Who among us is truly Independent? What person, family, town, business, state, nation or planet depends on nothing outside of itself for its sustenance and existence in harmony? All exists in an interlocking network of interdependencies.

Independence Day honors the break from tyranny that occurred in the olden times. The importance and consequence of this transition, in all its greatness and imperfection, still plays itself out in our world today. In honoring that transition we can take a moment to put ourselves in that time, and to imagine the transcendence that took place. A centuries-old status quo broke down as central rule evolved into republican rule, as monocracy was overwhelmed by democracy, and as ordinary people were promoted from peasanthood to empowered citizens.

We know that those representatives and citizens where engaged in debating the issues of the times, often bitterly. Nevertheless they were able to lift the whole balance of human organization and governance to the next higher rung. Independence benefited everyone, even the partisan rivals of the times, and sparked a global ideological revolution.

It is simple to see our partisan struggles in modern times. They are what we read about, talk about and expend vast amounts of energy and money engaging in. What is not so simple is to look up and to see the next higher rung in ideological evolution. Truly beneficial change will have to benefit all of humankind, not just those we happen to agree with in our current patterns of thought. What is that change?

I don't presume to have the answer. But I do presume to ask the question. In asking this kind of question, we are forced out of our polar thought patterns and toward the holistic. The Colonists developed Independence, self-determination, civil and human rights, and representative rule as new thought patterns. In spite of being plainly obvious to us now, they were novel and transcendent then. Importantly, these new ideas were embraced by people holding opposing views on the various issues of the day.

As food for thought, and for a bit of word play, I propose that we found our new transcendence on a Declaration of Interdependence. This document would describe the new truths that we hold self-evident, the new truths that we have discovered in the 229 years since the father document was scribed. Certainly we have learned much that is essential and beautiful about ourselves and our world and our universe during those years. We should apply those truths to our human organizations and systems of governance in fundamentally transformative ways.

Interdependence is not just word play. It will become plainly obvious and mainstream as global communication, travel, business and culture penetrate the opportunism and adolescent blindness we exhibit toward others. For what importance do our lives take if we do not hold the lives of others as important? What value has our wealth as others starve and struggle for basic necessities? Will we find the happiness we pursue in exclusion of the happiness of others? How can we create a safe and accepting world if we violently reject what we hold as "other"?

Just as plainly as the founding fathers saw that the British Crown was impeding the success of the Colonies, today it becomes obvious that our illusion of Independence from each other impedes a peaceful world. It becomes obvious that when we put violence in films and video games, we glorify and subtly give permission to violence in real life. It becomes clear that when we kill the families of others, we encourage others to destroy our families. It becomes obvious that when we invest our money in warfare we get what we pay for. It becomes clear that the abused child in the family next door becomes the bully that harms our own children. It becomes obvious that the renunciation of another's faith or way of life becomes the shallowness and narrowness of our own faith and way of life.

Let us declare our Interdependence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all persons are created interdependent, that they are endowed by their Creator with a connectedness to each other and to the planet, and that in respect for this connectedness they seek to reconcile with all they have held in the illusion of separateness.

Happy Interdependence Day!