Do not use so many dishes when you need only one because that is what you have been told is the right way. Do not do twenty things in a day when only four were necessary because that is what you have been told is the right way. "Why work like a dog so you can pant for a moment or two before you die?" (Lawrence & Lee, 57). All the time we spend working and not absorbing the experiences and the environment around us is being misused, and wasted so that, maybe, before we die, we can have one small moment of what we think is happiness. There is absolutely no sense, says transcendentalism, in the way the modern human functions based on all their frivolous details.
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps, it is because he hears a different drummer" (Thoreau as cited in Lawrence & Lee, v). The path to transcendentalism is meant to be different for every being that travels it. It is supposed to be what fits that beings experiences, ideas, beliefs, truths, and ideals. This makes conformity unacceptable. When a person conforms to their society, they are disregarding what they believe or what they need to do to survive. Society, according to Emerson, "is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members" (Self-Reliance, 247). Societal conformity is the ultimate antagonist of transcendentalism. The transcendentalist movement paid most of its efforts to the cause of defeating society and the conformity it requires. When there is absolutely no basis for an institution or action, yet everyone pays attention and sacrifices their beliefs for it, that is conformity cause by society. This is what Thoreau found to be so repulsive about America and the society it was harboring. A lack of conformity means giving up the obsession with what others may think of you, your beliefs, or your actions. "What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think" (Emerson, Self-Reliance, 247).