It’s amazing how the best way to get what you want is often to focus your efforts on what other people want. In this world of specialization, most of the time what we want is at least partly under the control of others, and it’s nearly impossible to satisfy all of our needs without involving an enormous network of otherwise unrelated people.

Even to get food to eat, I depend on a dizzying number of people I have never met and probably never will. Farmers from other states and other countries grow the food, suppliers with hundreds of employees sell the food to the grocery stores, to which it is delivered by thousands of truck drivers. The grocery stores have their own employees, both to run the stores and to manage the business.

To get to the store, I typically either drive (which requires my car to be in working order, which depends on the car company and its employees, and its suppliers and their employees, and the manufacturers of the materials, etc.; and also depends on my mechanic, who has employees, and suppliers of parts…etc.) or take the train (which means that the trains must be driven by transit agency employees, and must be kept in good repair by mechanics; and the transit agency has its own management staff as well, and manufacturers for the trains, which depend on parts which in turn have their own manufacturers…).

Then there’s the whole issue of having a job so you can pay for your groceries.

To make a long story short, whether we like it or not, we’re all inextricably interdependent.

So, being utterly dependent on others for so many of our needs, we need to be on good terms with a whole lot of people in order to be healthy and happy. Many of them don’t know us nearly well enough to care about us for our own sakes, so what motivation do they have for helping us?

The easy answer is money, but money is just a placeholder for a certain amount of value—a certain amount of fulfillment of our needs and wishes. Money by itself doesn’t really fulfill any needs. It tastes awful, even  when seasoned well and roasted, and has no vitamin C.

But because people are more efficient when doing one thing or a few things consistently, (not multitasking!) we’re all better off when we concentrate on a few skills we’re good at, and use those skills to help other people in exchange for help from their skills. This is why I don’t raise chickens and goats in my backyard.

This is such a vital part of the structure of civilization that when someone helps us out in some way, we naturally want to help them out when the opportunity arises.

American culture is outwardly obsessed with independence, but when you look at it under the microscope it’s made up of lots of tiny pinpoints of selflessness.