4. Mutual Freedom
We are alive within a whole universe of interrelated life. Martin Luther King described it this way: “All persons are tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
By feeling the living reality of our inherent human reciprocity we become radically alive to the liberating potential inherent in everything we do. Here, we see that freedom and caring are intimately interwoven. On the one hand one cares about the quality of one’s own being, and on the other, one cares about the quality of life for others.
Ubuntu is a word rooted in South African culture, meaning, “A person becomes human through other persons.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes ubuntu as the opposite of “I think, therefore I am.” In other words, my humanness is inextricably bound up in yours. Such a person, he says, “does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole, and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.” He concludes, “What dehumanizes you, inexorably dehumanizes me.”
It was Nelson Mandela’s respect for ubuntu that moved him to say, “It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.
I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity. When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. ... For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”