The African/Asian Universal Understanding

written by Nathan

In Asia and Africa, life is based on a fuller sense of universal understanding. Each is different, complex, and individualistic by interpretation. Each is complete in itself. Taken together, however, these universal belief systems and acculturations demonstrate core human values which we are all affected by. 

In China, we gained first hand appreciation of the wisdom of Chinese peaceful social cultural norms and their power to organize and direct large populations. The grace of Chinese interactions can be seen in its tea ceremony. The commonality of life’s necessity can be understood in a common enjoyment of green tea. 

Chairman Mao famously wrote proverbs including many which still are present in the work and family edicts of the Chinese. “A man tells his sons one morning: Sons, I cannot move this mountain alone with my hoe; but, together we can move this mountain.” And, they did. We have met many peoples who planted trees with the idea that they would never know its majesty, but that their grandchildren could enjoy the tree. And, the tree lives a thousand or two-thousand years and is used by a village and is revered. 

India balances China’s productivity with its long history of political reason and discourse. Much influence of British rule left many lingering educational influences. It is a gentler land of equitable dignity with total inequity of power. 

In India, Ghandi’s generation left a legacy of peaceful democracy. Both countries have had the least enfranchised benefit in socialist, capitalist, and communist forms. Both have newly combined wealth, existing powers, corporate military industrial complexes, democratic educational systems, raising enormous new middle-classes. All of these leave their marks as mass physical appropriation of resources accelerates. 

In Ethiopia, there is a mesh of peaceful religions. there is a pathway to families of shepherds and priests. Impacts on the 19th to 21st centuries are less. Religious belief is everywhere. Yet, Ethiopia experiences Africa’s history of ‘development through total impoverishment’ by behaving in acts of colonialism on its neighbors and its own diverse populations. The largest natural and human disasters here are entirely preventable, yet persistent. But, their overarching philosophies carry only worry from growing season to dry season and from day to day. 

Ethiopia being Africa balances the Asian history with its own biblical ages…history again stretches into sandy footsteps of time. Instead of social or economic capital, Ethiopia has practical experience and righteousness, carried with the pride of a lion heart. 

There are modern dilemmas facing all these grand countries that each hold origins and histories of the world. Each has been affected by dangerous physical development. Each has vowed to create a healthier, more sustainable natural world. All are vastly different. 

Ethiopia, India, and China need plans to achieve cleaner development while also increasing their living standards. What they don’t need are lectures on social thought or universal understanding. 

If we could mesh the economic power of unified China, the common cause and social decency of India, the proven spiritual agedness of Africa, with the practicality and rationality of the western mind, perhaps we could produce cleaner thoughts and science.