Recently in my favorite thrift store, I saw the entire set of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books on sale for $4, and snapped them up. Over the next month I flew through the 9 books in the series, which through Laura’s eyes documents the Ingalls family’s journey from the Big Woods in Wisconsin to Indian Country in Kansas and finally to Dakota Country, where they were among the first settlers of the town of De Smet.

There are many things to treasure in these books. Laura’s writing is lovely, and develops over time from the simple diction of a 4-year-old to the full, descriptive, sharp prose she writes as a young woman. It’s fun to see her grow in responsibility and character as the years unfold and the world around her begins to change.

These stories take place in the late 19th century, a time of huge change in America. Looking through the lens of Spiral Dynamics, this was a time of transition for many Americans from traditional to modern values. Of course, there’s no clear line that can be drawn, and it’s interesting to see how Laura’s Pa is willing to embrace some technological advances but not others, and how his choices differ from those made by others in the town.

Laura herself has an epiphany about the individuality inherent in the idea of modernity when she attends a Fourth of July celebration in De Smet. America itself was founded on the rational, self-determining ideas of modernism, and 14-year-old Laura awakens to a new, more grown-up understanding of those rights after the Declaration of Independence is read:

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she though: God is America’s king.

She thought: Americans won’t obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn’t anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good.

Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free.

Her young mind’s idea of freedom thrills me because it captures much of what is good about modern values—an understanding of oneself as an independent, unbossable person held only to one’s own standards and conscience. This spirit of individualism, confidence, and natural rights and responsibility is truly what makes America great and unique in the world.

Of course, several chapters later we see an example of the pathology of that worldview when Pa and several other men from the town delightedly dress up in darkface to put on a minstrel show at the Literary Society performances. But it’s no use to judge this action through the postmodern lenses we hold today. Instead, I think it more useful to see this as an area in which America has and must continue to develop.

I was amazed by the challenges faced by the Ingalls family and the fortitude and good cheer with which they face them. In Kansas, after spending a whole year building a new house and farmlands, they are informed that they are a few miles on the wrong side of the border between Indian lands and those open to homesteading, so they pack up their covered wagon and head west again without bitterness.

Once they reach De Smet, their first winter lasts for six months, and the whole town nearly dies from starvation when the trains can’t make it through the mountains. For months they hand-grind the last of the town’s wheat in a coffee grinder, eat brown bread for every meal, and twist piles of hay into sticks that can be burned for fuel, until their hands bleed from the effort. Still, even in these miserable conditions, they find ways to entertain each other and keep their spirits up—reciting poems, singing songs, and talking about what they will eat when the blizzards finally stop.

The next spring, when their homestead thrives with vegetables and oats and corn, they relish its bounty. Then thousands of blackbirds come and strip the oats and corn clean, leaving them with no crops to sell for cash. Laura submits to a rare moment of sadness: “The prairie looks so beautiful and gentle. But I wonder what it will do next. Seems like we have to fight it all the time.”

Ma replies: “This earthly life is a battle. If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It’s always been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and the more thankful for your pleasures.” And then she proceeds to make blackbird pie out of the dozens that Pa has shot.

Times are changing for us—on the cusp of a new integral worldview—just as they were for the Ingalls as they struggled to survive and learn to make meaning out of the shiny and newfangled. And as the times change, we all change, too. Though Laura is a good girl, she’s a far more confident and outgoing woman than was her Ma, and she learns to operate in a far different world.

Seeing how people in the past have come through turbulent and confusing times helps us see how we can do the same. These warm, satisfying books definitely help me appreciate the best parts of where we’ve come from even as I work to push into something new.