Those who grow in strength are able to do so by receiving the support of others. It's a causal relationship.
The myth is that we arrive at strength through overcoming the need for support, having grown our metaphorical muscles through force of will. Many have it as a goal, in fact. They think that the measure of strength is the ability to function without external help of some kind and to indulge in the fantasy that it is their unique individual application of their mindset that is the source of that strength.
This illusion is actually quite easy to penetrate by looking at our biology. Our body grows and heals to the degree it perceives it has external support. There's a built-in biological feedback system that requires these external inputs for our bodies to function to the peak of our abilities. At it most extreme it can be seen in babies. If they are deprived of touch and attention, their brain development stunts, they don't grow as healthy. It has a lasting effect through life. People think that reliance only is required at these more vulnerable phases of life, but not, say, as we become adults. But that's a fairy tale, our physiology continues to respond positively to cues of support, growing in strength when in receipt of support through all stages of life, On the other hand it declines in the face of lack of support. The effects are large and predictable, we are social creatures and our physiology is setup that way, we don't have a choice over it. The concept of self-reliance tries to tell a story that defies and in a sense denigrates our basic nature.
Rather than questing for self-reliance to indulge in the fantasy of independence, it is far more empowering, to me at least, to live in the knowledge that as individuals we have the ability to make others stronger.
The strength we need is not biological. We need the strength to pursue our individual roles in life. All the collective strengthening in the world cannot tell you which way to swim or do your life for you.
George Lucas got into film from cultural anthropology when it was near impossible to get a career in it. He then made a soap opera in space which you needed his background in anthropology to get what he was doing. The collective was against it or didn't understand. The film nearly didn't get made.
The NBA stars that make it have individual advantages that put them ahead of the pack. Wayne Gretzky was ahead of the game to the point where the collective had little to provide in direction or competition.
Independence is fundamental and countries have wars over it. Codependency is a psychological disorder that ruins lives. Strengthening people who are aiming at ruin breaks the virtuous loop, no matter how much collective support. It is a myth to think collective support is an easy task. Real support requires as much time, effort and skill as the individual puts into achievement. A married pair of doctors in the same field would know enough about each other and the task to support each other.
Falling into taking or giving the signalling cues of the collective and eating/massaging perks is a quick way to lose yourself. Meet each other's needs, yes. Collective strength as a replacement for the individual? No.
You've put unnecessary tension between the collective/society and individuality and individual achievement as if they are at odds here. Lucas didn't need the whole of the collective to believe in his vision from the start, he just needed some measure of support in his life coming from another person or people. This is especially true for someone making films, as that involves hundreds of people combining their individual talents to a project. (ps he's donated 6 Billion into helping people get good education, a support system for people to help get success)
Superstar athletes get to shine with their superior talents only because they had some measure of support in their life to encourage their career and open up the possibilities. This is especially true for countless NBA athletes, many of them having come from poor backgrounds. You won't find a single NBA star who doesn't acknowledge that their success was made possible through the sacrifices of others in their life. Their childhood peers who kept them away from gangs, a parent who drove them to games, a mentor who kept reinforcing their belief in their talent. Not to mention the infrastructure that was laid before them by the pioneers before they were even born.
The individual and collective is at odds. By fundamental design like the manager focusing for corporate profits over paying the employees a higher wage. By nature like the expression of one's own character in the face of collective difference. And arbitrarily too, between people who do not like each other or two lovers breaking the rules.
An NBA star sacrifices teamwork with others to focus on his career. His community gave to him in a way that he did not return. His amateur league teammates taught him things he didn't return. His professional teammates are ultimately left behind as he ascends up the hierarchy. He didn't focus on teamwork, he focused on getting as good at the game as he could and that put him in selection, on the advertisements, on the money.
The collective can kill the individual very easily. Falling into the collective trap of an empire builder frequently has the outcome of individual growth being limited for the sake of the team, the union, the standard. The mindless waves of reputation based attacks can take down in the individual regardless of fact or fiction.
Harmonious teams end in wars. You organize all the king's men into a tribe and see what happens when a tribe's Juliet marries the other tribe's Romeo. You pick your conflict, between individuals or collectives. The tension doesn't go away, it just gets shifted forward in the circle of life.
You have a mistaken idea that community is about repaying.
We're not in a just world, the community is supposed to be about bettering everyone, but of course there are traps like sports or people who ignore it.
The honest rule is to pay back more as your ability to increases.
The teacher does not have to be directly paid back by his students, it is enough that some of them will produce a generalized return, trickling down and around.
However, we're all too local for that to really work. Hence witness flight from cheap or rural areas to cities, draining resources.
None of this requires conflict. It just requires pure indifference. Teams can cooperate too.
Do you have study- or experiment- backed evidence for the claim that we physiologically respond positively to cues of support of others as adults? I figure it's true, I've just never seen any data on it. Some latent part of your lizard brain probably changes when your tribe respects you vs. when you are ostracized.
Broadly though I think the concept of self-reliance does not do anything to contradict the pro-social behavior you advocate. Those who are self-reliant and capable of independence are, all else equal, those who are most capable of helping others. Most who practice self-reliance do not do so to go off the grid, but rather to learn their own limits and capabilities. The process of learning a skill from scratch and inventing from blank slate is creative in ways that are unique, freeing from social pressures and socially imposed constraints.
There is an enormous pile of scientific evidence indicating this directly and indirectly. For direct examples you can for example look at studies involving touch. A hug, for example, can lead to a multitude of beneficial physiological responses in part because you get a release of oxytocin, which itself is a sign that our physiology is wired for 'coregulation'. Touch receptors are one of the ways that our body picks up on these kinds of cues. For a broader theoretical basis for this idea that cues of support are pivotal to ongoing health and wellness in adults, there is a groundbreaking theory called Polyvagal Theory which is well worth looking into.
We also have a vast number of examples of negative evidence in the literature (because scientists tend to hunt for what makes things go wrong). For example it is very well established that social isolation leads to worse health outcomes. The basic principle at work is that humans require coregulation to maintain physical and mental health and it doesn't matter what phase of life you are in, those feedback systems are operational from start to finish. Because humans in particular are social creatures, we have physiology that is designed to pick up on social cues, because it is through group participation and social bonds that our species obtains better chances of reproduction and survival. If we have poor social bonds and lack of social support/connection, the body picks up on that. You will get feelings of loneliness for example, which in a way is hoping you to drive you back to seek out a social group to belong to, as it increases your chances of survival. That's your body saying it is reliant on others.
Social disconnect is also a influencing what our immune system and the profile of our autonomic nervous system functioning is up to. If the body does not get cues that is safe - and for mammals like us that means perceiving social connection and social support - it is going to favour stressful physiology which over time deteriorates our health. Note that giving support (rather than receiving it) is also a cue to our body that we are in a social group that is positively affecting our survival and reproductive chances. But, note that to get these cues you are still relying on others to get that positive feedback loop working for your physiology. There are a lot of studies showing this dynamic as well, doing community work and altruism boosts all kinds of markers of mental and physical health, giving a massage reduces stress and promotes oxytocin release in the giver as well etc.
The bottom line is that our physiology makes us coregulators, rather than self-regulators and that is such a key distinction that is frequently missed.
> Those who are self-reliant and capable of independence are, all else equal, those who are most capable of helping others.
The people that in practice help the most are the most skilled and able coregulators. To become the strongest, or as I like to think of it, the most resourceful person, you don't get there by self-reliance, you get there by being an effective coregulator. To get close to maximum impact, strength and health you have to strong connections with others - you can't get there on your own, others are required because our physiology recruits the outside world as a means of regulating its own state.
And lastly, one of the perks of having a secure feeling about your social connections and sense of support, is that it opens up an ability to explore more freely and roam more widely. Many of the multi-million dollar making basketball stars in America who've come from poor backgrounds share the same story, while growing up they had at least one person and more commonly a whole group that supported their path to the NBA - it was their support that made their success possible. It's not uncommon to hear how their childhood peers kept them away from bad people because this person had a shot at something special. In just about every success story, whether it's a rags-to-riches scenario or the story of how a group of athletes largely from middle-upper class assembled one of the best teams in basketball history (GSW) you can trace back the critical role of enduring social support.
There is a lot of wisdom in this post. I think there are some people who have a knack for recognizing talent, value, whatever you want to call it, and protect and/or share their own social capital to encourage (boost?) what they see and remove impediments to it flourishing. It's not a guarantee, but it might be a signal. If the baseline is a 1 in 5000 shot at the NBA, there still may be 10 of those deep boosters among the 5000 who do the same things, but come up short. Yet 10 kids reduced their odds from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 10.
But one can reason from first principles, and find many more instances in one's life where reliance on others is unnecessary. It doesn't need to be an absolute.
I don't think it is possible to arrive to an explanation for why self-reliance is sought from your premise. The closest point I can think of is an analogy with the cell membrane; the fact of the existence of an indivisible individual... But to go from there to why someone would hone some skill not necessary for survival takes a change of perspective.
If you have eaten a good meal and you have some fat reserves you can spend a long time without having to ingest food (barring some minerals that you need every day), but that doesn't mean your body has become independent of its need for nutrition. You can do things that make it so you can last longer without food, but ultimately, the idea of independence from nutrition is ostensibly silly. Distorted views of self-reliance, in this analogy, is like believing that you can go without nutrition because you've become strong enough to do it.
I'm familiar with the philosophy of thermodynamics and don't object. However, there are many instances we sentient beings encounter where perception and reality blur. We don't have access to objective truth, so it is noble to willfully alter one's own subjective reality. A common example in the personal narrative of a human being is forgiving the people of one's past who subjected us to the difficulties which made us who we are. Here one may choose independence of one's own previous perception of what one thought was a fact, and no longer have one's future actions dictated by it.
The myth is that we arrive at strength through overcoming the need for support, having grown our metaphorical muscles through force of will. Many have it as a goal, in fact. They think that the measure of strength is the ability to function without external help of some kind and to indulge in the fantasy that it is their unique individual application of their mindset that is the source of that strength.
This illusion is actually quite easy to penetrate by looking at our biology. Our body grows and heals to the degree it perceives it has external support. There's a built-in biological feedback system that requires these external inputs for our bodies to function to the peak of our abilities. At it most extreme it can be seen in babies. If they are deprived of touch and attention, their brain development stunts, they don't grow as healthy. It has a lasting effect through life. People think that reliance only is required at these more vulnerable phases of life, but not, say, as we become adults. But that's a fairy tale, our physiology continues to respond positively to cues of support, growing in strength when in receipt of support through all stages of life, On the other hand it declines in the face of lack of support. The effects are large and predictable, we are social creatures and our physiology is setup that way, we don't have a choice over it. The concept of self-reliance tries to tell a story that defies and in a sense denigrates our basic nature.
Rather than questing for self-reliance to indulge in the fantasy of independence, it is far more empowering, to me at least, to live in the knowledge that as individuals we have the ability to make others stronger.