.ubuntu.

Vanity Fair, July 2007. Brad Pitt interviews Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

BP: What is this concept of ubuntu I keep reading about?

DT: Ubuntu is the essence of being human. And in our language a person is ubuntu, and ubuntu is a noun to speak about what it means to be human. In essence it is something that you find especially in the Old Testament where you're not quite sure sometimes-when you are reading, say, the Psalms-whether the Psalm is speaking, where it says "I," only of an individual or is it speaking in a corporate sense? We say a person is a person through other persons. You can't be human in isolation. You are human only in relationships.

BP: So that speaks to our interconnectedness.

DT: We are interconnected. I'm sure you know the movie, The Defiant Ones. It's a movie in which there are two convicts. One was white and one was black. They escaped, but they are still manacled to one another. They fall down a ditch, and the one tries to slither up out of the ditch and almost makes it. But when he gets to the top, he realizes he actually can't get out, because he's still manacled to his mate down there, and he slithers back down to the bottom and realizes that the only way they can make it is together. Up, up, up and out together. So we say that "I need you to be all of who you are in order for me to be all that I am." Because no human being is totally self-sufficient. In fact, a self-sufficient human being is subhuman.