The Collective is Greater than the Individual

“The ancestors left us many gifts, but perhaps one of the greatest was the reminder that no one is meant to walk this journey alone.”

If you were to travel to any rural community or traditional area in many parts of Africa, you will find groups of men, their hands in the Earth, tending to farmland together. You would see women collectively choosing an array of ingredients for steaming pots and children engulfed in games for hours on end, together.

A similar scene would be experienced in many of the country towns from Trinidad & Tobago, St. Lucia to St. Kitts, Jamaica to Barbados, the theme of interdependence is woven into our culture, like the roots of a tree are woven into soil.

Many examples of this collectivism for community can be found in the principles of Ma’at (pronounced ‘Ma-aht’). The Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) principle of Maat offers a profound view through which we can better understand reciprocity and interdependence.

At its core, reciprocity is the understanding that life is built upon exchange, and not a transactional exchange of, “I give so that I can get,” but a sacred exchange where each person contributes to the well-being of the whole.

Many of the challenges we experience here in the West, range from personal isolation to communal disconnection; elders feeling cast aside and placed in seniors’ homes to even children feeling like a burden, unloved, and ignored within their family. These sad scenarios find their roots in the absence of this ancient principle. Maat recognizes that nothing exists in isolation.

Maat asks:

• Are my actions contributing to harmony or disorder?
• Am I taking more than I give?
• Am I fulfilling my responsibility to the collective?

When was the last time we truly asked ourselves these types of questions? The principle of Maat teaches that each of us has a responsibility to contribute to the harmony of the community. That harmony is achieved when we are looking at how we are living individually in accordance with our families and the broader community.

Survival was a collective act

Our ancestors endured enslavement, colonization, displacement, poverty, and systemic oppression not because they were stronger as individuals, but because they did something braver than we care to acknowledge or being vulnerable enough to practice today; they relied upon one another.

They shared food, knowledge, childcare, healing practices, and spiritual traditions. Community was necessary for survival. Our ability to evolve communally, and to move from wearing a survival hat to a thriving mindset, is rooted in our ability to embrace the lessons that Ma’at teaches us. That no matter what, we are truly, at our core, seeking to be connected to a broader collective, and that itself holds the keys to our healing and progress.

If our ancestors survived because they leaned on one another, perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask today is: Who is in my village, and whose village am I helping to strengthen?