No one is coming

Nathaniel Branden, in his work on self esteem, wrote about the awakening of maturity being the realization that "no one is coming". This is a powerful realization that speaks to how dependence, indepedence and interdependence all play a role in a well-rounded pursuit of living well. There are certain aspects of reality we depend on, and how we adjust to reality determines how well we succeed in becoming independent, and our independence depends on our recognizing and accepting when interdependence is necessary -- and it's all dependent on the correct use of reason.

We are dependent on food, but unless you are under the care of a provider, food doesn't magically appear when you're hungry. To become independent, you begin planning and working to attain food -- by growing it, stealing, or working for wages you can then use to buy food. Independence comes into play when you decide to obtain food for yourself, and the interdependence comes in when you realize you have to work cooperatively with others to obtain what you want -- unless you do steal it, but then you are dependent on someone else having grown it, processed it and made it available to steal. I suppose you could live off the land, but you will eventually find that interdependence is necessary to live a life above a savage.

The problem Branden addressed is the immature idea that someone or something is going to come along and take care of us.  People who never accept fully the responsibility to become independent, or adjust reasonably and creatively to dependence on reality, or cooperatively work with others in interpedendence, are stuck looking for something or someone to take care of them, but this can never lead to a full human life and it ends up in debilitating dependence, or destitution -- self esteem is never developed, and the individual becomes like a pin ball in a pin ball machine, constantly at the mercy of forces outside their control. I should say here that this applies to individuals who are capable of doing otherwise, not handicapped in such a way beyond their control that they are dependent on others.

This past election showed clearly that this is not only the problem of some individuals who don't mature or develop self-esteem, it can be a problem for a large part of a nation -- there was the widespread idea that someone, or something, was coming, that hope and change was the arrival of the caregiver, the provider, and that all would be well. The nation's widespread dependence on government to make our lives better is an immature idea and it blocks maturity as a nation. Hopefully, people are beginning to see, after the failure of the first two stimulus efforts, that perhaps their original hope was misplaced. People are beginning to see the same old business as usual in government, and they are hopefully realizing that independence and interdepedence are the mature solutions to national problems, and that our dependence on government should be limited, that we should adjust reasonably to our needs for a government -- to protect the spontaneous order of society so that we can become independent and work interdependently to solve problems.