Categoria: English

Trump is violating the first virtue of world society

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

The United States has always distinguished itself for being an extremely hospitable country, because, except for the original Native Nations, practically all of the Northamerican population is derived from immigrants. The same happened in Brazil, which received representatives of at least 60 different peoples.
The democratic spirit and respect for religious differences are enshrined in the Constitution of the United States. Now comes a President, Donald Trump, who has broken a long Northamerican tradition: the respect for religious differences; by rejecting the Moslem population, especially people coming from Syria, and the traditional hospitality for the various types of people who came or are coming to the United States.

In his last book, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch”, the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) proposed a world republic, (Weltrepublik), fundamentally based on two principles: hospitality and respect for human rights.

For Kant, hospitality, (he uses the Latin expression, “die Hospitalität”), is the first virtue of this world republic, because «all of humanity lives on the Earth, and all, without exception, have the right to live on her and to visit her places and peoples; the Earth belongs to everyone in common». Hospitality is a right and the duty of all.

The second principle consists of the human rights that Kant considers «the apple of God’s eyes» or «the most sacred that God gave the Earth». Respecting them make possible the birth of a community of peace and security that puts a definitive end «to the infamous belligerency».

This hospitality is being denied in Europe to thousands of refugees who are fleeing the wars sponsored by peoples from the West. This same hospitality is consciously and explicitly being rejected by Donald Trump to thousands and even millions of foreign “illegal” workers.

In this context is worth remembering one of the most beautiful myths of Greek culture, the hospitality offered by an elderly couple – Filemon and Baucis – to two divinities: Jupiter, the supreme god of Greece, and his companion, the god Hermes.

The myth goes that Jupiter and Hermes disguised themselves as miserable wanderers, in order to test how much hospitality still remained on Earth. They were rejected by all, everywhere they went.

But one late afternoon, very hungry and tired, they were warmly welcomed by this elderly couple, who washed their feet, offered them food and a bed where they could rest. These acts of hospitality moved the gods.

When Jupiter and Hermes were getting ready to rest, taking off their rags, they decided to reveal their true divine nature. In an instant they transformed the humble shack into an splendid temple. Frightened, the kind elderly couple prostrated themselves on the ground in reverence.

The divinities told them to make a request, which would be promptly granted.

As if they had already agreed, Filemon and Baucis said that they would want to continue receiving pilgrims in the temple, and that at the end of life, the two, after such a long life of love, would like to die together.

And they were heard. One day, when they were seated at the courtyard, waiting for the pilgrims, suddenly Filemon saw that the body of Baucis was filled with flowering foliage and that his own body was also covered with green leaves.

They barely had time to say good bye to each other. Filemon was transformed into an enormous Oak tree, and Baucis into a luxuriant Linden. Their crowns and branches intertwined in the heights. And thus, embracing, they remain together forever. The elders of that region, now part of Northern Turkey, always repeat the lesson: those who welcome the foreigner, welcome God.

Hospitality is a test of how much humanism, compassion and solidarity exist in a society. Behind each refugee coming to Europe and each immigrant to the United States is an ocean of suffering and anguish, and also of hope of better days to come. Rejection is particularly humiliating, because it gives immigrants and refugees the impression that they are worthless, that they are not even considered to be human.

The refugees go to Europe because for more than two centuries, the Europeans were in their countries. They took over power, imposed different customs and exploited their wealth. Now that the refugees are in such great need, they are simply rejected.

It is worth rescuing the value and the urgency of hospitality, present as something sacred in all human cultures. We must reinvent ourselves as hospitalarian beings, so as to be worthy in the eyes of the millions of refugees and immigrants in the whole world.

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.

Trump: a new historical phase?

Leonardo Boff5 Comentários

For years we have seen, some in all parts of the world, the ascendance of a conservative way of thinking and of movements that defined themselves as rightists, seeking a society where order prevailed over liberty, traditional values over modern ones and the supremacy of authority over democratic liberties.

This phenomenon derives from many factors, but principally from the erosion of the shared values that gave society cohesion and a sense of collective coexistence. The predominance of the capitalist culture which extolled individualism, unlimited accumulation of material goods and above all, competition, left little space for cooperation. It contaminated virtually all of humanity, creating an ethical-spiritual confusion with no sense of belonging to a single humanity that inhabited a Common Home. There emerged what Bauman calls the liquid society, where nothing is solid. To this must be added the post modern spirit of every thing goes, anything is OK, where nothing is important except to accomplish each individual’s objectives, according to his/her preferences.

Facing this dilution of guiding stars its dialectic opposite arose: the search for security, order, authority, clear norms and well defined paths. This type of vision is found in conservatism, the political, ethical and religious right. It is just one step away from Nazi-Fascism, as in Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Portugal’s Salazar and Spain’s Franco.

These tendencies have been gaining social and political strength in Europe, Latin America and the United States. The judicial-parliamentarian class coup that deposed President Dilma Rousseff was molded by this conservative and rightist spirit. What followed was the implantation of clearly rightist politics, against the people, that deny social rights and is retrograde in cultural terms.

But that conservative tendency has reached its clearest fulfillment in the central power of the world system, the United States, as seen in the election of Donald Trump as its President. In the United States, conservatism and rightist politics express themselves without metaphors, in shameless, and even harsh, forms.

In his first actions as President, Trump began undoing the social accomplishments of Barack Obama. His clearest characteristics are nationalism, patriotism, conservatism and isolationism.

Trump’s inaugural address is terrifying: “from now on a new vision will rule our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America first”. The “first” here must be understood as “only the United States will matter”. With evident arrogance Trump radicalized his vision at the end of his speech: ”Together we will make America strong again. We will make America prosperous again. We will make America proud again. We will make America secure again. And together we will make America great again”.

Underlying these words is the ideology of the “manifest destiny”, of the exceptionality of the United States, always present in the previous Presidents, even in Obama. This is to say that the United States has a unique and divine mission in the world, to carry her values of rights, of private property and of liberal democracy to all humanity.

The world does not exist for Donald Trump. And if it exists, is seen in a negative form. Trump breaks the ties of solidarity with traditional allies, such as the European Union and leaves each country free for eventual ventures against their historical adversaries, opening the way to the expansionism of regional powers, including eventual lethal wars.

We can expect anything from Trump’s personality. Used to shady dealings such as, in general terms, the real estate New York business, without political experience, he can unleash hugely threatening crises for the rest of humanity, as for example, an eventual war with China or North Korea, where the use of nuclear weapons would not be excluded.

Trump’s personality shows deviant psychological characteristics, narcissistic and with an overblown ego, bigger than his own country.

The phrase that scares us is this: “from this day forward, a new vision will govern our land”. I do not know if he is thinking only of the United States or of the planet Earth. Probably to him the two are the same. If that were true, we would have to pray that the worst for the future of the civilization does not come to pass.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher  and of the Earthcharter Commission

 

The God of Brazil is Moloch, who devours his children

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

t is said that God is Brazilian. It is not the God of tenderness or the humble, but the Moloch of the Canaanite and Phoenicians, who devours his children. We are one of the most unequal, unjust and violent countries in the world. Theologically, we live in a situation of social and structural sin, contrary to God’s design. It is enough to consider what happened in the jails of Manaus, Rondonia and Roraima. Is pure barbarity: the fury beheads, pierces the eyes and destroys the heart.
There is not just violence in Brazil. We are grounded in violent socio-historic structures, based on the genocide of the Indigenous, humiliating colonialism and inhumane slavery. And these structures cannot be overcome without first overcoming this dreadful tradition.

How to do that? It is a challenge that demands a colossal transformation of our social relationships. Is this still possible or are we condemned to be a pariah country? I see it as possible, on condition of following, among other things, these two paths developed by the base: the creation of a people, beginning with the social movements, and the installation of a social-democracy, grounded in the people.

The creation of a people: those who colonized us did not come to create a nation, but to found a commercial enterprise, become wealthy fast, make themselves hidalgos (children of something…), return to Portugal and enjoy themselves with their accumulated wealth.

They first conquered the Native peoples and then they brought Black slaves from Africa to do the labor. A human mass was created, dominated, humiliated, and despised by the elites, even in our times.

Apart from some earlier revolts, there was a historic change beginning in the 1930s. Unions and the most varied social movements emerged. At the heart of the movements were conscious social actors, critics, with a will to modify the social reality and of create the seeds of a more participatory and democratic society.

The development of these associations generated the Brazilian popular movement. It is turning the mass into an organized people, one that did not exist before as a people, but that now is being born. It forces the political society to listen, and negotiate, and in this way to diminish the levels of structural violence.

The creation of a social-democracy with a popular base: we have a representative democracy, but one of very low intensity, filled with political vices and corruption, where the representatives are generally elected by the large enterprises, whose interests they represent.

But as a counterweight, due to popular organizing, there already have been created popular political parties and segments of progressive parties, including the liberal-bourgeois, or, traditionally from the left, parties that promote profound reforms in society and seek to conquer State power, be it municipal, state or federal.

This participatory democracy is fundamentally seated on these four legs, like a table:

– participation, the broadest possible, of everybody, upwards from the base, in such a way that everyone may consider himself or herself an active citizen;

– equality, resulting from the degree of participation. Equality gives the citizens greater opportunities to live better. In the face of the existing inequalities, social solidarity must be strengthened;

– respect for differences of every type; that is why a democratic society must be pluralist, multi-ethnic, respectful of all religions and with various forms of communal resources.

– the valuing of human subjectivity; the human being is not only a social actor, the human being is a person, with his/her own world vision, who cultivates values of cooperation and solidarity that humanize institutions and social structures.

Moreover, this table is on a base, without which it can not stand: a new relationship with Nature and with the Earth, our Common Home, as Pope Francis emphasizes in his ecological encyclical letter. In other words, this democracy must incorporate the ecological moment, based on different paradigm. The current paradigm, centered on power and domination, in function of unlimited accumulation, has encountered an insuperable barrier: the limits of the Earth and of her renewable and non renewable goods and services. A limited Earth cannot support unlimited growth. By surpassing these limits, we are now witnessing global warming and the extreme events experienced in this year of 2017, with snow falling in almost all of Europe: which has not happened for one hundred years.

The ever increasing consciousness of these limits, forces us to think of a new paradigm of production, consumption, and sharing of the scarce resources among humans and also with the community of life (the flora and fauna that are also created by the Earth and need their nutrients). Here is where the values enter of caring, co-responsibility and solidarity of all with all, without which the project will never prosper.

From these premises we can hope to overcome our violent social structures.

The alternative is to toy with change, so that nothing actually changes.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher and of 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 Nativity in the time of Herod

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The Nativity this year will be different from other Nativities. Generally, it is the holiday of familial fraternizing. For Christians, it is the celebration of the Divine Child who came to assume our humanity and make it better.

However, in truth, in its place there appeared the horrible figure of Herod the Great, (73 BC– 4 BC), linked to the killing of the innocents. Jealous of his power, he heard that a baby king was born in his kingdom, Judah. And he ordered the killing of all little boys under two years. Then were heard some of the saddest words in the Bible: “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Mt 2,18).

This story of the killing of the innocents continues, in another form. The ultra capitalist policies imposed by the present Brazilian government, revoking rights, reducing salaries, cutting social benefits such as health care, education, social security, pensions and freezing for 20 years the possibilities of development have as a consequence the perverse and slow killing of the innocent, of whom great majority are the poor of our country, Brazil.

The lethal consequences flowing from the decision to consider the market more important than persons are not unknown to the legislators. Within a few years we will have a class of super-rich (there are now 1,440, according to the IPEA, about 0.05% of the population of Brazil), a middle class afraid of losing its status and millions of Brazilian poor and the excluded, who fell from poverty into misery. This implies hungry children who die from malnourishment and totally preventable diseases, adults who can find neither medicines nor access to public health, condemned to die prematurely. This slaughter has an author: a large part of the current legislators from the so-called “The PEC of death” cannot be exempted from the guilt of being the present day Herod of the Brazilian people.

The monied elites and the privileged managed to return. Supported by corrupt parliamentarians, with their backs to the people and deaf to the clamor in the streets, through a coalition of forces consisting of constables, the Public Ministry, the Military Police and parts of the Judiciary and the corporative and reactionary mass media, and not without the backing of the imperial power interested in Brazilian wealth, forced the marginalization of President Dilma Rousseff. The real motor of the coup is the financial capital, banks and lenders (who are not affected by the policies of fiscal adjustments).

The political scientist Jesse Souza denounces with reason: Brazil is the stage of a dispute between two projects: the dream of the majorities of a great and strong country and the reality of a rapacious elite that wants to usurp the work of everyone and sack the wealth of the country to line the pockets of half a dozen. The monied elite rules, by the simple fact of being able to “buy” all other elites (FSP 16/4/2016).

It is sad to show that this process of pillaging is a consequence of the old politics of conciliation between those with money, among themselves and with the governments, that comes from the times of the Colony and Independence. Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff did not accomplish or did not know how to overcome the sagacious art of this ruling minority that, with the pretext of governability, seeks conciliation among themselves and with the government, ceding some benefits to the people at the price of maintaining untouched the nature of their process of accumulating wealth at the highest levels.

Historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues, who studied in depth class conciliation, always on the backs of the people, rightly says: the national leadership, in their successive generations, was always reformist, elitist and individualistic … The art of thievery is well-known and ancient, practiced by those minorities and not by the people. The people does not steal. The people is stolen … The people is cordial, the oligarchy is cruel and pitiless…; the great success of Brazilian history is the Brazilian people, and the great deception are the Brazilian leaders (Conciliação e Reforma no Brasil, 1965. pp. 114-119).

We are living in Brazil a repetition of this malefic tradition, from which we will never liberate ourselves without strengthening an anti-power, coming from below, capable of defeating this perverse elite and of creating a different type of State, with a different type of republican politics, where the common good prevails over individual and corporative good.

The Nativity this year is a Nativity under the sign of Herod. Still, we believe that the divine Child is the liberating Messiah and the Star will generously show us better paths.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher and of theEarthcharter Commission

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