You expect/demand self-reliance? Well, my father finished his studies and had a stable job as an engineer. Suddenly he got ill: Multiple sclerosis (MS). In the early stages he got called a fraud by his parents, people called him lazy. They didn't even know he had MS in the first place. He had tremors in his hands. He could barely walk. He could see less than 10%. He couldn't read anymore, except with special glasses. He couldn't drive anymore. (How this all affected me as a child is another discussion.) His disease slowly progressed. He eventually ended up in a wheel chair, ended up with dialysis, and the plaque in his brains made him look like Alzheimer's. According to the "American Way" [1] he should end up on the street, at the mercy of some philanthropist he'd have to know or magically meet, and if he failed to achieve that, well I guess he didn't pray hard enough? The "European Way" [1] shows mercy. I'm grateful my father lived in Europe when this all happened. The only sad part about the story, is that my father was so pro-capitalist that he voted on political figures who destroyed some bricks of the very system which supported him!

> our culture leaves very little room for appreciating, valuing, revering, looking up to, or attributing positive social accolades to anything but self-reliance.

Our societies are made up by individuals, but we are all in this together. All of us are human beings who are trying their best to succeed in life.

I believe that someone like my father made no known mistake in his life to blame him for his disease (the cause of MS is still unknown), and I have zero understanding for someone who beliefs that he, in his situation, should've ended up on the street, forcing him to be self-reliant. Like, how? He'd have died rather quickly as a blind, homeless man who cannot walk. And his example is just one of the many. I have one word for a society in the 20th/21st century who pushes people towards that path: compassion-less. And I judge a society by the way it treats its weakest links. Because that is a sign of wealth. Not United_States_Dollar-wealth, but maturity of society akin to how a parent nurtures their child. (Its not the same in this context because the child has a chance to succeed in life, but its close, and in case of temporary illnesses its accurate.)

[1] America is bigger than USA, and Europe isn't one nation either. These are caricatures of Europe and America. We're overgeneralizing, in so many ways.

I think we are very much on the same side. I'm not suggesting what the US does is right--I'm criticizing my culture. What I wrote is, to me, inexcusable and deplorable, even as a caricature--albeit one I do not believe is overly broad or unfairly overgeneralized. We need to do much better.

When I say we expect/demand self-reliance, I mean that is the dominant cultural & historical narrative & social expectation here in the US. I do not mean I personally expect or demand that of others as a general rule--but I am expected to. A fair amount of the political division in this country often revolves around where individuals fall on the spectrum of expecting/demanding self-reliance of their fellow citizens. America doesn't care about its poor, homeless, disadvantaged, disabled, and otherwise weaker citizens. In fact, I don't think Americans typically look at such people as citizens at all--or at least not as equals. They are, instead, burdens.