The Myth of Self-Reliance - The Paris Review
Self-sufficiency In 1830, American Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson published his influential essay Self Reliance in which he urged people to avoid conformity and to follow their own instincts and ideas. He encouraged people to discover the genius within and realise their self-worth. Milllennia before, Plato’s contemporary Hippias of Elis taug
... See moreWaqas Ahmed • The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility
We’re not meant to be independent creatures, all alone. We’re meant to depend on each other. It’s an unsettling truth: the less we depend on each other, the more we depend on the market. We summon eggs to our apartment via an app instead of simply asking a neighbor. We hire a therapist—incapable of loving us back by design —and forget to call our f... See more
Catherine Shannon • The fantasy of independence
Natalie Audelo and added
The second myth that I want to debunk is this idea of self-reliance. That resilient people do it all themselves. They’re independent, they don't need anybody else. That could not be further from the truth. Any organization, any person, any community that is resilient is one where people are coming together, where there is outside support, where the... See more
Jason Shen • How to Cultivate Resilience: A Four Part Framework
sari added
Dependence starts when we’re born and lasts until we die. We accept our dependence as babies, and ultimately, with varying levels of resistance, we accept help as we get to the end of our lives. But in the middle of our lives, we mistakenly fall prey to the myth that successful people are those who help rather than need, and broken people need rath
... See moreBrené Brown • Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Humans are social creatures—cooperative and interdependent almost by biological definition. So if it’s not actually natural to our species to be self-sufficient, why is it considered aspirational?
Haley Nahman • #96: Why Do We Aspire to Live Alone?
Keely Adler added
Keely Adler added
The self without sympathetic attachments is either a fiction or a lunatic…. [Yet] dependence is scorned even in intimate relationships, as though dependence were incompatible with self-reliance rather than the only thing that makes it possible.