Knowing what you don’t know — the limits of your competence — is one of the foremost pieces of advice I give. “A man’s got to know his limitations,” said an actor who one day performed a widely panned improvisation with an empty chair at the Republicans’ presidential nominating convention.
Another piece of sound advice is not to take yourself too seriously. Loss of the ability to laugh at yourself is the first warning sign of fundamentalism. A priest I know once said it was a healthy thing, now and then, to spit on your idols.
We have quite a few idols in this country. Images, ideas, fanciful notions to which it is obligatory we genuflect: the flag, the military, American exceptionalism, freedom (as an abstraction), meritocracy, hard work. “Values” too: small-town, Midwestern, mountain, Texas, however regionalized as unique to here, to my clan.
Rugged individualism is another of those idols. The coronavirus pandemic illustrates how far the notion has run amuck untempered by the two pieces of advice above. Rugged is now toxic (NPR):
Ten years ago, Dr. Kristina Darnauerand her husband, Jeff, moved to tiny Sterling, Kan., to raise their kids steeped in small-town values.
“The values of hard work, the value of community, taking care of your neighbor, that’s what small towns shout from the rooftops, this is what we’re good at. We are salt of the earth people who care about each other,” Darnauer says. “And here I am saying, then wear a mask because that protects your precious neighbor.”
But Darnauer’s medical advice and moral admonition were met with contempt from some of her friends, neighbors and patients. People who had routinely buttonholed her for quick medical advice at church and kids’ ballgames were suddenly treating her as the enemy and regarding her professional opinion as suspect and offensive.
It is hard for backsliders to walk their talk once acclimated to accepting and repeating lies.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Darnauer told NPR. “Because we say, this is what we value. And then when we actually had the chance to walk it out, we did it really poorly.”
Darnauer resigned as Rice County medical director in July. The toxicity was too much.
More than a quarter of all the public health administrators in Kansas quit, retired or got fired this year, according to Vicki Collie-Akers, an associate professor of population health at the University of Kansas. Some of them got death threats. Some had to hire armed guards.
“These are leaders in their community,” Collie-Akers says. “And they are leaving broken.” Collie-Akers notes these professionals also leaving at a terrible time. The pandemic is still raging. Vaccines still need to get from cities to small towns and into people’s arms; public health officers are as important as ever.
But under these conditions in communities already under-served, who will want to fill these positions, she asks.
Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, tells NPR what is happening in Rice County is occurring in rural communities all across the country. Many remote hospitals are becoming desperate for staff. For that matter, so are hospitals in Los Angeles County.
Chris Merrett, director of the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs, tells NPR that towns driving away health professional over the divisive politics surrounding the pandemic and mask-wearing are choosing “toxic individualism” over the common good.
Rugged individualism is a holdover from westward expansion, the up-by-the-bootstraps pioneer myth. It’s rubbish, but it is deeply ingrained rubbish. Herbert Hoover may have coined the phrase in a 1928 campaign speech, framing the choice before voters as “rugged individualism and a European philosophy of … paternalism and state socialism.” The pandemic demonstrates once again that all that talk about the values of hard work, community, and caring for your neighbor is just that — talk. Self-aggrandizing bluster. Selfishness rules.
Move over, toxic masculinity.
The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser goes through the end of the year so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, you will help make 2021 brighter.