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"Self-Reliance" Worksheet: Right Relation of Individual to Community

Joli Sandoz (for Making Your Place, Fall Quarter 2000, with Marla Elliott)

Conceptual goals:

1) To explore our own assumptions and raise questions about the "healthiest" or "best" or "most fruitful" relationship between the individual and society.

2) To examine one influential U.S. thinker's assumptions and answers.

Total time of workshop: 2:00

Background:

On May 27^th, 1992, a grenade blast killed 22 people standing in line to buy bread at a neighborhood bakery in Sarajevo. Vedran Smailovic, a member of the Sarajevo Opera, put on full evening dress and sat at that spot every late afternoon for the next 22 days, playing his cello as bullets and mortars pounded the city around him. The music he played was "Adagio in G Minor" - a piece a composer had earlier "reconstructed" from an Albinoni manuscript fragment found in the State Library in Dresden, a city bombed heavily during the Second World War.

1. (15 minutes) As a class (before breaking up into small teams), listen to composer David Wilde's musical response to hearing Smailovic's story, entitled "The Cellist of Sarajevo." After listening, sit alone for ten minutes and write down your own responses to Smailovic's actions. (If you are having trouble getting started, think about these questions: What emotions do you feel? What effect would you like to think that Smailovic's courage might have had, on the neighborhood, the city, his country, and the world? Using Smailovic as a concrete case, explore your own beliefs about the right relationship of the individual to a group engaged in actions with which the individual cannot agree.) Save your writing; you will not be asked to show it to anyone, but you will need it again near the end of this workshop.

2. Break into groups of not more than five and not less than three to discuss the following questions about Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance." This influential thinker both voiced U.S. ideals and shaped them, through his lectures and writings. Appoint a scribe (for reporting your discussion at step "d" back to the class) and a timekeeper before you discuss the following questions.

a. (10 minutes) Emerson says that "God will not have his own work made manifest by cowards." What are the proper characteristics of a self-reliant (hu)man, according to this essay?

b. (10 minutes) On what does the self-reliant person base her or his "greatness," in Emerson's view? In other words, what are the proper sources of self-reliance?

c. Emerson equates "manhood" (which Emerson may have meant to refer specifically to males, but which in the year 2000 we can perhaps think of as "mature, effective personhood") with a certain relationship to society.

1) (10 minutes) How does he depict society?

2) (10 minutes) What does he say is the praiseworthy relationship between the individual and society ã that is, how should a person act in relation to various groups, including society at large and family?

d. (20 minutes) How do you think Emerson would have defined the word "hero"? (You may want to examine his remarks on what he variously calls "geniuses," and "true" or "essential" men.) Based on what you know right now of cellist Vedran Smailovic, do you think that Emerson would have termed Smailovic a hero? (Your scribe should take notes on this discussion for later reporting to the full group.)

3. (15 minutes) Working alone, turn back the notes you made after listening to "The Cellist of Sarajevo." How do you define "hero"? Regardless of whether you think Smailovic's gesture could realistically have contributed to the eventual end of the fighting in Sarjevo, how do you think his actions might have affected those around him? Taking a step back from this specific situation to the more general, what is your present take on the right relation of individual to community?

4. (30 minutes) Return to the classroom for full group discussion.