Social power structures, the contrivances of a shared world, no matter if they take the form of political- or religious- or economic-based are by design reliant upon co-dependency for their own perpetuation. Even to the extent of lying, cheating and stealing to assure this co-dependency. Market economies for example cannot exist without self-important agent provocateurs leaching off of the countless identities who have been rendered to believe that they absolutely must buy things and/or sell things, even should the transactions have little to no relation either visceral or metaphysical to the fundamentals of want or need.
Self-dependence, contrary to the wishes of all hierarchies of all power structures, is about decidedly not using or abusing others, while simultaneously not being used or abused by others. Power structures need for you to buy and sell things, physical or ideological. They rely on you competing with neighbors and others alike to advertise on their behalf for which political or religious or economic principle is the greatest. If you do not need to use or abuse others to meet with satisfaction, then no political belief or religious conviction or industrial product can take credit for your success. Equally, if a political belief or religious conviction or industrial product inevitably results in mass casualties, without enabling those power structures then you cannot be held accountable as some randomly enthusiastic extremist who took the principles of said power structure too far. Unless you stand on your own, either you add to their control or you will serve as their scapegoat.
Because these are one and all very much the same in today’s world, where political partisanship is religious fervor is brand loyalty, at the non-figurative expense of what you the individual honestly, personally, would think or feel.
So by its self-dependent nature individuality is a threat to economic power structures, to religious power structures and to political power structures. Giddily jumping on the bandwagon for the latest commercial trend, the latest politician presenting himself as the second coming, or to help challenge the latest threat to whatever church’s ability to infringe upon the rights of non-believers, does nothing but placate the artificial authority of these power structures to further cripple the world. All because some people find it so fucking difficult to either take responsibility for their own actions, or to just leave others the hell alone.
Yet on the flip-side, we can learn so much when we meet others halfway. Pestering suspended in a golden grace outside ourselves. We learn about ourselves, themselves and this omniverse which every last one of us sleepwalks through. Best case scenario, we can be experienced by comparable stories to contrast, growing through osmosis so that all may stand on equal footing. Worst case scenario, we have a lot of catching up to do before we might appreciate the flutter-byes that come like clockwork from offerings to the wondrous unknown.