Interdependence makes you happy

Just a word from someone much wiser than me, Gandhi, the founder of Modern India.

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.”

Hindu and Bhuddist traditions have both reminded us of the importance of our interactions and interconnectedness with others. African ideas like Ubuntu likewise. Personally I find this a good sound counterblast to the Protestant North European cult of the individual and the egomania we are encouraged to treasure by our education.

Indeed, thanks to the work of the new Happiness economics, we now know that the best indicator for happiness is having strong successful relationships with others (as opposed to wealth or good looks…). Even if a number of economists challenge the extent to which we can legislate or otherwise ‘operationalise’ happiness optimisation for the nation as a whole, the truth in all our lives is that other people are a greater source of happiness and well-being than stuff or priests or even plain old cash…

If you want to be happy, focus on your interactions, relationships and interdependencies with others (not in terms of what you get but of how they are…); if you don’t want to be happy, then neglect these connections and interdependencies. You can also use interdependence to alleviate the symptoms of depression (itself a social cognitive disorder with real phsyical causes and symptoms) for example through volunteering…

When you accept – as for example most of us bloggers do – that none of us has a unique access to wisdom or talent or fact, but that all of us develop whatever we have through interaction with others, life starts to become very different. Anxiety is much less a part of your experience. Letting go is part and parcel of surviving in this new digital world; linking and being linked to is perhaps the behaviour that best characterises this interdependent experience. Ambient intimacy is one way to describe what the social media revolution provides us with

There are many things wrong with the way we will be living today and tomorrow but this interconnectedness – if we can only embrace it – is definitely a good thing. It touches something deep – deep – inside us.