30. I don't exist

I am formed and brought to life by relationship with others (incuding non-animate and non-human others).

Philosopher Martin Buber^[1] wrote that there are two ways of being in the world. The most common mode is ego-centric. I am real, everything (everyone) else is an object in relation to me. I relate to them for what I can get from them.

The second mode places everything on an even footing – everything has its own value (beyond my ability to extract that value). In this second mode, a relationship is marked by the way it alters both parties.

That one of these modes sounds obvious and the other doesn't really make sense is a sign of the predominance of the first mode, which Buber framed as I-It. This is the mode in which we collect data, analyse, classify, extract. The It is a thing to be used and utilised, known and put to work. There is necessarily a sense of distance between the experiencing I and the experienced It. The It is object to the I's subject.

The second mode of I-Thou is both possible and necessary if we are to be fully human. It is a mode of encounter, where we enter into relationship with the object encountered, we participate in something with that object, and both I and Thou are transformed by the relationship.

In the first mode, the I is dominant: I am the centre of the universe – everything else circles around me and provides value for me. In the second mode, the I is but a part of the relationship. Everything is the centre of the universe. Everything dances and interrelates, including me.

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