The Curious Case of Being Human

The Independence Myth

• Ridley Hall • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode we reimagine what it means to be human, not as isolated individuals striving for complete autonomy, but as persons designed for relationship, created to flourish together. Subscribe now to continue this journey of discovering wisdom for navigating our complex world.

comms@ridley.cam.ac.uk

www.ridley.cam.ac.uk

A Father's Early Morning Awakening

Speaker 1

It's early in the morning , too early . I woke up abruptly to the sound of an intense yell , followed by the violent rattling of the door handle . Blurry-eyed , I erupt from my bed in a panic and make my way to the brightly lit hallway of my flat . I crack open the rattling door carefully , slowly , and drop to the floor where my scared and exhausted one-year-old son is standing . He leaps into my arms and buries his head on my shoulder . As quickly as the yelling and crying had started , it stopped .

Speaker 2

Humanity isn't an easy thing to live with . We often struggle with our limitations and the realities of a physical world we can't ever fully control , a human world of interactions that brings as much pain as it does joy . And yet this is the existence that God chose and embraced , brought salvation , not by removing us from our humanity , but by entering it and inviting us into a journey of transformation within it .

Speaker 1

In this six-part limited series produced by Ridley Hall , Cambridge , Isabel Hamley and I are going to be discussing some of the unique situations , opportunities and challenges us humans are facing and try to gain unique insights and wisdom that the Bible and the Christian life can offer us . This episode related and dependent

The Illusion of Independence

Speaker 1

. Do we ever really stop being independent ?

Speaker 2

Of course we don't . I think it's a great myth of modern life that you know . I think , therefore , I am . I do not need anybody else , I am , that's it . It's like no , of course you're not . You don't derive your existence just from yourself . All of us are dependent on the people who brought us into the world , who brought us up , who looked after us as we grew , and today I am dependent on people who produce food , who bring it to the supermarket , who sell it . I'm dependent on people who work to produce electricity and sanitation , for good water . I am dependent on so many people and so many things . I think it is an illusion of today's world that we can never be independent and actually , even as a human person , I am dependent on the love of my husband , my children , my friends , my own good relationships with my colleagues . My life would be unlivable without them ?

Speaker 1

do you think there is a human optimum between you're independent enough ? Like where's that line ?

Speaker 2

It's really

Raising Children: Independence vs Interdependence

Speaker 2

interesting , isn't it ? Because as a society , we're quite obsessed with independence . I've lost count of the number of times where I've been told your job as a parent is to bring up an independent child . I'm like is it my job ? Yes , I want her to be able to function in the world without being always dependent on me . But she is interdependent .

Speaker 2

I want to teach her to relate well to other persons .

Speaker 2

I want her to not just make decisions for herself , but decisions that consider how her decisions might affect other people . I want her to learn how to cope with the decisions other people make that may not be good decisions for her . So do I want her to be independent , or do I want her to recognize where she has agency , where she needs to exercise agency , where she needs to respect other people's agency and where she needs other people ? And I don't want her to be afraid of expressing need either , you know , because if you're afraid of expressing need , it's much harder to get it met and you're more likely to repress it . So so the question for me is how do we , how do we handle the fact that as human beings , we cannot survive alone well and wisely , and how do we take seriously our responsibility towards other people who might need us and how do we take responsibility for the things that we need from other people and how we express that need and how that need might be too much or too little .

Control and Freedom in Modern Society

Speaker 1

Why strive for independence ?

Speaker 2

I think there's something about control . I want to be in control of my life . If we live in a society where it's the me kind of generation , I don't want to overplay that . I think human beings have always had a selfish streak . But a lot of talk about freedom is about I want to do what I want to do , or I have the right to do whatever I want , you know , within certain limits , but as few limits as I can . It's interesting .

Speaker 2

Having grown up in a different country , I was taught it was drilled into my head growing up that your freedom stops where somebody else's freedom begins , and I find it really interesting that there is so much today on social media that is all about my rights and my freedom . But the other thing I was taught as a child is that the rights don't exist unless you have responsibilities , because your rights can only be respected if somebody else sees it as their responsibility not to infringe upon your rights . So it's really interesting because even the way we talk about being independent is often related to what I see as my rights . But all of that is contingent on how other people behave towards us .

Speaker 1

Yeah .

Speaker 2

So it is really interesting . I think there is something about control and wanting to be in control and human beings liking to see themselves as in control and maybe in the place of God a little bit . So you know , I find the stories of the Old Testament fascinating . You know that I talk about the Old Testament a lot . You know the story in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 , there's a tree with fruit of knowledge and good and evil , and the human beings have been told not to eat of it . Now why Did they know nothing about good and evil before they ate of the tree ? Because if they knew nothing about what's right and wrong before they take the fruit , then they wouldn't have known it was wrong to take the fruit in the first place .

Speaker 1

Right , yeah .

Speaker 2

But how did they know that it would have been wrong ? They knew that in relationship with God , so their knowledge of right and wrong was based in relationship , and I think for me there is something about that tree symbolizes I want to know for myself . I don't want to learn in relationship to one another , I just want to be the master of my own learning . I want to be the master of good and evil for myself rather than being in relationship with others . And I think that's where we often go wrong , because we resist . You know , we resist , particularly in the West today . We resist the idea that my actions , my life , the way in which I define who I am has consequences for other people .

Speaker 1

I think it's really interesting because , on one hand , I think you're right , we are in a culture which idolizes independence , but we've also got this kind of undercurrent that's coming of . Where's my support ? Where is it ? Like everyone else should be solving my problems . So you get , like this real culture war . Actually people go and solve my problems for me and then the other half of the culture go and leave me alone , give me my freedom . Yeah , and they seem to both be happening at exactly the same time , but noticing both of those .

Speaker 2

It's all about me right which I find it's you know so . So saying solve my problem , give me this I have a right to this is often divorced from the sense of what does it look like for us as a society to care for one another's need ? What needs can we meet and what is beyond what we can do for one another ? So that comes back to my sense

The Pandemic: Seeing the Unseen Workers

Speaker 2

of I can't talk of my rights unless I also talk of my responsibilities , and we talk together about our rights and our responsibilities does the bible , in your view , offer us any sense of ?

Speaker 1

this is the advantage of of an interdependent society is the bible utilitarian in its approach ? To ethics ?

Speaker 2

Well yeah , so do we do things because they're useful ? Well , I think it depends who you are Right yeah .

Speaker 2

So I think the risk of independence is that you get your independence at the expense of other people . So one of the advantages of recognising interdependence like interdependence rather than dependence or independence I think it's interdependence . I like interdependence rather than dependence or independence . I think it's interdependence because dependence you can all too easily just look at yourself again . But interdependence recognises that we all have things to give and things to take , you know , and it goes all those ways . I think there are things that are gained .

Speaker 2

So , for instance , would anybody be any less human for being more dependent ? You know , are your children any less human because they're totally dependent on you ? They're not . They're just as human . Is an older person with alzheimer's any less human because alzheimer's has robbed them of their faculty and they can't remember how to do the simplest tasks ? You know , is somebody who cannot work any less human ? And so for me it cuts to the core of what it means to be human . Because if you see independence as somehow a moral good and a value of being human , what are you saying about the humanity of those who have no choice ?

Speaker 2

but to have an obvious dependence , because I believe all of us are dependent or interdependent in some way . The question is whether we recognise it and whether we're honest about it .

Speaker 1

Yeah , because I guess you frustrate people like you've just said the children , the sick , the elderly . You say , well , you're automatically less than If you're rising to the top of the . But it's interesting to me that you used being human as maybe an alternative north star . You kind of have to use that language in order to make dependence feel a comfortable place to to be yeah , yeah , I wonder whether , as well , we don't like the idea of dependence , because dependence involves loss of control .

Speaker 2

You know , it feels uncomfortable because I'm acknowledging that I'm not completely in control of everything and that there are things I really don't like that , I can't make happen no I don't think any of us do .

Speaker 2

the question is is independence the best way forward or is interdependence the best way ? So , if you're struggling with lots of control , is it better to find a solution together or is it better to try and strive to regain complete independence ? And I think we need to find ways and again , I'm not saying that complete dependence is good either , but I think finding ways of finding a right balance .

Speaker 1

you know , in our lives it feels like this really sits at the heart of the political discourse of humans is this question of how formally shall we commit to pulling , pull in these levers , um , and how much we give . And you said a fascinating thing on another podcast . That um about marxism which you're not um very evidently not when you look at the span of all your work , but you made this really interesting statement about the unity of marism is maybe something that in theory it gets right , but it really struggles with the diversity , or not even really struggles , doesn't have it . Do you think that this ? I mean , I don't want to ask you the question of , like , what political direction is dragging in one that sits most elegantly with biblical discourse ? But do you see a system of which communities should be governed that works on interdependence , in perhaps some kind of biblical framework ?

Speaker 2

I mean , I'm very wary of using scripture to tell you how to vote . Yeah , exactly .

Speaker 1

Hence why I want to use the language of kind of systems rather than parties .

Speaker 2

So you know , I think there is something in scripture about seeing every person In the ministry of Jesus . It's fascinating how many times we're told Jesus sees and then Jesus does . And even in the Old Testament , like you know , when the Hebrews are struggling under slavery God sees , god hears , god remembers , and then God does . So there is something about seeing every person . So I would say , you know , do we have a system that enables us to see every person ?

Speaker 2

Again , if you go back to the pandemic , what story do we tell about the pandemic in England ? Say we had lockdown and we say people work from home , didn't they ? That's actually not true . The majority of people did not work from home in England during the pandemic , during lockdown , because the majority of people still were employed in the food chain , in sanitation , in all kinds of jobs that we don't value enough to see . And so we tell a story of the lockdown being about working from home was the story was of people , often from socioeconomic groups that struggled more , actually going to work and having much higher rates of incidence of COVID .

Speaker 2

So what would it look like to live in a society where we actually see the person who comes and pick up our bins ? How do we see the person who works at the you know waterworks ? That's a pri prior Swiss clean water . How do we see every person ? How do we see the people you know who work in the city , not just the investment bankers , but the cleaners and the administrators and everybody ? So for me , there is something about you know a good political system would be one that acknowledges the value of every person .

Speaker 1

So you know this concept of if a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it . Does it make sense ?

Speaker 2

It doesn't make a noise , yeah .

Speaker 1

I wonder if the same is true of humans in a philosophical sense , of course , you know , if there's no one there to see the human , does the human really exist ? Do we exist

Identity Through Relationship and Language

Speaker 1

in response to everyone else around us ?

Speaker 2

are we human ?

Speaker 1

in response are we human ?

Speaker 2

in response to yeah so it's the , it's the classic kind of south african thing of ubuntu I am because we are . You know , would I be human if I wasn't in relation and and I think that's a really important question in an era when we talk a lot about identity . So a lot of talk about identity focuses on the things I choose about myself or the things I say about myself , about an inner sense of who I am . But actually our identities are just that . Our identity is given by so many things . My identity and my humanity is given to me by the words that have been given to me . I wouldn't know how to say I or I am human if I hadn't been given those words and those concepts .

Speaker 1

Yeah .

Speaker 2

By the , you know , by the culture within which I was born . I wouldn't have grown up if I hadn't had people to care for me , kind of in childhood , and that has impacted me and my identity and my sense of identity . And actually , had I be born in a different country , speaking a different language , that sense of who I am would be different , partly because we'd use a different language to you know , to talk about things . I mean , language is fascinating in that sense as a very uniquely human phenomenon . But you know , I see the world differently depending on which language I use . So I speak several languages , but obviously my two main languages are French and English .

Speaker 2

And so in French we only have one word for a turtle and a tortoise , and it took me a very , very , very long time to be able to tell the difference in English between the two , Because I literally see one animal . I have to make a conceptual reasoning to be able to see the animal and tell myself no one lives on land . And it works the other way . In French we had two different words for camel , For a two-humped camel or a one-humped camel , but in English you see a camel , I see two completely different animals from different parts of the world . My daughter , very helpfully , when she was about three , said to us don't be silly , mummy . A one-humped camel is a daddy camel and one with two humps is a mummy camel .

Speaker 2

Well , there you have it Out of the maze of babes , that's the wisdom of this podcast , but you know I think language is that space where , without language , who would we be ?

Speaker 2

And without language , I wouldn't be who I am , and therefore who I am is intimately linked to who we are as a society and how I grew up , and even my religious and political views have been formed in relation to , sometimes , the things I agree with and sometimes the things I reject , and they've been formed by the communities that I have been part of , not completely , but to a great degree .

Speaker 1

What's an alternative language in this situation ? So if we're in a Western culture , that probably , for the most part , doesn't work on this premise of ubuntu ubuntu yeah I am because we are . Is that , is that a biblical alternative ? Do you feel for , if , if that's , that's a way of ushering in ?

Speaker 2

in the culture that we're in I think you have to have a balance between individual and community . I think you have to have a balance between individual and community . So I don't think I think scripture is definitely not individualistic , but neither is it communitarian . So scripture doesn't say you only are in community and it doesn't say you only are as individuals . It says you're both . And so scripture has stories of communities and has stories of individuals in relation to communities .

Speaker 2

And for me that's a really important distinction because actually , you know , I think being overly communitarian can do as much harm as being overly individualistic , in a sense . So it's again that question of balance which we talked about in the first episode . It's how do you find the right balance between the different aspects of our lives , how do we find space to nurture individuality or difference or uniqueness and of relatedness to others , and how do we acknowledge that ? So I think the thing I struggle with in our culture is the failure to acknowledge that who I am is shaped so much by who we are together and it's not completely up to me to decide . And actually who I am has an impact on others . So I can't just mold myself to be what I want , because that actually has an impact on my family , on my friends , on my colleagues , on the people around me .

Speaker 1

So you know the story of the spies that go and spy out on the Promised Land . They project various iterations of what the future and what the place is going to hold for the nation . It's one of the functions of independence to be able to see things that give us a way to move forward together is . Is that an articulation of diversity , of independence that you'd be comfortable with ?

Speaker 2

I think , for me , independence always has to be in correlation with others . I find the stories of the people moving into the Promised Land really interesting , because often we read them in isolation from what has come before . And what has come before is 40 years in the desert , where what is happening in the desert ? You know why did God take people in the desert ? They're like traumatized by slavery and oppression for 400 years . They're ramshackle , they're just disheveled , you know . They're a bunch of refugees and God takes them away from the Nile , which is the place of life , into the desert , which is the place of death , and then they don't just pass through , they stay in the desert for 40 years ,

Biblical Vision for Community Balance

Speaker 2

stay in the desert for 40 years .

Speaker 2

I think one of the things God is doing that we see through the stories is that God is reshaping their imagination of how to do being together , being a society , being a good place , because the things that would have been the easiest things in the world to do is to come out of Egypt and make Egypt somewhere else , with them as the top , them as the Egyptians or the pharaohs and other people at the bottom of the ladder , and what happens in the desert is that they're given manna , you know . So they're given food without having to work for it , because they're human and the dignity of the human person is enough to warrant being cared for . And they're told to rest , because human beings are not all about production , but they're also about being with one another and they've got values in and of themselves . And then they're given the law . And the law and sorry , I'll come back to Leviticus again , but a lot of it is about how you treat the orphan , the poor , the stranger , the widow . They're about how you treat the orphan , the poor , the stranger , the widow . They're about how you articulate your life together .

Speaker 2

I mean , and you've got those great jubilee laws of the middle of Leviticus which are about how do you ensure that over times and generations , you don't get inordinate intermines of accumulated privilege and accumulated disadvantage .

Speaker 2

And the law is quite interesting because it doesn't prevent people from doing really well and actually benefiting from hard work , but it prevents unfairness and it resets the clock every 50 years and it gives people a chance of relating well with one another . And so I find that you know , there is something for me for today in those laws that say a good articulation of life together is life that pays attention to vulnerability , pays attention to the reality of life not always going easily for people but also makes room for people to prosper , to do well and to develop their own you know their own talents and you know and some people will work more and some people will work less . But actually how do you balance that individuality with the fact that that has an impact on other people ? And so the resetting of the clock is about putting , I think , almost a boundary around the impact of individuality there's this , um this .

Speaker 1

Obviously there's loads of story archetypes , um , like hero's journey type stuff , and I'm definitely one of the , the sorts of um people that still very much watches batman and superman and um , all of the the variations of that journey , and very much there's this glorification of one man saving the day , sometimes one woman saving the day . Part of me wants that for myself . I do want that , and maybe it's because it's glory . Is there redeeming factors in , you know , striving to be , I guess , moses , to be the one that liberates the slave . God did a lot of the work . I hear that is there .

Speaker 1

Is there value in

Leadership Beyond the Hero Narrative

Speaker 1

striving to be this lone ranger hero ? Or because , I don't know , to a certain extent I mean both me and you as writers there's , there's a little bit of that , call it , call it ego . Maybe , I don't know , there's a little bit of a sense of I'm someone that's got something unique to offer and I'm gonna throw off the shackles of what everyone else thinks and I'm just gonna get this thing done and I'm gonna have to go out on my own , um to get there , um , you know is . Is there value in that ? Because , or Because I guess we don't want to just shrug it all off ?

Speaker 2

No , and I think I mean again . I think that the relationship between people and leader is really interesting in scripture because there's this constant place . So Moses gets told off for trying to do everything himself by his father , you know Jethro . He says , oh , what are you doing ? You don't have to be like Pharaoh , making all the decisions , actually trust other people , delegate . So yes , moses is this incredible leader , but there's also he has to be taught actually to depend on others to be able to get the job done , because one person can never do it all . So I think , in terms of leadership , there's something really interesting there .

Speaker 2

Hero leaders don't tend to do brilliantly . In the Bible , I have to say , and I don't want to say , heroes can never save the day on their own . There's always got to be other people , you know . I mean , if you look at how we talk about the Second World War , people keep talking about Churchill , you know . But actually Churchill would have been nothing without all the boats for Dunkirk , or all the young men who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day , you know , and we don't know their names . But actually we wouldn't know Churchill's names unless they had been there too . So it's , how do you ? You know , and even if you write a book and you write it on your road , like you said , you probably have a dedication or something at the beginning , and the dedication of books so often are oh , thank you .

Speaker 1

so and so , because you made it possible for me to have the space to do this . In a sense , you're right , like my , without my wife , jess , like there , there is no space to do that . I mean and I guess you would be even more acutely aware of that in in your role as as leader and you've been a leader in various situations that actually it could be very easy on the surface to be like oh like , look at the improvements that have been made or the , the wins that we've had , and very easy to make it look like , if you were so willing , that it was you and that finance or admin had nothing to do with it yeah was , in fact , it's only when you do it together .

Speaker 2

And I I guess I've been very profoundly shaped by my last couple of jobs and when I , when I , arrived to work with the archbishop , there was a big team of you know .

Speaker 2

The senior team was about 10 people and every person that I looked at around the room was amazing . In their field whether it was reconciliation , evangelism , interfaith relations , ecumenism , communications , you know , people were just at the top of their game . And there was something about the Archbishop not being threatened by that , but actually rejoicing in his team's value and being able to kind of be totally at ease with the fact that he didn't know everything and he couldn't do the job on his own because he didn't have all that was needed to be able to do the job , but actually relying on those people around . And for me that was a huge lesson in leadership just to be able to value the people around you , that your job as a leader is to be one part of the puzzle , but that actually you need all the other parts of the puzzle because otherwise you won't do it on your own . And , yes , your part might be to inspire people , to get them to work together so that it looks like you're doing the thing , but actually the thing wouldn't happen without everybody else .

Speaker 2

You know , if you read the lord of the rings , yes , frodo has to go up mind doom . But frodo wouldn't get to mind doom unimpeded unless the others had come and drawn sauron out and all of that , you know . Or if you go to harry potter , it's the same thing . He wouldn't have made it without his friends and people who sacrificed themselves for him . So you have the hero , but the hero has always benefited from what other people have done . I don't know Batman , but I find him scary . Just , you know , it's the ears I see , thank you .