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The name in some African cultures for the same thing is “ubuntu,” the idea that you only actualize your humanity through your relationship to others. “I” only becomes “me” through “you”, or something like that.
This political season has illustrated Buber’s “I-It” relationship to the world in which people no longer matter as a “thou” but as an “it”, something to be declared less than human. When this state of political discourse exists, whether in personal relationships or political relationships, there is an imbalance, an infertile ground for positive growth and accomplishment.