Rugged Individualism

I read a very interesting review of the work of the novelist Wallace Stegner, who taught at Stanford, and was raised in the western states. I have been meaning to read the book "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", but haven't gotten to it yet. However, the main idea in the review was that Stegner was confronting the myth of the American western expansion, and the core values of the "goin' to strike it rich" stories so many people came with or grew up with. The book has constant failures and frictions between the thinly disguised parents, and the need to "move on" as the family never makes it to "the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings".
And that started me thinking about the problems inherent in the whole project of moving west, where we leave behind all that would encumber us-- especially the aged, infirm, children, and sometimes even wives or sweethearts. The single male going out to seek his fortune, from 15-35 years old, fits every cultural archetype since Odysseus-- but in the American west of a century ago, there was the extra mobility of having that frontier move ever further away from home, and ever-so-magically draw the restless youth forward, so that they didn't even really notice that they were leaving the rest of the family behind. Perhaps in some cases, it was explicitly recognized, and chosen partly because of frictions and dysfunctionalities which in our time have continued to "rub" the people who have to stay home and take care of the children and the old people. Alcoholism, cruelty, arbitrary use of power within a family, and subconscious dependence on the women to do the work at home figure prominently in the picture. The few women who actually got to live out the paradigm of the hero(ine) were lucky to have sisters or maiden aunts to do some of that boring maintenance work and caretaking needed at home.
Now, especially in the post-election slow melting of the euphoria after Obama's successful rise to the presidency, we will start fractionating and fissuring over what ideas will most help different parts of the electorate, all of whom feel that they did the main work of helping to get him elected. For many women, especially those of us steeped in the social justice movement of the 60s-80s, the main emphasis we want to see from government is to help with infrastructure to serve children and the elderly; so we can stay in the workplace, where our own health care benefits and retirement are tied down.
Every day I get emails from the green energy movement, the peace movement, the social justice movement, and various other groups within each of the main three. They are all trying to focus their subscribers, and ask Obama, or the new cabinet, for specific legislative and administrative answers to problems.
So far, the thing that seems best to me is from the Quakers-- (The Friends Committee on National Legislation) to ask the government to actually COUNT the military budget as part of the overall federal budget, and to lower it by 25%, so that the other needs of the country can be attended to, with that money.
Housing, Education and Welfare are going to need immense support, as the reverberations of the financial meltdown happen. People are not only going to be losing their homes, they won't be able to heat them, or afford enough food. The minimum wage hasn't gone up in years, and many poor people are barely making it from pay check to pay check. Single mothers and children are going to be very hard-hit in the downturn-- and moms will not be able to afford babysitters so they can go to work. The elderly who have depended more and more on Medicare are going to be finding it hard to get medical providers, because Medicare payments to physicians are so low that many docs are on the edge of closing their offices. It is possible that physician assistants and nurse associates will do a lion's share of the work, but as the baby boomers age, we will need more and more sophisticated help to be able to stay at home as frail healthy elders. Most of the state budgets are trying to decrease the in-home ancillary services for the elderly, in order to fix the budget shortfalls at the state level. And we also are going to have to find ways to get cheaper prices on medications, as the prediction is that most people over 65 will need an average of 8 pills per day for various chronic conditions.
Even if daughters and nieces and granddaughters stop going to school and to work, it will be hard to care for the elders at home. And most families cannot function without two incomes, to maintain a home and stability, which will get harder as the downturn deepens.
So it seems quite important to me to look at the myth of rugged individualism, and how it gave so many people the belief that the only person they needed to take care of is themselves.
And in order to become more realistic, we need to address this myth, and the truth, which is that all the people in society are interconnected in many ways, and we need to be respectful and helpful in small and large ways for our society to be not only resilient but healthy. When it becomes easy to bring it to consciousness, I believe many of the social ills which need to be addressed by the whole society will finally get attention. Until we have seen the way this myth has conditioned American individualism and "free enterprise" we won't be able to do the fundamental problem-solving we need to do.