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Globalization or Planetization?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

There is presently strong resistence to the process of globalization, aggravated by Donald Trump, who has forcefully pushed the idea of “The United States First”, or better said, “Only the United States”. Trump advocates war against global corporations, in favor of those wholly within the United States.

It is important to understand that this is about a struggle against the huge economic-financial conglomerates that control a large part of the world’s wealth, in the hands of a very small number of persons. According Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate for economics, we have 1% multi-millionaires vs. the 99% who are dependent or impoverished.

This type of globalization is of an economic-financial character, dinosauric; as Edgar Morin puts it, the iron stage of globalization. But globalization is more than economics. It is about an irreversible process, a new stage in the evolution of the Earth, that began at the moment we discovered her as seen from outside, as the astronauts showed us from their spaceships. Then it was clear that Earth and Humanity form a unique complex entity.

The testimony of John W. Young, the Northamerican astronaut, on the fifth trip to the moon of April 16, 1972, is impactful: «Below is the Earth, the blue and white planet, amazingly beautiful, shining, humanity’s motherland. From here, the moon would fit in the palm of my hand. From this perspective, there are neither Whites nor Blacks on Earth, nor divisions between East and West, communists and capitalists, North and South. Together we form a single Earth. We must learn to love this planet of which we are part».

From this experience the 1933 words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin become prophetic and provocative: «The age of nations is over. If we do not want to die, this is the moment to shake off the old prejudices and build the Earth. The Earth will be conscious of herself by no other means than by a crisis of conversion and transformation». This crisis is instilled in our minds: now we are responsible for the only Common Home we have. And we have invented the means of our own self destruction, which increases even more our responsibility for the whole planet.

If we look carefully, this consciousness arose early in the XVI century, precisely in 1521, when Ferdinand Magallan circled the globe for the first time, empirically proving that the Earth is round, and that we can get anywhere from whatever point where we find ourselves.

Globalization began to take form with the Westernization of the world. Europe commenced the colonial and imperialist adventure of conquest and domination of all the discovered and to be discovered lands, putting them at the service of the European interests, as manifested by the will to power, which we can very well translate as the will to unlimited enrichment, the imposition of the White culture, of their political institutions and their Christian religion.

From the point of view of the victims of this process, this adventure was carried out violently, with great genocides, ethnocides and ecocides. That adventure was a trauma and tragedy for the majority of the peoples, the consequences of which can be felt today, even among those who were the colonizers, who introduced slavery and forced surrender to the great imperialist powers.

We must now rescue the positive and essential meaning of the word planetization, a word that is better than globalization, given its economic connotations. On April 22, 2009, the United Nations made official the nomenclature, Mother Earth, to give it a connotation of something alive that must be respected and venerated, as we do our mothers. Pope Francis used the expression Common Home to show the profound unity of the human species that inhabits the common space.

This moment is a step forward in the process of geo-genesis. We cannot go back with a diminished consciousness, and close down, as Donald Trump pretends, within our national borders. We must prepare ourselves for this new step that the Earth has given, this living super organism, according to the thesis of Gaia. We are the moment of consciousness and of intelligence of the Earth. We are the Earth that feels, thinks, loves, cares and venerates. We are the only beings of nature whose ethical mission is to care for this sacred inheritance, to ensure that it is an inhabitable home for all of us, and for the entire community of living beings.

We are not rising to this call of the Earth herself. Therefore we must wake up and assume this noble mission of building planetizaton.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher  of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

An ethics for Mother Earth

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

It is a recognized scientific fact, with 95% certainty, that climate change, the main expression of which is global warming, is of an anthropogenic nature. That is, those changes have their genesis in violent human behavior towards nature.
Such behavior is not in harmony with the cycles and rhythms of nature. Humans are not adapting to nature, but forcing her to adapt to humans and human interests. Their main interest, dominant for two centuries now, is centered on the accumulation of wealth and benefits for the lives of some humans, starting with the systematic exploitation of goods and services, and of many peoples, especially the Indigenous Nations.

The countries that led this process have not given proper importance to the limits of the Earth-system. They continue subjecting nature and the Earth to a true war, even though they know that they will be defeated.

The way Mother Earth expresses the pressure on her fixed limitations is through extreme events (prolonged droughts on the one hand, and devastating floods on the other, unprecedented snow storms here, and unbearable heat waves elsewhere.)

Facing such events, the Earth has become a clear object of human preoccupation.

The several COPs (Conference of the Parties), organized by the UN, never reached an agreement. Only the Paris COP21, of November 30 to December 13, 2015 reached a minimum consensus for the first time, undertaken by all: to prevent global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celcius.

Regrettably, this agreement is not binding. Any country may follow it, but is not of an obligatory nature, as was shown by the Northamerican Congress that revoked the ecological measures of President Barack Obama. Now President Donald Trump roundly denies them as being nonsensical and deceitful.

It is becoming ever more evident that the question is more an ethical than a scientific one. That is, the quality of our relations with nature and with our Common Home were not and are not adequate. They are in fact destructive.

Quoting Pope Francis in his 2015 inspiring encyclical letter Laudato Si: about caring for the Common Home: «We have never before mistreated and hurt our Common Home as much as in the last two centuries…these situations provoke the wailings of Sister Earth, echoing the cries of the abandoned of the world, whose voices demand that we follow a different path» (n. 53).

We urgently need a regenerative ethics of the Earth, one that restores her damaged vitality, so that she may continue giving us all that she always has given us. That must be an ethics of caring, of respect for her rhythms and of collective responsibility.

But an ethics of the Earth is not enough. It must be joined with spirituality.

This spirituality is rooted in cordial and sensible reason. From there comes the passion for caring and a serious commitment to love, responsibility and compassion for our Common Home, as is expressed at the end of the encyclical letter of Francis, Bishop of Rome.

The well known and universally admired Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in a posthumously published text, written in 1943, Letter to General “X”, emphatically affirms: «There is one problem, and only one: to rediscover that there is a life of the spirit that is even higher than the life of intelligence. It is the only one that can satisfy the human being» (Macondo Libri 2015, p. 31).

In another text,written in 1936 when he was a Paris Soir correspondent, during the Spanish Civil War, with the title, It is important to give meaning to life, de Saint-Exupéry returns to the life of the spirit. There he affirms: «the human being does not realize himself other than together with other human beings, in love and friendship. However, human beings not only unite by being next to each other, but by fusing together in the same divinity. In a world turned into a desert, we are thirsty to find compañeros, comrades, with whom to share the bread.» (Macondo Libri p.20).

At the end of the Letter to General “X” , he concludes: «Oh how much are we in need of a God!» (op. cit. p. 36).

In fact, only the life of the spirit gives fullness to the human being. It is a beautiful synthesis of spirituality, frequently identified or confused with religiosity. The life of the spirit is more. It is as original and anthropological a fact as are intelligence and will. It is something that belongs to our most essential depth.

We know how to care for the life of the body, a true cultural phenomenon now, with so many physical fitness academies. Psychoanalysts of several tendencies help us to care for the life of the psychic, to live a life of relative equilibrium, without neuroses or depression.

But our culture practically forgets to cultivate the life of the spirit, that is our most radical dimension. It is where the great questions live, the most daring dreams dwell, and the most generous utopias are formed. The life of the spirit is nourished by intangible goods, such as love, friendship, friendly coexistence with the others, compassion, caring and openness to the infinite. Without the life of the spirit we wander about, without a direction that guides us and makes life appetizing and grateful.

An ethics of the Earth is not sustained by itself indefinitely, without that supplément d’ame that is the life of the spirit. It makes us feel part of Mother Earth, to whom we must give love and caring.

Leonardo Boff  Theologian-Philosopher of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The Threat to Humanity of Highly Destructive Wars

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

In Brazil we know great social violence, with a murder rate among the highest in the world. We have no peace because there is so much rage, hatred, discrimination, and a perverse social inequality.

Nevertheless, we are on the margins of the great martial conflicts going on in 40 parts of the world, some of which are truly menacing for the future of the human species. We are witnessing a cold war between the United States, China and Russia. A new arms race has began, be it in Russia, or in the United States with Trump, to produce ever more potent nuclear weapons, as if those already in existence could not destroy all life on the planet.

The worst is that the hegemonic power, the United States, has transformed itself into a terrorist state, waging a merciless war against all types of terrorism, as a foreign policy: invading countries in the Middle East, and at home, chasing undocumented immigrants, detaining suspects without respect for their fundamental rights, as a consequence of George Bush, Jr’s, “Patriot Act”, that allowed suspension of habeas corpus, which Barack Obama promised to abolish, but did not.

Francis, Bishop of Rome, said on the plane on his way back from Poland, on July 12, 2016: «there is a war of interests, war for money, war for natural resources, there is a war to dominate the people: this is the war. Someone could think: is he talking about wars among religions. No. Religions want peace. Others want war. Capiche?» That is a direct criticism of the current world order of limitless accumulation, that implies war against the Earth and the exploitation of weaker peoples. Everyone talks of freedom, but without world social justice. Ironically it could be said: it is the freedom of free foxes in a coup of free hens.

Commentators of the world situation not quoted by our press speak of the real danger of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States or between China and the United States.

Trump, as French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy puts it (O Globo 3/5/2016) «is a catastrophe for the United States and the world. And he is also a threat». The same newspaper says about Putin: «he is an explicit threat. We know Putin wants to destabilize Europe, to accentuate the crises of the democracies, and he supports and finances all political parties of the extreme right. We also know that in all places where there is a battle between barbarism and civilization, such as Syria and Ukraine, Putin is on the wrong side. He is a true and great threat».

According to Moniz Sodre in his magnificent book, World Disorder, Putin wants revenge for the humiliation the West and the United States inflicted on his country at the end of the Cold War. He nourishes clearly expansionist pretenses, not in the sense of recreating the old USSR, but of restoring the boundaries of historic Russia. The risk of a nuclear confrontation with the West is not excluded.

We are losing sight of the warnings from the great names of the past century, such as Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, on July 10, 1955 and a few days later, July 15, 1955, joined by 18 Nobel laureates, Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg among them, when they affirmed: «we see with horror that this type of nuclear science has put in the hands of humanity the instrument of its own destruction». The same was affirmed by several Nobel laureates during Rio-92.

If the situation was seen as grave at that time, now it is dramatic. This is because besides nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons capable of decimating the human species are now available.

Some analysts of world conflicts suppose that the next step of terrorism would no longer be with bombs and suicide-bombers, but with chemical and biological weapons, some taken from the weapons reserve left by Kadafi.

At the root of this system of violence is the Western paradigm of the will to power, that is, a way of organizing society and the relationship with nature based on force, violence and submission. This paradigm favors competition over solidarity. Instead of making the citizens partners, this paradigm makes them rivals.

To the paradigm of the closed fist, the response is the extended hand, as an alliance to safeguard life. Instead of power-domination, caring should prevail. It pertains to the essence of the human being and of everything alive. Either we take this step or we will witness dramatic scenes, the fruit of the irrationality and arrogance of the heads of State and their hawks.

Leonardo Boff  Theologian-Philosopher and Member of  the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Does extraterrestrial life exist?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

NASA scientists have discovered a Trappist-1 star, 39 light years from the Earth, with seven rocky planets, three of which have possibilities of water and consequently of life. This discovery has raised again the question of the eventuality of extraterrestrial life.

Let us reflect on the theme, based on notable names in this area.

The Earth sciences and the knowledge coming from the new cosmology have accustomed us to putting all these questions in the framework of the great cosmic evolution. Everything is in a process of genesis, a condition for life to emerge.

Life is considered the most complex and mysterious reality of the universe. The fact is that near 3.8 billion years ago, in an ocean or primordial marsh, under the action of unimaginable tempests of rays and cosmic elements from the Sun, interacting with the geochemistry of the Earth, took to the extreme the complexity of inanimate forms. Suddenly the barrier was surpassed: about 20 amino acids and four phosphate basis were created. Like a great lightning bolt striking the sea or marsh the first living being emerged.

As a qualitative jump in our bent space-time, in a corner of our median galaxy, in a secondary sun, in a planet of quantité négligeable, of medium size, in the Earth, the great novelty emerged: life. The Earth went though 15 massive great extinctions but, as if it were a plague, life was never extinguished.

Let us quickly review the internal logic that permitted life to emerge. The matter and energy of the universe, as they continue their process of expansion, tend to become ever more complex. Each system is in a set of interactions, a dance of inter-exchange of matter and energy, in a permanent dialogue with their environment and always retaining information.

Biologists and biochemists, such as Ilya Prigogine (1977 chemistry Nobel laureate), affirm that there is a continuity between living and inert beings. We need not appeal to a transcendental or external principle to explain the appearance of life, as religions and classic cosmology often do. It is sufficient that the universal principle, including of life, (called the cosmogenetic principle), of complexity, of self-organizing and self-creation, would have been present in embryonic form in that smallest little point that had emerged from the Basic Energy, and later exploded. One of the best present day physicists, Amit Goswami, maintains the thesis that the universe is mathematically inconsistent without the existence of a supreme ordering principle, God. This is why, to him, the universe is self-conscious. (The self aware universe, 1998).

The Earth is not alone in having the privilege of life. According to Christian de Duve, biology 1974 Nobel laureate: «There are as many living planets in the universe as there are planets capable of generating and of sustaining life. A conservative estimate puts their number into the billions. Billions of biospheres ply the space with billions of planets channeling matter and energy in the creative processes of evolution. In any direction of space that we may look there is life (…). The universe is not an inert cosmos of physics, with a pinch of life as a precaution. The universe is life with the necessary structures surrounding it» (Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative, 1996. Polvo vital: La vida como imperativo cósmico, Río de Janeiro, 1997, 383).

It is to astronomy’s credit that it has identified, in the millimeter fringe, a group of molecules in which can be found everything that is essential to start the process of biological synthesis. (Longair, M., The origins of our universe, Río de Janeiro, 1994, 65-66). Amino acids have been found in meteorites. These certainly are the eventual carriers of the archeo-bacteria of life. Probably there were several beginnings of life, many of them frustrated, until life was definitively established.

It is presumed that the most diverse forms of life come from only one original bacterium(Wilson, O. E., The diversity of life, 1994). With the mammals emerged a new quality of life: emotional sensibility and caring. Among the mammals, about some 70 million years ago, the primates stood out; then, some 35 million years ago, the superior primates, our genealogical grandparents, and some 17 million years ago, our predecessors, the hominids. About 8-10 million years ago the human being, the australopithecine, emerged in Africa. Finally, around 100 thousand years ago, there appeared the Homo sapiens-sapiens/demens-demens, of whom we are immediate inheritors (Hubert Reeves and others, The most beautiful story in the world, 1998).

Life is not the fruit of chance (contrary to Jacques Monod, Chance and necessity, 1979). Biochemists and molecular biologists have shown (thanks to random number generating computers), the mathematical impossibility of simple and pure chance. For the amino acids and the two thousand underlying encimas to come close enough together to form a living cell would take billions and billions of years, much more than the 13.7 billion year actual age of the universe.

The so-called chance is expression of our ignorance. We estimate that ascending evolution will produce more and more life, even extraterrestrial.

Leonardo BoffT heologian-Philosopher, of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.