I am because you are. I am because we are. Ubuntu. An African term, Ubuntu is the deep philosophical belief that we exist only because of the power of our shared humanity, our shared capacity for compassion, our interconnectedness. There is no place where I end and you begin. Think about what made you, really you. Well, maybe you could say that you started being you the moment you were born. Well, what about before that moment? You existed for nine months, that was also you. Let’s go back even further, you were inherently possible as a sentient being because of your parents and their ancestors before them.
None of us comes into this world fully formed. Our language, our mannerisms, our social customs, and countless other things are learned from others. We categorically behave as “humans” because of the humans around us and the humans that came before those humans. The Anthropocene as a period of time and our advancement as a species exist because we built on the knowledge of those before us. The Philosopher Carl Jung goes as far as to say that we share what’s known as a “collective unconscious” or the “objective psyche.” He believes that every human is born with a reserve of information, a collection of knowledge and imagery that has been honed over millennia. You may not be consciously aware of it happening but according to Jung, the phenomenon explains why our species share collective phobias such as those of snakes, the fear of the dark, and loud noises. We have been able to progress not as individuals but rather as a collective, standing on the shoulders of giants.
Ubuntu in most ways contradicts the Western values of individual exceptionalism, the idea that we are the only flagbearers of our success or failure. Before I have a
riot on my hands, Ubuntu doesn’t mean communism, it encourages individual uniqueness as well. More than anything the philosophy believes humanity to be a mirror, you can’t be human as an island. A person is a person through the recognition of other people and their humanity and compassion, we constantly create each other and in this is how we are continuously created. I am who I am because I am a mirror of you. I’m a mirror of our collective humanity.
Conversely, it also stands that “we are because I am.” A person that subscribes to Ubuntu is open and welcoming of others and their differences, such a person wouldn’t despair about the success of others rather I believe they would feel a sense of self-assurance by being a part of a greater whole. Similarly, he or she would feel diminished when humanity was admonished. More than anything Ubuntu is a philosophy of doing no harm. How can it be anything else when I am you and by harming you, I only harm us? With extreme individualism and political polarization on the rise is Ubuntu the philosophy our species desperately needs? Is Ubuntu the way to come to terms with our interconnectedness and the role we are playing in the climate emergency and social injustices?
We need to become a part of the global community and act as one for our future because the only way on is together.
We desperately need to act together, as a whole because “I am because WE are”.
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