Self-development is a complex and long-lasting process that takes place individually and is tailored by its creator. All people in the world are obsessed with becoming a better person than they used to be, or are at the present moment – this is the key to evolution and improvement. Humankind can never remain in one place, as this stagnation may finally make people lose their sense of life and degrade. It would be highly undesirable to happen, so great thinkers, outstanding scholars in the questions of human motivation, development, improvement, and evolution have been occupied with considerations on the true nature of improvement and self-development.
The main issues that have been occupying the human minds for many centuries pertain to the main instigators of self-development, varied ways through which a person may pass his or her way of self-development. What is even more important is to justify the crucial necessity of self-development, thus making people understand why they should pursue this complicated and challenging way. Another issue that acquires greater importance is defining the negative factors and pitfalls of human cognition that may slow down self-development or even stop it – it is essential to understand all positive and negative factors that influence the process in order to design it in the best possible way and succeed on this path. The present paper aims at analyzing the concept of work in self-development and at justifying the necessity of treating this factor seriously in the whole scope of ways to personal evolution and improvement.
The concept of work has been paid much attention to in different eras and at different periods of human development; however, its main aim was seen in generating the material benefits necessary for providing for the person’s existence. The vision of work as a tool applied for getting basic material benefits, thus satisfying the basic material needs of an individual, has undergone major transformations recently. The main reason for this may be found in the fact that some people are more successful than others performing the same type and amount of work; besides, the way people utilize the benefits received from work done differs individually, bringing dissolution to some people and happiness together with pleasure to others.
The trend of Transcendentalism nurtured a number of outstanding activists who were first of all occupied with the issues of self-improvement, socially useful existence, making the world and the community better than it actually is. This is why the discussion of self-development cannot do without the integration of analysis of profound works of several transcendentalists in the present paper – such writers as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederick Douglass devoted much of their attention to the issues of inner factors forming a personality, a mode of life that makes up a worthy member of society, and a set of ways to acquire a sense of life and to live usefully.
They also devoted a large share of their literary activity to the issues of work in self-development, which will be discussed more precisely in the present paper. What is more important, they speculate over the topic of work in the personal content of an individual with his or her life, and not the formation of material wealth. They view work as a means of achieving self-satisfaction, confidence, and happiness in life. Frederick Douglass, for example, views work as the way to achieve his goals in life, i.e., freedom from slavery. Thoreau and Emerson consider work as a way of spiritual development and improvement, thus neglecting its role as a source of wealth and prosperity. The opinion about work introduced by Transcendentalists is very interesting as it reveals the moral, ethical side of work usually neglected by people striving only to material success and ignoring the spirituality it may bring.
As for Emerson, his works “Wealth” and “Self-Reliance” are highly relevant for the present discussion. They give a much better understanding of morality and ethics of self-development and provide a wonderful, skillful justification of the active work of an individual on his or her self-improvement. The essay titled “Wealth” adds much to one’s understanding of work in self-improvement, raising the concept of labor much higher than people have been conventionally used to treating it. “Wealth” is an eloquent example of finding an alternative way of perceiving money as a material benefit, the way of utilizing it efficiently and gaining more than only down-to-earth pleasure from spending money and being financially stable. Thus, it should be thoroughly examined to find the clue to success on the way of self-development through work.
Henry David Thoreau’s work “Walden” is very interesting from many points of view, as the author fully dedicated this writing to the issues of detached self-development, without any assistance of other people, any usage of conveniences or money, living on his own and fighting his way through life. The chapters relevant in the present discussion are titled “Baker Farm,” “Higher Laws”, and “Bean Field” – they pertain to the questions of work, how it is exercised by different people, what benefits they manage to gain from it, and how they utilize them. Work is also viewed as a perspective of self-development, but the focus Thoreau makes in his work is on negative comparison – on an example of one family, the author examines the way people may act wrongly in building up their working process and accumulating wealth. He sees the reason for their unhappiness in the wrong organization and perception of the working process, analyzing their attitude to work and making wise inferences important for the present topic.
Frederick Douglass and his narrative about his life as a slave make a great contribution to understanding work as one of the movers of self-development. One of his chapters is devoted to working as he perceived it – his own achievement, his own reward, and his own success at every tiny point. Douglass explains his way of moral reconstruction in terms of understanding the basic truths about freedom, dignity, literacy, and work: he has been trying to make a wise, industrious, fair, and clear-thinking man of himself, which was his way to freedom. One of the factors of his self-development was obtaining literacy, which gave him the future way to philosophical analysis of events taking place in his life and in the lives of other people. The inferences he made allowed him to understand that all a person does himself is his own achievement, so work was perceived as a way to freedom as well. For this reason, the work of Douglass seems to be crucially important in the present justification of work being a way to self-development.
In the discussion of work and its role in self-development, the issue of self-reliance Emerson discusses in his essay is titled the same way. Emerson sees the key to self-development in self-reliance and states that only by gaining self-reliance a person may pursue his path to self-development. Discussing self-reliance, the author attributes much attention to the concept of self-trust. He thinks that without cultivating self-trust, an individual will surely fail his personal evolution – the reason for this fact can be found in the human limits of cognition, perception, and understanding the universal truth and wisdom.
“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” (Emerson, 1841).
By these words, Emerson explains human failures by their confidence in their own forces, in the way they build their life, and are guided by only their own considerations. Emerson accepts the major influence of the “Almighty effort” and states that people should trust their intuition, having their vocation in their genes, being initially created for some goal, and being unable to resist it. The problem people face in the course of their lives is seen by the outstanding Transcendentalist in the way they try to find their own way in life and remain deaf to the inner voice telling them what they are created for – this is why Emerson calls people to trust themselves and to give their destiny in the hands of a greater force that is too wise and grand to be mistaken about their calling.
The author also attributes much attention and importance to the issues of independent thinking and acting – he sees the major distinction of an individual from the crowd in such a way of life and despises conformity in its every revelation in life.
“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” (Emerson, 1841).
Nonetheless, the author admits the fact that it is a complicated way of life, and it constitutes a great challenge for an individual since other people tend to make a distinguished personality conform to the majority. People have always been directed in a hostile way to those who differ from the crowd, and this is why the person who dares to pursue a way of greatness has to be ready for hostility, unfriendliness, and envy.
Consistency is considered a virtue, but not by the author, but by society. Emerson mocks at the way humanity worships qualities that kill individuality and bring up ordinariness. He states that consistency together with conformity kills self-reliance and prevents the person from becoming a true and worthy member of society.
Continuing the topic of self-reliance, it is necessary to turn to the chapters “Baker Farm” and “Bean Field” from the book of Thoreau “Walden”. They serve as a splendid illustration of how one can practice or not practice self-reliance. The chapter titled “The Bean Field” is entirely dedicated to the description of the physical labor Thoreau exercised in Walden growing beans in his field. This chapter is a truly great example of how a person may worship work and justify its importance in his life. To understand the chapter, one should recollect the initial goal of Thoreau when going to Walden – “to live deliberately” and to try to prove to himself and to others whether it is possible for a child of civilization to live on his own and provide for his own living, to gain all basic commodities necessary for a decent life in the wilderness by his own hands and without any other assistance.
Following this goal, Thoreau built his own house and decided to grow beans to provide for his needs for food. Thus, in “The Bean Field”, the author pays tribute to the very concept of physical labor, worships it as a way to satisfaction, genuine pleasure a real man can only dream of. He describes in great detail how he worked on the field and what thoughts this work brought to his mind – he explains to the reader that there is no more moral and spiritual satisfaction created for a human being than understanding that his work is yielding visible results and he provides for his own living, consuming the food he produced himself. He also worships the process of labor itself, stating that it brings the highest satisfaction possible.
“It has constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar, it yields a classic result. A very Agricola laborious was I to travelers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they are sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil” (Thoreau, 1906).
Thoreau also sees symbolic meaning in work he did with the bean field – he, as a representative of a civilized world, came to the wilderness and cultivated it, thus showing that nature and human beings may live in harmony and may exist in consensus. The major thought of Transcendentalism, the connection of everyone and everything existing in the world and a series of transformations people may go through if they are able to perceive the whole diversity of the world surrounding them in all its dimensions, is clearly illustrated by Thoreau in “The Bean Field” – he shows that a person may exist successfully only due to self-reliance so explicitly outlined by Emerson.
However, Thoreau does not limit himself to illustrating how a person may successfully live according to the principles of self-reliance. He also dedicates a chapter to the observation of people who fail to implement these underlying factors of success in their life, thus remaining miserable, limited, and unhappy. He tells the story of his meeting with the family of John Field, who was his neighbor and lived together with his life and children nearby.
The story of John Field is very expressive in the context of discussing work as a way to self-development as the main hero of the chapter is a vivid example of a person making work a tool for self-destruction. The main reason for this incongruence Thoreau sees in the Field family is the inability to understand the absence of necessity of excessive benefits the Fields aspire to have.
“I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them…but as he began with the tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system” (Thoreau, 1906).
The main concept of self-reliance is broader consciousness that gives the individual a broader understanding of his true destination, the way to live properly, and obtain what he wants in his life. However, what the writers discussed in the present paper state is that it is essential to stipulate the correct goals, which is the greatest problem of modern society.
“Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead” (Thoreau, 1906).
Thoreau sees the problem of John Field in his excessive attachment to conventional rules and laws dominating in the modern civilized society – this means that people are prescribed to correspond to certain characteristics in order to be considered civilized, and they fight for the right to belong to the society thus losing their purity and individuality in the fight. The author sees the solution to the problem in reconciliation with nature, with the grand force of the Earth that will give an individual more benefit than vague belonging to some community. Thoreau discusses the ways to obtain this purity in the chapter “Higher Laws”, in which he speculates on the topic of a person’s unity with nature and their harmonious co-existence.
“It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way” (Thoreau, 1906).
It becomes clear from the narrative of Thoreau that John Field’s conscience is limited to gaining the trivial wealth all people in the society strive to. However, for some reason, field fails to achieve his goals, and the answer to the question of why this is so can be found in the essay of Emerson titled “Wealth” – it gives a clue to genuine wealth a person may gain and the true attitude a person should have to it in order to appreciate it, utilize it efficiently and gain true pleasure from doing so.
Emerson sees wealth in the whole scope of basic commodities a person can create for him- or herself. He states that a person can be considered wealthy not when they have a purse full of coins but when they have everything necessary for a decent existence, and these commodities have been achieved with the individual’s own hard labor.
“Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and winds out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn…the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good-will” (Emerson, 1876).
True wealth is what the person did with their own hands, without stealing, buying, or finding, thus being the owner of their own lives and their own wealth. This idea is truly precious in the modern world where wealth has acquired too material a meaning that basic needs are not taken into consideration at all. Simplification of such complex concepts as wealth and its reduction to basic, simplistic concepts may help people make a significant step forward to increasing their spirituality and understanding the true value of life.
The issues discussed in the present paper and findings of Emerson and Thoreau on the spiritual meaning of work in the human life, the spiritual wealth it may bring to the person may be illustrated by the chapter from the work of Frederick Douglass devoted to his life in slavery and his perception of work. Douglass had to work day and night and suffered from living in inhuman conditions for the sake of his dream about freedom – he paid his master for the right to work and lived in extreme poverty; however, Douglass knew what goals he pursued. He saved some tiny sum of money at the end of every week and did this not to buy something for this money, and not to get rich, but to become independent. Thus, work was a way to spiritual growth, to the achievement of higher moral goals for the author, which can be seen from the fact that this great Abolitionist finally achieved his goal and became free.
Consequently, it is clear that the concept of work is closely connected with the concept of self-development. It is only necessary to view work not as an unpleasant necessity or as the way to get financially rich but as a tool for self-enrichment, self-improvement, and growth of self-esteem. On the example of several works of Transcendentalists discussed in the present paper, one may see how a person may gain self-respect from doing something with his own hands and see his work yield results. The ethical side of work in human life is evident from the discussed works, so it is possible to make a conclusion that such an approach to perceiving work in human life may bring about a substantial and highly beneficial shift in human cognition.
Work is much more than physical labor, so understanding of this fact may bring a great change into human lives – there is no life without work because all people have to provide for their living; however, in case people perceive work from another angle, they may become much happier and much more successful in life. People should first of all remember about their spirituality, their inner world that is often neglected in the times of hard physical labor. Thus, a situation may be changed drastically if all workers include elements of self-development into their everyday working process.