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The Roots Of Transcendentalism And The United States

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While we go on with our daily lives, we often forget that our society has been built upon many years of history to become where it is currently; however, learning about the past, such as a historical era, may allow us to understand why our society is like the way today. As the United States grew quickly as a young nation, some people realized there were consequences to it. These people believed we were losing our intimate relationship with nature, thought people were too absorbed into changing themselves to become apart of their society’s standards, and suspected people needed to fight the government by practicing civil disobedience. People who shared these ideas became to be known as Transcendentalists as they were struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understandings their age made available; the main contributors to the ideas of this period were Emerson, Whitman, and Thoreau. The roots of Transcendentalism can be traced back to the early 19th century to a religious movement called Unitarianism. This movement rejected that man’s knowledge came primarily through the sense and instead believed the internal, spiritual principles were the basis for man’s understanding of the world. Even though the period of Transcendentalism emerged in the 1830s, it is surprising to know the main ideas of this movement can still be found in our contemporary society. One of the key traits originating from the Transcendentalist movement is

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