sits in our office not touched as it is slower and more bulky than the sleek new laptop I have been given. The life left in that computer battery is now to sit there untouched for months on end …show more content…
Usually I find myself going with whatever others believe instead of my own values and beliefs. But as Thoreau said in his famous essay “Resistance to Civil Government”, “The only obligation which I have a right to assume. Is to do at any time what I think right.” (Thoreau 830) If I follow Thoreau’s words then I will have to learn to follow my own morals and not have to rely on others to tell me what to do in my life. I listen to others so often as to what to do and how to live my life, following the way that they believe is best. Which leads me to find myself following them because it is what they think will be best for me. But sometimes what others think is right, I believe against but do not know how to tell them that I am against their beliefs. I can see myself just going with the crowd because I am too afraid of being by