Ubuntu

Ubuntu is a traditional African philosophy.  It helps us understand how we ourselves have a relation with the world, and how we all have common bonds.  When we discover our bonds through interactions with other human beings we then discover our own human qualities. Ubuntu is a philosophy we should all live by to better understand others and the world around us.  Ubuntu means to me that the interactions I have with people can help me realize what makes me different from them, how we are the same, and qualities I admire from them that I would like to emitt from my personality as well.  So many things seperate us, but the beating of our hearts, the souls we have in our bodies, and even the opposable thumbs make the purity of us the same.  We are all vaariations of one in the same.  Jeremy Rifkin's Empatheic Nation explains how we all come from one place.  We live around the world in hundreds of different countries speaking thousands of languages, but when it boils down to it we come from one man.... one woman.... which should have us united as one.  Ubuntu speaks of us being united, and Rifkin believes that the human race will not survive without us being united.  It goes against our grain to be selfish and to care for only yourself,  it is our nature in the purest form to be united.  The ubuntu philosophy makes me wonder if our hearts tell us to care about others around us... why do we as humans continue to be self centered?  What makes us act the way we do?

Ebert and Ezra

The idea of internet companionship has always been a strange one to me.  Why would I waste my life being on the internet building friendships when I can use my time to build physical friendships in person? Yet, Ebert acknowledged something that has never come across my mind.  I've never felt lonely so how can I judge these people.  My parents never abused me, if I was sad I have a network of people to talk to, and generally I keep myself preoccupied with close friends where I don't feel alone.  Yet, many people in the world have an uncanny ability to feel alone when they are in a room full of people.  The articles written by Ezra Klein (Being fully human)and Roger Ebert (Lonely people and a meeting of solitude) have shown that people don't need to be alone to feel lonely.  It has revealed that loneliness comes from a disregard of the problems that have been circulating within there spirits by the people you come in contact with on a daily basis. So many people isolate themselves from their fears of being unacknowledged so that they don't have to be disappointed by the character of people being self absorbed.  The internet is not a home for people to live; Ezra showed in his articles thats it's a fantasy world for them to experience the reality that they wished upon themselves.