Ubuntu and Gore Vidal

Desmond Tutu once explained that Africans have a thing called ubuntu. "We believe that a person is a person through other persons. That my humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours. When I dehumanize you, I dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. Therefore you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into its own in community, in belonging." There is always room at the top. We are here to make each other happy, to lift each other up. To make the world a better place. To cheer each other on, hoping for the greatest success for the other. On the other hand, there's that famous Gore Vidal saying....'whenever a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies.' I think I might live somewhere in the middle.