The Myth of Self-Reliance - The Paris Review
Dependence, perhaps especially when it comes to cognitive disability like Sesha’s, is its own kind of misfitting, because it always implicates far more than one person. Dependence creates relationships of necessary care—care that may be undertaken by individuals, families, local communities and municipal organizations, churches and mosques and temp
... See moreSara Hendren • What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World
We’re not meant to be independent creatures, all alone. We’re meant to depend on each other. It’s an unsettling truth: the less we depend on each other, the more we depend on the market. We summon eggs to our apartment via an app instead of simply asking a neighbor. We hire a therapist—incapable of loving us back by design —and forget to call our f... See more
Catherine Shannon • The fantasy of independence
No amount of sober and sustained thought can shield us from the overwhelming force that collectivities bring to bear on our lives, nor can it overcome the impossibility—or, perhaps, undesirability—of creating a world where work would no longer be necessary.
Robert Zaretsky • The Subversive Simone Weil: A Life in Five Ideas
To have autonomy without interdependency leads to isolation or narcissism. To have interdependency with no autonomy stunts our psychological growth. Healthy people live in social groups that have learned to balance or, better, marry these two imperatives.