My post-surgical care involved a Shamanic healing session with my friend and Planner Collaborator Nate Binford over at Postmugglism. And one of the revelations I had during the session was that I could suddenly see that power is manifest through connection.
Let me explain…
I often think of personal power (not to be confused with power over) as something that’s born from independence. We have power when we have control over our lives, our time, our sovereign personhood. This is one of my core beliefs and it comes from my upbringing, my life, and my general alignment in the world. The more independence I have, the more empowered I feel.
This is not untrue. We do gain power our independence over our bodies, our lives, our decisions. I am fundamentally pro-freedom. I think that freedom is the best option, even if we don’t like what people do with that freedom, and that where there are conflicting freedoms the one that makes the most people free is what we should choose. That said, I am also pro-connection. I believe the networks we build are inherently powerful and healing and helpful and that making these networks is a profoundly radical and revolutionary act in the modern world.
And somehow, while I was laying there getting my chakras aligned, it occurred to me… the power we have through independence is manifest through our networks. We empower one another when we make connections. We’re stronger together than we are alone. Our independence and our interdependence work together to make a stronger whole.
This is one of those revelations that sounds simple, but really understanding it was truly insightful (are you sick of eye puns yet?). It’s the hack that makes collectivism / communalism and individualism work together. We are stronger when we are independent, and we grow in strength when we are interdependent.
I’ve talked before about Taleb’s Antifragile. This is the idea that while being robust and being fragile are two opposites, being antifragile is orthogonal to that axis. Being robust means you can resist stress (like a mountain), being fragile means you are at risk from it (like a butterfly). Being antifragile means you get stronger when things are tough (like an ecosystem or the human body).
Similarly, being independent and being dependent are opposites (and seem to be being presented by the dominant narrative as the only two options) but orthogonal to that axis is interdependence. Independence confers power while dependence erodes it. But interdependence force multiplies that power so that the network becomes stronger than the sum of its members.
The key is that in order to be interdependent, it’s best to first be independent. Which brings me back to being pro-freedom AND pro-connection. This solve was really helpful and clarified for me better how I want to be in the world, as well as the better world I want to create. I want more freedom and more connection.
