The Psychology of Interdependency

Stanley I. Greenspan and Stuart G. Shanker *

The terrifying events of Tuesday, September 11^th did not come out of the blue. In a lead editorial in The Washington Post on July 26, 1999, the then Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, warned that: “The United States faces a super-power paradox. Our supremacy…is prompting adversaries to seek unconventional means.” Secretary Cohen grimly reported that: “Twenty-five countries now have or are developing weapons of mass destruction.” He sought to reassure the public that the Government was “preparing for the possibility of a chemical or biological attack on American soil because we must. There is not a moment to lose.” We know that serious steps were taken to avoid such a calamity. But Tuesday’s grim lesson is that there is no such thing as an impermeable wall of defense in the modern technological world.

A front-page story by John Pomfret in The Washington Post on August 8^th, 1999 made clear just how serious this issue has become. Two Chinese colonels were quoted and a new book cited with a message that was unnervingly consistent with Secretary Cohen’s warnings. In relationship to recent tensions over Taiwan, the colonels announced that if a war were to take place with the United States, China would consider terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental degradation, computer virus propagation, as well as attacks on American telecommunications and core industries. The Chinese colonels explained that they would certainly not fight a conventional war according to the rules laid down by the West; rather, they saw such unrestricted tactics as the only logical course of action for a country faced with a militarily more powerful adversary.

Science has now advanced to the point where large and small nations of limited military power, and terrorist groups have the means to destroy life for all other groups through destructive biological, nuclear or environmental technologies.

Despite the seriousness of these issues, however, they received relatively little attention in the national media. Secretary Cohen’s warning and John Pomfret’s worrying story were virtually ignored. Why is it that our society has remained so diffident in the face of these formidable challenges? Why have we been so reluctant to confront the dangerous realities of the new international order?

Certainly these challenges provoke anxiety and both individuals and groups are known to use denial to cope with anxiety and helplessness. And a society that has successfully embraced a competitive can-do ethic will not find it easy to deal with the realities of the world’s shared vulnerability. Coping with vulnerability without resorting to defensive aggression, however, will depend on complementing traditional political consideration with insights into our new psychological challenges.

Shared communications and economics, as well as shared dangers have brought individuals from all parts of the world together into a closer interdependency than at any time before in human history. In essence, we are all together in the same lifeboat now. Up until recently, different groups and nations could believe, appropriately enough, that they were each in their own boats and need only be concerned about their own survival. But what happens when everyone is in the same lifeboat and the seas are getting rough? Any serious conflicts will likely topple the boat and all will perish. In such a context, can traditional coercive measures “maintain international peace and security”? Along with strategies to promote security and safety, long- term goals require a new psychology that is commensurate with the realities of political interdependency. When diverse populations share the same lifeboat, it is essential that they relate to and communicate with one another; but for genuine communication and joint problem-solving to occur, the various parties involved must have a shared enough sense of reality and humanity. A shared sense of humanity and reality, the prerequisites to any sort of problem-solving, however, is a complex process that has been poorly understood.

This new state of interdependency can result in greater social fragmentation, more extreme types of polarized beliefs, and greater hostility; or it can serve as a catalyst for humans to develop a new psychology of interdependency. Such a psychology of interdependency will be characterized by transformations in our shared sense of humanity and reality, based on changes in fundamental scientific, social, and psychological paradigms, group and personal identities, government and economic policies, and child-rearing and educational practices.

The way we come together to create a shared sense of humanity and reality can occur at various levels. Coming together around surface physical traits and fixed polarized beliefs tends to keep people who have physical or ideological differences apart. In contrast, coming together around institutions and processes (e.g., the English Magna Carta) that embrace personal and cultural differences tends to create more stable, and flexible social organizations. But we will need even more complex social organizations than we now have to deal with the world’s growing interdependency.

Specifically, we must replace short-term, narrow, deterministic thinking dating back to Enlightenment philosophers such as Decartes. In this type of thinking every transgression is punished, but the interdependency of the world and our own and others’ vulnerability is denied. Instead, we must tie short-term strategies to guarantee security to the long-term goal of creating a shared sense of humanity and reality around the globe. To pursue such a long-term goal will require a redefinition of our psychological sense of survival. In an interdependent world where small groups now or in the near future will be able to destroy the planet, the unit of survival is no longer the individual, but the social group (which is a global group). The global group survives or falters together.

Polarizing, impulsive individuals or groups will find it difficult to master this psychological challenge. On the other hand, reflective individuals and groups capable of extending their sense of reality and humanity to include the other human beings and groups in the world are more likely to gradually meet this ongoing challenge. Encouraging humane and reflective individuals and social groups will require an unprecedented international investment in individuals, families, and communities, the fertile soil of the capacities to care and reflect. It will also require educational, economic, governmental, and business policies that encourage the growth of our “human capital.”

* Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, George Washington University Medical School; Stuart G. Shanker, D.Phil, Professor of Philosophy and Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada

Cuestiones de América Nº 6, Noviembre de 2001

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