system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
what is Transcendentalism?

I'm especially curious as to how it's different from individualism.
gpt
Transcendentalism is a moral and spiritual philosophy, most strongly associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and other writers of the 1830s and 1840s in the United States. For transcendentalists, truth comes not from physical evidence but from a sense of Truth that comes from communion with, for instance, nature. 

Think of it like the force. There's a connection that links all living things—a divine soul (but not necessarily a Godly thing). It's inherently good but has become corrupted by civilization, which splits man away from the oversoul. Humanity lives a dismembered existence as a result of the corrupting influence of civilization.

Individualism is part of the philosophy. Only if men are truly self-reliant—that is, only if they don't bend to the popular will or fashions of the time, or established authority—can they regain the connection with nature and the transcendental oversoul.