One May Be The Easiest Number To Defeat

Madame M:

Excellent analysis.  Although I would think many Native American tribes could take issue with your terminology and some implications, the overall legacy problem seems to have tremendous validity.

The literature, while perhaps scant, is not entirely devoid of reference to the effect of pioneer thought.  Frederick Jackson Turner’s classic essay on it is practically required reading for many graduate school historians (and occasionally political scientists).  And you would find a number of congruent ideas to yours.

Sociologists talk about how we are atomizing, each expecting his own freedom and minimally concerned or unconcerned about the freedom of others—and often minimally concerned or unconcerned at all about others outside of very immediate family or a small circle of “friends”.

One too frequently hears this expressed in terms of the rest of the citizenry (not FELLOW citizenry, note) similar to “F’ them.  I earned my way, and they can too.”  Even though the circumstances are usually far different from when the individual supposedly “earned” his or her own way.  But even more importantly, there is no desire to change the underlying conditions that generate poverty. 

As you alluded to, the real powers sit back and feel comfortable every time they hear the talk they have seeded echo back to them.  They know they don’t need to do the conquering.  Divide, disconnect, and isolate, and the people—or more accurately, the fractured groups or disempowered individuals—will conquer themselves.

Aristocrats and now plutocrats have been using that technique throughout history.  And we keep falling for it.  Human emotions and psychology change too little or too slowly, it would seem.

I therefore applaud and support your standing in the middle of the tide of individualism to be a breakwater for cooperation.

Excellent thinking to start us off in 2014!