Welcome
The Emergent Self is a place to think carefully about how we become who we are — through humiliation and recognition, belief and doubt, loss and meaning. I’m Robert K. Green, a writer and scholar who has spent a lifetime questioning what we’re told it means to be human. Read, disagree thoughtfully, and join the conversation.
Latest articles
Why do most of us take the path of least resistance? A dissertation Chair, nine drafts, and a social constructionist look at what it means to become, not just get.
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We tend to think becoming happens early, and that after middle age we just maintain what we have. My retired friends prove otherwise.
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From the blog
The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” began as a joke. Why nobody is truly self-made, and what privilege and intersectionality reveal about success.
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My high school guidance counselor told me I’d be a factory line worker for the rest of my life. Here’s what that moment taught me about humiliation, and about choosing my own story.
- robertkgreen
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