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“Though I should pass through the valley of the shadow of death”

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                                                      Leonardo Boff

In these dark times under the dangerous action of Covid-19 a mantle of fear and anguish extends over our lives. We live existentially weary, because of the loved ones we have lost, because of the threats of being contaminated, and even more because we don’t see when it will all end. What will come next?

A pious Israelite went through the anguish table and left us a picture of his situation in the famous Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In it there is a verse that comes in handy exactly for our situation: “Though I should pass through the valley of death, I will fear nothing, for you go with me”.

Biblically, death is to be understood not only as the end of life, but existentially as the experience of profound crises such as severe life-threatening, fierce persecution by enemies, humiliation, exclusion, and devastating loneliness. It speaks then, of descending into the hells of the human condition.

When we say in the Christian creed that Jesus descended into hell, we mean that he experienced extreme loneliness and absolute abandonment, even by his Father (cf. Mk 15:34). He effectively passed through the valley of the shadow of death, the hell of the human condition. It is consoling, then, to hear the words of the Good Shepherd: “Fear not, I am with you”.

Our great novelist João Guimarães Rosa in Grande Sertão:Veredas observed well: “living is dangerous. We feel expelled from the garden of Eden. We are always trying to build a possible paradise. We live in risky crossings. Threats lurk everywhere. And at this moment with the virus, like never before.

No matter how hard we try, and how well societies organize themselves, we can never control all the risk factors. Covid-19 has shown us the unpredictability and our vulnerability That is why the human crossing is dramatic and sometimes tragic. In the end, when it comes to securing our lives, we are forced to entrust ourselves, beyond medicine and technology, to a Greater One who can lead us “to green pastures and quiet springs,” to the Good Shepherd God. This entrustment overcomes hopelessness.

Let’s widen the horizon a little: great drama weighs upon the future of life and the biosphere. Thousands of species are disappearing because of human greed and negligence. The increasing warming of the planet together with the scarcity of drinking water may confront us with a dramatic food crisis. Millions of people may be displaced in search of survival, threatening the already fragile political and social balance of nations.

Here we must invoke once again the Shepherd of the universe, the One who has power over the course of time and climate to create opportune situations and arouse a sense of solidarity and responsibility in the peoples and heads of state.

Today what destroys our joy of living is fear.  It is the consequence of a type of society that has been built in the last centuries based on competition and not on cooperation, on the will to accumulate material goods, on consumerism, and on the use of violence as a way to solve personal and social problems.

What invalidates fear and its sequels is the care for each other, especially now, so as not to be contaminated by the virus and not to contaminate others. Care is fundamental for us to understand life and the relationships between all beings. Without care, life is not born or reproduced. Caring for someone is more than managing their interests, it is getting affectively involved with them, caring for their well-being, and feeling co-responsible for their destiny. For this reason, everything we love we also care for and everything we care for we also love.

Caring is also the anticipator of behaviors so that their effects are good and strengthen coexistence.

A society that is governed by care, for the Common House, the Earth, care for the ecosystems that guarantee the conditions of the biosphere and of our life, care for the food security of every single human being, care for fresh water, nature’s most echosen good, care for people’s health, especially for the most deprived, care, caring for the spiritual environment of culture, so that everyone can live a meaningful life, experience and welcome limitations, aging, and the passing of death without major drama, this caring society will enjoy the peace and harmony necessary for human coexistence.

It is comforting, in the midst of our current tribulations, threatened by Covid-19, to hear the One who whispers to us: “Do not be afraid, I am with you” (Psalm 23) and through Isaiah assures us: “Do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, yes, I will support you in the palm of my hand” (Is 41:10).

In this way, our personal life takes on a certain lightness and, even in the midst of risks and threats, it retains a serene youthfulness as we feel that we are never alone. God walks in our own walk as the Good Shepherd who takes care that “we lack nothing”.

Leonardo Boff is a theologian and philosopher: The Lord is my shepherd: divine consolation for human helplessness, Orbis Books, 2013.

Do we have enough time and wisdom to avoid ecological catastrophe?

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Leonardo Boff

On August 8, 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the report, made every two years, on the Earth’s climate situation, the result of the research of more than one hundred experts from 52 countries. Never has the document been as clear as it is now, unlike previous reports. Before it was stated that there was 95% certainty that global warming was anthropogenic, that is, of human origin. Now it is sustained without restrictions that it is a consequence of human beings and their way of inhabiting the Earth, especially because of the use of fossil energy (oil, coal and gas) and other negative factors.

The scenario presents itself as dramatic.The Paris Agreement specifies that countries should “limit warming to well below 2˚C, and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5˚C.” The current report insinuates that it will be difficult but that we have the scientific knowledge, technological and financial capacity to tackle climate change, provided everyone, countries, cities, companies and individuals already now make a serious commitment.

The current situation is worrying.In 2016 global greenhouse gas emissions amounted to about 52 gigatonnes of CO2 annually. If we do not change current course we will arrive in 2030 at between 52 and 58 gigatons. At this level there would be a fantastic decimation of biodiversity and a proliferation of bacteria and viruses such as never before.

To stabilize the climate at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the scientists say, emissions would need to fall by half (25-30 gigatonnes). Otherwise, with the Earth on fire, we would experience terrifying extreme events.

I am of the opinion that science and technology alone is not enough to reduce greenhouse gases. It is too much to believe in the omnipotence of science that even today does not know how to fully face Covid-19. Another paradigm of relationship with nature and with the Earth is urgently needed, one that is not destructive but friendly and in subtle synergy with the rhythms of nature.

This would require a radical transformation in the current capitalist mode of production, which still moves, for the most part, under the illusion that the Earth’s resources are unlimited and therefore allow for an unlimited growth/development project. Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Sì: On the Care for our Common Home (2020) denounces this premise as a “lie” (n.106): a limited planet, in an advanced degree of degradation and overpopulated, cannot tolerate an unlimited project.

Covid-19 in its deepest meaning requires us to put into action a paradigmatic conversion.In the encyclical Fratelli tutti (2021) Pope Francis seized this warning from the virus. He contrasts two projects: the current one, of modernity, whose paradigm consists in making the human being dominus (lord and master) of nature, and the new one he proposes, that of frater (brother and sister), including everyone, humans and other beings of nature.

This new paradigm of planetary frater would establish a fraternity without borders and a social love. If we don’t make this crossing, “everyone is saved or no one is saved” (n.32).

Here is the big question: does the globalized capitalist mode of production show the political will, has the capacity and the reasonability to allow itself this radical change? It has made itself the dominus (Descartes’ maître et possesseur) of the earth and all its resources, its mantras being: the highest possible profit, achieved by fierce competition, accumulated individually or corporately, through a devastating exploitation of natural goods and services. From this mode of production originated the lack of climate control and, what is worse, a culture of capital, to which, in some way, we are all hostages. How can we get out of it to save ourselves?

We have to change, otherwise, according to Sygmunt Bauman, “we will swell the ranks of those who are heading for their own grave. Logically, this urgent conversion of paradigm demands time and implies a process of transformation, because the whole system is geared to produce and consume more. But the time for change is expiring. Hence the feeling in the world of great names, whose unquestionable credibility is not of simple pessimism, but of a well-founded realism:

The first is Pope Francis’ warning in Fratelli tutti: “we are in the same boat, either we all save ourselves or no one is saved” (n.32).

The second is the formulator of the theory of the Earth as a living super-organism, Gaia, James Lovelock, whose latest title says it all: “Gaia: final warning” (Intrínseca, Rio 2010).

The third is Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom: “Hora final:o desastre ambiental ameaça o futuro da humanidade” (Companhia das Letras, SP 2005), which needs no comment.

The fourth is Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most renowned historians of the 20th century, who says at the end of his The Age of Extremes (Companhia das Letras, SP 1995): “We do not know where we are going.However, one thing is clear: if mankind wants to have a meaningful future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present.If we try to build the third millennium on this basis, we will fail.And the price of failure, that is, the change of society, is darkness” (p.562). This warning goes for all those who think of the post-pandemic as a return to the old, perverse normality.

The fifth is the well-known French geneticist Albert Jacquard with his “Has the countdown begun? (Le compte à retours a-t-il commence? Stock, Paris 2009), in which he argues that “our time is numbered, and having worked against ourselves, we risk forging an Earth where none of us would like to live. The worst is not certain, but we must hurry” (fourth cover).

]Finally, one of the last great naturalists, Théodore Monod with the book And if the human adventure should fail (Et si l’aventure humaine devait échouer,Grasset, Paris 2003) asserts: “The human being is perfectly capable of senseless and insane conduct; from now on we can fear everything, even the annihilation of the human species”(p.246).

The process of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis also provided for the emergence of faith and hope. They are part of the total reality. They do not invalidate the warnings cited, but open another window that assures us that “the Creator created everything out of love because he is the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11:26).

This faith and hope allow Pope Francis to speak “beyond the sun” with these words: “Let us walk in song, that our struggles and our concern for this planet do not rob us of the joy of hope” (Laudato Sì n. 244).

The principle of hope surpasses all limits and always keeps the future open. If we cannot avoid climate decontrol, we can take precautions and minimize its most harmful effects. This is what we believe and hope.

Leonardo Boff is a brazilian philosopher and ecotheologist who wrote The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity without borders and of social friendship, Vozes 2020.

Theoretical frameworks for understanding the Covid-19 intrusion

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                                    Leonardo Boff

Every social-historical reality, no matter how good it looks or how deep in chaos it is, demands a theoretical framework (set of concepts) in order to be understood, whether to face the threats it may represent or to celebrate a new order that may emerge with its promises.

The first theoretical framework follows science as it is commonly practiced, whose method was inaugurated in the 18th century by the founding fathers of the modern scientific paradigm, which has gained its clearest expression through the results of the IPCC that accompany current warming and the health of the Earth.

The facts it reflects on are, for example, the Covid-19 intrusion showing the Earth’s reaction against the aggressions made by humans in the geological era of the Anthropocene. The other fact is the growth of global warming whose C02, as we know, remains in the atmosphere for more than a hundred years. Given the industrialist voracity, it is reaching a dangerous limit. It must be drastically reduced by 2030, otherwise we will experience a dramatic transformation of the Earth’s balance, seriously threatening the biosphere and generating millions of immigrants worldwide. If the current level of consumption that requires one and a half Earth continues, it could lead us to great rates of social inequity, especially among the poor. There are also the “9 planetary bounderies for development” that must not be crossed (climate, water, soil, biodiversity, the diminishing oxon layer, ocean acidification, and others). Four are in a high degree of erosion. After the fifth, a domino effect may occur, because all factors are systemic and interrelated. This could lead to a collapse of our civilization. The final result: the scenario is dramatic for the life-system and the Earth-system, aggravated by the great absence of collective awareness of the real threats that weigh upon humanity, by most people and heads of state. This reading leads to pessimism and lack of interest of people in the ecological factor.

The second framework starts from the new cosmogenesis, from life and earth sciences. The central category is not order, but chaos. Here we use the achievements of chaos theory, which gives us a more positive and promising reading. Together with Einstein’s theory of relativity, Heisenberg/Bohr’s quantum mechanics, and Lorenz/Prigogine’s Chaos theory, a new scientific paradigm was founded that interprets social-historical reality in a different way. Everything in the universe comes from an immeasurable chaos (big-bang), its explosion 13.7 billion years ago projecting matter, energy and information in all directions. Evolution is done as a way to put order into this chaos. From their explosion, the materials formed inside them were launched into all spaces, creating galaxies, black holes, stars, our sun and the earth and everything in it.This chaos is unique: it has a destructive (chaotic) and a constructive (generative) dimension. As shown by Bohm, Lorenz and Prigorine, within this chaos a new order always forms, which emerges dominant as the destructiveness of chaos diminishes (without ever totally disappearing). Chaos erupts in all beings, also in us humans whenever a given order can no longer cope with the problems created. Thus we humans are chaotic and cosmetic, wise and demented, carriers of love and empathy and simultaneously of hate and exclusion.

At this moment with the dramatic presence of the coronavirus we are at the heart of a powerful chaos, affecting the whole planet and every single human. But it has made us discover the Earth as a whole, and that we are also Earth, a conscious part of it, and not its owners and masters. It made us discover that our human essence is made of collaboration/solidarity and the ethics of caring for each other and for nature. It showed us the urgency of building the Earth as a common motherland/homeland, as the Great House within which we live, nature included. The pandemic has raised the need for a planetary social pact so that we can live as a species in peace and with a minimum of tensions. The conclusion that we derive from this type of interpretation is that an old order has entered into irreversible chaos, but that within it a new order is being created (not without suffering), that is to say, a new way of inhabiting the Earth in synergy with nature, with fraternity and social love. This does not happen in the blink of an eye, for chaos has a long history and a slow agony. But it does not promise any hope, just more of the same, impossible to repeat, because the new order will have more power to convince and to assume hegemony in the conduction of history. Summary of the opera: we are not heading for our own grave but for a new kind of world. The dream of the World Social Forums will be realized not only as a new possible world, but as a new necessary world. Within it will be the various cultural worlds, Chinese, Indian, Andean, African and Brazilian, with their values and traditions, showing the diversity of ways of being human.

Where to start? Pope Francis in his encyclical Fratelli tutti says: we must start from below (because from above there is always more of the same or worse), with each person, with each locality, with each country, down to the last corner of the planet. Everything will begin in the territory (bioregionalism), not as it is artificially delimited by the political geography of the municipalities, but by the ways that nature has configured the territory with its mountains, its rivers, its forests, its soils, its landscapes, and especially with the population that for decades or centuries inhabited that place. Everything will be integrated into small and medium-sized production enterprises, starting with agroecology, with a new type of social-ecological democracy, recognizing the rights of nature and of Mother Earth, with the participation of all and with policies to reduce poverty to the maximum and the peaceful integration of all. The cultural traditions, the profane and religious festivals, the veneration of artists, of exemplary politicians, of their saints and sages, will conform the territory in which real sustainability can be realized.

We could represent the Earth as an immense tapestry woven of autonomous and interconnected territories constituting the new era of the Common House, of Mother Earth, the Mother of all struggles and all victories, cared for, loved, and inhabited by people who feel they are brothers and sisters because they are all sons and daughters of the Magna Mater, or better, they are the Earth herself, who feels, thinks, loves, cares, and venerates. We will be together in the joyful celebration of the Mystery of the world and of the miracle of our own existence, shared with the whole community of life. A utopia? Yes, but a necessary one, because the path of ascending evolution points there, represents the longing of all peoples, and also fulfills the Creator’s plan.

Leonardo Boff ecotheologist,text dedicated to the agroecology organizations CAATINGA, SABIÁ AND SASOP, in function of a 2022 calendar with the theme “Motherland of all struggles”.  

The worst is yet to come

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                                          Leonardo Boff

The great floods that occurred in Germany and Belgium in July, the summer month of Europe, causing hundreds of victims, associated with an abrupt warming that in some places reached more than 50 degrees, forces us to think and make decisions in view of the Earth’s balance. Some analysts have gone so far as to say: the Earth has not warmed up; it has become, in some places, a furnace.

This means that dozens of living organisms cannot adapt and end up dying. Today, with the current warming that has grown by more than one degree Celsius in the last century, and if it reaches, as predicted, two degrees, about a million living species will be on the verge of disappearing after millions of years of living on this planet.

We understand the resignation and skepticism of many meteorologists and cosmologists who claim that we are too late in combating global warming. We are not meeting it. We are seriously in it. They argue, bleakly, that we have little to do, because carbon dioxide is already excessively accumulated, since it stays in the atmosphere for 100 to 120 years, aggravated by methane, 20 times more toxic, although it stays in the air for a short time. By general surprise, it has erupted, due to the melting of the polar ice caps and the parmafrost that runs from Canada through all of Siberia, and has increased global warming.

The intrusion of Covid-19, being planetary. forces us to think and act differently. It is clear that the pandemic is a consequence of the Anthropocene, that is, of the overly aggressive advance of the prevailing system, based on unlimited profit. It has exceeded the Earth’s bearable limits. Through deforestation à la Ricardo Salles/Bolsonaro, the cultivation of monocultures, and the general pollution of the environment, the virus’ habitat was destroyed. Not knowing where to go, they jumped to other animals, immune to the viruses, and from them they passed to us, who do not have this immunity.

It is worth thinking about the meaning of the fact that the entire planet has been affected, on the one hand making everyone equal, and on the other increasing inequalities because the vast majority cannot live in social isolation, avoiding conglomerations, especially in public transportation and in stores. It did not affect the other living beings, our domestic animals.

We must recognize: we humans were the ones targeted. Mother Earth, since the 70s of the last century, recognized as a living organism, Gaia, and by the UN (on April 22, 2009) truly approved as Mother Earth, has sent us a sign and a warning: “stop attacking all the ecosystems that make me up; I no longer have enough time to replenish what you take from me for a year and regenerate myself.

Since the current paradigm still considers the Earth as a mere means of production, in a utilitarian sense, they are not paying attention to her warnings. She, as a living super-orgnism, gives us unmistakable signs, as now, with the great floods in Europe, the excessive cold in the southern hemisphere, and the range of viruses already being sent (zica, ebola, chikungunya, and others).

Since we are hard-headed and there is a glaring absence of ecological awareness, we may find ourselves on a path of no return.

Curiously, as others have commented, “the prophets of neoliberalism are turning into promoters of the social economy because they realize, in the face of the current catastrophe, that it will no longer be possible to do the same as before, and that it will be necessary to return to social imperatives. The worst that could happen to us is to go back to the way things were before, full of perverse contradictions, enemy of the life of nature and indifferent to the fate of the great majority of the poor, and arming itself to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction, absolutely useless in the face of viruses.

We must necessarily change, overcome the old sovereignties that made other countries even hostile or subject to fierce competition. The virus has shown that the limits of nations do not count for anything. What really counts is the solidarity among all, and the care that we have for each other and for nature, so that, preserved, it does not send us even worse viruses. Now is the new era of the Common Home, within which the nations will be.

David Quamen, the great virus expert, left this warning: either we change our relationship with nature by being respectful, synergetic, and careful, or she will send us other viruses, perhaps one so lethal that our vaccines will not be able to attack them and will take a large part of humanity.

If we do not stop global warming and if we do not change our paradigm towards nature, we will see worse days ahead. If we can no longer stop the increase in global warming, with the science and technology that we possess, we can at least mitigate its deleterious effects and save as much of the planet’s immense biodiversity as possible.

As never before in history, our common destiny is in our hands: we must choose between following the same route that leads us to an abyss or change it and guarantee a future for all, more frugal, more supportive, and more caring for nature and our Common Home.

I have been repeating this lesson for 30 years now, and I feel like a prophet in the desert. But I fulfill my duty, which is that of all those who awakened one day.

Leonardo Boff is an ecophilosopher and has written Inhabit the Earth: the way to universal brotherhood coming out soon from Vozes; Covid-19, Mother Earth Strikes Back against Humanity, Vozes, 2020