Wholism, Interconnectedness of Kmtyw Worldview-gctid26764

[Ɔbenfo Ọbádélé]

Wholism, Interconnectedness and Interdependence in the Kmtyw Worldview


"One of the recurring challenges I have as I write this book is the
almost unavoidable use of words and phrases that tend to divide human
experience into parts. For instance, the use of the words religion,
spirituality, and politics, seems to imply that each of these is a
separate entity that can be viewed, studied, and even lived
independently of the others. In the Chagga worldview, and indeed in the
basic Kmtyw worldview, such distinctions do not exist. In my own
ethnic language, Kichagga, there is no vocabulary for religion,
spirituality, politics, and so on. There are no such compartmentalizing
terms. One word includes them all: life, lived as one integrated
whole. Once this integrated experience of life is divided into several
parts (and each part subdivided almost ad infinitum) as we tend to do
today, the essence of the whole is lost because the parts do not have a
life of their own independent of the whole. For this reason it is
extremely difficult to describe indigenous religion, spirituality,
education, and fundamental virtues as separate entities. But I am doing
so in this book because the average modern-educated reader seems to have
the view that the dynamics of the whole can be understood from the
properties of the parts. Indigenous peoples, however, know that the
properties of the parts can be understood only from the dynamics of the
whole. For them, all aspects of life and universe are interconnected
and interdependent. They form one basic unity."

R. Sambuli Mosha
The Heartbeat of Indigenous Kmt