Individualism vs Interconnectedness: Reconciling the Tension Between Two Models of Power
Why We Need Personal Development for Collective Evolution
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a strong instinct for noticing patterns, and I am particularly drawn to the ones we are encouraged not to question.
Across the worlds of wellness, spirituality, longevity, coaching, and leadership, the same storyline keeps unfolding. Charismatic figures rise to enormous heights. They speak about transformation, awakening, performance, greatness, or optimization. Their influence expands, their wealth grows, institutions and the public become invested in them (after all, how much time, money, and attention have we given them?) they become “too big to fail.” Eventually, the public is shocked to learn that they are awful. That they are entangled in the worst behavior imaginable, with the worst people in the world.
I recently posted both a note and an instagram post about Peter Attia, Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and Andrew Huberman as examples of this in plain sight. We’ve written about Deepak before when he first appeared in the previous batch of the Epstein files (that essay goes more specifically into the practice of the extraction of life force energy at play here).
Each time this happens, public conversation focuses on the individual. People ask what is wrong with this person or how so many people could have been misled again. But when the same outcome appears across different industries, movements, and personalities, we are not looking at isolated creeps. We are looking at a recurring structural pattern.
When the same pattern appears across different people and industries, the useful question is no longer who failed. The useful question becomes: what model of power keeps producing the same result?
Patterns at this scale are rarely explained by personality alone. They are shaped by the worldview and incentive structures that determine who rises, how power accumulates, and why influence so often expands faster than maturity.1
The worldview shaping this pattern is rarely named directly, but it sits beneath so much of modern culture: the assumption that human beings exist primarily as separate individuals competing for advantage.
In this winners vs losers paradigm, of course success means hoarding as much as you can. Of course spiritual enlightenment means transcending the world of discomfort and leaving everyone else behind. Of course longevity is about extending your own lifespan at all costs. Of course power means the power to hurt people without consequences.
The assumptions underneath this paradigm appear so normal that most people rarely question them.
Two predictable, connected dynamics emerge from this foundation. The first is extraction: of labor, attention, resources, ecosystems, sexual energy, and even psychic energy. This extraction is always justified by the extractor as necessary for their needs to be met. The second is the ideology of endless growth2, the belief that expansion without limit is both natural and desirable, even when it destabilizes the very systems that make life possible.
It is vitally important that we understand that these are not, innately, human traits. They have been the dominant way that Empire in its many forms has been operating for thousands of years.
But both our deep-time ancestors and the indigenous relatives we share the world with today, who are able to teach us, today, show us that this is not how it needs to be.
All of this comes from a distorted model of power, one that assumes strength comes from accumulating advantage rather than strengthening relationship.
But if the underlying story teaches us to experience ourselves as separate from the relational fields that sustain us, we will continue to fall into the same trap: endless growth, via extraction, at any cost. Even at the cost of our own humanity. Even at the cost of the entire world.
This is not the way it needs to be.
The Biological Basis of Interdependence
Dominant culture, and the myths that shape it, train us to experience ourselves as separate individuals first and relational beings second, even though biology tells a different story.
No organism survives alone.
No organism can thrive without a robust network of mutual exchange.
Every body survives through ecological resource flows.
Every nervous system stabilizes through relationship.
No life exists in isolation.
It’s insane that we’ve collectively forgotten this to the extent that we’re in this situation.
Interdependence is not really even a worldview or a philosophy,
it is the operating condition of life.
When humans forget this, we begin rewarding expansion faster than integration and integrity and they inevitably collapse. That’s what we’re facing right now. Systems organized around separation consistently elevate people whose power grows more quickly than their capacity to hold it responsibly. This is what I mean when I say that they are symptoms of this larger sickness. And if we follow the logic of living systems, we see that all scales of life are nested within one another.
This means that at any scale we are able to change the pattern, we can create ripples to many other scales beyond us. That’s great news because it means we can, in fact, we have to, begin right where we are. Who we are, where we are, and what we are creating in the world matters. It all has the ability to shift the trajectory of the collective.
But at the core of this work is the need to redefine power.
Power, Reconsidered
When people hear the word power, many still imagine power over: dominance, control, or the ability to impose one’s will. The kind of power that says something like, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”3 That model of power fits neatly inside a worldview built on separation, where individuals compete for advantage and dominance.
But, again, living systems operate through a different form of power. At every scale, forests, immune systems, nervous systems, ecosystems, and human communities endure and grow strong because countless parts coordinate, communicate, and sustain one another over time.
Stability emerges from relationship. Whenever there is one element that dominates, extracts, and endlessly grows, we call that a cancer, and we fight it with everything we have because we know that, unchecked, it will destroy the very life that sustains it.
This is a different understanding of power: power between. Power that flows through trust, cooperation, shared responsibility, and mutual recognition. The strength of a system increases when more of its members can participate fully in its functioning.
This is the kind of power that enables systems to evolve.
Although this framing of power may feel alien when we’re coming from the dominant paradigm, we must remember that it is not hard to operate this way. It is in our very nature.
In human life, the name we have historically given to this organizing force is love.
Love is often reduced to a private feeling or a sentimental idea, yet at its most fundamental level it is a relational capacity. It is the willingness to remain connected, to commit to the wellbeing of another, to repair when harm occurs, to protect what is vulnerable, and to act in ways that allow more life to flourish rather than less.
Systems shaped by this form of power do not become weak. They become resilient.
We need to cultivate a more loving world, in every domain of life.
Across cultures, this understanding appears again and again. Mahayana Buddhist teachings speak of Bodhicitta, the motivation to commit one’s own enlightenment journey for the benefit of all beings. Jewish traditions speak of Tikkun Olam, the shared responsibility to help repair the world. Early Christian thought emphasized agape, a form of love expressed through active care and responsibility. Hindu philosophical traditions speak of seva (selfless service) and bhakti (devotional love expressed through relationship to all beings). Southern African philosophy offers Ubuntu, often translated as “I am because we are,” expressing the understanding that personhood is created through relationship. Indigenous knowledge systems around the world speak of kinship and stewardship across generations and ecosystems.
The language differs, but the direction is consistent:
a mature, resilient system expands the circle of care rather than narrowing it.
Power and love are not opposites. At their highest expression, they are inseparable. Love without power cannot protect or build. Power without love eventually fragments the systems it depends on. Fully integrated, they are the regenerative force that keeps our world together, and moves us forward, toward more life, against all odds.
If the crises we are living through are fueled by systems organized around separation, then the long-term alternative cannot be domination by better actors. It must be a shift in how we understand power itself. Strength must be measured not only by what an individual can accumulate, but by what their presence makes possible for others.
The tension between working on ourselves and working for the world dissolves once we understand that they are the same process.
Interdependence: A Different Operating System
To not only see the world through the lens of interdependence, but to live that way, design that way, create that way, takes time and practice. And it’s infinitely rewarding because you end up being surrounded by people and systems that thrive as you thrive, competition falls away, and everything becomes an opportunity for collaboration, or at least learning something new.
Living from this place is a relief.
It flows blessings in every direction.
Our health is found in the health of the planet.
Our longevity is found in living with deeply human rhythms, strong friendships, and meaningful work that contributes to other people thriving.
And all spiritual enlightenment comes from the deepest realization of our interdependence. That is the nature of enlightenment. Anyone truly operating from that place cannot participate in or excuse harm against others.
In order to move us all, as a collective, toward the story and the logic and the design principles of interdependence, we need each of us to do our part. That begins with each of us embodying interdependence from the inside out, and bringing that embodiment into our relationships, and bringing it into our businesses, and our communities, and everywhere we have influence.
All of this brings us back to the tension many thoughtful people feel right now.
If the ideology of separation is so dangerous, does focusing on personal development simply reinforce the problem? Or is there a way that working on ourselves can actually help shift the systems we are living inside?
The answer depends on how development is understood. When growth is framed as private advancement, it often strengthens the paradigm of separation.
But when growth is understood as increasing one’s capacity for relationship, responsibility, repair, and stewardship, it becomes something very different.
It becomes preparation for participation in a shared world, and a contribution toward more life-affirming futures.
This is why the work of inner development cannot be abandoned, even in times of collective crisis. What must change is the orientation. The question is no longer, “How do I optimize myself?” but “How do I become someone whose presence increases the health of the systems I belong to?”
Nearly a decade ago, in the midst of the surging #metoo movement, which began revealing just how pervasively sick every institution, and every industry had become, Ganga Devi and I began asking this question seriously in our own work. Coming from different fields, me coming from physiology, somatics, sexology, and coaching, and her coming from living-systems thinking, a rich spiritual lineage, and regenerative design, we wanted to understand what personal development would look like if it were designed from the beginning for collective evolution rather than individual advancement. What would practices look like if their purpose were to expand nervous system capacity, relational maturity, ethical clarity, and the ability to hold and nurture loving power responsibly across time?
That question continues to shape everything we build and teach.
We see in all of our clients and students that when they deepen their integrity, emotional maturity, and relational awareness, when they stabilize and expand their nervous system’s capacity to be with intensity (both intense challenge and intense pleasure), the effects do not remain contained within a single life. Relationships flourish. Communities become more connected. Leadership dynamics begin to shift. Small changes in how people relate to themselves ripple outward into the environments that we all share.
Your life matters in this way whether you are seeking power or not. The way you listen, repair, collaborate, set boundaries, share resources, raise children, build organizations, or care for the land contributes to the social and ecological fabric around you. None of us stands outside the systems of life. We are always shaping them, consciously or unconsciously.
The future will not be shaped only by policy, technology, or ideology. It will be shaped by people who understand that becoming more whole within themselves is inseparable from becoming more responsible to the worlds they inhabit.
When enough of us begin living from that understanding, the story of separation begins to lose its grip, and a different pattern becomes possible.
We can co-create that pattern together.
We must. All of life depends on it.
🖖✨🐌,
Seth!
PS, a few updates from the ΛCΛDEMY:
Our writing ritual, BE the LOVE which we launched last week is now $36. It’s a vitalizing and deeply supportive process to bring clarity, love, and insight to the exact kind of inner work we are talking about here. The results of this process will be different for everyone, as unique as you and both your desires and potentials.
Our six phase self-paced course the EDGE is our deep dive into the world of somatic sexual healing, teaching you to become your own best practitioner, rooted in a vision for a healed world. the EDGE has been offered for its first few months at a 44% discounted Beta rate which will be ending on Valentines Day.
You can purchase them both bundled together for just the current price of the EDGE here, also through Valentines Day.
We genuinely hope you are finding joy and love and connection and a way to live with integrity and flow in these times, whatever that looks like for you.
Next week I will be going deeper into the maturity crisis in masculinity, including and perhaps especially in the space of “Toxic Sacred Masculinity.“
See Nate Hagens, The Great Simplification, for a systems-level exploration of how endless-growth-driven economic models create structural pressures toward extraction across ecological, social, and psychological domains.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.” Donald Trump, Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, January 23, 2016
The contemporary yoga teacher star system is based on the psychic energy extraction you describe. Social media is the attentional plank that gets the star into a person's head, and big marquis workshops are the religious-style ceremony where the individual teacher does mass faith healings. It's totally transparent and systematic.
what an incredible article, thank you