Freedom in Connectedness
On "interbeing", the narrowing of our political imagination, and learning to vote with awareness
Introduction
“Freedom” is a word often spoken quickly. It is considered an important value in our lives. We invoke it in debates, in election platforms, in conversations with friends; it appears everywhere. Everyone appeals to it, claims to defend it, or insists on their right to it.
But when a word is used so frequently, the risk is that we stop examining what it truly means.
Many people speak of freedom as if it were purely personal: I decide, I choose, I act. It is my freedom, after all. Freedom then becomes a kind of muscle—trained by distancing oneself from others. As if a human being could exist autonomously, as a self-contained organism, sufficient unto itself.
Those who have meditated for some time, or who have followed any of the wisdom traditions, who have cultivated the capacity to become still and to enter into silence, know that this is, at best, only half the truth. A human being arises and exists only and entirely in and through relationship.
Interbeing
The Vietnamese monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of interbeing. Although the word sounds poetic, it is intended as a description of reality. It is what becomes evident in the practice of sitting quietly in the present moment. A sheet of paper is not merely paper: without the tree, the cloud, the rain, the sun, the earth and time—there would be no paper. Likewise, we are not “we” without the people who have shaped us, the people who support us (and, at times, fail us), and the people whose lives we in turn affect.
The idea of complete individual freedom, separate from others, is an illusion. It is a story we have gradually begun to tell each other, especially in recent decades, thanks largely to neoliberal thinking. A story that is appealing because it suggests that we need not be accountable to anyone. That we owe nothing. That vulnerability is optional and expendable, and that care is merely a courtesy.
The illusion
If you believe this, I must disappoint you. Individual freedom does not exist. Every choice has effects—on your own life and on the lives of others. Often subtle, barely noticeable, but no less real. (And not choosing is also a choice.)
When I speak without regard for who is listening, my words may wound.
When I claim my rights without considering context, I may inflict harm.
When I live as though I need no one, I end up building a house I inhabit alone—even in a crowded world.
When I dismiss science as mere opinion, I help create an uninhabitable Earth.
Freedom without awareness of our interdependence leads, slowly but inevitably, to harm. First invisible, then undeniable. In our bodies, in families, in neighbourhoods, in entire societies, across the world.
Freedom without connection doesn’t work
This is not a moral argument. It is physiology.
This is simply how our bodies and nervous systems work.
Polyvagal Theory describes how our state of being is influenced through others.
We co-regulate.
We heal together.
We lose one another together.
We find one another again together.
No human being exists as an island. Those who try to do so fragment and harden.
And in that hardening, something essential to freedom dies.
Fragmentation is literally the breaking of wholeness—resulting in disconnection and inequality.
Political noise
We see the consequences of the illusion of individual freedom clearly in Dutch politics. Parties such as PVV, FvD, and JA21 speak of freedom, but largely in terms of closing borders, excluding others, and protecting one’s own. Freedom becomes something that must be defended, safeguarded, fought for. But when freedom is defined primarily by who must be kept out, something shrinks.
The world narrows.
The space in which real encounter is possible diminishes.
Fear steps in.
The other becomes an object, no longer a person with a heartbeat like our own.
The VVD, meanwhile, centres the rhetoric of individual responsibility: you take care of yourself, the state interferes as little as possible, success is the result of personal effort. On paper, this sounds mature. In practice, it creates a society where the vulnerable become invisible, and self-interest replaces solidarity.
Not for everyone
We now know what happens when self-reliance is overemphasized: people fall through the cracks, and inequality deepens. Freedom that leaves no room for vulnerability has no room for humanity. I wrote about this recently, discussing an interview with professor of psychiatry Floortje Scheepers: it is absurd that one must take a mindfulness course simply to function in our hyper-agitated society.
When political rhetoric portrays others as a threat—and repeats that message often enough—it becomes believable. Joseph Goebbels understood this well:
A lie told once remains a lie. But a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.
The Body Responds
When we believe the lie of freedom without connectedness, something shifts in the body. The breath tightens. The eyes harden. The face closes. The voice becomes narrower. The muscles contract. The belly braces. Trust shrivels. Curiosity disappears. The nervous system understands the signal: protection is required.
In such a state, freedom cannot thrive.
Freedom requires openness.
Openness requires safety.
Safety is born in relationship.
Responsibility
The purpose of voting is not merely to pursue personal advantage.
Voting is an act of shaping the fabric in which we live together.
It is a moment in which we are asked to see that my freedom cannot exceed the capacity of the whole.
The irony is that in the voting booth, we quite literally stand alone.
That is the greatest illusion of that moment.
We are never alone.
Our choice moves through the lives of others—
through children not yet born,
through those afraid to speak their language in public,
through elders who rely on care,
through bodies trying to soften in a world that keeps them tense.
Freedom is not that no one has a claim on me.
Freedom is the ability to be myself without diminishing someone else —
trusting that they are doing the same, so that I may be myself fully.
This does not require softness as sentimentality, but softness as clarity, as a willingness to see with unguarded eyes that we breathe one another’s air.
As Thich Nhat Hanh said:
“We breathe together.”
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