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The word selfie and the actions behind it have transcended the past. We have become more self-reliant but not in the way Emerson may have liked it.

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There is a time in every man's day when his Facebook feed spits out a photo of a friend who has turned a smartphone camera on him or herself. There is the practiced tilt of the head, to avoid additional chins. There is the palm tree or infinity pool in the background, to record momentary privilege. There is the artfully arranged cleavage, or the casually flexed triceps, to establish oneself as fit, desirable, deserving of exhibition in the carousel museum of social media.

We click "like," or we narrow our eyes in dislike, and then remember our Emerson.

"Envy is ignorance," he wrote in his essay "Self-Reliance," and "imitation is suicide."

Regardless, "selfie" is the Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year, chosen partly because its usage spiked 17,000 percent since this time last year. We have become selfie-reliant, and now the lexicon has wholly absorbed the modern way to label the ancient fascination with self. But are modern selfies, uploaded onto Instagram by the millions, corrosive in a way that finer self-portraits are not - the oil-on-canvas selfies of Frida Kahlo, say, or Australian gunner Thomas Baker's 1917 Kodak portrait of his mirror image in uniform?

The practice of self-portraiture has never been cheaper or wider. The #selfie hashtag on Instagram summons a torrent of self-portraits, ranging in style from glamour shot to mugshot. Now we are a mob of self-portraitists. The total democratization of an art form either destroys it or ennobles it, and the selfie is either a pure expression of self or the surrender to conformity.

Depends on your artistic standards, and your tolerance for psychobabble.

Selfies are a form of vernacular photography, like amateur daguerreotype or Polaroid, says Alicia Eler, who writes routinely about selfies on the arts Web site Hyperallergic, and the prevalence of the artistic tool (the smartphone) doesn't diminish the value of the work.

"I think the self-portrait and the selfie are for anyone who's continuously documenting the act of becoming," she says. It's not self-obsession, though. It's a way to connect.

Such portraiture on social media is as good for self-empowerment as it is for self-objectification, psychologist Sarah J. Gervais writes in Psychology Today.

Though it's possible for people to take an unhealthy "outsider's perspective of their bodies," Gervais says, she suggests "that Instagram offers a quiet resistance to the barrage of perfect images that we face" in the traditional media.

Parse them any which way, and realize that we have come to rely on selfies. Selfies say "I was here, in this state, at this point in time." Selfies say "I'm not alone because I can share my aloneness."

We're not narcissists, as the curmudgeonry claims.

We are transcendentalists with iPhones.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose marquee essay is titled "Self-Reliance," would have been a habitual selfie-taker. The transcendentalists meticulously journaled about themselves and shared passages with each other. They prized the notion of the individual and his or her capacity for self-definition.

Emerson "says the mark of wisdom is seeing the miraculous in the commonplace, and showing ourselves to each other because we find something of worth in ourselves," says Philip F. Gura, professor of American literature and culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In this way, each selfie is one more breath blown into "the Oversoul," which Emerson defined as the "common heart," as individuals knit together in the ether. He could have been writing about the Internet and social media, in which case he would have cautioned against modeling yourself on others, which "loses your time and blurs the impression of your character."

"But do your work, and I shall know you," Emerson wrote. "Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself."

If Emerson were writing "Self-Reliance" today, he might have added this instruction to his essay: If you do take a selfie, don't look at the image of yourself on the screen as you snap the photo. Your eyes will be looking in the wrong direction. Instead, look into the lens itself, into the other soul who will soon be looking back at you.

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Selfie-reliance: The word of the year is the story of our individualism.

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There is a time in every man's day when his Facebook feed spits out a photo of a friend who has turned a smartphone camera on him or herself. There is the practiced tilt of the head, to avoid additional chins. There is the palm tree or infinity pool in the background, to record momentary privilege.

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This article reflects Thoreau's methods of preaching and relates them to today's orthodox education methods.

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ERIC - Pedagogy and the Teacher within: Reflections on Thoreau and Kinesiology in Higher Education, Quest, 2013

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"The Garden" by Jones Very
Jones Very writes, "Each sense forever found a new delight," which shows self-knowledge and learning instead of the limited knowledge of books and other publications. "No more without the flaming gate to stray," conveys nonconformity by saying that one shall not conform to the "flaming gate," which represents society. "No more without the flaming gate to stray," also indicates self-knowledge instead of conforming to the "flaming gate."

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"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."
-Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau expresses a need to deliberately isolate oneself among nature to experience the over-Soul and to self-actualize to find your true identity.

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"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest of wilderness."
-John Muir

Muir expresses through his love of nature, the idea of the Over Soul. By wandering through a forest and embracing the beauty which is present.

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“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson was saying about the mind and that all knowledge revolves around self knowledge.

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"The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different." - Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi is referring to the purpose between all religions and philosophies; he is trying to bring together all men with the idea of peace through common belief in the over soul, and its connection with all creations of nature.

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This piece shows how  nature is in a perfect spiritual state .

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This art piece describes transcendentalism by showing the combination of nature and humanity.

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The people in this photograph are marching through the streets, protesting segregation and unfair treatment. Disobeying and not conforming to authority

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"I won't back down" by Tom Petty

"Well I won't back down,
No I won't back down,
You can stand me up at the gates of hell,
But I won't back down,
No I'll stand my ground,
Won't be turned around"

Petty mainly wrote about nonconformity in "I won't back down." He is states repeatedly that he will not back down from what he believes in, and/or conform to what he does not believe in. Petty sings, expressing that no matter what he is faced with that contradicts his beliefs, he will not conform to the rest of society.

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"What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong

"The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky,
Are also on the faces of people going by,
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do,
They're really saying I love you,"

Louis Armstrong expresses reverence toward nature, the song talks about the beauty in the bland, in a sense we forget about the nature around us. He talks about the people having colors of the rainbow on their faces which shows the idea that in Transcendentalism, the people are kind to one another and show peace.

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"Keep Ya Head Up" by Tupac

"Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
I say the darker the flesh then the deeper the roots
I give a holler to my sisters on welfare
Tupac cares, if don't nobody else care"

Tupac's song lyrics give examples of independence and self reliance in a conformist society.

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Grant cox about the importance and power of nonconformity. Just by being different, and standing out of the ordinary society, others notice that you can make your own impact.

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The Power of Non-Conformity: Grant Cox at TEDxHoughton