Hope Beyond Rugged Individualism

It’s also highly likely that at some point in our Collective journey we’ll be invited to identify, and then ultimately let go of, many of the traces of hyperindividuality, rivalrous behaviour and dominator culture that we might have picked up from being raised within patriarchal and post-colonial societal models.

Even for those who will never don a cowboy hat, the idea of a white man going it alone against the world has stuck. It is one of the strongest identifiers of American culture and politics, where cooperation is weakness and others are the enemy—to be stolen from or conquered.

Heroic individualism’s incessant drive to be “productive,” “optimized,” and “efficient” often crowds out time and energy otherwise spent forging close bonds, both to other people and to traditions, crafts, and lineages that provide a sense of belonging.

“I keep coming back to community as the solution,” he writes.12 To brave shifting conditions, we will have to strive to create communities “in which everyone’s basic needs are met,” because “leaving people out eventually costs everybody.” Interdependence and the social skills that facilitate that connectedness or cooperation are at the heart of Beg