Independence and Dependence

There is a lot of talk about ‘Independence’ worldwide and the constant need to keep expressing one’s existence – by actions, words, and products. Is there a place for ‘silence’ or contemplation? Anyways, let’s keep that question aside.

The ‘feeling’ of independence, I believe, is created on account of following scenario in contemporary times –

The slice of Time considered (or available at our disposal) is brought to a minute scale. We seem to concentrate only on events contained in that spec of time. This means, the rate of change is fast.

We are bombarded by billions of information from all directions and all appear fragmented or totally disconnected. It appears that there is little point correlating one information with another, since we have no time to condense what we are absorbing! In such a scenario, even the ‘same’ information of today may appear different tomorrow! In a nut shell – there is hardly a place for any thought or response to develop or properly sink in our consciousness. What we appear to behave – are fleeting memories or notional beings with feeble footings on the ground, because what is ‘ground’ any way?!

In present condition, everything may appear to be extremely ‘fresh’ and changing and therefore ‘different’ or unique! Since the idea of ‘connection’ seems to break down and as more and more fragmentation arises, “we” become islands in ourselves – and our consciousness too, becomes fragmented. Since island does not last long, we feel this urge to exert our existence forcefully – and from this comes the compulsion to constantly express. Whatever we do, our expressions are now believed to be independent (read disconnected) from anything else. My conclusion is that the feeling of independence is an expression of disconnection with everything around you. The expression of ‘creativity’ seems to take the form of ‘disconnection’ or fragmentation from the relationship with the context. In other words, perhaps the term context needs to focus on the fragment! In this world of fragments, anything remotely associated with memory – culture, society, nation, community, history, ecology – has very limited value. Our reactions (or responses) are short lived and we only seem to create a lot of ‘noise’ without any substantial change in our perceptions/ attitudes/ feelings/ actions. Of course, other pitfalls of culture such as biases, prejudices, hierarchical power structures etc. also don’t have much relevance here.

Let’s come to the notion of ‘dependence’. Another world view is felt when one starts to connect a single dot with another. A dot may have a link with more dots – forming lines, planes and spaces. Thus the identity or the relevance of dot is related to the entire volume! Here, we are talking of interrelationships or patterns or tendencies or movements of systems. For this, the scale of Time needs to increase to include generations or centuries or millennia. This world is of interconnections  - ecology to geography to history to culture to behavior to architecture to philosophy to existence and so on. In such a state of mind, we become ‘silent’ – for we understand that ‘we’ are not individuals, but represent a dimension of the cosmos. We may just appear different (in terms of manifestation), but we are all connected. In this world, we care less for individual identity and care more about connections – empathy. ‘Memory’ becomes collective or even transcends body-mind limitations. Of course, one should also guard aganst hierarchical power structures, prejudices, superstitions etc. – which are also a part of collective memories. In a nutshell, in this world, the idea of creation is of expressing or revealing a ‘pattern’ through a product. Every act is a realization of a pattern and our role in it.