Our modern freedom
In our modern lives, especially in the global north, we experience a lot of individual freedom and agency. We live in nuclear families, in separate homes, with individual ownership of cars and belongings, our own bank account balances, our individual schedules. We usually make decisions primarily based on what’s right for our own lives and our family’s, but rarely much beyond that.
What underpins our individual freedom of choices is a comfortable foundation of infrastructure and systems. They are hidden from us, but actually involve many people, resources and complexity. We buy food in the supermarket, get water from the tap in our house and electricity from the power outlets. We throw our trash in the bin and flush our excretions down the toilet.
In the day-to-day we can easily forget how entangled we actually are with others and the planet. But we are not separate from each other or the planet. We’re part of one large organism, a complex system with many interconnections and interdependencies.
Our life as we live it right now depends on many other people, systems and resources. The products we buy involve the labor of a huge amount of people, requiring many natural resources and processes all over the globe. Even for locally sourced and produced products, the machines, the packaging, the energy, the transport, all represent enormous complexity. And if we dig deeper, also our physical and mental health are heavily dependent on a healthy environment, biochemically and psychologically.
Accepting our interconnectedness
What does it mean to truly acknowledge our interconnectedness? In my experience, it involves not just an intellectual, but also an emotional process. Facing the reality of the part we’re playing in the larger organism of life can be both challenging and beautiful.
Facing our own dependency on so many other people, systems and resources can lead to a realization of how much less is in our sphere of control than we would like to think. So much went into providing us with this life and so much is needed to sustain it. Understanding this fundamentally can spark powerlessness and a feeling of loss of control. Or anger at what we believe is negatively influencing our lives. We’re much much more exposed to outside forces and processes than we might like to think. And in a world with increasingly disrupted ecological and human systems, that can be really scary.
As much as we’re impacted by it, we’re also impacting so much in the world ourselves. Much of our comfort and prosperity is made possible by the extraction of people and planet. Consider all the extractive practices and child labor going into the production of most of the products we buy. Or our collective footprint which continuously overshoots our planet’s resource capacity. Most of what we consume is unsustainable and causes harm somewhere else, but our systems and our disconnectedness hide that reality from us. Awareness of how we’re complicit in causing harm can bring up a lot of guilt and shame, emotions we tend to avoid at all costs.
Over the past few years I’ve learned more and more about my own interdependence with the world. And experienced the pain of it. I felt lost and helpless, scared of how my life and comfort will change fundamentally through ecological breakdown. I felt guilt and self-criticism, caught in-between feeling stuck in our existing systems and the realization of how they are violent to people and the planet. I’ve been trying to figure out the right decisions to make, when actually there are very few decisions that don’t cause harm.
How can we approach our interconnectedness with love and compassion? Allowing ourselves to let go of control and still feel safe? Taking care of the parts of us that are scared? Love can help us find something within ourselves to hold onto when everything around us crumbles. It can make us realize that our capacity to be with the change is so much bigger than we once thought.
And instead of judging and finger-pointing, how can we empathize with ourselves and each other? Neither ignoring the harm we’re causing, nor giving up on ourselves? Compassion can help us face the reality of our complicity in harm and help process our guilt. It can help us see how we’re part of harmful dynamics and forgive ourselves. Compassion allows us to see that even though we have been causing harm, we are worthy of love. Because in the end, we are all worthy of love. Especially when we deep down don’t believe we are.
What we can gain
The separation we experience in modern life is an illusion that starts to break: Geopolitical developments and extreme weather events are exposing the fragility of global supply chains. Climate breakdown and soil depletion are already impacting food prices and availability. And reading about yet another flood, heatwave or wildfire or the ongoing genocide in Gaza in the news is impacting our mental health, even if we quickly scroll past them because they overwhelm us. It gets increasingly harder to keep the illusion alive that we are separate from all of that.
Our individualism is not just an illusion, it also prevents us from experiencing the beauty of this larger organism we’re part of. When we avoid the pain of our interconnectedness, we also avoid the parts of ourselves that feel those emotions. The pain only exists, because the parts of us that are in pain know that we’re not separate and struggle with the fact that we’re living our lives as if we were. Reconnecting with those abandoned parts can make us feel whole again. And open our eyes to how we’re part of this beautiful life all around us.
In times of systemic breakdown of environment and society, I believe it’s crucial to understand our interconnectedness again. When we experience disruption in the systems we depend on and got so used to, we increasingly experience other people’s challenges and pain around us and we also rely much more on their support. We more and more benefit from understanding the world around us and what it needs to thrive.
Community in all forms is becoming more and more important, emotionally and practically. And considering how modern life has led to an increase in isolation and loneliness, I think there is much to gain from that for us. We’re all in this together and we can offer each other so much support in the process.
