There is a passage in Homer’s Iliad where two warriors -Glaucus fighting for the Trojan cause Diomed warring on behalf of the Greeks – are preparing to engage each other in single combat. Both are eager to establish their prowess at warfare. Before the he will agree to the dual Diomed asks Glaucus to prove he is human and not a god in disguise. In order to do so Glaucus tells his family’s history as he does Diomed realizes that Glaucus father is a friend of his father. With this connection established it become impossible for the two to continue in violence against one another. Homer relates how the moment of connection was realized as Diomed says to Glaucus:
…let us avoid one another’s spears even during the general engagement; there are many noble Trojans and allies whom I can kill, if I overtake them and heaven delivers them into my hand; so again with yourself, there are many Achaeans whose lives you may take if you can; we two, then, will exchange armour, that all present may know of the old ties that subsist between us.
With these words they sprang from their chariots, grasped one another’s hands, and plighted friendship.
The old Greek poet points out a facet of humanness I first witnessed in my natal south: regardless of how we might feel about an idea or a group in general, when we are connected with an individual our feelings about that idea or group become secondary to how we feel about a person. Knowing someone changes everything; connection is the greatest enemy of hatred and violence. We may quietly ignore jokes, insults, and veiled threats until our brother, or cousin, or friend becomes the victim and then we will abide them no longer.
I have seen the power of connection in Sudan as well, where western terminology for these connections is often inadequate to describe their nature. The linguistic inadequacies gives rise portmanteaus which alternately confuse and bring laughter to those unfamiliar with context – brothercousin, for instance, is one of the more common. In addition to the ties of family and friendship tribe and home area also important sources of connection. Pain and joy are felt throughout the whole community when a tribemate experiences loss or makes good.
I recall my groundskeeper once asking for a day off to join in the mourning of a woman killed in boda-boda accident, he didn’t know her but he was a part of her tribe. He saw it as his duty to her and to his community to mourn her loss. I also remember being amazed by how visibly he was moved by the loss. Although duty compelled him to mourn her, he mourned her deeply, he was affected by her loss in a way I still find incredible difficult fathom.
We are species that relies on connections, we are a part of a nature that abhors a vacuum and we cannot exist in one. We are creatures built to reside in ecosystems, beautiful because their inherent complexity. At every level of humanity, individual, communal and societal we are reliant on one another for our survival. Living is too great a challenge for us to be able to do it on our own, as strong as we may be we are never strong enough to exist without the work and welfare of others.
It because of our inherently ecosystemic nature that we nurture and defend our connections. The profound value we grant them drevide from the fact that they not only provide for our physical survival but because they ensure mental, emotional, and spiritual survival as well. Connected we thrive, disconnected we die.
The downside of this predilection is that where a connection appears to be absent we prone to take it to mean that we are excused from the deference we are required to show those to whom we are bound. It was true of Diomed and Glaucus when they gave each other carte blanche to destroy other foes, it is expressed in my home area various abuses which occurred prior to the civil rights era but which are still not unheard of today, and in Sudan it is seen in the growing rate of inter-tribal conflict. The failure here is not a moral one, on the whole we grasp our duty to our connections, it is a failure of imagination.
Think deeply about your typical day and you will realize how dependent you are on people across the face of the earth. People, like the people who made your cereal and juice or who grew your coffee, the people that built car you drive to work, the people who helped to educate you so that you could even get job, the people who built roads and buildings, on and on the connections grow. They multiply even more when you realize that every person you are connected to is connected to many more people. Humanity: an infinite and ever growing collection of fractals spreading out forwards and backwards across history.
This thought experiment is more than just some warm way to think about our fellow humans or the platform on which to build a parlor game, it is the source of a moral obligation. If we are called to protect, nurture, and defend our connections – and most of us already live in way that would suggest that is indeed an imperative – and our connections run through whole of our kind then our duty becomes to seek out ways show care for every person whose paths we cross. It is a massive obligation because the obligation extends beyond our individual lives, it impacts how we structure our neighborhoods, our religious and social organizations, and our workplaces. This imperative of connectedness forces us to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate our society at all levels from our towns and cities to our nations, this duty forces the nations of the earth to re-think and re-imagine how they interact with one another.
It is a weighty thing to be connected, it is difficult and demanding, but ultimately far less difficult than attempting to exist apart form the connections upon which we are born to depend.
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Quotation from; The Iliad, by Homer, translated by Samuel Butler, Book 6.
