Conservatives tend to be fond of the myth of rugged individualism. So does a certain small subset of fantasy and science fiction writers. The irony of “rugged individualism” is that no individual will long survive out in the wilderness or in the middle of his or her thousand acre spread without the fruits and results of human concentration and cooperative effort.
Even the frontiersmen and mountain men required the products of a citified culture. They didn’t personally forge their rifles, piece by piece, or tan the leather and carve the frame for their saddles, or cast the bullets for their weapons (well, perhaps a few did). They didn’t forge their axes and knives. And against all that city-built technology, agrarian and indigenous cultures didn’t stand a chance.
It’s no accident that the far less cooperative Neanderthals died out. Despite having what appears to have been equivalent cognitive skills and greater physical strength; they couldn’t compete and survive against the fractious but cooperative homo sapiens. Economists and historians have long known that innovations come out of cities and communities, not from lone individuals or single families living alone. Even with modern technology, single family farms struggle…and they certainly don’t create and mass-produce new technologies.
The tiger is the most fearsome of solo predators, certainly an animal analogue to the mythical rugged individualist. A single unarmed human being doesn’t stand a chance against a tiger, but tigers are an endangered species.
And for all the exaltation of great inventors and creators, the vast majority of them were actually only improving earlier and cruder devices in a form of competitive cooperation, hoping to make a better device, and thereby a better life. Sometimes, they even stole each other’s ideas, but they couldn’t have done that without a community from which to steal. History shows that societies that reward cooperative-creators, and, yes, sometimes idea/device thieves, tend to progress and thrive.
So why is there all the nostalgia, all the conservative support, for rugged individualism? Why do so many support the myth of rugged individualism? Why all the ridicule for the idea that it takes a village to raise a child? Why doesn’t anyone champion productive, if competitive, cooperation? Why do so many Americans revere “rugged individualism” and reject the idea of a competitive (if sometimes cut-throat) but cooperative society when that society has created so much for so many?