I agree with both of these statements. “Being self-reliant, to the best of your ability,” isn’t the issue, and doesn’t really seem to be what people are pushing back against you for in your posts, @Sam_Stone…because it doesn’t seem like that’s really the thrust of the article.
The issue, IMO, is what seems to be a particularly toxic view of “self-reliance” in American culture – that is, if you aren’t able to be particularly self-reliant, and need to rely on the assistance of others, many people will see this as some manner of moral failing and/or laziness, and that you aren’t deserving of assistance. It’s probably the main reason why we have such a craptastic social safety net in this country.
I remember watching this twilight zone /outer limits knock-off that explored this question…
The plot of it was that in the future people will be so into being self-reliant that society breaks down into a “do it your damn self” type of thing to the point if you can’t well it’s your loss no food?..well to o bad
people lost empathy and everything connected to it in one town there was no civil government because everyone refused to do anything for anyone else because of that view why pay for schools for someone else’s kid etc…
people would die in the street without help and the dying people knew better or refused to ask … it was almostas grim as a black mirror episode …
I would disagree with as phrased this as the opposite could be teamwork, and it also could be rulership. What self reliance does do is single out the individual and isolate them. This makes one vulnerable. This I feel is the danger and perhaps the lie of the American ideal of self reliance. Teach people to be self reliant and they are pretty much on their own and easy pickin’s for those who are well connected.
That can only apply during part of an adult human’s lifespan, and even that is not universal. The young and the elderly need help. The sick and injured need help. The disabled need help. Women of child-bearing age with young children need help. Add those all up and that’s a hefty chunk of any human population capable of self-sustaining.
The rugged, individual “mountain man” or cowboy of American myth was invariably young by our standards, and they died young by our standards.
Meanwhile, there is ample evidence that humans lived in groups far, far back into our distant past, including caring for the disabled far past the point they’d be able to care for themselves.
On top of that, with the rise of civilization it’s become impossible for any one person to become expert in everything.
Also:
Did your grandmother make her own glass jars, or did she buy them?
Did you build all of those, or purchase any of them?
Did you put together that freezer yourself? Did you build that 2200W generator yourself? Did you prospect, obtain, and refine the fuel for it yourself? Did you construct the furnace or the water heater, or did you buy them?
Unless the answer to all of the above is “yes” you are not self-reliant, not long-term. You neither built nor can maintain civilization on your own.
In my own words:
The term “self-reliance” in the right-leaning part of the USA is a dog-whistle for a fetishized version of some combo of “I got mine; screw you”, “Every man for himself; Devil takes the hindmost”, “All taxation is theft”, and “Non-white (or poor) people are not really Americans.”
@Sam_Stone has eloquently defended the idea represented by the dictionary definition of the words. Which is fine as far as they go.
But that’s not the idea we’re gently debating IMHO-style here.
What we are really debating, per the OP, is whether a modern mostly (sub-)urban technological society can function when half the populace believes that the fetishized dog-whistle fantasy is or should be the primary guiding principal of social / economic organization. My answer is we cannot run society the fantasy fetish way, and we’re going to have a very hard time running any society in any way while half the populace worships that nonsense.
IOW, that fetish version of fake reality very much resembles this:
I guess I view “self reliance” a tad differently than most have described so far - as making the best choices and making the best use of what is available to oneself. How do you avoid getting into bad situations and, when you find yourself in a bad situation - whether by your own doing or not - how do you improve your situation? Do you sublimate your wants for your most basic needs? Do you feel that you personally have to make sacrifices and take action in such situations (even if the needed action is seeking help), or do you expect others to seek you out and lift you up.
I guess I view it sort of as reasonable, goal directed activity in our society, as opposed to passivity. Nothing to do with skinning a moose, or building my own car.
I view self reliance in terms of how well does someone deal with the resources available to them, with an eye towards both their immediate needs and the long term.
I have no use for folk who were born on 3d base thinking they hit a triple. But I also wonder about people who do not encourage their children to attend and apply themselves to available public schools, do not follow healthy practices, and do not make whatever efforts they can to avoid/recover from poor choices.
I often hear people say things such as, “Resources aren’t available where they live, and moving is hard!” But then I hear of Central Americans - or immigrants worldwide - undertaking arduous journeys to escape political and economic problems. I find it had NOT to compare such situations - and conclude that a lot of people are capable of lot more than some people attempt to improve their situation.
I acknowledge that people are differently abled. I would not hold someone who is mentally/emotionally/physically challenged who was born into an unhealthy family situation to the same standards as someone born into a solid and supportive middle or upper class environment. But how well does each person do with the opportunities available to them?
So when will you advocate that we dismantle all the corporations? After all, a corporation is a system we’ve set up so that we can coordinate a lot of different people’s actions, so that they can support each other to produce products and services they can’t produce as individuals.
No one person can build a car.
The problem isn’t using systems to support each other, it’s choosing which systems to use.
I think the real issue isn’t self-reliance so much as self-efficacy. How much control do you have–or think you have–over your life, your destiny, and the lives/destiny of those you love? When bad things happen to you or your loved ones, to what degree is that your fault? When good things happen, to what degree is that a reflection of your character?
Belief in self-efficacy is incredibly tricky. Too little is obviously a disaster: passive, helpless people who blame others for everything, or simply accept things unquestioningly are setting themselves up for a life of unhappiness, and likely bitter unhappiness. For the vast, vast majority of people, personal choices have a big impact on outcomes for them. If you don’t believe that, and so don’t act in your own self-interest, you are short-changing yourself, and you are also probably miserable to be around.
On the other hand, an exaggerated sense of self-efficacy is also a path to misery. Some things are beyond our control. No one can anticipate and prepare for everything, and if you see every sub-optimal outcome as a personal failure–in yourself, but also for others-you’ll alternate between being smug and self-hating for your whole life. It’s a recipe for anxiety and despair and anger. And you’re also probably miserable to be around.
You can see this in microcosm because of the “family” issue. Even rapid self-efficacy advocates understand that the choices we make have a big impact on our children, but that also undermines the idea that a person is the sole master of their fate. So you get a lot of blurring of that distinction in the self-reliance community. The family, not the individual, is the unit of society, and choices, good and bad, and therefore credit or blame, are allocated on the family level.
The fundamental truth is that you have to evaluate everything on a case to case basis, and decide the degree to which you have agency. You also have to decide your risk tolerance, which generally involves losing some agency: getting married, having kids, taking a job that’s a career stretch, moving to a new place–all those are choices that might end up with outcomes you didn’t desire, for reasons outside your control–but the risks there are ones which good planning and judgment can certainly mitigate, if not resolve.
Even under ideal circumstances, it can be really difficult to determine true efficacy. Past that, it’s tempting to lie to yourself, and easy to worry you are lying to yourself. So the easy thing to do is to just come down in one camp or the other. Plenty of people do that. Emerson said “trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string” and it is an iron string. Trusting that you are properly assessing where you are responsible and where you are not is the central battle in living a full life.
There’s a long work story that isn’t worth retelling here, but the punchline is what I told a few dozen people working on a short-term project that I headed:
Prepare for independence, but plan to be interdependent.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” gets lost somewhere in all the Biblical stuff.
And “independence” and “dependence” are the two extremes on a rather long continuum.
But I’d describe what you said not as “self-reliance”. Instead it’s a combination of diligence and good judgment. IOW …
Face your situation, make a plan, and then actually execute it. Which plan may include massive applications of other people’s and agencies’ help. Nothing says any of those 3 phases must be done alone.
What is true where both you and some of more rabid RW types have a point is that the converse doesn’t work. All the do-gooding people and agencies in the world will not materially improve the lot of those who refuse to help themselves. Whether my the omission of laziness or the commissionof self-destructive choices. Modolu, as you said those who for reasons of genuine handicap or disability can’t (much) help themselves.
As well as the attitude that one is being “self-reliant” by doing things that require a whole large network of other people to accomplish; or even the assistance of multiple people in one’s own household or immediate community.
Agreeing with kanicbird here, though possibly for different underlying reasons. A single person is always vulnerable; even if they’re doing fine at the moment, one unexpected slip and fall can leave them helpless. Plus, a single person can only do so much. A network of people who assist each other is by its nature much less vulnerable. We’ve known this since before we were human. Most primates live in groups, and that’s for good reason.
And was carrying tools made by other people; and very often, in actual practice, lived in groups with other people at least part of the time.
Indeed.
And again: it’s not just “modern mostly (sub-)urgan technological society.” No human society functions as isolated individuals independent from each other. All human societies function in groups, in which individual members have responsibilities to the group and vice versa. What those responsibilities are varies considerably; but even the richest and most able-bodied members rely on them – if only that they rely on others fullfilling what are claimed to be those others’ responsibilites.
No, it’s not. Not in the context of the quote, early in this thread (post #5), about not having to rely on anyone else for anything. People who claim to be doing that are relying on huge numbers of other people to do large numbers of things; even if they’re not relying on them to do them on a particular Tuesday…
You didn’t. @Sam_Stone did; which is who I was also replying to, and quoted, in that same post of mine which you quoted and said was a strawman. I took you as agreeing with and amplifying their post, which may have been a misapprehension.
ETA: It still wasn’t a strawman, as applied to what Sam_Stone had said; but may not have been applicable to what you meant, in which case I apologize for the misunderstanding.
I generally am supportive of increased publicly funded social services aimed at improving things for the least fortunate/able. In the past decade or so, some states/communities/organizations have become extremely active in terms of the assistance they provide. I have been impressed at the number of instances in which the recipients’ response to such assistance is to request ever more.
There are some people for whom no amount of assistance will enable them to become self sufficient - even in the absence of demonstrable physical/mental/emotional pathologies explaining their “helplessness.” Instead, the individual’s presentation of themself as helpless is most often accepted as PROOF of some pathology, such as behavior or personality disorder or depression.
So… people incapable - too young, too old, sick, disabled, whatever - of “looking after themselves” without any help are therefore bad citizens?
Not saying YOU think like that - the point is that some people can come to that conclusion, and that’s where the wheels start coming off the wagon that is society and civilization. That’s where it get pernicious, when people use it to justify hurting other people.
Expensive is relative - I have had co-workers who are homeless and living out of their cars. Mind you, working full time and in that situation. Usually not for a long term but I’ve seen it happen. For such people $400 for a freezer at Costco might as well be purchasing a condo on the Moon, and even if they had such a freezer they don’t have a home in which to put it at that point. No, they aren’t self-reliant at that point in time. They might have been self-reliant for years before some catastrophe happened, and after a time they might be so again, but in the meanwhile they do need help. A civilized society would help them.
It’s not anti-social. It’s not true self-reliance, either. “Disaster-proofing” might be a better term, and you’re certainly lessening the burden on first responders in an emergency which is, indeed, laudable.
True. If anything, they should be the folks lending a helping hand.
Um… again, I’d call what you’re doing disaster-proofing, or emergency preparedness. It is NOT self-reliance. Emergency preparedness is having a stock of supplies like food and fuel and a generator. Self-reliance would be having the means to grow your own food, obtaining your own fuel, and being able to build a stove from scratch to heat your home in the winter.
OK. But there are others of us who do see a distinction.
I’m in the position that I actually CAN make my own clothes starting with sheep or cotton bolls: harvest the fiber, spin it, weave it, dye it, shape it, sew it. I have done all of the above. But I don’t call myself “self-reliant” in clothing because the truth is I usually purchase commercially made clothing. Why? Because being self-reliant is a time-consuming pain in the ass unless you’re doing it to amuse yourself as a hobby, and needing to make a living keeps interfering with my hobbies.
If the zombieclimateconomicapolcalypse happens yes, you want me on your team to help rebuild civilization because I bring several skills and crafts to the table, but in the meanwhile no, I’m not self-sufficient. I depend on society and civilization to put a roof over my head (which I pay for with the money I earn by my work), food on my table (because I’m not farming/hunting/raising livestock), light my abode (because I prefer electricity to candle I hand-dipped myself, or rushlights, or oil lamps fueled with oil I obtain somewhere somehow), and pay for all my fun toys and entertainment.
Yep, unqualified self-reliance that would be my definition. Stupid? Well… not my choice. There are people who do make such a choice. Which is fine, if it’s really their choice. As mentioned, their lives tend to be shorter than those of people who live in society and civilization (a very few might live to old age) and materially less comfortable than our lives are, but hey, if that’s what makes them happy so be it.
I dare say the more than one person in this thread who does use that definition would disagree and it proves that yes, such people exist.
Right. That’s a qualified type of self-reliance: self reliance in an emergency. Which is good.