Interdependence

By the time you read this, my daughter should have returned from an adventure. I can’t wait to hear all the details—particularly what it was like to watch Independence Day fireworks exploding over San Juan Harbor. She traveled down to Puerto Rico for a week with some friends of our family (and without us), both to celebrate her graduation from eighth grade, and to help their daughter with the care of their 20-month-old grandson. My wife could have gone with them—she’s off for the summer—but we decided it was time to let our daughter enjoy this experience, well, independently.

Recently, The Weekly Almanac ran a very thought-provoking editorial suggesting that “American Revolution” isn’t quite the right name for what happened here from 1775 to 1783—that it wasn’t a “revolution,” with all the novelty and messiness that implies, so much as a war for simple independence. After all, the editorial suggested, George III wasn’t overthrown, we just removed ourselves from his rule, and furthermore, we didn’t drift all that far afield, but set up institutions modeled, more or less closely, on their British counterparts.

I don’t quite buy the distinction myself—from the point of view of this side of the pond, George III was indeed kicked out—but it does raise an interesting question: just what does this “independence” mean, anyway? It doesn’t mean complete disconnection, despite Jefferson’s wording about “dissolving ties;” our daughter will grow more and more independent over time, but she will not lose her connection with us, or with the area she grew up in, even if her life takes her to other places. The young United States remained connected to its parent by language, trade and history, as have other colonies since.

While “independence” implies a certain degree of self-reliance and free volition, I don’t think it implies a complete freedom from responsibility or obligations to others. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the words of writer and activist Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute, “While independence is a very difficult and important developmental stage—a dramatic step up from dependence, as anyone who has teens and two-year-olds will tell you—it is not the ultimate goal of maturity. As we mature, life encourages us to bring the healthy individuality (which we developed through our independence) into relationships and networks which involve a lot of healthy interdependence.”

There are systems of laws from which we can never break away, from which we can never truly declare independence, like the laws of physical reality, of chemistry, physics and biology. One of the consequences of these laws is that we find ourselves in a complex web of relationships with the different places, species and natural forces around us, and it is in the nature of that web that we cannot muck around with one part without affecting others. As John Muir put it, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

It’s no coincidence that Al Gore picked the weekend after America’s celebration of “Independence Day” to hold the Live Earth concerts, intended to raise awareness of not just global climate change, but of our worldwide interdependence.

A number of “Declarations of Interdependence” can be found at www.co-intelligence.org/DeclarationsOfInterdep.html. But even that term is a misnomer. One can declare Independence, perhaps, but Interdependence, being the true state of things all along, cannot be declared or claimed, but only realized as one grows in perception, awareness and understanding.

That growth happens through experience and learning. As my daughter moves into the wider world (which is also becoming smaller by the day!), I hope that she—and all of our children—will find themselves at home in that interdependent world.