Self-With-Others 1 - The Interconnected Self
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All life is interconnected.
We’re created from the combination of two DNAs. We cross the threshold into existence inside, and dependent on, someone else - our mother.
At birth we experience a separation. It’s the first of many.
We learn to communicate - and work out that there’s a space between ourself and the rest of the world.
We learn to walk. Then we discover we can choose when to stay and when to leave.
We learn to think and reason. We realise we’re like other people, and also we’re different to them.
We learn to be An Individual.
We become unique.
A self - separate from parents, other people and nature.
An Isolated Self.
We learn to see life through the lens of separation.
I’m separate from you. You’re separate from her. We’re all separate from nature.
I stop at my skin. Everything inside is ‘me’. Everything outside is ‘other’.
What if that’s not the whole truth?
What if we’ve forgotten a different truth that’s every bit as important as the truth that we’re all separate and unique?
What if we’re also completely interconnected?
Let’s look again at the journey to becoming a self.
Though we separate at birth, we remain, for years, totally dependent. Without connection with others (parents, care-givers, medical staff), we wouldn’t survive for even a few hours, let alone grow into adulthood.
We learn to communicate through connection with others. We imitate how they move, behave, the sounds they make.
We learn to walk (usually) with encouragement and the protection of others.
The more good connection we experience in our formative years and beyond, the more we learn, the better we communicate, the deeper we imagine, the more richly we create.
We become more richly individual the more we interconnect.
We read about what earlier generations knew, we talk with those around us, we tackle the unknown in active and playful collaborations.
We make choices in response to the environments we’re in.
We develop values and politics to conform with, or rebel against, what’s around us.
Isolated? The Self seems totally dependent on interconnection.
Treating ourselves as An Isolated Self massively limits our potential.
Fundamentally we’re a Self-With-Others.
We’re an Interconnected Self.
It’s no surprise. The entire universe is a network of interconnection.
Everyone and everything connects.
Parents become who they are because of their children. Children become who they are because of their parents.
Groups meet. Though laughter, anger, violence, compassion, members of those groups transform one another.
We’re changed by the grandeur of a tree, the smell of a rose, the beauty of a sunset. Sometimes temporarily, sometimes at every level of our being.
We find joy, anxiety or an adrenaline rush in the energy of cities.
As in each of us, so in every aspect of the world we live in.
Trees connect with each other beneath the ground. Thousands of organisms and species coexist and collaborate to make a forest. Bees carry pollen from flower to flower. Birds of prey feed on small mammals and, by keeping the mammal population under control, prevent overgrazing of the forest. The forest thrives and the small mammals thrive. This means the Birds of Prey will thrive too. The hunter and the hunted interconnect.
It’s a complex dance of mutual dependence.
The galaxies themselves are held and repelled by each other’s gravity.
Sometimes, in the course of an ordinary day, as we stand by the ocean, or open-mouthed, watch the sunset or stare at the stars we’ll be overcome by a sense of awe. In that moment we remember we’re part of, and connected to, something much bigger than our self.
It’s not only with each other and nature that we interconnect.
We’re moved to tears or laughter by music and art.
We love or hate characters in movies, TV shows or novels.
We roar in unison at a sports game (even if we’re sat on our own in a room watching the game on TV).
We fight and die for ideas or beliefs, or to defend against people we think threaten us or those we love.
We honour a flag, politics, dream, ideal, vision.
A sound. A smell on the wind. The tone of a voice. A forgotten taste. A stranger’s smile in a crowded room. The laughter of children.
Every moment is rich with interconnection. We live in the centre of a web of interconnection.
Yet still we think of ourselves as individual - as disconnected.
There are consequences to believing we’re an Isolated Self. We obsessively compare and judge, come to believe we’re not good enough, a failure, inadequate, endlessly at fault.
Or we treat each other and the planet as resources to be used.
We destroy through selfishness.
We compete.
We think we’re the centre of everything.
At the heart of much of our unhappiness is this: we live in a web of connection, but act as if we’re disconnected.
We ignore how things really are.
We disrespect our place in the world.
We don’t align with the reality of being an Interconnected Self.
To thrive, we must realign with reality.
Of course we could - full of self-importance - demand reality realigns instead. We could demand the universe, planets, natural systems we rely on, all stop being so interconnected and became more fragmented, just so our idea of being Isolated Selves seems less absurd.
That would be foolish.
Reality is not going to change for us, however much we try to run away from it, or hide inside virtual, augmented or alternative realities.
Self-With-Others suggests we align ourselves with what is, rather than try to change what is to suit us.
How do we thrive in an interconnected world?
My simple answer (and the thrust of all this work) is: ‘Learn to be an interconnected self’.