Limits - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 116

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud,
there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The
cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here
either. clviii
Hanh uses interbeing to remind us that to be is to inter-be. Everything's linked. We can't isolate
our selves from context.
A mother holding her baby is one with her baby.
If it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce.
It's hard to hold these truths to be self-evident in a ship of state that's listing dangerously from
democracy to capitalism to oligarchy. Ben Franklin stated in 1776 that “we must all hang togeth-
er, or assuredly we shall all hang separately,” but what our culture says today is “every man for
himself.”
For a moment, the Internet was our hope. We thought we were building an information com-
mons, a shared peer-to-peer network created by and accessible to all. But this place made of in-
formation became subject to the process of enclosure. Like our fields and forests and universities
and hospitals, it was corporatized and commodified. Donella Meadows was right about techno-
logy. In the long run, it reflects and reinforces the dominant culture. No tail can wag the dog for
long.
In contrast, the free public library has managed to endure. It's a source of information and in-
spiration that tells a tale of rags to riches, not the rich get richer. Andrew Carnegie nailed it back
in 1889 when he explained “a library outranks any other one thing a community can do to bene-
fit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert.” The library is one of the last surviving
places where we are citizens, not consumers. When we ask a librarian for trusted counsel, their
only motives are to teach us to search and to help us to find what we need. And the library is a
treasure for the independent learner. It may still be the only place where a dirt poor kid like
Andrew Carnegie can access databases, the Internet, and books.
Of course, the library isn't only a space for information. Public libraries share all sorts of things,
including tools, toys, and telescopes. And they afford a peaceful refuge where an individual can
escape to read, write, search, think, and learn. A library, like a national park, teaches us that we
all benefit when our most valuable treasures are held in common.