On the Interdependence of All Things

My tattoo of a figure symbolizing interdependence has framed my reflections on the concept for three decades. Biological and social interdependence is an omnipresent fact, but we need direction as to how to respond to it. This question leads to two major problems in moral philosophy: the source of moral obligation and the need to reconcile universal and local ethical commitments. I explore panpsychism as a partially satisfying answer to the first of these. The part it does not satisfy is to be sought by answering the second of these problems.

This answer might be that we should develop the human response to interdependence by working to form community with other forms of life and with nature as a whole. This is slow, long-term work. But our moral obligation will arise from doing it—from the hard job of making community based on our abilities to do this and not from the fact of interdependence. These concepts, though initiated by reflection on the subject of my tattoo, suggest no doctrine but, instead, philosophical and practical tasks that only great efforts and hard work by the human community can determine, pursue, and fulfill.