Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Ignoring the Obvious Nature of Interdependence

It seems to me that the fairly obvious fact of interdependence gets ignored when forming ideas and making decisions about how we organize societies. No human can thrive on their own, letting alone survive solo. This has been stated many ways by many people, but it still seems to carry little weight.

Let's consider all of the things individuals use that exist because of others. The most obvious include homes, cars, clothes, food, electricity, health care, schools, roads, every kind of household appliance, railroads, shoes, roads, along with all of the smaller included items of each, and more. Some of the less obvious include dental floss, toothpicks, computers, ink, batteries, light bulbs, traffic lights, soap, music, art, the post office, and more.

There is one other thing that should be looked at separately that's arguably more important than any of the others: information. We all learn about the world from the education we get from others--in both formal and informal settings. What we learn is almost exclusively learned from others, and we can hardly take advantage of anything else without the knowledge we accumulate.

Individualistic notions as the basis for a society cannot be fruitful because the foundation for such ideas are false; any results will be rubbish. As a test for someone who disagrees, place yourself in a non-inhabited area, naked, with no items created by others, including what you've learned from anyone else. Survival will be brief.

Each of us does next-to-nothing that contributes to our way of life. We get to take advantage of the features of societies because everyone else provides them for us. Those who convince themselves that they've "earned" on their own everything they have are ignoring the true nature of our shared existence. Valid conclusions stemming from individualism will never be realized. In order to successfully address and improve how we live, we can't ignore how the system of human existence works.

Quote: "Humans are social animals, perhaps with an innate biological drive for social interaction. We do not just live in society: we invent society in order to live." - Jim Baggott, A Beginner's Guide to Reality (Author's note: This is a quotation adapted from Maurice Godelier, The Mental and the Material, Verso, 1986.)

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