Categoria: English

Will Capital’s “iron cage” produce “a polar night, icy, dark and arduous”?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

          Leonardo Boff

We are still in 2021, a year that did not end because Covid-19 canceled the count of time to continue its lethal work. The 2022 could not, for now, be inaugurated. The fact is that the virus has brought all powers to their knees, especially the militarists, as their arsenal of death has become totally ineffective. However, the genius of capitalism, apropos of the pandemic, made the transnationalized capitalist class restructure itself through the Great Reset, expanding the recent digital economy through the integration of the giants: Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon , Google, Zoom and others with the military-industrial-security complex. Such an event represents the formation of an immense power, never before seen.

Note that this is an economic power of a capitalist nature and that, therefore, it fulfills its essential purpose, that of maximizing profits in an unlimited way, without regard to exploiting human beings and nature. Accumulation is not a means to a good life, but an end in itself, that is, accumulation for the sake of accumulation, which is irrational. The consequence of this radicalization of capitalism confirms what a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, William I. Robinson, in a recent article, well observed (ALAI 12/20/2021): “As the world gets rid of pandemic, there will be more inequality, conflicts, militarism and authoritarianism and to the same extent social upheavals and civil conflicts will increase; ruling groups will strive to expand the global police state to contain mass malcontents from below”.

Indeed, artificial intelligence with its billions and billions of algorithms will be used to control each person and the entire society. Where will this brutal power take humanity? Knowing the inexorable logic of the capitalist system, Max Weber, one of those who best analyzed it critically, just before he died, asserted: “What awaits us is not the flowering of autumn, but a polar night, icy, dark and arduous. (Le Savant et le Politique, Paris 1990, p. 194).

 He coined the strong expression that strikes at the heart of capitalism: it is an “iron cage” (Stahlartes Gehäuse) that cannot break and, therefore, can lead us to a great catastrophe (cf. the pertinent analysis by M.Löwy , La jaula de hierro: Max Weber and the Weberian Marxism, Mexico 2017). This opinion is shared by great names such as Thomas Man, Oswald Spengler, Ferdinand Tönnies, Eric Hobsbown, among others. Several world-society models are being discussed for the post-pandemic period.

The most important ones, besides the Great Reset of the billiards, are: green capitalism, ecosocialism, the bien viver and coexistence of the Andeans, biocivilization, of various groups and of Pope Francis among others.

This is not the place to detail such projects, which I did in the book Cvid-19: Mother Earth counterattacks Humanity (Voices 2020). I would just say: either we change the paradigm of production, consumption, coexistence and, especially, our relationship with nature, with respect and care, feeling that we are part of it and not about it as owners and masters, or else to fulfill ourselves.

Max Weber’s prognosis will be: from 2030 to 2050 at most, we will experience an ecological-social armageddon that is extremely harmful to life and to the Earth. In this sense, my feeling for the world tells me that whoever is going to destroy the order of capital, with its economy, politics and culture, would be no moment or school of critical thought.

 It would be Earth itself, a limited planet that no longer supports a project of unlimited growth. The visible climate change, object of discussion and decision-making (practically none) of the last UN COPs, the growing depletion of natural goods and services, fundamental for life (The Earth Overshoot) and the threat of disruption of the main nine barriers to development that cannot be broken at the price of civilization’s collapse.

A significant number of climate experts say we are too late. With the already accumulated greenhouse gases we will not be able to contain the catastrophe, only, with science and technology, to lessen its disastrous effects. But the great irreversible crisis will come. That’s why they became skeptics and even technofatalists. Are we resigned pessimists or, in Nietzsche’s sense, adherents of “heroic resignation”? I believe, as a pre-Socratic said: we must expect the unexpected, because if we don’t expect it, when it comes, we won’t notice it. The unexpected can occur, within the quantum perspective: the current suffering because of the systemic crisis will not be in vain; he is accumulating benevolent energies which, upon reaching a certain level of complexity and accumulation, will make a leap to another higher order with a new horizon of hope for life and for the living planet, Gaia, Mother Earth. Paulo Freire coined the expression to hope: not to wait for the situation to improve one day, but to create the conditions so that hope is not empty, but that, with our commitment, we make it effective. I believe that this leap, with our participation, could occur and would be within the possibilities of the history of the universe and the Earth: from the current destructive chaos, we can move to a generative chaos of a new way of being and inhabiting planet Earth. This is what I believe and hope, reinforced by the word of Revelation that says: “God created all things out of love because he is the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11:26). He will not allow us to end this tragically. We will still live in the benevolent light of the sun.

 Leonardo Boff, ecotheologist, philosopher and writer. Wrote The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity without borders and social friendship, Vozes 2021; Inhabiting the Earth: What is the path to universal brotherhood? Voices 2121.

s the formation of an immense power, never before seen.

Note that this is an economic power of a capitalist nature and that, therefore, it fulfills its essential purpose, that of maximizing profits in an unlimited way, without regard to exploiting human beings and nature. Accumulation is not a means to a good life, but an end in itself, that is, accumulation for the sake of accumulation, which is irrational. The consequence of this radicalization of capitalism confirms what a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, William I. Robinson, in a recent article, well observed (ALAI 12/20/2021): “As the world gets rid of pandemic, there will be more inequality, conflicts, militarism and authoritarianism and to the same extent social upheavals and civil conflicts will increase; ruling groups will strive to expand the global police state to contain mass malcontents from below”.

Indeed, artificial intelligence with its billions and billions of algorithms will be used to control each person and the entire society. Where will this brutal power take humanity? Knowing the inexorable logic of the capitalist system, Max Weber, one of those who best analyzed it critically, just before he died, asserted: “What awaits us is not the flowering of autumn, but a polar night, icy, dark and arduous. (Le Savant et le Politique, Paris 1990, p. 194).

 He coined the strong expression that strikes at the heart of capitalism: it is an “iron cage” (Stahlartes Gehäuse) that cannot break and, therefore, can lead us to a great catastrophe (cf. the pertinent analysis by M.Löwy , La jaula de hierro: Max Weber and the Weberian Marxism, Mexico 2017). This opinion is shared by great names such as Thomas Man, Oswald Spengler, Ferdinand Tönnies, Eric Hobsbown, among others. Several world-society models are being discussed for the post-pandemic period.

The most important ones, besides the Great Reset of the billiards, are: green capitalism, ecosocialism, the bien viver and coexistence of the Andeans, biocivilization, of various groups and of Pope Francis among others.

This is not the place to detail such projects, which I did in the book Cvid-19: Mother Earth counterattacks Humanity (Voices 2020). I would just say: either we change the paradigm of production, consumption, coexistence and, especially, our relationship with nature, with respect and care, feeling that we are part of it and not about it as owners and masters, or else to fulfill ourselves.

Max Weber’s prognosis will be: from 2030 to 2050 at most, we will experience an ecological-social armageddon that is extremely harmful to life and to the Earth. In this sense, my feeling for the world tells me that whoever is going to destroy the order of capital, with its economy, politics and culture, would be no moment or school of critical thought.

 It would be Earth itself, a limited planet that no longer supports a project of unlimited growth. The visible climate change, object of discussion and decision-making (practically none) of the last UN COPs, the growing depletion of natural goods and services, fundamental for life (The Earth Overshoot) and the threat of disruption of the main nine barriers to development that cannot be broken at the price of civilization’s collapse.

A significant number of climate experts say we are too late. With the already accumulated greenhouse gases we will not be able to contain the catastrophe, only, with science and technology, to lessen its disastrous effects. But the great irreversible crisis will come. That’s why they became skeptics and even technofatalists. Are we resigned pessimists or, in Nietzsche’s sense, adherents of “heroic resignation”? I believe, as a pre-Socratic said: we must expect the unexpected, because if we don’t expect it, when it comes, we won’t notice it. The unexpected can occur, within the quantum perspective: the current suffering because of the systemic crisis will not be in vain; he is accumulating benevolent energies which, upon reaching a certain level of complexity and accumulation, will make a leap to another higher order with a new horizon of hope for life and for the living planet, Gaia, Mother Earth. Paulo Freire coined the expression to hope: not to wait for the situation to improve one day, but to create the conditions so that hope is not empty, but that, with our commitment, we make it effective. I believe that this leap, with our participation, could occur and would be within the possibilities of the history of the universe and the Earth: from the current destructive chaos, we can move to a generative chaos of a new way of being and inhabiting planet Earth. This is what I believe and hope, reinforced by the word of Revelation that says: “God created all things out of love because he is the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11:26). He will not allow us to end this tragically. We will still live in the benevolent light of the sun.

 Leonardo Boff, ecotheologist, philosopher and writer. Wrote The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity without borders and social friendship, Vozes 2021; Inhabiting the Earth: What is the path to universal brotherhood? Voices 2121.

Die Zukunft des menschlichen Lebens auf der Erde hängt von uns ab      

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Leonardo Boff*

Covid-19 hat uns, indem es alle Menschen betrifft, ein Signal gegeben, das interpretiert werden muss. Nichts in der Natur ist zufällig. Die mechanistische Auffassung, dass die Natur und die Erde keinen Zweck haben, ist überholt. Als Lebewesen sind sie Träger von Bedeutung und Teil des Gesamtbildes des kosmogenen Prozesses, der mittlerweile 13,7 Milliarden Jahre alt ist. Hätten sich all diese Elemente nicht über Milliarden von Jahren auf subtile Weise herausgebildet, wären wir nicht hier, um über diese Dinge zu schreiben.

Was ist der unmittelbarste Sinn, den uns die Natur mit dem Angriff des Coronavirus offenbart? Die Bedeutung wird uns in Form einer Ermahnung vermittelt:

“Stoppen Sie den systematischen und verwerflichen Angriff auf Ökosysteme, auf Wälder und Dschungel, auf Böden, auf Gewässer, auf die biologische Vielfalt. Ihre industriellen und extraktivistischen Megakonzerne, Ihre Bergbauunternehmen, die Agrarkonzerne in Partnerschaft mit der Agro-Toxin-Industrie, die Gigatonnen von Treibhausgasen in die Atmosphäre ausstoßen, die Ursachen für die Erosion der biologischen Vielfalt, Sie zerstören die Grundlagen, die Ihr eigenes Leben erhalten; Sie schaufeln sich in absehbarer Zeit Ihr eigenes Grab; nicht die Familienbauern, die Armen der Erde, sondern Sie zerstören die Lebensräume von Tausenden von Viren, die in Tieren vorkommen; um zu überleben, haben Sie im Menschen einen Wirt für ihr Überleben gefunden, auf Kosten Ihres Lebens. Das falsche Projekt des unbegrenzten Wachstums/Entwicklung eurer konsumistischen Kultur kann von der Natur und der Erde, dem alten und begrenzten Planeten, nicht mehr mit Waren und Dienstleistungen unterstützt werden; als Reaktion auf die Gewalt gegen mich – die Natur und Mutter Erde – habe ich euch bereits mehrere Viren geschickt, die euch angegriffen haben, aber ihr habt in ihnen kein Zeichen gesehen, ihr habt nicht gelernt, sie zu lesen, noch habt ihr die Lektion gezogen, die sie enthalten. Ihr denkt nur daran, zur alten und perversen Normalität zurückzukehren; deshalb sage ich euch: Entweder ihr ändert euer Verhältnis zur Natur und zu Mutter Erde, ein Verhältnis der Achtsamkeit, des Respekts vor ihren Grenzen, der Selbstbeschränkung eurer eigenen Gefräßigkeit, indem ihr euch tatsächlich als Teil der Natur und nicht als ihre angeblichen Besitzer fühlt, oder ihr werdet von noch tödlicheren Viren heimgesucht; ich warne euch: Einer von ihnen kann so resistent sein, dass er die völlige Unwirksamkeit der derzeitigen Impfstoffe zeigen würde, und ein großer Teil der Menschheit würde vom nächsten großen Virus, dem letzten und tödlichen, verschlungen werden. Die Erde und das Leben auf ihr, insbesondere das mikroskopische Leben, werden nicht untergehen. Die lebendige Erde wird weiterhin um die Sonne kreisen und sich regenerieren, aber ohne dich. Seid also auf der Hut, denn wir befinden uns in der Zeit des Countdowns. Die Natur ist eine Schule, aber ihr wolltet euch nicht einschreiben, und so ebnet ihr irrationalerweise den Weg, der zu eurer eigenen Zerstörung führt. Es ist trauroig zu erfahren, dass ich,  die Natur, rede, aber der Mensch hört mich nicht.  Ich sage nichts mehr.

Die Pandemie hat die Menschheit weltweit erfasst. Da es sich um ein globales Problem handelt, sollte die Lösung natürlich auch global sein, d. h. global diskutiert und entschieden werden. Wo gibt es ein pluralistisches und globales Zentrum für das Denken und die Suche nach Lösungen für globale Probleme?

Die UNO wird ihren Gründungszielen nicht gerecht, da sie sich in eine Organisation verwandelt hat, die die Interessen mächtiger Nationen vertritt, die insbesondere der Sicherheitsrat ein Vetorecht haben. Wir sind Geiseln der überholten Vision der nationalen Souveränität, die die neue Phase der Menschheitsgeschichte, die Planarisierung, noch nicht realisiert hat, die alle Nationen miteinander verbindet und sie alle ein gemeinsames Schicksal haben lässt.

Wir sitzen alle im selben Boot: Entweder sind wir alle gerettet oder niemand ist gerettet, wie Papst Franziskus warnte. Das ist die wahre Bedeutung von Globalisierung oder Planarisierung. Die Zeit der Nationen ist vorbei. Wir müssen ein gemeinsames Haus bauen, in das die verschiedenen Kulturnationen passen, die immer miteinander verflochten sind und ein einziges gemeinsames Haus bilden, einschließlich der Natur.

Die Pandemie hat deutlich gemacht, wie unmenschlich und grausam wir sein können: Die Reichen haben die Situation ausgenutzt und sind viel reicher geworden, während die Armen viel ärmer geworden sind. Die derzeitige Kultur ist wettbewerbsorientiert und sehr unkooperativ. Der Profit zählt mehr als das Leben.

Die Impfstoffe sind ungleich verteilt, so dass die Armen der Ansteckung und dem Tod ausgesetzt sind. Ein ganzer Kontinent mit mehr als einer Milliarde Menschen, Afrika, ist in Vergessenheit geraten. Kaum 10 % der Bevölkerung sind geimpft worden. Der Tod ist weit verbreitet, insbesondere bei Kindern, was auf die Gefühllosigkeit und Unmenschlichkeit unserer globalisierten Zivilisation zurückzuführen ist. Es ist die Herrschaft der Barbarei, die jeden Sinn für menschliche Zivilisation leugnet.

Kein Wunder, dass einige Analysten, insbesondere Biologen, fragen: Haben wir noch das Recht, auf diesem Planeten zu leben? Unsere Art zu sein, zu produzieren und zu consumieren bedrohen alle anderen Arten durch ihren Verzehr. Wir haben ein neues geologisches Zeitalter eingeläutet, das Anthropozän und sogar das Nekrozän, d. h. die große tödliche Bedrohung für das Leben auf diesem Planeten geht nicht von einem vorbeifliegenden Meteor aus, sondern von den barbarisierten Menschen, insbesondere in den wohlhabenderen Bevölkerungsschichten.

 Unter den Armen und Ausgegrenzten gibt es noch Menschlichkeit, Solidarität, gegenseitige Hilfe und die Sorge um das Gemeinwohl, wie sich in dieser Zeit der weltweiten Pandemie gezeigt hat.

Der Ausbruch von Covid-19 lädt zum Nachdenken ein: Warum sind wir an diesem Punkt angelangt, bedroht von einem unsichtbaren Virus, der die militaristischen Mächte und ihren phantasievollen imperialen Impuls in die Knie gezwungen hat? Wohin gehen wir? Was müssen wir ändern, wenn wir uns und unseren Nachkommen eine Zukunft sichern wollen?

Die globalen Billionäre (die 0,1 % der Menschheit) träumen von einer totalen Radikalisierung der Ordnung des Kapitals, die allen eine kybernetische Despotie aufzwingt, die alle Gegner überwacht und unterdrückt und ihren Reichtum garantiert. Der Magen von Mutter Erde wird eine solche Ungeheuerlichkeit nicht verdauen. Zusammen mit dem unverzichtbaren menschlichen Widerstand wird er ihre Ansprüche umstoßen und ihnen die ökologischen Grundlagen für dieses perverse Projekt entziehen, die sie nicht kontrollieren können.

Wie nie zuvor in der Geschichte hängt das Schicksal unseres Lebens von den Entscheidungen ab, die wir gemeinsam treffen müssen. Andernfalls werden wir den Weg kennen, den schon die Dinosaurier beschritten haben. Das wollen wir nicht. Aber wir befinden uns an einem Scheideweg.

*Leonardo Boff hat geschrieben: Cuidar la Tierra – proteger la vida: cómo escapar del fin del mundo, Record, Rio de Janeiro 2010; mit J. Moltmann, ¿Hay esperanza para la creación amenazada? Stimmen 2013.

The future of human life on Earth depends on us

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Covid-19, by affecting all humans, has given us a signal that can be interpreted. Nothing in nature is random. The mechanistic view that nature and the Earth have no purpose is outdated. Being living beings, they are bearers of meaning and form part of the general picture of the cosmogenic process that is already 13.7 billion years old.

If all the elements had not been subtly articulated, over billions of years, we would not be here to write about these things. What is the most immediate meaning that nature is revealing to us with the attack of the coronavirus? The meaning comes to us in the form of an exhortation:

                                                   

 “Stop the systematic and depraved assault on ecosystems, forests and jungles, soils, waters, biodiversity. Your industrialist and extractivist mega-corporations, your mining companies, corporate agribusiness in association with the agrochemical industry, the ejectors of giga-tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the causes of the erosion of biodiversity, you are destroying the bases that sustain their own life; they are digging their own grave within a predictable time frame; not the peasant families, the poor of the land, but you are destroying the habitats of thousands of viruses present in animals; seeking to survive, they found in humans a host for their survival at the cost of your life. The false project of unlimited growth/development of its consumerist culture can no longer be supported by nature and the Earth, an old planet limited in goods and services; As a reaction to the violence against me – nature and Mother Earth – I have already sent them several viruses that attacked them, but they have not seen a sign in them, they have not learned to read them, nor have they drawn the lesson they contain. You only think about going back to the old and perverse normality; That is why I tell you: either you change your relationship with nature and with Mother Earth, a relationship of care, of respect for its limits, of self-limitation of your voracity, feeling effectively part of nature and not its alleged owners, or they will be ravaged by even deadlier viruses; I warn you: one of them may be so resistant that it would show the total ineffectiveness of current vaccines and a large part of humanity would be consumed by the Next Big One, the last and fatal one. The Earth and life on it, especially microscopic life, will not perish. The living Earth will continue to revolve around the Sun and regenerate itself, but without you. Therefore, take care as we are in the time of the countdown. Nature is a school, but you have not wanted to enroll in it and therefore, irrationally, you are paving the way that will lead you to your own destruction. And I say no more.”

The pandemic has affected humanity globally. Since the form is global, the solution should obviously also be global: discussed and decided globally. Where is there a plural and global center to think and seek solutions to global problems? The UN does not meet its founding objectives, as it has become an agency that defends the interests of powerful nations, which have the right to veto, particularly in the larger body that is the Security Council.

We are hostages of the obsolete vision of national sovereignty, which has not yet realized the new phase of human history, planetization, which makes all nations interconnected and all of them together have a common destiny. We are all in the same boat: either we are all saved or no one is saved, as Pope Francis warned.

This is the true meaning of globalization or planetization. The time of the nations passed. We have to build the Common Home within which the different cultural nations fit, always intertwined, forming a single Common Home, including nature. The pandemic has made it clear how inhuman and cruel we can be: the rich took advantage of the situation and have become much richer while the poor have become much poorer. The current culture is competitive and very uncooperative. Profit counts more than life.

Vaccines have been unevenly distributed, leaving the poor exposed to contagion and death. An entire continent, with more than a billion people, such as Africa, has been forgotten. Barely 10% of its population has been vaccinated. Death is rampant especially among children due to the insensitivity and inhumanity of our globalized civilization. It is the empire of barbarism, which denies any sense of human civilization. No wonder there are analysts, especially biologists, who ask themselves: do we still have the right to live on this planet? Our ways of being, producing and consuming threaten all other species.

We have inaugurated a new geological era, the Anthropocene and even the Necrocene, that is to say: the great mortal threat to life on this planet does not come from a grazing meteor but from the barbarized human being, especially among the most opulent strata of the population. Among the poor and marginalized, humanity, solidarity, mutual help, care for common things are still preserved, as has been proven during this time of global pandemic.

The outbreak of Covid-19 is an invitation to reflection: why have we reached the current point, threatened by an invisible virus that has brought the militaristic powers and their fanciful imperial drive to their knees? Where are we going? What changes must we make if we want to guarantee a future for ourselves and for our descendants? The global trillionaires (0.1% of humanity) dream of a total radicalization of the order of capital, imposing on everyone a cybernetic despotism that will monitor and repress all opponents and guarantee their fortunes.

The stomach of Mother Earth will not digest such a monstrosity. Together with the indispensable human resistance, it will annul their pretensions, denying them the ecological bases, uncontrollable by them, for this perverse project.

As never before in history, the fate of our lives depends on the decisions we must make collectively. Otherwise, we will know the path already traveled by the dinosaurs. We don’t want that. But we are at a crossroads.

 

*Leonardo Boff has written Caring for the Earth – protecting life: how to escape the end of the world, Record, Rio de Janeiro 2010; with J.Moltmann, Is there hope for the threatened creation? Vozes, Petrópolis 2013.

The iron cage” of Capital

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The unexpected may occur, within the quantum perspective assumed by the new cosmology: the current suffering due to the systemic crisis will not be in vain; it is accumulating benign energies that will make a leap to another, higher order.

04/01/2022

Versión para impresión

crisis_capitalismo.jpgImagen: tacnacomunitaria.blogspot.com –A+A

We are still in 2021, a year that did not end because Covid-19 cancelled the counting of time by continuing its lethal work. 2022 could not, for now, be inaugurated. The fact is that the virus has brought all powers, especially the militaristic ones, to their knees, as their arsenal of death has become totally ineffective.

However, the genius of capitalism, regarding the pandemic, has caused the transnationalized capitalist class to restructure itself through the Great Reset, expanding the new digital economy through the integration of the giants: Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, Zoom, and others with the military-industrial-security complex.

Such an event represents the formation of an immense power, the like of which has never been seen before. Let us note that this is an economic power of a capitalist nature, and that it therefore realizes its essential purpose, that of maximizing profits in an unlimited way, exploiting, without consideration, human beings and nature. Accumulation is not a means to a good life but an end in itself, that is to say, accumulation for accumulation’s sake, which is irrational.

The consequence of this radicalization of capitalism confirms what a sociologist from the University of California at Santa Barbara, William I. Robinson, in a recent article, has well observed (ALAI 20/12/2021): “In the aftermath of the pandemic, there will be more inequality, conflict, militarism, and authoritarianism as social upheaval and civil strife escalate. The ruling groups will turn to expanding the global police state to contain mass discontent from below”. In effect, artificial intelligence with its billions upon billions of algorithms will be used to control each person and the entire society. Where will this brutal power take humanity?

Knowing the inexorable logic of the capitalist system, Max Weber, one of those who best analyzed it critically, shortly before his death, asserted: “What awaits us is not the blooming of autumn, but a polar, icy, dark and arduous night (Le Savant et le Politique, Paris 1990, p. 194). He coined a strong expression that strikes at the heart of capitalism: it is an “iron cage” (Stahlartes Gehäuse) that cannot be broken and, therefore, can lead us to a great catastrophe (cf. the pertinent analysis of M. Löwy, La jaula de hierro: Max Weber y el marxismo weberiana, México 2017). This opinion is shared by great names such as Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, Ferdinand Tönnies, Eric Hobsbawm, among others.

Various world-society models are being discussed for the post-pandemic. The most important ones, besides the Great Reset of the billionaires, are: green capitalism, ecosocialism, the Andean buen vivir and convivir, biocivilization, of various groups and Pope Francis, among others. It is not up to me here to detail such projects, which I have done in the book Covid-19: A Mãe Terra contra-ataca a Humanidade (Vozes 2020). I would only say: either we change the paradigm of production, consumption, coexistence, and especially the relationship with nature, with respect and care, feeling part of it and not over it as owners and lords, or else Max Weber’s prognosis will come true: we may from 2030 to at most 2050, experience an ecological-social Armageddon extremely harmful to life and to the Earth.

In this sense, my feeling of the world tells me that the one who will destroy the order of capital, with its economy, politics, and culture, would not be any mill or school of critical thinking. It would be the Earth itself, a limited planet that can no longer support a project of unlimited growth. The visible climate change, object of discussion and decision making (practically none) of the last UN COPs, the increasing depletion of natural goods and services, fundamental for life (The Earth Overshoot) and the threat of breaking the main nine boundaries of development that cannot be broken at the price of the collapse of civilization, are some indicators of an imminent tragedy.

A significant number of climate experts say that we are too late. With the already accumulated greenhouse gases we will not be able to contain the catastrophe, only, with science and technology, to lessen its disastrous effects. But the great irreversible crisis will come. That is why they have become skeptics and even techno-fatalists.

Are we resigned pessimists or, in Nietzsche’s sense, supporters of “heroic resignation”? I think, as a pre-Socratic said: we should expect the unexpected, because if we don’t expect it, when it comes, we will not perceive it. The unexpected may occur, within the quantum perspective assumed by the new cosmology: the current suffering due to the systemic crisis will not be in vain; it is accumulating benign energies that, upon reaching a certain level of complexity and accumulation, will make a leap to another, higher order with a new horizon of hope for life and for the living planet, Gaia, Mother Earth. Paulo Freire coined the expression to hope: not to keep hoping that one day the situation will improve, but to create the conditions for hope not to be empty, but to make it effective through our efforts.

I believe that this leap, with our participation, specially the victims of the exploitation of capitalism, can occur and would be within the possibilities of the history of the universe and the Earth: from the current destructive chaos, we can move on to a generative chaos of a new way of being and inhabiting planet Earth.

This is what I believe and hope for, reinforced by the word of Revelation that states: “God created all things out of love because He is the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11,26). We will still live under the benevolent light of the sun.

– Leonardo Boff, ecotheologist, philosopher, and writer, has written The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity without bor