Interdependence Means Other People's Outcomes Can Reach Us
Individual responsibility is real. So is interdependence. We live in families, organizations, economies, neighborhoods, legal systems, infrastructures, and ecosystems in which one person's outcome can become another person's condition. A colleague's missed work affects a team. A bank failure affects people who never made the bank's decisions. A public-health failure reaches people outside the institution that failed. A family member's illness changes the lives of caregivers.
Interdependence does not erase individual responsibility. It changes the fantasy that responsibility makes us isolated units. We can be answerable for our choices while still being affected by choices we did not make.
This matters ethically and practically. The question is not only what I control. It is also what systems connect my well-being to other people. That connection can create obligations, vulnerabilities, and forms of cooperation that individualism alone cannot explain.
Their outcome may not be mine. It can still reach me.