The other day I had the pleasure of making welcoming remarks at a lecture inspired by the book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Stronger Societies Stronger. My introduction went as follows:
Friday, January 21, 2011
GOODMORNING Ladies & Gentleman, my name is Dr. Tendai Ndoro,
On behalf of Community Access Unlimited Board of Trustees, Executive Management & Staff and Community Access Unlimited Collaborative partners, I would like to welcome you all to the Center for Science, Technology and Mathematics Education at Kean University Campus. More importantly I welcome you to this very important lecture program inspired by the publication: THE SPIRIT LEVEL: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.” written by Drs. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
This is such a timely topic of conversation given the economic recession that has overtaken the world like a tsunami forcing us all to question our prevailing socio-economic paradigms and values. In Southern Africa there is expression that embraces the value of equality called: ‘UBUNTU”, which means I AM BECAUSE YOU ARE! The essence of which speaks to the perils of inequality that one cannot be really WHOLE when others are LESS! The Spirit Level truly attests to the essence of Ubuntu by advocating that greater equalities make societies stronger!
To our distinguished guest, Dr. Richard Wilkinson, Welcome and we truly appreciate your presence here with us today. Thank you.
The irony of this whole day was that America is a Society that at its core values believes in individualism! However more and more I have been hearing both people in academia and public society calling for cooperation, collaboration, cooperativeness, community, common ground and any of those communal adjectives that favor the social capital of togetherness! But this is not framed in Putnam’s Social Capital theoretical framework. The independent variables vary depending on which discipline the author or speaker comes from - Dr. Richard Wilkinson is a epidemiologist and therefore comes from the health industry.
But my question is: Is globalization forcing us to evolve to social communalism? The Spirit level is a study that looks at the developed world (including such countries as – Japan, Sweden, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, etc) and measured how certain social indicators such as: homicide, imprisonment; teenage pregnancies; infant mortality, mental illness, drug abuse; social mobility; obesity; high school dropouts; etc perform based on the margins of income equality. The greater the income equality and lower the social maladies, conversely, the gross income inequalities leads to the higher the social maladies. In a nutshell the authors point out that “gross inequalities tear at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrusts and an array of mental and physical ailments”. Thus reducing the gap in income inequalities leads to stronger and better societies. Unfortunately, this data based study indicated that the US had the greatest income inequalities and as such was at the bottom of the ladder in terms of greater social maladies. “Therefore if you want to live the American dream, you may have to relocate to Sweden or Japan” Wilkinson remarked.
At the end of the lecture, one of my Republican colleagues in the room came to me and expressed his horror at the thought of equal incomes, as ‘income equality’ translates into “income redistribution”! I laughed and reassured him that he need not worry as it will never happen in his lifetime! He exhaled!
This social study narrative is not new. That is, the variables are new but the idea or explanations of why some people suffer and others prosper is a narrative that has emerged in many other various forms in the past. To name a few – Mills’ power elites theory (the idea that interwoven interests of people in and/or with power will do anything including setting up institutionalized systems to protect those interests); Putnam’s social capital (the idea that homogeneity fosters greater community wealth for members of that group, thus feminism and racial integration undermined social capital in the USA), Galtung’s structural violence ideas (widely defined as the systematic ways in which a regime prevents individuals from achieving their full potential. Institutionalized racism and sexism are examples of this - @ Wikipedia); and Schneider & Ingram’s policy design as a socially constructed narrative for target populations, usually choosing who gets benefits or burdens, with burdens skewed unfavorably to the disadvantaged populations (@ Policy Design and Democracy); and now Wilkinson & Pickett’s narrative of how income inequalities (disparities) undermining stronger societies, and thus lead to chronic social maladies.
Well, I always live in a ‘relative universe’ (i.e. the reality of my perceptions are defined by my circumstances at that moment in my universe), and thus always tries to draw parallels to show that we are all the same, it’s just our geography that’s different. Therefore in participating in this lecture presentation, it reinforces my beliefs in those parallel existences as well as the lines of symmetry that bind us together as humans. I came to one conclusion which is the quest for Ubuntu - which had once been called primitive during the reign of colonialism - is still relevant after all! I must add, Ubuntu is a universally African philosophy which means that I AM BECAUSE YOU ARE, but the term itself is specifically a Southern African term – Ubuntu or as the Shona people would say Uhunhu or Unhu – the essence of being [human].
Copyright @ February 1, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro (DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO- EDCTrainers, LLC.
UBUNTU ROOTS: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(philosophy) :
Ubuntu (Zulu/Xhosa pronunciation: [ùɓúntʼú]; English: /ʊˈbʊntuː/ oo-BOON-too) is an ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other. The word has its origin in the Bantu languages of southern Africa. Ubuntu is seen as a classical African concept.[1]
Ubuntu: "I am what I am because of who we all are."
Bantu means the men or people. The word occurs in all Bantu languages, for example, it appears as wa-tu in Swahili, ba-to in Lingala, and aba-ntu in Zulu in shona as Van-hu
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