Hello, everyone! Today we reach the seventh and final principle in my series on balancing self and others. Next week, I’ll wrap this up. Then I’ll evaluate whether to continue the weekly schedule or return to writing twice a month.
(Your feedback on that, and all else in this newsletter, is welcome. Did you like the weekly schedule?)
The seventh principle is the Principle of Connection: We are all connected. Our connection has important consequences, and here are the first four:
When you harm yourself, you harm others, eventually.
When you harm others, you harm yourself, eventually.
When you help yourself, you help others, eventually.
When you help others, you help yourself, eventually.
The link between ourselves and others is not always instant, close, and visible. There may be transit time between the action and its consequences. Sometimes the response is immediate. Sometimes, an action that appeared to have no consequences for years suddenly develops a backlash with a vengeance - as we are seeing with cutting safety corners on well-drilling in the Gulf now, or when someone you snubbed at a party turns out to work where you are trying to get a job.
We are connected in many ways. The atmosphere is a giant connection machine. We’ve traced the precise compounds released by burning coal in China to air in North America. The oceans are a connection machine, too, as we’ve seen from the scatter patterns of tennis shoes that fell from a ship. The internet connects us, too.
I’ve spoken about mirror neurons before - our nervous systems try to copy the state of the people around us. We only speak language - any language - because we’ve learned it from other humans or their artifacts. We eat, breathe, and drink in a great dance of sharing atoms and molecules with others.
The economy is a living connection machine. We pass items and services and money from hand to hand - and measure the health of the economy by how many of those transactions take place.
Perhaps the most subtle and powerful connection of all is word of mouth. Our reputations float from person to person. We talk to each other and about each other, and a story may gain a life of its own in the network of human connection.
How are we to live, knowing that we are all connected? As much as you can, be kind and do no harm. Give the little gifts you can to the people around you - a smile, a word of encouragement, an errand for a neighbor, useful and true information for the internet. Do not pollute or steal or murder or damage or speak cruelly. Do good work and give fair value. Seek ways to live that benefit both yourself and others.
This is ethics: to live in the consciousness that we are all connected. The Principle of Connection is the capstone of all the principles for balancing self and others. It ties our own survival, the value of love, and all the other principles together.
Next week, I’ll conclude this series on balancing self and others. Until then, may you experience the nourishment that comes from connection.
Anna