Categoria: Ecologia

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Post-covid-19: what cosmology and ethics to incorporate (II)

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Many analysts predict that the post-pandemic could usher in an extreme radicalization of the previous situation, a return to the system of capital and neo-liberalism, which seeks to dominate the world through electronic surveillance (big data) of every person in the planet, which is already being done in China and the United States. We then would enter an era of darkness, risking our own destruction, as suggested by Rachel Carson in her famous book, “Silent Spring”. Hence the demand for a radical ecological conversion, whose centrality must consist of the Earth, life and human civilization: a bio-civilization.

               The possible risks in the post-covid-19 period:

We must not, however, underestimate the power of systemic violence. Sigmund Freud, replying to a 1932 letter by Albert Einstein in which Einstein asked if it was possible to overcome violence and war, left an aporia. Freud replied that he could not say which tendency would prevail: the instinct of death (Thanatos) or the instinct of life (Eros). They are always in tension and we cannot be sure which will triumph in the end. And he concluded, resigned: “Starving, we think of the windmill that grinds so slowly that we can die of hunger before we get the flour”.

There is the non optimistic opinion of Noam Chomsky, one of the greatest Northamerican intellectuals and a severe critic of the imperialist system, who says: «The coronavirus is very grave indeed, but it is worth remembering that something even more terrible is near. We are headed towards disaster, something worse than anything that has ever happened in human history, and Trump and his lackeys are leading us towards the abyss. We are facing two immense threats. One is the ever growing threat of nuclear war, exacerbated by the tension of the military regimes; and the other, of course, is global warming. The two threats could be resolved, but there is not enough time; the coronavirus is terrible and can have terrible consequences, but it will be overcome, while the others will not. If we do not resolve them, we are condemned».

Chomsky has affirmed that President Trump is insane enough as to unleash a nuclear war, without caring what would happen to all of humanity.

Notwithstanding this dramatic vision of the prestigious linguist and thinker, our hope is that if humanity were to run a truly grave danger of self destruction, the life instinct would prevail. But that presumes that we had constructed a new form of inhabiting the Common Home, on bases that are neither those of the past, nor of the present.

         Some good lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic

In any event, the coronavirus has shown us that we are not the “little gods” who claim to be able to do anything; it has shown us that we are fragile and limited; that the accumulation of material goods does not save life; that financial globalization alone, in the competitive mold of capitalism, precludes the creation, as the Chinese propose, of “a community of common destiny for the whole humanity”; that we must create a global a pluralistic center to discuss world problems; that cooperation and solidarity of one an all rather than individualism are the central values of a geosociety.

The limits of the Earth-System which does not tolerate a project of unlimited growth must be recognized and respected; we must take as good care of nature as of ourselves, because we are part of nature and she gives us all the goods and services needed for life. We must seek a circular economy that fulfills the famous “3-Rs”; reduce, reuse, and recycle everything that has entered into the process of production.

The economy must be one of dignified and universal subsistence and not of accumulation by some at the expense of everyone else and of nature. An economy of subsistence reduces our needs and leads to sobriety, and thus in great measure reduces social inequalities. The new economic order will not be ruled by profit but by economic rationality with ecological and social sensitivity.

It would be highly rational and humanitarian to create a minimum universal income; for medical attention to be a universal human right (One World-One Health) that should not be left unattended. It is important to ensure that the state regulates the market, to promote the necessary development and satisfy collective demands, be they of health or natural disasters.

We must encourage human-spiritual capital, always unlimited, based on love, solidarity, the search for the just measure, fraternity, compassion, feeling the enchantment of the world and the tireless search for peace.

              A road map to rescue life: The Earthcharter

These are, among others, some of the lessons we can draw from the coronavirus. Quoting the Earthcharter, (UNESCO), one of the most inspiring official documents for the transformation of our form of being on planet Earth, «fundamental changes are needed in our values, institutions and forms of life… Our environmental, economic, political, social and spiritual challenges are interconnected and together we can forge inclusive solutions» (Preamble c).

What world vision and which values should be included?

To know and have knowledge of information about reality is not yet to act. What moves us to act? What world vision (cosmology) and which values (ethics) we should include? An important text in the final part of the Earthcharter, in whose editing I also took part, can guide us.

“As never before in history, the common destiny calls us to search for a new beginning. This requires a change of mind and heart. It demands a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility. We must develop and apply with imagination the vision of a mode of sustainable life at a local, national, regional and world levels” (The path ahead).

Let us note that it is not just about improving the path we have taken. This would lead us to the cyclical crises that we already know, and eventually to disaster. It is about “searching for a new beginning”. We are called to rebuild the “Earth, our home, that is alive with a unique community of life” (Earthcharter, Preamble a). It would be deceitful to cover the wounds of the Earth with bandages, thinking that we could cure her that way. We must revive her and remake her so that she may be our Common Home.

“This requires a change of mind”. A change of mind means a new way of looking at the Earth, according to the new cosmology and biology. She is at a moment of the process of evolution that is 13.7 billion years old, and for the Earth, 4.3 billion years. After the big bang, all the physical-chemical elements were forged over more than three billion years, in the heart of the big red stars. On exploding, they launched in every direction the elements that formed the galaxies, the stars like the Sun, the planets and the Earth.

The Earth is teeming with life that began some 3.8 billion years ago, a continuously self creating and self organizing systemic super-organism. In an advanced moment of her complexity, some 8-10 million years ago, a part of the Earth began to feel, to think, to love and to worship. The human being emerged, man and woman. They are Earth, conscious and intelligent, that’s why they are called homo, made of humus.

This cosmovision changes our conception of the Earth. The UN, on April 22, 2009, officially recognized her as Mother Earth, because she creates and gives us everything. This is why the Earthcharter calls us: “To respect the Earth and life in all its diversity and to take care of the community of life with understanding, compassion and love” (Earthcharter 1 and 2). We can buy and sell the Earth as land. However, as Suquamish-Duwamish Grandfather Sealth, a.k.a., Seattle, stated, “we neither buy nor sell our Mother; we love and venerate her”. This attitude must be restored to the Earth, our Mother. This is the new mindset that we must make our own.

“It requires a change of heart”. The heart is the dimension of profound feelings (pathos), of sensibility, love, compassion and the values that guide our life. Especially in the heart is found caring, the friendly and affectionate form of relating with nature and her beings. It has to do with the sensible or cordial reason, with the limbic brain, that arose some 220 million years ago when mammals emerged in evolution. All of them, like the human being, have feelings, they love and care for their offspring. That is pathos, the capacity of affecting and of being affected, the human beings’ most profound dimension.

Reason (logos), the mind we have referred before, appeared only some 8-10 million years ago, with the neo-cortical brain, and in an advanced form as homo sapiens (present day humans) about a hundred thousand years ago. In modern times, it has developed exponentially, dominating our societies and creating techno-science, the great instruments of domination and the transformation of the face of the Earth, including a death machine in the form of nuclear weapons and other things that can end human life and the life of nature

The elevation of reason, rationalism, has created a kind of lobotomy: the human being has difficulty feeling the other and its suffering. We need to complete the rational intelligence, necessary to solve the needs of survival of our life, but we must to complement it with emotional and sensible intelligence. so that we may be more complete and we undertake with passion the defense of the Earth and of life.

We need the heart to make us hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor, and to forge, as the Prime Minister of China, Xi Jinping, says: “a society moderately supplied” or as we say: a society with sober, frugal and solidarian consumption. (to be continued).

*Leonardo Boff is an ecotheologian and philosopher that has written: The Human Being, Satan or the Good Angel. Record,Rio 2008.

Una lettura “da cieco” della enciclica ecologica Laudato Si

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Un cieco sente con le mani o con il bastone le cose più importanti che trova sul suo cammino. Proviamo allora, come un cieco nel suo cammino, a fare una lettura dell’enciclica ecologica di Papa Francesco, Laudato Si: sulla cura della Casa Comune, di cui abbiamo festeggiato i 5 anni pochi giorni fa (24/05/2015). Quali sono i suoi punti rilevanti?

Tanto per cominciare, questa non è un’enciclica “verde” che si limita all’ambiente, cosa predominante nei dibattiti attuali. Propone un’ecologia integrale che abbraccia l’ambiente, il sociale, la politica, la cultura, il quotidiano e lo spirituale.

Vuole essere una risposta alla crisi ecologica mondiale generalizzata perché “non abbiamo mai maltrattato e ferito la nostra Casa comune come negli ultimi due secoli” (n.53). Abbiamo fatto della Casa Comune “un’immensa discarica” (n.21). Inoltre: “Le previsioni catastrofiche non possono più essere considerate con disprezzo e ironia… il nostro stile di vita, essendo insostenibile, non può che portare a catastrofi” (n.161). La richiesta è di “una conversione ecologica globale” (n.5;216) che implica “nuovi stili di vita” (lo ripete 35 volte) e “cambiare il modello di sviluppo globale” (n.194).

Siamo arrivati a questa emergenza critica a causa del nostro esacerbato antropocentrismo, con il quale l’essere umano “si costituisce come dominatore assoluto” (n.117) della natura, strappato da essa, dimenticando che “tutto è interconnesso e quindi non può essere dichiarato autonomo dalla realtà” (n.117;120). Ha usato la tecnoscienza come strumento per forgiare “una crescita infinita… che suppone la menzogna della disponibilità infinita dei beni del pianeta, che porta a spremerlo al limite e oltre il limite” (n.106).

Nella parte teorica, l’enciclica incorpora un fatto della nuova cosmologia e della fisica quantistica: che tutto nell’universo è relazione. Come in un ritornello insiste sul fatto che “siamo tutti interdipendenti, tutto è interconnesso e tutto è in relazione con tutto” (cfr. nn. 16, 86, 117, 120), il che conferisce al testo una grande coerenza.

Un’altra categoria che costituisce un vero paradigma è quella della cura. Questo sarebbe in realtà il vero titolo dell’enciclica. La cura, in quanto è l’essenza della vita e dell’essere umano, secondo la favola romana di Higino così ben studiata da Martin Heidegger in Essere e Tempo, è ricorrente in tutto il testo dell’enciclica. Egli vede in San Francesco “l’esempio per eccellenza della cura” (n.10). “Cuore universale… per lui ogni creatura era una sorella legata a lui da vincoli di affetto, sentendosi chiamato a prendersi cura di tutto ciò che esiste” (n.11).

È interessante notare che Papa Francesco unisce l’intelligenza intellettuale, sostenuta dai dati della scienza, con l’intelligenza sensibile o del cuore. Dobbiamo leggere i numeri con emozione e relazionarci con la natura “con ammirazione e fascino (n.11)… prestare attenzione alla bellezza e amarla perché ci aiuta ad uscire dal pragmatismo utilitaristico” (n.215). È importante “ascoltare sia il grido della terra come il grido dei poveri” (n. 49).

Consideriamo questo testo, carico di intelligenza emozionale: “Tutto è in relazione, e tutti noi esseri umani siamo uniti come fratelli e sorelle in un meraviglioso pellegrinaggio, legati dall’amore che Dio ha per ciascuna delle sue creature e che ci unisce anche tra noi, con tenero affetto, al fratello Sole, alla sorella Luna, al fratello Fiume e alla madre Terra (n.92). È importante “promuovere una cultura della cura che impregni tutta la società” (n. 231), poiché in questo modo “si può parlare di una fraternità universale” (n. 228).

Infine, la spiritualità è essenziale all’ecologia integrale. “Non si tratta tanto di parlare di idee, quanto soprattutto delle motivazioni che derivano dalla spiritualità al fine di alimentare una passione per la cura del mondo. Infatti non sarà possibile impegnarsi in cose grandi soltanto con delle dottrine, senza una mistica che ci animi, senza «qualche movente interiore che dà impulso, motiva, incoraggia e dà senso all’azione personale e comunitaria» (n. 216). Anche qui evoca la spiritualità cosmica di San Francesco (n. 218).

Per concludere, è importante sottolineare che con questa enciclica, ampia e dettagliata, Papa Francesco si pone, come è stato riconosciuto da noti ecologisti, alla testa della discussione ecologica mondiale. In molte interviste ha fatto riferimento ai pericoli che la nostra Casa comune affronta, ma il suo messaggio è di speranza: “Camminiamo cantando! Che le nostre lotte e la nostra preoccupazione per questo pianeta non ci tolgano la gioia della speranza” (n. 244).

*Leonardo Boff è ecoteologo e ha scritto Francesco d’Assisi, Francesco di Roma, Emi 2014.

Traduzione di Maria José Gavito e Stefano Toppi.

Post-covid-19: how should cosmology and ethics respond? (I)

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

There is something terrible, nature’s systemic attack on humanity, through a microscopic and invisible virus that is causing great concern and killing thousands of people. Faced with this true human tragedy we need to understand our reaction to the pandemic. What is the pandemic’s effect on us? What lesson does it teach us? What cosmology (vision of the world) and what type of ethics (values and principles) does it call on us to develop? Surely we now must learn everything that we should have learned but didn’t learn before. We should have learned that we are part of nature and not its “lords and owners” (Descartes). There is an umbilical connection between the human being and nature. We come from the same cosmic dust, as all other beings did. We are the conscious link of the chain of life.

                   The erosion of the image, “little god of the Earth”

The modern myth has been destroyed that we are “the little god” of Earth and that we can dispose of her at our whim because she is an inert object without purpose. One of the fathers of the modern scientific method, Francis Bacon, said that we must treat nature as the henchmen of the inquisition treated their victims, torturing them until they gave up all their secrets.

Through techno science we have carried this method to the extreme, reaching the heart of matter and of life. This has been done with unprecedented furor, to the point of destroying the sustainability of nature and consequently of the planet and of life. We have broken the natural pact that exists with the living Earth: she gives all everything we need to live, and in exchange we must care for her, preserving her goods and services and affording her rest, in order to replenish what we have taken for our lives and progress.  We have done none of this.

For failing to observe the Biblical precept of “protecting and caring for the Garden of Eden, The Earth (Genesis 2,15)” and for threatening the ecological bases that sustain all life, she has counterattacked with a powerful weapon, the corona virus 19. Facing it, we have returned to the methodology of the Middle Ages, that overcame its pandemics with strict social isolation. So that the frightened people would get out of the streets, an ingenious clock was built in the Munich municipal council (Marienplatz), with dancers and cuckoos so that everyone would come to appreciate it, something that is still being done today.

The pandemic, that more than than a crisis is a demand for a change of cosmology (the vision  of the world) and of the incorporation of an ethics with new values, posits us this question: do we really want to avoid nature sending us even more lethal viruses that could even decimate the human species? We would be one of the ten species that disappear forever each day. Do we want to run that risk?

                   Generalized lack of awareness of the ecological factor

Already in 1962, North American biologist and writer Rachel Carson, author of The Silent Spring,  warned: “It is not likely that future generations will forgive our lack of prudent concern for the integrity of the natural world that sustains all life… The question is whether any civilization can continue a relentless war against life without destroying itself and without losing the right to be called a civilization“.

It seems like a prophesy of the situation we are experiencing all around the world. It appears that the majority of humanity, including the political leaders, do not show enough awareness of the dangers we face with global warming, with the excessive density of our cities and, especially, of the massive agro-business that advances over the virgin lands into the jungles that are being deforested. We are destroying the habitats of millions of viruses and bacteria that wind up being transferred to human beings. According to serious scientists, the corona virus did not have to come though a bat from a market in China, but, simply, from nature.

In the best hypothesis, corona virus will force us to re-invent ourselves as humanity, and to remodel in a sustainable and inclusive form the unique Common Home that we share. If what dominated before prevails, exacerbated to the extreme, then we must prepare for the worst.

Many are predicting a new, destructive, austerity in the post-corona virus era. The vultures of the past are already gathering to return to the same perspective of the past, and to impede significant change. The interests of financial capital and the lack of consciousness on the part of those in power, and even in much of academia, about the gravity of the degradation of nature, does not allow them learn anything from the thousands and thousands of dead human beings all over the world, caused by the corona vírus.

They want to return to the austerity that is the politics of opportunists, carried out by opportunists, for the benefit of opportunists. CEPAL has calculated that because of covid-19, the politics of austerity, worse than before, will leave 215 million new poor people in Latin America. (cf. Carta Maior 13/05/2020) However, it is worth remembering that the life system has gone though several major extinctions (we are in the sixth) but it has always survived.

Life seems like –allow me a singular metaphor– a “plague” that no one until now has managed to exterminate. That is because life is a blessed “plague”, linked to the mystery of the cosmogenesis and to that mysterious and loving Basic Energy that presides over all the cosmic processes and also over ours.

ThIs is imperative that we abandon the old paradigm of the will to power and domination over everything (the closed fist). in favor of a paradigm of caring for everything that exists and lives  (the extended hand) and of the collective co-responsibility.

Eric Hobsbawn wrote in the last paragraph of his 1995 book, The Era of the Extremes: “One thing is clear. If humanity wants to have a recognizable future, it cannot be prolonging the past or the present. We will fail if we try to build the third millennia on that basis. In other words, the price of failure, the alternative to the change of society, is obscurity.” (p.506).

That means we cannot simply return to the situation before corona virus. Nor we can think of returning to the pre-enlightenment past, as the present Brazilian government and others of the extreme right want.

(To be continued).

Leonardo Boff is an ecotheologian and philosopher who has written Option Earth: the solution for the Earth does not come from heaven, Record 2009.

 

 

Pentecostes: vem Espírito de vida e salva-nos!

Leonardo Boff11 Comentários

Todos nos sentimos perdidos, investigadores, médicos e médicas, epidemioilogistas, biólogos e todos os saberes que instauramos, todos não conhecemos o covid-19 nem sabemos como enfrentá-lo eficazmente com uma vacina. Oxalá não seja o que alguns biólogos, há muito, temem: o NBO (Next Big One) “o próximo grande” vírus que fará desaparecer a espécie humana.

Além do covid-19 e dos vários vírus já conhecidos, estamos enfrentando tempos ecologicamente ameaçadores, como o aquecimento global, a sexta extinção em massa, a erosão da biodiversidade e outras.

Além de usarmos os meios científicos que nos estão deixando desamparados, temos uma referência de uma outra ordem que não é contra a inteligência mas vai além de seu alcance que a inteligência espiritual que capta o Espírito Criador.Ela não está fora de nossa realidade quando entendida holisticamente.

Este Espírito Criador responde pelo surgimento do universo com suas bilhões de galáxias e trilhões de estrelas e planetas, aquele que existia antes do antes e que fez surgir aquele ínfimo ponto, carregado de energia e que, explodindo (big bang), deu origem ao universo. Ele continua presidindo todo o processo da cosmogênico, o nosso planeta e a cada um de nós pois é o Spiritus Creator, o Pneuma, o Sopro de Vida. Nas línguas medio-orientais ele é sempre feminino, ligado à mulher que gera.

Nesses momentos de crise é ocasião de invocá-lo e suplicar-lhe: “Tu que és Fonte de Vida, salve nossas vidas, as vidas dos mais desvlidos, as vidas de toda a humanidade”.

Ele, diz o Gênesis logo no início, pairava sobre o “touwabou” (em hebraico), o caos originário; dele tirou todas as coisas e as colocou em sua devida ordem, no céu e na terra e por fim ,nós seres humanos, homens e mulheres.

Alargando o horizonte, releva reconhecer que sua criação está ameaçada para além dos efeitos letais co covid-19. A ameaça não vem de algum meteoro rasante como há 65 milhões de anos que exterminou os dinossauros depois de viverem por mais de cem milhões de anos por sobre a Terra. O meteoro rasante atual se chama homo sapiens e demens, duplamente demens (inteligente e demente e duplamente demente). Por sua relação agressiva para com a Terra e com todos os seus ecossistemas pode eliminar a vida humana, destruir nossa civilização e afetar gravemente toda a biosfera.

É num contexto assim que refletiremos sucintamente e invocaremos a ação sanadora e recriadora do Espírito Santo. Nossas fontes referenciais são os textos dos dois Testamentos judaico-cristãos e a experiência humana, cujo espírito é animado pelo Espírito Criador, chamado pela liturgia de “luz beatíssima”.

Pensar o Espírito Santo nos obriga a ir além das categorias clássicas com as quais se elaborou o discurso ocidental, tradicional e convencional da teologia. Deus, Cristo, a graça e a Igreja foram pensadas dentro de categorias metafísicas da filosofia grega: de substância, de essência e de natureza. Portanto, por algo estático e sempre já circunscrito de forma imutável. Este paradigma foi feito oficial pela teologia cristã.

Entretanto, pensar o Espírito implica assumir outro paradigma, o do movimento, da ação, do processo, da emergência, da história e do novo e do surpreendente. Este não pode ser apreendido com a terminologia substancialista mas com a do vir-a-ser.

Este paradigma nos aproxima da moderna cosmologia e da física quântica. Estas veem todas as coisas em gênese, emergindo a partir de um fundo de Energia Inominável, Misteriosa e Amorosa que está antes do antes, no tempo e no espaço zero. Ela sustenta o universo e todos os seres nele existentes e penetra de ponta a ponta o cosmos e nos penetra totalmente. Essa Energia de Fundo, chamada também de o Abismo Originador de todo o ser, é a melhor metáfora do Espírito Criador que é tudo isso e ainda mais.

Redizer o terceiro artigo do Credo cristão: ”Creio no Espírito Santo” nestes novos moldes, significa uma diligência nova, cientes de que ficamos sempre aquém daquilo que deveríamos dizer sobre o Espírito Criador.

Finalmente, cabe reconhecer que tocamos no mistério. Este não se opõe ao conhecimento pois o mistério é o ilimitado de todo conhecimento. Este sempre conhece mais e mais, mas em todo o conhecimento permanece o mistério. Este é, por natureza limitado. Este mistério se revela mas também se vela. A missão dos que o acolhem e se entregam à sua reflexão sistemática como os teólogos e as teólogas, também os que se dedicam à filosofia (como F. Hegel, cuja categoria central é o Espírito Absoluto) é buscar incessantemente esta revelação.

É próprio do Espírito esconder-se dentro dos processos evolucionários e da história. É próprio do ser humano descobri-lo. Ele “sopra onde quer e não sabemos nem de onde vem nem para onde vai” (cf. Jo,38). Isso não nos exime da tarefa de des-ocultá-lo.

É o que esperamos ardentemente que este Espírito se manifeste e inspire os espíritos de nossos pesquisadores para que descubram uma vacina que salve nossas vidas. E quando através da pesquisa deles, Ele irrompe surpreendentemente, nos alegramos e celebramos, ebrios de gratidão por sua ação mediada pelo espírito humano.

Neste domingo, dia 31 de maio, celebramos a festa de Pentecostes, uma das maiores das Igrejas cristãs. É uma festa sem fim, pois o Espírito está permanente em ação, se prolonga ao longo e ao largo de toda a história e nos alcança até nos dias em que sofremos, nos angustiamos e tememos a letalidade do coronavírus. O Spiritus Creator nunca abandonou sua criação, mesmo nas 15 grandes dizimações pelas quais ela passou. E não nos vai abandonar agora. Veni Creator Spiritus et salva nos”.

Leonardo Boff é ecoteólogo e escreveu O Espírito Santo: fogo interior, doador de vida e pai dos pobres, Vozes 2013.