Independence: The deadliest word on Earth.

Independence is an illusion.  A delusional concept modern minds are addicted to. 

In tonight's State of the Union we will hear the most ignorant, lying, greedy, egotistical, self-serving US President our nation has ever fairly elected to office. And he will likely justify his abuse of power of our so called independent nation for killing more innocent people who happened to be in another 'independent' nation because he can.  

The US does has three legitimate politically polarized parties.  The Democratic Party. The Republican Party. And the Independent party.  With each entirely dependent on the insanity of people believing they are separate from the global forces that affect everything else in the known universe.  Without grasping the reality that even if we united and elected the perfect President intending to form a more perfect union, that every US citizen would still be unable to depend on the most powerful military in the world to protect our freedom and security and the growing chaos globally because of our irreversible interdependence on every thing we need to survive and thrive, and be healthy and wealthy.  

This insanity is accelerating chaos and the possibility of another world war. It is entirely predictable given both the US Constitution and the UN Charter are founded on the quicksand of a word/concept that exists only in our minds, communications.  And we cemented into architecture of every political system.  According to Einstein, the Golden Rule, and indigenous cultures independence exists nowhere in the known universes. 

The last Director of the newest US federal agency, CISA understood this before she was replaced by Trump, Jen Easterly stated in order for the Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency to effectively protect the US electrical infrastructure that we all depend on to survive and thrive she said, “So, as we know, in our globally connected world, our infrastructure and our American way of life really faces a very wide array of risks, with very serious consequences. And today, you know, everything is a system of systems. We really can’t just think about it as siloed critical infrastructure sectors. You have complex designs, with numerous interdependencies, systemic risks that, as the congressman said, can have cascading effects... Everything is connected, everything is interdependent, so everything is vulnerable.... And that’s why this has to be a more than whole of government, a more than whole of nation [effort]. It really has to be a global effort....”.   CISA was hacked in early 2025 after Trump replaced her.

What most American’s don’t know is introduction paragraphs STATEMENT OF PETER VINCENT PRY, CONGRESSIONAL EMP COMMISSION,  CONGRESSIONAL STRATEGIC POSTURE COMMISSION, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE TASK FORCE ON NATIONAL AND HOMELAND SECURITY.  Reporting to the ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP): THREAT TO CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE -  HEARING before the  SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBERSECURITY, INFRASTRUCTURE PROTECTION, AND SECURITY TECHNOLOGIES of the COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY in the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:  ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS       SECOND SESSION:  MAY 8, 2014    Serial No. 113-68.

 

“Natural EMP from a geomagnetic super-storm like the 1859 Carrington Event or the 1921 Railroad Storm, a nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013 are both existential

threats that could kill 9 of 10 Americans through starvation, disease, and societal collapse.

    A natural EMP catastrophe or nuclear EMP attack could black out the National electric grid for months or years and collapse all the other critical infrastructures, communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water, necessary

to sustain modern society and the lives of 310 million Americans.”

We humans adore the idea of independence. We celebrate around this word every 4^th of July.  Then we repeatedly defend it with our youngest soldiers in war after war while commemorating it with fireworks large enough to alarm neighboring galaxies.

And we love to say, “I’m my own person.” Which is adorable if it weren’t so out tough with reality. What exists instead is radical, irreversible, inescapable interdependence—from your gut bacteria all the way to neutron stars a billion light-years away.

 

Let’s start with physics, since it does not rely on ambiguous words like peace, democracy, or terrorism.  Every atom in your body was forged in a star. The iron in your blood? From supernova debris billions of light years ago. The carbon in your cells? The same ancient stellar exhaust. The calcium in your bones? Cosmic recycling of basic elements.  Humans are not self-made. We are star-made. We are, in effect, a temporary arrangement of astrophysical leftovers with laughable but lethal opinions.

 

Even the neutrons inside our atoms are governed by fundamental forces that permeate the universe. Gravity doesn’t ask whether you feel independent today. Electromagnetism doesn’t take a holiday because it’s your birthday. The same physical laws that shape galaxies govern the synapses in our brains. The idea that you are separate from stars 1,000,000,000 light-years away is like a claiming a wave is independence from the ocean. Charming, incorrect, and tragically lethal.

 

Consider your body. You are not a solo act. You are a consortium. Roughly as many microbial cells live in and on you as human cells. Your digestion, immune system, and every aspect of your mood depends on trillions of bacteria who did not sign your Declaration of Personal Independence. If they go on strike, you don’t “power through.” You get sick or die.

 

You inhale oxygen produced by plants and phytoplankton. You exhale carbon dioxide that feeds them. You eat food grown in soil supported by fungal networks, insect pollinators, and microbial alchemists. Even your thoughts depend on glucose that depends on sunlight that depends on nuclear fusion in a star we call the Sun.  So when we say, “I’m independent,” what we really mean is, “I am currently benefiting from a vast, invisible web of cooperation so stable I’ve forgotten it exists.”  And being delusional is where the trouble begins.

 

Health: The Myth of the Isolated Body:  When we imagine ourselves as separate, we treat health as a purely individual achievement. Eat right. Exercise. Try not to scream into the void. But public health teaches a different lesson. Infectious diseases do not respect our personal separation. Neither does air pollution or water contamination.  A virus does not pause at your property line and whisper, “Ah yes, sovereign territory.” It travels through networks—social, economic, biological. Our bodies are nodes in a living web of interdependence. Yet we believe we are separate.  And this results in under investing in vital collective systems: sanitation, vaccination, environmental protection, preventive care. Then then we act surprised when interconnected systems behave… interconnectedly.

 

Even chronic disease reflects interdependence. Stress spreads through families. Trauma echoes across generations. Diets reflect flawed agricultural systems. Agricultural systems reflect our flawed economic incentives. Economic incentives reflect lethal political decisions. Political decisions reflect cultural narratives—including the narrative that “everyone is on their own.”  Then a pandemic comes and we dive into our silos of ignorance and die by the millions and suffer by the billions.  Health is not independent. It is globally relational.

 

National Security: Our collective delusion of the Fortified Island.  Powerful national leaders and their political parties love independence even more than people.  The rhetoric of “national sovereignty” sounds like the mentally ill in an insane asylum.  No country is a secure island—not even literal islands.

 

Supply chains span continents. Financial systems pulse across borders in milliseconds. Cybersecurity ignores geography entirely. Climate systems circulate atmospheric carbon regardless of visa status. A drought in one region destabilizes food prices in another. A conflict in one country triggers migration flows, economic ripple effects, or terrorist acts worldwide.

 

The illusion of independence fuels national leaders and many of their citizens to think: “If we just secure our borders tightly enough, build the right weapons systems, we will be safe.” But pandemics, bioweapons, climate change, cyber threats, and economic shocks do not queue politely at customs.

 

National security in the 21st century is ecological security, public health security, economic interdependence management, and climate stability. It is cooperative by design. And uniting to achieve the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development goals is the wisest action we can take.  The more we cling to our bubbles of comfort with the idea of standing alone, the more we undermine the very stability, health, security, prosperity, and sustainability we seek.

 

Ironically, genuine resilience comes from acknowledging our interdependence at the community level and extending out from there —diversified trade, international cooperation, shared scientific research, climate agreements, and cross-border disease surveillance. Imagin the value of having community health centers globally connected as an early detection, rapid response, and prevention foundation for all humankind.  The cost savings in lives and dollars and the financial return on such a wise investment would be unbelievable compared to any bankers current profit expectations.  Our military fortress mentality feels strong.  But the sanity of globally preventing problems is the greatest form of security and maximum health for every generation.  

Reality does not respect physical power. It rewards adaptation when the need to change is painfully obvious.

 

Personal and organizational action: The personal “It Doesn’t Matter” or organizsational “We’re OK as we are” is delusional:  Such beliefs regarding separateness breeds two equally unhelpful attitudes: exaggerated control and perceived helplessness.

 

Exaggerated control says, “My success is entirely my own doing.” That conveniently ignores teachers, infrastructure, public institutions, stable currency, legal systems, good nutrition, and the planetary habitability maintained by billions of years of geochemical cycles.

 

Perceived helplessness says, “Nothing I or we do really matters.” That ignores network effects of unity with individual actions, multiplied across populations, organizations, reshaped markets, norms, and ecosystems. Cultural shifts rarely begin with everyone at once; they begin by letting go of egos and organizational identities, then connecting nodes and influencing one another for maximum results.

 

In reality, we are neither omnipotent nor irrelevant. We are participants that need to unite to achieve sustainable systems at every level.

 

 

The Psychological and Spiritual Cost of Separateness: Perhaps the most damaging effect of the independence illusion is loneliness. When we believe we are fundamentally separate, we experience isolation not as a temporary state but as a structural condition. Anxiety increases. Tribalism intensifies. “Us versus them” becomes the default setting.

 

But if we internalize our interdependence, compassion becomes logical. Cooperation becomes strategic. Unity becomes rational. It is difficult to demonize people when you understand that your food, medicine, technology, freedom, security, and atmosphere are all intertwined with theirs.

 

Even at the cosmic level, separateness dissolves. The light from distant galaxies reaches us across a billion years, interacting with our telescopes and retinas. The expansion of space itself shapes the cosmic microwave background that whispers through our instruments. The universe is not a collection of sealed compartments; it is a continuous unfolding process in urgent need of the sanity of humanity so someday we may flourish on earth and perhaps among the stars.  We are in that process, and briefly aware of it.

 

A More Accurate Story:  The illusion of independence is understandable. It feels empowering. It simplifies complexity. It fits neatly into slogans and speeches. But it cannot sustain us.  

We are stardust arranged into organizations, addicted to non-biological identities, vital ecosystems, embedded in nations, nested in a biofilm covering earth, orbiting a star, within a galaxy, inside a universe governed by unified physical laws. We are biologically, economically, ecologically, gravitationally, and even spiritually entangled.  We are not separate from neutron stars a billion light-years away. We were made of their aftermath.

 

Recognizing interdependence does not weaken freedom; it clarifies responsibility. It reflects that health, security, prosperity, and survival is shared. The real maturity of civilization does not lie in declaring independence, but in embracing the wisdom of interdependence.  This may be less catchy than fireworks—but it will be far better for the species.