Opinion | Can We Put an End to America’s Most Dangerous Myth? - The New York Times

Some 25 percent of adults in the United States have some type of disability; more than 56 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare. In other words, tens of millions of us are dependent in some way on assistance. Needing support, be it physical or mental, or even making your way through complex forms to get unemployment money or student financial aid, is part of engaging with society. Indeed, asking for help and working with others demands patience, humility and organization in some cases, and social skills in others. (It can also take craft. In fact, the scholar William Huntting Howell, in his book "Against Self-Reliance," used the phrase "arts of dependence" to describe crafts that were supposedly derivative and collective, like early American women's embroidery.) 

It takes craft and skill, for instance, to feed a family of five on minuscule monthly food benefits; or to navigate street crossings in a wheelchair, even if they are designed with street cuts made to regulation, or to access child care or find bosses who tolerate or even encourage taking sick days. And the Americans who say that the substantial contributor to economic inequality is the personal choices people make — the 60 percent of Republicans who say this, according to a 2020 Pew study — may imagine they are independent and masters of their own lives. But they too are not exempt from dependency. If they are privileged, they rely on tax breaks, colleagues and social connections, roads, telecom infrastructure, health insurance and their employees. Part of acknowledging the art of dependence means we release people from shame about their needs for others, and expose the lie of being self-made as it is propagated publicly by some of America's wealthiest people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/opinion/art-of-dependence.html