Panmobilism and optimism in teilhardian humanism

7.1.2. Nature

While western man studies nature to see what he can make out of it, we acknowledge on our part that nature holds mysteries. For us, nature is mysterious, we learn from it, we perceive the dynamism of being from it and this leads us to worship. The reverence that Africans give to nature points out to traditional religion. We perceive God in nature and we worship Him in and through nature. Nature is the ground for all our relationships:

Whereas Descartes would say, "I think, therefore, I am", we would say, "I relate, therefore, I am". I am because I am involved with other beings. Without relationship my being loses meaning and I cease to be. Where there is a breach in relationship I am bound to experience trouble, I find myself confronted with nonbeing.²

^I Jude Thaddeus Mbi, Op. Cit., pp., 70-7I ² Ibid., p. 72.

Nature involves us completely and we are part of it. From nature, we gain not only material goods, but also knowledge, religiosity and wisdom. If for the Westerner, what is artificial is meaningful and valuable, because it is the mark of his achievement and scientific spirit, for us, what is natural is meaningful and valuable because it is the sacred ground of our being. With our vision of the world, it is perhaps right to assert that we worship God naturally, the Most real Being in the most natural way.

Again, one great mistake which the foreigner is liable to make when he sees us gazing at nature is to say that we worship trees or stones. Africans do not worship trees or stones; it is a misunderstanding of the way we look at things. Our metaphysics is impregnated with religion. Africans are notoriously religious.

7.1.3. The World

The world for Africans consists of the physical reality, which we see. It is not a static reality but a dynamic reality, which opens up to the world beyond. The world both seen and unseen is one reality. In the world beyond, there is the realm of the nature spirits, both the good and the bad, and there is the realm of ancestral spirits: people who lived a useful life on earth go to where the ancestors are. They are blessed ones; they are productive even in the after-life since they are close to the source of life. They live in perpetual communion with the family and can bring assistance to those in the present life. They are venerated as Ancestors. Those whose life was unproductive on earth are damned ones; they remain unproductive when they die. They are "wandering spirits, they have no rest and they cannot be venerated as Ancestors.^;I

African ontology presents a concept of the world which is diametrically opposed to the traditional philosophy of Europe. The latter is essentially static, objective, dichotomic; it is in fact, dualistic, in that it makes an absolute distinction between body and soul or matter and spirit. It is founded on separation and opposition: on analysis

^I Jude Thaddeus Mbi, Op .Cit., pp. 78-79.

and conflict. The African, on the other hand, conceives the world, beyond the diversity of its forms, as a fundamentally mobile, yet unique, reality that seeks synthesis.

The African is, of course, sensitive to the external world, to the material aspect of beings and things. It is precisely because he is sensitive to the tangible qualities of things such as shape, colour, smell, or weight that he considers these things merely as signs that have to be interpreted and transcended in order to reach the reality of human beings. Thus, the whole universe appears as an infinitely small and at the same time an infinitely large network which emanates from God and ends in God.