Uniquely Individual Interdependence

We celebrate independence every minute of every day but we also have a special day dedicated to the one thing we never were and never will be: independent. That's a hard message to get across in this neoliberal age of pathological individualism, but I'll give it (another) a go anyway...

_{Image by amboo who? - source: Flickr}

I'm an individual, just as you are, dear reader; we're all unique, we're singular expressions with no exact duplicate. Yet, we're all made of the same stuff and there are even physical duplicates called identical twins, and we all have the same body parts, apart from the ones needed for sexual reproduction and pleasure; it's not so much our physical bodies that make us truly unique. What does make us indisputably singular, is our individual perspective on the universe we all share; my perspective on the grand design of shared reality is unique in both space and time, it has never existed before and it will never exist again. Our every conscious moment is a unique occurrence in the eternity of space-time; that's a small miraculous realization in itself.

Being unique and irreplaceable however, isn't special because we all are. Being a unique individual doesn't imply independence in any way, nor does it diminish in any way the fact that our unique perspective is the result of our constant interdependence. What I've become today is the result of all the interactions I've had in my life, with the material world and all living creatures in it. Every baby learns who he or she is by looking at the reflection, the responses coming from their parents, family members, pets and so on, and that's just the start of our interdependent life's journey. There are even trillions of lifes within our physical bodies; we're composed of approximately 37 trillion human cells, but an almost equal number of microbial cells live in symbiosis within each of our bodies. Even on a purely biological and physical front we're everything but independent. We can't be, and we don't have to be.

Our modern cultures however, for the most part under the influence of the capitalist ideology, have been shaped by and founded on the glorification of the individual as an independent, preferably rational agent who uses their freedom of choice to steer themselves down their individual path to whatever success, or lack thereof, awaits them at the end of it. Every success is celebrated as an individual achievement, and every failure as an individual shortcoming. The child that learned to share their toys with the other children soon learns that everyone else wants their toys as an adolescent. That if you want to make it to the top an attitude is needed that says "it's me against the world", instead of the truth which says "it's me as an integral part of the world". If we regard the planet as a living organism, our capitalist culture is its cancer; uncontrolled growth disrupts the previously harmonious connections and interactions within the biosphere.

Everything is connected to me and I'm connected to everything. I exist in the universe and the universe exists in me. You and I are the same, for we're both unique individuals. But independent we're not, and it's a gigantic waste, to the detriment of our humanity as well as our physical bodies and world, to keep acting like we are. Like a winning team, we want many unique talents, we ARE many unique talents, but we don't want to play individually, we want the talents to interact in such a way that they each contribute to the victory we all long for; a better world for everyone with less wars and more happiness, with more health and less disease, with more freedom and less conformity, for only in a well oiled team every individual talent gets a chance to truly shine. Nothing wrong with individuality, but when it becomes an all encompassing ideology called "individualism"... that's another story, as explained in the below linked video.

_{Individualism v. Individuality}

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