June 2011
Beginner
226 pages
2h 51m
English
Idea 5: Reciprocity
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibres connect us with our fellow men; and among these fibres, as sympathetic threads, our actions act as causes and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick
The reason that communication is essentially dialogue and not monologue lies very deep within human nature.
In fact, we become persons only in relation to one another – and that entails mutual giving, receiving and sharing. The Bantu-speaking tribes of southern Africa have a word for it: ubuntu. The concept this indicates means literally ‘I am a person because of other persons’. Hence the African proverb: ‘It takes the whole village to raise a child.’
Reciprocity is at the heart of being human. ...
