Why "Everything is Connected" Can Make You Miserable (And How to Deal With It)
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Many people (myself included) talk about a necessary shift in worldview, paradigm, consciousness - or philosophy - towards a relational understanding of the world. In academia, we see this call for relational thinking across the disciplines, it’s also referred to as the relational turn.
The graph below shows all the different disciplines that talk about relational approaches. And I am sure it encompasses even more.
A central premise of this relational turn is that our pervasive unhappiness, isolation, and loneliness stem, in significant part, from a profound disconnection - from the more-than-human-world, from each other, and from ourselves. Some suggest that’s due to an overemphasis on what might be termed 'left-brain' dominant modes of thinking - an intense focus on analysis, categorization, and the dissection of parts, often at the expense of a more holistic, intuitive apprehension of the whole.
Now, I think the relational turn is utterly needed. Our mechanistic, reductionist philosophies played a significant role in leading us into our current complex predicaments. Relational philosophies can play a huge part in getting us out of them.
Unforeseen Consequence: Alienation in Connection
Yet, at the same time, I have noticed but never explicitly heard anyone talk about - within myself and others - that a strong identification with a relational worldview CAN actually have the opposite effect: instead of making people happy, lives more connected, more caring, people feeling like they belong, a relational understanding of the world may actually alienate people.
I am a mechanical engineer by background, I have always loved analyzing, dissecting, and logic. My ways of knowing, being, and acting were very grounded in a mechanistic paradigm. I was deeply situated in that kind of thinking. AND: I was also very happy. I loved my little corner of the world and everything in it. I felt connected to the people I was surrounded with. And while my life wasn’t really going anywhere specific, I enjoyed that messiness.
When I began thinking more relationally, not just knowing, but experiencing how I am related to everything else, the easiness of life actually decreased. I became more isolated from my surroundings.
Acknowledging that I am one knot in an encompassing web of knots made my life complex, more exhausting.
When Simple Actions Become Fraught
Suddenly, simple actions like drinking coffee, wanting to visit close friends overseas, or buying a new pair of jeans became increasingly difficult. I became hyper-aware of the implications of my actions because of the relationality of the world - how everything I do is connected to everything else.
And it wasn’t just consumption choices. Even doing good became more difficult.
Rutger Bregman, in his latest book, Moral Ambition, describes how we need to focus on real, tangible, easy-to-implement actions that make the world better, such as how distributing mosquito nets to people endangered by malaria saves thousands of lives. When I see this from a relational perspective though, I’ll have to ask: Where did the materials for the nets come from? What are the labor conditions in the factories? What happens to the plastic nets at the end of their life? What are the long-term ecological and social consequences of dramatically altering mortality rates in a specific region without addressing underlying resource constraints or systemic inequalities?
Asking these questions isn't meant to be cynical, instead, it's meant to highlight how a focus on the whole system can cast doubt on actions that feel intuitively, immediately right at the “part” level. It’s profoundly human to want to save that child from malaria today. It feels inhuman to hesitate because of complex, uncertain, long-term systemic effects.
Of course, this doesn't mean all actions are hopelessly compromised. I am not saying that there are no actions we can take that are unambiguously good.
I’ve recently joined a group that takes care of wildlife. I am in the division of the crows. So if there is a crow that got injured or a baby crow kicked out of its nest, a group of volunteers organizes themselves from catching the animals, taking them to the vet, to taking care of them at their homes as long as needed. Each crow requires about 30 WhatsApp messages for coordination. People sometimes drive an hour one way to see if they can find the injured crow - that was usually called in by attentive people. The dedication is mind-blowing. It’s a hyper-focus on the parts and yet I have a really hard time finding any reason why such an initiative wouldn’t be a good idea worth emulating.
The Un-Dichotomy: Thinking Small vs./and Thinking Big
My point is that:
Thinking Small (focusing on the part): is often cognitively easier and sidesteps the overwhelming complexity of the whole system. It provides immediate feedback and a sense of agency - we rescue this crow, we improve this farm, we drink this coffee. The tangible impact can be deeply satisfying.
vs.
Thinking Big (focusing on the whole): while arguably more accurate, carries significant existential risks.
Thinking relationally should perhaps come with a warning label:
May induce feelings of insignificance: What difference can my tiny actions possibly make in the face of global systems and geological time scales?
May lead to immobilization: If every action has complex, potentially negative ripple effects, how can I ever choose confidently? The fear of unintended consequences can be paralyzing.
May increase isolation: If the cultural current emphasizes connection and community, feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed by relational thinking can ironically make one feel even more lonely. I - for example - don’t have a strong urge to live in community. But everything around me and my line of thinking suggests, that this is the way to go (and not just to live in a neighborhood, but usually a specific type of community, like an ecovillage), for a long time, that was what actually what made me feel lonely - the thought that me not wanting to means that something is wrong with me.
May foster nihilism or cynicism: If the system is too vast, too interconnected, too broken, does anything truly matter? Does any action avoid complicity?
May cause chronic indecision: The sheer weight of interconnected factors can make even simple choices feel impossibly fraught.
The Irreversible Shift
And yet... despite these challenges, the shift towards a relational understanding feels irreversible, essential. Even if it doesn't equate to conventional happiness, I find that it undeniably deepens our experience of life.
It adds layers of meaning.
It expands our awareness.
It fosters a more profound sense of responsibility (in a good way).
While some theories suggest our right hemisphere is more attuned to holistic perception, I sometimes wonder if the sustained cognitive and emotional demands of navigating our current predicaments might, over vast timescales or through more immediate processes of neuroplasticity, foster new neural capacities - an amygdala 2.0 perhaps, better equipped for complex ethical discernment. But that’s a thought for another day.
Anyways, so, while I don’t find that my life has become happier in the classical sense, I wouldn’t want to trade it for my former world of blissful ignorance.
As Bregman also quotes in the opening of his book:
“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be 'happy'. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.“ Leo Rosten, writer (1908-1997)
Maybe, living a good life is not about how happy we are. Maybe it’s not about us at all. Not even how meaningful our life was.
In The Body is The Doorway, Sophie Strand talks about how she saved a woodchuck on the street. She continues by asking the question whether that was her purpose of her existence, what if her life was about that moment, to be there to save the woodchuck.
What happens if we decenter our life story like that?
Relationality as Reality
Moreover, the relational turn is not something that people choose out of boredom or because they have nothing better to do. A relational understanding is a more adequate representation of reality. It is how reality - out there, no matter how we perceive it - is. The reason mechanistic philosophies fail is because they are a misrepresentation of reality. Our hyper-globalization is just what made this fact undeniable visible.
So, how do we live with this? How do we embrace relationality without succumbing to overwhelm and paralysis? How do we honour both the beauty of the whole and the tangible reality of the parts we inhabit?
Of course, this isn't about choosing one perspective over the other, but rather about cultivating the capacity to hold both. I don’t think we should replace a mechanistic, reductionist paradigm with a relational one. Instead, the better question is how to integrate both. We don’t want to keep the -isms, like reductionism, solutionism, scientism. But we do want to continue reducing to the parts sometimes, to offer solutions when adequate, and to continue using the scientific method.
So, here are some potential ideas of how to navigate this mess:
Cultivating cognitive flexibility: The tension isn't a problem to be solved definitively, but a polarity to be leaned into. We need the ability to zoom in and zoom out. Appreciate the specific, the local, the immediate (the rescued crow, the comforting cup of coffee) while holding awareness of the broader systemic context (the crow's ecosystem, the coffee's supply chain). This requires practice - consciously shifting perspectives, resisting the urge to collapse complexity into simple binaries. Seeing the tree and the forest.
Good enough-ing: Acknowledging complexity shouldn't be an excuse for inaction. Bregman's work often emphasizes the power of practical action rooted in hopeful vision. We must accept that perfect knowledge and purely good choices are often impossible in complex systems. Instead, we can strive for "good enough" actions based on the best available understanding, guided by core principles (like compassion, justice, regeneration). We act, we learn from the consequences (both intended and unintended), and we iterate. This requires humility and a willingness to be wrong.
Bounded agency: While we are connected to everything, we cannot be responsible for everything. Attempting to carry the weight of the entire world leads inevitably to burnout or paralysis. We need to consciously define our spheres of effective action - our families, our communities, our workplaces, specific causes we can meaningfully engage with.
Faith in the unknown: While it’s impossible to grasp the wholeness of it all, we can nonetheless lean into the fact that our actions influence - without us ever knowing how, when, and where - the whole. Once this becomes an embodied experience, we notice that how we do one thing is how we do everything. Whether our action is with care and kindness or with anger and impatience.
Seeking community: Navigating this complexity is too much for any single individual. The isolation risk of relational thinking is real, but the antidote is actual relationship. We need spaces for dialogue, collective inquiry, and shared sense-making. Talking through the ethical dilemmas, sharing information about complex systems, and coordinating actions within communities can distribute the cognitive and emotional load. Collective intelligence is better equipped to handle systemic complexity than individual intellect alone. (If you are curious about this, join us in PhilosophyGyms here).
Anchoring in core principles, not just predicted outcomes: Because the full consequences of our actions in complex systems are often unpredictable, relying solely on outcome-based calculations can be paralyzing or misleading. Instead, we can ground our choices more firmly in core ethical principles. Am I acting with compassion? Am I striving for justice? Am I respecting the inherent value of others (human and more-than-human)? Am I contributing towards regeneration rather than extraction? These principles can serve as a moral compass when the map of consequences is foggy. While Bregman also says that intention doesn’t necessarily lead to a good outcome (I agree), they are nonetheless a prerequisite.
Cultivating systemic awareness alongside analytical skill: Rather than discarding our analytical tools, we need to integrate them into a broader systemic understanding. This means learning to see patterns, feedback loops, leverage points, and emergent properties and appreciating that the whole is often more than, and different from, the sum of its parts. If you are somehow educating, you can actively cultivate this kind of systems thinking alongside traditional analytical training.
The Maturation of Awareness
This disquietude of “not knowing how to live” that arises when we truly begin to grapple with a relational worldview, isn't necessarily a sign that the worldview itself is flawed or that we are failing in our attempts to inhabit it. On the contrary, perhaps this very discomfort is an indicator of a developmental shift, a kind of collective growing up.
Think, for example, about the process of individual maturation. Moving from the egocentric certainties of childhood, where the world largely revolves around one's immediate needs and desires, towards the more complex understandings of adolescence and adulthood, involves confronting ambiguities, recognizing the perspectives of others, and accepting responsibilities that extend beyond the self.
This is rarely smooth.
Similarly, as a species, or at least as a civilization significantly shaped by the relatively recent experiment of modernity, we may be finding ourselves at a comparable threshold - as many argue, we are stuck in collective adolescence. The mechanistic, individualistic paradigm, with its clear-cut separations and its promise of control, offered a certain kind of intellectual and emotional comfort, much like a child's well-defined world. The relational worldview, however, thrusts us into a far vaster, more interconnected, and less predictable reality.
This is inherently unsettling. But it can also be seen as an essential step towards a more mature, responsible, and ultimately more realistic engagement with the world. The discomfort, then, is not a symptom of error, but rather the friction generated by growth, the cognitive and emotional labor required to expand our understanding and our sense of self to encompass a wider reality.
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This was like drinking holy water spiked with existential caffeine—thank you.
You name what most “everything is connected” takes leave out: that knowing too much can turn your morning coffee into a moral crisis and your good deeds into a philosophical hostage situation.
Relational thinking is sacred—but if we don’t ground it in grace, it’ll eat us alive.
This isn’t about becoming cosmic purity police. It’s about staying in the mess, tending our tiny knots in the great web, and maybe saving a crow or two without needing to solve planetary collapse before lunch.
Clear-eyed. Soft-hearted. Still moving.
—Virgin Monk Boy
We may all feel frustrated and feel ineffective.
Please consider this:
Within systems everything is connected to everything else.
We live in an infinite set of interdependent relationships.
You can not, not make a difference. Everything you do makes a difference. It’s impossible to do otherwise. Within systems we may not always know how and when that difference shows up.
But it is certain it will.
If half of us used one less paper towel a day we would save millions of trees. It’s that simple, complex and beautiful.
So when we, as you are, conscious and ethical, it does change the world.
How cool is that !