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| >> Book >> Other >> ID #1526919 |
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| ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** No one should Laugh at Life! That's Life's Job - Laughing at us. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** According to Chinese Horoscopes it is the YEAR OF THE TIGER! G-R-R-R Here's a writer that will make you laugh! I swear she is Erma Brombeck reincarnated! Take a look!
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| 1. Waldo What WERE You Thinking? | ID #676412 |
| Posted: 11-16-2009 @ 2:18 pm EST Edited: 11-16-2009 @ 2:21 pm EST | |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I just finished reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance". I actually had to start a list of vocabulary to look up definitions and pronunciations. For instance: mendicant sycophantic parallax apologue antinomianism amelioration Nope not gonna fill you in on their meanings. You can go do it! HA!. While I get the major points of his essay, there were parts that left me wondering just what he was trying to say to his reading audience. "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men, - that is genius." Now, while I do understand different people believe different things, have differing concepts of reality, does it necessarily mean genius? If someone has a mental disease, say schizophrenia, are their musings also genius? He doesn't qualify his remarks to any significant degree so it is difficult to know what he means. "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater." Again, huh? Taken out of context it looks even more unfathomable. I had to read the section four times just to come to any sense of what he was talking about. He wants to warn against imitating anyone, anything, any idea - yet can we actually do that? Is originality that easy to maintain? Do all of us have original, brand new ideas and thoughts? Somehow I disagree with that. We are bound by our physical DNA to achieve a sameness expressed in varied ways perhaps but how can all be original? Now that I've managed to stump myself, I am going to find an on-line source that evaluates this piece of literature. For those interested in ancient, old, documents and books, the link to Google's library is: http://books.google.com/books Check out some of the philosophers and writers of eras gone by. By the way, spell check saw every one of those words I had to look up as being misspelled but had no alternatives for them. *sigh* Forgotten language - English. |