Sexuality, Love and Physical Attractiveness : Euro-Western vs. Southern African perspectives

Love in Euro-Western societies vs. love in Southern Africa societies (individualistic love vs. ubuntu love). In individualistic and modern Western societies, passionate or romantic love is a necessity and it is all the more imperative because it is almost the only way to satisfy the most fundamental desires in human existence: the desire for recognition and confirmation of one's intrinsic value. In societies where some form of community fraternity (ubuntu) dominates, as in the Southern Africa Bantu traditional societies, passionate love is less imperative, since the desire for recognition inherent in human life is fulfilled through the general and constant love that people give and receive from their "brothers" and "sisters" and through a process of periodic and specific socio-religious rites. The recognition and the confirmation of one's value are conferred by the whole society, including by the gods. Indeed, ubuntu is a Bantu concept, popularized in the West by Nelson Mandela and his policy of national post-apartheid reconciliation, which can be likened to the concept of universal brotherhood mixed with a psychological consciousness of an inextricable link between all humans.