Transcendentalism: Ideals and Reality

In 2002, the United States stock market investors took a massive hit. Heads and accountants of the technology giant, Enron, were exposed for falsifying their records. Instead of reporting their loss they lied and reported gains to draw investment. These few corrupt officials profited enormously when the lies caused their own stock holdings to rise in value. When these records were exposed, the company was decimated. The stock value was reduced to pennies, thousands of jobs …showed first 75 words of 952 total…

…showed last 75 words of 952 total…the purity and morality of the nature of humans. Nathaniel Hawthorne believed that to sin is to be human nature. It is this belief that is correct and is the undoing of utopian transcendentalism. As long as humans retain their nature of eventual conformity there is no way that a transcendentalist society could survive. Transcendentalism could then only be used as a guide to improve one’s morals, not change one’s way of life.