[ganzuul]

But one can reason from first principles, and find many more instances in one's life where reliance on others is unnecessary. It doesn't need to be an absolute.

I don't think it is possible to arrive to an explanation for why self-reliance is sought from your premise. The closest point I can think of is an analogy with the cell membrane; the fact of the existence of an indivisible individual... But to go from there to why someone would hone some skill not necessary for survival takes a change of perspective.

[pknight]

If you have eaten a good meal and you have some fat reserves you can spend a long time without having to ingest food (barring some minerals that you need every day), but that doesn't mean your body has become independent of its need for nutrition. You can do things that make it so you can last longer without food, but ultimately, the idea of independence from nutrition is ostensibly silly. Distorted views of self-reliance, in this analogy, is like believing that you can go without nutrition because you've become strong enough to do it.

[ganzuul]

I'm familiar with the philosophy of thermodynamics and don't object. However, there are many instances we sentient beings encounter where perception and reality blur. We don't have access to objective truth, so it is noble to willfully alter one's own subjective reality. A common example in the personal narrative of a human being is forgiving the people of one's past who subjected us to the difficulties which made us who we are. Here one may choose independence of one's own previous perception of what one thought was a fact, and no longer have one's future actions dictated by it.

Freedom is not an absolute.