I once read a quote that said you cannot criticize the place or era you live in without also criticizing yourself. This seems to be a pretty decent definition of my understanding of interdependence. Believing in interdependence means that you don’t believe you can stand apart from reality as an outside observer. It means believing in reality having inseparable thickness, rather than layers where we can stand and observe and judge each other.
If you believe in interdependence truly, rather than as a handy catchphrase that makes you feel smarter and more evolved than Republicans, than you would be forced to acknowledge that you are as personally responsible for the policies of George Bush as Ronald Reagan was. That’s what it means to not think of yourself as a skinbag of experience walking through a hostile universe.

It also means that when you criticize pop culture, or consumerism, or the destruction of our physical environment, that you are criticizing yourself. In the world of interdependence when you point your finger it’s like pointing into a really big funhouse mirror because eventually your finger has to come all the way ‘round and point right back at you. This is what Ethan means when he talks about the seeds of violence being contained in the act of hanging up angrily on someone (I think). Personally I’ve found that the more I understand this, the more it puts a tremendous and liberating responsibility squarely on my shoulders for so much more than is obviously in my sphere of influence.
You can’t separate yourself from the thickness. You are you, but you are also George Bush. A thin slice of this moment looked at objectively would include both of you, as part of the moment. George Bush couldn’t have been elected without your participation in the reality, any more than Barack Obama could have. You can’t say you didn’t participate in the George Bush reality but that you did participate in the Barack Obama reality. It doesn’t work that way.
This doesn’t mean not to criticize and propose solutions to problems that we know are bad for the world. But it does mean acknowledging your own participation in the mess. As wrong as you may think it is that someone feels constrained by not being permitted to make more than $500,000 a year, to someone else somewhere in the world your $23,000 a year salary is equally horrifying in its immensity. To several billion people, YOU are Bill Gates. Why is it that we are always the ones who get to draw the line?
Anyone using a computer and the internet and living within 100 miles of Manhattan and criticizing consumer culture is taking a fraudulent stance, no? Aren’t you completely guilty, on some level, of every single thing that you accuse others of doing? Isn’t everything that’s wrong with society totally your fault? Is that inspiring to you or depressing or just totally off-base?