Categoria: English

Only a God can Save us

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

The crisis of our scientific-technical civilization demands more than historical and sociological explanations. It requires a philosophical reflection that leads to a theological question. It  was Martín Heidegger, (1889-1976), who saw it clearly, even before the ecological alarm was sounded.  In a famous 1955 conference in Munich, “On the question of the technical” where Werner Heisenberg and Jose Ortega y Gasset were also present, he clearly set out the risk the natural world and humanity ran by being totally absorbed with the intrinsic logic of the mode of thinking and acting that, in order to obtain individual or social benefits, intervenes in and manipulates all aspects of the natural world. The scientific -technical culture has so profoundly penetrated our understanding of ourselves that we can neither understand each other nor live without incorporating this crutch into ourselves and our way of being in the world.

This represents the convergence of two traditions of Western philosophy: the Platonic philosophy, with an idealistic flavor transformed by the Christian tendency, and that of Aristotle, more empirical and science-based. They fused in the XVII century, with Descartes, and formed the basis of modern techno-science, the present dominant paradigm. This mode of being concentrates on how things are, how they function and how they can be useful to us, and is not interested in the miracle that things are, compared to nothingness. We separate ourselves from the natural world and immerse ourselves in the artificial world. We have lost the organic relationship with things, plants, animals, mountains and with humanity itself.

Everything is converted into the means to an end. We do not see a being as the carrier of a purpose, but for its utility, physical or intellectual, that can be exploited. If something can be done, it will be done, with no ethical justification. If we can split the atom there is no reason not do so, and build the atomic bomb. If we can drop that bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who will stop us? If I can manipulate the genetic code, there is no ethical or moral limit that can stop it. And we perform experiments that interest us and appear useful for the market and to a given life style.

Heidegger warns us that techno-science has created a mechanism in us (Gestell ), a way of seeing that considers everything as an item at our disposal. It has colonized all spaces and subjugated all knowledge. It has been converted into a motor that auto-accelerates in such a manner that we do not know how to stop it. We have made ourselves its hostages. It dictates to us what to do and what not to do. Here, Heidegger points out the very high risk we run, as natural beings and as a species. Techno-science affects the fundamentals that sustain life and has generated such destructive power that it can exterminate us all. The means have already been built and are at our disposal. Who will stop the hand that would unleash the natural and human Armageddon? That is the great question that should concern us as persons and as humanity; rather than growth and interests rates.

Heidegger’s intended answer is a Kehre, a “return” or transformation. This is the final purpose of all his thinking, as is revealed in a letter to Karl Jaspers: to be the attendant of a museum who cleans the dust from the objects so that they can be seen. As a philosopher he proposed himself (it is sad that such terribly complicated language was used) to remove all that covers the habitual and daily life. Doing that, what is revealed?

Nothing, except everything that surrounds us and that constitutes our being-in-the-world-with-the others and with the landscape, with the blue sky, with the rain and with the sun. And to enable that all these things be seen as they are; they do not oppress us, but they are there, tranquil, with us, at home.

He looked for inspiration for this mode of being in the pre-Socratic, especially in Heraclitus, who lived the original thinking before it was transformed by Plato and Aristotle into metaphysics, which is the basis of techno-science. But Heidegger fears that it is too late. We are so close to the abyss that we cannot go back. In his last interview with Der Spiegel, in 1976, published post-mortem, he says: “Only a God can save us.”  The philosophical question about the destiny of our culture has been converted into a theological question. Will God intervene? Will God permit the species to self-destruct?

As a Christian theologian I will join Saint Paul in saying: “hope does not disappoint”  (Rm 5,5), because “God is the sovereign lover of life” (Sb 11,26). I do not know how.  I only wait.

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

Solidarian Responsability for the Future of the human Species

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

By a unanimous vote on April 22, 2009, the UN welcomed the idea, often suggested by the Indigenous Nations and always rejected, that the Earth is Mother. Consequently, the same respect, the same veneration and caring is owed to her as we devote to our mothers. Ever since, April 22nd has been not only Earth Day, but Mother Earth’s Day. This recognition carries important consequences. The most immediate is that the living Earth is entitled to rights. And not only the Earth, but all the organic and inorganic beings of which she is composed, are, each in its own way, also entitled to rights. Thus, every being has intrinsic value, as the Earthcharter underscores, independent of the use that we do or do not make of it. All beings have the right to exist and to continue existing on this planet, and not to be ill treated or eliminated.

This acceptance of the concept of Mother Earth fulfills what in the 1920s Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, (1983-1945), creator of the concept of the biosphere, (a name coined by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, (1831-1914)), called global ecology, meaning the ecology of the terrestrial globe as a whole. We are familiar with environmental ecology, socio-political and mental ecology. What was lacking was an ecology of the Earth, considered as a complex unit. Russian geochemist, James Lovelock, with new empirical data, recently presented the Gaia hypothesis, which is now an accepted scientific theory: the Earth effectively appears as a living super organism that self regulates, a thesis that is sustained by the systems theory of cybernetics, and by Chilean biologists Maturana and Varela.

Vernadsky understood the biosphere as the very thin layer that surrounds the earth, a kind of subtle, invisible cloth that captures the radiation from the cosmos and from the Earth herself and transforms it into highly active earthly energy. Here life occurs. In it is found a multiplicity of symbiotic beings, always interdependent, in such a way that they all help each other exist, persist and co-evolve. The human species is part of this terrestrial whole, the part that thinks, loves, intervenes and builds civilizations.

The human species is unique among the beings: it has the ethical responsibility to care for and maintain the conditions that guarantee the sustainability of the whole.

As described in the previous article, we run a very grave risk of destroying the human species and the entire planetary future. We created, as some scientists affirm, the anthropocene, a new geologic era with very high destructive power, the result of centuries passed in a perverse imbalance of the equilibrium of the Earth system. How can we confront this new situation that has never before occurred on a global scale?

Personally, we have developed the paradigms of sustainability and caring, as a relationship of friendship and cooperation with nature. We will now briefly present a necessary compliment: the ethics of responsibility of German philosopher Hans Jonas, (1903-1993), with his familiar principle of responsibility, followed by the Principle of Life.

Jonas starts from the sad truth that techno-science has made nature very vulnerable, to the point where the extinction of the human species is not impossible. From there arises human responsibility, formulated as an imperative: to behave in such a way that the effects of your actions do not destroy the possibility of future life.

Jonas also works with another category that must be well understood in order not to create a deadlock: terror and fear (Furcht).  Here, fear has an elemental significance, the fear that instinctively moves us to preserve our life and the life of all the species. The fearful possibility exists that in fact an irreversible process of mass destruction has been unleashed, with the instruments we so fearlessly built, and that now we rightfully fear may actually destroy us all. From this is born our responsibility before the new techno-sciences, such as biotechnology and nanotechnology, whose capacity to destroy is inconceivable.  We must really assume responsibility for the future of humanity, if only from fear, and, above all, for the love of our own lives.

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

Ecological Constitutionalism in Latin America

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Modern Constitutions are grounded in an anthropocentric social contract. They do not include the natural contract; the accord and reciprocity that must exist between human beings and the living Earth, that provides us with everything and whom in reciprocity we care for and preserve. For that reason it would be natural to recognize that the Earth and the beings that comprise her are bearers of rights. However, classic contractualists such as Kant and Hobbes viewed ethics and rights as belonging only to relations between humans. They acknowledge human obligations only towards other beings, especially animals, in the sense of neither destroying them nor subjecting them to unnecessary suffering or cruelty.

The failure to consider that each being has intrinsic value, independent of its human use, its rational use, and that it is the bearer of the right to exist within the same common habitat, the planet Earth, has opened the path for nature to be treated as a mere object, to be exploited with no other consideration, in some cases, to the point of exhaustion. However, it fell to Latin America, as Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni, noted criminal lawyer and Justice of the Supreme Court of Argentina, shows in, Pachamama and the Human, (La Pachamama y el Humano, Ediciones Colihue 2012), to develop a constitutional theory of an ecological nature, where the Earth and all natural beings, particularly the animals and other living beings are endowed with rights. They must be included in the modern Constitutions that have put aside the deeply rooted anthropocentrism and the dominus paradigm of the human being as lord and dominant master of nature and of the Earth.

The new Latin American constitutionalists unite two currents: one, the more ancestral, is that of the original Nations, for whom the Earth (Pacha) is mother (Mama), hence the name, Pachamama, and is entitled to rights because she is alive and gives us all that we need, and, in the end, because we are part of and belong to her, in the same way as the animals, woods, jungles, waters, mountains and landscape. They all deserve to exist and to coexist with us, forming the great community and cosmic democracy.

They integrate this ancestral, efficacious, tradition of the Andean culture, that stretches from Patagonia to Central America, with the new understanding, derived from contemporary cosmology, genetic and molecular biology, and systems theory, that understands the Earth as a living super-organism that self regulates, (Maturana-Varela and Capra’s autopoiesis), seeking always to maintain life and the capacity to reproduce and to make it co-evolve. This Earth, called Gaia, consists of all beings, and generates and sustains the fabric of life in its vast bio-diversity. The Earth, as a generous Mother, must be respected, recognizing her potentialities and her limits, and therefore, accepted as a bearer of rights, -the dignitas Terrae- the basis for making possible and sustaining all the other personal and social rights.

Two Latin-American countries, Ecuador and Bolivia, have created a true ecological constitutionalism; in that regard, they are ahead of any other “developed” country.

The 2008 Montecristi Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador, explicitly says in its preamble: “We celebrate nature, Our Pacha Mama, of whom we are part and who is vital for our existence”. It then emphasizes that the Republic proposes to build “a new form of citizen coexistence, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to attain the good living, or sumac kawsay (plentiful life)”. In article 71º, chapter VII states: “nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and realized, has the right that her existence be wholly respected, the maintenance and regeneration of her vital cycles, evolutionary structure, functions and processes; all persons, communities, people or nationalities can demand of the public authority the fulfillment of the rights of nature… the State will encourage the natural and juridical persons, and the collectives, to protect nature and will promote respect for all the elements that form an ecosystem”.

The words of the preamble of the Political Constitution of the Bolivian State, approved in 2009, are moving: “Fulfilling the mandate of our peoples, with the strength of our Pachamama and thanks to God, we again found Bolivia”. Article 33º prescribes: “persons have the right to a healthy, protected and balanced environment. The exercise of this right must allow individuals and the collectives of the present and future generations, including other living beings, to develop in a normal and permanent manner”. Article 34º disposes: “any person, as an individual or in the name of a collective, is allowed to undertake legal actions in defense of the environment”.

Here we have a true ecological constitutionalism that has taken shape and form in the respective Constitutions. Such visions are forerunners of what should be included in all of humanity’s future constitutions. Only with such a mind and disposition will we guarantee a happy destiny on this planet.

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

The Hoopla around Boston makes us forget the possible End of the Species

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

One would have to be inhumane and lacking compassion and solidarity not to become indignant and condemn the attack perpetrated in Boston, leaving two dead and hundreds wounded. But that does not excuse us from being critical. The incident was dramatized world-wide, with hidden objectives that must be unmasked. Many such incidents occur around the world, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the presence of North American and allied troops. These incidents always result in many dead and hundreds of wounded. Almost no one pays attention to those facts, which are already viewed as natural, and are trivialized. Many think: they are terrorists or persons close to them, an inconvenience to the system of Western domination. They can be killed. But, let’s admit it: they are human beings like those in Boston. However, the standards are different.

We must be conscious of the political-ideologic importance of making a spectacle of the events in Boston. It is a way of diverting world attention from much more fundamental problems: the first being the state of terror the North-American State imposes upon its citizens and the whole world. With that it betrays its highest quality: the defense of fundamental rights. The government of the United States has neither closed Guantanamo nor ratified important international instruments, such as the Treaty of Rome on the International Criminal Court, or the American Convention on Human Rights (the Pact of San Jose, Costa Rica). The United States does not want the violations and attacks its agents perpetrate throughout the world in order to ensure its empire to be brought before those tribunals.

But through the uninterrupted preoccupation the world mass media lavished on the incident, the «masters of the world» try to divert attention from the second question, one which, of course, has grave consequences and could eliminate us all: the threatened end of the human species. In the first place, for centuries these “masters” have devastated the planet to the point that, by itself, the planet cannot regain sustainability. Through extreme events, the planet is demonstrating that its limits have been surpassed. Then, in their urge to accumulate without limit and to dominate the process of the globalization of humanity, lethal machinery has been set up that, together with the ecological crisis, threatens life on Earth, and could mean the end of the human species.

Noted world scientists and the most serious theorists of ecology have called attention to this very real threat. The fact is that no-one knows exactly when it could occur, but if the present path is maintained, the result will be fatal. Michel Serres, a renown French philosopher of ecology has said: after Hiroshima, Nagasaki,and now, Fukushima, humanity has discovered a new type of death: the death of the species. If, as Mikhail Gorbachev endlessly repeats, with the chemical, biological and nuclear arms we already have built and stored, we can destroy all of humanity without leaving a single witness: ¿Security? It is never absolute. Let us remember Three Mile Island, Chernobil and Fukushima.

Thus, our species has revealed itself as the Satan of the Earth: it has learned to be homicidal (killing its own kind), ethno-cidal (how many original, Native Nations have not yet been exterminated?), eco-cidal (it has devastated entire ecosystems). And now the human race could become specie-cidal (lead the whole species to suicide).

The imperial system lives by searching for scapegoats (previously, there were the communists, then the subversives, and now the terrorists, the immigrants… who will be next?) on whom the desire for collective vengeance falls. That way, the system divests itself of guilt or error. But, above all, it does everything possible so that this lethal threat to the human species is not acknowledged, and transformed into a dangerous collective consciousness.

No one will passively accept a death sentence, but will fight to protect life and the common future. This should be the objective of a global government that demands the renunciation of an imperial will that thinks only of perpetuating itself, instead of thinking of the common good of Mother Earth and of Humanity. No matter how much the bombing of Boston is manipulated, how long will the powerful be able to obscure the dramatic situation that looms over us? Let us all awaken, because we do not want to die; we want to live and shine.

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