This I believe: we are all connected

I’m a huge fan of This I Believe, a collection of audio essays that I first encountered on NPR. In it, people from all walks of life talk about aspects of their belief systems. It’s one of the most inspiring series I’ve ever encountered.

I recently submitted the following essay.

I believe that we are all connected, often in complex and random ways, and that any action we take can affect anyone else in the system, sometimes in ways we might not easily predict.

Most people know about the butterfly effect, the metaphor regularly used to describe aspects of chaos theory. A tiny change in a complex system - like a butterfly beating its wings, causing air to flow a slightly different way - may produce much larger, long-term changes in that system - in this example, weather changes.

If we think about human society as being a collection of people connected in lots of different ways, over lots of different mediums and with lots of different strengths, it resembles a chaotic but very tightly interconnected network. Families, friends, partners, co-workers, people we pass in the street and interact with in coffee shops and at bus stops - all of these are networks and connections. We have an influence over all of these people, however small, and they have an influence over us.

Even if we were to hide ourselves away so that we didn’t see anyone on a day-to-day basis, grew our own food self-sufficiently, and lived away from the hustle and bustle of society, we would be connected to people. We share the earth. We share the environment. More practically, we are required to pay taxes and help financially sustain our communities. Even if we weren’t, chances are we would require schooling, healthcare or roads, or use land that has been farmed or developed by people, at some point in our lifetimes.

This, then, suggests a way of living, because of the interdependence with the people around us. Our own well-being depends on the well-being of others in the network. Living selfishly - thinking of our own needs above anyone else’s - becomes counter-productive, because we then neglect the network connections around us. Universal healthcare and public education, for example, elevate the overall well-being of the system, and are more likely to improve our own wealth and quality of life. On the other hand, abusing the resources of another community will, eventually, come back to haunt us.

This is not to say that I advocate communism. People are not equal; they all have different personalities, skills, qualities and areas in which they excel. Capitalism is a good way - or at least, the best we’ve found - to allow the products of those traits to spread throughout the network. However, because of our connections to the people around us, pure self-interest is not the route to well-being.

There may or may not be a God. I happen to believe there probably isn’t, at least not as popularly described. But we don’t need a God or religion to dictate morality. When we look at the world as a complex network, the right thing to do is also the logical thing to do, and the best thing for all of us.