Me, myself, and I
Would be nowhere without my fellow humans and the knowledge created by them along the way ...
One of the amazing things about life in America is that it affords anyone and everyone the opportunity to move up the economic ladder. The American dream promises that anyone can make it if they work hard enough and play by the rules. Some would have you believe this is baloney, but that is not the case. Many many many Americans do just this.
To the extent that there are problems with this story, I would argue they stem mostly from a belief by those who have "made it" that somehow their hardwork and efforts alone were the determining factor. Too many people see themselves as an individual who is totally self-reliant and independent from outside state or government assistance. They see themselves as the epotime of rugged individualism.
With its origins in the American frontier experience, American rugged individualism remains with us. The American frontier during the time of expansion was generally sparsely populated with very little infrastructure. Under these conditions, individuals would have to provide for themselves to survive. The environment certainly must have favored people who preferred to work in isolation from a larger community and might have shifted attitudes at the frontier in favor of individualistic thought over community.
Many of those interviewed in the 2020 book "Rugged Individualism and the Misunderstanding of American Inequality," co-written by Noam Chomsky, mostly found that the continued belief in this brand of individualism is a strong factor in American policies surrounding social spending and welfare. Americans who more strongly believe in the values espoused by rugged individualism tend to view those who seek government assistance as being responsible for their own troubles. As you would expect this leads to decreased support for welfare programs and increased support for stricter criteria for receiving government help.
The influence of American individualistic thought also extends into attitudes around government regulation as well. Those parts of the country who's past was part of the American frontier for longer were found to be more likely to be supportive of Republican candidates. The values espoused by these candidates often ran against things like gun control, minimum wage increases, and environmental regulation.
So, let’s get real.
If you’ve “made it” in America, that is you’ve enjoyed financial success, it is very likely that you fall into one of the two of Daniel Kahneman’s equations describing success1:
success = talent + luck
great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck
Sure, you can make the argument that economists like Kahneman fail to remember that the game of life lasts more than one move, and therefore success is achieved by grit and determination.
So, let’s get even more real.
Success in the modern world has never been possible to achieve in isolation. Our ability to survive and thrive across an immense range of global environments is not due to our individual abilities. Rather, it is due to the collaboration with our fellow humans over many generations. In essence, any success we might enjoy today is a byproduct of human culture.
I’m using culture here in the manner described in Joseph Henrich in his 2016 book “The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.” Specifically, “the large body of practices, techniques, heuristics, tools, motivations, values, and beliefs that we all acquire while growing up, mostly by learning from other people.” Henrich makes the case that we have been co-evolving with our culture in such a manner that our very genes have been impacted.
If you want to understand just how much impact this cultural evolution has had on our genes, and in my mind the nail in the coffin as to why we cannot ever consider our selves “rugged individuals,” just consider how we humans deal with food. We grind it, we chop it, and we cook it. Other primates don’t do that, why not?
Duh, they don’t have fire.
True. But that is only part of the story. Our cultural learnings over the generations seems to have produced genes which have resulted in long term changes to our anatomy. When you stop and think about it, it really is quite amazing.
Our mouths are incredibly small. The size of a three pound squirrel monkey. Our cousins, the Chimpanzees, can open their mouths twice as wide as we can and hold substantially more amounts of food. Our stomachs are small. They are a third of the surface area that we’d expect for a primate of our size. Our colons are too short, being only 60% of their expected mass. We are also very poor at detoxifying wild foods2.
So it will come as no surprise that with stomach's and colons being much smaller than they ought to be, we lack digestive power. Compared to other primates, our digestive power, from our mouth’s inability to breakdown food to our colon’s lack of capacity to process fiber, sucks. Without things like cooking fire and the ability to grind seeds and nuts our genes co-evolved with both the cultural know-how and the tools.
If our relationship with food, and our body’s complete dependency on the cultural learnings provided by the generations of humans that came before you doesn’t completely move you off the idea of rugged individualism, what will? So, whilst you might indeed still consider yourself a rugged individual, one who has completely made it on your own, the evidence is clear: without the cultural knowledge around cooking and food processing, you’d quickly be dead.
Still convinced of your innate rugged ability to drive personal success? Let’s drop a team of 100 capuchin monkeys along with a team of you and 100 of your friends (chosen at random) into the Amazon with no tools or supplies whatsoever (Ok, to be nice, your team can wear clothes). Which ever team has a greater population after one year wins. Which team will you chose to bet on?
So, next time you hear about a population that is down on their luck, a population whose dignity and standard of living could be elevate with a helping hand, please stop and consider how you can help. Please also consider how lucky you are to be in a position to help. Lastly, get to work helping them. It need not necessarily be through government subsidies or whatnot, it can simply be as a volunteer somewhere. No matter what, keep in mind that perhaps one of the best uses of our tax dollars is helping those not lucky enough to be in a position to help themselves.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 177). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.
The material on food processing and cooking was drawn principally from Wrangham 2009, and Wrangham and Conklin-Brittain 2003.