Connection and Existence

Preface

Each of us inhabits a different universe. Every consciousness operates with different parameters. Even when looking at the same red rose, there is no way to prove that the red your optic nerve and brain interpret carries the same qualitative texture (qualia) as the red I experience.

Because of this fundamental difference, we can never understand another person with the binary clarity of zeros and ones. Experience is an ambiguous, continuous flow, and within that uncertainty we must choose, moment by moment, what attitude to adopt. This "unknowability" is our starting point.

This essay does not remain mere speculation. It proposes a single principle, examines the hypotheses that follow from it, compares them against competing perspectives, and traces the practical implications.

1. The Bottleneck of Consciousness

The loneliness we feel originates in biological limitations.

We commonly say that humans "multitask," but cognitive science paints a somewhat different picture. The capacity for conscious processing is severely limited; even when it feels like we are doing several things at once, we are often rapidly switching attention between them.¹ Unconscious processing, by contrast—the regulation of heart rate, breathing, digestion, and body temperature governed by the autonomic nervous system—runs continuously in parallel.² Even complex motor control like postural maintenance is largely automatic and unconscious.³

Yet the information that makes it onto the stage of "consciousness" is extremely restricted. To squeeze through this narrow bottleneck, the brain does not accept information as-is. It compresses, interprets, and reconstructs.

This is precisely the point constructivism identifies. The visual information we feel we "see" is not the image that falls on the retina, but a product edited by the brain using past experience and expectation.⁴ Illusions, optical tricks, and context-dependent perception reveal that the brain is closer to "predicting and filling in" than to "actually looking."⁵ Vision is less a simple sensation than an active act of interpretation.

A premise needs to be made explicit here.

"The brain is a system that computes and compresses information."

This is the assumption of computationalism, or the Computational Theory of Mind.⁶ Without the premise that the brain is a kind of information-processing and compression system, the discussion that follows cannot stand. Sensory input is not stored verbatim; it is efficiently coded and summarized to aid prediction and decision-making. According to the efficient coding hypothesis, sensory systems have evolved and developed to reduce redundancy and compress information in accordance with environmental statistics.⁷ Predictive coding models hold that the visual cortex represents the world through a "prediction–error" structure.⁸

In short, we do not live in the world as it is, but in an "abridged edition" that the brain has edited down to a manageable level.

2. The Predicting Brain, the Human Become Function

The most efficient way the brain summarizes the world is by finding patterns. This function is directly tied to survival, especially when we encounter other people.

Because each person's parameters differ, another person's inner state is a permanent black box. We cannot know whether someone is friendly or hostile. In a primal environment, such uncertainty would have spelled danger. So we had to predict ceaselessly.

The paradox emerges here. The very attempt to make others predictable ended up making us ourselves predictable. To interact smoothly within the vast system called society, we learn and internalize agreed-upon patterns.

In concrete terms, we volunteer to become functions that return a predetermined output for a given input. When the input is "Hello," we almost automatically produce the output "Nice to meet you." In order to predict each other more easily, we have turned ourselves into predictable machines.

Of course, we are not entirely mechanical functions. At times we comply with social scripts; at other times we reveal ourselves precisely by breaking them. Nonetheless, the tendency to "functionalize" oneself to smooth social interaction clearly exists.

Here is the crucial point. The process of becoming a function did not occur in isolation. The gaze, expectations, and reactions of others came first; my "functional self" was formed as a response to them. The order matters.

3. The Limits of Classification

What a functionalized life provides is a sense of stability. To maintain this stability, we rely on the tool of "established taxonomies." Good and evil, success and failure, ally and enemy. Binary frames are seductive because they organize a complex world in an instant.

Yet actual experience is continuous, like an analog signal, while the language and concepts we employ are discrete and coarse, like a digital one. We are laying a rough grid over a smooth continuum. When social categorization and stereotypes reduce complex people to a handful of labels, we witness the limits of this grid.⁹

To arrive at truly worthwhile thought, we must shatter these comfortable categories. We must begin from the radical assumption that "existing ways of dividing the world are wrong." We need to try redefining the world from its most fundamental principles.

As we have seen so far,

• we live atop a consciousness with a bottleneck,
• compressing and predicting the external world,
• producing domesticated, function-like patterns forged in interaction with others.

All of these facts open space for redrawing the world around interaction—that is, connection—rather than the independent individual. I now want to condense this intuition into a single principle.

4. A Proposed Principle: Connection Precedes the Individual

I propose a single principle that runs through the discussion so far.

"Connection precedes the individual."

This inverts the common assumption that an isolated self exists first and later connects with others. Instead, it asserts that the web of connections comes first, and the "I" emerges after the fact as a knot in that web.

4-0. What "Connection" Means in This Essay

If the word "connection" is used too broadly, it becomes a concept that says nothing at all. In this essay, I will use it to include at least the following:

1. Interaction: the exchange of information, affect, and influence between two systems (people, groups, generations, neurons, etc.)
2. Repetition and constraint: as that interaction recurs, it constrains each party's state space and shapes what actions are possible

Gene transmission or a single physical collision could, in the broadest sense, count as connection, but in this essay "connection" primarily refers to relationships in which information, affect, and behavioral patterns are repeatedly exchanged. I will make the meaning more specific whenever the context shifts.

4-1. Its Status as a Principle

Terminology needs to be clarified. I do not call this an "axiom." An axiom, by definition, can be neither proved nor disproved. This principle, however, while not directly testable in itself, can be evaluated indirectly through the success or failure of the empirical hypotheses it generates.

A principle is a frame through which to view the world. Its truth or falsity cannot be judged directly; but if the predictions it yields keep proving correct, it is a useful frame, and if they keep missing, it should be discarded.

4-2. Derived Hypotheses

From the principle "connection precedes the individual," I formulate several falsifiable hypotheses.

Hypothesis H1: The Self-Concept Forms After Recognition of Others

The "self-concept" I refer to here is not mere bodily sensation or a minimal sense of agency—"I am moving," "this body is mine." It refers to a conceptual, narrative self that can reflectively state, "I am this kind of person."

There is evidence from developmental psychology. Infants begin recognizing themselves in the mirror—pointing and identifying "me"—around 18 months of age.¹⁰ But before that, from just a few months old, they already follow others' gaze, imitate others' emotional responses, and form joint attention.¹¹ The ability to look at something together with another person and to attune to another's emotions precedes self-recognition. Studies on mirror self-recognition and the development of joint attention support this ordering.¹⁰¹¹ Of course, if cases are found in which a conceptual self forms first under conditions of complete isolation, this hypothesis collapses.

Hypothesis H2: Extreme Isolation Disintegrates the Self

There are cases of feral children. Children who suffered extreme social deprivation are known to show severe deficits not only in language and social skills, but also in the ability to experience themselves as a person distinct from others.¹²

Furthermore, in sensory deprivation experiments and prolonged states of extreme isolation, many people report experiences of blurred self-boundaries or a collapse of their sense of reality. Research consistently shows that social exclusion and isolation severely damage self-esteem and self-evaluation.¹³¹⁴

What evidence would falsify this hypothesis? Consistent reports would be needed of an intact self being maintained or formed under conditions of complete isolation. No such reports exist to date.

Hypothesis H3: Self-Organization of Neural Networks Also Requires External Input

This is testable from both neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

• A visual cortex that develops without sensory input fails to acquire normal function. In classical visual deprivation studies, covering one or both eyes during a critical period causes irreversible damage to the connectivity and function of the visual cortex.¹⁵¹⁶
• In humans as well, the absence of adequate visual input during infancy severely impairs the development of vision and the visual cortex.¹⁷
• Artificial neural networks, too, cannot form meaningful representations without sufficient data. Deep learning models can learn useful features only through vast training data; without data, "meaningful self-organization" effectively does not occur.¹⁸

Both the visual cortex and artificial neural networks exhibit the same pattern—meaningful structure does not emerge without external input.^15161718 If a system were discovered that generates rich internal structure through self-organization alone, without any external input, this hypothesis would need to be reconsidered.

The empirical evidence available so far broadly supports these hypotheses. The more the hypotheses are supported, the more the overarching principle earns its status as a "useful frame."

One caveat is in order. If the definition of "connection" becomes excessively broad, problems arise. If gene transmission counts as connection, as do physical interactions, as does quantum entanglement—at that point the hypotheses become unfalsifiable again. To maintain rigor, one must keep specifying what "connection" means in each context, as I have done above.

4-3. Comparison with Competing Principles

"Connection precedes the individual" is not the only option. There is a traditional alternative:

"The individual precedes connection."

In this view, an independent, substantive self exists first, and these selves subsequently form relationships. Descartes' cogito and the modern concept of the subject belong to this lineage.

Let us apply the two principles to several phenomena.

Feral children and developmental deprivation. The fact that extreme isolation impedes self-formation¹²¹³¹⁴ follows naturally from "connection first." Under "individual first," a separate explanation is needed for why an already-existing self is so severely damaged by relational deprivation alone.

Genetic temperament. Temperamental differences visible from birth may seem to favor "individual first." But what if genes themselves are the materialization of connection with previous generations?¹⁹²⁰ My temperament is less an isolated "mine" than the result of an entire lineage's environment and stress reaching all the way to me.

Self-collapse upon severing of relationships. The death of a loved one, divorce, exile—these experiences are widely observed to shake one's sense of identity.¹³¹⁴ Research has also shown that the dissolution of a romantic relationship weakens both the content and the clarity of the self-concept.²¹ Under "connection first," this is only natural: the strings that held the knot together have been cut. Under "individual first," one must explain why external relationships penetrate the internal self so deeply.

The experience of "no-self" during meditation. The dissolution of self-boundaries is reported across contemplative traditions.²² If the self was always a construct of relationships, it is natural that its boundaries blur when that construction relaxes.

Everyday intuition. Here, "individual first" has the advantage. In daily life, we experience ourselves as independent units. "Connection first" runs against this intuition and must therefore explain why it arises—perhaps an efficient self-model of a "single agent" was needed for making decisions in a complex relational web.

In sum, the "connection first" principle explains more phenomena with fewer ad hoc exceptions. The clash with everyday intuition remains, but this is a phenomenon to be explained, not a reason to reject the principle. There was a time when "the Earth moves" also contradicted everyday intuition.

4-4. Practical Implications

A principle's value is not judged by truth or falsity alone. How it changes thought and practice when adopted also matters.

Ethics: The Unit of Harm Changes

Under the "individual first" paradigm, harm is injury inflicted on an individual. Under the "connection first" paradigm, harm is the damage done to a relationship.

• Murder is the annihilation of an individual, but it is also the tearing of every web of connection that had that person as a knot.
• Environmental destruction is an act of severing connection with future generations.¹⁹²⁰
• Social exclusion isolates the individual while simultaneously weakening the connective structure of the community.¹³¹⁴

This does not mean, of course, that "as long as the relationship is fine, violence within it is acceptable." Even when connection is taken as the basic unit, the vulnerability and rights of the individuals who compose that connection must also be considered.

Identity: From "Who Am I?" to "At What Intersection of Connections Do I Stand?"

The question "Who am I?" becomes "At what intersection of connections do I stand?"

Identity is not a fixed essence hidden inside, waiting to be discovered, but a pattern produced by the arrangement of relationships:

• family, friends, lovers, colleagues,
• generations and cultures,
• language and memory.

Identity thus becomes more fluid and less essentialist. When relationships change, I change. Research showing that the content and clarity of the self-concept undergo major reorganization when an intimate relationship begins or ends illustrates this well.²¹

Responsibility: Individual vs. System

From the "connection first" perspective, the balance point between individual responsibility and systemic responsibility shifts.

• Punishing the individual criminal alone is insufficient—the web of connections that shaped that individual (family, education, economic structure, discrimination, etc.) must also be examined.
• This does not, however, annihilate individual responsibility. A knot is part of the net, but the strength and position of the knot itself still matter. After all, different people make different choices even in the same environment.

Death: Beyond the Annihilation of the Individual

The annihilation of the individual is not the whole story.

The connections a person formed, the influence they left behind, their place in the memories of others—these continue to operate after biological death. This is not immortality in the traditional sense, of course.

But if we view the "I" as a pattern of relationships, part of that pattern undeniably survives—in genes, epigenetic traces, customs, language, and memory, in very concrete ways.¹⁹²⁰

4-5. What It Means to Embody the Principle

Ethics, identity, responsibility, death—these practical implications concerned how we view the world. But accepting the principle does not end with "seeing" the world differently. It also means "feeling" oneself differently.

Understanding intellectually that connection precedes the individual is one thing; experiencing it in daily life is another. What does the latter feel like?

It is the sense, upon opening your eyes in the morning, that "what I will do today" does not spring purely from within. Yesterday's conversation, a book read long ago, habits inherited from parents, the rhythm of the culture I belong to—all of these have already shaped "today's me." And the moment when that awareness arrives not as fear, but as relief.

When you escape the illusion that an isolated self must generate everything on its own, the burden paradoxically lightens. I was never alone to begin with.

This feeling must come first, so that the following sentence becomes a description of experience rather than an empty declaration.

5. The Awareness of Being Part of a Whole

"I am directed by the world in how to act."

This may sound poetic, but it is a proposition derived from a principle. If connection precedes the individual, then my actions have been shaped within my relationship with the world from the very start. If the phrasing "directed" is uncomfortable, it may be replaced with "co-constituted."

This could be read as fatalism denying free will. It is closer, however, to demolishing the narrow walls of self-consciousness and acknowledging that one is an organic part of a vast system.

Even my unique parameters were formed through countless interactions with others and across generations.¹⁹²⁰ We feel anxious, isolated in separate universes, yet in truth we are predicting and responding to one another, co-creating a single great current.

When we become aware that we are beings directed by the world, we paradoxically free ourselves from the compulsion that "I alone must control everything." We surrender to the larger flow, yet the attitude with which we respond within it remains our own. That is the minimal freedom this essay speaks of.

Conclusion

The best we can do is to decide the attitude with which we respond to the great current the world sends our way.

Whether this principle is ultimately correct is something we cannot know. That is the nature of principles. But we can adopt one and live by it. We can observe how the world looks different, how our relationships change, how loneliness transforms when we do.

Just that much freedom. And yet it is enough.

Appendix: Structure of the Argument

This essay departs from two premises: that the brain is a system that computes and compresses information⁶⁷⁸, and that consciousness has a bottleneck¹. From these it proposes the principle "connection precedes the individual" and attempts indirect evaluation through three falsifiable hypotheses—that the self-concept forms after recognition of others¹⁰¹¹, that extreme isolation disintegrates the self¹²¹³¹⁴, and that self-organization of neural networks requires external input^15161718. The criteria for evaluating the principle are the empirical support for these hypotheses, its explanatory power relative to competing principles, and its practical utility when adopted. Five claims are derived: that we are mutually constituted as prediction machines; that existing classification systems obscure connectedness; that embodying the principle demands a shift from understanding to lived experience; that "being directed by the world" is an awareness of connectedness; and that the remaining freedom is the choice of attitude.

Questions remain. The definition of "connection" must be specified in each context; the clash with everyday intuition requires further explanation; and what changes when one adopts the principle and lives by it must be observed empirically.

References