In "Self-Reliance" does society conspire against self-reliance?

In his seminal work, "Self-Reliance," Ralph Waldo Emerson
touts the merits of rugged individualism.  Conspiring against this individualism is
society, which is against the manhood of all its members.  Emerson
declares,

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Society is a joint-stock company in which the
members agree for the better securing of his bred to each sharholder, to surrender the
liberty and culture of the eater.  The virtue in most request is conformity. 
Self-reliance is its
aversion.

Emerson states that
if a man would truly be a man, an individual, he must become and remain a
non-conformist.  As his associate, Henry David Thoreau, has stated, he must "march to
the beat of a different drummer."  For Emerson, conformity--"a foolish consistency"--is
the "hobgoblin of little minds," a fear of rejection or disapproval from society.  But,
in order to be an individual, in order to be great, one must be different and, probably,
misjudged:  "To be great is to be misunderstood," Emerson
writes. 

In order to understand truth, one must be an
individual, not a conforming member of society.  For, the experience of truth is a
divine one; it is one in which the individual stands alone, above time and space, and
even above life and death.