"Part of the reason why so many come out in this particular kind of way that we have found so astonishing is that in our African worldview, there is a thing called ubuntu. A person is called ubuntu, and ubuntu is the essence of being human. Ubuntu is compassion, ubuntu is hospitality, ubuntu is warmth, ubuntu is sharing, ubuntu is caring.
And because of our sense that I am because you are, because we say a person is a person through other persons, my humanity is caught up in your humanity. If I want to enhance my humanity, it is by the process of enhancing yours. If I de-humanize you, whether I like it or not, inexorably my humanity is diminished.
And so, in part, it is a form of self-interest, this thing of not wanting to revenge, because revenge, anger, bitterness - all of these are corrosive of ubuntu, of the harmony that is for the summum bonum, the great good. And so, in a sense, I am not paying back to you, I do not settle scores with you, because the anger is dissipated, and you become a better person, and in that process, I become a better person too."
-Desmond Tutu.
Ubuntu.
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