Someone Else's Thesis

There must be a word for that moment you realise that someone else has synthesised the ideas you have been exploring and done it in such a succinct and clear way that you lose a little bit of confidence. I will look at this in more detail elsewhere but for now I am interested in the fact that core ideas appear to rise from multiple places at the same time.

Without a specific word to define it, I am going to refer to Zeitgeist.

There is a story that at the time that Harry Potter was being penned by J.K.Rowling in Scotland, there were simultaneously a number of other books about young wizards being written by other authors, one even had a scar on his forehead. These separate authors were disconnected and working in isolation from each other but each tapping into a zeitgeist.

The story goes that a later court case proved beyond doubt these were written entirely independently, not connected by anything other than the cultural cues of the moment. I believe this story is itself fiction, but like the best stories it is trying to capture an idea that we feel is inherently true.

Despite the fiction of the story it excites me, this idea: the disturbing depth of our interconnectedness. The paradox that as our world gets smaller so we are seeing the reality of our entwined selves.

There is a growing body of work pointing to our profound dependence on each other. Systems, Complexity and Psycho-Therapeutic disciplines at the very least are all digging into this same foundation. Arboreal sciences are exploring the remarkable relatedness of trees, communicating via rhizome-mediated chemicals, a network of silk-thin neurons that feed, and support and warn.

I believe this level of interconnectedness is problematic. As humans we struggle to cope with exponential numbers, or with wild and incalculable complexity.

But while it is problematic. It is also important. We have have achieved remarkable things by abstracting and reducing, but we have also done great harm by not considering the wider context, by not factoring the incalculable.

A tree needs to become more than just lumber again; humans more than widgets. Transitioning to awareness of the relationship between nodes, beyond the value of the node itself, will be a criteria for success for humanity as we progress into the growing awareness of complexity that is the mid 21st century.

But a little like our treatment of woodland, and our complex mother nature, we are quick to abstract down to the simple and linear, leaving us insensitive to a complete picture. This complete picture is one of profound connection, and complexity. One in which our actions have ripple effects out, in ways that we cannot predict but are of infinite importance.

Image courtesy of Rubén Bagüés, via Unsplash