Interdependence and Nature

I am beginning to believe that the westerner must be one of the most isolated and lonely creatures on the earth. Where else can you stand in the bustling streets of a city of eight million people and feel so alone that it is frightening? Pamela's college is using a book entitled “Garbology” (Humes, Edward. 2013. Garbology: our dirty love affair with trash. Avery. New York, NY ISBN 978-1-58333-523-9) for its interdisciplinary studies next year. Each discipline is asked to relate and explore the book from their perspective and disciplinary position. As Pamela told me about the book I learned that trash/garbage is becoming the United State's number one export. That's right. According to Humes, in 2010 our two highest volume exports to China were paper waste and scrap metal. (Hey, Cousin Michael - Dr. Michael Harkin, anthropology, University of Wyoming - what do you think your colleagues a thousand years from now will make of that? :D )

If our trash and garbage is becoming our number one export, I am prepared to make the case that our sense of loneliness in a crowd and our adamant determination of separation and independence is a close second. Although I must admit, I doubt that there are any statistics or other empirical data to make my case. To observe this I would direct your attention to modern western-like cities around the world in non-western countries. At least from my perspective, they stand out in their difference from the structure and culture around them. I have no evidence objective or subjective to generalize this attitude to the local population, but that would be my expectation.

I suspect that this is more symptomatic than causal. To determine that would be an extensive study in itself. Nevertheless my own experience and observation leads me to believe that the nature of our communities is a result of our transition into the lonely-in-a-crowd, high-tech individualist. 

Homo sapiens started out as gatherers then moved to hunter-gatherers and to farmers. In all of these aspects of our development we were close to the nature around us. It was probably not until about 6,000 years ago or more when semi-permanent agricultural communities began to show up and slowly developed into cities that homo sapiens began to identify themselves apart from the world around them.  I'm not a trained anthropologist, but this makes sense to me. Whether or not I am close or totally off on my assumption, the end result was an animal species that thought of itself as totally separate from all other living creatures. That is readily observable and can be confirmed by multiple observers at the same or different times. They even created deities to confirm that assumption. At least we know for certain that happened in the middle east. That "confirmation", in my opinion, has paved the way for greater and greater isolation. 

High-tech home

Then we introduce technology. Now we have the sense that we have no need of other homo sapiens nevertheless any need for the rest of life on earth. 'Give me my iPad, Keurig, microwave and car and I'm a totally independent being.'  Well, that might be pushing it a bit, but you get the idea. 

Now we have two lines of thinking to follow at this point: (1) homo sapiens belief in personal independence, and (2) homo sapiens belief that it is a superior, independent species. Obviously I believe that both of these are totally wrong. Actually, having given both some serious thought, I conclude that they are both totally absurd. 

I do not believe that I'm thinking outside the box. My contention is that homo sapiens, for all their self-inflated feelings of intelligence, are totally clueless and still looking for the proverbial box. Every time we all agree on a "new fact" - e.g. the world is round - then all of our truths, absolutes, etc., change to match the newly acquired information.  Quantum physics is currently playing havoc with the established truths and absolutes.  So, I might be thinking outside the currently established "box" - i.e. those concepts and assumptions that drive our current society - but like all the rest, I'm still looking for the real thing.  I just think, however, that I might have a good idea where to look. 

Let's start with the homo sapiens belief in personal independence.  With the cultural history of US development and westward expansion, fierce independence has become almost synonymous with the American.  Ah, yes, the famous  "I ain't beholding to nobody for nothin'."  But I beg to differ. I do not believe that has ever been true in the modern world and it definitely is not true in the 20th or 21st century.  

Let's start with the alarm clock that awakens you for work. The act of waking up for work is attached to or dependent upon thousands of other people.  It took hundreds, maybe thousands of people to discover, dig/mine the raw materials to make the clock. Hundreds were required to fabricate parts and put them together into the device you have on your night stand. We can get to the night stand, which supports your clock, later.  Of course we can't leave out the thousands of people involved in the vehicles and transportation of materials and parts as well as those involved in the building of the factory where your clock was made. So how many thousands of people do you think it actually took to produce your clock?  Now you must have at least one person to drive the clock to the store where you bought it. We'll skip any warehouses, employees, etc., for the sake of time, and go straight from factory to store. We'll also skip the thousands involved in providing the truck that transported the clock or the roads on which the truck moved.  We'll need at least one person to remove the clock from the truck, and another to put it on the shelf as well as another to check you out at the register. This could all be the same person, if it is a small mom-n-pop store, so at least one more.  Of course we can't forget that the store is in a building that required hundreds of people, and the sidewalk from your car to the building, which probably required 25-50 people. Oh, yes, there's very likely a parking lot, but even if there's not a parking lot there is a road on which you traveled to get to the store. That brings us to the car which transported you and the gasoline or electricity to run your car . . . . do we need to keep going?!  You haven't gotten out of bed yet and you're already interdependent with many thousands of people through your alarm clock. Now let's talk about the bed upon which you slept, the sheets, blankets, pillows. Then there's your house, the bathroom fixtures, the water, the soap, the razor, and on and on and on.  I believe I've made my point. If in no other way, we are physically interdependent with the world around us.  We haven't even touched on psychological, emotional interdependence which is not as easily demonstrated, but still quite observable.  

Now we can turn our attention to the homo sapiens belief that it is a superior species that has no need of other life forms. If you are an intelligent, rational, open-minded human you are way ahead of me and already have numerous examples of why we are not independent of other life forms.  It seems that most source agree that around 80% of the world's population eat meat. Last time I looked meat was the carcass of an animal. According to USDA data, Americans consumed a high of 145.74 pounds of meat per person per year in 2004.  In 2012 we at 131.98 pounds/person. Sure sounds like we're dependent upon other life forms. Food in general makes us dependent upon the nature we attempt to deny and minimize. Then from where does one think all of the raw materials for our modern technology come? Even synthetic, man-made materials have some basis in the nature of which we are a part. Last time I knew we hadn't found a way to make something out of nothing. The chemicals with which we play god are all found in nature or the parent of the chemical came from nature. There is no way around it. We are totally, 100% dependent upon nature. 

When I was sharing my thesis with Pamela she commented that she didn't feel alone in a big city but felt very much alive.  Was my hypothesis in trouble?  Quite the contrary. Pamela is an example of exactly where my thesis is going - attitude and understanding.  You see, Pamela does enjoy the city very much but she feels equally, if not more alive when we are trekking, kayaking, or cycling forty or fifty miles out in the wilderness. To what would you accredit that?

Ask Pamela if she feels that she is totally independent of other homo sapiens.  I believe you will get the answer 'no'.  I believe you will find that she feels very much a part of people.  She laughs with them and cries with them. She is sensitive to their strengths, weaknesses, and fears.  She wants to help others and she loves to have others be a part of her life. Not long ago she talked about stopping to visit our friends from camping and National Park Service on the way to Key Largo. I laughed heartily and pointed out that if we stopped and visited with each - which would require one day of visit and one day of travel per friend - it would take us between two and three weeks to get from western Kentucky to southern Florida. So I feel very comfortable in saying that Pamela would answer the question "do you feel totally independent of other homo sapiens" with a firm "no".

Ask Pamela if she feels that homo sapiens are a superior species with no need for other life forms. Again I feel confident of a resounding "no".  After all Pamela is a biology professor with an unbelievable love for geology and all things natural. I dare say that she would bring up two ideas to clarify her position; viz. her sense of oneness and quantum physics.

Oh, my. Now I've done it.  But many of you knew that I'd get to this point sooner or later. Was there a pool betting on how long it would take me?  Did I win?

Kidding aside, this is where the proverbial rubber hits the road. Having, I believe, rather conclusively demonstrated that we are neither independent from one another nor from other life forms, we go back to my posit that our sense of isolation goes back to our development which involved moving away from activities that are directly related to our connection to nature. Our ancient ancestors did not need a philosophy to determine their interdependence. It was a part of their every day survival. If the smithy was gone, who was going to make the new plow or repair the broken one?  If you didn't have a plow, how were you going to get your crops in? If you didn't get your crops in, how were you going to survive the winter?  Our ancient ancestors did not need a philosophy or any empirical evidence to know that we are a part of nature.  We are conceived like other animals. Born like other animals. Nurse at our mothers' breast like other animals. Work to survive and eventually die like other animals. I firmly believe that they had a sense of their oneness with everything around them. There was no reason for them to feel otherwise since they had no experience which would contradict that sense of oneness.

I do not believe that it takes a quantum leap to make the connection that as we grew as a species, mostly from our own design, away from our connection to and place in nature we gradually lost our awareness of oneness which was replaced by a sense of isolation. In almost 40 years of practice as a psychotherapist in an institutional setting I saw a tremendous amount of anxiety and depression. Much of that was strictly a chemical imbalance - endogenous.  Nevertheless I saw a great deal of exogenous depression and anxiety; i.e. depression and anxiety resulting from life experiences, events and situations. In these latter cases I can confidently say that most, if not all, felt totally isolated and disconnected. They expressed feeling that the world was out to get them, which could be looked upon as delusional or paranoid thinking but which I believe really reflects a common societal malady due to our disconnect from others and most importantly from nature. It would seem to follow that the simple cure would be to send them out into nature, but that isn't going to work without an attitude change and paradigm shift.

Believe it or not I don't want to get into a discussion of quantum mind, sunyata, and how what we think effects our reality and the physical world around us. That is great stuff, but is perhaps best viewed as the next step after coming to grips with the reality that we, as homo sapiens, are totally interdependent upon others of our species as well as upon being a part of nature. For our modern western world, due to its philosophies and religions, that represents a significant paradigm shift. Only when we can make that paradigm shift - that change in the way we, as individuals, think - can we take the next step to the realization of oneness as explained by quantum physics as well as Buddhism and other spiritual communities. Believe me. From my own experience and that of those with whom I've talked about this, sensing this oneness makes one feel really alive.