quotes on inter dependence

In the book "Emergent Strategy" by adrienne marie brown but she shares a lot of interesting insights about the importance of interdependence in social change efforts.

She believes we are more naturally wired for "interdependence" but almost everything in our society promotes "independence." 

"Humans are unique because we compete when it isn't necessary. We could reason our way to more sustainable processes, but we use our intelligence to outsmart each other. We compete for fun, for ego."

"The idea of interdependence is that we can truly meet each other's needs in a variety of ways, that we can truly lean on others and they can lean on us. It means we have to decentralize our idea of where solutions and decisions happen, where ideas come from."

She uses several examples from nature as well:

"Oak trees don't set an intention to listen to each other better, or agree to hold right to each other when the next storm comes. Under the earth, always, they reach for each other, they grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day as it is in a hurricane."

"Ants tell each other where food is, not hoarding individually, but operating on a principle that the more of them that gather the food, the more food they will have as a community."

"When a goose is injured during migration, two geese will land with it and stay until it is healed or dies, then catch up with their flock. Flocking is fundamentally about decentralizing the effort for safety and trust leadership to come from any edge of the flock."

It seems to us that interdependence is a process of coming home to our more natural nature. And we believe is critical for teams that are in a heavy pursuit of change.