Simplicity: Self Reliance

 “Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string.” (Emerson.) A cornerstone of simplicity is self-reliance, and simplicity is the only practical antidote to the headaches of complexity.

A new study at UC San Diego reports the average intake per person in the USA in 2008 was “33.8 gigabytes of information and 100,000 words per day.” A gigabyte is a billion bytes. No wonder people feel bombarded, if not trampled, by the “confused jabbering of men.” (Thoreau’s phrase.)

The over-looked downside of complexity is that it leads to living second-hand lives. The incessant drumbeat of should-dos, should-bes, and just plain noise that rolls in from every direction 24/7 makes it difficult to know thyself. Nothing can be heard above the din. So, by default, we do as and what we are told and sold by others.

Emerson continues: “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation. But of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. What I must do is all that concerns me; not what people think.”

It is very easy to be a spectator of, rather than a participant in, life. It is possible today to side step reality, to avoid loving or hating or making difficult choices—taking some risks. All one has to do is dwell in the wannabe, fantasy world concocted by media and ad companies. Then “life” is via secondary sources. The technical name for this is living “vicariously,” an adverb defined as living one’s life through the feelings or actions of others, for example, through celebrities, reality shows, and mindless chatter, even from peers, that substitutes for thinking on one’s own.

The Grey Twilight

At the opposite end of the how-to-live spectrum is the gold standard set by President Theodore Roosevelt in a 1899 Chicago speech: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Feasting on external messages reflects a want of self-reliance, an “infirmity of will.” (Emerson) As the current UC San Diego study points out, the steady diet of bytes is many, many, many times the amount people’s ancestors could assimilate. Technology has outrun evolution, a human’s capacity to absorb.

Eric Sevareid, a major CBS news journalist from 1939 to 1977, forecasted what is happening today: “The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.”

So, just what is self-reliance? Autonomy? Rugged individualism? Independence? A useful colloquial definition is: standing on ones own two feet. Autonomy, yes. “Standing” with no props. Individualism, yes, rugged or smooth. Independence, yes. “Ones own two feet.” But self-reliance is more. It requires action. Consider Emerson:

“The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck.” But... “The virtue in most request is conformity.” “There is really no insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.”

Simplicity is the antidote to complexity, and the cornerstone of simplicity is self-reliance.