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| (c) BBC |
Please don’t tell
anyone, because I know it will upset them. All people, and to a certain extent especially
Americans, have long lived under an illusion of independence. Quiet. Don’t say that too loud. You see,
because there was so much self-reliance – which is a totally different matter –
involved in the spread of the people of predominantly European descent in the
18th and 19th centuries across what is today the United
States, that we, as a nation, have confused the idea of self-reliance with
independence. Go to Montana, my adopted home State, and you will be told that we are fiercely independent. You will hear intellectuals talk about being
independent thinkers. But what does it
mean to be independent.
The dictionary definition of independent is “(1) free from
outside control; not depending on another’s authority. (2) not depending on
another for livelihood or subsistence.”
The problem with this is that, like the ‘clysoptic thingaglober’, it
doesn’t exist.
Wait! Before you decide
that I’m some sort of looney, hear me out.
If you think you are so independent, it definitely won’t hurt you to
listen to what I have to say.
I base my premise that we are not only not independent but
totally dependent upon everyone and everything else in the universe upon an
indisputable chain of connections and dependences.
This morning, when you turned off your alarm clock, you
touched your interdependence with the universe.
If we follow all of the connections and dependencies related to that
simple clock, you will follow them back to the creation of the universe.
Go ahead, laugh. When
you’re done laughing, stop and start making a list or a diagram. To make it easy, let’s start with the fact
that you had to buy that alarm clock. That
was probably pretty easy. You drove to a store and bought the clock.
Period. Well, let’s take a closer
look. How did you drive to the
store? In a vehicle of some description,
I assume. Consider how many people with
whom you are interconnected and interdependent to acquire that car. I don’t want this blog to end up being a 200,000
word dissertation, so let’s abbreviate: (1) the dealership and those related to
and responsible for the existence of the dealership; (2) the person responsible
for the transportation of the vehicle to the dealership and the company that
employs her/him; (3) the manufacturer, those who work there and those
responsible for its existence; (4) those who built the factory and all of the
raw materials involved in that building; (5) the raw materials for the
automobiles and those responsible for mining or harvesting, getting to the
factory, etc., etc. (6) the earth in which the raw materials developed and the
universe, most specifically the beginning of the universe, where the raw
materials originated.
That was very abbreviated, but I think you get the idea.
Now
we can do the same thing with (1) the road that you traveled to get to the
store, (2) the building in which the store was located, (3) the company that
obtained and sold the clock, (4) the transportation of the clock to the store,
(5) the manufacturer of the clock. Wow.
And we still have a number of steps before we get to - you guessed it – the beginning of the
universe where the raw materials originated.
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| (c) Science ABC |
Think about this and then try to tell me that you’re not
related to and/or dependent upon every volcano, glacier and tectonic plate on
earth. Think about this and then try to
deny that you are directly connected to the beginning of the universe. Scientist tell us that we actually have
elements from the beginning of the universe pass through our bodies every day.
We are totally interdependent upon everything else in the universe.
This same process can be applied to our own existence and
continued existence. There is the
biological – our parents and all upon whom they were dependent for their
existence. Then there is the
physiological – all the chemistry that makes us. Where did it all begin and
upon what is it dependent? Nothing in us is new or independent. All of it has developed over the billions of
years since life on Earth began, and that development is dependent upon
elements and circumstances created by the universe around us such as Earth’s
distance from the Sun. We are constructed of the most basic building blocks of
the universe, came into being as a result of forces beyond our control, and
survive only because of other aspects and results of this marvelous phenomena.
The only possible conclusion is that we are totally
interdependent upon all of the rest of the universe. Another way to say this is that we are one.
We are one because everything leads back to the beginning of the universe,
whether or not one believes the Big Bang theory. The universe is a living
organism of which we are a minuscule part.
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| (c) Pexel |
So, is there any application of this reality? I would suspect there are a lot more applications
than I can think of or report here.
Conservationism and Environmentalism are the first that come to mind;
i.e. showing respect to the world and the universe around us. It is to our benefit to be good citizens of
planet Earth.
#OldConservationist
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