The Poisoned Well

Who You Avoid Is Key

If Interdependence is our nature, why doesn’t it come more ‘naturally’ to us?
The answer lies in the ‘socialization’ process which if it is complete and successful, makes us ‘unfit’ for interdependence. Hence the subtitle ‘Who You Avoid Is Key’. The sad reality is that probably only a fraction of a percent of people living in western culture are suited for interdependence.
The rest are to be avoided. Sad, but it’s the conclusion I have reached after many attempts at achieving healthy interdependent relationships.
If you are more interested in what you can ‘get’ than what you can ‘give’, you aren’t ready for interdependence.

Myth of Sisyphus

In the Greek myth Sisyphus is condemned to the fate of endlessly pushing a huge rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down the hill as he nears the top.
That is pretty much the fate to which the existing system condemns the bulk of humanity.
The cage that holds us trapped is faulty paradigms or maps of the way the world is. Those faulty maps start getting installed by the system of ‘socialization’ starting with your parents, and ratchets into overdrive through exposure to TV, the media and the school system.
If any alternative culture is to survive, it must break free of the existing faulty paradigms and systems of indoctrination to those paradigms.

The ‘Cage’ of Culture

     Imagine a group of birds has been bred and raised in a cage for centuries.   The cage is the only ‘reality’ they know.   To them it appears ‘natural’.   Of course you and I know better because we are aware that the natural environment for a bird is in the wild.
    The birds don’t know that though.  Of course, as you or I can imagine the unnatural environment of the cage causes all sorts of problems that simply don’t appear in nature.   Behavioral issues due to the confinement and other problems are attributed by the birds to be just a reflection of the shortcomings of ‘bird nature’.  
     To us it seems comical, and we can clearly see the issues are due to the unnatural cage environment in which they are living.   But, being the only environment they have experienced, they simply aren’t equipped to see things as we see them from outside the cage, with a different perspective.