A successful life is traditionally identified predominantly on an external level. The more assets or wealth one attains, the more successful one becomes. To most people, a successful life is one usually filled with wealth received by one’ s own hard work. To work hard is an admirable virtue, but to be seduced by the potential wealth or income of a career that one produces their work for reduces such hard work to an unworthy virtue. One’s main objective in life may become clouded or influenced by society’s luxurious temptations; therefore internal success becomes alienated in its virtues and principles go by the way side. Unfortunately, we are all subjected to the influence of envy and many become consumed by it. This predator hunts our societies and infects the mass of minds; therefore leading to an abuse within the divine gift of life our providence has provided us. We are granted life, but only take advantage of its fruits. While society advances on a technological and tangible level, it truly may be diminishing intrinsically; thus causing us to lose sight of our true virtues, principles, and the quality of life, leading us to conform to a society that predicts our future for us.
A more comprehensive reflection of this idea is supported in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance” which he begins by philosophizing his quintessential maxim: “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”(933). However, we have been accustomed to embrace the thoughts of others, to which we have done so abusively. Our own thoughts may have become clouded and influenced by the thoughts and ideals of others, leading us to dismiss our own “without notice”(933). When that fleeting “gleam of light” “flashes across” (933) our minds, we must pay attention and “trust thyself”(934) and not fall pray to temptation, for “every heart vibrates to that iron string”(934). We are drawn to this entity that produces no beneficial outcome for our innermost needs. Without the understanding of identifying true virtue we can only “imagine that” we “communicate” our “virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment”(938); the character within each of us will determine our virtuosity.
Unwise as we are, our principles are influenced by a desire that we have cultivated; thus contributing to society’s false advancements, for “it recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other”(947). Our empirical thought has caught up to us and has camouflaged our essential needs. Optimistically speaking, there is a revolution of thought that will occur in some distance that will provide a harmonic balance between man and nature; thus resolving many of the complications that we face; or perhaps it is just a perpetual cycle of unanswered questions that will continue to require persistent investigation. Such inquisition is conceivably the driving force that will advance mankind. However, neglecting some questions or principles over others may require adjustment.
The question of principle reveals itself in the fashion that an overcast day reveals its minimal rays of sunlight. As each receptor of the earth absorbs its light, there is the vast remaining population that is satisfied with the dimness they have conformed to. “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure”(937). Such a fear reaches into the mass of souls, obscuring their thoughts and hindering their internal progress, while magnifying external desire. We are aware that as a result of our ignorance, the quality of life is being depreciated and make no attempt to modify our ways. Perhaps we are not ready to make such advancements. Perhaps we need to make more of our mistakes to realize what lies before us; we may need to “gamble” more “with her”(949) to come to such an awareness.
But how much will she tolerate our risks? Maybe our end is approaching, and the next being is waiting its turn. If were true and known, we would witness a revolution of human nature. It is disturbing to know that the potential exists, and we do little to preserve the true value of our instinctual nature; thus causing our internal decline. Here a change is necessary. All of the essential elements are there for correction, and they wait for us to restore our vision beyond the confinements, which we live, and then and only then, will “the triumph of principle”(949) be achieved.