Facing Reality: Humanity’s Opportunity to Come Home to the Essence of Being

Facing Reality: Humanity’s Opportunity to Come Home to the Essence of Being Human

The polycrisis upon us is a call for humanity to come home to the essence of being human: interconnected and interdependent within the web of life. The current global socio-economic and political systems negate everyone of the elements of our Essence as human beings. 

The current systems are designed to create the crises we face. Obscene wealth for the top 1% and poverty, inequality, and misery, for the many people on this planet. Mother Earth has enough resources for all, if only we would share fairly. We have access to the latest climate science to galvanise us to shift our behaviours to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, but scientific knowledge alone has proven not enough to trigger the requisite behavioural change. The incentives of the military industrial complex to perpetuate the current system, are powerful enough to sustain the system as is. Ongoing conflicts and wars are at the heart of the system which produces ever more lethal weapons to justify its existence. 

We have to face the reality that the dominant global socio-economic and political system is designed to thrive on the extractive model of the military industrial complex. This model externalises all responsibility for protecting the well-being of people and planet, whilst it internalises higher and higher profits. More is better. Short-termism, ‘winner takes all’, linear thinking, and reverence for hierarchical structures, drive the model. Colonialism and slavery are the logical tools that emerged from this model centuries ago to amass wealth for the few at the expense of the many and Mother Nature. Africa continues to suffer from the legacy of divide and conquer of this colonial extractive model that undermined wellbeing for all for a healthy planet. 

History and geography that has moved Africa from the centre of human history to the margins has to be confronted. Post-Industrial Revolution epistemology has distorted the history and geography of Africa. Google maps depictions of the geography of Africa shows it to be several magnitudes bigger than conventional maps: USA, China, Japan, and India, to name but a few. The Mother Continent is not only central to the world but bigger than traditional depictions. 

On the history side, George James, an African American scholar in 1954 published a book that no publisher was keen on:  Stolen Legacy: Egyptian Origins of Western Philosophy.  The book details evidence for his reclaims that what is known today as ‘Greek philosophy’ is African philosophy. He provides details of how ancient African scholars taught Greek seekers of knowledge and truth, including Socrates, Plato, Thales, and Aristotle, who came to Egypt to spend years under the tutelage of African wise people. Africa’s place in the world must be restored as the cradle of humanity, and of the first human civilisation, as a prerequisite to heal the wounds of the stolen legacy for both Africa and the thieves who stole its history. 

Restoring Africa’s place in the world would enable humanity to come home to itself as an interdependent interconnected species within the web of life. Africa’s wisdom of Ubuntu derived from our common ancestors, who built civilisations from the Great Lakes to the Nile Delta on the Mediterranean Sea, would inspire us to reimagine more sustainable and resilient futures. It is time to reclaim Ubuntu – our Essence. Our ancient ancestors knew what scientists only recently confirmed that there is only One Race – the Human Race. Racism, sexism, patriarchy and all other isms, are invented to justify discrimination and exploitation of those being othered.

What’s to be Done? 

Acknowledgment is a critical first step in responding appropriately to the reality we face. We need to acknowledge our departure from the wisdom of our common ancestors who learnt from nature and lived in harmony with it. As an Australian indigenous leader, the Keeper of Uluru (Ayers Rock) said: Humanity must become indigenous again to learn the lessons of nature and live in harmony with it.

Reformist agendas at national and global levels are distractions from the imperative of systemic transformation of our socioeconomic and political systems. The following areas of focus come to mind as the urgent steps to be taken:

• Jeremy Lent, an author and systems thinker, reminds us that: Once we shift our worldview, another world becomes possible. The era of Ronald Reagan/Margaret Thatcher promoted the false narrative that there is no alternative to the neoliberal extractive economic system. They were wrong. Humanity has the power to reimagine new worldviews and shift from the current polycrisis inducing ones, to more life sustaining regenerative worldviews.
• Educational philosophy must promote systems approaches that mirror our universe, where everything is connected to everything else. We must move from fragmented linear competitive empty vessel teaching and learning models to Education as the key to self-liberation within supportive teaching and learning Intergenerational circles. Every child, young person, and teacher, brings unique capabilities to the educational arena that needs to become a space that invites creativity and willingness to learn from others. 
• There are myriads of experimental models of self-librating education from South Africa, Morocco, and West Africa. What is needed is our readiness to embrace the new and shape it to become context appropriate for learning by doing.