Engagement: striving for 'ubuntu'
In South Africa, where I live and work a part of each year, there is a concept of community called ubuntu. It is best expressed by the Xhosa proverb: "People are people through other people"-which is to say that my humanity is bound up in yours. What dehumanizes you dehumanizes me. I belong to a greater whole, so I am diminished when others are diminished by oppression. It is not "I think, therefore I am." It is "I am human because I belong."