Disconnected

Issue #3.4 ~ May 8th, 2024

Last issue’s lead essay, “Interconnected”, posited that the ongoing conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians flows, at least in some part, from their mutual long-standing denial of the interconnected nature of their coexistence - with each other, within the larger interconnected arenas of the wider geopolitical region of the Middle East, and within the even vaster and more volatile polarized global space of East-West relations.

When we focus our attention on this vaster vantage point of the current global situation, signs of humanity’s interconnectedness become increasingly difficult to detect. Far more easier to spot are the ever-increasing incidents of disconnectedness cropping up all over the place. Like new clouds constantly forming in the sky on a windy day and passing in rapid succession across the sun, these examples of disconnectedness continually interrupt and diminish our ability to see through to the interconnectedness of all things.

Here is a by-no-means exhaustive (though certainly exhausting) list of conflicts currently simmering at various degrees of heat all across the globe: China vs. Taiwan, North Korea vs. South Korea, Hindus vs. Moslems in India, MAGA Republicans vs. liberal/progressive Democrats in America, Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’s heinous attack upon Israeli civilians, Israel’s genocidal retaliatory action in Gaza, Israeli settlers’ assaults upon Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel vs. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel vs. Iran, government vs. gangs in Haiti, insurgents vs. military dictatorship in Myanmar, and (according to Google) “more than 35 non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) taking place across the continent of Africa, including the countries of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan.”

Pondering this critical worldwide pandemic of disconnectedness, I keep returning to the Buddhist notion of “not-self”. Bear with me as I attempt to explain.

There are almost as many interpretations of the challenging concept of “not-self” as there are Buddhist teachers, but the one that’s come up most often in my years of studying the literature defines “not-self” as the understanding that what we refer to as “self” is such a constantly changing experience that it cannot properly be described as a fixed static entity. Understood this way, the “self” is seen as a process of ongoing activity, rather than a state of unchanging being. Accordingly, since there is no fixed “self”, it’s more accurate to describe what we are as “not-self”.

This ontological definition of “not-self” leaves many Buddhist students (and not a few Buddhist teachers) confused and dissatisfied. Even if you’re able to accept this definition on an intellectual basis, it’s all but impossible to incorporate its implicit meaning into your everyday linguistic experiences. We rely on such conversational terms as “myself” and “yourself” in order to make sense of our interactions with others, and every time we use them, we’re inadvertently contradicting the implicit meaning of that intellectual definition.

A second, and I think more satisfying, way of interpreting “not-self” is to define it in terms of ethical behavior rather than in terms of ontology. From this perspective, “not-self” is a behavioral style we can cultivate in our interactions with others. It starts with the realization that our needs and desires are transitory, arising and fading away as temporary products of our ever-changing experience; from there, it proceeds to the understanding that our transitory needs and desires are no different in nature than - and in fact exist on an even plane with - the needs and desires of others. Accordingly, an ethical awareness of “not-self” prompts an attitude of “egoless-ness” in our personal relationships and our interpersonal transactions - a willingness to refrain from the automatic prioritization of our wants and wishes over those of others.

Seen as egoless-ness, the concept of “not-self” points us squarely in the direction of interconnectedness. Not prioritizing one’s own needs and desires leads naturally to an openness toward the needs and desires of others; such openness inspires an attitude of collegiality and cooperation in one’s interactions with others; and every egoless transaction further enhances one’s awareness of the interconnectedness between us all.

We can discern a virtuous circle in this process, whereby an enhanced awareness of our interconnectedness reinforces the sense of egoless-ness that brings about that very awareness, and that reinforced egoless-ness further strengthens our awareness of interconnectedness.

Might it be possible for this model of individual egoless behavior to take hold at the nation-state level? Could we ever see a global sense of interconnectedness that would be strong enough to overcome the divisions and disconnectedness that plague so much of the world at present? What might we do to foster such a global awareness?

These are questions I hope to explore further in future TLBR issues.

In the meantime, you’re most welcome to share your own thoughts on “not-self”, egoless-ness, and interconnectedness in this issue’s comments section.

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“AfterWords”

< This new closing section - its title a play on the similar-sounding but different-meaning terms “afterword” and “afterwards” - replaces and merges the two closing sections of previous TLBR issues, “Postscript” and “Further reading …”, into a single bulleted listing of what I hope you will find to be a useful collection of brief reports, reviews, and recommendations to close out each issue. >

• In case you missed it, this comment in the last issue from my friend Carol Capper offers a remarkably insightful glimpse into the subtle complementary dynamics between connecting and disconnecting. Great food for thought here … “Interesting that we currently connect often in ways that are less personal & more remote. I suspect also that the amount of available stimuli is overwhelming to whatever sense of interconnectedness we have. Also that living from a place of interconnection requires reclaiming our perspective by a healthy disconnect from what doesn't serve us.”

• If you’re a fan of the 87-year-old film director Ken Loach, by all means be sure to see his latest (and possibly last) movie, “The Old Oak”, the theme of which is disconnection between two groups of very different people. Tensions are stirred up, and violence erupts, when a busload of refugees from war-torn Syria arrives and takes up residence in a remote Scottish village largely inhabited by an aging, impoverished, and embittered generation of men and women who had once made their living as miners in the local “coal pits” that are now permanently closed. Events take an unexpected turn when one of the immigrants, a young aspiring news photographer, begins to connect with some of the villagers by taking their pictures. Here’s the film’s official trailer.

• The novelist and essayist Zadie Smith has just published a powerful online essay entitled “Shibboleth” - her profoundly personal response to how so many of us are responding to the war in Gaza and the campus protests by using words to create even more disconnectedness between ourselves. Here’s an excerpt, just one among many brilliant passages contained in this insightful piece … “[I]n the case of Israel/Palestine, language and rhetoric are and always have been weapons of mass destruction. It is in fact perhaps the most acute example in the world of the use of words to justify bloody murder, to flatten and erase unbelievably labyrinthine histories, and to deliver the atavistic pleasure of violent simplicity to the many people who seem to believe that merely by saying something they make it so. It is no doubt a great relief to say the word ‘Hamas’ as if it purely and solely described a terrorist entity. A great relief to say ‘There is no such thing as the Palestinian people’ as they stand in front of you. A great relief to say ‘Zionist colonialist state’ and accept those three words as a full and unimpeachable definition of the state of Israel, not only under the disastrous leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu but at every stage of its long and complex history, and also to hear them as a perfectly sufficient description of every man, woman, and child who has ever lived in Israel or happened to find themselves born within it. It is perhaps because we know these simplifications to be impossible that we insist upon them so passionately. They are shibboleths; they describe a people, by defining them against other people—but the people being described are ourselves. The person who says ‘We must eliminate Hamas’ says this not necessarily because she thinks this is a possible outcome on this earth but because this sentence is the shibboleth that marks her membership in the community that says that. The person who uses the word ‘Zionist’ as if that word were an unchanged and unchangeable monolith, meaning exactly the same thing in 2024 and 1948 as it meant in 1890 or 1901 or 1920—that person does not so much bring definitive clarity to the entangled history of Jews and Palestinians as they successfully and soothingly draw a line to mark their own zone of interest and where it ends. And while we all talk, carefully curating our shibboleths, presenting them to others and waiting for them to reveal themselves as with us or against us—while we do all that, bloody murder.”

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