Do you think we are all seperate beings operating in a vacuum, or are we all one, or is it something in between?

Well we weem to be individual specks of awareness with the potential to connect & exchange info, so the connections have to be made, they don’t seem to just be there. It is hard to say what we are in this respect…

We can’t be operating in a vacuum because vacuums don’t have other things in them. I think it’s something in between because of the different angles we can look at it from.

We’re literally all one in that we flow into one another at the microscopic level where there is no clear way to say “this is the border between me not-me.” We’re metaphorically all one in that our lives are all connected and interdependent. This is for mundane reasons like food cycles, where even apex predators become food for scavengers and saprotrophs, for esoteric reasons like the far reach of cause and effect, and for social reasons like the effects of culture, friendship, trade relationships, and warfare.

But we’re also separate in that, even if we make up some sort of giant system by default and when looked at from above, we have individual aims that aren’t always cooperative and are often antagonistic. We are not of one mind, one of us can starve to death while another stays alive, some can do things that others cannot. It’s like a body and its parts. The parts are identifiable as separate objects, but they are also parts of a whole. Their all one, and their all separate. At the same time.

I think ALL life on Earth is One, the same and not the same – it’s a paradox. We are human with physical bodies that live and die, but we are spiritual beings that transcend physicality and do not ‘die’ = human beings. Earth is a Being, with a respiratory, circulatory, and skeletal system, etc., originally and naturally balanced to nurture and sustain diverse life. If the quality of our thoughts creates the quality of our reality, and I think it does, what a different world we’d wake up to tomorrow if we all believed we were one and the same, or even similar as we all need the same things to maintain our physicality – Mother Earth. Wow .. maybe the Golden Rule (do unto others as you’d have them do unto you) could really become a rule.

There is no definitive answer to that type of generalization. Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that we are all a lot more alike than different, but in the long run, it doesn’t really matter. We all end up the same.

“One” doesn’t get at it. “Separate” doesn’t get at it either. And it’s not “something in between”, either. Even saying “it’s all of these” still misses it.

These are all ways of thinking about it, and certainly each has an element of truth to it. But the actual reality of it isn’t one or a combination of these; it’s beyond all these. By “beyond”, I mean that it’s of a nature that no thought or idea can adequately sum up.

I understand that this sounds all evasive and mystical, but it really isn’t at all. I’m simply saying that it is what it is, and that as soon as you try to reduce it to a concept, you’ve missed it. It’s our ordinary reality, the only one we’ve ever known. But it can’t be conceptually packaged in any of the ways proposed here, nor any other way, for that matter. It just is. Right here.

@FluffyChicken Separate things in a vacuum, O take it, is a way of asking do I embrace solipsism. Am I right?If so, I will answer that. If not, can you give me some guidance in what you are really asking?

I personally think we’re all separate beings, but several beings that live as one organism, kinda. Like a bee hive or an ant colony. Can’t explain it too good, like we’re all parts of a wall holding up a roof, and we in turn are held by the cement that binds us?

I’ve come to believe, by no intellectual process that I can describe—by intuition, I guess—that we are all connected spiritually, that our souls, if you will, are connected to one, big common soul. And that’s as far as I go with that. But I think it is enough to explain what we are about and why we react to each other, no matter how remote we become, in the world and it’s events.

I think about this, especially while at sea and surrounded by the vastness of the ocean, it’s movement, the sky, and the life underneath. I think about how far we’ve come as a species, how dangerous the journey, how amazing it is that we’ve survived, and how easily modern man seems bent on squandering it all. A conundrum.

I’ve come to think that if enough people had the opportunity to see and feel these things as I have, to be enveloped by this beautiful enormity of constant motion that is nature, that they would understand suddenly how small we are, and yet how powerful we’ve become. They would realize what a gift we have in this Earth and that we can either nurture her ways, or poison her slowly as we poison ourselves. But it would take a more complete, intense understanding and acceptance of our commonalities as humans—and as the Earth’s dependents and guardians—rather than a concentration upon our differences, to become actively nurturing rather than apathetic to her needs—an understanding of how we are all connected, whether we like it or not, in order to make the unified effort to protect this magnificent orb.