When we prioritised independence over proximity

For most of human history, people didn’t grow up in isolation.

They grew up around others. Across ages. Across roles. Through shared meals, shared work, shared time. Empathy wasn’t explained. It was absorbed. Skills weren’t taught in theory. They were learned by watching, repeating, adjusting.

This wasn’t ideology. It was proximity.

That doesn’t mean it was perfect. It doesn’t mean harm didn’t exist. It doesn’t mean staying was always healthy. But it did mean that learning, identity, and continuity travelled through contact, not instruction.

Then something shifted.

Independence became the highest virtue. Distance was reframed as growth. Separation as self-definition. Leaving stopped being a phase and became proof of progress. And slowly, staying connected began to feel like stagnation instead of continuity.

Now we speak fluently about boundaries, but struggle with belonging.

We move away. We outgrow family. We explain disconnection as healing. Sometimes it is. Sometimes distance is survival, and staying would have been destructive. But often — more often than we admit — it’s fragmentation dressed as progress.

What gets lost isn’t tradition for tradition’s sake. It’s transmission.

When people no longer stay in contact long enough, stories stop travelling. Skills don’t repeat enough to become instinct. Empathy doesn’t get practiced across difference. You don’t learn patience alone. You don’t inherit wisdom through content.

You inherit it through repetition, proximity, and time.

This is why so much feels shallow now. Not because people don’t care — but because there’s nowhere for depth to accumulate. Everyone is self-authoring in isolation, chasing stimulation instead of continuity. Dopamine replaces ritual. Convenience replaces craft.

No one learns to cook by watching a meal take shape slowly over years. They learn to assemble. To heat. To optimise. Food becomes fuel, not memory. The recipe doesn’t carry a story anymore. It carries instructions.

And when skills don’t carry stories, they don’t root.

This isn’t a call to return to the past. We can’t. And it wouldn’t solve anything.

It’s a recognition that autonomy without continuity leaves a gap — and we haven’t filled it with anything equivalent. Humans still learn who they are through others. Growth still requires friction. And friction still requires proximity.

The question isn’t whether we should give up independence.

It’s whether we can choose connection deliberately — long enough for something to be passed on.

Because if nothing travels forward, culture doesn’t evolve.

It resets.

But reset isn’t inevitable. It’s just what happens when no one chooses otherwise.