K: So the basis of our relationship is utilitarian.
R: If you apply that test, then there is no relationship.
K: There is an idea, a formula, a pattern, a goal, a principle, a utopia we agree
upon, but is there relationship?
A: Is relationship then merely an idea?
K: You are not addressing the deeper issue here, which is: As long as there is an
observer who is committing himself to a course of action, is there a relationship
between you and me?
A: Is there no relationship between two people?
K: This is really an enormous problem, sir. Am I related to that tree when I look
at it? Relationship is a distance between me, as an observer, and the tree, which
is the observed. When there is a distance between the observer and the observed,
is there any possibility of relationship? I am married and have built an image of
my wife, and she has built an image of me; the image is a distancing factor. Is
there any relationship between us apart from the physical one? All of us
cooperate to do something; it brings us together. But I have my own worries, and
she has her own agonies. We are working together, but are we related?
A: Sir, this point of working together has been understood, but not the other.
K: Just a minute. I believe it took three thousand people working together to
build the rocket, each man working to create a perfect mechanism; each man put
aside his idiosyncracies and there was what is called ‘cooperation’ between them.
Is that real cooperation? When you and I with common motives work together to
build a house, we are still separate human beings. Is that cooperation? When I
look at a tree, there is a distance between me and the tree; I am not ‘in
relationship’ with the tree. That distance is not created by the physical space; it is
created by knowledge. Therefore, what is relationship, what is cooperation and
what is the factor of division?
SW: Images in one form or another divide.
K: Go slowly. There is that tree. I look at it. The physical distance between me
and that tree may be a few yards, but the actual distance between me and that tree
is vast. Though I look at it, my eyes, mind, heart—everything—is very far away.
That distance is incalculable. In the same way, I look at my wife, and I am very
far away. In the same way, I am very far away in cooperative action.
SW: Is the word, the image, interfering in all this?