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Adopting a Relational Perspective
In many parts of the world where capitalism has become a way of life, so too has “individualism.” The idea that we are these discreet and bounded individuals with our own self-interest, who are seeking to maximize our happiness, or accumulate wealth, or exercise our personal liberties. So first and foremost, according to that view, we are individuals separated from others and out for our own self-interest; defined, in fact, by self-interest.
But what happens when it turns out that living in the world requires that I be dependent on others and that others be dependent on me? I can’t get food if others are not getting food, because we are both dependent on the same food chain and the same food supply sources. Similarly, we could think about climate change, climate destruction. We depend on each other to take steps to reduce carbon emissions and to oppose polluting industries. And if we fail to do that, then we fail to protect the planet and the continuation of life itself.
We can’t just be individuals who are out for ourselves, because we share a world and we’re dependent on that world, and we’re dependent upon each other to preserve the world and its regenerating powers. So it’s way past time to give up on individualism and self-interest as the way to think about who human beings are. We need what I call a more “relational perspective.” We need to understand that who we are, fundamentally, is our relations with one another.
The World According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty
As a student at the university, I read the French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and he thought that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as subjects who act on objects or subjects who act on other subjects. When we touch somebody, we’re not just acting on them, they’re also acting on us; that the touch goes both ways, that the person who’s supposedly active is also being affected. We are oddly intertwined with one another, and he used that term, “intertwinement.”
As we act on the world, it also leaves its impress on us. And that’s a very different idea than the idea, “Oh, well there’s nature and man is supposed to change nature into culture.” Or that nature is some kind of passive, an infinite resource from which humans derive what they want. So his view actually allowed for a much more dynamic relation between humans and nature, humans and objects, humans and each other.
And you know, in the pandemic, that’s exactly what we learned. Like, we all became students of Merleau-Ponty without ever having to read him. Because if I’m unmasked in a scene where I can infect another, I am also in a scene where I can be affected, infected. And that means that there’s a reciprocal action, always, potentially. So if I’m to think like, well, what is my obligation? It’s not just to save myself, nor is it altruistically just to save the other, but to realize that we are bound together and that we have to act socially, because our bodies are constantly impinging on each other, that we breathe each other’s air, that we share the common surfaces of the world.
Expanding Our Forms of Belonging
Cultivating the best form of interdependency is no easy matter. We do it, I think, in our personal relationships, we hope to have forms of interdependency that are not about domination and subordination; we want to keep interdependency separate from hierarchy. But we also think about it globally. We don’t want a global division of labor, such that the global north profits from extracting minerals from the global south and leaving those communities devastated. So there can be terrible forms of interdependency, ones from which we require liberation, and that reiterate or bolster forms of hierarchy or exploitation.
But the best forms of interdependency are those in which we enter into agreements to provide for one another. Not because we absolutely have to, but because we want to. Because we understand ourselves as part of each other’s lives. Our forms of belonging have to expand so that we understand that our interdependency extends to all living creatures and even all living processes. That means de-centering the idea of the human as the center of the world, but also, contesting the idea that I belong only to my family, or to my religion, or to my neighborhood, or to my hemisphere, or those who speak my own language, or have my similar education. I belong to those I’ve never met because we do share this world and the world is imperiled. And our only way of contesting would be through mobilizing our interdependency into forms of solidarity that fight climate destruction and battle for healthcare for all. Enacting forms of solidarity that are crucially life-affirming.