Interconnectedness

“ But in actual life it is oftener the latter that is prominent in our relations with our fellow-men. We—the category of co-operation—is at least as fundamental in all human thought and language as I and thou, the categories of mutual exclusion. That you and I are mutually complementary factors in a wider whole of common interests, is at least as early a discovery of mankind as that our private interests and standpoints collide. ”

“ There is an alliance with matter, with the object, or extended world; but the thing allied, the mind proper, has itself no extension, and cannot be joined in local union. Now, we have no form of language, no familiar analogy, suited to this unique conjunction; in comparison with all ordinary unions, it is a paradox or a contradiction. We understand union in the sense of local connection; here is a union where local connection is irrelevant, unsuitable, contradictory, for we cannot think of mind without putting ourselves out of the world of place. ”

“ What we do find is their ‘constant conjunction’ in experience, and ‘conjunction’ is equivalent to that ‘contiguity in time and place,’ which has already been pointed out as one of those ‘natural relations’ which act as ‘principles of union’ between ideas. ”

“ The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can, some impress or imparted power, from the other. ”

“ If beings are, like the objects of our ordinary experience, already interdependent, they can indeed consistently assume new ties, as young people who are already members of the same social order or of the same human family can marry. But in the supposed, and distinctly not empirical realm, to which the consistent realist finds himself driven, the two independent beings of which his world, if reduced to its lowest terms, consists, have no ties, and can never get any. ”

“ It is no doubt true that in the experience of any individual there must be the two aspects of fresh teleological initiative and of already systematised habitual and quasi-mechanical repetition of useful reactions already established, and further, that intercourse between different individuals is only possible through the medium of such a system of established habits. As we have already seen, what we call our body is simply a name for such a set of habitual reactions through which intercommunication between members of human societies is rendered possible. ”

“ The establishment of such inner relations corresponding to outer relations and their widening growth, must have a marked influence upon human conduct so that it may very well be separated for convenience of study from the earlier forms of organic conduct, in which such action is little recognisable. But how to form the connective law is the difficulty. Moreover, it is one thing to establish the fact of evolution, and another thing to explain it. ”

“ Certainly if we commence with a knowledge of things, and then look around for their relations we shall not find them. ‘Causal connection’ is merely one typical instance of the universal ruin of relatedness. ”

“ The co–operation is involuntary, and is put upon us by the Genius of Life, who reserves this as a part of his prerogative. 'T is fine for us to talk; we sit and muse, and are serene and complete; but the moment we meet with anybody, each becomes a fraction. ”

“ A chain of mutual dependence, too often unrecognized, binds together the members of the human family, whether they belong to the same community or dwell on opposite sides of the earth. The links of this chain are made up of the articles which constitute our daily food, our clothing, homes, fuel, light, our means of communication and transportation, and only by continuous coöperation are they kept together. ”

“ Some point of contact they must have with the world in which they live, and if their influence is to be based on widespread sympathy, the contact must be in a region where there can be, if not full mutual comprehension, at least a large measure of practical agreement and willing co-operation. ”

“ Such a multitude of human lives crossing each other in an intraceable and interminable network; intraceable to the human eye, but what a sight it must be to the eye that sees all! All these people, so many hundreds of thousands, acting and reacting upon one another's happiness, prosperity, goodness, and badness. ”

“ The wonder lies chiefly in the concentrated and unified organization of the relations, not so much in their functional display afterward. The problem is the established unity of the multifariously related individual, not the planning and fitting of these multifarious relations themselves. The power of our life is intrinsically wrought, not extrinsically derived. ”

“ We have already observed that nature has established connexions among particular ideas, and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its correlative, and carries our attention towards it, by a gentle and insensible movement. These principles of connexion or association we have reduced to three, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity and Causation; which are the only bonds that unite our thoughts together, and beget that regular train of reflection or discourse, which, in a greater or less degree, takes place among all mankind. ”

“ Consensus demands communication.
We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social group there are many relations which are not as yet social. A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. ”

“ There is, however, an intelligible question about human association:—Not the question how individuals or singular beings come to be connected, but how they come to be connected in just those ways which give human communities traits so different from those which mark assemblies of electrons, unions of trees in forests,24 swarms of insects, herds of sheep, and constellations of stars. When we consider the difference we at once come upon the fact that the consequences of conjoint action take on a new value when they are observed. ”

“ It seemed so obvious that a civilized society could not develop without the capacity for intelligent coöperation, and intelligent coöperation of any real complexity was impossible without adequate communication. What means of communication could adequately replace the direct linking of mind and mind? Failing any answers short of fantasy, the proposition always remained a sort of classroom joke with us. ”

“ To-day it has attained, in Europe and America, a wide degree of development, and the vast extension of human intercourse through the mediums of [217] travel, commerce, and telegraphic communication is, for the first time in human history, beginning to lift the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man from the plane of a philosophic dogma toward that of an established fact. ”

“ In the context in which human cognitive resources take precedence over any other resources, as we face efficiency requirements of the global scale of humankind, connecting minds is not an evolutionary aspect of design, but a revolutionary step. All the networks mentioned above can participate in the emergence of humankind's integrated network. ”

“ It is certain, that one cannot, without some reflexion, comprehend that chain composed of so many incoherent, so widely distant links, that union, that mutual dependance of interests, in appearance so opposite to each other ”

“ Each appears as the means of the other and as being brought about by the other, which is expressed as their mutual interdependence; a relation, by virtue of which they appear as mutually connected and indispensable, yet remaining outside of each other. ”

“ This interrelating holds good of society when we view it externally. Society too can be understood only by the study of its flux of relations, of all the intricate reciprocities which go to make the unifying. Reciprocal ordering—subordinating, superordinating, coördinating—purposeful self-unifyings, best describe the social process. Led by James, who has shown us the individual as a self-unifying centre, we now find the same kind of activity going on in society, in the social mind. ”

“ At length, however, one ardent philosopher, full of hope, as we all were, that we had neighbors on some of these globes, brought out the idea that if these neighbors were as far advanced in astronomical science as we were, there ought to be some means of communication between one world and another. ”

“ These conceptions center upon contact, and ideas of contact are at the root of all conceptions of human relations at any stage of culture; contact is the one universal test, as it is the most elementary form, of mutual relations. Psychology bears this out, and the point is psychological rather than ethnological. ”

“ Peculiarly is it true, that wherever we find the idea of an absolute merging of two natures into one, or of an inter-union or an inter-changing of two personalities in loving relation, there is reason for suspecting a connection with the primitive rite of inter-union through a common blood flow. ”

“ For as the company of strangers is agreeable to us for a short time, by inlivening our thought; so the company of our relations and acquaintance must be peculiarly agreeable, because it has this effect in a greater degree, and is of more durable influence. Whatever is related to us is conceiv'd in a lively manner by the easy transition from ourselves to the related object. Custom also, or acquaintance facilitates the entrance, and strengthens the conception of any object. ”

“ Taken in this group we call both it and them ‘ideas’ or ‘sensations’; and the basis of the two groups respectively is the different type of interrelation, the mutual impenetrability, [Pg 140] on the one hand, and the lack of physical interference and interaction, on the other.
That what in itself is one and the same entity should be able to function thus differently in different contexts is a natural consequence of the extremely complex reticulations in which our experiences come. ”

“ As regards increase of harmony or co-ordination, human communities have advanced but little, although in the increase of powers of communication there has been laid the foundation for such possibility. ”

“ That which is more possible is either internally more harmonious and inclusive; it is, in other words, nearer to a complete totality of content, such as would involve passage into, and unity with, the Real. Or the more possible is, on the other hand, partly realized in a larger number of ideal groups. Every contact, even with a point in the temporal series, means ideal connection with a concrete group of relations. ”

“ But if, on the other hand, we can show that the mode of intercourse here needed does already exist, and appears in man's relations with his fellow-men, then the transition to messages from the unseen will be so much the less violent. ”

“ Human interaction extends in our days beyond the immediate circle of acquaintances, or what used to be the family circle. This interaction is, however, more superficial and more mediated by other people and by various devices. ”

“ Hence, again, it appears that in all communication between one being and another, there must necessarily interpose a medium, which must be continuous from the communicator to the one receiving the communication. ”

“ By an objective connexion, I mean such a connexion as there is between the bucket in the well and the hand that draws it up,—when the hand stops, the bucket stops too; or between a man and his shadow,—when the man moves, the shadow moves too ”

“ I have attempted to show that in like response to the same given stimulus we have the beginning, the absolute origin, of all concerted activity—the inception of every conceivable form of co-operation; while in unlike response, and in unequal response, we have the beginning of all those processes of individuation, of differentiation, of competition, which in their endlessly varied relations to combination, to co-operation, bring about the infinite complexity of organized social life. ”

“ A mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hinderances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity. ”

“ Relationships of an intimate character, the formal vehicle of which is psycho-physical proximity, lose the charm, and even the content, of their intimacy, unless the proximity includes, at the same time and alternately, distance and intermission. ”

“ There are internal relations, namely, "definite combinations of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive," and there are external relations, "external co-existences and sequences," and life is the connexion of correspondence between them. Thus under its most abstract form, Spencer's conception of Life is:—"The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." ”

“ Even members and directions which are apparently isolated are discovered to be related by significant connecting members and links, and the whole shows itself in all its parts as one and living,—therefore, also, as a life-rousing, life-nurturing, and life-developing totality. ”

“ It is interesting, although not at all singular, to watch how quickly attachments spring up between people who are thrown together, yet isolated from the rest of the world, and how much more tender and real these enforced attachments become. ”

“ It hath therefore been made evident and proved that interaction, co-operation and interrelation amongst beings are under the direction and will of a motive Power which is the origin, the motive force and the pivot of all interactions in the universe. ”

“ And now from the sixteenth century onward, as an inevitable by-product of systematic thought, appeared a steadily increasing series of inventions and devices affecting the intercommunication and interaction of men with one another. ”