Declaration of Interdependence

What if someone from Santa Cruz had written that letter to King George in 1776?

Declaration of Interdependence

Dear King George,

There are some things we need to discuss. But before we get into that, we just want you to know that we love you and we will continue to love you even if our relationship changes.

This arrangement isn't working for us anymore. One of the problems is that we don't feel heard.

The message we got from you—and correct us if we are misunderstanding—is that you want us to pay you more money but you don't want to hear our input. When we got that message, we felt hurt and afraid.

We have decided to create some space in our relationship. We just need to work some things out by ourselves.

Also, we have some ideas that we think are good ones and we would like to try them out. We have checked around and it seems that everyone over here just wants to be happy, so we would like to give people the freedom to figure out what that means for themselves. Also, people seem to treasure their lives almost more than anything else, so we are going to see what we can do to support them in creating a meaningful life.

George, we heard that you have been experiencing some altered states lately, so your reality is probably quite a bit different from our reality. There are many possible realities, but we would rather not have your reality imposed on us.

When you did things before that hurt us, we told you that it wasn't okay with us, but you keep doing the same sorts of things. It seems like you just keep taking and taking without giving. That makes us feel unsafe and unsupported.

We have discussed this amongst ourselves and have decided not to let you continue this abusive behavior. You and we both probably need some time to heal after this, so maybe it's better if we leave each other alone for a while.

Peace out.

signed....


Original version by Thomas Jefferson, et alia, 1776:
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/