Name: Vũ Thị Lan Anh

ID: 1717710026
Individual freedom is Americans’ most precious and greatest treasure. However, there is a
price to obtain and secure it: self-reliance. Self-reliance is especially valued by Americans.
Americans believe they should take care of themselves and solve their own problems. It means
that people don’t depend on their family, the government or any organizations. Individuals believe
that they should be financially and emotionally self-reliant to keep their freedom. Only in that way
can they get into mainstream of American life, which means they can have power and/or respect.
Of course charity or getting help and support from family and government is allowed but many
people think what such individual is bad for American character and people must rely on
themselves.
This belief of self-reliance in Americans today is traditional basic American value. A long
time ago, this value was always supported by many philosophers. For example, Friedrich
Nietzsche wrote ““No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the
river of life” (Schopenhauer as Educator, 1873). Similarly, Emerson admonishes that “imitation is
suicide” and counsels: “The power which resides in [each person] is new in nature, and none but
he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” (Self-reliance, 1904).
This strong belief in self-reliance of Americans may be difficult to understand, but deep inside it
is very important. Most Americans can easily identify with this value because for them freedom is
like a desire and right of each individual to be able to control their own destiny.
To illustrate that intense belief, you can see it in the way Americans treat their children.
They have been trained since very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals
who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies. They have not been
trained to see themselves as members of a close-knit, tightly interdependent family, religious
group, tribe, nation, or other collectivity. Even very young children are given opportunities to make
their own choices and express their opinions. For example, parents will ask a one-year-old child
what color balloon he or she wants, which candy bar he or she would prefer, or whether he or she
wants to sit next to mommy or daddy. The child’s preference will normally be accommodated. In
brief, through this process, Americans see themselves as separate human beings who have their
own opinions and are responsible for their own decisions.
 Indeed, in American child-rearing manuals (such as Dr. Benjamin Spook’s famous Child
and Baby Care), it is stated that the parents’ objective in raising a child is to create a responsible,
self-reliant individual. It means that by the age of 18 or so, he or she is ready to move out of the
parents’ house and make his or her own way in life. Americans take this advice so seriously that a
person beyond the age of about 20 who is still living at home with his or her parents may be thought
to be "immature", "tied to the mother's apron strings" or otherwise unable to lead a normal,
independent life.
However, because Americans are trained to conceive of themselves as separate individuals,
they assume everyone else in the world is too. When they encounter a person from abroad who
seems to them excessively concerned with the opinions of parents, with following traditions, or
with fulfilling obligations to others, they assume that the person feels trapped or is weak,
indecisive, or "overly dependent". They assume all people must resent being in situations where
they are not "free to make up their own minds". Furthermore, they assume that after living for a
time in the United States people will come to feel liberated from constraints arising outside them-
selves and will be grateful for the opportunity to "do their own thing" and "have it their own way".
This concept of themselves as individual decision-makers blinds at least some Americans
to the fact that they share a culture with each other. They have the idea, as mentioned above, that
they have independently made up their own minds about the values and assumptions they hold.
The notion that social factors outside themselves have made them "Just like everyone else” in
important ways offends their sense of dignity. Then Americans consider the ideal person to be an
individualistic, self-reliant, independent person. They assume, incorrectly, that people from
elsewhere share this value and this self-concept. In the degree to which they glorify "the indivi-
dual" who stands alone and makes his or her own decisions, Americans are quite distinctive.
By contrast, people from many other cultures regard some of the behavior Americans
legitimize by the label "individual freedom" to be self-centered and lacking in consideration for
others. But if foreigners understand the degree to which Americans are imbued with the notion
that the free, self-reliant individual is the ideal kind of human being, they will be able to understand
many aspects of American behaviors and thinking that otherwise might not make sense. A very
few of the many possible examples: Individuals who "stand out from the crowd" by doing
something first, longest, most often, or otherwise "best" are seen as heroes. Examples are aviators
Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart. Moreover, Americans admire people who have overcome
adverse circumstances (for instance, poverty or a physical handicap) and "succeeded" in life. One
example is black educator Booker T. Washington; another is the blind and deaf author and lecturer
Helen Keller.
Compared to Vietnam, there are several differences between two cultures. While America
is an individual-oriented society, Vietnam is a collective-oriented society which is defined as a
social characteristic in which an individual is integrated to their environment since they were born.
Therefore, unlike Americans, Vietnamese people, in fact, “have a strong sense of community”
(Tran, 1999). Americans are trained to see themselves as separate human beings whereas
Vietnamese are not. Vietnamese child is taught from early childhood to do things not only for his
own sake but for his family’ honor, harmony and welfare as well. Moreover, American children
are soon taught to make decisions and be responsible for their actions. Encouragement to work for
money outside the home is a first step to establishing autonomy. On the contrary, Vietnamese
parents often choose what they think is best for their children. Additionally, they do not encourage
their children to work after school because they assume that children cannot concentrate on
learning then they cannot get a good job in the future. Last but not least, the elderly in America is
also self-reliant. American senior citizens choose to live in nursing homes or retirement
communities where they are financially supported by the U.S. Social security or welfare systems
and they will find peer group association within their own age group. On the other hand, the elderly
in Vietnam tend to live with their children’s family and do not work anymore.
From my point of view, no culture is totally perfect. I think American society is sometimes
too strict in the belief of self-reliance. There are many ways to demonstrate that they are self-reliant
instead of only moving out of their parents’ house and then living their own lives. In fact, it is not
unusual for Americans who are beyond the age of about 22 and who are still living with their
parents to pay their parents for room and board. Doing that is also a way of showing independence,
self-reliance, and responsibility for oneself. On the other hand, many Americans who think they
are really self-reliant do not display the degree of respect for their parents that people in more
traditional or family-oriented societies commonly display. They have the conception that it was a
sort of historical or biological accident that put them in the hands of particular parents, that the
parents fulfilled their responsibilities to tile children while the children were young, and now that
the children have reached "the age of independence", the close child-parent tie is loosened. As a
result, the family relationships are broken. Furthermore, to be self-reliant, which means to be free
to do whatever they want, more and more people become alone. They get used to doing everything
on their own and then nobody cares about them as well as they do not care about anybody. To sum
up, Americans should learn how to balance their lives. They need to come together and support
each other.
In conclusion, self-reliance is one of the six basic American cultural values which
distinguish America from all others. Self-reliance is rooted in a fundamental belief that you can
change your circumstances. What you do and how you do it will affect your future. And it is also
the requirement if individuals want to be perfectly free. Unless you are self-reliance, you will lose
freedom and the respect of peers, which means you cannot get into American lives’ mainstream.

Reference list:
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1873). Schopenhauer as Educator
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1904). Self-reliance
- Benjamin Spock (2011). Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care (9th ed)
- https://studfiles.net/preview/5706949/page:4/
https://www.academia.edu/3704398/AMERICAN_AND_VIETNAMESE_VALUES_RE
FLECTED_THROUGH_ADVERTISEMENTS