Self-Reliance By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mankind Ascends Nature Man emerged from nature and is connected to all life on Earth through the natural course of evolution. Yet how has man come to separate himself from nature and dominate the planet so rapidly? Despite nature’s role as the foundation of the Earth’s existence and the promoter of evolution, it seems as if mankind is disrupting natural processes as the human species continues to grow and progress. Through the process of evolution, humans have developed exclusive and distinct means of thought and expression. These qualities allow mankind to spread its belief that humans are the central and most significant element of the universe. By holding this belief, the world is at the mercy of a species with such a dominating approach.
To be anthropocentric is to “regard humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals,” according to the American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary. In simpler terms, everything that exists in the world should be for the benefit of humans. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in his essay named Self-Reliance, “Let a man know his worth...in the world which exists for him” (26). He believes that the purpose of the world is to cater towards men and act as a resource that sustains the human race. Since this belief is coming from a very influential figure of the transcendentalist era, followers of Emerson would look up to his ideals and adopt them as their own. Consequently, anthropocentric views will become conventional. Another prominent philosophical concept that encouraged the superiority of man by making him the most significant being was called the Great Chain of Being from the Classical era of 1775 to 1825. This concept dictated that “every existing thing in the universe has its ‘place’ in a divinely planned hierarchical order” (“Renaissance”), where the placement of a thing would depend on how much “spirit” or “matter” it contained. The more spiritual and divine would be at the top of this chain and the beings with more “matter” would be at the
This abuse of nature is man’s way of asserting his dominance. As Lord Byron boldly said in an excerpt of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, “Man marks the earth with ruin” (Line 12). By choosing to use the word “ruin,” Byron implies that the impact man has on the earth is negative. Also, the present tense of the sentence shows how relevant this statement is throughout time. He observes the constant development of man-made constructions like roads, cities, and factories to be a physical scar left on the face of the earth. Naturally, these constructions only benefit the human race, which means that other beings are disregarded and damage to the environment is inevitable. Even in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, when Thoreau taught a lesson about transcendentalism to one of his students, he exclaimed, “We’re poisoning paradise” (33). It is evident that he uses his cognitive abilities as a human to compare nature to paradise and man’s daily actions to poison. This thought shows that Thoreau not only acknowledges man’s actions, but can visualize the consequences of them as well. Not only do humans produce hazardous waste, but this waste is contributing to the pollution of the air and worsening the environment for the people. Regardless of what a handful of dissenting scientists and Republican