Categoria: English

Our place in the whole of life

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Ethics in the dominant society are utilitarian and anthropocentric. That is: society’s ethics accepts the illusion that nature’s beings only have reason to exist to the degree they serve human beings, and that humans can dispose of them at will. Humans consider themselves the kings and queens of creation.

The Judeo-Christian tradition reinforced this idea with its “subdue the Earth and dominate all that lives and moves upon Her” (Gn 1,28).

Now we know that we humans were among the last beings to enter the scene of creation. When it was 99.98% complete, we appeared. The universe, the Earth and her eco-systems did not need us to organize themselves and to arrange their majestic complexity and beauty.

Each being has intrinsic value, independent of the use we make of it. Each being is a manifestation of that background Energy, as the cosmologists say, or of that Abyss generator of all beings. Each being has something to reveal that only that being, even the least adapted, can do, and after that, through natural selection, it will forever disappear. But it is important for us to listen to and celebrate the message which that being reveals to us.

Gravest, however, is the idea all modernity and much of the contemporary scientific community have about planet Earth and nature. They consider them a simple “res extensa”, something that can be measured, manipulated, and according to Francis Bacon’s rude language, «tortured as the inquisitor does to his victims, until he has forced out all their secrets». The prevailing scientific method largely maintains that aggressive and perverse logic.

Rene Descartes sets forth in his Discourse on Method something of a clamorous reductionism in understanding: «I do not understand for “nature” a goddess or any other type of imaginary power; instead, I use that word to mean matter». Descartes considers the planet as something inert, without purpose, as if human beings were not part of that nature.

The fact is that we entered the process of evolution when it had already reached a very high level of complexity. Then, human life arose, conscious and free, as a subchapter of life. Through us the universe gained consciousness of itself. And that occurred in the miniscule part of the universe that is the Earth. This is why we are that portion of the Earth who feels, loves, thinks, cares and venerates. As the Argentinean singer-songwriter Atahualpa Yupanqui says, “We are the Earth that walks”.

Our specific mission, our place in the whole of life, is to be those who can appreciate the grandeur of the universe, who can listen to the messages that every being articulates, and who can celebrate the diversity of beings and of life.

And as the carriers of sensibility and intelligence, we have an ethical mission: to care for creation and to be her guardians so that she may continue with vitality and integrity and under conditions allowing her to continue evolving as she has done for 4.4 billion years. Thanks be to God, the Biblical author, for correcting the text we quoted above, who says in the second chapter of Genesis: “The Lord took the human being and placed him in the Garden of Eden (the original Earth) for him to cultivate and care for it” (Gn 2,15).

Regrettably, we are not good at fulfilling this mission, because as biologist E. Wilson says «humanity is the first species of the history of life that has turned out to be a geophysical force; the human being, that biped being, such an air-brain, has already altered the atmosphere and the weather of the whole planet, diverting them far from their usual norms; spreading thousands of toxic chemical substances throughout the world, and leaving us on the verge of exhausting our drinking water” (A Criação: como salvar a vida na Terra, 2008, 38). Sorrowful at seeing this, and living under the threat of a nuclear apocalypse, Norberto Bobbio, the great Italian philosopher of the law and democracy, asked himself: «Does humanity deserve to be saved?» (Il Foglion. 409, 2014, 3).

If we do not want to be expelled from Earth by the Earth herself, as enemies of life, we must change our behavior towards nature, but above all, we must embrace the Earth as the United Nations did in April, 2009, as Mother Earth, to care for her as such, and to recognize and respect the history of every being, living or inert. They existed millions and millions of years before us, and without us. Therefore, they must be respected as we do the elderly, people we treat with respect and love. More than we, they have a right to the present and to the future, together with us. Otherwise, neither technology nor promises of unlimited progress can save us
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Brazilians: a mystical and religious people

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários

Brazilians are a spiritual and mystic people, whether or not that pleases the secularized intelligentsia, which generally has little or no relationship with the popular and social movements.

The Brazilian people did not pass through the modern school of the purveyors of suspicion, who have tried in vain to de-legitimize religion. To the people, God is not a problem, but the solution to their problems and the ultimate meaning of their living and dying. The people sense God accompanying them in their journey, they celebrate God in their everyday expressions, such as, “My God”, “Thanks be to God”, “God will repay you”, “Go with God”, “God willing” and “May God bless you”. Many are accustomed to ending a telephone conversation by saying, “Be with God”. If the Brazilians did not have God in their lives, they certainly would not have endured so many centuries of social ostracism with so much strength, humor and sense of struggle.

Christianity helped form the Brazilian identity. In Colonial and Imperial times, Christianity arrived with the missions (the institutional Church) and the devotion of the saints (popular Christianity). In modern times, it comes through liberation (Biblical circles, base communities and social pastorals) and the charismatics (gatherings for prayer and healing, great celebration-spectacles of healing through the media). Fundamentally, Colonial and Imperial Christianity educated the higher classes without questioning their goal of dominating and domesticating the popular classes to accept their place on the margins. Therefore, the role of Christianity was extremely ambiguous but always in function of the unequal and unjust status quo. Christianity was rarely prophetic. In the case of slavery, it clearly legitimated an evil order.

Only starting with the 1950s did important sectors of the institution (Bishops, curates, men and women religious and the lay) begin a process of reorienting their social class from the center towards the periphery where the people lived. Talk began of integral human promotion and of a socio-historical liberation whose center is occupied by the oppressed who no longer accept their oppressed condition. Simultaneously poor and religious, they were inspired by their religion to resistance and liberation, towards a society with greater popular participation and more justice. And a new Christianity emerged, prophetic, liberating and committed to the necessary changes.

But the main cultural creation in Brazil is represented by popular Christianity. Left on the margins of the political and religious system, the poor, the Indigenous and the Blacks shaped their spiritual experience by using the code of the popular culture, one that follows the logic of the unconscious and the emotional more than the rational and doctrinaire. This way they developed a rich system of symbols, in the feasts of their important saints, an art form filled with color and music charged with the feelings associated with the noble tristesse. This popular Christianity does not represent the decay of official Christianity, but is a different, popular and synthesizing form of expressing the essence of the Christian message.

The Afro-Brazilian religions, the synthesis of Christian, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous elements, represent a relevant creation of popular culture. With the exception of some evangelical fundamentalism, the people generally are neither dogmatic nor stubborn in their beliefs. The people are tolerant, because they believe that God is found on every path and that all paths end with God. Therefore the people are multi-confessional and are not ashamed of belonging to several religions. The synthesis is born within the heart of the people, in their profound spirituality. From there the people are weaving a rich religious fabric. Anthropologist Roberto da Matta clearly expresses this: «In the path towards God I can gather many things. I can be a Catholic and umbandista, devout of Ogum and of Saint George. The religious language of our country is, consequently, a language of relation and of re-linking. A language that seeks the middle term, the medium path, the possibility of saving the whole world and of encountering in all places something good and dignified.» (O que faz o brasil Brasil, Rocco, Rio de Janeiro 1984, 117).

Especially important is the contribution of the Afro religions (nago, camdonble, macumba, umbanda and others) that, starting from their own African matrix, elaborated here a rich syncretism. Each human being can be an eventual incorporator of the divinity to benefit the others. Socially denied, politically rejected, religiously persecuted, the Afro-Brazilian religions gave self-esteem back to the Black people, by affirming that the African orixas sent them to these lands to help the needy and to fill with axe (cosmic and sacred energy)the winds of Brazil. Despite being slaves, they fulfilled a transcendental mission of great historical significance.

The Blacks and the Indigenous lent and are lending a mystical mark to the Brazilian soul. The Blacks and Indigenous all know that they are accompanied by important saints, by the orixas, by the Preto Velho (umbanda) and the provident hand of God ,who does not allow everything to be lost and forever frustrated. There is solution to everything and a good way out. This is why there is levity, humor, and a sense of festivity in all the popular demonstrations.

The religious future of Brazil will probably not be its Catholic past. It possibly will be an original, synthesized creation, with a new ecumenical spirituality, that will coexist with the differences (the growing evangelical tradition, the Pentecostals, the kardecismo, the oriental religions) but in unity with the same perception of the Divine and of the Sacred that impregnates the cosmos, human history, and the life of each and every person.

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

Brazil at a crossroads: to prolong dependency or complete its reinvention?

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Celso Furtado, one of our best names in political economics, and an attentive observer of world economy transformational processes, as contrasted with those of Brazil, wrote in his book, Brazil: construction interrupted (Brasil, a construção interrompida. SP, Paz e Terra, 1992): “In half a millennium of history, beginning with a constellation of misdeeds, crushed indigenous nations, slaves transplanted from another continent, of European and Asian adventurers seeking a better destiny, we have become a people with an extraordinary multifaceted culture, a country without parallel for its territorial immensity and its linguistic and religious homogeneity. But we lack the experience of crucial tests such as those experienced by other peoples whose survival was threatened. We also lack a true knowledge of our possibilities, and above all, of our weaknesses. But we are aware that historic time is accelerating and that the accounting of that time runs against us. It is important to know whether we have a future as a nation that participates in the construction of human progress, or whether the forces will prevail that threaten to interrupt our historic process of formation as a Nation-State.» (Paz e Terra, Rio 1993, 35).

We must recognize that current Brazilian society has seen significant advances under the governments of the Workers Party, PT, (from the Portuguese, Partido dos Trabalhadores). The degree of social inclusion realized, and the social policies that benefit millions of Brazilians who had always been marginalized, have a historic dimension, the meaning of which we still have to fully evaluate, especially as compared to prior historical phases, when the traditional elites maintained hegemony because they always used the power of the state for their own benefit.

But these advances still are not proportional to the size of our country and of our people. The June 2013 demonstrations showed that a large segment of the populace, particularly the youth, are not satisfied. The demonstrators want more. They want a different type of democracy, a participatory democracy.  They want a republic not of shady deals, but of a popular character; they justifiably demand transportation which does not rob so much time from their lives; basic hygiene services; and educational opportunities that help them to better understand the world and to improve the types of jobs they may chose. They demand sanitation services with a minimum of decency and quality. In everyone a conviction is growing that an infirm and ignorant people will never make a qualitative leap towards a different form of a less unequal society, and, therefore, as Paulo Freire used to call it, of a less evil society. The PT must be up to those new challenges, and either renew its agenda or pay the price by losing power.

We are approaching that which Celso Furtado called the “crucial challenges”.  Perhaps as never before in our history, we have arrived at the critical moment of the “challenges”.  The next election, as I see it, will have a singular characteristic. Given the acceleration of history, stimulated by the systemic world crisis, we will be forced to make a decision: either we take advantage of the opportunities offered by the profound crisis in the primary countries, reaffirming our autonomy and guaranteeing our future, autonomous but in a relationship with the totality of the world; or we waste them, and we will live bound by the destiny forever defined by those who would condemn us to be only providers of the natural goods they lack, and in that way they once again will colonize us.

We cannot accept this strange international division of labor. We must again look to the dream of some of our finest analysts, of the stature of Darcy Ribeiro and Luiz Gonzaga de Souza Lima, among others, who proposed  a reinvention or re-foundation of Brazil on our own terms, born of our civilizing experience, so highly prized by Celso Furtado.

This is the challenge urgently presented to all the social organizations: will they help with the reinvention of Brazil as a sovereign nation, conceived in the framework of the new planetary consciousness and the common destiny of the Earth and humanity? Could they be co-midwives of a new citizenship –the co-citizenship and the Earth-citizenship– that relate the citizen with the State, the citizen with other citizens, the national with the world, and Brazilian citizenship with planetary citizenship, thus helping to mold human evolution? Or will they be accomplices of those forces that are not interested in the construction of the Project-Brazil, because they want to include Brazil in the world-globalized project in a subordinate and dependent form, with the advantages ceded to the wealthy classes that always benefit from this type of alliance?

The next elections will shed light on these alternatives. We must decide where we will stand. The situation is urgent because, as Celso Furtado warned with great concern: «everything points to the inviability of the country as a national project» (op. cit. 35). We do not want to fatalistically bow to this grave warning. We must not accept defeat without having engaged all the battles, as Don Quixote would teach us in his hope filled poetry.

There is still time to make the changes that can reorient the country to its true path, especially now that, with the Ecological crisis, Brazil has acquired a decisive weight in the balance and the equilibrium sought for planet Earth. It is important to believe in our possibilities, even, I would say, in our planetary mission.

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

The Birth of the Brazilian people, the University and Popular Knowledge

Leonardo Boff4 Comentários


As a people, Brazilians have not yet finished being born. Representatives of 60 different countries are being mixed here in an open process, that will culminate in the birth of a new people.

From the Colony we inherited a highly selective state, an excluding elite and immense mass of the deprived and the descendants of slaves. In his original interpretation of Brazil, the political analyst Luiz Gonzaga de Souza Lima  tells us that we were born as a Transnational Enterprise, condemned up to the present to be a supplier of natural products for the world market (cf. A refundação do Brasil, 2011).

But in spite of this socio-historical limitation, in the midst of this enormous mass, leaders and movements were slowly maturing that created all types of communities, associations, and groups of action and reflection, ranging from the associations of coconut breakers of the Marañon to the peoples of the jungle of Acre, the landless of the South and the North-East, the base communities, and the unions of the Paulista ABC.

The democracy exercised within these movements engendered active citizens; and from the relations among them, with each maintaining its autonomy, a generating energy of the Brazilian people is being born, that is slowly becoming conscious of its history, and is projecting a different and better future for all.

No process of this magnitude is accomplished without allies, without organic linkage with those who handle a specialized knowledge with the social movements of the committed (los comprometidos). And this is where the University is challenged to broaden its horizon. It is important that educators and students attend the living school of the people, as Paulo Freire did, and that they allow the people to enter the classrooms and listen to the professors on subjects relevant to them, as I myself used to do in my classes at the Rio de Janeiro State University.

This vision presupposes the creation of an alliance of the academic intelligencia with the popular misery. All universities, especially after the 1809 reform of their statute, in Berlin, by Humboldt, that allowed the modern sciences to acquire academic citizenship, alongside the humanistic reflection created by the old university, universities became the classic place for the questioning of culture, of life, of humanity, of human destiny and of God. The two cultures –the humanistic and the scientific– communicate more and more with each other in the sense of thinking of the whole, the destiny of the technical-scientific project itself in the face of the interventions that humans make in nature and humanity’s responsibility for the common future of the nation and of the Earth. This challenge demands a new form of thinking which does not follow a simple, lineal logic, but that of the complex and of dialogue.

The universities are being compelled to search for a way of developing organic roots in the peripheries, in the popular bases and the sectors directly linked to production. Here a fecund interchange of knowledge can be established between popular wisdom, formed by experience, and academic knowledge, based on the spirit of criticism. From this alliance will surely grow a new range of theoretical subjects, born of the contradiction between the popular anti-reality and the valuation of the vast wealth of the people in their capacity to find, by themselves, solutions to their problems. Here occurs an exchange of knowledge, some complimenting others, in the style proposed by Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel Laureate for Chemistry (cf. A nova aliança, UNB 1984).

This union accelerates the genesis of a people; allows for a new type of citizenship, based on the co-citizenship of the representatives of the civil and academic society and the popular bases, that themselves take the initiative and submit the State to democratic control, demanding basic services, especially for the great peripheral populations.

In these popular initiatives, with their distinctive fronts (housing, health, education, human rights, public transportation, etc.), the social movements feel a need for professional knowledge. This is where the university can and must be spreading knowledge, offering guidance for original solutions and opening perspectives sometimes unsuspected by those who are condemned to fight for survival.

From this rich coming-and-going between university thinking and popular knowledge there can appear a bio-regionalism, sufficiently developed for the eco-system and the local culture. From this practice, the public university will regain its public character, and really serve society. And the private university will realize its social function, since in great part it is hostage to the private interests of the classes and is the incubator of their social reproduction.

This dynamic and contradictory process will only prosper if it is imbued with a great dream: to be a new people, autonomous, free and proud of their land. Antropologist Roberto da Matta emphasized that the Brazilian people has created a really enviable patrimony: «all our capacity to synthesize, relate, reconcile, thereby creating zones and values linked to happiness, the future and hope» (Porque o Brasil é Brasil, 1986,121).

In spite of all the historic tribulations, in spite of having been considered, so many times, a Don Nadie and good for nothing, the Brazilian people never lost either its self esteem or its enchanted vision of the world. Brazil is home to a people of great dreams, invincible hope, and generous utopias, a people that feels so impregnated of divine energies that it believes that God is Brazilian.

Perhaps this enchanted vision of the world will be one of the main contributions that we, the Brazilians, can offer to the emerging world culture, with so little magic and such a diminished sensibility for play, humor and the co-existence of the opposites.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar