what is society in your own words essay

What does Emerson say about self-reliance?

In Emerson's essay “ Self-Reliance ,” he boldly states society (especially today’s politically correct environment) hurts a person’s growth.

Emerson wrote that self-sufficiency gives a person in society the freedom they need to discover their true self and attain their true independence.

Believing that individualism, personal responsibility , and nonconformity were essential to a thriving society. But to get there, Emerson knew that each individual had to work on themselves to achieve this level of individualism. 

Today, we see society's breakdowns daily and wonder how we arrived at this state of society. One can see how the basic concepts of self-trust, self-awareness, and self-acceptance have significantly been ignored.

Who published self-reliance?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the essay, published in 1841 as part of his first volume of collected essays titled "Essays: First Series."

It would go on to be known as Ralph Waldo Emerson's Self Reliance and one of the most well-known pieces of American literature.

The collection was published by James Munroe and Company.

What are the examples of self-reliance?

Examples of self-reliance can be as simple as tying your shoes and as complicated as following your inner voice and not conforming to paths set by society or religion.

Self-reliance can also be seen as getting things done without relying on others, being able to “pull your weight” by paying your bills, and caring for yourself and your family correctly.

Self-reliance involves relying on one's abilities, judgment, and resources to navigate life. Here are more examples of self-reliance seen today:

Entrepreneurship: Starting and running your own business, relying on your skills and determination to succeed.

Financial Independence: Managing your finances responsibly, saving money, and making sound investment decisions to secure your financial future.

Learning and Education: Taking the initiative to educate oneself, whether through formal education, self-directed learning, or acquiring new skills.

Problem-Solving: Tackling challenges independently, finding solutions to problems, and adapting to changing circumstances.

Personal Development: Taking responsibility for personal growth, setting goals, and working towards self-improvement.

Homesteading: Growing your food, raising livestock, or becoming self-sufficient in various aspects of daily life.

DIY Projects: Undertaking do-it-yourself projects, from home repairs to crafting, without relying on external help.

Living Off the Grid: Living independently from public utilities, generating your energy, and sourcing your water.

Decision-Making: Trusting your instincts and making decisions based on your values and beliefs rather than relying solely on external advice.

Crisis Management: Handling emergencies and crises with resilience and resourcefulness without depending on external assistance.

These examples illustrate different facets of self-reliance, emphasizing independence, resourcefulness, and the ability to navigate life autonomously.

What is the purpose of self reliance by Emerson?

In his essay, " Self Reliance, " Emerson's sole purpose is the want for people to avoid conformity. Emerson believed that in order for a man to truly be a man, he was to follow his own conscience and "do his own thing."

Essentially, do what you believe is right instead of blindly following society.

Why is it important to be self reliant?

While getting help from others, including friends and family, can be an essential part of your life and fulfilling. However, help may not always be available, or the assistance you receive may not be what you had hoped for.

It is for this reason that Emerson pushed for self-reliance. If a person were independent, could solve their problems, and fulfill their needs and desires, they would be a more vital member of society.

This can lead to growth in the following areas:

Empowerment: Self-reliance empowers individuals to take control of their lives. It fosters a sense of autonomy and the ability to make decisions independently.

Resilience: Developing self-reliance builds resilience, enabling individuals to bounce back from setbacks and face challenges with greater adaptability.

Personal Growth: Relying on oneself encourages continuous learning and personal growth. It motivates individuals to acquire new skills and knowledge.

Freedom: Self-reliance provides a sense of freedom from external dependencies. It reduces reliance on others for basic needs, decisions, or validation.

Confidence: Achieving goals through one's own efforts boosts confidence and self-esteem. It instills a belief in one's capabilities and strengthens a positive self-image.

Resourcefulness: Being self-reliant encourages resourcefulness. Individuals learn to solve problems creatively, adapt to changing circumstances, and make the most of available resources.

Adaptability: Self-reliant individuals are often more adaptable to change. They can navigate uncertainties with a proactive and positive mindset.

Reduced Stress: Dependence on others can lead to stress and anxiety, especially when waiting for external support. Self-reliance reduces reliance on external factors for emotional well-being.

Personal Responsibility: It promotes a sense of responsibility for one's own life and decisions. Self-reliant individuals are more likely to take ownership of their actions and outcomes.

Goal Achievement: Being self-reliant facilitates the pursuit and achievement of personal and professional goals. It allows individuals to overcome obstacles and stay focused on their objectives.

Overall, self-reliance contributes to personal empowerment, mental resilience, and the ability to lead a fulfilling and purposeful life. While collaboration and support from others are valuable, cultivating a strong sense of self-reliance enhances one's capacity to navigate life's challenges independently.

What did Emerson mean, "Envy is ignorance, imitation is suicide"?

According to Emerson, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to you independently, but every person is given a plot of ground to till. 

In other words, Emerson believed that a person's main focus in life is to work on oneself, increasing their maturity and intellect, and overcoming insecurities, which will allow a person to be self-reliant to the point where they no longer envy others but measure themselves against how they were the day before.

When we do become self-reliant, we focus on creating rather than imitating. Being someone we are not is just as damaging to the soul as suicide.

Envy is ignorance: Emerson suggests that feeling envious of others is a form of ignorance. Envy often arises from a lack of understanding or appreciation of one's unique qualities and potential. Instead of being envious, individuals should focus on discovering and developing their talents and strengths.

Imitation is suicide: Emerson extends the idea by stating that imitation, or blindly copying others, is a form of self-destruction. He argues that true individuality and personal growth come from expressing one's unique voice and ideas. In this context, imitation is seen as surrendering one's identity and creativity, leading to a kind of "spiritual death."

What are the transcendental elements in Emerson’s self-reliance?

The five predominant elements of Transcendentalism are nonconformity, self-reliance, free thought, confidence, and the importance of nature.

The Transcendentalism movement emerged in New England between 1820 and 1836. It is essential to differentiate this movement from Transcendental Meditation, a distinct practice.

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Transcendentalism is characterized as "an American literary, political, and philosophical movement of the early nineteenth century, centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson." A central tenet of this movement is the belief that individual purity can be 'corrupted' by society.

Are Emerson's writings referenced in pop culture?

Emerson has made it into popular culture. One such example is in the film Next Stop Wonderland released in 1998. The reference is a quote from Emerson's essay on Self Reliance, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

This becomes a running theme in the film as a single woman (Hope Davis ), who is quite familiar with Emerson's writings and showcases several men taking her on dates, attempting to impress her by quoting the famous line, only to botch the line and also giving attribution to the wrong person. One gentleman says confidently it was W.C. Fields, while another matches the quote with Cicero. One goes as far as stating it was Karl Marx!

Why does Emerson say about self confidence?

Content is coming very soon.

Self-Reliance: The Complete Essay

Ne te quaesiveris extra."

Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate ; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still." Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune Cast the bantling on the rocks, Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat; Wintered with the hawk and fox, Power and speed be hands and feet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson Self Reliance Summary

The essay “Self-Reliance,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, is, by far, his most famous piece of work. Emerson, a Transcendentalist, believed focusing on the purity and goodness of individualism and community with nature was vital for a strong society. Transcendentalists despise the corruption and conformity of human society and institutions. Published in 1841, the Self Reliance essay is a deep-dive into self-sufficiency as a virtue.

In the essay "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson advocates for individuals to trust in their own instincts and ideas rather than blindly following the opinions of society and its institutions. He argues that society encourages conformity, stifles individuality, and encourages readers to live authentically and self-sufficient lives.

Emerson also stresses the importance of being self-reliant, relying on one's own abilities and judgment rather than external validation or approval from others. He argues that people must be honest with themselves and seek to understand their own thoughts and feelings rather than blindly following the expectations of others. Through this essay, Emerson emphasizes the value of independence, self-discovery, and personal growth.

What is the Meaning of Self-Reliance?

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to think 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; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light that flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

Great works of art have no more affecting lessons for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility than most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance that does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust Thyself: Every Heart Vibrates To That Iron String.

Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, and the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields to us in this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. 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. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. The lintels of the door-post I would write on, Whim . It is somewhat better than whim at last I hope, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. Wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. The primary evidence I ask that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. For myself it makes no difference that I know, whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.

This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. The easy thing in the world is to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

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. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? With all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, do I not know that he will do no such thing? Do not I know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature.

All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; He should wish to please me, that I wish. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust.

Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; 'I think,' 'I am,' that he dares not say, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; not see the face of man; and you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived.

Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates is that the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power, not confidence but an agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence , personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. To nourish my parents, to support my family I shall endeavour, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs that I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions if you are not. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh today? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct , or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If anyone imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society , he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate , where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart.

Men say he is ruined if the young merchant fails . If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it , farms it , peddles , keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; education; and in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. It is prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —

"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours; Our valors are our best gods."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect . They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such as Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating everything to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. The Vatican, and the palaces I seek. But I am not intoxicated though I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate, and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; Shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments, but our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

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. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other and undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous,  civilized, christianized, rich and it is scientific, but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two, the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe, the equinox he knows as little, and the whole bright calendar of the year are without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic, but in Christendom, where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than anyone since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation today, next year die, and their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore, be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Which quotation from "Self-reliance" best summarizes Emerson’s view on belief in oneself?

One of the most famous quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Self-Reliance" that summarizes his view on belief in oneself is:

"Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string."

What does Emerson argue should be the basis of human actions in the second paragraph of “self-reliance”?

In the second paragraph of "Self-Reliance," Emerson argues that individual conscience, or a person's inner voice, should be the basis of human actions. He writes, "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." He believes that society tends to impose conformity and discourage people from following their own inner truth and intuition. Emerson encourages individuals to trust themselves and to act according to their own beliefs, instead of being influenced by the opinions of others. He argues that this is the way to live a truly authentic and fulfilling life.

Which statement best describes Emerson’s opinion of communities, according to the first paragraph of society and solitude?

According to the first paragraph of Ralph Waldo Emerson's " Society and Solitude, " Emerson has a mixed opinion of communities. He recognizes the importance of social interaction and the benefits of being part of a community but also recognizes the limitations that come with it.

He writes, "Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." He argues that society can be limiting and restrictive, and can cause individuals to conform to norms and values that may not align with their own beliefs and desires. He believes that it is important for individuals to strike a balance between the benefits of social interaction and the need for solitude and self-discovery.

Which best describes Emerson’s central message to his contemporaries in "self-reliance"?

Ralph Waldo Emerson's central message to his contemporaries in "Self-Reliance" is to encourage individuals to trust in their own beliefs and instincts, and to break free from societal norms and expectations. He argues that individuals should have the courage to think for themselves and to live according to their own individual truth, rather than being influenced by the opinions of others. Through this message, he aims to empower people to live authentic and fulfilling lives, rather than living in conformity and compromise.

Yet, it is critical that we first possess the ability to conceive our own thoughts. Prior to venturing into the world, we must be intimately acquainted with our own selves and our individual minds. This sentiment echoes the concise maxim inscribed at the ancient Greek site of the Delphic Oracle: 'Know Thyself.'

In essence, Emerson's central message in "Self-Reliance" is to promote self-reliance and individualism as the key to a meaningful and purposeful life.

Understanding Emerson: "The American scholar" and his struggle for self-reliance.

Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-09982-0

Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Other works from ralph waldo emerson for book clubs, the over-soul.

There is a difference between one and another hour of life, in their authority and subsequent effect. Our faith comes in moments; our vice is habitual.

The American Scholar

An Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837

Essays First Series

Essays: First Series First published in 1841 as Essays. After Essays: Second Series was published in 1844, Emerson corrected this volume and republished it in 1847 as Essays: First Series.

Emerson's Essays

Research the collective works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Read More Essay

Self-Reliance

Emerson's most famous work that can truly change your life. Check it out

Early Emerson Poems

America's best known and best-loved poems. More Poems

Understanding Culture, Society and Politics

Understanding culture, society and politics through the different lenses of social sciences.

• Teaching Resources

What do you think about our modules? Please let us know by answering this short survey!

DOWNLOAD SLIDES HERE

In his book Politics , Aristotle posited that man is by nature a social animal and cannot be alone. According to him, human beings inherently seek interactions, which eventually leads to the formation of a society. However, it is a fact that society has also preceded the existence of man, and that the latter’s survival depends primarily on the social relationships embedded in society’s structures. It is this mutual dependence that allows both man and society to continue to exist.

The nature of a society can be seen in different components: (1) actions and interactions of human beings (social), (2) practices and traditions cultivated and maintained (cultural), and (3) power relations at play among actors (political) (Contreras, et.al.). Observing and analyzing society’s nature through these three components would enable us to better understand not only society, but more importantly, ourselves.

In this module, the learners will be acquainted with observing different social, cultural, and political phenomena happening around them. By introducing the key social science disciplines – Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science – and their respective perspectives, the learners will be guided in approaching these phenomena as they serve as toolkits of understanding and analysis in discussing social issues concerning democracy, human rights, and social justice. Lastly, this first module will serve as a framework for the succeeding modules that will tackle Filipino culture and society and different Philippine national issues.

Module Standards

Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELCs):

• Discuss the nature, goals, and perspectives in anthropology, sociology, and political science.

Content Standards:

By the end of this module, learners are expected to demonstrate an understanding of:

• Human cultural variation, social differences, social change, and political identities;
• The rationale for studying anthropology, political science, and sociology.

Performance Standards:

By the end of this module, learners are expected to:

• Acknowledge human cultural variation, social differences, social change, and political identities;
• Adopt an open and critical attitude toward different social, political, and cultural phenomena through observation and reflection; and
• Appreciate the value of disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science as social sciences.

Lesson 1: Society and I

Lesson Objectives

At the end of the lesson, the student is expected to be able to:

• Describe themselves according to their cultural, social, and political backgrounds;
• Analyze how their backgrounds influence their identity (values, beliefs, behavior);
• Recognize the concepts of culture, society, and politics and their respective elements; and
• Examine how the cultural, social, and political phenomena happening around them continuously influence or change them as individuals.

Key Concepts

• Agency – the power of an individual to change society or form a new one.
• Beliefs – specific ideas that society holds to be true
• Identity –  the set of perceived qualities that make an individual unique from the rest
• Norms – rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members
• Power – the ability to influence others
• Symbols –  anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture
• Values – culturally defined standards that people use to decide what is desirable, good, and beautiful

Self-Evaluation Form (Part 1)

Answer the following questions.

1.What do you already know about the lesson?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2.What do you want to know more about the lesson?

• Shaping My Identity

Do we create our own identities?

• Our identities are said to be socially-constructed.
•  According to the social-constructionist view, one’s identity is formed through our interaction with others and in relation to social, cultural, and political contexts. In other words, our identities are influenced by our society (Rice, 2021). 
• Biodata, resume, and curriculum vitae tell much about our personal information. It contains our given name (sense of identity), surname (lineage), gender/sex (roles we conform to), the names of our parents and their jobs (social interaction and socioecnomic status), educational attainment (social status and mobility), religion (religious practices), ethnicity (language and culture), and political beliefs (exercise of power and inclinations).

How does society influence individuals (identities)?

• Social groups and norms – the social groups that an individual belongs to also affect one’s creation and maintenance of identity as social groups and their members practice specific norms (family, ethnolinguistic group, churches, schools, fraternal relationships, organizations)
• Can you cite some historical events that influence individuals?
• The intermarriage of Filipino and Americans
• Trade laws which swamp Filipino markets with American goods 
• Filipinos’ undying love for “imported goods” and Duty-Free 
• The passing of the Anti-Terror Law
•  Martial Law and People Power
• Can you give other national political events that influence individuals?
• Example 1: Lumads evacuating from their communities because of militarization and armed conflict. 
• Example 2: New policies enacted by school administrators changing students’ level and practice of freedom—stricter regulations on uniforms, the creation of more student-led clubs and organizations, and the practice of academic freedom. 
• Example 3: Barangay and SK officials involving the locals in policy-making through consultations, or electoral frauds and violence during local elections
• Can you give other examples of local events that influence individuals?
• Observing, Interacting With, and Changing Society

What can you say about Filipino culture and society?

• Symbols – anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share a culture, e.g. the national flag represents our sovereign nationhood, the red cross is a recognized symbol of medical services, the Star and Crescent represents Islam.
• Language – system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another, e.g.. Arabic, Bisaya, Filipino Sign Language (FSL).
• Norms – rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members.
• Mores – norms that are widely observed and have great moral significance, e.g. gender roles or the concept of pagkalalake and pagkababae, reverence for the dead.
• Folkways – norms for routine or casual interaction, e.g. paggalang, pagmamano
• Example 1: In bullying incidents at schools (bully, bullied, spectator)
• Example 2: Woke culture in social media, political inclinations (Dilawan, DDS)
• Example 3: Community organizing, mobilization, bandwagoning, siding with the oppressors, repression of other individuals (marginalized and minorities: poor, indigenous peoples, PWDs, LGBTQ, etc.)
• How do you exercise your power as a child, a student, and a friend?
• Example of individuals who changed their societies (for better or for worse): Albert Einstein, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Jose Rizal, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Mark Zuckerberg, Greta Thunberg, you (ourselves)  
• How did these individuals change their societies? 
• What are the reasons which drove them to be a catalyst of social change in their respective societies? 
• What are the things that you will change in Philippine society?

Self-Evaluation Form (Part 2)

1.What have you learned from the lesson?

2.How will you apply the knowledge you have learned in this lesson in improving Philippine society?

• List of Activities

Synchronous Activities (In-class)

Activity 1: #MeMeMe (Motivational Activity)

Instructions. This activity is a simple getting-to-know-each-other drill. This will help prompt the students to see how the lesson relates to their personal lives. This will also help the teacher know more about their students.

Guide Questions.

• I am ________ (given and last name). (identity and lineage)
• I live in  ________ (address) with ________    (household members). (culture at home and people they socialize with most of the time)
• My father/mother/guardian works as a/an ________    (job). (socioeconomic status)
• I am ________ (nationality/ethnicity). I practice ________   (religion). (cultural and religious upbringing)
• If there is a hashtag to describe me, it would be # ________    . (values, beliefs, behavior).

Activity 2: Safe Space (Reflective Assessment)

Instructions. Share your experiences as prompted by the guide question, and reflect about the lessons you learned from them.

Note to the Teacher: Form groups of three to five and have them share their output to each other. You may not share some of your answers that you feel uncomfortable to open up about.

Sample Guide Questions:

• What Filipino tradition/s have you and your family been observing for a long time? How does the practice of this tradition impact your life as a child and individual? (cultural)
• In a barkada, there are people who have different personalities. For you, how do the backgrounds of your friends affect how they behave inside your social circle? Reflect on your own behaviors as well. (social)
• What do you think of the Philippine government’s response to the COVID pandemic? How do the COVID-related policies of the government affect you as an individual? (political)
• As a Filipino, what aspect of our culture and society do you want to change? Why do you want this to change? What can you do to ensure that this change will take place? (practice of agency)

Asynchronous Activities (Take-home)

Activity 1: Me Starter Pack (Creative Assessment)

Instructions. Create your own “(Your Name) Starter Pack.” Create a picture compilation of the things that best represent your identity based on your sociocultural and political background and the things you want to change in society.

 “The Grew Up in the 90s Starter Pack” in https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/90/93/fa9093ea64e3fb994622681a813ac7b5.jpg

Activity 2: Praxis Time! (Creative Assessment)

Instructions. Create a short comic strip or set of conversation bubbles depicting a story whereby people share their knowledge on understanding and changing society.

Activity 3: Anonymous

Instructions. This activity is a short online survey among students using the Mentimeter template. ( https://www.mentimeter.com/app/templates ). The teacher can ask questions to the students and post the questions on a Mentimeter slide. The teacher will give the code to the students, and the latter will go to www.menti.com and input the code to participate in the activity. Students will be anonymous in this activity. This activity will encourage students to voice their opinions (although anonymously) on the cultural and sociopolitical phenomena happening in their society.

Example Guide Questions:

• If there is one word to describe Philippine politics, what is it?
• How much do you like Filipino culture? 10 being the highest, 1 being the lowest.
• What current social issues strike you the most or have been affecting you in some way?
• What can you say about the current lives of Filipinos in general?
• What do you think of the government’s and Filipinos’ response to the COVID pandemic?
• What changes do you want to happen?
• What will the Philippines be like 10 years from now?

Self-paced Learning (Optional Activity)

Activity 1: Mapping My Identity

• If identities are socially-constructed, why don’t we try to trace the attitudes, beliefs, and values we have to the norms, cultures, social groups/structures that helped create our identities?
• Instructions . Watch the video “How Our Identities are Socially Constructed” as the basis of this activity. Get a pen and paper and start mapping your identity. You can create a mindmap to better illustrate your map. Link: https://youtu.be/uIuJT1n2vRY  

Rubric for Discussions

Rubric for Creative Outputs

Lesson 2: How Social Sciences Equip Us in Understanding People and Society Better

 Lesson Objectives

• Recognize the perspectives/lessons from the three key disciplines of Social Sciences – Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science;
• Differentiate the theories and methods employed by each discipline;
• Determine how the theories/lessons from the Social Sciences can better equip them to understand people and society; and
• Apply the lessons of the Social Sciences in their own praxis.
• Anthropology – study of the human species, its immediate ancestors, and their cultures.
• Moral Compass – signifies someone’s set of values and beliefs that guide them to what they believe as right or wrong in life. 
• Political Science – study of governments and politics.
• Praxis – an act of doing something or practice in relation to theory.
• Social Sciences – the study of society, culture and politics based on social and political philosophy.
• Sociology – the study of human interactions, social groups and institutions, whole societies, and the human world.

1,What do you already know about the lesson?

• Broadening My Perspectives

Given that individuals also influence their society, how can they do that positively?

• Do the best practices equipped with better understanding.
• A better understanding of people and society would require for an individual to broaden their perspective.

How can individuals broaden their perspectives?

• Social Sciences – the study of society, culture and politics based on social and political philosophy (Scott 2006, p.9; Retrieved from Lanuza and Raymundo), offer multitudes of disciplines with different perspectives about people and society — three key disciplines for UCSP: Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science.

Why should we learn these lessons (suspending judgement, empathy, and understanding power)?

• Moral compass – signifies someone’s set of values and beliefs to guide them to what they believe as right or wrong in life. These beliefs dictate their actions which directly influences others/society.
• Our moral compass is heavily influenced by our cultural, social, and political backgrounds. Coupled with individual agency, these backgrounds do not serve as limits, but as initial grounds and definitely not the final ones in acting (praxis) as active agents of change.

What are the different kinds of changes?

• “The only constant thing in the world is change”.
• According to Panopio, changes in culture bring in society and human beings; likewise, changes in society and human beings bring change in culture and politics. This phenomena is called social dynamics .
• Example: Rise of the ilustrados as the educated Filipino elite
• Example: The kind of lifestyle adopted in the “new normal” brought by the Covid-19 pandemic
• Example: The transition from dictatorial to a democratic government through the People Power Revolution in 1986

Can you effect change in society?

• Students’ answers to the question.
• Highlight agency and praxis.
• Sub-lesson 2: Praxis and Methods of the Social Sciences

Praxis – an act of doing something or practice (application of knowledge) in relation to theory (knowledge), informed and committed action to the search for truth and promotion of everyone’s freedom. 

How will you be able to put the theories and perspectives of Social Sciences to praxis?

Do you need to be a social scientist to practice these methods?

• No. Anyone who wants to exercise their power (agency) can realize the potential of being a social scientist. We may not be experts, but some of these practices are also things we do in school or in life.

As a student, how will you practice or use these theories and methods in your own life?

Do you think that learning these theories and methods would benefit you? How?

• Critical thinking
• Responsible citizenship
• Knowing the self more
• Being more open-minded or sensitive to different cultures, peoples, and behaviors

Activity 1: QuiSSbee

Instructions. This activity may serve as a motivational activity for the class. Give a reading material before the class that the students can study. It is suggested that this material contain facts about the history of the three key disciplines of the Social Sciences. This activity will help you introduce the topic to them by going through the historical context of the topic. Material on this will be provided to the teacher.

Example questions: 

• Who is the father of sociology? 
• Where did the discipline of Political Science originate from?

Activity 2: The Ultimate Test

Instructions . This activity will prompt students to think about scenarios or issues that are debatable. The teacher must introduce here the concepts of cultural relativism, sociological imagination, and understanding the exercise of power. The teacher will post the questions “What will you do if…” and the students may answer the question. After all the questions are answered, the teacher will facilitate a mini open-forum among the students whereby they can speak up their minds and share their opinions.

Activity 3: Wearing the Shoes of a Social Scientist

Instructions. Before the activity starts, ask the students to prepare the following materials: three pieces of bond paper, scissors, markers, and coloring materials. Ask the students to draw the shoes of the following people: anthropologist, sociologist, and political scientist. Ask the students if they can do the functions of the aforementioned people. Highlight the commonalities and differences among the three.

Activity 1: Pledge! (Reflective Assessment)

Instructions. Write a 300-500 word essay about the most remarkable theory you learned in class so far. Explain how you would want to turn this theory into praxis. At the end of the paper, write a pledge that would commit to fulfill the task.

Self-paced Learning (Optional Activities)

Contreras, Antonio, Arleigh Ross dela Cruz, Denis Erasga, Cecile Fadrigon. (2016) . Understanding Culture, Society and Politics. The Padayon Series. Quezon City: Phoenix Publishing House.

David, R. & Samson, L. (2017). Understanding Culture, Society, and Politics. Mandaluyong City: Anvil Publishing, Inc.

Heywood, Andrew. (2013). Politics. 4th Edition. Palgrave Macmillan.

Kottak, Conrad. (2008). Anthropology: The Exploration of Human Diversity. 13th Edition. McGraw- Hill.

Lanuza, Gerry & Raymundo, Sarah. (2016). Understanding Culture, Society and Politics. 1st Edition. Manila: Rex Book Store.

Macionis, John. (2019). Society: The Basics. 15th Edition. Pearson.

Scott, John. (2006). Social Theory: Central issues in sociology. London: Sage

Learning Materials

Gerry Lanuza & Sarah Raymundo. (2016). Lesson 1:The Birth and Growth of the Social Sciences. 

Understanding Culture, Society and Politics. First Edition. Manila: Rex Book Store (pp.2-15).

Heywood, Andrew. (2013). Politics. 4th Edition Palgrave Macmillan.

Macat. (2016, April 14). An introduction to the discipline of Anthropology [Video]. YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5aglbgTEig  

Macat. (2016, April 14). An introduction to the discipline of Sociology [Video]. YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32KG_ba_NJc  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzIcWW3FWSQ  

Panopio, I. & Rolda, R. (2007). Society and Culture, Introduction to Sociology and Anthrophology. 

Quezon City:  Katha Publishing Co., Inc.

BBC Ideas. (2019, June 6). Relativism: Is it wrong to judge other cultures? | A-Z of ISMs Episode 18 – 

BBC Ideas [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518FR6SbY_k  

Crash Course. (2017, March 28). Sociology & the Scientific Method: Crash Course Sociology #3 

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIwyNIdgJBE  

Ted Talks. (2014, April 23). The wisdom of sociology: Sam Richards at TEDxLacador [Video]. YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWD6g9CV_sc  

The School of Life. (2016, December 30). Why You Can Change The World [Video]. YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxiYsgyn1yU  

More Readings from Sibika.ph >

• Introduction
• Rubrics for Grading

Word Choice

What this handout is about.

This handout can help you revise your papers for word-level clarity, eliminate wordiness and avoid clichés, find the words that best express your ideas, and choose words that suit an academic audience.

Introduction

Writing is a series of choices. As you work on a paper, you choose your topic, your approach, your sources, and your thesis; when it’s time to write, you have to choose the words you will use to express your ideas and decide how you will arrange those words into sentences and paragraphs. As you revise your draft, you make more choices. You might ask yourself, “Is this really what I mean?” or “Will readers understand this?” or “Does this sound good?” Finding words that capture your meaning and convey that meaning to your readers is challenging. When your instructors write things like “awkward,” “vague,” or “wordy” on your draft, they are letting you know that they want you to work on word choice. This handout will explain some common issues related to word choice and give you strategies for choosing the best words as you revise your drafts.

As you read further into the handout, keep in mind that it can sometimes take more time to “save” words from your original sentence than to write a brand new sentence to convey the same meaning or idea. Don’t be too attached to what you’ve already written; if you are willing to start a sentence fresh, you may be able to choose words with greater clarity.

For tips on making more substantial revisions, take a look at our handouts on reorganizing drafts and revising drafts .

“Awkward,” “vague,” and “unclear” word choice

So: you write a paper that makes perfect sense to you, but it comes back with “awkward” scribbled throughout the margins. Why, you wonder, are instructors so fond of terms like “awkward”? Most instructors use terms like this to draw your attention to sentences they had trouble understanding and to encourage you to rewrite those sentences more clearly.

Difficulties with word choice aren’t the only cause of awkwardness, vagueness, or other problems with clarity. Sometimes a sentence is hard to follow because there is a grammatical problem with it or because of the syntax (the way the words and phrases are put together). Here’s an example: “Having finished with studying, the pizza was quickly eaten.” This sentence isn’t hard to understand because of the words I chose—everybody knows what studying, pizza, and eating are. The problem here is that readers will naturally assume that first bit of the sentence “(Having finished with studying”) goes with the next noun that follows it—which, in this case, is “the pizza”! It doesn’t make a lot of sense to imply that the pizza was studying. What I was actually trying to express was something more like this: “Having finished with studying, the students quickly ate the pizza.” If you have a sentence that has been marked “awkward,” “vague,” or “unclear,” try to think about it from a reader’s point of view—see if you can tell where it changes direction or leaves out important information.

Sometimes, though, problems with clarity are a matter of word choice. See if you recognize any of these issues:

• Misused words —the word doesn’t actually mean what the writer thinks it does. Example : Cree Indians were a monotonous culture until French and British settlers arrived. Revision: Cree Indians were a homogenous culture.
• Words with unwanted connotations or meanings. Example : I sprayed the ants in their private places. Revision: I sprayed the ants in their hiding places.
• Using a pronoun when readers can’t tell whom/what it refers to. Example : My cousin Jake hugged my brother Trey, even though he didn’t like him very much. Revision: My cousin Jake hugged my brother Trey, even though Jake doesn’t like Trey very much.
• Jargon or technical terms that make readers work unnecessarily hard. Maybe you need to use some of these words because they are important terms in your field, but don’t throw them in just to “sound smart.” Example : The dialectical interface between neo-Platonists and anti-disestablishment Catholics offers an algorithm for deontological thought. Revision : The dialogue between neo-Platonists and certain Catholic thinkers is a model for deontological thought.
• Loaded language. Sometimes we as writers know what we mean by a certain word, but we haven’t ever spelled that out for readers. We rely too heavily on that word, perhaps repeating it often, without clarifying what we are talking about. Example : Society teaches young girls that beauty is their most important quality. In order to prevent eating disorders and other health problems, we must change society. Revision : Contemporary American popular media, like magazines and movies, teach young girls that beauty is their most important quality. In order to prevent eating disorders and other health problems, we must change the images and role models girls are offered.

Sometimes the problem isn’t choosing exactly the right word to express an idea—it’s being “wordy,” or using words that your reader may regard as “extra” or inefficient. Take a look at the following list for some examples. On the left are some phrases that use three, four, or more words where fewer will do; on the right are some shorter substitutes:

Keep an eye out for wordy constructions in your writing and see if you can replace them with more concise words or phrases.

In academic writing, it’s a good idea to limit your use of clichés. Clichés are catchy little phrases so frequently used that they have become trite, corny, or annoying. They are problematic because their overuse has diminished their impact and because they require several words where just one would do.

The main way to avoid clichés is first to recognize them and then to create shorter, fresher equivalents. Ask yourself if there is one word that means the same thing as the cliché. If there isn’t, can you use two or three words to state the idea your own way? Below you will see five common clichés, with some alternatives to their right. As a challenge, see how many alternatives you can create for the final two examples.

Try these yourself:

Writing for an academic audience

When you choose words to express your ideas, you have to think not only about what makes sense and sounds best to you, but what will make sense and sound best to your readers. Thinking about your audience and their expectations will help you make decisions about word choice.

Some writers think that academic audiences expect them to “sound smart” by using big or technical words. But the most important goal of academic writing is not to sound smart—it is to communicate an argument or information clearly and convincingly. It is true that academic writing has a certain style of its own and that you, as a student, are beginning to learn to read and write in that style. You may find yourself using words and grammatical constructions that you didn’t use in your high school writing. The danger is that if you consciously set out to “sound smart” and use words or structures that are very unfamiliar to you, you may produce sentences that your readers can’t understand.

When writing for your professors, think simplicity. Using simple words does not indicate simple thoughts. In an academic argument paper, what makes the thesis and argument sophisticated are the connections presented in simple, clear language.

Keep in mind, though, that simple and clear doesn’t necessarily mean casual. Most instructors will not be pleased if your paper looks like an instant message or an email to a friend. It’s usually best to avoid slang and colloquialisms. Take a look at this example and ask yourself how a professor would probably respond to it if it were the thesis statement of a paper: “Moulin Rouge really bit because the singing sucked and the costume colors were nasty, KWIM?”

Selecting and using key terms

When writing academic papers, it is often helpful to find key terms and use them within your paper as well as in your thesis. This section comments on the crucial difference between repetition and redundancy of terms and works through an example of using key terms in a thesis statement.

Repetition vs. redundancy

These two phenomena are not necessarily the same. Repetition can be a good thing. Sometimes we have to use our key terms several times within a paper, especially in topic sentences. Sometimes there is simply no substitute for the key terms, and selecting a weaker term as a synonym can do more harm than good. Repeating key terms emphasizes important points and signals to the reader that the argument is still being supported. This kind of repetition can give your paper cohesion and is done by conscious choice.

In contrast, if you find yourself frustrated, tiredly repeating the same nouns, verbs, or adjectives, or making the same point over and over, you are probably being redundant. In this case, you are swimming aimlessly around the same points because you have not decided what your argument really is or because you are truly fatigued and clarity escapes you. Refer to the “Strategies” section below for ideas on revising for redundancy.

Building clear thesis statements

Writing clear sentences is important throughout your writing. For the purposes of this handout, let’s focus on the thesis statement—one of the most important sentences in academic argument papers. You can apply these ideas to other sentences in your papers.

A common problem with writing good thesis statements is finding the words that best capture both the important elements and the significance of the essay’s argument. It is not always easy to condense several paragraphs or several pages into concise key terms that, when combined in one sentence, can effectively describe the argument.

However, taking the time to find the right words offers writers a significant edge. Concise and appropriate terms will help both the writer and the reader keep track of what the essay will show and how it will show it. Graders, in particular, like to see clearly stated thesis statements. (For more on thesis statements in general, please refer to our handout .)

Example : You’ve been assigned to write an essay that contrasts the river and shore scenes in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. You work on it for several days, producing three versions of your thesis:

Version 1 : There are many important river and shore scenes in Huckleberry Finn.

Version 2 : The contrasting river and shore scenes in Huckleberry Finn suggest a return to nature.

Version 3 : Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

Let’s consider the word choice issues in these statements. In Version 1, the word “important”—like “interesting”—is both overused and vague; it suggests that the author has an opinion but gives very little indication about the framework of that opinion. As a result, your reader knows only that you’re going to talk about river and shore scenes, but not what you’re going to say. Version 2 is an improvement: the words “return to nature” give your reader a better idea where the paper is headed. On the other hand, they still do not know how this return to nature is crucial to your understanding of the novel.

Finally, you come up with Version 3, which is a stronger thesis because it offers a sophisticated argument and the key terms used to make this argument are clear. At least three key terms or concepts are evident: the contrast between river and shore scenes, a return to nature, and American democratic ideals.

By itself, a key term is merely a topic—an element of the argument but not the argument itself. The argument, then, becomes clear to the reader through the way in which you combine key terms.

Strategies for successful word choice

• Be careful when using words you are unfamiliar with. Look at how they are used in context and check their dictionary definitions.
• Be careful when using the thesaurus. Each word listed as a synonym for the word you’re looking up may have its own unique connotations or shades of meaning. Use a dictionary to be sure the synonym you are considering really fits what you are trying to say.
• Under the present conditions of our society, marriage practices generally demonstrate a high degree of homogeneity.
• In our culture, people tend to marry others who are like themselves. (Longman, p. 452)
• Before you revise for accurate and strong adjectives, make sure you are first using accurate and strong nouns and verbs. For example, if you were revising the sentence “This is a good book that tells about the Revolutionary War,” think about whether “book” and “tells” are as strong as they could be before you worry about “good.” (A stronger sentence might read “The novel describes the experiences of a soldier during the Revolutionary War.” “Novel” tells us what kind of book it is, and “describes” tells us more about how the book communicates information.)
• Try the slash/option technique, which is like brainstorming as you write. When you get stuck, write out two or more choices for a questionable word or a confusing sentence, e.g., “questionable/inaccurate/vague/inappropriate.” Pick the word that best indicates your meaning or combine different terms to say what you mean.
• Look for repetition. When you find it, decide if it is “good” repetition (using key terms that are crucial and helpful to meaning) or “bad” repetition (redundancy or laziness in reusing words).
• Write your thesis in five different ways. Make five different versions of your thesis sentence. Compose five sentences that express your argument. Try to come up with four alternatives to the thesis sentence you’ve already written. Find five possible ways to communicate your argument in one sentence to your reader. (We’ve just used this technique—which of the last five sentences do you prefer?)Whenever we write a sentence we make choices. Some are less obvious than others, so that it can often feel like we’ve written the sentence the only way we know how. By writing out five different versions of your thesis, you can begin to see your range of choices. The final version may be a combination of phrasings and words from all five versions, or the one version that says it best. By literally spelling out some possibilities for yourself, you will be able to make better decisions.
• Read your paper out loud and at… a… slow… pace. You can do this alone or with a friend, roommate, TA, etc. When read out loud, your written words should make sense to both you and other listeners. If a sentence seems confusing, rewrite it to make the meaning clear.
• Instead of reading the paper itself, put it down and just talk through your argument as concisely as you can. If your listener quickly and easily comprehends your essay’s main point and significance, you should then make sure that your written words are as clear as your oral presentation was. If, on the other hand, your listener keeps asking for clarification, you will need to work on finding the right terms for your essay. If you do this in exchange with a friend or classmate, rest assured that whether you are the talker or the listener, your articulation skills will develop.
• Have someone not familiar with the issue read the paper and point out words or sentences they find confusing. Do not brush off this reader’s confusion by assuming they simply doesn’t know enough about the topic. Instead, rewrite the sentences so that your “outsider” reader can follow along at all times.
• Check out the Writing Center’s handouts on style , passive voice , and proofreading for more tips.

Questions to ask yourself

• Am I sure what each word I use really means? Am I positive, or should I look it up?
• Have I found the best word or just settled for the most obvious, or the easiest, one?
• Am I trying too hard to impress my reader?
• What’s the easiest way to write this sentence? (Sometimes it helps to answer this question by trying it out loud. How would you say it to someone?)
• What are the key terms of my argument?
• Can I outline out my argument using only these key terms? What others do I need? Which do I not need?
• Have I created my own terms, or have I simply borrowed what looked like key ones from the assignment? If I’ve borrowed the terms, can I find better ones in my own vocabulary, the texts, my notes, the dictionary, or the thesaurus to make myself clearer?
• Are my key terms too specific? (Do they cover the entire range of my argument?) Can I think of specific examples from my sources that fall under the key term?
• Are my key terms too vague? (Do they cover more than the range of my argument?)

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Cook, Claire Kehrwald. 1985. Line by Line: How to Improve Your Own Writing . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Grossman, Ellie. 1997. The Grammatically Correct Handbook: A Lively and Unorthodox Review of Common English for the Linguistically Challenged . New York: Hyperion.

Houghton Mifflin. 1996. The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

O’Conner, Patricia. 2010. Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English , 3rd ed. New York: Penguin Publishing Group.

Tarshis, Barry. 1998. How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes . New York: Three Rivers Press.

Williams, Joseph, and Joseph Bizup. 2017. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace , 12th ed. Boston: Pearson.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Make a Gift

Student Essays

11 Essays on Society – Importance, Impacts, Problems [ 2024 ]

Society is the place where human live together with peace, established rules, culture and cooperation. Society has definite laws and well set boundaries. The Following essay I have wrote that talks about the society, its basic concept, importance and what role can students play in society.

Essay on Society: Its Importance for our Life

The society is a place where we live into. We share our life experiences with other individuals. The society helps us to interact with different types of people and learn from them. It is a platform that enhances our personality and teaches us how to live in a community.

Concept of Society

A society is not just about a group of individuals living together but it is much more than that. A society shapes the character of its members and instills values in them. It defines what is right and what is wrong for its members. It also provides them with a sense of security and belonging.

Importance of Society

The importance of society can be understood from the fact that it plays a pivotal role in our life. Our survival and development depend on the society. The society provides us with shelter, food, clothing, and education. It also protects us from danger and keeps us safe from harm.

>>>> Read Also : ” Essay on Cooperation, Need & Importance in Life “

The society is important for our life because:

1) it provides us with basic necessities of life: The society provides us with shelter, food, clothing, and education. All these things are necessary for our survival and development. 2) it protects us from danger and harm: The society protects us from danger and harm. It keeps us safe from criminals, natural disasters, and other threats. 3) it shapes our personality and character: The society shapes our personality and character. It defines what is right and what is wrong for us. It also instills values in us. 4) it gives us a sense of security and belonging: The society gives us a sense of security and belonging. It makes us feel safe and accepted. We feel connected to others and have a sense of purpose in life.

Role of Students in a Society:

There are many ways in which students can be productive members of society. Some of them are: 1) by participating in social service activities: Students can participate in social service activities and help the needy. They can volunteer for organizations that work for the betterment of society. 2) by spreading awareness about social issues: Students can spread awareness about social issues and raise awareness about the problems faced by society. They can use social media to spread awareness about important issues. 3) by becoming involved in politics: Students can become involved in politics and work for the betterment of society. They can run for office or volunteer for political campaigns.

The society is an important part of our life. It plays a crucial role in our survival, development, and personality. We should appreciate the importance of society and work towards its betterment.

Short Essay on Society in English:

Society plays a crucial role in shaping our lives. It is the framework within which we interact and build relationships with each other. From our families to our communities, society has a major influence on every aspect of our daily lives.

In today’s world, the concept of society has evolved drastically. With advancements in technology and globalization, we are no longer confined to physical boundaries. We are now part of a global society, connected to people from different backgrounds and cultures.

One of the fundamental aspects of any society is its values and beliefs. These shape our attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions towards others. They provide us with a moral compass to guide us in our interactions with fellow human beings. However, these values and beliefs can vary greatly across societies, leading to conflicts and misunderstandings.

Furthermore, society also provides us with a sense of identity. We are inherently social beings and rely on our interactions with others to form our self-concept. Our role in society, whether it be as a student, professional, or family member, contributes to our sense of self.

In conclusion, society is the glue that holds us together as a community. It provides us with structure, values, and identity. As individuals, it is our responsibility to contribute positively to society and help create a better world for future generations. After all, we are not just members of society; we are society itself.

Importance of society Essay:

The society we live in plays a crucial role in shaping our lives. It is the foundation on which our values, beliefs and behaviors are built upon. Society not only affects us as individuals but also has a significant impact on the world around us. In this essay, we will explore the importance of society and how it impacts our lives.

Firstly, society provides us with a sense of belonging and identity. As social beings, we have an innate desire to be a part of a community and feel connected to others. Through our interactions with family, friends, and other members of society, we develop a sense of who we are and where we fit in.

Moreover, society also provides us with the necessary support and resources to thrive. In times of need, we can turn to our community for help and support. Whether it is financial assistance, emotional support or advice, society offers a safety net that helps us navigate through life’s challenges.

In addition, society plays a crucial role in shaping our values and beliefs. Our cultural norms, traditions, and customs are all influenced by the society we live in. Through socialization, we learn what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and this helps us function harmoniously as a community.

Furthermore, society also promotes personal growth and development. By providing opportunities for education, employment, and personal advancement, it enables individuals to reach their full potential. A healthy and supportive society encourages its members to pursue their passions and aspirations.

In conclusion, the importance of society cannot be overstated. It is the fabric that holds us together and shapes our lives in more ways than we can imagine. As members of society, it is our responsibility to contribute positively towards its growth and well-being, for the betterment of ourselves and future generations.

Essay on Impact of Social Media on Society:

Social media has become an integral part of our lives in this modern day and age. It allows us to connect with people from different parts of the world, share our thoughts and experiences, and keep up with current events. However, its impact on society is a topic that has been widely debated.

On one hand, social media has played a major role in revolutionizing communication and breaking down geographical barriers. It has allowed us to stay connected with loved ones, even if they are miles away. Social media also serves as a platform for spreading awareness and promoting social causes. It has given a voice to marginalized communities and helped bring about much-needed change.

But on the other hand, social media comes with its own set of challenges. The constant need for validation and the pressure to present a perfect life online has led to a rise in mental health issues, especially among the youth. It has also made it easier for fake news and misinformation to spread like wildfire, creating chaos and division in society.

Moreover, social media has changed the way we perceive ourselves and others. We are constantly bombarded with images of idealized lives that have been carefully curated for the online world. This has led to an unhealthy comparison culture and a rise in feelings of inadequacy.

In conclusion, the impact of social media on society is complex and multi-faceted. While it has brought about positive changes in terms of communication and social activism, it also comes with its own set of challenges. It is up to us as individuals to use social media in a responsible and balanced manner, keeping in mind its potential impact on our mental health and society as a whole. So, we must strike a balance between being connected and staying grounded in the real world. Let’s make sure that social media remains a tool for positive change rather than a source of negativity.

Essay on Impact of Modern Technology on Society:

Modern technology has become an inseparable part of our daily lives. With every passing day, we are becoming more dependent on the latest gadgets and devices to make our lives easier. From smartphones to smart homes, modern technology has revolutionized the way we live, work and communicate.

The impact of modern technology on society has been both positive and negative. On one hand, it has accelerated the pace of progress and brought about significant advancements in various fields such as healthcare, education, and transportation. On the other hand, it has also contributed to societal issues like addiction, privacy invasion, and job loss.

The rise of social media platforms has connected us with people from all around the world but at the same time, it has led to a decrease in face-to-face communication and affected our social skills. The convenience of online shopping has made us more prone to impulsive purchases, causing financial strain on individuals and families.

The healthcare industry has benefited greatly from modern technology with the invention of life-saving medical equipment and advancements in treatment methods. However, it has also raised concerns about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs in the sector.

In conclusion, the impact of modern technology on society is a double-edged sword. It has brought about tremendous progress and convenience, but it has also posed challenges that need to be addressed

Essay on society and culture:

Society and culture are two intertwined concepts that shape our daily lives. Society refers to a group of individuals who share a common set of values, beliefs, and practices while culture encompasses the customs, traditions, and behaviors of a particular society.

The relationship between society and culture is dynamic and constantly evolving. As humans, we are social beings who are influenced by our surroundings. Our social environment which includes our family, friends, institutions, and media plays a critical role in shaping our perspectives and beliefs. These influences are reflected in our culture, from the food we eat to the way we dress and celebrate important occasions.

Culture is not limited to material objects or practices but also encompasses intangible aspects such as language, art, religion, and social norms. These aspects are what makes each society unique and different from others. Culture also helps us connect with our past, understand our present and shape our future.

While society and culture play a significant role in shaping an individual’s identity, they can also create divisions among people. Our cultural differences can lead to misunderstanding, discrimination, and conflicts within societies.

It is crucial for individuals to have an open mind and respect for other cultures to foster a harmonious society. By understanding and embracing different cultures, we can create a more inclusive and cohesive community where everyone feels valued and respected.

In conclusion, society and culture go hand in hand in shaping our beliefs, values, and behaviors. It is essential to recognize the impact of these concepts on our daily lives while also promoting an inclusive and diverse society. By valuing our differences, we can move towards a better future for all individuals.

Essay on Importance of Education in Society:

Education is one of the most crucial aspects of our society. It plays a vital role in shaping individuals and their perspectives towards life. Education not only provides knowledge, but it also helps us to develop critical thinking skills, moral values, and ethical beliefs.

In today’s world, education has become a necessity for survival. It is no longer seen as a luxury or privilege, but it is a basic human right. The importance of education in society can be seen through its impact on individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole.

For individuals, education opens doors to better career opportunities and higher income levels. It helps them to become self-sufficient and lead a better quality of life. Education also promotes personal growth and enables individuals to make informed decisions.

At the community level, education promotes social cohesion and harmony. It brings people from diverse backgrounds together and helps them to understand and appreciate each other’s cultures, beliefs, and values. Education also plays a crucial role in eradicating social evils such as poverty, discrimination, and inequality.

On a national level, education is instrumental in building a strong economy and creating a skilled workforce. It equips citizens with the necessary skills and knowledge to contribute to the development of their country. Education also plays a vital role in promoting democracy, social justice, and progress.

In conclusion, education is the cornerstone of our society. It empowers individuals, brings communities together, and strengthens nations. Therefore, it is essential to invest in quality education for all to ensure a better and brighter future for generations to come

Short Essay on humanity:

Humanity is a term that encompasses the collective characteristics, behaviors, and beliefs of human beings as a species. It is often used to describe the positive aspects of human nature such as compassion, empathy, and kindness towards others. However, it also includes the negative aspects such as greed, violence, and selfishness.

Throughout history, humanity has evolved tremendously in terms of technological advancements and societal structures. But at the core, humanity remains the same – with all its complexities and contradictions.

One of the defining characteristics of humanity is our ability to think critically and empathize with others. This has allowed us to understand and relate to people from different backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs. It has also led to the development of social systems such as laws, education, and healthcare that aim to improve the well-being of individuals and society as a whole.

On the other hand, humanity has also been responsible for some of the greatest horrors in history – whether it be wars, genocide, or environmental destruction. This highlights our inherent flaws and the need for constant self-reflection and improvement.

Despite our differences, there is an undeniable sense of interconnectedness amongst all human beings. We all share the same basic needs, desires, and emotions. This is what makes us human, and what ultimately unites us.

In a world that often seems divided and chaotic, it is important to remind ourselves of our shared humanity. It is through understanding and compassion for one another that we can create a better future for ourselves and future generations.

So let us strive to embrace our humanity, both the good and the bad, and use it to uplift ourselves and those around us. So let’s continue to spread kindness, empathy, and understanding – for that is what truly makes us human.

Essay on Society Today:

Society today is constantly changing, evolving, and adapting to new advancements and challenges. And as we grow and progress, it’s important to reflect on the state of our society in order to understand where we’ve come from and where we’re headed.

One of the biggest trends that has emerged in recent years is the increasing importance placed on diversity and inclusivity. With globalization and the rise of social media, people from different cultures, backgrounds, and walks of life are coming together like never before. This has led to a greater appreciation for diversity and a call for more representation in all aspects of society.

At the same time, technology has also played a major role in shaping our society today. From smartphones to social media platforms, we are more connected than ever before. This has led to a rapid exchange of information and ideas, making it easier for people to stay informed and engaged.

But with all this progress also comes the rise of challenges such as cyberbullying, online privacy concerns, and fake news. These issues are not only affecting individuals but also society as a whole. It’s important for us to be mindful of the impact of technology on our society and to use it responsibly.

Moreover, as we continue to make strides towards a more inclusive and technologically advanced society, we must also address ongoing issues such as social inequality, poverty, and climate change. These are complex problems that require collective action and a commitment to creating a better world for future generations.

In conclusion, society today is a complex and ever-changing landscape. It’s important for us to stay informed, engaged, and open-minded in order to continue progressing towards a more diverse, inclusive, and sustainable future. Let us not forget our past while we strive towards building a better tomorrow.

Essay about Society Problems:

Society has always been an ever-changing entity, and with that comes a plethora of problems that we face as a community. These issues are not limited to one particular part of the world or group of people; they affect us all in some shape or form. From economic struggles to environmental concerns, society is faced with numerous challenges that need to be addressed.

One of the biggest problems that society faces today is economic inequality. Despite advancements in technology and medicine, there is still a stark difference between the wealthy and the poor. This leads to a wide range of issues such as limited access to education, healthcare, and employment opportunities for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Another pressing problem in society is climate change. The effects of global warming are becoming increasingly evident, with extreme weather events and rising sea levels threatening our planet. This is not just an environmental issue but also a social one as it disproportionately affects marginalized communities.

Furthermore, societal norms and expectations often lead to discrimination and injustice against certain groups of people. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination are prevalent issues that need to be addressed in order for society to progress.

In addition, the rapid pace of technological advancements has brought about its own set of problems. From cyberbullying to invasion of privacy, technology has opened up new avenues for societal issues that we must navigate and find solutions for.

It is crucial for us as a society to acknowledge and address these problems in order to create a more equitable and sustainable future. Each and every one of us has a role to play in making our world a better place for ourselves and future generations. Let’s work together towards finding solutions and creating a society where everyone can thrive.

Indian Society Essay:

Indian society is an intricate web of traditions, values and beliefs that have been passed down through generations. Despite vast regional differences and cultural diversity, there are a few common threads that bind the people together. The Indian society is deeply rooted in its rich history and heritage, which has shaped its present form.

One of the most significant aspects of Indian society is its emphasis on family and community. Indians place great value on familial relationships, and the joint family system is still prevalent in many parts of the country. In this system, several generations live together under one roof, sharing their lives and responsibilities.

Religion also plays a crucial role in Indian society. With over 80% of the population identifying as Hindus, India is often referred to as the land of spirituality. The country is home to multiple religions, and each one has its unique customs and practices that are deeply ingrained in the culture.

Another defining aspect of Indian society is its diversity. India is a melting pot of different languages, cuisines, traditions, and belief systems. This diversity not only adds to the cultural fabric but also plays a vital role in shaping the country’s economic and social landscape.

Despite its challenges, Indian society has come a long way in terms of progress and development. With a growing economy, advancements in technology, and changing mindsets, the society is constantly evolving. However, it still holds on to its roots and traditions, making it a unique blend of modernity and tradition.

Indian society may have its flaws, but it is a beautiful tapestry of cultures, religions and communities that make it truly one of a kind. So, let us celebrate this diversity and continue to cherish the values that bind us together as Indians.

We live in a society Speech:

Hello everyone!

Today, I want to talk about a topic that is very close to my heart – “We live in a Society”. As we all know, society plays an integral role in our lives. It shapes our thoughts, beliefs, and actions. We may have different cultural backgrounds, but ultimately, we are all part of the same society.

In today’s world, we are heavily influenced by society. It is often the driving force behind our decisions and actions. However, it is crucial to remember that society is not always right. It has its flaws and imperfections, just like anything else.

What makes a society strong and thriving is the unity of its people. We must work together towards a common goal – creating a better world for ourselves and future generations. We must also learn to embrace diversity and respect each other’s differences.

Living in a society means being part of a community where we have rights, but also responsibilities. We must use our voices for the greater good, stand up against injustice, and help those in need. After all, it is only when individuals come together as a collective that real change can happen.

We also must acknowledge the impact of technology and social media on our society. While it has connected us in ways we never thought possible, it has also brought about new challenges. We must use these platforms responsibly and not let them control our lives.

As students, you are the future of our society. It is your responsibility to ensure that society continues to progress and evolve in a positive direction. You have the power to make a difference, no matter how small.

>>>> Read Also: “Essay on Personality Development & its Importance “

Q: What is society in essay?

A: In an essay, society is a complex network of individuals living together, sharing common values, norms, and institutions.

Q: What is society in 100 words?

A: Society is a structured community of people who interact, coexist, and share common values, beliefs, and customs. It encompasses social, cultural, economic, and political systems that shape human behavior and relationships. Society provides the framework for individuals to collaborate, exchange ideas, and establish social order. It plays a crucial role in human development, as it influences identity, roles, and opportunities.

The dynamics of society are constantly evolving, influenced by historical events, technological advancements, and cultural changes. A functional and harmonious society is essential for the well-being and progress of its members.

Q: What is the importance of a society?

A: The importance of society lies in providing a structured environment for individuals to live, collaborate, and thrive together, facilitating cooperation, shared resources, cultural development, and social order.

Q: What is society introduction?

A: An introduction to society typically provides a brief overview of what society is, its significance in human life, and its various components, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the topic in an essay or discussion.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

• Phone: +91 8466016171
• Whatsapp: +91 8208375580
• Email: contact@leapscholar.com

Ideal Society IELTS Essay: Sample Opinions & Solutions for Practice

• Updated On December 14, 2023
• Published In IELTS Preparation 💻

International English Language Testing System is a widely accepted English proficiency test taken by students intending to pursue foreign education or employment abroad. The test assesses the candidate’s ability to communicate in English and is based on four parameters: reading, writing, speaking and listening. 

Table of Contents

The Writing Task consists of two tasks- 1 and 2. In Task 2, candidates should respond to a given statement and justify their opinion with examples. One of the most common topics is the ideal society IELTS essay. Here we have compiled a detailed guide on the vocabulary to be used, sample questions and answers that can be followed, and the kind of approach for Writing Task 2. Candidates must utilise this for their preparation. 

Crack IELTS in 4 Weeks! IELTS 8 Band Guarantee

Ace IELTS with Band Guarantee. Get access to Live Classes & 100+ Mock Test. Join Free IELTS Masterclass Now!

Vocabulary for Writing Task 2 

Linking words is an essential grammatical tool that helps construct a sentence and connects part of a text. Moreover, linkers can also help candidates put forth their opinion. In addition, they are beneficial for other reasons. They are underlined below for easier understanding:

• The paragraph has a smooth transition 
• Ideas are flowing in a logical manner 
• Help in expressing opinion or purpose
• They help in constructing a suitable conclusion
• Linkers help explain a point in-depth. Furthermore, they can be used to describe examples. 

However, candidates must know that linking words cannot be used everywhere. They must come naturally in a sentence, or the composition of the sentence might sound awkward. Moreover, examiners evaluate the ideal society IELTS essay of students by assessing the accuracy, range, and usage of linkers. However, linkers belong to different categories, and it is vital to understand when and where they can be used. This can help score well in the Writing Task 2: 

• To add information
• To provide examples
• Highlighting key points 
• Consequences and results
• Reasons and causes 
• Contrasts 

To add information  Candidates must support their main points in the essay. While writing an ideal society IELTS essay, it is essential to let the examiner know that additional information is coming up. They can do so with the help of linkers such as:

• Furthermore
• Additionally
• In addition
• Not only…but also

Listing Lists are often used to present pointers in a paragraph sequentially. They can help the essay look more appealing. Here are a few connectors that one can use to list their paragraph:

• Finally, lastly, or last but not the least

To provide examples Examples are often used to substantiate ideas. Candidates must make sure to use a range of linking words to support their examples:

• For instance
• For example
• To cite an example
• To illustrate
• In other words

Highlighting key points  Candidates must stress their main pointers in an ideal society IELTS essay. They can do so with the help of these connectors:

• Specifically
• In particular
• Particularly

Consequences and results When one needs to explain the consequence of something, one can use these connectors:

• As a result
• Consequently
• For this reason

Causes and reasons It is essential always to provide reasons for a statement that is put forward. One can do so with these linking words:

Contrasts  Often in Writing Task 2, one may need to provide opposing ideas. However, it is most pertinent in the discussion essays, where one needs to provide in-depth details. The below-mentioned linking words will help candidates show the examiner when they are going to introduce an opposing pointer:

• Nevertheless
• On the other hand
• Even though

Conclusion An ideal society IELTS essay must have a concluding sentence. These connectors can be the most useful then:

• To conclude
• In conclusion

Providing opinion Candidates must put forward their opinion comprehensively. Using the following linkers can help one address their opinion in a better way:

• In my opinion
• I agree/concur

How to Approach Writing Task 2? 

Candidates can score well in Writing Task 2 if they plan out their essay and structure it. However, this requires practice. Furthermore, they should follow the below-mentioned pointers while approaching

Writing Task 2:  Understand the question  First and foremost, it is crucial to understand what type of question it is and what it is asking. Moreover, candidates must distinguish whether the essay is an opinion, discussion, double questions or advantages and disadvantages.  

Structure the essay One must structure the essay by dividing it into the introduction, main body paragraphs 1 and 2, and conclusion. 

• Introduction
• Main body paragraph 1 

In the opening paragraph, candidates should just paraphrase the question in order to start interacting with it. Candidates must begin with a topic sentence and then elaborate on it. However, one must substantiate it with examples. This should have the main idea discussed in the introduction. 

• Main body paragraph 2 

In this paragraph, candidates must substantiate the points raised in the previous paragraph. They can also use this section to give examples or add new points that will strengthen their core argument.

• Conclusion 

In conclusion, they must summarise their main points and finish their essay on a clear, concise note. 

Write in your own words  It is one of the essential skills that candidates must hone as it is applicable for reading and writing. This will help boost one’s band score. In addition, they must use various synonyms while paraphrasing. Besides, candidates must also paraphrase the question in the introduction and write the ideal society IELTS essay in their own words. They are advised to not resort to writing memorised essays. 

Begin with an opening statement  Candidates must begin their essay with an opening statement that describes what they might talk about in a few words. Of course, it needs to be specific. 

State your opinion  One must clearly state their opinion while answering different parts of the task. However, one must highlight their position in their introduction. 

Crack IELTS Exam in first attempt

Attend Leap’s free masterclass to get tips, tricks and advance strategies to crack IELTS exam in first attempt

Sample Question with Answers for Ideal Society Topic

Candidates must practise sample questions and answers for ideal society IELTS essay as this will give them a stronghold over the writing and vocabulary. Moreover, this will help them attempt the essay with ease and improve their overall band score. They are underlined below for easier understanding: 

T hroughout history, people have dreamt of living in a perfect society. However, there is still no agreement about what a perfect society would be like. Why do people want to build a perfect society in the modern world? What can people do to help create an ideal society? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.  Write at least 250 words.

In the contemporary era, everyone wants to live a comfortable and holistically fulfilling life. People have wanted to create a fairer, egalitarian society from time immemorial. There is, however, no unanimity on what an ideal society might look like. The major reasons behind this yearning for a utopia are improved standards of living and socioeconomic equality. In an ideal civilization where the inhabitants help each other, accept and respect different values and cultures, prosperity follows, thus, automatically leading to a better quality of life. For instance, most developed countries like Europe and USA have laws that guarantee and safeguard the safety and equality of all their citizens regardless of colour, caste or gender. Additionally, in such a community where everyone is allowed to work and contribute, followed by an equal distribution of wealth, the class difference is eliminated leading to an improvement in everyone’s standard of living.  Democracy, education and nonviolence are fundamental tenets of a perfect society and people can play a crucial role in shaping up such a society by teaching the value of these to the youth. Since today’s children are tomorrow’s future, they must learn to accept that different people can follow a different religion or culture and respect that. It is not possible to change each individual that exists; however, parents can play their part in providing exemplary education by inculcating the values of acceptance and respect. Moreover, people must uphold and support the principles of democracy. The elected government must ensure that everyone has fundamental human rights and the citizens in return must respect their duties such as paying taxes. While most people do this, numerous locals practice tax evasion which can hinder the possibility of having a better place to live by having free education, health care services, etc.  In conclusion, people have always longed to reside in a reliable society that provides safety and treats each person equally. The government and people must work together by implementing and following rules and regulations to attain the same.

Points to Remember:

While writing an ideal society IELTS essay, candidates must ask themselves questions such as: 

• What was the society like in the past? 
• What developments have taken place? 
• What is a community? 
• Can society be improved? 

For instance, the question may ask, “People often think of establishing an ideal society, but most of the time, this does not happen. What is your opinion of an ideal society, and how can it be created?”.  Here, candidates must put forth their opinion of: 

• What an ideal society is and reiterated in the introduction 
• Candidates’ opinion of a perfect society and what it is like 
• What makes an ideal society? 
• Ways to create it 
• In conclusion, stating if this can be achieved in reality 

Tips to Score Well in Writing Task 2 

To ace in Writing Task 2, we have underlined a list of tips that candidates can implement to attain a good score. Nevertheless, the vocabulary usage mentioned above is essential, but that is not all.  They must follow these tips ardently: 

• Proper time management 
• Be conversant with the marking criterion. 
• Remember to paraphrase the questions. 
• Plan out the essay  
• Explain the points in-depth
• Read, listen and converse in English 
• Learn new words
• Revise and check for spelling errors or grammatical mistakes 

To crack IELTS, candidates must follow a systematic approach towards Writing Task 2. They must be conversant in vocabulary as well. Moreover, as writing is one of the most challenging sections in IELTS, candidates require regular and rigorous practice to achieve a firm grip over it. Apart from that, following the tips mentioned ardently will help tackle this section. Furthermore, aspiring students planning their study abroad program may require additional funding, as immigration to a foreign country is often costly. To fund your studies in a hassle-free way, you can approach Leap Scholars. Our financial products are crafted for ambitious students who chase the best international education. 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. how can i improve my score in writing task 2 .

Ans: Students who aspire to achieve a higher band score in ideal society IELTS essay must use a wide range of vocabulary for the topic, have proper time management as well as should be aware of the language and tonality of their essays

2. What are the common topics in IELTS Writing Task 2?

Ans: Some of the most common topics in IELTS writing task 2 are: Technology, food, family, economics, crime & punishment and business & money. 

3. How can I prepare well for Writing Task 2? 

Ans: The most common problem candidates face while attempting the writing task 2 is a lack of clear strategy. To avoid that, they should practise sample and previous year questions to boost their confidence. They can also use other resources available both online and offline to ensure they get their desired band score.

Know more about IELTS

Get free speaking practice samples.

• Describe a Skill That you can teach other people
• Describe a Place you Visited Where the Air was Polluted
• Describe a Famous Person that you are Interested in
• Describe a Course That You Want to Learn
• Describe a Person who Solved a Problem in Smart Way
• Describe a Prize That You Received
• Describe a Volunteering Experience You Have Had
• Describe a Piece of Good News
• Describe Something you Taught to Your Friend
• Talk About an Interesting Old Person you Met Recently
• Describe a Dinner you Really Enjoyed
• Describe a Story or Novel That Was Interesting to You
• Describe a Time When you Shared Something with Others
• Describe a Toy you Liked in Childhood
• Describe an Interesting Neighbour
• Describe a Competition You Would Like to Take Part In
• Describe an interesting activity that you remember enjoying most in your Primary School
• Describe Your Childhood Friend
• Describe an Object You Find Particularly Beautiful
• Describe a Place Where you are Able to Relax
• Describe a person you know who likes to talk a lot
• Describe a place where you would like to go to relax
• Describe a period when you were busy
• Describe a long-term goal you would like to achieve
• Describe a situation when you helped someone
• Describe a job you would not like to do in the future
• Describe a time when you used a map
• Describe a skill that you learned in your childhood
• Describe an unusual holiday you had
• Describe an exciting activity that you experienced with someone else
• Describe a person who is good at making people feel welcome in his/her home
• Describe A Time You Successfully Did Something Difficult
• Describe Something in Your Country That You Are Interested In
• Describe a Beautiful City
• Describe something you do regularly that helps you work and study better
• Describe a photo that you took and are proud of
• Describe a party that you enjoyed
• Describe a useful object in your home that you can’t live without
• Describe a good advertisement that you think is useful
• Describe an occasion when someone or something made noise
• Describe a sportsperson that you admire
• Describe something that you picked up that was thrown by someone else
• Describe a time that something changed your life in good ways
• Describe a successful person who you once studied or worked with

Get Free Reading Practice Samples

• William henry perkin reading answers
• Why zoos are good reading answers
• Bioluminescence reading answers
• Classifying societies reading answers
• Artificial artists reading answers
• Jargon reading answers
• The Origins of Laughter Reading Answers
• The Innovation of Grocery Stores Reading Answers
• All About the Otter Reading Answers
• The Triune Brain Reading Answers
• Saving the Soil Reading Answers
• Trans Fatty Acids Reading Answers
• A Disaster of Titanic Proportions Reading Answers
• Why Companies Should Welcome Disorder Reading Answers
• Book Review Reading Answers
• Tea Times Reading Answers
• Why are Finland's Schools Successful Reading Answers
• Intelligence and Giftedness Reading Answers
• Animal Minds Parrot Alex Reading Answers
• Crop Growing Skyscrapers Reading Answers
• Secrets of the Swarm Reading Answers
• Walking with Dinosaurs Reading Answers
• The Development of Travel Under the Ocean Reading Answers
• What's so Funny Reading Answers
• The Culture of Chimpanzee Reading Answers
• Clutter Bugs Beware Reading Answer
• Stepwells Reading Answers
• Glaciers Reading Answers

Get Free Writing Practice Samples

• Advantages and Disadvantages Essay with Sample Answers
• Agree and Disagree Essay with Sample Answers
• Problem Solution Essay Topic with Sample Answers
• Every year several languages die out
• Positive or Negative Development Essay with Sample Answers
• Honesty is the best policy essay
• Online shopping essay
• Environment essay topics
• Prevention is better than cure essay

Get Free Listening Practice Samples

• Family excursions listening answers
• Public library listening answers
• Hiring a public room listening answers
• Notes on social programme listening answers
• Accommodation request form listening answers
• Transport survey listening answers
• Mic house agency repairs listening answers
• Holiday rentals listening answer
• Job enquiry listening answers
• Homestay application listening answers
• Library information listening answers
• Free activities in the burnham area listening answers

IELTS Important Information

• IELTS Exam Date
• IELTS Exam Fee
• IELTS Modules
• IELTS Speaking Practice Test
• IELTS Writing Practice Test
• IELTS Reading Practice Test
• IELTS Listening Practice Test
• IELTS Test Centres
• IELTS Results
• Types of IELTS
• IELTS Pattern
• IELTS Exam Eligibilty
• IELTS Slot Booking
• IELTS Band Score
• IELTS Registration
• IELTS Books
• IELTS Preparation
• IELTS Practice Test
• IELTS Speaking Cue Card
• IELTS Speaking Part 1
• IELTS Writing Task 1
• IELTS Writing Task 2
• Task 1 Pie Chart
• Task 1 Table Chart
• Task 1 Bar Graph
• Task 1 Line Graph
• Task 1 Diagram
• IELTS Computer Based Test
• IELTS Paper Based Test
• IELTS One Skill Retake
• IELTS for UKVI
• IELTS Vocabulary

IELTS Test Centre and Dates in India

• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Hyderabad
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Bangalore
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Chennai
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Amritsar
• IELTS Centre and Dates in Ludhiana
• IELTS Test Centre and Dates in Mumbai
• IELTS Test Centres and Dates in Ahmedabad
• IELTS Centre and Dates in Delhi
• IELTS Test Centres and Dates in Chandigarh
• IELTS Center and Dates in Pune

Manisha Angre

Experienced IELTS prep trainer and education management industry veteran. Specializes in public speaking, international education, market research, mentoring, and management.

Related Posts

A Guide on Most Common English Words Used in Daily Life

Top IELTS Tips and Tricks For Best IELTS Scores 2024

60+ IELTS Essay Topics 2024: IELTS Writing Task 2 Samples & Tips

Trending now.

Essays About the Contemporary World: Top 5 Examples

We live in a very different world from the one our parents lived in; if you are writing essays about the contemporary world, you can start by reading essay examples.

The contemporary world refers to the circumstances and ideas of our current time. From costly conflicts to tremendous political developments to a global pandemic, it is safe to say that the 21st century has been quite chaotic. Recent events have put various issues including bodily autonomy, climate change, and territorial sovereignty, at the forefront of the global discussion.

A good understanding of the contemporary world helps us become more conscious, responsible citizens, no matter what country we are from. Therefore, many schools have included subjects such as “the contemporary world” or “contemporary issues” in their curricula. 

If you wish to write essays about the contemporary world, here are five essay examples to help you. 

You might also be interested in these essays about engineering and essays about cooperation .

1. Our Future Is Now by Francesca Minicozzi

2. what it may be like after the chaos by kassidy pratt, 3. does social media actually reflect reality by kalev leetaru.

• 4.  Importance of English by Terry Walton

5. The Meaning of Life in Modern Society (Author Unknown)

Top prompts on essays about the contemporary world, 1. the effects of technology, 2. why you should keep up with current events, 3. college education: is it essential, 4. politics in the contemporary world, 5. modern contemporary issues.

“Our globe is in dire need of help, and the coronavirus reminds the world of what it means to work together. This pandemic marks a turning point in global efforts to slow down climate change. The methods we enact towards not only stopping the spread of the virus, but slowing down climate change, will ultimately depict how humanity will arise once this pandemic is suppressed. The future of our home planet lies in how we treat it right now.”

Minicozzi discusses the differences in the U.K.’s and her native U.S.’s approaches to one of today’s greatest issues: climate change. The U.K. makes consistent efforts to reduce pollution, while the U.S., led by President Donald Trump, treats the issue with little to no regard. She laments her homeland’s inaction and concludes her essay with suggestions for Americans to help fight climate change in their way. 

“College began, in-person classes were allowed, but with half the students, all social distanced, wearing a mask at all times. Wearing a mask became natural, where leaving without one felt like I was leaving without my phone. It is our normal for now, and it has worked to slow the spread. With the vaccines beginning to roll out, we all hope that soon things will go back to the way

we remember them a year ago before the pandemic began.”

Pratt reflects on her school life throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in this short essay. She recalls the early days of class suspension, the lockdowns, and the social distancing and mask guidelines. She understands why it has to be this way but remains hopeful that things will return as they once were. 

You might be interested in these essays about cheating .

“While a tweet by Bieber to his tens of millions of followers will no doubt be widely read, it is unlikely that his musings on the Syrian peace process will suddenly sway the warring factions and yield overnight peace. In fact, this is a common limitation of many social analyses: the lack of connection between social reality and physical reality. A person who is highly influential in the conversation on Twitter around a particular topic may or may not yield any influence in the real world on that topic.”

Leetaru criticizes the perception that social media gives users that what they see is an accurate representation of contemporary worldviews. However, this is not the case, as the content that social media shows you are based on your interactions with other content, and specific demographics dominate these platforms. As a result, people should be more aware that not everything they read on social media is accurate. 

4.   Importance of English by Terry Walton

“We can use English to develop ourselves culturally and materially so that we can compete with the best side in the world of mind and matter. We can say that English language is our window to the world. One of advantage is that it is the world most used business and political language. Those who are still unaware about the importance of English. They should start learning English as a time come when everything would be understood spoken and written in English.”

According to author Terry Walton, proficiency in the English language is vital in today’s world. He discusses its status as a lingua franca used by people worldwide. He also lists some of the ways English is used today, such as in business, science and technology, and education. 

“The socialites have ensured the meaning of life is to push their followers beyond their healthy lives by making them feel that they are only worthy of keeping tabs on the next big thing that they are engaging. These socialites have ensured that life has been reduced to the detrimental appraisal of egos. They have guaranteed that the experience of social media is the only life worth living in the modern society.”

This essay describes the idea in contemporary culture that prioritizes social media image over well-being. People have become so obsessed with monitoring likes and follow that their lives revolve around social media. We seldom genuinely know a person based on their online presence. The meaning of life is reduced to the idea of a “good” life rather than the true reality. 

Technology is everywhere in our life –  in social media, internet services, and artificial intelligence. How do you think technology affects the world today, and how will it affect the future? If this topic seems too broad, you can focus on technology in one particular sector, such as education or medicine. Describe the common technologies used in everyday life, and discuss the benefits and disadvantages of relying on these technologies.

In your essay, you can write about the importance of being aware of whatever is happening in the contemporary world. Discuss lessons you can learn from current events and the advantages of being more conscious or knowledgeable in day-to-day life.

In the 21st century, we have heard many success stories of people who dropped out or did not attend college. In addition, more and more job opportunities no longer require a college degree. Decide whether or not a college education is still necessary in the contemporary world and discuss why. Also include context, such as reasons why people do not attend college.

Many countries have undergone drastic political changes, from coups d’état to wars to groundbreaking elections. In your essay, write about one important political event, global or in your home country, in the contemporary world. Provide context by giving the causes and effects of your chosen event. 

From vaccination to the racial justice movement to gun control. For your essay, you can pick a topic and explain your stance on it. Provide a defensible argument, and include ample evidence such as statistics, research, and news articles. 

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

If you’d like to learn more, check out our guide on how to write an argumentative essay .

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

View all posts

1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

What is Philosophy?

Author: Thomas Metcalf Category: Metaphilosophy Word count: 1000

Listen here , video below

If you’ve ever wondered whether God exists, whether life has purpose, whether beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what makes actions right or wrong, or whether a law is fair or just, then you’ve thought about philosophy. And these are just a few philosophical topics.

But what is philosophy? The question is itself a philosophical question. This essay surveys some answers.

1. Defining Philosophy

The most general definition of philosophy is that it is the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and knowledge. [1] Indeed, the word itself means ‘love of wisdom’ in Greek.

Whenever people think about deep, fundamental questions concerning the nature of the universe and ourselves, the limits of human knowledge, their values and the meaning of life, they are thinking about philosophy. Philosophical thinking is found in all parts of the world, present, and past. [2]

In the academic world, philosophy distinguishes a certain area of study from all other areas, such as the sciences and other humanities. Philosophers typically consider questions that are, in some sense, broader and/or more fundamental than other inquirers’ questions: [3] e.g., physicists ask what caused some event; philosophers ask whether causation even exists ; historians study figures who fought for justice; philosophers ask what justice is or whether their causes were in fact just; economists study the allocation of capital; philosophers debate the ethical merits of capital ism .

When a topic becomes amenable to rigorous, empirical study, it tends to be “outsourced” to its own field, and not described in the present day as “philosophy” anymore: e.g., the natural sciences were once called “natural philosophy,” but we don’t now just think about whether matter is composed of atoms or infinitely divisible: we use scientific experiments. [4] And most of the different doctoral degrees are called “Doctor of Philosophy” even when they’re in sociology or chemistry.

Philosophical questions can’t be straightforwardly investigated through purely empirical means: [5] e.g., try to imagine a lab experiment testing whether societies should privilege equality over freedom—not whether people believe we should, but whether we actually should . What does moral importance look like in a microscope?

The main method of academic philosophy is to construct and evaluate arguments (i.e., reasons intended to justify some conclusion). Such conclusions might be that some theory is true or false or might be about the correct analysis or definition of some concept. These arguments generally have at least some conceptual, intellectual, or a priori , i.e., non-empirical, content. And philosophers often incorporate relevant scientific knowledge as premises in arguments. [6]

2. Branches of Philosophy

Philosophy deals with fundamental questions. But which questions, specifically, is philosophy about? Here’s a standard categorization: [7]

Logic : Logicians study good and bad arguments and reasoning, and they study formal, symbolic languages intended to express propositions, sentences, or arguments. [8]

Metaphysics : Metaphysicians study what sorts of entities exist, what the world and its constituents are made of, and how objects or events might cause or explain each other. [9]

Epistemology : Epistemologists study knowledge, evidence, and justified belief. An epistemologist might study whether we can trust our senses and whether science is trustworthy. [10]

Values : In value theory, philosophers study morality, politics, and art, among other topics. For example: What makes wrong actions wrong? How do we identify good people and good lives? What makes a society just or unjust? [11]

There are many sub-branches within these fields. Many other fields— the sciences, art, literature, and religion—have a “philosophy of” attached to them: e.g., philosophers of science might help interpret quantum mechanics; philosophers of religion often consider arguments about the existence of God. [12]

There are also unique and important philosophical discussions about certain populations or communities, such as feminist philosophy and Africana philosophy. [13] People from all cultures contribute to philosophy, more than are typically discussed in Western philosophy courses. [14] Western academic philosophy has often neglected voices from non-Western cultures, and women’s voices. [15]

Philosophers sometimes import tools, knowledge, and language from other fields, such as using the formal tools of statistics in epistemology and the insights from special relativity in the philosophy of time. [16] When your project is understanding all of existence [17] in the broadest and most fundamental way, you need all the help you can get.

3. The Point(s) of Philosophy

Academic philosophy doesn’t present a body of consensus knowledge the way chemistry and physics do. [18] Do philosophical questions have correct answers? Does philosophical progress exist? Does philosophy get closer to the truth over time? [19] These are all matters of philosophical debate. [20] And philosophical debates are rarely resolved with certainty.

So what’s the point? Here are some answers: [21]

• To discover truth, wherever and whatever it is. [22]
• To learn how to better live our lives. [23]
• To understand our own views, including their strengths and weaknesses.
• To examine our own lives and be more conscious of our choices and their implications.
• To learn how to better think and reason. Recall: The main method of philosophy is to present and examine arguments. [24]

And arguably, all of us are already naturally interested in at least some philosophical questions. Many people find that philosophy is a lot of fun. And it’s difficult to dispute that it is very important to find the answers to philosophical questions, if the answers exist. It’s important to know, for instance, that slavery is wrong and whether scientific consensus is generally trustworthy. So as long as it’s at least possible to find the answers to these questions, we should try.

Also, there are strong correlations between studying philosophy and high achievement in other academic areas, such as GRE scores and professional-school admission. [25]

4. Conclusion

We’ve contrasted philosophy with other fields. We’ve looked at the branches of philosophy. And we’ve looked at the purposes or benefits of philosophy. But what is philosophy, really? Given everything we’ve said so far, we can provide at least a partial definition of ‘philosophy’ as follows:

A largely (but not exclusively) non-empirical inquiry that attempts to identify and answer fundamental questions about the world, including about what’s valuable and disvaluable.

Is this a good definition? That’s a philosophical question too.

Acknowledgments

This entry has benefited enormously from the comments and suggestions of Shane Gronholz, Chelsea Haramia, Dan Lowe, and Nathan Nobis.

[1] Berkeley 2003 [1710]: 5; Blackburn 1999: 1.

[2] Some of the oldest formal philosophy writing we have is attributed to a group of ancient Greek philosophers called the ‘Pre-Socratics,’ because they wrote before Socrates and Plato did (cf. Curd 2019). The earliest Upanishads may go back even further (Olivelle 1998: 4 ff.).

[3] This is similar to Encyclopaedia Britannica’s (n.d.) definition: “the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience.”

[4] See e.g., Berryman 2020 on ancient atomism.

[5] Metcalf 2018.

[6] Most philosophers believe that the sciences provide knowledge relevant to traditional philosophical issues. That is, most philosophers endorse the meta-philosophy of ‘naturalism,’ according to which philosophy should be informed by the natural sciences. The usual justification for naturalism is based on the track-record of the natural sciences, including their tending toward consensus. See Bourget and Chalmers 2014: 476; Metcalf 2018; and Papineau 2019. For examples of the relevance of science to traditional philosophical issues, see Ingram and Tallent (2019: § 8); Wilce 2019; and Knobe and Nichols 2019. In these examples, special relativity may be relevant to philosophy of time; quantum mechanics may be relevant to philosophy of logic; and social science may be relevant to ethics.

[7] This is a version of common anthologies’ categorizations. See e.g., Blackburn 1999: vii and Rosen et al. 2015.

[8] Logicians can also study logics about obligation (McNamara 2019), about necessity and possibility (Garson 2019), and whether useful logics can contain sentences that are both true and false simultaneously (Priest et al. 2019).

[9] Van Inwagen and Sullivan 2019.

[10] Steup 2019; Metcalf 2020.

[11] Value theorists also study specific topics, such as our obligations to animals (Gruen 2019) and whether governments can be legitimate (Peter 2019). See also Haramia 2018 (the entry on applied ethics in 1000-Word Philosophy ) for an overview of applied ethics.

[12] Indeed, one area where people see many connections is with religion. So what’s the difference between philosophy and religion? This is not an easy question to answer, but most religious practice proceeds from a shared starting-point consensus body of putative knowledge, and these beliefs are almost all about God or gods, the afterlife, and how to live a pious life. In contrast, in philosophy, everything is constantly open to question, and the topics are much broader than gods and the afterlife.

[13] See e.g., McAfee 2019 and Outlaw 2019.

[14] Van Norden 2017.

[15] See e.g., Van Norden (op. cit.) and Buxton and Whiting 2020.

[16] Indeed, one popular metaphilosophical view is methodological naturalism about philosophy, according to which philosophy should use the methods of the natural sciences. Some naturalists go so far as to say that traditional philosophical methods should be replaced by scientific methods. See Metcalf 2018 and Papineau 2019 for more discussion. As for tools and knowledge from other fields, statistical and probabilistic analysis is common in many areas of philosophy (see, e.g., Weisberg 2019) and special relativity may tell us something important about the philosophy of time (Ingram and Tallant 2019).

[17] And maybe even the objects that don’t exist; see Reicher 2019.

[18] Bourget and Chalmers 2014. Arguably, there is consensus about many philosophical questions, but we don’t consider those questions in academic philosophy, at least not anymore. For example, almost everyone knows that slavery is wrong and that women should be allowed to vote if anyone is. See also Gutting 2009 for a general survey of some apparent philosophical discoveries.

[19] Cf. Chalmers 2015.

[20] See, e.g., Miller 2019.

[21] See Bierce 2008; de Montaigne 1987: 204; Russell 2010: 20 for some other statements about the nature or purpose of philosophy.

[22] Bierce 2008.

[23] De Montaigne 1987: 204.

[24] See e.g., Groarke 2019.

[25] Daily Nous n.d. However, we do not yet know what proportion of this is a ‘selection effect’—people who are already smart major in philosophy—and how much of this is a ‘treatment effect,’ i.e., majoring in philosophy actually makes you smarter.

Berkeley, George. 2003 [1710]. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge . Mineola, NY: Dover Philosophical Classics.

Berryman, Sylvia. 2019. “Ancient Atomism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.   

Bierce, Ambrose. 2008. “The Devil’s Dictionary.” In Project Gutenberg (ed.), Project Gutenberg.

Blackburn, Simon. 1999. Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy . Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bourget, David and David J. Chalmers. 2014. “What Do Philosophers Believe?” Philosophical Studies 170(3): 465-500.

Buxton, Rebecca and Lisa Whiting. 2020. The Philosopher Queens: The Lives and Legacies of Philosophy’s Unsung Women. London, UK: Unbound Publishers.

Chalmers, David J. 2015. “Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?” Philosophy 90(1): 3-31.

Curd, Patricia. 2019. “Presocratic Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Daily Nous. n.d. “Value of Philosophy.”

De Montaigne, Michel. 1987. Complete Essays . Tr. M. A. Screech. London, UK: Penguin Books.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. N.d. “Philosophy.” In The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (eds.), Encyclopaedia Britannica , Online Edition.

Garson, James. 2019. “Modal Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Groarke, Leo. 2019. “Informal Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

Gruen, Lori. 2019. “The Moral Status of Animals.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Gutting, Gary. 2009. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Ingram, David and Jonathan Tallant. 2019. “Presentism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Knobe, Joshua and Shaun Nichols. 2019. “Experimental Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

Markosian, Ned. 2019. “Time.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

McAfee, Noëlle. 2019. “Feminist Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition.

McNamara, Paul. 2019. “Deontic Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Miller, Alexander. 2019. “Realism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Olivelle, Patrick (tr. and ed.). 1998. The Early Upaniṣads: Annotated Text and Translation . New York, NY and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Outlaw, Lucius T. Jr. 2019. “Africana Philosophy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Papineau, David. 2019. “Naturalism.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Peter, Fabienne. 2019. “Political Legitimacy.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Priest, Graham et al. 2019. “Paraconsistent Logic.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Reicher, Maria. 2019. “Nonexistent Objects.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Rosen, Gideon et al. 2015. The Norton Introduction to Philosophy , Second Edition. New York, NY and London, UK: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Russell, Bertrand. 2010. The Philosophy of Logical Atomism . Oxford, UK: Routledge Classics.

Sartwell, Crispin. 2019. “Beauty.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Steup, Matthias. 2019. “Epistemology.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Van Inwagen, Peter and Meghan Sullivan. 2019. “Metaphysics.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Van Norden, Bryan W. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto . New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Weisberg, Jonathan. 2019. “Formal Epistemology.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Wilce, Alexander. 2019. “Quantum Logic and Probability Theory.” In E. N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Winter 2019 Edition.

Related Essays

Critical Thinking: What is it to be a Critical Thinker?  by Carolina Flores

Philosophy as a Way of Life  by Christine Darr

Applied Ethics by Chelsea Haramia

Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge by Thomas Metcalf

Philosophy and its Contrast with Science by Thomas Metcalf

Philosophical Inquiry in Childhood  by Jana Mohr Lone

All Essays at 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology  

PDF Download

Download this essay in PDF.

Audio and Video

Listen here

Translation

About the author.

Tom Metcalf is an associate professor at Spring Hill College in Mobile, AL. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He specializes in ethics, metaethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Tom has two cats whose names are Hesperus and Phosphorus. http://shc.academia.edu/ThomasMetcalf  

Follow 1000-Word Philosophy on Facebook , Twitter and subscribe to receive email notifications of new essays at 1000WordPhilosophy.com

Share this:, 9 thoughts on “ what is philosophy ”.

• Pingback: Felsefe Nedir – Thomas Metcalf – Veritas Analitik Felsefe Dergisi
• Pingback: Artificial Intelligence: The Possibility of Artificial Minds – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: 철학이란 무엇인가? – Thomas Metcalf - Doing Philosophy
• Pingback: Philosophy of Color – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: Philosophy as a Way of Life – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: Modal Logic: Axioms and Systems for Alethic Modal Logic – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science – 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology
• Pingback: Online Philosophy Resources Weekly Update - Daily Nous

Comments are closed.

Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society Essay

Globalization is what characterizes the state of the modern world. This process implies an almost instantaneous logistical and information exchange throughout the planet. Mankind has never been as united in its history as it is today. Although globalization accelerates the development of the human species and is its consequence, it is a complex process to which one must adapt, creating some severe problems and difficulties.

Due to the worldwide network, people almost all over the planet are in a single information space, which favorably affects the mutual understanding. Today’s exchange of information has reached such an impressive speed that innovations can spread across the planet almost instantly (Martin et al., 2018). Globalization affected me directly as it allows to be closer to my relatives and friends, which is significant in our vast country. Moreover, we can ask each other for help and cheer each other up if we have problems.

Secondly, globalization in every way helps me in the studies. I do not think I have ever had a better chance to get a decent education than in the age of globalization. If I had lived thirty years ago, I would not have had the opportunity to participate in international educational programs and competitions, do an internship abroad using the Internet, to ask my colleague from another country for help. Even though globalization entails several negative consequences, such as logistical crises, like what happened with Evergreen, or the risks of the spread of pandemics, such as COVID-19, for me, the positive aspects of this phenomenon outweigh.

In the future, I envision further mutual integration of communities across the planet. The increased interdependence of countries significantly complicates the conduct of military conflicts, which is a benefit (Martin et al., 2018). With the growth of the global economy, transnational corporations will gain more and more influence, which at some point can exceed even the power of national governments and lead to dangerous consequences.

Globalization is a complex phenomenon that entails many apparent advantages and disadvantages. The benefits of globalization include economic growth, cultural and information exchange, and global well-being. At the same time, the penalties are the growth of transnational corporations’ influence and epidemical and logistical risks. However, all the same, globalization should be considered a boon for humanity since all the benefits far outweigh all the costs.

Martin, R., Tyler, P., Storper, M., Evenhuis, E., & Glasmeier, A. (2018). Globalization at a critical conjuncture? Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society , 11 (1), 3-16. Web.

• Two cheers for Raspberries
• Ethics of Using Animals in Biological Research
• Reflection on Virtual Field Trip: The British Museum and the Women of NASA
• Discussion: Bankruptcy of Detroit
• Discussion: Modern Company Globalization
• Globalization: The Pros and Cons
• The Role of Globalization in Business
• Researching of Urban Imaginaries
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, May 25). Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-regions-economy-and-society/

"Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society." IvyPanda , 25 May 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-regions-economy-and-society/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society'. 25 May.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society." May 25, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-regions-economy-and-society/.

1. IvyPanda . "Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society." May 25, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-regions-economy-and-society/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Globalization: Regions, Economy and Society." May 25, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/globalization-regions-economy-and-society/.

Dover middle school students nominate their heroes, tell them why in their own words

D over Area Middle School students invited their heroes to school on May 22 to hear, in their own words, why they were chosen. Parents, teachers, coaches and soldiers were among those chosen by students.

Students wrote the essays ahead of time and then invited their heroes to the assembly where students sat at long tables with their heroes to hear why they were chosen.

"My hero is Miguel Rosado, his friends and family call him Mikey. He is my dad," Mikalyn Rosado read to her father, "He changed his life for me and that is why he is my hero..."

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

Rosado, wearing an XPO logistics company work shirt and cap, said he was a little bit choked up by the nomination, unaware that his daughter had named him her hero before he had arrived to meet her at school.

Several essays were chosen to read in front of the whole room.

Brody Wise took to the podium to read his nomination of his father Andrew Wise, "Have you ever heard of a hero without a cape? Well I have one… He might have some mental scars from serving, but there isn’t anything in the world that I would be grateful for more than him," citing his service to the Marine Corps. “He put his life on the line to give us the freedom of walking the earth.” 

Andrew Wise served with the Marines between 2000-2004 during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Brody goes on to tell the audience how his father has “influenced my life to make me a clean and trustworthy person and make me stronger so when it comes time for me to face.”

Andrew Wise gave his son a strong hug after his reading.

Justin Rowand, a Dover middle school football coach, wore two name tags that said “Justin” because he was nominated by two different students. He sat at the end of the table with his head slightly tilted to the ceiling as he listened to what the two boys were saying on either side of him

More photos: Dover log house through the years in photos.

“He was a good impact on me and he helped me so much and made me into the young man I was today…,” Josh Alexander said, sitting to the right.

“He is a mentor to me and helps me every single day whether it comes to being better in life or being better in football,” Broden Greener said to his left.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Dover middle school students nominate their heroes, tell them why in their own words

The Pax Romana: Understanding its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond

This essay about the Pax Romana explores the period from 27 BCE to 180 CE, emphasizing its role as a golden era of peace, prosperity, and cultural integration under Roman rule. It highlights the expansion of Roman infrastructure and the sophisticated mix of military strength and diplomacy that maintained peace. The piece also addresses the social inequalities that marred this era and examines its lasting impact on law, governance, and religion, underscoring the complexities and contradictions of Roman administration and its profound influence on Western civilization.

How it works

The Pax Romana, spanning from 27 BCE to 180 CE under the guidance of Emperor Augustus to its conclusion, marked a golden era in Roman history that profoundly influenced the ancient world and left lasting legacies that echo through time. This period, characterized by remarkable stability and prosperity under Roman rule, was not just a mere cessation of warfare but a dynamic phase of cultural integration and administrative innovation.

During the Pax Romana, Rome’s infrastructure reached its zenith with the construction of extensive road networks, aqueducts, and trade corridors that linked distant parts of the empire, enhancing economic interconnectivity and cultural exchange.

This intricate infrastructure not only facilitated the booming trade across vast distances but also enabled a melting pot of ideas and cultural practices that enriched Roman society, making it a vibrant hub of cosmopolitan activity.

The peace achieved during this era was largely underpinned by the strategic prowess of the Roman military, complemented by adept diplomatic maneuvers. Rome’s approach to governance during this time involved a mix of military strength and clever diplomacy, where forging alliances and maintaining a balance of power were key. The concept of Pax Deorum, or the Peace of the Gods, also played a critical role by encouraging religious pluralism, which helped integrate various communities under the Roman fold.

However, the era was not devoid of its darker aspects. Despite the outward appearance of prosperity, social disparities were stark. The elite enjoyed lavish lifestyles, starkly contrasted by the struggles of the lower classes and slaves, who formed the backbone of the empire’s economy but lived in harsh conditions. These contradictions highlighted the complexities of Roman society, where the veneer of peace often masked underlying tensions and inequalities.

The imprint of the Pax Romana on subsequent history is undeniable. It established foundational principles of law and governance that influenced contemporary legal systems, and its role in the spread of Christianity set the stage for profound religious transformations in Europe. The cultural and architectural achievements of this time remain landmarks of human achievement.

In essence, the Pax Romana was a period of significant growth and contradiction. It showcased the heights of Roman administrative, military, and cultural capabilities, yet it also exposed the inherent challenges of managing such a vast empire. Its enduring legacy serves both as a source of inspiration and a cautionary tale, reminding us of the complex interplay between power, culture, and governance in human societies.

Cite this page

The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond. (2024, May 21). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/

"The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond." PapersOwl.com , 21 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/ [Accessed: 25 May. 2024]

"The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond." PapersOwl.com, May 21, 2024. Accessed May 25, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/

"The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond," PapersOwl.com , 21-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/. [Accessed: 25-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2024). The Pax Romana: Understanding Its Impact on Ancient Roman Society and Beyond . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/the-pax-romana-understanding-its-impact-on-ancient-roman-society-and-beyond/ [Accessed: 25-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers