Ubuntu

"If I diminish you, I diminish myself"

In my culture and tradition the highest praise that can be given to someone is, "Yu, u nobuntu," an acknowledgment that he or she has this wonderful quality: ubuntu. it is a reference to their actions toward their fellow human beings, it has to do with how they regard people and how they see themselves within their intimate relationships, their familial relationships, and within the broader community.Ubuntu addresses a central tenet of African philosophy: the essence of what it is to be human.The definition of this concept has two parts. The first is that the person is friendly, hospitable, generous, gentle, caring, and compassionate. In other words, someone who will use their strengths on behalf of others- the weak and the poor and the ill- and not take advantage of anyone. This person treats others as he or she would be treated. And because of this they express the second part of the concept, which concerns openness, large-heartedness. They share their worth. In doing so my humanity is recognized and becomes inextricably bound to theirs.

People with ubuntu are approachable and welcoming; their attitude is kindly and well-disposed; they are not threatened by the goodness in others because their own self-esteem and self-worth is generated by knowing they belong to a greater whole. To recast the Cartesian proposition "I think, therefore I am,"ubuntu would phrase it, "I am human because I belong." Put another way, "A person is a person through other people," a concept perfectly captured by the phrase "me we." No one comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think or walk or speak or behave unless we learned it from our fellow human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. The solitary, isolated human being is a contradiction in terms. 

Because we need one another, our natural tendency is to be cooperative and helpful. If this were not true we would have died out as a species long ago, consumed by our violence and hate. But we haven't. We have kept on despite the evil and the wars that have brought so much suffering and misery down the centuries. We have kept on because we strive for harmony and community, a community not only of the living but also one that honors our forebears. This link to the past gives us a sense of continuity, a sense that we have created, and create societies that are meant to be for the greater good and try to overcome anything that subverts our purpose. Our wars end; we seek to heal.

But anger, resentment, a lust for revenge, greed, even the aggressive competitiveness that rules so much of our contemporary world, corrodes and jeopardizes our harmony. Ubuntu points out that those who seek to destroy and dehumanize are ALSO VICTIMS- victims usually, of a pervading ethos, be it a political ideology, an economic system, or a distorted religious conviction. Consequently, they are as much dehumanized as those on whom they trample.

Never was this more obvious than during the apartheid years in South Africa. All humanity is interlinked. Thus, the humanity of the perpetrators of apartheid was inexorably bound to that of their victims. When they dehumanized another by inflicting suffering and harm, they dehumanized themselves. In fact I said at the time that the oppressor was dehumanized as much as, if not more than, those oppressed. How else could you interpret the words of the minister of police, Jimmy Kruger, on hearing the death of Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, in prison. Of his tortured and painful killing, Kruger said, it "leaves me cold." You have to ask what has happened to the humanity- the ubuntu- of someone who could speak so callously about the suffering and death of a fellow human being.

It was equally clear that recovering from this situation would require a magnanimousness on the part of the victims if there as to be a future. The end of apartheid, I knew, would put ubuntu to the test. Yet I never doubted its power of reconciliation. In fact I often recalled the words of a man called, Malusi Mpumlwana, an associate of Biko's, who, even while he was being tortured by the security police, looked at his torturers and realized that these were human beings too and that they needed him "to help them recover the humanity they [were] losing."

This is the essence of ubuntu, or "me we," and it is expressed so poignantly in the life and actions of Mahatma Gandhi. His ubuntu showed that the ONLY way we can ever be human is together. The only way we can ever be free is together. 

-Desmond M. Tutu
[Taken from the book Peace]  

: If only we could all read this, believe it, live it. What a glorious world it could be.