Ubuntu is described as, if I may clumbsily summarise the wonderful words of ADTutu... "the essence of being human"... in that we can define a person only in relation to other people, we cannot be human in isolation from others, we can only be human in interconnectedness with others. ADT talked about no human ever being fully self-sufficient, to be disconnected is to be sub-human.
"I need all of you to be who you are in order for me to be all that I am"...
He then went on to talk about the concept of restorative justice in South Africa, rather than retribution or reprisal... and that this is an example of living the concept of ubuntu, because according to ubuntu the greatest good is community harmony.
After this he spoke about one of my favourite passions - the obscenity of defence spending... trillions of dollars on a system that doesn't make sense and only makes the world more insecure... Says ATD "You want to fight a war against terrorism? Let me tell you one thing for sure. You are not going to win it, period. You won't win that war until you work so that the conditions that make people desperate are eradicated. Then you will realise that you won't have to worry about guys being upset with you."
And as I read this I listened to the news, with the Australian Government and Australian Federal Police introducing stronger internet surveillance... claiming that we are high risk of internet terrorism. When will we learn? This cops and robbers attitude of catching the bad guys is outdated and a waste of time... its like catching a rain shower with your hands.... you might catch some random drips...but many will slip through your fingers and you won't get anywhere near the rest of the storm... We need to focus on the causes not the results... Its like focussing on where to put the band-aids on your feet while you continue to stride across broken glass... Why not search for a broom? The reality is - if we ever needed to use our weapons then we would really understand ubuntu... we cannot destroy our enemies without destroying ourselves... and we cannot be safe without saving our enemies...
This was ADT's closing quote...
"We have the capacity to feed everyone on our planet. We have the capacity to ensure that everyone has clean water. We have the capacity to ensure that everyone has affordable health care. We have the capacity to ensure that every child gets the inoculations that they ought to have as children. We can prevent many of the diseases to which our children in the poorer parts of the world succumb. For goodness sake. Why don't we wake up to the fact that you can't have apartheid security. You can't have apartheid prosperity. If you are going to have security, its going to be security for all. If you are going to have prosperity, its going to be prosperity for all. If you want to be free, you can't have quarantine freedom. Its going to be freedom for all. And if you want to be human, we are not going to be able to be human in isolation. It will be that we are all human together."
I turn the page and Jeffrey Sacks shouts from the next story..."If you haven't noticed, people are dying. Its an emergency..."
"millions of people die every year for the stupid reason that they are too poor to stay alive... this is a plight we can end"
"the basic truth is that for less than a percent of the income of the rich world nobody has to die of poverty on the planet"
Ubuntu
I am left sitting with the question...
How can do I live my days knowing that the atrocities of the world are going on, and do almost nothing about it?
There are several answers, I know... I just can't bear to think them out loud in my head.... So I sit instead with the echoing question...
"How do I live my days, and live with myself, knowing that the atrocities of the world are going on around me, and not to do anything about it?"
3 comments:
Good Ol' Dez
Perhaps the most disturbing answer is that we live in a state of negative 'ubuntu'..... I do not feel rich unless I know that some one is poor, I do not know that I am fortunate unless there is some one demonstrating misfortune.....our dualistic life view, binary opposites that are used to define us personally, socially, spiritually has no room for oneness or extreme egalitarianism therefore we all suffer.
mmm good point... we live in connectedness and yet emotionally disconnected... we define ourselves in relations to others but can't allow ourselves to care too deeply about them or it would be overwhelming....
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