Slavery: One who is excessively dependent upon or controlled by something (Oxford dictionary)
Dependency is a foundational principle that we all must bring into our conscious thought if we want to be free. Freedom is independence and for some reason people don't work on independence along their journey for freedom. I've witnessed many freedom fighters who are still very much completely dependent upon the system and that does not make sense to me.
So I'm going to explore this journey a bit further and compare it to being a child as it very much correlates with our own journey when we were all children growing up to be an adult.
When babies are born, they are completely dependent on their parents to provide the basic necessities of life. The parents responsibility is to then raise that child so that he/she is independent physically, emotionally and mentally to the point where the individual is capable of providing all the basic necessities of life for themselves. In order to accomplish that goal, parents provide benefits and privileges in order to raise and guide the development and maturity of the child. If the child misbehaves or makes mistakes, then benefits and privileges can be revoked to help provide natural consequences to guide development. The goal is to have emotional, mental and physical maturity develop at the same time so that the child is ready to enter adult hood when his / her body (vessel) reaches maturity.
If the child can grow to maturity emotionally, mentally and physically, with all the skills necessary to provide for their own needs, then the child has moved into adulthood and can participate in a right of passage ceremony to celebrate and communicate their capacity to self-govern. At that right, they have earned the ability to excercise their own rights as granted to them by the Creator and with that comes the duty to serve others as well.
However, if the child fails to reach maturity, most often due to emotional or mental delays then when their body reaches maturity and leaves the home, the child looks for another parent as he / she is not capable of providing for them self. The new parent often becomes the state!
These individuals may look like physical adults, but they are very much acting and behaving like children. The state steps in to look after them, guide them and even discipline them. Because they are not mature yet, they don't have access to rights and duties of an adult. Instead, the state provides benefits and privileges, just like a parent would do. The state even withdraws benefits and privileges when the child does not behave within the boundaries established by the state in order to ensure obedience and maintain minimum social standards.
Adulthood
However, if the individual can do the work to find emotional, mental and physical maturity, they can then venture into being an adult fully independent from any parents in the community (real or fictional). The individual is capable of self-governing, providing for all their own needs and accepts 100% responsibility and accountability for their actions or inaction. They recognize that they have a duty to help guide those who have yet to reach maturity or those who have lost their independence and are once again dependent on others for their needs. That could be due to accidents, old age, illness or other events that jeopardize ones independence.
Spiritual Maturity
When an individual reaches independent, then he / she can reach out to other independent individuals and work on building inter-independent relationships. With this work spiritual maturity is then progressing as the individual works towards the establishment of healthy, foundationally solid relationships. The process started as a child, but really blossoms when this level of health and maturity is reached.
This is where social maturity is found which brings peace and prosperity within our social structures. Greed, violence, lust and other harmful behaviours jeopardize mature social structures and prevents people from reaching spiritual maturity. This is where true communities manifest and should be the goal of any independent individual as these communities are required to ensure our children can mature in a balanced way so that they don't need the state when they reach maturity. Our teachers, leaders and elders are found here. The people who run corporations and governments are nothing more than children in suits as they have failed to reach this level of maturity.
Our communities and independence has been under attack for hundreds of years. The power structure on this planet recognizes this process and has worked hard to disrupt it. It is our responsibility to re-establish this process so that we can usurp their control and accomplish physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social maturity within our life time.
Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality. - Mahatma Gandhi March 21, 1929
“Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players. They're not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.” - Stephen Covey, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Honestly I cannot say I am fully independent, I still rely on my parents a good deal for a lot of things. There was a book I read in which a child asked his parents when you become an adult, and their answer was when you think about others and not just yourself.
I think the transition to adulthood is something many people are struggling with lately, myself included, because in many cases our parents were either not mature or tried to hide reality from us. I, personally, am trying to become independent from the state before I am independent from my parents. Also, it is mostly just physically that I depend on them, in a lot of ways the mental and emotional independence came easier. It sorta feels like I am in limbo.
One of the main things our community agrees on is that taking care of kids is a community effort, and something we all love and strive for. It just makes sense. I like the idea that grandparents and young kids could hang out together and tell stories and what not, well the adults and older kids would learn other stuff and do things. Its an ideal kinda situation I think
Really great points to explore, @wwf. I think arrested development is one of the primary problems confronting society today and I also believe it has been intentionally socially engineered to create a society of easily controlled people. Self-reliance and interdependence need to be developed and balanced within us if we hope to create a "more perfect Union" or healthy society. Upvoted and resteemed
'Interdependency' is a new word and concept for me, something I've never been taught but wish I had. It's one milestone further than 'independance'.
It's sad that our current education system doesn't even teach our students to be independent of the governments and corporations, let alone interdependence.
I agree. The correct term is 'inter-independence' but the idea is the same. There is no way that the state would ever teach that as they only hint at independence. The level of independence they want to teach is people working their jobs and consuming in order to keep the machine running. All they care about is people participating in the 'economy'. That requires an intimate level of dependency in order to keep that machine going. I call it the 'hamster wheel'. We are trained to turn the wheel and enjoy the exercise. Independence and inter-independence puts them out of a job, out of control with no power, authority or influence. They are done. That scares them.
I never grew up. My parents became my patrons. They enabled amazing creative work. But at the same time, this isn’t an ordinarily sustainable scenario. It can work better than anything but most who could use and deserve it, Never get it.
Most people have to grow up, and even become “adulterated”, but I continue to say, that for some, the “Patron age” is coming.
Alx
Interesting. Do you care to share more by what you mean on both points? If the parents have a great deal of wealth, then it is no longer a burden on them to support the children if their endeavors exceed what they could normally accomplish on their own. Would you consider that community support for a benefit far greater than what the community would normally be able to produce? Whether that support comes from the parents directly or some other community members, if you were independent, the community support could be considered a part of the relationship within an inter-independent relationship. However, you admitted that you were dependent. So I'm curious as to the impact it had on your own growth and development. Do you care to share?