Collaboration: symmetric interaction
„How can I trust you?- Bingo! It is a pickle, no doubt about it.“
My soul craves for integrity of being. It is by manipulating the left side of the equation that I may create socio-cultural contexts with others. Autonomy means realizing my self – by questioning what I am and relating myself to others, both as recognition and appreciation. A credit of trust and the readiness to change prevalent assumptions and accustomed behavioural patterns are preconditions for symmetric interaction. Collaboration is programmed in a medium-term perspective. Conscious sacrifice for an inclusive context rather than rational investment characterize this mode of action: if I ever gain something from it, the return will most probably not be one of the sorts I have put into the pot beforehand.
The community: in search for the self. Actors of Belarusian Free Theatre give life to a being in between them during a performance in Minsk.
In my perspective the most important gain of collaboration is that it helps to create interest: in the literal sense of inter-esse, of something in between people. Socio-cultural contexts provide stability of references to individuals sustaining a community as long as they consciously reproduce them. Personal identity which is grounded in inclusive groups is both considerately and cultivatable. Love thyself, the other and the context you create with him or her. Love does not blind us like vanity – it rather deafens us towards certain signals but amplifies others. It enables me to create the future.
An illusion of control is the obscene underside of collaboration. Costs are not to be easily – if at all – estimated. The menace of existential losses puts up a high threshold. A new form of dependency comes to light here: promises might be broken, group identities tend to make individual ones obsolete, and capacities can be overstrained. These always include my own, whose loss directly threatens my personal integrity. And I shall not forget the temptation to use a progressing context first of all to change others while hiding away myself. Nevertheless, collaboration is ultimately a cult of the living.