American Individualism: That Dangerous Delusion

I begin this post with two discussions. First a discussion between a group of mothers who don't vaccinate their children and a Public Health official (watch it from 45 seconds to 3:56) :



The assumption that these mother's make is that whether or not they choose to vaccinate their children is their decision alone. The possible health risks to unvaccinated, at risk groups are irrelevant - in their minds - to that decision. They either refuse to believe that there are such risks, or refuse to believe that they have a responsibility to take these risks into account. Thinking in terms of the individual apart from the community, these mothers insist that their responsibility is to themselves and their children alone; others are, presumably, responsible solely for themselves in the same manner.

The Public health official protests that when we affect the community, we cannot help but affect ourselves. If we introduce illness into our society, our own risk of illness increases as well. If we don't help take care of each other, we cannot even take care of ourselves.

The second discussion I heard today on NPR. The Supreme court is currently discussing the Constitutionality of "Obamacare." Specifically, the court is hearing arguments to rule on whether the individual mandate - which requires Americans to buy insurance or pay a fee - is permissible according to the Constitution. Whatever the fate of that particular position, some of the arguments against it put forward by the conservative Justices have a particular flavor. Listen to the following:

NPR: Health Care Mandate before Supreme Court

And this:

NPR: For and Against the Health Care Mandate

Just as the mothers did in the first clip, the Justices appeal to the individual first and foremost. The claim is that we cannot require this or that individual to "bear the costs" of other individuals, and that to do so eliminates (or at least greatly diminishes) their freedom of choice.

The opposition to these Justices argues in much the same vein as the Public Health Official in the Vaccine discussion did. Health care decisions never affect me solely as an individual, what happens to me directly affects what happens to others. If I don't get health insurance, and I am rushed to the ER for a heart attack, the hospital must treat me. When I can't pay, they must raise prices, insurance responds by raising premiums, and State Governments by raising taxes. To think of health insurance as nothing but an individual choice without any communal impact is not only naive, but entirely fails to consider the facts.

Behind the reaction of both the Justices and the mothers is the myth of the self-made individual. The myth holds, in spite of common sense, that whatever happens to me in life is the result primarily (perhaps even solely) of my own effort and achievement. If I get sick, that's my fault. If I'm not rich, I did not work hard enough. If I lose my home, can't afford chemotherapy, or find myself buried in debt, then I have no one to blame but me. Even worse, this myth seems clearly to advocate the position that the responsibility I have to others is negative; that is, I must not steal from them, murder them, or physically assault them, but I owe them nothing more than that.

The myth of the self-made individual is sheer nonsense.

We all owe a great debt to others for who we are and what we have achieved. We were taught to walk, talk, and even use the toilet by parents (or some caretaker). We were taught to read, write, and do arithmetic by teachers. Our character, personality, loves, likes, hates, preferences, values, and even our talents, are shaped to large degree by coaches, employers, coworkers, teammates, friends, lovers, and even casual acquaintanceships.

We are who we are because we are related to and interconnected with other people, other members of our communities.

But it's more than that. We are not little islands roving about an vast expanse of sea. What we do affects our society, and that society affects us. If we support policies that cut funding to education, cut aid to those living in poverty, dump people into prison for non-violent crimes, and fail to acknowledge the divisions of race and class that rip our society asunder, then we will be hurt by living in a less content, more violent, and less cooperative society. What we do or fail to do for our society, we do or fail to do for ourselves.

In economics the myth of the self-made individual is all too well known. Many of the super rich and their supporters argue that they must not be taxed at higher rates than the rest of us. They claim that to do so is nothing short of stealing what they rightly own.

Behind this idea is the assumption that wealthy people are solely responsible for their wealth. The help and assistance that they have received from others is marginal and negligible. They see themselves as "self-made" heroes whose hard work and intelligence has earned them their success.

The fact that many of these so-called "self-made" individuals were born wealthy, received government loans, grants, and other funding, use public roads, rely on employees who are publicly educated, depend on consumer protection laws, police, fire fighters, and other public services is not taken into account.

Furthermore, that how much money one earns depends on arbitrary factors - like being born with certain natural talents rather than others, being born in a time period in which one's talents pay off, and having one's talents, somewhat randomly favored by society - is never recognized by these self-professed heroes and their allies.

That a professional athlete, or a hedge fund manager, is paid so much more than an elementary school teacher, or a nurse, is simply a matter of the way society structures its economy; not a result of how hard these individuals work, or the result of some moral worth or inherent greatness that they posses.

We have to start thinking of ourselves as related to others, not merely encountering them like passing ships in the night. We are a community, not a collection of atomistic egos. What we do or fail to do for the broader society, we do or fail to do for ourselves.

Do this in Remembrance of Me

Today is Holy Thursday, the day when Christians remember the last supper, the foundation of that most sacred of Christian meals, the Holy Communion.

It is historically very uncertain if the accounts of the last supper actually go back to the Historical Jesus or if they are later constructions of the church. My own inclination is that Jesus did celebrate a "last supper" with some of his followers. I doubt he said the "words of the institution," but I suspect he asked them to "remember him while they ate and drank." But perhaps not even that is historical. There is something more important about this meal.

In standard Christian theology Holy Communion is deeply connected with Jesus "dying for the sins of the world." I'm not very interested in that theology. Jesus' death is very important. He was put to death by an Empire and a leadership that despised everything he stood for to make an example to would be rebels. That death is, in many ways, a profound conclusion to his life and mission. But I don't believe in vicarious sacrifice or magic rituals, so the "dying for our sins" part does not move me. I am, however, deeply moved by the ritual of Holy Communion.

Communion reminds as that we are all one, like cells of one body, and that we were meant for "life together" in Boenhoffer's phrase. It is also a reminder that God is intimately near to us, as near as the bread and wine we digest. But there is more to the ritual even than that. Eating together was a (perhaps the) central element in the ministry of the historical Jesus.

Historians and New Testament scholars are unanimous in recognizing an "all-inclusive table fellowship" or "open commensality" as a central practice of the ministry of Jesus. In the ancient world who you ate or did not eat with mattered very greatly. Table Fellowship was a microcosm of the lager society, you did not eat with the the "lower people" or "outcasts."

Jesus directly challenged this ancient table practice with his own. Jesus dined with all manner of people, rich and poor, righteous and sinner, outcast and respectable soul, tax-collect and harlot, P and scribe. For Jesus, all set together to dine as equals. Jesus, from all accounts, appears to have been principally concerned with undoing the divisions of society. His ministry of eating and healing appears to have been designed to radically transform human relationships from exclusive to inclusive, from hierarchical to egalitarian.

The practice of all eating together as equals was the realization of Jesus' vision. In having all dine together as equals, Jesus was not merely proclaiming, but actually destroying the boundaries that divide. No one was to be an "outcast" any longer.

It all probability that is what communion grew out of - Jesus' mission to unite us all; to break apart the divisions which cause strife between us.

So if you take communion tonight or anytime this Holy Week do indeed remember Jesus. But forget theological claims about his divinity or sacrificial death (I suspect that the Historical Jesus would have found such claims a profound waste of time) try to remember his mission to unite, heal, reconcile, and bring together.

In a world still so divided and marred by the violence of those divisions, perhaps it would be good to remember Jesus' call to unity and to try to live it a little.

Faith and Health Care reform

A while back I wrote a blog post in which I asked my readers to imagine how Jesus would have treated people who came to him to be cured if he operated like a Health Insurance Company (See "If Jesus were a Health Insurance CEO." I think that the question of religious faith and universal health care is an important one.

On that note, I am going to refer the reader to two pieces from the Washington Post "On Faith Panel"

First, Jim Wallis explains the rules for Health Care found in Leviticus, the basic idea was that everyone in Israel must have health care whether they could afford it or not.

See Wallis' piece here

Second, Aana Marie Vigen argues that anyone who follows Jesus is committed to making sure that all people have access to health care. In other words, Health care is a right. Furthermore, Vigen argues that a strong public option is the best way currently under discussion to ensure the christian duty to provide affordable and universal coverage.

See Vigen's piece here

I confess that I cannot understand how anyone could claim to be a follower of Jesus and think it is acceptable to live in a world where anyone is denied care, or even in a world where people regularly fall into debt and go bankrupt because of their medical bills. This seems utterly wrong for those who follow a man who preached "good news to the poor" and spent all his time healing the sick (without asking for a premium by the way).

As for the public option? A public option is a proposal that if passed would simply be a government funded insurance option that would force private insurance companies to provide better coverage at lower costs. The CBO estimates that no more than 12 million people would enroll in said public option. The bills that include have crafted in a way that it can't have an unfair advantage over private plans, and public plans work well in other countries and even in our own (Medicare) without any of the horrors that its opponents fear. Nor is it too expensive, simply reversing the Bush tax cuts, or cutting unnecessary subsidies by medicare to private insurance companies, or curbing unnecessary military spending, or not invading another country like Iraq, would provide far more than enough money to pay for the change. All a public plan will do is cut costs, and improve quality of care.

And people who follow the healer from Nazareth oppose this?!

Wittgenstein, Public Discourse, and the Relational Self

The following two clips are from the 1989 Film Wittgenstein, directed by Derek Jarman. The point of each is to articulate Wittgenstein's position that language and therefore thought and therefore the self is essentially relational and public, rather than private and isolated.





It seems to me that profound implications follow from the realization that the self is public, not private. If our language, thought, and sense of self is essentially embedded in our culture and our relations with others, the implications of that are truly far reaching.

An isolated Cartesian self, principally self-focused and inward looking is a very different creature from an essentially public self, embedded in a world and a culture, created and shaped by relationships. The political implications of this are enormous. Think about policies that assume a world of Cartesian egos as opposed to policies that assume fundamentally relational and public selves.

I think our relationships to others differ on each model just as significantly. If I am fundamentally a Cartesian atomistic self then my chief problem is self-discovery and I must do this by shutting the world "out there" off and looking within. But if I am a relational public self - the goal might still be self-discovery, but with and through discovering others. Relationships with others here are primary not secondary. This is critically important.