By LEAH MONTEJANO
Staff Writer
Confidence is the fourth tenet of transcendentalism, Transcendentalists viewed confidence as a way of viewing themself and how that person should tackle their own issues and obstacles. Confidence in Transcendentalism does not mean the self-assurance we give ourselves, but the self-assurance we are given from others and how we utilize it to push ourselves forward in the real world. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote “if I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me,” says that if you don’t believe in yourself then no one else will.
Another movie that shows confidence is Shallow Hal, this movie shows Confidence because our main character finds he is attracted to obese women but we the audience only see the women he dates as small and petite. As the movie goes on, Jack Black starts making these overweight women find confidence in themselves. The last tenet of Transcendentalism is Nature and God. Transcendentalists created this tenet to create their own personal idea of the knowledge God has which transcends with nature itself. Nature and God does not embrace the spirituality aspect of God but embraces the idealism focusing on Nature and opposing materialism.
A movie example of this would be M. Knight Shyamalan’s movie Signs because the plot revolves around finding god. Our main character played by Mel Gibson is a retired priest who gave up on his belief in God because of his wife’s horrible death. At the end of the movie we finally get to see the flashback of when she died, her dying words ended up helping their family greatly during the alien invasion and Mel Gibson finds his faith in God again. Another example of this is Plant-based diets because the food in veganism and vegetarianism are nature itself, some say vegan and vegetarian diets bring you closer to God and help you find your own spirituality.
Those were the five tenets of transcendentalism with examples of pop culture. Transcendentalism is very interesting and important to learn if you struggle with spirituality.