What Interdependence Means?

As said in an earlier post, each action of ours affects and is affected by other actions of ours. This gives raise to an interdependent framework of actions. Each action is also rooted firmly in a role. If we begin seeing our roles as separate, our actions will tend to be independent of the roles that we play. In such cases, we would be doing wrong most of the times becaues the framework is interdependent and we are seeing it as independent. The right thing to do, hence, would be to look at our actions as a continuous movement, proceeding from the root of one role to another.

We also tend to divide our time between roles. Time might exist chronologically, physically. It may not be possible to escape from this physical time. But time in the psychological sense, if we want to see action as a continuous movement, must also be seen as continuous. We cannot say that I will think about my family role only after six in the evening. That would be a ridiculous thing to do. But most of us do it and expect others to conform to our time perspective. This is again because of our fragmented view of the whole process of life. We see roles as separate and we tend to separate these roles in space and in time.

Therefore, at office, I am someone and then at home, which is spatially separate from office, I am someone different. There is a separate time for office and a separate time for home. We cannot escape time physically. We have to spend some time at office and some time at home, physically. We have to go to a separate place to work and earn money and a separate place is neede for carrying on our family affairs. This is inevitable. I am not saying that we should mix this up.


What I am saying is this. Our roles are psychologically different. We also tend to make them spatially and chronologically different. Once these differences come into being in our minds, then we get the tendency to look at our roles as separate. Once that separation comes into being, then we try and make our actions in each role as separate as possible. But we are one person. One Whole Person. Each action that we perform affects us directly and indirectly. All our roles are rooted in us as a human being.

The Integrator and The Integrated

It might sound very ridiculous if I say that the root of all conflict lies in thought. To avoid such conflict we must see "What Is" rather than "What should be". That is to say one must take a fact based approach rather than an ideal based approach. A fact based approach looks at "What Is" with an objective eye, which is free from bias, from the past. A fact based approach doesnt get fixated on a specific method, a specific way of looking based on the past. A fact based approach simply looks at facts as they are and finds out how to deal with the facts as they are.

To understand and know about facts as they are it is necessary to develop a mindset which can look without any conditioning. The mind must be able to look at "what is" without the root of knowledge, experience and the past. It is not enough to think of integration. The very idea of integration brings about conflict because there are two fragments atleast in that thought. The integrator and that which is integrated. The integrator, who is one of the fragments says "I will observe the other fragments and I will unify them".

That is why it is necessary to remove the idea of the integrator, the center from which all thought originates. When we take a fact based approach, there is only what is observed. The observer is the observerd. The integrator is that which is integrated. When such a state of mind is achieved, then we can say that the mind is free and sensitive enough to look objectively towards facts as facts.

The Basis of Structural Thinking

The reason I have chosen to talk about family and work and the "Balance" seeking behavior of people between the two is fundamentally because the foundations of Structural Thinking can be easily explained through this. The reason why I chose to quote J. Krishnamurthi is also because of the reason that the quote I have given contains the essence of Structural Thinking.

We are conditioned in our mind to look at things in a fragmented way. We create separate boxes in our mind about different groups that we interact with, and try to give different identities in each of these groups. We try to be different at Work, at Home, with Friends, with Relatives, with Customers, with Vendors and so on and so forth. Many of us would have complaints from our spouses that we help our friends more than his/her relatives, that when we are dishonest at our workplace how can we be honest at home, that we are more patient with our colleagues than our family members and so on. Many times we ourselves feel ridiculous about our own responses to these different groups of people. Most of us end up getting frustrated because of these questions and declare that life is unfair to each of us.

The solution to the above problems that we face, begins by questioning the root of the formation of such multiple identities about ourselves. Why do we try to create so many different images of ourselves and then try to juggle between these images? Why cant we have one common image that cuts across the whole realm of roles that we play in our life? It is much simpler to have one image than multiple images. Then there would be no question of balance no question of disharmony among various roles. Then we can see that life is but fair, only we have made it unfair to ourselves.

To make this issue a little more visible and understandable let me quote an incident that I happened to witness a couple of years back. There was, in the town that I studied, a bus conductor of a private bus service, who was very rude to his passengers. But, he was very prompt in his job. He issued tickets efficiently, insisted to the driver that the bus must stop where it is supposed to, and shouted at passengers if they forgot to buy the ticket or if they made a request to stop where the bus is not supposed to stop. His interactions with this passengers were rude. When someone points this to him, he always used to say, "I do my job correctly, I dont have either the time or the patience to be soft to my passengers, because I have to do my job correctly. And since I do my job correctly, I dont have to bother or fear anyone. I can be like I want to be." People stopped advising him after a while.

The same bus conductor had to take his mother to a super specialty hospital built in a nearby town for some treatment. So, he took his old and sick mother to the bus station and got her into a government run bus. Soon after the bus crossed town, his mother had a vomiting sensation. He requested the conductor of the bus to stop the bus, so that she can vomit. The conductor was very rude to him. He said "If your mother is sick, what have I got to do with that? If you wanted such luxury, take a private cab. Or get down the bus and catch another one. Just for the sake of one passenger I cannot disturb others. What is the matter with you? Cant you think straight?" When he tried to explain the conductor of the govt. bus service snubbed him out saying "I dont have time and patience to understand you. I have to do my job correctly. And as long as I do my job correclty, I dont have to care a ding about what you feel."

Look at the above situation and think of the Identity crisis that the conductor of the private bus service would be facing. As a conductor of the bus, he did his duty correctly. And he built a system of values that enabled him to be a good conductor. But, as a passenger, he expected the other conductor to understand his situation. He operated with a completely different value system when he was a passenger and he had someone to take care about. He did not feel it was wrong to ask the conductor of the govt. bus service to stop at a place where the bus was not supposed to stop. Now, what would he do the next day? Would he continue to be firm and rude in his job the next day? Or should he continue being rude and firm.

Let us keep being rude apart from the story. Because, when I use the word "rude", most of us assign a negative meaning to it, which colors the story. Just ask yourselves whether being firm (without being rude) would make the above situation any better. According to me, the situation remains the same. Even if the govt. bus conductor was polite in the above said situation, the private service bus conductor would have got the same question as he had got earlier, maybe with a different level of intensity.

The above situation maybe typical, but there are many conflicts that we can identify with which are similar to the aforementioned situations. As employees we want higher salaries for good work done, but as customers we want lower prices for the best quality goods. As customers we want employees of organizations that serve us to be understanding, as employees we wont have time and patience to understand our customers. As workers we want our family members to understand and support our work related pressures, but as family members we refuse to understand support the work related pressures that might be created in the family because of various works that are carried out in the family.

What is the root of such conflict? What breeds such different responses in us?

Thoughts From the Flight of the Eagle

J. Krishnamurthi, known in the Theosophical circles as Alcyone, whose life and works have revolutionized many a western life, lectures in London and says

I think it would be worthwhile to spend this evening in trying to find out if there is a way of living - not theoretically or intellectually but actually - a way of life, in which there is no division whatsoever; a way of life in which action is not fragmented, so that it is one constant flow, where every action is related to all other actions.

Go throught the quote once again and you will find it interesting and worthwhile to think about. We live many lives. Most of us live atleast two different lives. Work Life and Family Life. This division exists because we define work and family separately and think about work and family separately. But are work and family separate? Is the division valid?

Fundamentally the division exists because we think of work and family differently. We think of the work we do to earn a living as separate from the work we do in our family life. For us, training our salesman is different from training our two year old to read and write. We view maintaining social relationships at work different from maintaining social relationships in our family. This is because work and family for us serves two different purposes and goals. Therefore, we have two different identities at work and in our family. We build these identities according to the goals that we want to achieve.

This division of our identities brings about conflict. Conflict within ourselves and conflict with our co-workers and family members. We then expect our co-workers to understand our family problems and then expect our family members to understand our work related problems. We then complicate the matters further by trying to find out a "Balance" between work and family life.