“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. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense” - R.W. Emerson, from Self - Reliance.
Emerson was a heck of a writer, and I revisit that essay all the time, especially because I argue so heavily against some of the things he says in it. There are a few gems in it that I fully align with though:
In regards to geniuses, don’t seek to think what they think, but rather, think how they think.
Lots to unpack here, but first, let’s take a detour.
Have you seen these experts that make arbitrary statements?
“Do X to achieve Y. I did.”
On social media, I’ll see things like this get so much engagement, but I have no idea if they’re true.
Some of them are so absurd, I half believe the creator just found two random ‘good’ nouns and connected them together. The other day I saw someone basically say that having only one comma in a tweet makes you an effective tweeter.
He had twitter stardom, so he had a lot of fans that’ll treat this as gospel.
It’s arbitrary. He spoke it as if it’s truth, and everyone jumped on board. I don’t think he’s deceiving anyone either, he definitely believes it himself.
He’s doing what Emerson’s talking about. He’s an ‘expert’ and he thinks this comma thing is true for himself, and automatically presumes personal truths are universal truths.
Maybe his success has nothing to do with commas, but the sheer amount of tweeting he does. Maybe it’s any number of other things he does, and one comma tweets are actually holding him back, but since the net result is growth, he’s correlating it as a cause.
This is what social media is so full of. People who’ve achieved (conventional) success, and who look through their histories trying to figure out what got them there, and put their guesses out in public as truth; as lesson plans.
If someone asked renowned director Christopher Nolan about his work ethic, and he said he drinks chamomile tea at 4 AM every morning, how many writers would try to make this a habit of theirs?
A few takeaways:
1) Never fully trust someone’s reasoning behind their success.
Theirs is a guess as good as anyone else’s. Also, there’s no accounting for luck.
Instead, use your own mind, look at the facts: their history, their geography, their community, their diction, everything. Make your own guesses, test them out. Things like ‘keep practising’ and ‘do things’ are universal, and universally known. No one needs to tell you this.
It’s when they start getting idiosyncratic - like they have some sort of secret - that I get suspicious.
Actually, I get curious, they’re going to tell me a great correlation story.
That person out there talking about trying to connect with 5-10 people every day to succeed? Maybe he actually succeeded because he starts every call with “Ello Ello.”
Who knows? He certainly doesn’t.
2) Start doing this personal-truth-as-universal-truth yourself!
If you think giving a compliment to a person each day will bring you happiness, great. Believe it. Go all in. Irrevocably, irrefutably. You will gain happiness.
The beauty of d̶e̶l̶u̶s̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ believing your personal truths are universal truths is, you now have the confidence to take action. It gets the ‘comma’ guy tweeting. It gets the ‘5-10 people every day’ guy talking.
Even in the above example, who knows if giving compliments will give you happiness. But you know what it will do?
Get you comfortable talking to different people each day. Build a practice of working up the effort to reach out to someone. Develop creativity in the compliments you give.
Convictions build habits, and that alone can get you well on your way to wherever you want to get. Whatever the conviction is.
It’s the secret behind philosophies.
Stoicism is great for people who’ve gone all in. Buddhism is great for people who’ve gone all in.
They’re strong, but think about this - the ones who created the philosophies had the greatest conviction.
They built this network of ideas, connected them, committed them into the public sphere as Truth, and staked their life on it.
That’s the power of genius. Take on these philosophies if you want, but know this: nothing will be stronger - FOR YOU - than the philosophy YOU create.
It’s why I know Radical Romanticism is the only philosophy that’s legendary on its own merit. ;)
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