For this interview, my interlocutor preferred to remain anonymous, and our interaction was not recorded.

 

Our conversation flowed between different and unscripted ideas of what interconnectedness can manifest through, such as empathy, mystery, creative flow and different languages of interconnectedness. 

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For a start, we talked about how empathy is exercised through reading, which, in turn, fosters interconnectedness. By reading you practice immersion not only in the fictional or non-fictional universe that rests in the pages, but you also practice immersion in the mind of the author. The author can’t fully make abstraction of themselves when writing, so reading can be a game of interconnection, of identifying where the author’s mind ends and the character’s begins. A lot of the time, people develop emotional attachment to characters and authors by identifying with the snippet of their mind that is depicted on paper. 

 

My conversation with the English professor then flowed into a discussion about learning, the motivations behind learning and how they serves people. As my interlocutor said, “education is a zone of war,” and it can be said that the appeal of learning can be counted as a casualty of it. One can learn out of obligation or just for the sake of it, and when the latter happens, time is distorted and learning becomes immersive. That “creative flow” can distort the time, and information starts flowing through your veins, not just through your sight. I also interpreted this as a state of interconnectedness. In “Darwin’s Pharmacy,” Dr. Doyle describes a vision of the world where everything is information, and its existence is determined by the interaction with human consciousness. Similarly, learning and the creative flow are the organic states of human interaction with information. Consciousness, too, was touched in my interview with the English professor. 

 

“It exists, and how we access it is important.” We did not delve into faith or spirituality, or any particular means of channeling one’s consciousness. We did however, agree upon the existence of a benevolent force that manifests through the implicate order of the universe. This force sometimes pushes for a reckoning. My interlocutor shared a story in which someone they know had lost their mother, and then encountered two children who recently lost their own mother. This person proceeded to adopt the two children, convinced that this occurence was far beyond a coincidence, and stemmed directly from the divine. The implicate order manifests itself within the laws of nature, and it sometimes reveals its own magma. 

 

We then tackled the idea of interconnectedness through language. Interconnectedness can happen through various languages, beyond the organic, verbal communication: body language, physical touch as a language of affection, and even the biology of psychological bonding. Emotional bonding is perhaps the most immediate form of interconnectedness people can exercise. It satisfies fundamental needs for acceptance, belonging and connection. My interlocutor cited Barbara Fredrickson’s work “Love 2.0” that I tackled on the Half-Mysterious Page. Psychological interconnection is a form of connection that can be felt with body and mind, viscerally as well as mentally. It involves the essential components of human experience, which explains why sometimes unhealthy relationships can do more damage than cigarettes, as my interlocutor mentioned, citing “Love 2.0.” 

 

Lastly, our conversation flowed to mystery and John Keats’ theory of “negative capability,” or the access to truth “without the pressure and framework of logic and science” (“Negative Capability”). Mystery allows us to be infinitely open to flows of information. Accepting mystery as perhaps the truest and most permanent aspects of reality can also be an act of interconnectedness. Accepting mystery as part of the DNA of reality can catalyze the search for feeling interconnected with the world. Like the poet practicing “negative capability,” one can “dwell in a state of openness to all experience,” half of which is mystery, but all of which can involve interconnectedness.