Happy Interdependence Day
What is the opposite of monarchy?
Yesterday was what we call Independence Day in the United States. It’s the anniversary, the 248th this year, of our independence from the British monarchy. It appears that many on the political right here in the U.S. have forgotten that bit in their drive to return us to a system ruled over by a single man who can commit crimes and punish his opposition with impunity.
I can’t help but think that part of why we’ve ended up here is because our Founding Fathers, all of them being, of course, men raised in patriarchy, didn’t have the instincts for the true opposite of monarchy, with its inherent privileging of a single individual meant to rule over all due to the divine right of birth. Instead, they took that patriarchal individualism and tried to stuff it into a collective framework, not understanding they were planting a rotten core at the center.
History states that the Haudenasaunee Confederacy later inspired the Founders in the framing of our Constitution. However, the Framers took the federalism part and left out the essential ethic at the center of that system— interdependence— the opposite of individualized independence. Interdependence means we are all equal in our relationship with each other and the natural world around us, and we must work from that basic understanding to live together— protecting and sharing our common resources for the good of all currently living and those to come.
It might seem like a pipe dream, that we can share what we have for mutual benefit and organize ourselves in ways that honor our interdependence with each other and the planet. But I don’t see what other good option we have. Systems that privilege the individual and then rank those individuals on a hierarchy of human value only prompt us to dominate and kill each other. Systems that ignore our role as just one species in an interdependent ecosystem are killing the planet, which will inevitably kill us as well.
It’s just death all the way down.
I refuse to despair, though, because interdependence isn’t an idea. It’s a fact. None of us enters or survives this world alone. We are born and live in an interconnected web of care and support, from our family to our friends, teachers, and neighbors. Even our local governments, with their water and sewer systems, roads, schools, and libraries, exist to manage our shared resources for the common good. Or they can. And the Earth cares for us, too, in case we’ve forgotten where our food comes from. To quote Paul Harvey, “Man— despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments— owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
Our interdependence, in other words, is the truth. Everything else is fiction.
This is not to say recognizing that truth and then constructing and maintaining systems that honor it is easy. All systems are work, much of it hard. But we get to choose our hard.
I’ll confess to not feeling like the United States really deserves a flashy birthday celebration this year, but not because we have nothing to celebrate. More because we have everything we need to be different for each other and the planet, and yet we squander it fighting with and taking from each other, all for the benefit of a few individuals who don’t give a crap about us.
Instead of succumbing to despair or cynicism, however, this weekend I’m focusing on my interdependence— connecting with friends, hiking down to our local reservoir and offering thanks to the water, working to take care of my house, which I share with my dear ones, and my body, which is the tool I have to offer myself to the world. I’m also here, albeit briefly, encouraging you to see the web of relationships that surrounds and supports you and to offer yourself to it wholeheartedly.
love this, thank you Asha for the reminder speaking only for myself, i believe it is because of the lack recognizing or understanding the interdependence of everything on this planet that we have found ourselves where we currently are.
I really enjoyed this, though it reminds me that, as I am British, I'm still waiting for "independence from the British monarchy." One day, it will surely come.
'What is the opposite of monarchy?' is a powerful question in the context in which you use it. Funnily enough, I read the other day this phrase from Hazlitt: "I knew all along there was but one alternative—the cause of kings or of mankind." The use of "mankind" grates with us now, of course, but otherwise, his sentence seems to point the way towards your question.