Moving From Descartes to Ubuntu Philsophy

by Emanuel Kuntzelman

It is important to emphasize that I��m not in any way asking anyone to stop their any personal work when I say we must focus on the good of the whole. The fact that we must begin shifting our focus from Descartes’s “I think therefore I am,” to the Ubuntu philosophy of “I am because you are;” doesn’t mean we stop worrying about our inner personal transformation. That continues, and that is every individual’s imperative work. As in all transformational modes, we don’t exclude the previous phase, we include and transcend. That is very, very important. We must include this whole long phase of individual introspection, and continue to include it as we have all this millennium. It is our spirit and soul. We aren’t going to deny this, but just move to a broader, social perspective.

In doing so, the main thing that changes is “why does it matter?, and what is the purpose?” That is where the big shift comes in. The problem of the individual angst that we have referred to is because it doesn’t really matter that much for the individual. That is the torment and frustration, because no matter how enlightened we are as individuals, if we can’t share that with anyone else it means nothing.

We are focusing on transformation for the sake of everyone else, and this is also how we will ultimately get our joy as well. If I sit alone in a room and have this absolutely ecstatic, enlightened moment and can’t convey this to someone else, what difference does it make? This is the differences between states and stages in evolutionary growth. If it is merely an introspective, individual happening, then it is more akin to being a state of experience. To make it a new evolutionary stage will only happen if we can share and convey the experience to others. This is really where we see the difference. We aren’t asking individual growth to discontinue, but rather to ask that person to broaden the sphere of their reality to concentrating more on sharing outward and not solely finding pleasure within the personal level.