Interdependence

Encyclopedia : I : IN : INT : Interdependence

Interdependence is a dynamic of being mutually responsible to and dependent on others. Some people advocate freedom or independence as a sort of ultimate good; others do the same with devotion to one's family, community, or society. Interdependence recognizes the truth in each position and weaves them together.

Will Durant made one Declaration of Interdependence on April 8, 1944. Others have been written in the years since, and interest in the United States has picked up in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Leaders as diverse as Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Stephen Covey have written and spoken at length about interdependence:

The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.

--William James

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.

--Mahatma Gandhi, 1929

The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in and parts of the United States – a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer.

--FDR, 1932

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.

--John Muir

...for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

--Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream, 1963

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

--Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won't be good leaders or team players. They're not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.

--Stephen Covey

Economics

All countries (nation-states) are dependent at differing degrees with each other in the following areas: trade, technology, markets, communications, migration, and/or transportation.

External links

[Interdependence Day & Declaration research]

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[A brief overview of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People]

[interdependencedeclaration.org] Another declaration of interdependence

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