INTERCONNECTEDNESS

Introduction

Interconnectedness: It's a long word, six syllables, and it sounds quite complicated. A simple way to illustrate it would be to examine, say, a motor car:

	It's all bolted together and welded together and there are bits glued on, so these parts are physically connected.
	The car would not run without petrol and oil and water and so on. The car's function and meaning depend on these things; we can say that it's connected to the products that it needs to function as a car.
	The car is located in a socio-economic context. It also depends, for its existence and meaning, on roads, on laws, on a context of international business. People worked to make it, products had to be mined and manufactured before it could be assembled. The type of economy which produced the car will determine, too, how people live. So the car is connected, invisibly, to all these activities and people.
	The car must exist in an environment, and must have an impact on that environment. The extraction of the raw materials, manufacturing processes, the extraction and transport of fuel, the ecological impact of roads and highways, the gases which the car produces, all of these impact directly on the environment which we share with the car.

Interconnectedness is not obvious from just looking at the car. We see other things when we look at it, things which may not actually be part of the car at all, like status, power and so on. In the way in which we live our lives there are a lot of connections that are not obvious, that are hidden from us, not by any conspiracy, but by the way we lead our lives. Our lives are fragmented:  

We experience our lives in bits and pieces. We don't seem to have time to see the connections between us and everything which forms our world. But some of these connections are vital: The quality and continuity of our lives quite literally and materially depends on them.

This set of pages is about the way the world is glued together and the way that people are built and welded into the natural  and social systems. I want to develop a line of thought that will help us to experience our humanity as part of this larger life. Obviously, I can't do an exhaustive treatment of the subject matter here. Rather, what I shall attempt is to show, by using some examples, how we are connected to our environment and to one another. As the world itself is not fragmented into "disciplines" but is simply there in all its complexity, this stuff must appear somewhat interdisciplinary. If you can experience, as a result of reading this, at least some of the complex interrelation of living and cultural systems, then the thing is working.

I will use some global examples and some examples from the region which I know best: the Western Cape region of South Africa, where I live in an urban neighbourhood. If you come from another region, you can think about how your local region deals with the problems and situations raised.

©1991,1999, Michael Cope. You may copy any  section, print it, transmit it as one or more electrons, distribute it to whoever you wish. If you wish to use any section of it for educational (teaching) or commercial purposes (making money or supporting activities that make money) then you must first seek permission from the author.