Ubuntu

Quite apart from being my Operating System of choice, Ubuntu is a word with powerfully relational, animistic etymology.

The concept of Ubuntu, of “a person (being) a person through (other) persons”, strikes at the core of what I try to express when I put my animism in terms of relationships, and what I mean when I say I fully identify “being alive” with “relationship”.

I’ve a few thoughts on why it may seem to us that some person, human or not, may seem to be more alive than another, but in the mean time…

From Wikipedia

Archbishop Desmond Tutu further explained Ubuntu as follows (2008):

One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.

And if we substitute the word person, in Graham Harvey’s sense of human people not being definitive of what constitutes a person, for human being… Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a person in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be a person all by yourself.

continued…

We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

Louw (1998) suggests that the concept of ubuntu defines the individual in their several relationships with others, and stresses the importance of ubuntu as a religious concept. He states that while the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (“a person is a person through (other) persons”) may have no apparent religious connotations in the context of Western society, in an African context it suggests that the person one is to become by behaving with humanity is an ancestor worthy of respect or veneration. Those who uphold the principle of ubuntu throughout their lives will, in death, achieve a unity with those still living.

Nelson Mandela explained Ubuntu as follows;

A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn’t have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?