Self Reliance and Obsession, They're Healthy Right?



How many of us have done everything we’ve been told to do by teachers, parents, or bosses?  I know I certainly haven’t done everything I’ve been told, and the abysmal state of my room at home is proof of all the times I’ve ignored my Mother telling me to clean it.  Still, there are doubtlessly many things we as part of a society conform to.  For example, how many of us live without things electricity, the internet, or cell phones?  It’s possible, and yet we’d all rather not.  In this way, we’re tied to what society sees as being normal.  I’ll admit, if I meet someone who doesn’t have texting or a cell phone, I’m really shocked, sort of like I used to shock people back when I didn’t have a Facebook.  When you’re that one person who doesn’t quite fit with the other puzzle pieces, it can be alienating, but at the same time it can be empowering.  I remember when I finally got a Facebook, I felt like I was giving in and just following peer pressure, even though I made it during a camp I was attending so I’d be able to keep in touch with the friends I made there.  For me, it was like becoming one of the girls in Stepford Wives, except without the sundress and the perfect hair.  I’d followed the crowd and conformed to what everyone else said was cool, no matter how hard I tried to justify it.

Emerson wanted what many people still want today, to break from society in their own way and live their life.  One of my favorite quotes from Self Reliance illustrates this: “My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle” (Emerson 81).  I feel like this was the main point of the entirety of Self Reliance for me and certainly what I took away from it.  Living your life apart from society entailed a certain amount of loneliness, a place where there was no one to show off for or hold you back.  In this way, relying on oneself was both a necessity and a luxury.  If you have no one watching you, then you can really do what you want to without worrying about being judged.  In a time when there are time that “the world whips you with its displeasure,” trying to “insist on yourself” and “never imitate” anyone else isn’t something that can be easily achieved (Emerson 82, 87, 87).  I feel that it must have been easier in Emerson’s time to rely wholly on oneself without ties to society he felt would hamper you.

The truth is, whether we want and strive to be self reliant or not, a lot of the world needs a hierarchy in order to function.  For a minute, try and think of people throughout history that lived outside society and relied on their wits or resources to survive as a subculture.  Did you think of pirates?  Because I certainly did. 

When I think of pirates, I think of men striving to be free without rules on the open ocean.  And yet the clip above shows that even some of the supposedly freest lawless characters I can think of had a code they lived by, and a hierarchy that goes along with it.  In the Court of the Brethren in Pirates of the Caribbean III At World’s End, in order to declare war on anyone, the pirate lords need to vote for someone to become the Pirate King.  In this way, the lawless pirates have to sacrifice their independence and power to a leader for the group as a whole to make a move to attack, following the rules and guidelines set down in the pirate code.

When Emerson was pursuing a life of independence from society, Captain Ahab was chasing a whale.  Moby Dick for me serves as a warning to humanity to be cautious of what we cling to, lest they become out entire purpose and identity.  Captain Ahab was, point blank, obsessed with a giant white whale.  If Dr. Freud were still alive, I’m sure he’d have a field day with what the symbolism of that meant, but since he isn’t, you’ll have to be content with my theories.  In class we discussed how the symbolism of the color of the whale being white had ties to white in animals being unnatural, and thus mystical.  The quest of Ahab to kill the whale was likened to conquistadors seeking treasure and to the Puritans hunting the witches they didn’t understand among other things.  I saw the whale as any and every addicting or obsession-worthy object or ideal on the planet, and Ahab and his crew as a warning against what our addictions and obsessions can do to us.  As an example, trying thinking of it like Lord of the Rings where the whale is the Ring and Ahab is Frodo.  Frodo becomes so involved in trying to destroy the Ring that it becomes his entire identity.  At the end of The Return of the King, lying on the edge of Mt. Doom with Sam, Frodo (this is paraphrased, since at this moment I can’t find a read online version and my copy is at home) tells Sam that he can’t remember his life before the ring or what his home even looks like.  In this way, the Ring became overpowering, his position as the ring bearer becoming his entire identity. 

Obsession has a way of overtaking us and taking control, like a heroin addiction.  No matter how dangerous or bad for us it is, we can’t break free, even if it’s wrong.  For example, Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame comes to mind.  His sick attraction and obsession with the gypsy Esmeralda leads him to do horrible things including burn down half of Paris, throws loads of innocent gypsies in jail, and orders a family to be burnt alive.  The clip below illustrates his inner moral battle and obsession right before the breaking point when he starts to do real damaged to the town, and his decision to go to the ends of his resources to have her or see her burned.

Its one thing for Ahab to be obsessed with chasing a whale, but the fact that he got entire shipload of people to follow him in his obsession and to even feel it as their own is a whole other kettle of worms.  In the same way that people need a hierarchy to follow, they need leaders to give them ideas.  The sailors that worked for Ahab bought into his obsession, somewhat claiming it as their own.  In The Prestige, Cutter tells The Great Danton that obsession is a young man’s game.  I think the sailors in Moby Dick are a prime example of this.  Needing something to hold onto, something to strive for, they seek to bring down the whale along with Ahab, as much for glory as for the very need of having something to chase.

One of the ways Self Reliance and Moby Dick seemed to overlap for me was the idea of sheer loneliness.  When thinking of characters in books or movies, a lot of the villains seem to have two common attributes: they’re independence and able to support themselves without other people, they’re obsessed rather unhealthily with something or someone, and because of two they’re usually crazy lonely.  Take Jareth the Goblin King from The Labyrinth for example.  Even though he runs a kingdom and is a perfectly self sustaining ruler, he becomes obsessed with a young girl named Sarah because of he’s so lonely (even though he’s surrounded by a thousand or so goblins, whatever, apparently none of them count next to wanting a girlfriend).  Because of it, he loses everything, proving that obsessions can be horribly detrimental to continuing forward with one’s life, or you know, the ruling of one’s kingdom and continued magical life.