The views between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Benjamin Franklin were very different. Benjamin Franklin, or as his friends call him, Benjie, believed that we should do all these different virtuous things so that we would better ourselves as well as bettering the community. He believed in things like respect and honor; he thought that we should show these things to other people so that they could see our greatness, and at the same time we would be honoring them and doing good deeds towards the greater good. We would be bettering others and bettering ourselves at the same time! This is a great way to think in my opinion. However, it is very hard to do. Our class had to do a little thing about it where we would demonstrate those virtues every day and then journal about them, kind of like he did. It was not an easy task, I will tell you that. I do not really know how Benjie managed to do it for such a long time; he must have not been a very exciting person.
Ralph Waldo Emerson had a different way of thinking. He thought that we should basically just live for ourselves. He also had an interesting way of viewing death. His whole idea thing revolved mostly around nature; he said that we were created by nature, we lived in and with nature, and when we died our body would go back to nature. Since he thought like this, death really did not upset him very much. He had some close family members die, but he did not even mourn. He thought that since our bodies went back to nature, it was just how it was supposed to be and it should be thought of more as a beautiful thing than a sad thing. I guess this makes sense to me, but it would be difficult to truly believe that when faced with a challenge. Both men were very different, but they were both inspirational and influential.
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