Today I watched a woman cross a busy intersection diagonally. She avoided the crosswalks that squared the intersection as she rolled her carry-on luggage behind her. Cars stopped in all directions to let her pass She smiled sweetly and even waved at one driver who had to stop rather suddenly. My impression of her—in part formed by that smile and wave—was of a woman returning from a pleasant trip, both happy with herself and oblivious of others. Most people in my generation would find no fault with this woman. In fact, I rather liked her easygoing manner. But there were generations before us who would have taken exception to her casualness. I can hear the voice of my father, a World War II vet, pointing out her disregard for the inconvenience of others and perhaps even calling her out, “Hey, lady, use the crosswalk.”

By contrast, several years ago I found myself walking in a park in Vienna. A few feet in front of me on the same path was a father with his young daughter. She was probably 5 or 6 years old. Suddenly he stopped before a crumpled piece of paper. Without saying a word, he released his daughter’s hand. She ran to the paper, picked it up, and deposited it in a nearby trash receptacle. Returning to her father, she looked up at his face, took his hand, and resumed her walk at his side. So, you might ask, why remember these Austrians at this time and in this context? Well, my strolls on these very separate occasions reveal how people view their role in society—how differently people see their responsibility to others. If you think I’m going too far with this comparison, consider the labels we’ve given to the generations following the so-called “great” generation: beatniks, yuppies, the “me” generation, and generation “X.” These labels too easily lend themselves to a stereotypical generalization: one generation pulled together to save the world, while their posterity sought to garner it for themselves. So what does the “lady crossing the street” have to do with American individualism?

America has always advanced individualism: witness our founding fathers, the frontiersmen, the titans of industry, and the heroes of various civil rights movements. What is unique about American individualism is its pendulum swings. Unbridled, it advances without regard for the rights of others, accumulating wealth at the top echelons of power while reducing underlings to slavery or serf-like conditions of servitude. Laissez faire economics was once touted as the only liberal doctrine that could allow our economy to grow and assure individual freedom of choice and action. Now, of course, it’s a neo-conservative anachronism. But individualism also has another face that raises its head at times to advance the cause of universal freedom and opportunity for everyone. We not only freed the slaves, but at key points in our history eliminated barriers that prohibited women, black, Hispanic, disabled, and immigrant citizens from participating more fully in the American workforce, the electorate, and the marketplace. Between these extremes of individualism—either with or without regard for the rights of others—there is the oblivious individualism I witnessed in the woman innocently crossing the street.

I can respect the neo-conservative push back to crippling regulations without accepting the excesses of laissez faire economics. I also can respect the progressive argument for programs that increase opportunity for those at the bottom of the economic ladder without accepting those excesses that encourage social dependency. These positions both express American individualism and, at differing times, do and should assume ascendancy in our culture and government. They represent the push and pull swings of the pendulum that drives that self-corrective tendency at the heart of the American experience. What we should not accept in ourselves is self-centered apathy. Every American is entitled to the pursuit of happiness, but not without regard for his/her neighbor. American individualism is sometimes brash and insensitive, but it never exists in a vacuum. Only Narcissus is happy with his own reflection.

(To be fair, I owe the woman in my opening paragraph an apology. Hopefully, she’ll never read this blog. Unwittingly, she provided me with a metaphor that I shamefacedly used to make a point.)