While reading Emerson’s essays, “History” and “Self-Reliance”, a common characteristic started to emerge between Emerson, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Socrates. They were all men who broke away from populace thinking. Emerson, like King and Socrates, wanted to agitate, with a purpose, the minds of common people. For example, Emerson writes, “Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.” Emerson gives an insightful view of his prospective of society. It reminded me of the cartoon with two cavemen. Both are standing there with two stones, but one of the cavemen has a brighter idea. He chisels away the four edges of this huge stone, twice his size, in order to make it easier to move.

                I started making a connection between all three philosophers when Emerson wrote, “Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.” Emerson makes a comparison to Socrates and Jesus the same way King made references to them in his letter entitled, “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King wrote, “Jesus, Amos, Paul, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson as being called extremist too.” Coincidently, both men felt a likeness to Jesus and Socrates as being misunderstood and extremist.

                King, Emerson, and Socrates appear to have had a low threshold for complacency. This characteristic is displayed when Emerson writes in his essay, Self-Reliance, “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency” Dr. King makes mention of “weeping” from the laxity he had seen from the church in regards to their  lack of involvement in segregation.  King gives insight to his low tolerance for being complacent when he justifies his reasons for coming to Birmingham. He writes, “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea.”

                Socrates was both an extremist and misunderstood among his peers, just as King and Emerson were. Both King and Emerson seem to connect themselves to being like Socrates and other outspoken men in history. They all seem to have had a passion for sharing their new ideas and way of thinking even with those who couldn’t embrace them.