Independence Requries Interdependence and Cooperation:
Independence Requires Free and Independent Thinking:
“We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American freeman is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.”
Emerson 1837
Biblical Literalism Impedes the Search For Truth:
"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." Emerson: Self Reliance
Our Highest Aspiration Beyond Materialism:
“Within the form of every creature is a force compelling it to ascend into a higher form."
"But nature has a higher end, in the production of new individuals, than security, namely ascension, or the passage of the soul into higher forms.“
Emerson; The Poet
“…The real object of life is not making money or becoming famous but the building of character, the bringing forth of the potentialities that exist in every one of us.”
Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore
Materialism Impedes Spiritual Growth: Freedom must mean more than just property rights and personal liberty
