Ubuntu

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language.  It speaks of the very essence of being human.
When we want to give high praise to someone we say:
‘Yu, u nobuntu.’
Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate.  You share what you have.
It is to say: ‘My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.’
We belong in a bundle of life.
We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’  It is not, ‘I think, therefore I am.’
It says rather: ‘I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.’
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, 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 are less than who they are.”

– Desmond Tutu