It's an interesting essay and a good call to action for the already non-conformist and independent. Though at the end of the day someone needs to mend your shoes, bake your bread and so on - we can't all be primes if we want to function as a cohesive society.
With regard to the contempt for charity, while you can celebrate that you are the product of your own hard work, you forget that's never really true in a society where we don't all start life with the same level of nutrition, warmth, care, location, education or skin. The track is rockier and longer for some, shorter and smoother for others. While we know charities are inefficient, and putting a dollar in the hand of a beggar won't teach them how to make more purposefully, I'd sooner hand over the dollar than pretend I wasn't the benefactor of circumstance.
That doesn't mean you have to self-flagellate for being fortunate and dedicate yourself to others, it's just honesty.
It is my belief that Mr. Emerson's essay was more about being the best version of yourself you can be. Yes, someone has to mend your shoes and bake bread, however, if that's your profession, you should strive to be the best at the given task.
If you pride yourself in your work, then being the best baker isn't an insult, nor being the best car driver, chef, or construction worker.
There's certainly no shame in being a driver, baker or barista. And if you yearn to be the best at a particular task, all the better for those who use your services and perhaps society at large. But you're not your job. In a small amount of time you won't even be a memory. The universe doesn't care how well you brewed that coffee, nor does it care about your electric car company. Even as the people of the future and their artificial aides stand on the collective shoulders of giants past, finally encapsulating the sun with the greatest megastructure ever known to harness its vast power, the universe stares back silently, carelessly.
You are the universe looking at itself. If you want to make something, make it. Make it as good as you want to make it. But more than anything, celebrate your existence. For some, that's doing a great job - making a great thing. But society will suffer as long as the only way to validate your existence is to work and work hard.
striving for being best shouldn't be limited to profession, but also on personal levels - friend, family member, partner, parent.
sociery will benefit greatly from people who manage to get this all well, but there seems to be actually very few people who achieve this.
>if that's your profession, you should strive to be the best at the given task.
My best takes 10x the time and, in most cases, is 100% unprofitable. Standards and status quos exist for a reason - because they work.
I used to work with a "perfectionist" personality and he was ultimately let go. He just couldn't keep up and had this ridiculous "I'm the best" attitude that was incompatible with most acceptable schedules. He didn't even seem all that talented, just obsessive. I suspect "being the best" usually translates into "learning the test."
The reality is that when we look at creative and productive and satisfied people, we see a mix of traits. More common than not, the lazy half-asser wins out as she can provide something of value (convenience). She gets annoyed by problem y and produces solution x. The guy who looks at problem y and has a "okay I'll spend 10 hours on getting this perfect" attitude falls behind the girl who says, "Lets write a script for this and fully automate it." Why shouldn't the automator feel as much satisfaction as the obsessive perfectionist? Honestly, the "be your own mountain man with endless time on his hands to do simple things" ethos shouldn't be applauded. Its just a lot of questionable things taken to an extreme - obsessiveness, distrust of others, inability to be on a team, inability to be efficient, etc.
That is perfectionism as a vice more than a virtue, which is a valid concern.
The best tends to be achieved by acknowledging constraints of time and resources and accomplishing the most within those constraints. Knowing when something is good enough is important. Being able to reach that point quickly is also important, or at least being able to reach it before the competition.
IIRC (but I can't seem to source it) it was Marshall McLuhan that said that there was nothing sweeter than the gaze of a tyrant. This is what Emerson seems to be preaching against, and how good a sermon it is.
One of the things Emerson was warning about was Dogma:
“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church.”
"If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument."
Put in modern terms, it virtually defines the combination of politics, marketing and labeling that defines our current system in the US.
We no longer discuss issues, we anticipate the version of the argument we're told to expect from the assumed "sect" and prepare a response to that. You can see this play out on Facebook or other platforms when you try to discuss an issue with someone and get a response completely unrelated to anything you just said.
Slap a label on a straw man, then campaign against that.
Not only did you get the wrong Concord resident, you trotted out the biggest misconception of the book with the subtitle "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For." Whenever this complaint comes up, it is very clear the writer didn't bother to read the book, or even its most famous passage, where Thoreau explains exactly what he was doing at Walden:
> I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
