The more closely we believe ourselves to be connected to other people, the more likely we are to hold ourselves at least partly responsible for their well-being. As our current turbulent era has made exceptionally clear, the actions we take or do not take—in the face of pandemics, prejudice, authoritarianism, resource use, climate change—affect even strangers, even those who live far away from us, sometimes even those who are not yet living at all. It is easy to ignore all those other people, to regard ourselves as linked only to our own family and community. Yet our moral power, like our intellectual power, comes from asserting connections that have previously been invisible or overlooked. That is a solemn reason to nurture our sense of connection; and yet the more densely we are tied to others, the happier we are. Many of us have occasionally felt the world to be as Bishop describes it in her poem: disconnected, fragmentary, devoid of logic and meaning. And many of us have occasionally felt ourselves to be disconnected as well—felt that, whatever the state of the world, we stand apart from its workings, unable to muster interest in doing anything or, alternatively, convinced that nothing we do will matter. These are not pleasant feelings. To be disconnected is to be lonely, indifferent, estranged—in one way or another, cut off from the rest of humanity. As a psychological state, it is at best distressing and at worst dangerous, both for the people experiencing it and for those around them. One famous description of hell holds that it is a place where “nothing connects with nothing,” suggesting that the absence of attachment to the rest of the world is both an abdication of goodness and a form of suffering. By contrast, the more deeply connected we feel, the more fulfilling we typically find our lives.
