I am since we are!

“I am because We are, and since We are, therefore I am.”

John Mbiti

        This African philosopher said that I can only find the essence of my being within a communal sense and that the community can only exist within the contribution of an “I” as an individual. This “I” will, in turn, contribute to the making up of the community as a whole. There would consequently be no “we” if there were not many “I’s”, and I would not be if it wasn’t for the collective “we” who helps to sculpture my existence.

Spinoza says that we are social animals due to the fact that we seek, as Sir Francis Bacon also said, comfort and protection within this societal constitution. Will the individual be able to have any significance if he/she cannot acquire it from the social whole? I don’t think so, with the emphasis on significance as the quality of being regarded as having great meaning. It is precisely due to this communal reciprocal effect that we have an obligation to strive to live a life which is in harmony with ethical and moral values, for it will be thereby that a community (and eventually a world) will be created in the same manner.

If I as a moral individual constitute the community, then I will contribute to building a moral community; the inverse is also true, the moral community will then contribute to my individual moral upbringing. I am therefore since we are, and we are due to me and you being there.

I am because of our communal existence,

this has much significance.

Community forms my identity,

and together with it, it constitutes the “we”.