WORLDVIEW: Schultz discovers Ubuntu – perhaps the world is ready for Smuts’ Holism

My inbox often contains fascinating correspondence. Especially nowadays with fellow South Africans confused by a reality of abundant information with a scarcity of wisdom. Yesterday illustrated it well..One correspondent, a white farmer, was full of angst after watching a video produced by a recent German visitor to South Africa. Her artistically beautiful but factually challenged production documented an unsuccessful attempt to earn the trust of UCT radicals. The reporter was distraught those she tried to help rebuffed her because she is white..The flip side was the link I was sent to last week's commencement speech at 2017 Arizona State University by Starbucks founder Howard Schultz. This boy from the projects whose business employs 300,000, devotes much of a stirring 14 and a half minutes to unpacking the spirit of Ubuntu. A concept he encountered during a first visit to South Africa last year..___STEADY_PAYWALL___.It shouldn't surprise you the one we published was Schultz's address. The German was frustrated by not being able to make sense of an outpouring of juvenile bile. So she documented the emotive passion of those invested in hate – the "system", Mandela, capitalism, whites and pretty much everyone not aligned with their worldview..Schultz, by contrast, shared an uplifting story of the 50 newly employed staffers at Starbucks Johannesburg. For all of them, this was their very first job. His speech climaxes with the entrepreneur shouting Ubuntu! Ubuntu! Ubuntu! at thousands of students graduating from the US's biggest university. I'm hoping that after the celebration, some of them will dig around. Because with a little luck, they'll discover another great idea out of SA..In 1926, the first edition of the ground-breaking Holism and Evolution was published simultaneously in London and New York. It documents beliefs of SA's world renowned polymath, general-lawyer-academic-politician-philosopher-botanist Jan Christiaan Smuts. .Holism theorises that everything in the universe is connected. The idea was dismissed as outrageous when Smuts first wrote about it. But today, he is widely recognised as a man who lived and thought ahead of his time. The ancient concept of Ubuntu offers a similar view of humanity – a person is a person through other persons. Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks of Ubuntu as the very essence of being human. And when they encounter this seemingly obvious thought, people like Schultz are seriously impressed..Whatever your personal perspectives, it is worth noting that of four foreigners honoured with statues in London's Parliament Square, two are South Africans. And the greatest achievements of both were as peacemakers – Smuts in bringing together Boer and Brit, the white tribes of Africa; Nelson Mandela to doing the same between black and white South Africans. Those who make a contribution are admired and remembered long after haters and destroyers have faded from public consciousness. There must be a message in that somewhere.

WORLDVIEW: Schultz discovers Ubuntu – perhaps the world is ready for Smuts’ Holism

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