Part of the problem is physiology. The front, focused part of the brain/mind is about immediate needs and wants. What feeds our individual selves/nodes. Yet it's the back of the brain, that only shines when we let it expand from that focal point, that the network exists.

It's like many people say life has no meaning or purpose, but that comes from giving, not taking.

Sentience might seem to originate from the body, but it's really the interface between the body and its environment. It is that feedback loop between node and network that creates an organism in tune with its situation. So our conscious state is constantly intermingling with others. We sense it in groups, making eye contact, etc. Love is when you are on the same wavelength and become one larger moment.

Seeing ourselves as individuals is like seeing a tree as just the trunk, not the branches and roots.

All the trunk by itself is good for, is lumber.

At best, our atomized culture is like a tree farm, not a forest.

Reductionism is sterile, but our minds are designed to separate signals from the noise, losing sight of the fact the noise is context for the signal.

So we spiral into our various rabbit holes of specialization and the larger world becomes some global Tower of Babel. With only the money changers siphoning energy off the sterile financial networks tying our world together.

We need to recognize the coin always has two sides.

Without the ups and downs, it's a flatline.