Tuesday, November 28, 2006

this is for diogo

Motho ke motho ka Batho

this is Bantu (or some related tongue) for "a person is a person because of other people". In Communalistic societies, for instance Bantu, humans are social beings and the self is not emphasized. The community is important. What's good for society is good for the people in it. We live in an Liberalistic or Individualistic society where people all believe that happiness comes through self actualization. Where the community is becoming less and less a real thing. To be YOU and to make yourself happy is all that we have time for. The Nguni and Bantu word Ntu, meaning nothing, is derived from the word Muntu (person). This is not to say that a person is nothing, just empty and soulless, not at all. It means that a person is not a thing. The essence of a person cannot be captured in a definition as an object... because a person is a subject. The essence of a person is fluid, always evolving, thinking and feeling, moving through time and space as time and space move through them. Every thought or feeling makes you a new reality. Your experiences build you. The people you love and who love you build you.

So when a person decides he has a weakness, and wants to overcome it so that the quality of his life might be improved, he can evolve and there is no fear of losing the thing that makes him him. Because there is no thing that makes him him. He just is and does and goes and feels and sees and believes and grows.


If anyone is interested, I found this dissertation written by a scholar at the University of Pretoria. About the difference between the two types of societies. But this was actually all inspired by Ed and Sociology class today.

5 comments:

Sj said...

I like the way you stated it here Kristin. There is no fear.

There is no spoon.

Anonymous said...

El gets promised an ode.

Diogo gets a post.

And still nothing for me. I'm hurt, crushed, destroyed. I no longer know how I will go on.

Oh, how I wish the sighing were for me.

kristin said...

marieseda,

what have you done for me lately???

just kidding.

you know I love you. look at it this way, it's not like i've actually written the ode for chup. individual posts may be written for certain people, but you know my raison d'etre of blogging is you.

did you, uh, like this post???

Anonymous said...

(Ohhh yeah, the post)

It was okay (I guess). I like to believe that I that there is no thing that simply makes me me. That there is no possible definition or finite set of words to describe me.

I would have commented on the actual post initially, I got disheartened over the fact that it was subtitled - this is for Diogo - and completely lost my train of thought.

kristin said...

it was only for diogo cause I thought it was too big a point to get lost in his comments.

silly ms.