Utamaroho

Utamaroho is Marimba Ani's term for the vital force of a culture — its animating emotional orientation, what it reaches for and what it fears. One orientation reaches toward relationship, reciprocity, and a sense that there is enough; another organizes around control, separation, and the fear that there is not.

The first orientation is life-giving; the second, however capable, tends over time to be life-limiting for the people inside it. This is a difference in orientation, not in how widespread either becomes. Naming utamaroho lets an organization ask what its culture is reaching for underneath, and whether that reaching gives life or slowly takes it.

From Marimba Ani's Yurugu (1994); see the Library page on the asili and the worldview seed.