Categoria: English

We Westerners, the Most Responsible of the actual Crisis

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

The number of crises overwhelming humanity forces us to stop and take stock. It is a time for all critical observers who wish go beyond the conventional and intra-systemic speeches to philosophize.

Why have we come to the present situation, that objectively threatens the future of human life and of our civilizing work? Our response lacks serious justification: those principally responsible for putting us on this path are those who in recent centuries have held the power, the knowledge, and who owned everything. They wanted to dominate nature, conquer the whole world, subjugate its peoples and put everything at the service of their interests.

To this end they employed a powerful weapon: techno-science. Through science, they determined how nature functions, and through technology they created interventions for human benefit, with no thought for their consequences.

The men who did this were the Western Europeans. They incorporated us Latin Americans, by force, as an appendix: the Far Westerners.

These Westerners, however, are now enormously perplexed. Stunned, they ask themselves: how can we be at the center of the crisis, when we have the best knowledge, the best democracy, the best technology, the best movies, the biggest military and the best religion, Christianity?

Now these “conquests” are in question, because in spite of their value, they undeniably fail to offer us a vision of hope. We sense that the time of the West has been used up, and is already past. This is why it has lost its legitimacy and convincing strength.

Arnold Toynbee, analyzing the great civilizations, noted the following historical constant: when the answers to the challenges no longer suffice, civilizations always enter into crisis. They start to decay, until they either collapse or are assimilated by another. The new one brings renewed vigor, new dreams and new meaning for personal and collective life. What will come? Who knows. That is the crucial question.

What makes the crisis more serious is the persistent Western arrogance. Even in decay, Westerners imagine themselves to be the obligatory point of reference for everyone else.

For the Bible and the Greeks, such behavior constituted supreme deception, because it puts oneself on the same pedestal as the divinity, considered to be the supreme reference and the Last Reality. This attitude was called hybris, this is, arrogance, and extreme egotism.

It was this arrogance that led the United States intervene under false pretenses in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, and previously, in Latin America, for many years supporting military dictatorships and the shameful Operation Condor, in which hundreds of leaders of several Latin American countries were kidnapped and murdered.

With the new president, Barak Obama, a new path seemed promising, a more multipolar one, respectful of cultural differences and compassion for the vulnerable. It was a huge mistake. Obama is carrying out the imperialist trajectory, in the same line as fundamentalist Bush. He has not substantially changed anything, in this strategy of arrogance. To the contrary, Obama inaugurated something outrageous and perverse: un-declared war, using “drones”, un-manned planes. Electronically directed from cold rooms in military bases in Texas ,they attack, killing individual leaders and entire groups whom they suspect to be terrorists.

Christianity itself, in its different forms, has distanced itself from ecumenism and is taking on fundamentalist traits. There is a competition in the religious market, to see which denomination acquires more of the faithful.

We have witnessed in Rio+20 the same arrogance of the powerful, who refused to participate and to find even minimal points of convergence, that could alleviate the crisis of the Earth.

And to think that, deep down, we only seek a simple utopia, well expressed by Pablo Milanes and Chico Buarque: “history could be a happy bus, filled with contented people”.

The impossible pact between the wolf and the lamb

Leonardo Boff6 Comentários

Post Festum, we can say: the final Rio+20 document offers a generous menu of suggestions and proposals, none of which is obligatory. There is a dose of moving good will, and a scary, even pitiful, analytical naiveté. It is not a compass leading us to «the future we want», but in the direction of an abyss.

This failed outcome is due to the almost religious belief that the solution to the present systemic crisis is found in the poison that produced it: the economy. It is not about the economy in the transcendental sense, namely, the process –without regard to the means– that guarantees the material basis of life, but the economic structure, that which actually exists, that has recently dealt a blow to everything else (to politics, culture and ethics) and installed itself, sovereign, as the sole engine of society. It is the «Great Transformation» that the Hungarian-Northamerican economist Karl Polanyi energetically denounced in 1944. This type of economy fills all aspects of life. Governed by a ferocious competitiveness, it proposes accumulating as much wealth as possible, utilizing, to the point of depleting all ecosystems, everything that can be commercialized and consumed. This logic has thrown all relationships with the Earth and among humans off balance.

Facing this chaos, Ban Ki Moon, General Secretary of the United Nations, never tires of repeating at Conference openings: we are running out of time to save ourselves. In 2011 in Davos, Switzerland, he emphatically declared in front of the «lords of money and of the economic war»: «The present world economic model is a pact for global suicide». Albert Joacquard, the well-known French geneticist, titled one of his last books: Has the countdown begun? (2009). The decision-makers do not pay the least attention to the warnings of the world scientific community. Never before have there been such chasms between science and politics, between ethics and economics. It reminds me of Napoleon’s cynical comment after the battle of Eylau, on seeing thousands of dead soldiers in the snow: «One night in Paris will make up for all this». They continue reciting the creed: more of the same, of economics, and we will emerge from this crisis. Can there be a pact between the lamb (ecology) and the wolf (economy)? All indications are that it is impossible.

You can add any adjective you want to this type of economy — sustainable, green… or any other — but it will not change its nature. They imagine that polishing the wolf’s teeth will remove its ferocity, when the ferocity does not reside in the wolf’s teeth, but in its nature. The nature of this economy is to grow constantly, even if it means devastating the nature-system and the life-system. Not to grow would mean death itself.

But the Earth can no longer tolerate this systematic assault on her goods and services. To this, add social injustice, which is as grave as the ecologic injustice. The average rich man uses 16 times more than a poor one. And an African has a thirty year shorter life expectancy than a European (Jaquard, 28).

Facing such crimes, how can one not be indignant, and demand a change of direction? The Earthcharter offers us a secure path: «As never before in history, the common destiny calls us to seek a new beginning, one that requires a change of mentality and of heart, a new sense of global interdependency and universal responsibility… to reach a sustainable mode of life at the local, regional and global levels» (final). A change of mentality implies a new view of the Earth, not as a «world-machine» but as a living organism: Mother Earth, who deserves respect and caring.

A change of heart means overcoming the dictatorship of scientific-technical reason, and regaining sensible reason, wherein reside profound feelings, passion for change and love and respect for everything that exists and lives. Instead of competition, to experience global interdependency, another name for cooperation; and instead of indifference, universal responsibility, that is, deciding to face global danger together.

The words of the Nazarene are on point: «unless you change, all of you shall perish» (Luke 13,5).

The Conceptual Deficiencies of Rio+20

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

To say that Rio+20 was a success is a fantasy, because not a single binding measure was reached, and neither funds to eradicate poverty, nor mechanisms to control global warming was created. No decisions were taken regarding the purpose of the Conference, which was to create conditions for the «future we want». The logic of the governments is not to admit failures, but failures still exist. Given the general degradation of all the eco-systemic services, failing to make progress is to regress.

Deep down Rio+20 affirmed that if the crisis lies in growth, then the solution is still more growth. This necessarily means greater use of nature’s goods and services, which accelerates their exhaustion, and puts more pressure on the ecosystems, which have already reached their limit. Data by the very UN organs show that since Rio 92 there has been a 12% loss of biodiversity, 3 million square meters of forests and jungles were destroyed, 40% more green house gasses were released, and about half of the world reserves of fish have been depleted.

What is surprising is that neither the final document nor its draft reveal any self criticism. They neither question how we have come to the present situation, nor clearly recognize the systemic character of the crisis. This is the theoretical weakness and conceptual deficiency of this, and in general, other official UN documents. Let’s enumerate some critical points.

Those who continue within the old cultural and social structure that places the human being in an Adam-like position, above nature, as her dominator and exploiter, are the fundamental cause of the present ecological crisis. They fail to understand humans as being part of nature, and responsible for the common destiny. They have not incorporated the vision of the new cosmology that sees the Earth as alive, and the human being as the conscious and intelligent portion of the Earth itself, with the mission of caring for her and guaranteeing sustainability. The Earth is seen only as a warehouse of resources, with neither intelligence nor purpose.

They adopted the «great transformation» (Polanyi), when they annulled ethics, set aside politics, and made the economy the sole axis for structuring all of society. From a market economy we have transitioned to a market society, separating the real economy from the financial speculative economy, with the latter directing the former.

They confuse development with growth, whereas development is the collection of values and conditions that foster the realization of human existence, and growth is the mere production of goods to be commercialized and consumed. They understand sustainability as the means of guaranteeing the continuity and the reproduction of the same, of the institutions, the enterprises and other organizations, without changing their internal logic or questioning their impact on the eco-systemic services. They are hostage to an anthropocentric point of view, according to which all other beings have meaning only to the extent they are ordained for human use, thus ignoring the community of life, also generated, as are we ourselves, by Mother Earth. They have a utilitarian relationship with all beings, denying their intrinsic value, because of which they are due respect, and have rights, especially planet Earth.

Viewing everything through the economic vision of competition rather than cooperation, they abolished the ethical and spiritual dimension from the reflections on lifestyles, and the means by which societies produce and consume. Without ethics or spirituality we turn ourselves into barbarians, insensitive to the suffering of millions and millions of starving and miserable human beings. Therefore, a radical individualism reigns, with each country seeking its own particular good above the global common good, thus precluding consensus and the convergence of the diversities in UN Conferences. And so, content and alienated, we head towards an encounter with the abyss created by our lack of sensible reason, wisdom, and a transcendent sense of existence.

With these conceptual deficiencies, we will never emerge from the crises that destroy us. This was the cry of the Leadership of the Peoples that offered alternatives of hope. In the worst case scenario, the Earth will continue, but without us. May the Divine not let that happen, because God is «the sovereign lover of life», as the Judeo-Christian Scriptures affirm.

See L.Boff & M.Hathaway,The Tao of Liberation– Exploring the Ecology of Transformation, Orbis Books, N.Y. 2010.

The terms of the present ecological debate

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Rio+20 has provoked a wide debate about ecological issues. Since not everyone understands the technical terms of the debate, we are publishing an article by the best known ecologist of the State of Rio, Arthur Soffiati, of Campos de Goytacazes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, founder of the Centro Norte Fluminense for the Conservation of Nature, published on May 14, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro’s La Folha da Manhã. These are the principal terms: sustainable eco-development, green economy, ecological footprint, and anthropocenic.

Some 11,000 years ago, the temperature of the Earth began to increase naturally, causing the progressive thawing of the last glaciation. Most of this water, as it passed from solid to liquid, raised the sea levels, separating the continental masses, forming islands, fostering the formation of forest and jungles and other ecosystems. Scientists named this new phase “Holocene.”

In the last 11,000 years, of the Hominids, there remained only Homo sapiens, who turned himself into the sovereign of the whole planet. With a well developed brain, which was challenged by the new climatic conditions, he domesticated plants and animals, invented farming, created technologies to polish the rock, invented the wheel, the loom and metallurgy. Then he built cities, empires, dams, and drainage and irrigation systems. Several civilizations exceeded the limitations of the ecosystems where they were built, causing environmental crises that contributed to their demise.

Enter, then, the concept of ecological footprint. It refers to the degree of ecological impact produced by an individual, an activity, an economy, a society. The ecological footprint of the civilizations before Western civilization always had a regional character, which was sometimes reversible and sometimes not. Western civilization wore the heaviest boots to date. This pressure began with capitalism, that transformed the world.

Starting in the XV century, Western (read European) civilization left a profound mark, through maritime expansion. It imposed its culture on other sectors of the planet. The world became Westernized, and began trampling the environment as well.

Another great transformation followed the industrial revolution, which originated in XVIII century England, and was expanded throughout the world, which it divided into industrialized countries and those that exported raw materials. From there, another planetary reality began to be develop, with the gaseous emissions that drive global warming, devastating jungles and impoverishing Earth’s biodiversity, with the unwise use of the soil, widespread urbanization, profound alterations in the cycles of nitrogen and phosphorous, contamination of drinking water, weakening of the ozone layer, excessive extraction of non-renewable natural resources, and simultaneously, production of unprecedented quantities of garbage.

Scientists are showing that within the Holocene (holos = whole + koinos = new), collective human action through capitalism and socialism have provoked an environmental crisis that is unprecedented in the history of the Earth, because it has been created by a single species. They have denominated the phase of the post industrial revolution of the XVIII century, Anthropocene, or, a geologic period caused by the collective action of the human being (antropos = man + koinos = new).

Given this great crisis and this new epoch, the United Nations is promoting huge international conferences, such as the Conferences of Stockholm (1972), Rio-92 and now Rio+20. The objective is to solve the Anthropocene problems, be it by harmonizing economic development and environmental protection, or by seeking other forms of development. Rio-92 adopted the formula of sustainable development, which has acquired different meanings, some of which even contradict the original.

The Rio+20 Conference hopes to establish the equality of the environmental, social and economic dimensions. The magic phrase now is green economy, the meaning of which is unclear. It is supposed that, as a minimum, it means the progressive substitution of renewable sources of energy for carbon-intensive ones, and renewable resources for non-renewable ones.

Río+20 showed that the industrialized countries do not want to abdicate their position; the emerging countries want to catch up with the industrialized ones, and the poor countries want to emerge. As long as there is no appreciation of the limits of the planet, it is useless to think of social justice and economic development. Thus the environment is more important than social aspects or the economy, because without the environment it is not possible to find solutions for the other two. Rather, the concept of eco-development seems to be more correct as a tactic and as a strategy.