a thing is itself

My first thought about the concept of 'independence' is that it is a very limited idea. A person, place, or thing can be independent to a certain degree, but I would argue that this is a superficial, or even artificial, classification. Consider these examples: the USA, a person, and a flower.

The US can be said to be independent insofar as it has its own governing body, and perhaps insofar as it maintains its own artificial borders. But the US is far more dependent than independent. We rely on the Mid East for our fuels, on China for our imports, and on South America for our exotic fruits (the list could go on and on). At a deeper level, the US relies on centuries of Western philosophy and political successes/failures in Europe for the ideological framework upon which it was founded. Even when the US declared itself independent from Britain, its formerly British citizens were dependent upon British sensibilities about how to govern townships, how to distribute wealth and food, and how to deal with internal threats (think Native Americans). The US has never been independent of its heritage. Had we been, we might have been more sensible, and less violent, in our exploration and settlement of the vast parcel of land we call the USA. But we cannot escape history and tradition - we depend on it to make sense of life, flawed as it may be.

Moving on to an individual human being. A person might be said to be independent insofar as they are a unique entity - not unique in the superficial sense (their tastes, their clothing, etc.), but in the profound sense that they are a singular soul amidst billions of other singular souls. I will not argue that such a person cannot be independent, at least to some degree. But the problem remains - left alone, this person would soon die and be nothing. At the most basic level, an individual person cannot reproduce. An individual person cannot teach her or himself to speak; an individual person, without any cultural education, cannot teach her or himself what is appropriate to eat (it took centuries of communities making mistakes to figure this out!). We are entirely dependent upon cultures, histories, and traditions. We depend upon one another to build the infrastructures that make our lives tick. It is within the relative safety of these structures and cultures that we even begin to conceive of the notion that we are 'unique' or 'independent' persons. This seems rather strange to me.

Finally, a flower - and this is where 'independence' breaks down at even the biological level. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist teacher, writes: "When we look into the heart of a flower, we see clouds, sunshine, minerals, time, the earth, and everything else in the cosmos in it... In fact, the flower is made entirely of non-flower elements; it is has no individual, independent existence. It 'inter-is' with everything else in the universe" (Living Buddha, Living Christ; 11). The flower is made of non-flower elements; its entire existence depends upon the generosity of the universe, of the structures and systems we know as rain, sunshine, and soil. And we too are dependent upon these things. Without the sun, we would have nothing to eat. There would be no living, breathing planet.

And so my final point. I find the notion of 'independence' unhelpful. At a superficial level, things are independent from one another; but when you look at their roots, all persons, places, and things are dependent, grounded in the same good earth. Perhaps the most that can be said about our being unique, or independent, is this truth: a thing is itself, and no other thing. Things are differentiable; differentiable things are special things. But all things depend upon all other things for life.


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This post is part of a synchroblog; this week's topic is "independence." To read the other blogs, follow these links:
nightsbrightdays
Karma's Fool
Rebel I
art, et cetera
iwritetoberidofthings
wordshepherd