Are There Huge Dangers With Overemphasizing Self-Reliance?

In My Humble Opinion
81

Yery well said overall, and especially your summation above. Thank you.

Even more succinctly, and that’s a rarity coming from me, …

Some money in the bank, and income in excess of needs, acts as insurance against a thousand minor problems of routine life. It’s only when the insurance runs out that we see who’s actually self-reliant and who’s just had a thick enough wallet to cushion them from those bumps.

Of course there’s a bit of chicken and egg there. I know people with 6-figure incomes who have no actual or figurative insurance because they’ve ratcheted their monthly spending right up under their income. And low-wage workers who’re at least somewhat “insured” against at least minor problems.

But all else equal: “mo’ wages; fewer hard problems”. It is therefore unsurprising to see most hard problems occurring to low-income and low-asset people. That’s not primary evidence of a moral failing on their part.

82

Indeed, when we hear

and

We perceive it as an attack on welfare, rather than bemoaning a general lack of DIY, planning, and problem solving skills in the newer generation.

83

I think there’s a fundamental difference between a specific culture having ideals that bind the group together, and a nation that was formed of wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups, at different times, and at different places. And facing different challenges as well.

Historically, American settlers have been both self reliant AND dependent on their larger group- it took both to survive while moving westward. I think the part that was reinforced and that has survived to become somewhat mythological is the self-reliance idea- that it was the primary key to why individuals and groups not only survived, but thrived in a hostile landscape.

I feel like it’s a package deal with independence- sort of a “if you want to be independent, that’s great, just take care of your own shit while doing so.” sort of attitude.

I think that in many ways it’s been a good sort of national ideal, but it’s not without its problems, and one of those is the way that those who aren’t self-reliant are treated/regarded by society. I mean, growing up in a sort of “Jacksonian American” community mindset, there was a CLEAR distinction drawn between who was essentially considered part of the community, and who wasn’t. People who were ethnically different, socially different, or who couldn’t get their shit together were all not part of the group. Which meant if you were some sort of “loser” who couldn’t hold a job, or had skewed priorities, or whatever, you were basically left to your own devices.

Meanwhile, if you were in the group, you were afforded position in the community, with the respect that it entailed, including help when needed, etc… As far as white men went, there was little that was worse that could be said about someone than saying they couldn’t support their family or pull their own weight. It was a fundamental breach of the social contract- you were causing others to spend their hard-earned resources to support you and theirs because you didn’t do what you should have done, which typically meant work hard, be thrifty, etc…

This didn’t mean that if there was a flood or tornado, that your neighbors wouldn’t help you, but that in everyday life, you were expected not to place demands on others’ resources, etc… Everyday life was whatever was expected to happen in normal life- stuff like normal medical bills, normal maintenance activities, etc…

Not coincidentally, that same thinking is a big part of why stuff like welfare is so hated in that mindset- not only is it demanding someone’s resources in everyday life, it’s also that the demands are being done by people who clearly didn’t plan ahead/pull their weight, and it’s likely that they’re going to be part of the out-group (black, hispanic, etc…) That’s sort of a triple whammy there; it’s a “you want me to give up my pay, in order to give it to those people, who didn’t do what they should have, and there’s no emergency?” sort of thinking.

It can be a fairly harsh mentality- there’s not a lot of cushion for being a fuck-up or a drain on society, because it’s basically a framework for a bunch of loosely confederated indivduals to work as a society, not a collective mindset. If someone fails, it’s not society’s failure, it’s theirs. And if they succeed, the same thing applies.

That, I think is the biggest conceptual hurdle for a lot of people- it’s NOT a collective mindset.

84

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

I see the immigrants you mention doing what they do because of sheer desperation. If the local gang lord wanted my daughter, and the only question was whether or not his minions had to kill me and the rest of my family to get her, I’d hike a thousand miles to get my family out of there too.

But if I was surviving in poverty, but surviving and without any issues like that, but if I moved to some other city to find a job and was unsuccessful with the result that me and my family might all wind up on the streets, hundreds of miles away from the friends and family who could lend me a hand, then fuck, no. You don’t take that chance until you have to. The risk of being in a much worse situation is nontrivial.

ETA: I think TJ was very astute and accurate in his observation above. And one thing you can’t expect of people in general is for them to exhibit above-average behavior. You have to expect most people to behave the way most people behave, and the systems we construct should be systems that work well for the vast majority of people.

85

I think overemphasizing self-reliance and extreme individualism promotes a mentality of escaping the world’s problems instead of trying to solve them. It’s too hard to work together to improve our community, so I’m going to make as much money as I can so I can find a nice gated one to live in. Or even better, a big walled off mansion on an island.

86

…I’m sorry, but are you imagining that New Zealand is somehow not a nation formed of wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups, at different times, and at different places, facing different challenges as well?

Just because what we choose to prioritize here was formed, in part from the values of our indigenous peoples and a group of people that moved here in the 50’s doesn’t make it materially different to how America, collectively as a nation, chose what to prioritize there. Because as you say yourself:

Did you notice how you jumped from “wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups, at different times, and at different places” right back to “American settlers… moving westward”?

Because the ideal of rugged individualism wasn’t one that evolved from the collective experiences of “wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups.” It was one group. You said it yourself. And it was enforced through slavery, and attempts at genocide, and today through capitalism-run-wild and the industrial prison complex and a militarised police and commercialised healthcare force and intense propaganda.

The ideals that “bound a group” became ideals that bound our nation. Just the same as how the ideals that didn’t “bind the group” became the foundation of the ideals that define the United States of America.

87

I wasn’t saying we were right, just basically trying to explain it. It’s basically the difference between a collective and an individual mentality writ large.

And really… it’s not hard to understand why some people might feel that way, having been to many rural areas of the country. I mean, if you’re in central-western Arkansas, you’re living in an overwhelmingly white, low income rural area that’s steeped in this self-reliance ethos. So the problems of big-city black people are foreign to you, and run counter to everything you’ve been taught. Why would you vote for those sorts of things, if you grew up in say… Mt. Ida, Arkansas? You’re being told that you should want to cough up more of your own hard-earned cash that you don’t have much of, to help people who didn’t pull their own weight, and who you’ve been told your entire life are shiftless and lazy.

It’s not right, but it’s understandable. I mean, I get the opposite way about dumb-ass hillbillies fairly frequently, but have to remind myself that their experience is so different in many ways than my big-city upbringing, that they’re doing what they think is right, and doing the best they can.

And FWIW, I don’t think America “chose” what to prioritize. I think rather that it was what worked on the frontier, and what people were predisposed to. The country isn’t, and never has been a centralized sort of thing, so it’s not like the government or any other entity was actively directing Westward settlement and the sorts of attitudes and mentalities that would work. Rather, the people who tended to be successful on the frontier were the rugged, self-reliant individualists. So that sort of ethos is what stuck in certain parts of the country.

To piggy back a little bit on @RTFirefly’s commentary, the US was largely populated by people who were desperate (and self-reliant) enough to hike that thousand miles to get their family out of there, figuratively speaking. Risk-taking and individualism are ingrained in the national character, for good or ill, and we reap the results for good and ill.

88

The fundamental belief of libertarianism:

All of my achievements were justly earned by my sole effort, and any failures were caused by others or the state

All the achievements of people outside my in-group were unjustly earned via state interference, and any failures of people outside of my in-group are caused by lack of hard-working, not having proper “innate” abilities, or bad culture.

89

…the thing was, I wasn’t asking for an explanation. There really isn’t any difference between what you said and what I said. Except I don’t accept that where you are today is a result of “a nation formed of wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups.” I think those “wildly disparate ethnic and cultural groups” have been largely ignored, especially in terms of this mantra of “self-reliance”.

If this discussion was only about Mt. Ida, Arkansas, then maybe you might have a point.

But the mythos of “self-reliance” isn’t some isolated ideology confined to some parts of the south. It’s entrenched in almost every aspect of American life. Universal healthcare? It’s your health, pay for it yourself. Social security? It’s running out of money, so you better save more money for your retirement. Minimum wage? How dare you suggest we bankrupt small business owners.

If it’s not right, then you fix it.

But most Americans aren’t fighting to fix it. Both of the two major parties seem pretty happy with the status quo.

America didn’t accidentally end up where it is today. It chose to centre white supremacy in its earliest days. It chose to allow slavery back then, just like it does now when it chooses not to close an exception to slavery in the 13th amendment.

Risk-taking and individualism are ingrained in the national character because it keeps the powerful in power, because it helps make the rich richer. It keeps the “poors” and the marginalised in their place. Its such effective propaganda, and it has worked really well for years.

You are the way you are right now because dissent is shut down very quickly from both people on the right and those who populate the so-called-centre-left. Dissent gets labelled as “socialism” or “woke.” We are going through another phase of that now.

90

HmmmmMMMmmm. Not sure. The historian Heather Cox Richardson has described the frontier movement as largely a successor to the defeated Confederacy:

Sure, there were a whole lot of ordinary folks who went west for land. But I’m not persuaded that the prioritization of the ideal of the “rugged, self-reliant individualist” was really just a natural organic outgrowth of frontier conditions.

ISTM that Richardson has a point that a lot of it was shaped by propaganda from societal elites whose idea of “individualism” was that the government should control and remove Native populations, grant Homestead Act lands and extraction rights almost entirely to white people, keep Asian immigrants permanently excluded from citizenship and subject to “foreigner” taxes, and otherwise safeguard their own top-dog status.

91

Perhaps ever so slightly overstated, but quite well stated IMO. I’d probably add something about the belief that the governmental expenditures/programs that personally benefit the libertarian are somehow justified, whereas any that they do not personally benefit from are entitlements/handouts/welfare.

92

That would be your stereotypical, uncharitable view of libertarianism. The actual view is that free societies are built on the agency of individuals cooperating together, and to have agency you need to have rights, such as the right to property, the right to make your own choices for your own ends so long as you do not harm others doing it, information not being controlled by central planners, etc. It says nothing about who is good or bad, competent or incompetent, lazy or not lazy. It simply means that people have a right to exist for their own sake, are not born into obligation to a collective, and are free to make their own choices. Full stop.

It does make the implicit claim that complex societies are best run from the bottom up, allowing institutions to emerge as needed, than from the top down by central planners and bureaucrats. And that is correct. Central planning sucks.

93

Personally I think extreme self-reliance converges with other philosophies and movements such as Libertarianism, authors such as Ayn Rand, Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), and Fredrick Nietzsche, celebrities like Joe Rogan, as well as movements associated with “toxic masculinity” such as incels movement, pick up artists and right wing extremism.

And I think the link between all that is “modern society sucks”. Whether they like it or not, most people are completely reliant on large institutions like the government or their corporate employers. Society pushes people to follow a path of “go to college, get a good corporate job, find a wife, buy a big house, raise a family, rinse and repeat”. And I think a lot of people, especially men, find that less than satisfying, even they are able to achieve that at all.

Not like most men would be happier eking out a living in the wilderness or splitting heads on a medieval battlefield. But I think people want to feel like their contributions actually matter.

94

Well-said overall. Agree completely. I’ll follow on from this bit:

They also, and perhaps particularly men, want to believe they have decisions to make, life choices that matter. Conformism can be emotionally stultifying even as it’s functionally carrying you to success.

And between “family obligations” and “golden handcuffs” (even if they’re much more brass than gold for most folks), many people believe that while life choices exist, the vast majority of those choices are so darn expensive versus going along SSDD that they don’t amount to a real choice. So they shuffle along while frustration builds. Wishing for some alternate reality where real choices don’t carry such high costs.

95

I think a big part of that is that for many jobs, there’s a BIG component of being at one or more removes from where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

For example, if you’re an IT analyst in a healthcare company, you have to go through some mental gyrations to convince yourself that what you’re doing is actually helping patients, and not actually just helping line your employer’s, or some insurance company’s pocket, because often the technological component is more centered around recordkeeping and billing, not around patient care.

I suspect a LOT of jobs are like this - what you’re doing in your day-to-day work doesn’t really translate very well into making a difference, or helping anyone, etc…

My theory is that’s a big piece of why people hoard information and try and squirm themselves into being indispensable and/or controlling some crucial task. Because when they do that, their work and by extension, they are important and what they do matters. It’s a shitty thing from an organizational perspective, but it makes a lot of sense from a interpersonal standpoint. And it also plays into something good leaders do- they make you feel like you and your work matter, even if only to them.

96

I think it has been a good 20 years since I thought I had more than negligible impact on anything outside my immediate family and the 4 walls of my home. And any time I thought of my career as anything other than a paycheck, I inevitably got that misconception slapped outta me. Just about the only thing I’ve accomplished has been to contribute to the creation and upbringing of 3 new people, who turned out pretty decent.

I pretty much want to live a decent life, after which I’ll cease to be and pretty quickly be entirely forgotten. From my perspective, it is somewhat misguided for most people to think anything else.

I’ve recently been re-reading Wendell Berry’s Port Williams novels and stories. He portrays a small town agrarian community - covering time back to the Civil War, in which the folk are far more in tune with the land and the seasons, aware of what they can and cannot accomplish, and appreciative of their family and neighbors. Yes, they worked fanatically hard, tragedies happen, and his books are definitely romanticized. But such an existence seems so much more “meaningful” to me than today’s.

97

From the Department of Pith:

cog in a machine

98

I suspect you are wrong. Every good deed adds up IMHO.
Some deeds merely put a smile on a strangers face. Others may add up for the person to be able to make it to the airport on time to see their dying mother.

While not religious, I do believe in Karma, and what goes around, comes around. Good or bad. Even if it makes you feel better for a fleeting second by holding a door for someone.

And don’t think you will be forgotten. You have children. My Mother recently died. I am currently digitizing 8mm film of our family. Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles Cousins. Everyone. I’m sharing it with everyone. Some of this is 60 years old.

I will then send the film digitizer to other cousins so they can do the same. And a coworker is interested in it as well. When all is done, I’m going to see If I can donate the digitizer to a it to a library, or historical society.

99

Really the whole discussion boils down to this comment, doesn’t it?

Humans are humans precisely because we ARE NOT SELF-RELIANT. I not only do not grow and hunt for my own food, or do my own electrical work, I have not invested the time and resources to learn how to do it, depending on others to have those skills instead. In return others have not learned about general pediatrics, depending on me to provide that service for them. Within pediatrics even I am not self-reliant as a practitioner - I depend on my partners to see our shared patients and we depend on each other to curbside for thoughts. I rely on the fact that there are specialists to call who know about areas much more than any generalist could. My having a broad fund of knowledge is much less important to my being a good doctor than knowing who to depend on for what kind of help when.

Living in a society IS A TEAM SPORT. And a team does poorly when its players do not trust that their teammates have their back; does best when they know can depend on each other.

I depend on others to help pull me up when I am down and they depend on me for the same.

I am proudly NOT SELF-RELIANT, hold those who believe that their privileged position is the result of only their own hard work with eye rolling contempt, and am proud to be able to be depended on and to depend on other in return.

100

Well we are circling around again to what Self Reliance means. It’s different to all of us. I do consider myself Self Reliant.

If we take some peoples views on this, then no, Jerimiah Johnson wasn’t self reliant. Nor am I.

The view of some is that you’re only self reliant is if you get dumped on a beach or forest naked and can get by, then you are self reliant. It’s ridiculous.