Categoria: English

People: in search of a concep

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Few words are used in more different contexts than «people». Its meaning is so fluid that social scientists have little respect for the term, preferring to speak of society or social classes. But, as Ludwig Wittgenstein says, «the meaning of a word depends on its usage». Among us, those who use «people» more positively are those who are interested in the fate of the lower classes: the «people».

We will attempt to give analytical content to «people» so that its use may serve those who feel excluded from society and want to be «people».

The first philosophical-social meaning has its roots in the classical thinking of antiquity. Cicero and then Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas affirmed that «people is not just any gathering of men, it is the union of a multitude around a consensus of the correct and common interests». It is the State that must harmonize the different interests.

A second meaning of «people» comes from cultural anthropology: it is the population that is part of a given culture, and inhabits a given territory. So many cultures, so many peoples. This meaning is legitimate because it distinguishes one people from another: a Bolivian quechua is different from a Brazilian. But this concept of «people» obscures differences and even internal contradictions: both an agro-business landlord and the poor peon who lives on his lands are part of the «people». But in a modern state power is legitimate only if it is rooted in the «people». This is why the Constitution says that «all power comes from the people and must be exercised in the name of the people».

A third meaning is key to politics. Politics is the common search for the common good (the usual meaning) or the activity that seeks the power of the State in order to administer society (specific meaning). On the lips of professional politicians «people» is very ambiguous. On the one hand, it means the undifferentiated gathering of the members of a given society (populus), and on the other, it means the marginalized and generally uneducated poor, (plebs = common people). When politicians say that «they go to the people, talk to the people and act for the benefit of the people, they are mostly thinking of the poor».

Here lies a dichotomy between the majorities and their leaders or between the masses and the elites. As Nelson Werneck Sodre said: «a secret intuition makes everyone think of himself as being more of the people to the degree that he is more humble. He has nothing, and therefore, he is proud of being of the «people» (Introdução à revolução brasileira, 1963, p. 188). For example, our Brazilian elites do not consider themselves to be of the «people». Before he died in 2013, Antonio Ermirio de Moraes said: «the elites never think of the people, they only think of themselves». That is the problem.

There is a fourth meaning of «people» that comes from sociology. Here some rigor of the concept is needed in order not to fall in populism. Initially, it has a political-ideological meaning, to the degree that it obscures the internal conflicts of the group of persons with different cultures, social status, and different projects.

That meaning has little analytical value because it is too all-encompassing, even though it is used most in the language of the mass media and of the powerful.

Sociologically, «people» is also a historical category, between the masses and the elites. In a class-based society that was colonized, the concept of the elite is clear: it is those who hold power, who are the owners, and have education. The elite has its ethos, habits and language. In contrast to the elite is the Native, those who neither have full citizenship nor can implement their own projects. They assumed, and unconsciously incorporated, that of the elites. The elites are expert manipulators of «the people»: that is populism. The «people» is co-opted as a supporting actor in a project formulated by the elites, for the benefit of the elites.

But there are always bumps in the process of hegemony or class domination: from the masses charismatic leaders slowly appear, who organize social movements with their own vision for the country and their future. They stop being «people-mass» and start to be relatively autonomous, active citizens. New unions appear, movements of the landless, the homeless, women, the Afro-descendants, the Indigenous, among others. From the creation of those movements a concrete «people» is born among them. That «people» no longer depends on the elites. They develop a consciousness of their own, a different plan for the country. They teach means of resistance and for transforming the current social relationships. Thus the «people» is born, as a result of the development of the movements and active communities. This is the new reality in Brazil and in Latin America in recent decades, that is culminating now in new democracies of a popular and republican nature. A leader of the new political party, «We Can» in Spain, put it well: «it was not the people who produced the uprising, it was the uprising that produced the people». (Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2015 p. 16).

Now we can speak with some conceptual rigor: a «people» is emerging here, to the degree that it has consciousness and its own vision for the country. «People» also has an axiological dimension: all are called upon to be people: to be neither dominated nor dominators, but citizen-actors of a society where all can participate.

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

Intolerance in present day Brazil and in the world

Leonardo Boff6 Comentários

The recent murder in France of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and the last Presidential elections in Brazil, have highlighted a latent fact of Brazilian culture and the world: intolerance. I will restrict myself here to intolerance in Brazilian culture, because my previous article dealt with that reflected in the Charlie Hebdo murders. Brazilian intolerance is part of what Holland’s Sergio Buarque characterizes as «cordial» in the sense that hate and prejudice, like hospitality and sympathy, come from the heart. But rather than cordial, I would prefer to call that of Brazil passionate.

What the last electoral campaign showed was «cordial-passionate», in the form of class hatred (contempt of the poor), and racial discrimination (Blacks and Northerners). To be poor, or to be Black and a Northerner, was deemed a defect, hence the absurd desire of some to divide Brazil between the South «rich» and the North-East «poor». That class hatred derives from the archetype of La Casa Grande and the Senzala that persist in some social sectors, well expressed by a wealthy madame from Salvador: «the poor, not satisfied with meeting basic family needs, now want to have rights as well». That presupposes that if previously they were slaves, they should do everything for free, as if the abolition of slavery had not occurred and rights meant nothing. Homosexuals and other LGBTs are insulted even in official debates between candidates, revealing an «intolerable» intolerance.

To better understand intolerance we must delve deeper, to the crux of the problem. Today’s reality is contradictory at its core, and complex, because it is the convergence of the most varied factors. In it is found original chaos and cosmos (order), light and shadows, the sym-bolical and the dia-bolical. In fact, they are not construction defects, but the very real condition of in-plenitude that exists in the universe. This forces universal coexistence with differences and imperfections, and tolerance of those who do not think or act as we think and act. Expressed in direct language: they are two opposing poles, but the poles of a singe and unique dynamic reality. These polarities cannot be suppressed. All attempts at suppression result in terror by those who presume to have the truth and try to impose it on others. The excess of truth ends up being worse than error.

What everyone (and society) must know is how to distinguish one pole from the other and to make one’s choice. Humans show themselves to be ethical beings when they take responsibility for their actions and for the consequences of those actions.

One could think: but then, is all good? Is there no longer difference? It is not that all is good or that differences are erased. Distinctions must be made. Weedy grasses are weedy grasses, and not wheat. Wheat is wheat and not just a weedy grass. The torturer can not have the same fate as the tortured. Humans must not equate and confuse them. Humans must be discerning, and make decisions.

To achieve coexistence without confusing these principles we must nourish tolerance in ourselves. Tolerance is the ability to positively maintain this difficult coexistence and tension between the poles, knowing that they are opposite, but that they are part of one unique dynamic reality. Even though they are opposite, they are the two sides of the same whole, the left and the right.

The ongoing risk is intolerance. Intolerance diminishes reality, because it only accepts one pole and denies the other. Intolerance forces everyone to adopt one pole and annul the other, as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda do in a criminal form. Fundamentalism and dogmatism deem their truths to be absolute. Thus they condemn themselves to intolerance, and neither recognize nor respect the truth of others. Their first action is to suppress freedom of opinion, pluralism and to impose their unique thought. Attacks such as the one in Paris derive from this intolerance.

One must avoid passive tolerance, the attitude of accepting the other’s existence, not from choice, and recognition of its value, but because it cannot be avoided.

Rather, active tolerance must be encouraged, consisting of coexistence, with an attitude of positive coexistence with the other, out of respect, and an awareness of the value of difference, through which we can enrich ourselves.

Above all, tolerance is an ethical experience. Tolerance represents the right of all people to be who they are, and to continue being that. That right was universally expressed in the golden rule: «do not do to others what you would not have them do to you». Or positively stated: «Do unto others as you would have them do unto you». This principle is obvious.

At its core, the truth found in tolerance is summarized thusly: each person has the right to live and coexist on planet Earth. They all have the right to be here with their specific differences. That right precedes any expression of life as a vision of the world, a belief, or ideology. This is the great difficulty of European societies: the lack of acceptance of the other, be it an Arab, Muslem, or Turk, and in the Brazilian society, it is the lack of acceptance of the African descendant, the Northerner, the Indigenous. Societies must be organized in such a way that, by right, everyone may feel included. Hence peace is born, that according to The Earthcharter, is «the plenitude created by correct relationships with oneself, with other persons, with other cultures, with other lives, with the Earth and with the main Whole of whom we are part» (n. 16 f).

Nature offers us the main lesson: no matter how diverse the beings are, they all coexist, interconnect and create the complexity of reality and the splendid diversity of life.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
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Intolerance in present day Brazil and in the world

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The recent murder in France of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and the last Presidential elections in Brazil, have highlighted a latent fact of Brazilian culture and the world: intolerance. I will restrict myself here to intolerance in Brazilian culture, because my previous article dealt with that reflected in the Charlie Hebdo murders. Brazilian intolerance is part of what Holland’s Sergio Buarque characterizes as «cordial» in the sense that hate and prejudice, like hospitality and sympathy, come from the heart. But rather than cordial, I would prefer to call that of Brazil passionate.

What the last electoral campaign showed was «cordial-passionate», in the form of class hatred (contempt of the poor), and racial discrimination (Blacks and Northerners). To be poor, or to be Black and a Northerner, was deemed a defect, hence the absurd desire of some to divide Brazil between the South «rich» and the North-East «poor». That class hatred derives from the archetype of La Casa Grande and the Senzala that persist in some social sectors, well expressed by a wealthy madame from Salvador: «the poor, not satisfied with meeting basic family needs, now want to have rights as well». That presupposes that if previously they were slaves, they should do everything for free, as if the abolition of slavery had not occurred and rights meant nothing. Homosexuals and other LGBTs are insulted even in official debates between candidates, revealing an «intolerable» intolerance.

To better understand intolerance we must delve deeper, to the crux of the problem. Today’s reality is contradictory at its core, and complex, because it is the convergence of the most varied factors. In it is found original chaos and cosmos (order), light and shadows, the sym-bolical and the dia-bolical. In fact, they are not construction defects, but the very real condition of in-plenitude that exists in the universe. This forces universal coexistence with differences and imperfections, and tolerance of those who do not think or act as we think and act. Expressed in direct language: they are two opposing poles, but the poles of a singe and unique dynamic reality. These polarities cannot be suppressed. All attempts at suppression result in terror by those who presume to have the truth and try to impose it on others. The excess of truth ends up being worse than error.

What everyone (and society) must know is how to distinguish one pole from the other and to make one’s choice. Humans show themselves to be ethical beings when they take responsibility for their actions and for the consequences of those actions.

One could think: but then, is all good? Is there no longer difference? It is not that all is good or that differences are erased. Distinctions must be made. Weedy grasses are weedy grasses, and not wheat. Wheat is wheat and not just a weedy grass. The torturer can not have the same fate as the tortured. Humans must not equate and confuse them. Humans must be discerning, and make decisions.

To achieve coexistence without confusing these principles we must nourish tolerance in ourselves. Tolerance is the ability to positively maintain this difficult coexistence and tension between the poles, knowing that they are opposite, but that they are part of one unique dynamic reality. Even though they are opposite, they are the two sides of the same whole, the left and the right.

The ongoing risk is intolerance. Intolerance diminishes reality, because it only accepts one pole and denies the other. Intolerance forces everyone to adopt one pole and annul the other, as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda do in a criminal form. Fundamentalism and dogmatism deem their truths to be absolute. Thus they condemn themselves to intolerance, and neither recognize nor respect the truth of others. Their first action is to suppress freedom of opinion, pluralism and to impose their unique thought. Attacks such as the one in Paris derive from this intolerance.

One must avoid passive tolerance, the attitude of accepting the other’s existence, not from choice, and recognition of its value, but because it cannot be avoided.

Rather, active tolerance must be encouraged, consisting of coexistence, with an attitude of positive coexistence with the other, out of respect, and an awareness of the value of difference, through which we can enrich ourselves.

Above all, tolerance is an ethical experience. Tolerance represents the right of all people to be who they are, and to continue being that. That right was universally expressed in the golden rule: «do not do to others what you would not have them do to you». Or positively stated: «Do unto others as you would have them do unto you». This principle is obvious.

At its core, the truth found in tolerance is summarized thusly: each person has the right to live and coexist on planet Earth. They all have the right to be here with their specific differences. That right precedes any expression of life as a vision of the world, a belief, or ideology. This is the great difficulty of European societies: the lack of acceptance of the other, be it an Arab, Muslem, or Turk, and in the Brazilian society, it is the lack of acceptance of the African descendant, the Northerner, the Indigenous. Societies must be organized in such a way that, by right, everyone may feel included. Hence peace is born, that according to The Earthcharter, is «the plenitude created by correct relationships with oneself, with other persons, with other cultures, with other lives, with the Earth and with the main Whole of whom we are part» (n. 16 f).

Nature offers us the main lesson: no matter how diverse the beings are, they all coexist, interconnect and create the complexity of reality and the splendid diversity of life.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Understanding the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

It is one thing, and it is justifiable, to be indignant over the terrorist action that killed the best French caricaturists. It was an abominable and criminal act, which no-one can support.

Trying to understand analytically why such terrorist acts occur is different. Such acts do not fall from a clear blue sky. The sky behind them is dark, comprised of tragic histories, great massacres, humiliations and discrimination, and not just from true wars, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, that sacrificed the lives of thousands upon thousands of people, or forced them into exile.

The United States and several European countries were involved in these wars. Millions of Moslems live in France, the majority in the peripheries of the cities, in precarious conditions. Many of them, although born in France, are discriminated against to the point that it appears to be true Islamophobia. After the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a mosque was sprayed with gunfire, a Moslem restaurant was set on fire, and an Islamic prayer house was also shot at.

The issue is one of overcoming the spirit of revenge, and renouncing the strategy of confronting violence with still more violence. That creates a spiral of never ending violence, that produces countless victims, most of whom are innocent. And it will never achieve peace. If you want peace, prepare the means of peace, which is the fruit of dialogue and of the respectful coexistence among all.

The terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 against the United States was paradigmatic. The reaction of President Bush was to declare “endless war” against terror and to pass the “Patriot Act” that violates citizens’ fundamental rights.

What the United States and her Western allies did in Iraq and Afghanistan was a modern war with the loss of countless civilian lives. If in those countries there had only been large date palm and fig plantations, nothing like that would have occurred. But in those countries there are great oil reserves, the blood of the world system of production. Such violence left a residue of rage, hatred and a desire of revenge in many Moslems who lived in those countries and elsewhere, all over the world.

Starting from that background one can understand that the abominable Paris attack was the result of this prior violence, not a spontaneous act. Not that this justifies it.

The effect of this attack is to instill widespread fear. That is the what terrorism seeks: to occupy the minds of the people and make them prisoners of fear. The principal point of terrorism is not to occupy their territory, as Westerners did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but to occupy their minds.

Sadly, the prophesy the intellectual author of the September 11 attempts, Osama Bin Laden, made on October 8, 2001 was realized: «The United States will never again have security, never again have peace». To occupy people’s minds, to keep them emotionally destabilized, to make them distrust any foreign gesture or person, is the essential objective of terrorism.

To reach its objective of dominion of the minds, terrorism follows this strategy:

(1) the actions must be spectacular, otherwise they do no cause widespread commotion;

( 2 ) the actions, in spite of being hateful, must inspire admiration for the ingenuity involved;

( 3 ) the actions must show that they were meticulously prepared;

( 4 ) the actions must be unexpected, to give the impression of being uncontrollable;

( 5 ) the authors of the actions must remain anonymous (using masks) because when there are more suspects, the fear is greater;

( 6 ) the actions must cause lasting fear;

( 7 ) the actions must distort the perception of reality: anything that is different can produce terror. It is enough to see some poor children walking into a commercial center, and the image of a potential assailant is produced.

Let us formalize the concept of terrorism: it is any spectacular violence, done with the purpose of filling people’s minds with fear and dread. Violence itself is not important, what is important is its spectacular character, its capacity for dominating everybody’s mind. One of the most lamentable effects of terrorism was that it promoted the terrorist State that the United States is now. Noam Chomsky quotes an official of the North-American security apparatus, who confessed: «The United States is a terrorist state and we are proud of it».

Hopefully this spirit does not predominate in the world, especially in the West. If it does, we are headed for the worst kind of encounter. Only peaceful means have the secret strength to overcome violence and war. That is the lesson of history, and the counsel of wise humans, such as the Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Francis of Assísi, and Francis of Rome.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org