Categoria: Idiomas

We badly need respect

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Modern culture, from its dawn in the XVI century, has been based on a brutal lack of respect. First, a lack of respect for nature, which is treated as a torturer treats his victims, in order to steal all her secrets, (Bacon). Then, for the original peoples of Latin America. In his 1562 book, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, (Brevísima Relación de la Destrucción de las Indias), Bartolome de las Casas relates, as an eyewitness, that the Spaniards «in only 48 years occupied an area larger than the length and width of the whole of Europe and part of Asia, robbing and usurping everything with cruelty, injustice and tyranny, where twenty million souls were killed and destroyed in a country we had seen filled with people, and of such a humane people». (Décima Réplica). Shortly thereafter, millions of enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas, and sold as «items» in the market and used like coal in the processes of production.

The litany of instances of lack of respect in our culture would be long, culminating in the Nazi extermination camps, where millions of Jews, gypsies, and others considered inferior were annihilated.


We know that a society only grows and attains minimally humane relations when it establishes respect for one another. Respect, as R. Winnicott shows, is born in the bosom of the family, especially in the figure of the father, who is responsible for one’s passing from the world of “I”, to the world of “others”, which is the first limit to be respected. One of the criteria of culture is the degree of respect and self-control its members impose upon themselves and observe. Then, just measure, a synonym of justice, appears. If such limits are not observed, we see a lack of respect and imposition on others. Respect presupposes recognition of the other as other and its intrinsic value, be it a person or any other being.

Among the many current crises, the general lack of respect is surely one of the gravest. Lack of respect dominates every aspect of individual, familial, social and international life. For this reason, the Franco-Bulgarian thinker, Tzvetan Todorov, in his recent book, Fear of the Barbarians, (El miedo a los bárbaros, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2008) warns that if we do not overcome fear and resentment and do not assume collective responsibility and universal respect we will not have the means of protecting our fragile planet and the already threatened life on Earth.


The theme of respect leads us to 1952 Nobel Peace laureate, Albert Schweitzer, (1875-1965). A native of Alsace, he was one of the most preeminent theologians of his time. His book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, (Historia de las investigaciones sobre la vida de Jesús), is a classic, because it shows that a scientific biography of Jesus cannot be written. The Gospels contain history, but are not history books. They are theologies that use historical facts and narratives in order to show what Jesus means for the salvation of the world. Therefore, we know little about the real Jesus of Nazareth. Schweitzer understood that the Sermon on the Mount is historic and it is important to live it. He abandoned his chair of theology, stopped giving concerts of Bach (he was one of his best interpreters) and enrolled in medical school. On graduating, he went to Lambarene, Gabon, in Africa, to found a hospital to serve people suffering from Hansen’s disease. And there he worked, with great limitations, for the rest of his life.


He explicitly confessed: «what we need is not to send missionaries there who want to convert the Africans, but persons willing to do for the poor what needs to be done, if the Sermon on the Mount and the words of Jesus make any sense. What really is important is to become a simple human being who, in the spirit of Jesus, does something, no matter how small it is.»


During his work as a physician, Schweitzer found time to write. His principal book is Reverence for Life, (Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben), which he proposes as the articulating axis of all ethics. «The good», he says, «consists of respecting, conserving and elevating life to its maximum value; evil consists of not respecting, destroying and hindering the development of life.» And he concludes: «when the human being learns to respect even the smallest being of creation, be it animal or vegetable, no one will need to be taught to love his fellow human being; the great tragedy of life is when a man dies within while he is still alive.»

It is urgent that we hear and live this message, in these dark days that humanity is experiencing.

Actual Crisis: Ruled by the Blind and Irresponsible

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Looking carefully at the many analyses of the crises that are destroying us, we see something that seems central, and about which we must think seriously. Societies, globalization, the process of production, the economic-financial system; the predominant dream and the explicit object of the desire of the great majority is to consume, and to consume without limits. A culture of consumerism has been created and is propagated by the media. We must have the latest models of cell phones, training shoes, and computers. 66% of the Northamerican GNP does not come from production, but from general consumption.

British authorities were surprised to learn that, among those who created the disturbances in many cities, were not only the usual foreigners in conflict with each other, but many college students, unemployed, teachers; and even soldiers. They were people enraged because did not have access to consumption. They did not question the consumption paradigm, but questioned the means of excluding them from that paradigm.

In the United Kingdom after Margaret Thatcher, and in the United States after Ronald Reagan, and in the world in general, great social inequality is growing. In the United Kingdom the income of the wealthiest has increased 273 times as much in recent years as that of the poor, according to Carta Maior, of 08/12/2011. Because of that, there is no surprise in the disappointment of the frustrated, who face a «social software» that denies them access to consumption and forces them to confront the cuts in the social budget, 70% of which falls punishingly hard on them: 70% of the youth recreation centers were simply closed.

What is alarming is that neither Prime Minister David Cameron nor the members of the House of Commons took the time to ask themselves the whys of the looting in so many cities. They responded with the worst remedy: more institutional violence. Conservative Cameron said, emphasizing every word: «we will detain the suspects and will publish their faces in the mass media and we could care less about the fictitious worries about human rights». This is the solution of pitiless neo-liberal capitalism: if an order that is unequal and unjust demands it, democracy is annulled, and human rights are ignored. And this happens in the country where the first declarations of the rights of the citizens were born.

If we look carefully, we can see that we are embroiled in a vicious cycle that can destroy us: we need to produce to allow such consumption. Without consumption, enterprises go broke. Resources of nature are needed to produce. These resources are ever more scarce and we have already disposed of 30% more than what the Earth can replace. If we stop extracting, producing, selling and consuming there will be no economic growth. Without annual growth countries fall into recession, generating high rates of unemployment. With unemployment, explosive social chaos erupts, degenerating into all types of conflicts. How can we get out of this trap that we have set for ourselves?

The opposite to consumerism is not non-consumption, but a new «social software» as expressed by political expert Luiz Gonzaga de Souza Lima. That is, we urgently need a new agreement, between a frugal and solidarian consumption, accessible to all, and the limits of nature that must be respected. How to do it? There are several suggestions: the «sustainable way of life» of the Earth Charter, the «good living» of the Andean cultures, founded on the equilibrium human being/Earth, the solidarian economy, the bio-socio-economy, the «natural capitalism» (unfortunate expression) that attempts to integrate the biological cycles in the socio-economic life, and others and the ecosocialism.

But when the heads of the wealthy States get together, they do not talk about these things. They try to save a system that is leaking everywhere. They know that nature can no longer pay the high price charged by the consumerist model. It is already endangering the survival of life and the future of generations to come. We are ruled by blind and irresponsible leaders, incapable of understanding the consequences of the economic-political-cultural system they defend.

A new global path is imperative, if we want to guarantee our lives and the lives of all other living beings. The scientific-technical civilization that has allowed us exaggerated levels of consumption can ruin that civilization itself, destroying life and degrading the Earth. It is certainly not to such an end that we have reached this point in the process of evolution.

We must have the courage and daring to create radical change, if we still have a little of love for ourselves.

Encouragment for those disappointed with the Church

Leonardo Boff11 Comentários

There is great disappointment with the institutional Catholic Church. A double emigration is happening: one is exterior, persons who simply leave the Church, and the other is interior, those who remain in the Church but who no longer feel that she is their spiritual home. They continue believing, in spite of the Church.

It’s not for nothing. The present pope has taken some radical initiatives that have divided the ecclesiastic body. He chose a path of confrontation with two important episcopacies, the German and the French, when he introduced the Latin Mass. He articulated an obscure reconciliation with the Church of the followers of Lebfrevre; gutted the principal renewal institutions of Vatican Council II, especially ecumenism, absurdly denying the title of «Church» to those Churches that are not Catholic or Orthodox. When he was a Cardinal he was gravely permissive with pedophiles, and his concern with AIDS borders the inhumane.

The present Catholic Church is submerged in a rigorous winter. The social base that supports the antiquated model of the present pope is comprised of conservative groups, more interested in the media, in the logic of the market, than in proposing an adequate response to the present grave problems. They offer a «lexotan-Christianity» good for pacifying anxious consciences, but alienated from the suffering humanity.

It is urgent that we animate these Christians about to emigrate with what is essential in Christianity. It certainly is not the Church, that was never the object of the preaching of Jesus. He announced a dream, the Kingdom of God, in contraposition to the Kingdom of Caesar; the Kingdom of God that represents an absolute revolution in relationships, from the individual to the divine and the cosmic.

Christianity appeared in history primarily as a movement and as the way of Christ. It predates its grounding in the four Gospels and in the doctrines. The character of a spiritual path means a type of Christianity that has its own course. It generally lives on the edge and, at times, at a critical distance from the official institution. But it is born and nourished by the permanent fascination with the figure, and the liberating and spiritual message of Jesus of Nazareth. Initially deemed the «heresy of the Nazarenes» (Acts 24,5) or simply, a «heresy» (Acts 28,22) in the sense of a «very small group», Christianity was acquiring autonomy until its followers, according to The Acts of The Apostles (11,36), were called, «Christians».

The movement of Jesus is certainly the most vigorous force of Christianity, stronger than the Churches, because it is neither bounded by institutions, nor is it a prisoner of doctrines and dogmas,founded in a specific cultural background. It is composed of all types of people, from the most varied cultures and traditions, even agnostics and atheists who let themselves be touched by the courageous figure of Jesus, by the dream he announced, a Kingdom of love and liberty, by his ethic of unconditional love, especially for the poor and the oppressed, and by the way he assumed the human drama, amidst humiliation, torture and his execution on the cross. Jesus offered an image of God so intimate and life-friendly that it is difficult to disregard, even by those who do not believe in God. Many people say, «if there is a God, it has to be like the God of Jesus».

This Christianity as a spiritual path is what really counts. However, from being a movement it soon became a religious institution, with several forms of organization. In its bosom were developed different interpretations of the figure of Jesus, that were transformed into doctrines, and gathered into the official Gospels. The Churches, when they assumed institutional character, established criteria of belonging and of exclusion, doctrines such as identity reference and their own rites of celebration. Sociology, and not theology, explains that phenomenon. The institution always exists in tension with the spiritual path. The ideal is that they develop together, but that is rare. The most important, in any case, is the spiritual path. This has a future and animates the meaning of life.

The problem of the Roman Catholic Church is her claim of being the only true one. The correct approach is for all the Churches to recognize each other, because they reveal different and complementary dimensions of the message of the Nazarene. What is important is for Christianity to maintain its character as a spiritual path. That can sustain so many Christian men and women in the face of the mediocrity and irrelevancy into which the present Catholic Church has fallen.

The Latin-American Contribution to a Geosociety

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Resistance is growing around the world to the big multilateral companies’ system of the domination of globalized capital over nations, individual people, and nature. For better or worse, a tendency is appearing of ecologically oriented practices and projects, that are already trying out the new. The basis is always solidarity economics, respect for the cycles of nature, synergy with Mother Earth, economics at the service of life and not for profit, and politics sustained by hospitality, tolerance, cooperation and solidarity among the most diverse peoples, thereby suppressing the seeds of religious and political fundamentalism, and of the terrorism that we have seen in the United States and, now, in Norway.

Of the many projects in existence in Latin America, such as solidarity economics, family organic agriculture, clean alternative energies, The Peasant’s Way, The Zapatista Movement, and others, we would point out two for the universal relevance they bear as expressions of a new type of socialism: the first is «Living Well» and the second, «Community Democracy and of the Earth».

«Living Well» is present throughout Abya Yala (the original name of the continent known as “South America”), from the extreme North to the extreme South, under many names, two being the best known: suma qamaña (from the Aymara culture) and suma kawsay (from the Quechua culture.) Both names mean «the process of life in plenitude.» This results from a harmonious personal and social life and a material and spiritual equilibrium. In the first place, it is knowing how to live well, and then, knowing how to coexist: with others, with the community, with the Divinity, with Mother Earth, with her energies present in the mountains, the waters, the woods and the jungles, in the soil, the sun, the moon and in every being. A harmony is sought, not through accumulation of wealth, but by producing what is enough and dignified for everyone, with respect for the cycles of Pachamama and the needs of future generations.

That «Living Well» has nothing to do with our «living better» or «quality of life.» Our living better presupposes accumulating the material means to be able to consume more, within the dynamic of an unlimited progress whose motor is competition, and a relationship based on the mere use of nature, with no respect for its intrinsic value and without recognizing oneself as part of nature. That some may live well, millions must live poorly.

«Living Well» is not simply identified with our «common good» thinking only in function of human beings in society, in an unconscious anthropo-and-sociocentrism. «Living Well» touches all that exists, nature, with all her different beings, all humans, the search for the equilibrium among all, also with the spirits, with the wise persons, (the Grandfathers and Grandmothers already gone), with God, that all may coexist in harmony. «Live Well» cannot be imagined without the community, the widest community possible, human, natural, Earthy and cosmic. «Minga», the work in community, expresses well this spirit of cooperation.

This category of «Good Living» and «Living Well» is enshrined in the Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia. The big task of the State is to create conditions such that «Living Well» may be for all beings, and not just for humans.

This perspective, born in the periphery of the world, with all its utopian ideals, is directed to all because is an attempt to respond to the present crisis, that will be able to guarantee the future of life, of humanity and the Earth.

The other Latin American contribution to a different kind of world is «Democracy of the Community and of the Earth.» It is a type of social life, already in existence in the cultures of Abya Yala. It was repressed by colonization, but now, with the indigenous movement retaking its identity, it is catching the eye of analysts. It is a form of participation that goes beyond the classic, European type of representative and participative democracy. It includes them, but adopts a new element: the community as a whole. The community participates in developing projects, in debating them, in creating consensus around them, and in their implementation. This form of democracy presupposes an already established community life in the population.

It differs from the other type of democracy because it includes the whole community, nature and Mother Earth. It recognizes the rights of nature, of the animals, the jungles, the waters, as they appear in the new Constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia. The juridical personhood of all other beings is widened, especially to Mother Earth. By virtue of being living beings, they have an intrinsic value and are carriers of dignity and rights, and for that reason they are deserving of respect.

Democracy will then be socio-Earthly-planetary, the democracy of the Earth. There are some who say: all this is utopia. And it is. But it is a necessary utopia. When we have overcome the crisis of the Earth (if we do), the path of humanity will be to organize ourselves globally around «Living Well» and to the «Democracy of the Earth,» the Bio-civilization. There are already signs that anticipate this future.