We begin our lives being almost wholly dependent upon our parents, especially our mothers. This is how it works for everyone, from the beggar on the street to the Queen of England, we start out helpless and unable to survive on our own. Gradually, we start to take care of ourselves more and more, until one day we're able to live on our own. We become independent, or so it seems...
Here in America, you get your own job, your own car, your own house, and now you're free to live your life. You're an independent, hard-working adult and a contributing member of society. Except there's a problem here. If you're like most people, you begin your “independence” enormously in debt. If you don't pay the bank, that house and car that seem to belong to you will be taken away, and by force if needed. The bank that was so friendly when they stood to profit off of you will suddenly become your worst enemy. If things like your transportation and shelter depend upon paying someone else, how independent can you say you are? If your whole lifestyle depends upon you keeping your job, are you sure you're really independent?
Even if you're already wealthy, consider this: What you flush down the toilet, it just magically disappears, right? The way people behave, that's almost what it seems like, but no, someone actually has to deal with your shit. Same with the garbage you throw away. The gas that your car, how many people worked hard to bring that to you? Same with your food, water, clothing, all the things you depend upon for survival, they came from other people, didn't they?
See what I'm getting at here? You're not really independent, that's a myth. You are enormously dependent upon thousands of other people if you want to keep living the life you're living, but that's not such a bad thing either. Most people, if they became truly independent, would die fairly quickly. Could you provide all of your own food, shelter and clothing? Those skills have been largely forgotten, and even the people who still preserve the skills were dependent upon someone else to teach them.
I bring all this up because the whole conversation regarding dependence and independence has been reduced to this empty rhetoric that basically goes, independence good, dependence bad. There's some smattering of truth there, because it's not healthy to be too dependent upon another person, but at the same time if you were truly independent you couldn't even be a part of society. The issue isn't really “dependence vs. independence”, the real problem is this type of dualistic thinking that separates these two ideals and puts them at odds with each other. Surely there's a middle path between these two extremes, neither of which accurately represent the reality of our situation...
Look at Nature, look at a tree. The tree exists on its own, but at the same moment it depends upon the Sun, the soil, the air and the water for its nourishment. And us humans, we depend upon the trees. The ecosystems that have sustained life for billions of years, no individual part is wholly dependent or independent, it all exists together, it's all interdependent.
This is the paradigm shift, towards recognizing our interdependence. It shouldn't be too hard, because that's the way things really work, but at the same time people have been collectively taught to deny it to create a false sense of freedom and independence.
I need to add that I'm not promoting collectivism here, which is the idea that the collective is more important than the individual. It's a recipe for creating authoritarian governments who oppress the people while claiming it's for their own good. At the same time I'm not promoting individualism either, which is the idea that the individual is more important than the collective. It's a recipe for creating selfish, egocentric people who are disconnected from each other.
So which is more important, the individual or the collective? That question itself is flawed. Individualism and collectivism are both based upon the faulty assumption that the interests of the collective and the individual must be at odds with each other. It's dualistic thinking rearing its ugly head again, separating and creating extremes. The collective doesn't have to conflict with the individual, nor does the individual have to conflict with the collective. This is what real interdependence is about.
A huge part of the problem is that very few actual individuals exist. Most people who believe themselves to be individuals really have this sort of “Coke or Pepsi” kind of individuality where you make these superficial choices to create a personality that doesn't really originate from you at all. Of course, you probably know this as the ego.
So how do we remove the conflict between the individual and the collective? Like all the truly important questions in life, this is one that's already been answered a thousand times over. The collective only denies the individual because the individual denies themselves. A person who is at odds with themselves, which is to say, everyone who doesn't unconditionally love and accept themselves, can't help but be in conflict with other people. You have declared war on your own uniqueness, and this gets projected outwards in attempts to deny others their uniqueness. The majority of individuals behave this way, so the collective behaves this way.
The individual can celebrate the collective, and the collective can celebrate the individual. Through this both are healed. If you can remove the conflict within yourself, you can see both as complimentary forces who work together to benefit each other. The individual depends upon the collective, and the collective depends upon the individual. Recognizing our interdependence is simply seeing the forest for the trees, while seeing how the trees benefit from the forest too.
The Galactic Free Press
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