I AM AN INDIVIDUAL SCREAMED THE INDIVIDUAL

To be is to be together.

To be human is to be all humans, to be humankind.

Western cultures, our societies and economies and politics, value this idea of “rugged individualism”. We value the triumph of the workingman over the elite, we value the American dream, we see the smallest unit of existence as a single person, as an individual.

I don’t think that’s true.

From the very moment of out birth we are surrounded by the language of others, the ideas of others, the notions of others, the emotions of others, the prides and prejudices of others, their hidden motivations, their deepest held beliefs, the lies they tell every day to be more likable or powerful, their philosophies and religions and gods and demons and angels;

But that is not to say that “everyone else” is not a product of everyone else’s “everyone else”, just the same as we.

When I am feeling less (or perhaps rather much more) poetic than usual, I describe this concept as a “great self-referential clusterfuck of an existence”.

Or, otherwise, I see us all as an enso. The enso is a symbol very strongly rooted in Zen Buddhism, it is a circle drawn with a single brushstroke.

Although there are numerous meanings behind this, I will focus on one.

A circle has no beginning and no end. Any two points on a circle can be connected by a single line.

This, to me, is humanity.

A person, the individual, is but a single point.

Now, you can get close to a circle with single points, but there will always be space in between. A collection of humans is not humanity; humanity is something greater than us all, something that fills in those spaces and completes the enso.

You see, the individual, the free agent (in that I mean one who is capable of exerting free will), the consumer, the worker, the cog in the clock, is nothing of any value, really.

You did not invent the language you speak, you did not invent the clothes you wear, you did not invent the god(s) you believe in and the gods you don’t believe in, you did not invent the internet, you did not invent anything, and even the people who did invent those things did so with the help of others, and the influence of many thousands others, and many ineffable environmental factors.

No one is individual; no one is unique; we are all the same ideas recycling themselves.

This universe exhibits near infinite complexity at all levels. From the quarks and bosons, to the specks of mica in a pebble, to the spots of dead grass on a lawn, to the scarred cityscapes hemorrhaging the desert, to the continents in a bounded ocean, to the stars in an endless ocean, everything is intricate and interconnected. We are one part of this complexity, but we are not the only part, nor the largest part, nor the smallest.

But the point, I think is this.

There is no way to separate someone from anyone else. Where do our thoughts begin and the thoughts that we have learned from others end?

Where do I begin and you end? We always fall into a physical answer to his question; surely I end where my body does. But let’s face it; there is no part of my body that is mine. I am made of food, most recently, and stardust, most poetically.

So, I do adore Thoreau and Emerson, but I am not a rugged individual. I am as fragile as the world I live in, which is damned fragile indeed.

It’s a very universal kind of way to think; you are as fucked up as I am; when you succeed, I succeed; we will triumph together and fail together, all at the same time. We’re all in this together, I suppose.