Most of us hew to a code of privacy that leads us to not know our neighbours. Most of us live with technology that aims to reduce the friction in any encounter and you get used to ta that mode of living. But community life – care for one another – is built on friction, on sticky and inefficient relationships.*
(David Brooks)

It’s possible to use the status hierarchy as a sort of fuel, a way to motivate yourself to push a little harder. But it is also possible, and far more resilient, to use connection and possibility as fuel as well.**
(Seth Godin)

Here are a few thoughts I’m playing with.

The dependent self is No Self:

“Connais-toi pour t’améliorer” (“Know yourself to improve yourself”).^

The independent self is Ego Self, something that get started on being someone different to your parents of guardians, but can can lead to False Self, if not helped to let go of the unhealthy beliefs through the five elemental truths:

Life is hard;
You are not as special as you think;
Your life is not about you;
You are not in control;
You are going to die.^^

If this doesn’t happen, then,

After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it.*^

The interdependent Self is Eco Self, which leads us to True Self. We become all we can be through reciprocal relationships with others in identity and contribution.

(*From David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(**From Seth Godin’s blog: The persistence of hierarchy and status roles.)
(^Auguste Comte, quoted in Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists.)
(^^From Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.)
(*^From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.)