Disconnection

“If you have ever seen a severed hand or foot, or a head cut off and lying some way away from the body – analogous to what someone does to himself, as far as he can, when he will not accept his lot and severs himself from society or does some unsocial act.”

– Marcus Aurelius, 121-180 AD

The Roman emperor of 161-180 AD wrote a collection of short notes to himself which were only discovered after his death. Written in Greek, a language used by philosophers rather than rulers, these “meditations” have become admonitions and observations so astute that Marcus Aurelius’ name echoes throughout the modern world as one of history’s great philosophers. The above quote from this collection highlights the gruesome nature that surrounds the disconnection of someone from their society. As a military leader on several campaigns, his witnessing of this sight stained a distinct emotional color to which he found parallel emotions in events of his personal life and observations as a civil servant.

It was a surprising discovery in 1888 when Santiago Ramon y Cajal showed in his experiments that the nervous system is made up of individual neurons, rather than a continuous and unified organ. We see this system of individual parts as a clearly unified object, yet the parts that make it are physically discrete. This is not so different from our condition as human beings. In one sense separate, we are also entirely bound to each other through the legal, moral, and unspoken emotional laws of society. The weight we carry of one another’s internal state can be felt, regardless of how separate you may imagine yourself, echoing through pockets of communities in which hardship or prosperity is visible to the conscious and subconscious mind. Those who surround us have a visceral impact on our emotional position, and we should be mindful of how we ourselves contribute to this “collective consciousness”.

It is therefore a painfully grotesque dismemberment when one of our own rejects the whole. We may harden ourselves, marking them as other, external, and lifeless, which is not so different from the transition to the pale tone of a cold and bloodless severed limb. I was drawn to this quotation because it highlights the severity of disconnection, which our individual centered society often neglects. It is difficult to discuss this topic without fitting into the mold of some algorithmically driven cliché which always contains an enemy to be fought, but I also want to encourage the simple effort to revive a sense of real-world community. The only enemy here is dismemberment itself, yet we casually allow ourselves to take part in this gruesome act on a daily basis in the virtual world.

Be cautious and selective with your opinions of hatred and rejection, for they will consume your internal energy at a rapid rate, and these stores take effort to replenish. Find a group to dance with and humbly make yourself vulnerable. A lonely neuron that hides its own sickness does not serve the body or itself. Do your best to prevent disconnection and savor the energy it brings you when you succeed.

With love,

Michael