Have you heard a song like “Handlebars,” or “Prayer of the Refugee”? Those are both very good songs, but have you ever realized that they have to do a lot with nature, confidence, and self-reliance? Those characteristics have to do with transcendentalism. Even today, despite transcendentalism is two hundred years old, transcendentalism can be found in modern songs such as “I Can Ride My Bike with No Handlebars”. Self reliance is when you rely on nobody but your self; where you don’t rely on technology or your buddy to do stuff. In the song “Handlebars” it says “I can make a living off a magazine, I can design an engine that gets 64 miles to the gallon of gasoline…” The Flobots are inferring that they can make a living off anything, relying on nothing but themselves to survive. While in the exert from “Walden”, it says “where I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly.” What Henry Thoreau is saying is that wherever he may go he will live; relying on nobody but himself and only himself to survive. Both the Flobots and Thoreau are saying that they will rely on no one but themselves to live and survive. Going against the flow, swimming up river, these are all ideas of free-thought. Free though is where someone does something or thinks something that not everyone does or is thinking. In the song “Handlebars” it says “I can ride my bike with no handlebars, no handle bars, no handlebars.” The lyrics are saying that he can ride bikes with no handlebars. Now not many people do that. There for showing free thought. While Thoreau states free thought in the story “Walden” by saying “ In imagination, I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought and I knew their price.” Both are doing things that a lot of people would not do; Showing free
