INTERdependence Day
July 4 2007, 3:44 PM
- The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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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
- When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
- 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.
- 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.
The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!"