Categoria: English

What is the crux of the ecological question? (I)

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

We are used to generalized environmental discussions by the mass media and the collective conscience. But restricting ecology to environmentalism is to fall into serious reductionism. It is not enough to limit the production of carbon while maintaining the same irresponsible exploitation of nature’s goods and services. It would be like filing down a wolf’s teeth in hope of eliminating its ferocity. But the wolf’s ferocity resides in its nature, not in its teeth. Something similar occurs in our industrial, production oriented and consumerist system. Its nature is to treat the Earth as the provider of merchandise for market. We must overcome this attitude if we want to create a new paradigm for relatimg with the Earth, and thus halt a process that could take us to the abyss.

We are tired of a “half-environment”. We want the whole environment, that is, a global vision of the Earth-system, the life-system and the human-civilization system, forming one great whole, constructed of interdependencies, complementaries and reciprocal networks.

With good reason the Earthcharter tends to substitute life community for environment, because modern biology and cosmology teach us that all living beings carry the same basic genetic code – the twenty amino acids and four phosphate bases – from the very first bacteria that appeared 3.8 billion years ago, through the great jungles, the dinosaurs, the hummingbirds and extending to us. The differentiated combinations of those amino acids and phosphate bases creates the diversity of living beings. It follows from this observation that a kinship link bonds all life, forming in fact a community of life that must be «cared for with understanding, compassion and love» (Earthcharter, n. I, 2). What Francis of Assisi sensed in his cosmic mysticism, calling all beings by the sweet name of brothers and sisters, we now know through scientific experimentation.

Among those living beings planet Earth stands out. Since the 1970s, much of the scientific community affirmed, first as a hypothesis, and since 2001 as theory, that the Earth does not just have life on her: She herself, the Earth, is alive. She has been called Gaia by the principal formulator, James Lovelock, and in Brazil, by Jose Lutzenberger. Gaia is the name for the living Earth in Greek mythology. She combines the chemical, physical, ecological and anthropological in such a subtle, delicate form that it is always capable of producing and reproducing life. Because of this observation, the United Nations Organization, the UN itself, in its famous General Assembly session of April 22, 2009, unanimously approved calling the Earth Mother Earth, Tierra Madre, Magna Mater and Pachamama. It is like saying that she is a super Entity: alive, complex, sometimes seemingly contradictory (the Earth makes order and disorder live together), but always the source of all beings, in their distinct orders, particularly of living beings, especially humans, men and women.

According to the biochemist who popularizes scientific matters, Isaac Asimov, one fact is the greatest legacy of the space journeys: the indivisibility of the Earth and humanity. From these great distrances, from the spacecrafts and the Moon, Asimov says and the astronauts confirm, there is no difference between human being and Earth. Together they form a unique entity. In other words, the human being, endowed with intelligence, caring, and love, arose from an advanced and highly complex moment of the Earth herself. The Earth evolved to the point that she began to feel, to think, to love, to care and to venerate, as the great Argentinean indigenous poet and singer Atahualpa Yupanqui has already pointed out. And then the human being appeared on the scene of this miniscule planet Earth. Therefore it is said that humanity derives from the humus: good and fertile land; or adamah in Biblical Hebrew: the son and daughter of the arable and fertile land.

The entire process of the creation of life would be impossible without all the physical-chemical substratum (the Mendeleiev scale) that formed billions of years ago in the cores of the big red stars that, when they exploded, launched those elements in all directions, creating galaxies, stars, the planets, the Earth and us, ourselves. Therefore, the part that seems inert also belongs to life, because without it, yesterday as today, life and human life would be impossible.

Sustainability – a central category of this vision– is everything needed to maintain the existence of all beings, especially the living beings and our culture on the planet.

What do we conclude from this quick review? That we must change our vision of the Earth, of nature and of ourselves. The Earth is our primary mother, who, like our own mothers deserves our respect and veneration. That is, to know and to respect her rhythms and cycles, her capacity of reproduction, and not to devastate her as we have done since the advent of technology and of the anthropocentric spirit that considers that the Earth has value only for as long as she is useful to us. But the Earth does not need us, it is we who need the Earth.

The current paradigm is approaching its limits, for Mother Earth is giving unequivocal signs of being depleted and ill. Either we invent a different form of attending to our vital needs in relation to the Earth, or she, who is alive, may not want us on her soil anymore.

Adopting such a new vision and new practice is to me the crux of the issue, and the decisive challenge presented by the present ecological situation.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Characteristics of the emerging new cosmologican paradigm

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

There is much talk today of the destruction of paradigms. But there is a great paradigm, formulated almost a century ago, that offers a unified understanding of the universe, of history and of life. We would offer some aspects of the thinking that characterizes it.

1) Totality/diversity: The universe, the Earth system, the human phenomenon are evolving. They are organic and dynamic wholes built from the networks of multiple diverse interconnections. Along with an analysis that separates, simplifies and generalizes, it is good to elaborate the synthesis by which we do justice to this totality. It is a holism, not as the sum, but as the totality of the diversities organically interlinked.

2) Interdependence/re-link/relative autonomy: Since one needs others to exist and co-evolve, all beings are interconnected. For this reason there is a basic cosmic solidarity that limits natural selection. But each enjoys relative autonomy and possesses meaning and value in and of itself.

3) Relationships/power fields: All beings are part of a network of relationships. Outside the relationship there is nothing. Along with the beings themselves, it is important to grasp the relationships between them. Everything is within these fields, therefore everything relates to everything else.

4) Complexity/interiority: Everything is charged with energies of different degrees of complexity and interaction. Highly concentrated and stabilized energy presents itself as matter, and when it is less stable, as a field of energy. Given the interrelationships among everything, beings are endowed with accumulated information, especially the superior living beings, carriers of genetic codes. This phenomenon of evolution shows the intentionality of the universe, pointing towards an interiority, towards a supremely complex consciousness. Such dynamism causes the universe to be seen as an intelligent and self organizing totality. Quantitatively, the process is indivisible, but it always occurs within the cosmic genesis, as a global process of the emergence of all beings. This understanding allows us to pose the question of a constructive thread that runs through the entire cosmic process that unifies everything, and that causes chaos to be creative and order always to be open to new interactions (Prigogine’s dissipative structures). The Tao category, Jehovah and God could hermeneutically fill this meaning.

5) Complementarity/reciprocity/chaos: All reality occurs in the form of particles and waves, energy and matter, order and disorder, chaos and cosmos and, at the human level, in the form of sapiens and demens. This is not a defect, but the mark of the global process. But they are complementary dimensions.

6) The Passage of time/entropy: All that exists pre-exists and co-exists. Thus, the passage of time confers on the relationships a characteristic of irreversibility. Nothing can be understood without a reference to rational history and personal trajectory. It is open to the future. This is why no being is ready and finished, but full of potential. Total harmony is future promise and not present celebration. As the philosopher Ernst Bloch put it so well: “genesis is at the end and not the beginning”. Universal history obeys the laws of thermodynamics: the passage of time, that is: in the closed systems (the limited natural goods of the Earth) entropy must be taken into account in considering temporal evolution. The energies are irremediably dissipating and no one can stop it. But the human being can prolong the condition of his life and of the planet. As a whole, the universe is an open system that self organizes and continuously transits towards higher levels of life and of order. They escape entropy (Prigogine’s dissipative structures) and open it to the dimension of the Mystery of a life without entropy and absolutely dynamic.

7) Common destiny/personal: Because we have a common origin and everything is interconnected, we all have a common destiny in an always open future. Within it must be found one’s personal destiny and that of every being, because in each being the process of evolution culminates. What this future will be and what will be our final destiny fall in the realm of Mystery and the unforeseeable.

8) Cosmic good/particular common good: The common good is not only human but of the whole community of life, planetary and cosmic. All that exists and lives deserves to exist, to live and to coexist. The individual common good emerges from being in harmony with the dynamics of the universal common good.

9) Creativity/destructiveness: The human being, man and woman, in the collection of related beings and interactions, has its singularity: it is an extremely complex and co-creative being because it intervenes in the rhythm of nature. As an observer it is always interacting with everything around it, and this interaction causes the collapse of the wave function that congeals into particle matter (Heisenberg’s indetermination principle). The human enters into the world as it presents itself, as a realization of quantum probabilities (particle/wave). S/he is also an ethical being, able to think of the pros and cons, to act beyond the logic of self interest and in favor of the interests of the weaker beings, and equally capable of attacking nature and destroying species (the new era of the antropocene).

10) Holistic-ecological attitude/antropocentrism: The attitude of unconditional openness and inclusion speaks of a radically ecological cosmo-vision (of pan-relationality and re-linking of the whole), surmounting the historic anthropocentrism. It also allows us to be more unique and, at the same time, solidarian, complementary and creative. In this manner we are in harmony with the whole universe, whose final end lies under the veil of the Mystery found in the field of human impossibility. The possible repeats itself. The impossible happens: God.

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

If we knew the White man’s dreams…

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

The economic-financial crisis that afflicts much of world economy has made it possible for the very rich to become even richer, more than ever before in the history of capitalism, and, logically, at the expense of disgracing entire countries such as Greece, Spain and others, and in general terms, the whole Euro zone, perhaps with one minor exception, Germany. Ladislau Dowbor (http://dowbor.org), economics professor of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica, (PUC-SP), Sao Paulo, Brazil, reviewed a study by the famous Instituto Federal Suizo de Investigacion Tecnologica (ETH) which competes in credibility with research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT), of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In this study Dowbor explains the workings of the world corporate power network, comprised of 737 principal actors that control the main financial functions of the world, mainly through great banks and other immense multinational corporations. To them, the present crisis is an incomparable opportunity to realize the biggest capitalist dream: ever greater and more concentrated accumulation.

Capitalism has now realized its dream, possibly the last in its already long history. It has reached the top. And after the top? No one knows. But we can imagine that the answer will not come from other models of production and consumption, but from Mother Earth, Gaia, herself, who, being finite, cannot support an infinite project. She is giving clear warning signals that, according to the Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Christian de Duve (see the book, Vital Dust: life as a cosmic imperative, (Polvo Vital: la vida como imperativo cosmico, 1997), are like those that preceded the great devastations that have occurred in Earth’s already long history, (3.8 billion years). We must be on guard because the extreme events we are already experiencing point to eventual socio-ecological catastrophes, perhaps even during our lifetimes.

Worst of all is the fact that politicians, much of the scientific community, and of the population, are not taking note of that dangerous reality. It is distorted or concealed, because it is too contrary to the system. It would force us to change, something that few desire. Antonio Donato Nobre put it well is a very recent study (2014) on The Climatic Future of the Amazon, (El futuro climatico de la Amazonia): «If conscientious farmers knew what the scientific community knows (the great droughts to come), they would be in the streets with banners demanding that the government protect the jungles and plant trees on their lands».

We need a big dream that galvanizes people to protect life on the Planet and guarantee the future of the human species. Ideologies die. Philosophies get old. But the great dreams remain. They guide us through new visions and encourage us to create new social relationships, with nature and with Mother Earth.

Now we understand the relevance of the words of Duwamish Main Elder Seattle to Governor Stevens of Washington State, in 1856, when the Governor forced the sale of Native lands to the European colonizers. Main Elder Seattle could not understand why they would want to buy the earth. Could one buy or sell the breeze, the green of the plants, the cleanliness of the crystalline water or the splendor of the sceneries? To Main Elder Seattle the Earth was all that, not just soil, as a means of production.

In this context, note that the Native people of our continent could understand the reasons for the civilization of the Whites, «if they knew what hopes they transmit to their sons and daughters in the long winter nights, and what visions of the future they offer for tomorrow».

What is the dominant dream of our civilization’s paradigm, that makes market and merchandise the structural axis of all social life? It is possession of the most material goods, the greatest possible financial accumulation, and the most intense enjoyment we can obtain from all that nature and culture can offer us, to the point of satiation. It is the triumph of refined materialism, reaching even the spiritual, turning it into merchandise, with doubtful self-help literature full of thousands of formulas for happiness, built from bits of psychology, new cosmology, oriental religion, Christian messages and the esoteric. It is a pure swindle, designed to create the illusion of an easy happiness.

Even so, groups are appearing everywhere that bring a new reverence for the Earth, inaugurating alternative behaviors, elaborating new dreams of an agreement of friendship with nature, and a belief that the present chaos is not just chaotic, but is the genesis of a new paradigm of civilization that I would call the civilization of re-linking, synchronized with the most fundamental laws of life and the universe, that is pan-relational, synergetic and complementary.

Then we would have made the great journey towards the truly human, friends of life and open to the Mystery of all things. It is the path to follow.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Politics and dialogue in light of Dilma Rousseff’s re-election

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The re-election of Dilma Rousseff calls for reflection on the various forms of party politics. To engage in politics is to seek or to concretely exercise power. That illuminates what Max Weber wrote in his famous text, Politics as a vocation: «Who engages in politics seeks power: Power as a means to serve other ends or power for its own sake, to enjoy the prestige it brings».

This last type of political power has been exercised throughout most of our history by the elites, for their own benefit, forgetting that the people is the subject of all power. It is about the famous patrimonialism so clearly denounced by Raimundo Faoro in his classic, The Owners of Power.

I see five forms of exercising power.

First, the politics of the fist. This is power exercised from the top, and in an authoritarian form. There is only one political project, that of those who hold power, which can be a dictator or a dominant class. They simply impose their plans and crush the alternatives. This is what has occurred most often in Brazilian history, especially under military dictatorships.

Second, the politics of the little pat on the back. This is a covert form of authoritarian power. But it is different from the previous one, because it is open to all who are out of power, but it seeks to lure them to the dominant plan. They obtain some advantages so long as they do not constitute an alternative. It is the well known paternalistic and assistance politics that undermined the resistance of the working class and corrupted so many artists and intellectuals. It functioned among us, especially since the time of Vargas.

Third, the politics of the out-stretched hands. Here, power is distributed among several carriers, who form alliances under the hegemony of the strongest. The alliance between the winning party and other allied parties guarantees governability. It is the presidentialization of the parliamentary coalition. This type creates favoritism, disputes for important positions in the State and even corruption. It is what has happened in recent years.

Fourth, the politics of the intertwined hands. It starts from the basic fact that power is distributed among all the movements and institutions of civil society, not just those of the political society, political parties and the State. That type of social and political power can converge into something beneficial for all. It is about the present great debate that foresees the participation of the social movements and the councils in order, together with the Parliament and the Executive, to define public policies. A participatory democracy is sought to enrich the representative one. To oppose this form is to oppose democratizing democracy, and to keep the present, low intensity one.

Specifically: the politics of the intertwined hands occurs when the head of State proposes a broad dialogue with everyone, on a minimum common project. The proposal is that; above all the differences and conflicting interests, there exists in society the idea of what kind of country we want, the minimum solidarity, the search for the common good, the observation of agreed-upon rules and respect for the values of sociability, without which we would become a pack of wolves. The extended hands can collectively intertwine. But to achieve that, there must be a dialogue that listens to everyone and searches for agreements that are win-win and not win-lose. It is ethics in politics and good, truly democratic, politics.

Finally there is the politics as seduction, in the best meaning of the word, that underlies the proposal of President Dilma. She proposes an open dialogue with all the political actors, and the popular sector. It is urgent to seduce the 48% that did not vote for her so that they may support a Brazilian Project that benefits all, starting with the inclusion of the most ostracized, the creation of an ecological and socially sustainable development that generates jobs, better salaries, and the redistribution of income, one that creates decent transportation and greater security for the citizenry, besides caring for nature and promoting a horizon of hope, so that the people may find politics enchanting again.

We would have to be our own enemy to be against these goals. The art of that dialogue is to make politics enchanting again, and to seduce people towards that blessed dream.

For that we must look forward. Those who won the elections must be magnanimous, and those who lost them, must show humility and a willingness to cooperate, looking towards the common good.

Idealistic? Yes, but in its deeper meaning. A society cannot live only through structures, bureaucracy, and ideological disputes about power. It must elicit the cooperation of all and nourish the dreams of permanent improvement, one that to the extent possible, includes and benefits as many as possible, in order to overcome our terrifying social inequality.

The ecclesiastical base communities are correct when they sing: «Dream that to dream alone is only pure illusion. Dream that to dream together is a sign of a solution. So, let’s dream together, let’s dream in collaboration».

This is the supra-party convocation that President Dilma is making to the Parliament, to the popular movements and to all the nation. Only in this way can we overcome the talk of division and prejudices against certain regions, and can we heal the wounds produced in the heat of the electoral campaign, with all its excesses by both sides.

Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.