Categoria: English
To human aggression, the Earth responds with flowers
Besides being at the center of a crisis of planetary proportions, we are now confronting an irreversible process. The Earth will never again be the same. Her physical-chemical-ecological base has been transformed in such a profound way that she has lost her internal equilibrium. She has entered into a chaotic process, this is, she has lost her sustainability, affecting the continuation of what she had been doing for millennia: producing and reproducing life.
All chaos has two sides: one destructive and the other creative. The destructive side is the dismantling of a kind of equilibrium, resulting in the erosion of some of the biodiversity and, in the end, of the human species, caused either by its incapacity to adapt to the new situation or its inability to mitigate its lethal effects. At the end of that process of purification, the chaos will start to show its generative face. It will create new orders, stabilize climates, and allow the surviving human beings to build a new type of civilization.
The history of the Earth shows us that she has experienced about fifteen great destructions, such as the Cambrian, 480 million years ago, that destroyed 80-90% of the species. But since she is a generous mother, the Earth slowly rebuilt the diversity of life.
Today, a large majority of the scientific community alerts us to the eventual collapse of the life-system, that could threaten the very future of the human species. We all can perceive the changes that are occurring before our eyes. Great extremes occur: on one side, prolonged summers associated with great water shortages that affect the ecosystems and society as a whole, as is happening in South East Brazil. In other parts of the planet, such as the United States, there are extreme winters, such as had not been seen for decades, or even hundreds of years.
The fact is that we have reached the physical limits of planet Earth. As we push those limits, as is caused by our productivity and consumerist voracity, the Earth responds with hurricanes, tsunamis, devastating floods, earthquakes and an irreversible rise in global warming. If we increase temperature by two degrees centigrade, the situation could still be manageable. But if we do not do what we must, drastically decreasing the emission of greenhouse gasses, and do not re-orient our relationship with nature towards a collective self-restraint, and respect for the limits of endurance of each ecosystem, then a rise of from four to six degrees centigrade is likely. Then we will experience the “tribulation of the desolation”, to use a Biblical expression, and a great part of the forms of life that we know, including portions of humanity, will not be able to subsist.
On January 15, 2015, the well known magazine Science published Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing Planet, a work on planetary limits by 18 scientists. These scientists identified nine dimensions that fundamentally challenge the continuity of life and our attempt at civilization. It is worth mentioning them: (1) climate change; (2) changes in the integrity of the biosphere, with the erosion of the bio-diversity and accelerated extinction of species; (3) reduction in the stratospheric ozone layer that protects us from the lethal rays of the sun; (4) the increased acidification of the oceans; (5) the disruption of the bio-geo-chemical flows (the cycles of phosphorous and nitrogen, fundamental for life); (6) such changes in soil usage as the increasing deforestation and desertification; (7) the threatened scarcity of drinking water; (8) the concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere (microscopic particles that affect climate and living beings); and (9) the introduction of synthetic chemical agents, radioactive materials and nano-materials that threaten life.
Of these nine dimensions, the first four have already exceeded their limits, and the others are in an elevated state of degeneration. This systematic war on Gaia can lead her to collapse, such as occurs with people.
And in spite of this dramatic scene, I look around and see, entranced, the forest filled with cuaresmeiras, violet lent trees, yellow casias, and, by the corner of my home, flowering amaryllis belladonnas, toucans on the trees outside my window, and the araras that nest bellow the roof.
Then I realize that Earth really is a generous mother: to our aggressions, she still smiles with flora and fauna. And she gives us hope that it is not the apocalypse, but a new Genesis, that is coming. The Earth will survive. As the Judeo-Christian scriptures assure us: “God is the sovereign lover of life (Sab 11,26). And God will not permit the disappearance of the life that so painfully overcame chaos.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
The Common Good was Thrown into Limbo
In the middle of a threatening water and energy crisis in Brazil, current political discussions are obfuscated by the particular interests of each party. There is an attempt at destabilizing the new administration of Dilma Rousseff by the dominant groups, behind which are hiding the large corporations, national and multinational, the corporate media and, surely, the actions of the security forces of the North-American empire. It is not just about the ferocious criticism of the official policies, something even more profound is at play: the desire to dismantle, and, if possible, to eliminate the Labor Party, PT – from the Portuguese name – that represents the interests of the populations that historically have always been neglected. It is very hard for the conservative elites to accept the new historical subject –the organized people and their political expression – because they feel that their privileges are threatened. As the elites are clearly egotistical and have never considered the common good, they strive to remove from the scene the social and political force that can irreversibly change the destiny of Brazil.
We are forgetting that the essence of politics is the common search for the common good. One of the most devastating effects of global capitalism and its ideology, neoliberalism, is the destruction of the goals of the common good and social welfare. We know that civilized societies are built on three fundamental pillars: participation (the citizenry), social cooperation and respect for human rights. Together, they create the common good. But the common good has been thrown into the limbo of preoccupation with politics. It has been replaced by the concepts of profitability, flexibility, adaptability and competitiveness. The freedom of the citizen is replaced by the freedom of the market forces, the common good by the individual good, and cooperation by competition.
Participation, cooperation and human rights guaranteed each person’s existence with dignity. By denying those values, people’s existence is no longer socially guaranteed, nor are their rights assured. As a result, everyone feels compelled to guarantee his or her own: employment, salary, car, family. Individualism, the greatest enemy of social coexistence, rules. Consequently, people are not encouraged to build something in common. The only thing that is left in common is the war of all against all, seeking individual survival.
In this context, who will see to the common good of planet Earth? In a recent article in the magazine Science, (01/15/2015) 18 scientists list the nine Planetary Boundaries, four of which have been already exceeded (climate, integrity of the biosphere, use of the soil, biogeochemical fluxes-phosphorous and nitrogen). The others are in an advanced state of degradation. Just exceeding those four can make the Earth less hospitable for millions of people, and for biodiversity. What world organ is confronting this situation, that destroys the planetary common good?
Who will care for the common interests of more than seven billion people? Neoliberalism is deaf, blind and mute on this fundamental question, as Pope Francis keeps repeating as a ritornello. It would be contrary to neoliberalism to address the common good, because neoliberalism defends political and social concepts that are directly opposed to the common good. Neoliberalism’s basic purpose is: the market has to win and society must loose, because the market will regulate and solve everything. That being so, why should we build things in common? Social well being has lost its legitimacy.
However, the growing impoverishment of the world is the result of the excluding and predatory logic of the present competitive, liberalizing, deregulating and privatizing globalization. The greater the privatization, the more individual interests are legitimated, to the detriment of the general interest. As Thomas Piketty has shown in his book, Capitalism in the XXI Century, with greater privatization, inequalities grow. It is the triumph of killer capitalism. How much social perversity and barbarism can the spirit take? Greece has shown that can not take any more. Greece refuses to accept the diktat of the markets, in her case principally imposed by Merkel’s Germany and Hollande’s France.
In summary: what is the common good? In the infra-structural plane, it is the just access by all to food, health, housing, energy, security and culture. in the humanistic plane, it is acknowledgement, respect and peaceful coexistence. Having been dismantled by competitive globalization, the common good must now be rebuilt. To that end, it is important to give supremacy to cooperation, rather than competition. Without that change, it will be difficult for the human community to stay united and to look forward to a good future.
Now, this reconstruction is the nucleus of the political project of the PT and its ideological allies. Begun correctly, Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) was subsequently transformed through several popular public policies. It attempted to lay a solid foundation: a new social pact starting with the values of cooperation and good will towards all. But the effect has been weak, given our individualist and patrimonial tradition. However, at bottom, there remains this basic humanistic conviction: there is no long range future for a society founded on the lack of justice, equality, fraternity, respect for the basic rights, caring for the natural resources and cooperation. It denies the most basic longing of the human being since its appearance on the evolutionary stage, millions of years ago. Whether we like it or not, even accepting its errors and corruption, the best of the PT articulated and articulates that ancestral longing. Therefore, it can restore itself, renewing and nourishing its strength to summon others. If not the PT, other actors in other times will do so.
Cooperation is strengthened by the cooperation that we must unconditionally offer.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
Fundamentalism of the West and Far West
Islamic fundamentalism is predominant. But there is also a wave of fundamentalism, especially in France and Germany, where xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are strong. The many attacks by al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups feed the feelings that dehumanize everyone: the victims and those who victimize. We can understand the global concepts that underlie terrorist violence, but never, for any reason, can we approve of it, given its criminal character.
The fundamentalism of several Islamic groups is radical, creating a new type of war: terrorism. It is an insult today to accuse someone of being a fundamentalist. Generally we consider that only others are fundamentalists, often forgetting that the accuser also lives in a fundamentalist culture. I would like to briefly touch on this, although it may irritate not a few readers. I am thinking of the fundamentalism found in broad sectors of the West and Far West (the American continent).
Historically, fundamentalism, although already in existence, came into the open in North-American Protestantism, between 1890 and 1915, when a group of Pastors published a collection of 12 theological fascicules, titled Fundamentals: a testimony of the Truth. It rejected secularization, affirming the absolute truth of the faith, outside of which there only could be error. That fundamentalism still prevails today in many Christian denominations and in sectors of conservative Catholicism of the Lefebvre style.
I would say with some exaggeration, but not very much, that fundamentalism is one of the chronic and more deleterious diseases of the West and Far West. This fundamentalism is so deeply rooted that it has become unconscious, but it was well expressed by the most hilarious and gross politician in Europe, Silvio Berlusconi, who declared that Western Civilization was the best in the world and therefore should be imposed on everyone. I mention two types of fundamentalism: religious and political.
The Roman Catholic version of Christianity was for centuries the hegemonic ideology of Western society, of the orbis catholicus. Seen through this lens is the absolutism of two Popes, a clear expression of fundamentalism.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) through the papal letter, Inter Caetera, to the kings of Spain, declared: «By the authority of all powerful God, given to us in Saint Peter, as the Vicar of Jesus Christ, we give, concede and hand over to you, the islands and dry lands found and to be found, with all their domains, fortress cities, places and villages». This was taken seriously and used to legitimate Spanish colonization, with the destruction of ethnic groups, ancestral cultures and religions.
Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) in the papal letter Romanus Pontifex, addressed to the kings of Portugal, was even more arrogant: «I give you full and free power to invade, conquer, combat, defeat and submit Saracens and Pagans wherever they may be found, and to reduce such persons to perpetual servitude». That power was also exercised «to expand the faith and the empire» at the cost of exterminating our Indigenous peoples (there were 6 million in what is now Brazil) and the devastation of our jungles.
That religious doctrine attained a secular version in the colonizers who practiced such terror over the people.
Sadly, this absolutist version was resurrected through a controversial document by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dominus Jesus (2001), where he affirmed the medieval concept that there is no salvation outside of the Church. Everyone else is in a dangerous situation with regard to eternal salvation.
The religious version gained political expression with the Manifest Destiny of the United States. This expression was coined in 1845 by the journalist John O‘Sullivan, to justify North American expansionism, with the annexation of parts of Mexico. In 1900 Indiana senator Albert Beveridge explained: «God designated the North American people as the chosen nation, to initiate the regeneration of the world». Other presidents, especially George W. Bush, based their actions on that pretentious exclusivity. It justified wars of conquest, especially in the Middle East. It looks like Barak Obama is not totally innocent.
In short the West and Far West imagine themselves to be the best in the world: with the best religion, the best form of government, the best technoscience, the best cosmovision. This is fundamentalism, which makes its truth the only truth, and imposes it on others. That arrogance is present in the Western conscious and subconscious. Thanks to God, we have also an antidote: self criticism for the evils that such fundamentalism has brought upon humanity. But it is not shared by all.
The phrase of Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet is on point: «Not your truth. The truth. And come with me to search for it. Your truth, keep it to yourself». If we search for together, through dialogue and cordiality, then my truth increasingly disappears, giving way to the Truth, which is shared by all. And thus, perhaps, it can rein in the fundamentalism that the West and Far West visit on the world.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
Leonardo Boff 