The American Experiment

I lived in Washington D.C. for a couple of years and frequently rode the subway system, called The Washington Metro, or simply Metro. The Metro was relatively clean and safe although many rail cars showed wear and tear. On one trip I was on a car with a few other people, including two boys somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-16 years old. The car was new; like brand new. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this was its maiden voyage. I was struck by how clean the car was.

At some point in the trip, the two boys started playing with their keys, pretending to make scratches on the car and then giggling. Then the game turned into actual scratches. They paused again but there were no repercussions. The small scratches on the new car turned into large scratches on the new car. And I sat and watched. I wanted to say something but I was afraid. Would the other adults - who were also ignoring the kids behavior - support me in my reprimand? Or would I be alone in an awkward moment of correction?

Most times when people speak or write about The American Experiment it is in the context of the melting pot: a variety of ethnicities, skin tone, and beliefs; a collection of people from around the world now living in the United States. And it certainly is used when describing the new 18th century model of government by the newly formed country, The United States of American.

But there is another expression of the American Experiment that often goes unnoticed: the importance of individualism over community. Every society must balance strike a between the tyrany of freedom and the tyrany of constraint (that's not my phrase, by the way, but I don't know who said it first). The United States seems to lean toward individualism. Perhaps part of this is the onslaught of the creator class, people who earn money by producing social media content. But the other thing to consider is that community requires rules (or regulations). Who makes those rules? The government (federal, state, and local), religious communities, ethnic communities, etc. As a melting pot, there are many entities that make rules.

The United States also has a history of frontierism: pushing European cultures into non-European regions. This gave rise to the mythologies of the homesteader, the trapper, the scout, and the western gun-slinger and these mythologies were perpetuated in dime store novels, television, and movies.

Every engagement within a community is a sacrafice of personal freedom. And every expression of person freedom, (regardless of regulations)[https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/bryce-canyon-national-park-drone-dog/], is a sacrifice of a collective spirit. How much is too much?