Self-Reliance

This post consists of notes from an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson called "Self-Reliance". It is a wonderfully short and inspiring piece which was not only meant to provide individual encouragement to trust yourself, to have confidence in your own thoughts and ideas but also to provide encouragement to the people on the American continent at the time to develop their own intellectual life and their own cultural identity as opposed to looking entirely towards Europe for sophistication and discounting everything that is native to the Americas. (highlights are mine)

Believe your own thoughts

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius. Speak not what men but what you think. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. To often we dismiss without notice a thought because it is ours.

Don't imitate, put your own heart to work, be authentic

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 at 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. 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.

Trust thyself

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

Nature provides us with an oracle in the face and behavior of children, babies and even brutes. Their mind is whole, their eyes are as yet unconquered, and when we look into their faces we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it; Children cumber themselves never about consequences, about interests, they give an independent, genuine verdict. They must be courted, they do not court us. The adult person, on the other hand, is as it were clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter his account. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.  It is as if society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves no realities and creators, but names and customs. To be a man you have to be a nonconformist. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. "What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent 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."

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, - else it is none.

There is the man and his virtues (as opposed to the virtuous man). Often men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to extinguish my guilt 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.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. It is hard because you will always find people who think what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world 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.

If you maintain a dead church, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, - 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.
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. 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.

Don't fear nonconformity

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. It is easier to tolerate the rage of the cultivated classes as their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being 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 magnimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concern.

Your conformity and consistency explain nothing. Be it how it will, do right now.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eye of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loth to disappoint them. A foolish consistency is the hobglobin of little minds. 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 tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today.

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. The agreement in whatever variety of action is that they are honest and natural in their hour. This 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 actions will explain itself and will explain you other genuine actions. Your conformity and consistency explain nothing. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances. The force of character is cumulative. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemera. 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, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope the days of conformity and consistency are over. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him. I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity and though I would make it kind, I would make it true.

The man must be so much that he must make all circumstances indifferent.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under this feet. 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. Yet they are all his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise.

The magnetism of original action and the primary wisdom called Intuition

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee and what is the aboriginal Self on which a universal reliance maybe grounded? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. This primary wisdom can be called Intuition. 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. Thoughtless people contradict the statement of perceptions as of opinions 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. My perception of something is as much as 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. Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say I think, I am, but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. Those roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in all moments alike. But man postpones and remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedles 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. Even strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speaks the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak.

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; - 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.

Man often does not put himself in communication with the internal ocean, but 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. 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 "Come out onto 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".

Live the truth

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 ware and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. We can start by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, I have lived after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. I must be myself. 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 and aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. 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 to-day? 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 may you give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moment 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 off popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism. But the law of consciousness abides. 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. If any man consider the aspects of what is called society, he will see the need of those 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. 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. Our arts, our occupations, our religion we have not chosen but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

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; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less then 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 meannes and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, hi will not beg.

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is the 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 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.

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 virtue, and visits cities an men like a sovereign and not like an interloper or a valet.

He who travels to be amused, travels away from himself. Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that in Rome I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness but when at last I wake up in Rome, there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

The rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is a vagabond, and our society fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodes are forced to stay at home. We imitate, and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind. 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.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

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 this 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.

Do not seek yourself outside yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

From Discipline to Equinamity

A good friend of mine gave me the following sequence which explains how equanimity is reached. It all starts with discipline and flows from there, think of arrows leading from one stage to the next:

Discipline (for the sake of)
Restraint (for the sake of)
Freedom of Remorse (for the sake of)
Joy (for the sake of)
Rapture ( for the sake of)
Tranquility (for the sake of)
Pleasure (for the sake of)
Concentration (for the sake of)
Knowledge (for the sake of)
Vision of things as they come to be (for the sake of)
Disenchantment (for the sake of)
Dispassion, focus on duty and letting go (for the sake of)
Release (for the sake of)
Equanimity (total unbinding through non clinging)

The Cultivation of Virtues (or Positive Habits) and Recognizing Reality

Over the past few years it became clear to me that the basis for all intelligent investing is to cultivate three important virtues: temperance, courage and worldly wisdom.

Temperance: defined as moderation in action, thought or feeling; restraint; self control

Courage: defined as mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

Wordly Wisdom: (as defined by Charlie Munger) Learning the big ideas that underlie reality and developing certain thinking habits (mental models) derived through multidisciplinary reading and learning.

Successful investing is often not about the degree of intelligence but about the right emotional make-up and habits. Acquiring technical and specialized knowledge is not enough we also have to cultivate virtuous behavior and adapt to the true nature of the world since it will not adapt to us. We also have to recognize and accept the complexities of the world, especially the aspects we do not like. 

How to do it?

It all starts and ends with habits. Due to our evolutionary development humans in their natural state are not by default virtuous as required in today's complex environment. After accounting for our natural state at birth we are essentially a product of the habits we cultivate throughout our lives. It follows that if we want to change something we have to focus on our habits and behavioral change. Let's look at the definition of habits as found on Wikipedia:

"A habit (or wont) is a routine of behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. In the American Journal of Psychology it is defined in this way: "A habit, from the standpoint of psychology, is a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience." Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Habits are sometimes compulsory. The process by which new behaviors become automatic is habit formation. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways, but it is possible to form new habits through repetition"

In order to get a better understandings of the workings and laws of habit I turn to William James (1842-1910), one of the most influential  philosophers the United States has ever produced and associated with the philosophical schools known as pragmatism and functional psychology.

The Laws of Habit

Living creatures are bundles of habit. In the case of wild animals the usual round of daily behavior seems to be a necessity for survival implanted at birth. Those habits with an innate tendency are called instincts. For domesticated animals and humans on the other hand, habits are to a great extend the result of education and can also be called acts of reason. Habits cover a large part of our lives and usually take periods of time to be adopted.

The tendency to adopt habits slowly over time can be described by term called plasticity which is the possession of a structure weak enough to yield  to an influence but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits. Organic matter , especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with an extraordinary degree of plasticity of this sort. As such the phenomenon of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed. This also means that habits are at bottom a physical rather than a psychological principle. Like a garment, after having been worn a certain time, clings to the body better than when it was new; there has been a change in the tissue, and this change is a new habit of cohesion. Similarly, a napkin folds easier when it was already folded before or a sprained ankle is in danger of being sprained again. The overcoming of resistance is a phenomenon of habituation, in a good and a bad way. If we ascend to the nervous system, many so-called functional diseases seem to keep themselves going simply because they happen to have once begun (e.g. insomnia). Or more obvious habits such as unhealthy indulgence of passion or just complaining or irascible disposition are merely due to the simple inertia of the nervous organs, when once launched on a false career. This can be proven by the success with which a "weaning" treatment can often be applied through the closing of the chain of reflexive arcs in the nervous system which are impressions produced by one muscular contraction serving as a stimulus to provoke the next. Thankfully, there is no part of the organism of man in which the reconstructive activity is so great, during the whole period of life, as in the ganglionic substance of the brain, indicated by the enormous supply of blood which it receives. Since any formative activity is will be easiest during a period of growth and development (e.g. children learn any sport or instrument much easier than adults) the extreme regenerative ability of the brain during all periods of our lives makes it very susceptible to learning new habits. Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself, so that we find ourselves automatically be prompted to think, feel or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results. The brain, like all parts of the organism, tends to form itself in accordance with the mode in which it is habitually exercised. This tendency will be especially strong in the nervous apparatus due its extraordinary and incessant regenerative abilities.

Practical implications

1) Habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, it makes it more accurate and diminishes fatigue. But the easier a movement occurs, the slighter is the stimulus required to set it up. Man would be in a sorry plight if practice did not make perfect, nor habit economize the expense of nervous  and muscular energy. If an act became no easier after done several times, if the careful direction of consciousness were necessary to its accomplishments on each occasion, it is evident that the whole activity of a lifetime might be confined to one or two deeds - that no progress could take place in development. A man might be occupied all day in dressing and undressing himself; the attitude of his body would take all his attention and energy; the washing of his hands or the fastening of a button would be as difficult to him on each occasion as to the child on its first trial.

2) Habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our actions are performed. When we are proficient, results not only follow with minimum muscular action but also follow from a single instantaneous cue. The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot. When somebody says A,B we immediately rattle down A,B,C,D,E,F,G, .....And not only is it the right thing at the right time that we thus involuntarily do, but the wrong thing also, if it be an habitual thing. All of us have a definite routine manner of performing certain daily tasks connected with the toilet, with the opening and shutting of familiar cupboards, and the likes. We don't remember how our door swings or which socks we put on first. We cannot tell the answer but our hand never makes a mistake. Our lower centers knows the order of these movements and shows surprise if they are altered. Our higher thought center knows hardly anything about these matters as these actions are not consciously performed. When we perform this tasks our attention is usually far away.

The period below twenty years old is important for fixing personal habits, such as vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion and address. The greatest thing in education then is to make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as you can. The period between twenty and thirty is critical for the formation of intellectual and professional habits. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the infallible and effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There are three maxims to treat habits:

In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your knew beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.

Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of sting which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.

All expert opinion would agree that abrupt acquisition of the new habit is the best way, if there be a real possibility of carrying it out. We must be careful not to give the will so stiff a task as to insure its defeat at the very outset. A sharp period of suffering is the best thing to aim at. It is surprising how soon a desire will die of lack of mental enthusiasm if it be never fed. One must first learn, unmoved, looking neither to the right nor left, to walk firmly on the straight and narrow path, before one can begin to make one's self over again. He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance, there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible, and to make this possible, and to exercise us and habituate us in it is the sovereign blessing of regular work.

Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new "set" to the brain. Practical opportunity provides the fulcrum upon which the lever can rest and by which strength will be multiplied. He who has no solid ground to press against, will never get beyond the stage of empty gesture-making. No matter how full the reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain "grows" to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit, is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotions, but who never does a manly concrete deed. If we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. Attention and effort are but two names for the same  psychic fact. They also seem to some degree subject to the law of habit. Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you no unarmed and untrained to stand the test.

We make hell for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every small stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rib Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying. "It won't count this time!" He may not count it,  and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less.  Down among his fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.  Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work.