We see the world as a collection of separate objects: a tree, a neighbour, a company, a river. Each seems to exist on its own, entering into relation with the others only afterward. Sageocracy starts from the opposite, and this is its first principle: things do not first exist separately and then connect; they exist through the bonds that hold them. From this reversal follows a very concrete consequence: if nothing exists in isolation, then nothing can be decided in isolation.
We see the objects, we forget the links
Our gaze is built to cut out: it isolates clear shapes and leaves in shadow what connects them. A river, however, is not a thing one could set on a table: remove the water, the banks or the current, and there is no more river. We ourselves stand only through the air, through the living, through those who raised us. This is not a sentimental image, but a more exact description of reality than the one our habits have accustomed us to. The awareness of connection is to stop taking the map, made of separate objects, for the territory.
What it changes when we decide
A decision about school does not hold if it ignores the health of children, the air they breathe, the pressure of work on their parents. An economic decision bears on soils, water and relationships as much as on figures. To decide in awareness of connection does not mean taking everything into account, which would be impossible and paralysing. It means looking broadly enough not to manufacture elsewhere the very problem one claims to solve here. Not to know everything, but to look far enough.
A principle, not a feeling
One might see in it an invitation to ‘feel connected’, a matter of emotion or spirituality. It is not. The awareness of connection is a demand for lucidity, as concrete as checking, before acting, what our gesture will set off further along. It is the first of the three principles that found Sageocracy, and perhaps the one that most quietly changes the way we see. The forthcoming book will unfold its consequences, right down to the organisation of a society; this article only opens the door.