ABSTRACT
The dynamics of transformation, from an ecological perspective, and of trans-personal individuation, from a psychological one, this chapter considers that necessarily alternating current, between continuity and change, the static and the dynamic, in promoting socio-economic renewal, thereby combining, the trans-cultural with the trans-personal. The example of Africa and its struggle to creatively engage in socio-economic renewal, serves as a powerful illustration of the danger that lies in failing to first identify and activate one's own local vital force and secondly to bring that local force in creative interaction with global forces. In Southern terms, Ubuntu embodies a relational hierarchy of responsibility between self and other, whereas Ntu embodied a dynamic, networked quality. The community, via a representative body, provides local continuity, while the university, with its access to particular and universal knowledge, provides global continuity. A local indigenous natural and cultural force has the potential to act as a transformative spark within a social system.
