Margo Adair in Working Inside Out, writes that, as Americans, we seem to have a special definition of freedom, which is freedom to ignore all the repercussions of our individual acts. We are steeped in individualism. To imagine it is possible to fix oneself in a sick society is ludicrous. "There is no such thing as true self-awareness without social awareness; nothing is devoid of an economic and cultural context - nothing exists in a vacuum.... The issue is not self-awareness, self-responsibility, or personal potential. The crucial issue is collective awareness, cultural potential, and social responsibility. An idea whose time has come: the declaration of interdependence."

Kolbenschlag writes that perhaps it is not altruism as much as a sense of shared fate that will finally free us from our fetish for individualism and release the indigenous pragmatism and cooperation that are also part of our national character and myth.

And clearly, we need new myths. Myths that break through our illusion of separateness and acknowledge our interdependence. Myths that revere all life on earth as sacred, and empower us to open our hearts and minds and arms to one another and to join together in healing and celebrating the implicate unfolding of the world that we have torn apart.

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