A Philosophical Critique of Possible Reasons That Lead to Barriers Against Social Cohesion

Abstract

Social cohesion as a concept serves to bring all people together for social justice. Social justice in itself has some utility as it creates space for every voice to be heard in human deliberations. In the observation of human communities, many disasters whereby one group of people rises up against the rest have been experienced and left many victims. As such, social cohesion in communities has been disturbed over time by groups like; Taliban, Al Shabab, Boko haram, as well as Operation dudula. Although some research has been done on the harm that the rise of such groups does to the communities and how they operate, there seems to be an aspect that remains unraveled. It is our view that this matter has never been analyzed to the level of exploring possible reasons for those groups to have a desire to rebel against humanity. Using analytic theoretical framework, this paper seeks to explore the philosophy or rationale beyond the formation of these anti-humanist groups that have existed in Africa and middle East. Since this kind of discussions usually arise in political spheres, scholars have always found it difficult to comment about them. Perhaps, the difficulty arises due to the fact that the discussion becomes more emotional than philosophically theorizing which scholars are used to. However, this paper aims at finding the core of how people get to be so determined to inflict harm upon other members of the human community. The surprising factor is that such violent groups exist even in South Africa where Ubuntu is enshrined in the societal norms. This is in reference to Operation dudula, which aims at creating discomfort for other Africans living in South Africa.