As I work on writing and editing my video series, I've been thinking a lot about the interconnectedness of people. One of the arguments that is central to my whole thesis is that no one is an island--no matter how hard you try in today's world, you will not be able to escape the impact of other people. It's an appealing fantasy, but it just won't work.
Your freedom is everyone's freedom. As MLK put it, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Rufus J. Fears, at the very end of his lecture series "A History of Freedom," also makes a very eloquent argument that allowing some group of people to be disenfranchised, no matter how rich and powerful you are, will eventually come around to bite you in the ass (my words, not his).
Honestly, it's kind of amazing to me that this is something many people just refuse to accept. In this, the year of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter, I hope more people are waking up to the fact that our fates are all intertwined. As if we needed another reminder, the air in Seattle right now is an orange-grey miasma. Even if you lived in a cabin in the San Juans, fishing for your meals and warming yourself by a wood fire, you would not be able to escape the impact of other people right now.
