A threat, self destruction and peace

30/07/2018 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

There is a general perception that humanity is not well situated, because an absurd accumulation of wealth in few hands exists in the midst of a sea of misery and hunger. Brazil’s situation is no better. We live perplexed by all the evils committed, destroying workers rights and internationalizing the national wealth that sustains our sovereignty as a people. Those who carried out the coup against President Dilma Rousseff have a radically neoliberal plan which they are ready to fully implement, with no concern for the resulting atrocious crisis and the destruction of any ray of hope.
The treatment of refugees in Europe, rejecting their presence in Italy and Great Britain, and worse yet, in Hungary and in the very Catholic Poland, has reach a high level of inhumanity. The policy of U.S. President Donald Trump, of tearing children from the arms of their immigrant parents and throwing them into cages, speaks of a crass barbarity and total lack of humanitarian feelings.
It has been said that “no human being is an island… because of that do not ever ask for whom the bell tolls. The bell tolls for you, for me, for all humanity”.
If the darkness that engulfs our spirits is great, greater still is our yearning for light. Do not let the lunacy mentioned above have the last word.
The most important word and the last that resounds among us and that unifies us with all of humanity is the word of solidarity and compassion with the victims, the word of peace and good sense in the relationships among the people.
Tragedies show us the dimension of the inhumanity of which we are capable. But those tragedies also bring to light the truly human that inhabits us, far beyond the differences of race, ideology and religious beliefs. The human in us causes us to cry together, to wipe each other tears together, to pray together, to seek justice together, to build peace and renounce revenge together.
The wisdom of the people and the voice of our conscience tell us that a State that opted to become a terrorist state, such as the United States under George W. Bush, will not defeat terrorism. Nor will the hatred for Latin American immigrants strongly expressed by Donald Trump, bring peace. Tireless dialogue, open negotiations and a fair agreement erase the basis for refusing protection and strengthen peace.
The tragedies that touch us in the depth of our soul invite us to rethink the fundamentals of human coexistence in this new planetary phase and to care for our Common Home, the Earth, as Pope Francis urges in his encyclical letter on integral ecology.
The situation is urgent. This time there will be no Noah’s Arc to save some of us and let the rest perish. We must save us all, the community of human and non human life.
To that end we must abolish the word enemy. Fear creates the enemy. We exorcise fear when we bring close the distant one, and make of the near one a brother and a sister. We move away from fear and the enemy when we begin to dialogue, when we start to know each other, when we accept and respect each other; when we love each other; in a word, when we care for each other. To care for peaceful coexistence, solidarity and justice; to care for our environment so that it may be whole, facilitating the acknowledgement of each being’s intrinsic value; and to care for our beloved and generous Mother Earth.
If we care for each other as brothers and sisters the causes of fear disappear. No one needs to threaten another. We can walk our streets at night without fear of being assaulted and robbed.
That caring will only be effective if it comes with justice, such that the basic necessities of the most vulnerable are attended to, if the State becomes meaningful, by providing health care, schools, security and spaces for fellowship, culture and leisure.
Only that way we will enjoy the peace that can be reached when there is a minimum of general good will and a feeling of solidarity and well being in human relationships. This is the basic desire of the great majorities of human beings.

Leonardo BoffEco-Theologian-Philosopher, Earthcharter Commission

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

THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION IS LIFE, NOT THE HUMAN BEING

22/07/2018 Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

In the understanding of the great cosmologists who study cosmo-genetics and bio-genetics, the culmination of this process is not the human being. The great event is life, in its immense diversity, and that which is essential to it: caring. Without the necessary care no form of life can exist (cf. Boff, Leonardo, The necessary caring, El cuidado necesario, 2012).

We must emphasize that the culmination of the cosmo-genetic process is not found through antrophocentism, as if human beings were the center of everything, and other beings are only significant to the extent they are valuable to human beings, for their use and enjoyment. The main event of evolution was the appearance of life, in all its forms, including human beings.
Biologists describe the conditions under which life arose, starting from a high level of complexity. When complexity loses its equilibrium, chaos ensues. But chaos is not only chaotic. Is also generative: chaos generates new orders and many other complexities.

Scientists do not know how to define life. Life is the most surprising and mysterious aspect of the cosmogenic process. Humanity is a sub-chapter of the life chapter. we cannot over-emphasize the centrality of life. To life is given the evolutionary physical, chemical and ecological infrastructure that allows for immense biodiversity. This includes human life: conscious, talking and caring.

Life is understood here as the self organization of matter to the highest degree of interaction with the universe and everything around it. Cosmologists and biologists maintain that life is the supreme expression of the “Original Source of All Beings.” That, for us, is another, very appropriate, name for God. Life does not come from outside but emerges from the nucleus of the cosmo-genetical process, on reaching a very high degree of complexity.

Christian de Duve, the 1974 Biology Nobel Prize Laureate, affirms that when that level of complexity occurs, anywhere in the universe, life emerges as a cosmic imperative (Vital Dust, 1996, Polvo vital, 1997). In that sense, the universe is filled with life.

Life shows a sacred unity in its diverse manifestations, because all living beings have the same basic genetic code, namely, the 20 amino acids and four basic phosphates, that make us all relatives and brothers and sisters unto each other. To care for life, to ensure that life expands, to enter in communion and synergy with the chain of life, and to celebrate life: that is the meaning of life of humans upon the Earth. This is also understood as Gaia, a living super-organism, and we, the humans, are a portion of Gaia that feels, thinks, loves, speaks and venerates.

The centrality of life implies concretely that we ensure the means for life, such as: nourishment, health care, work, housing, security, education and leisure. If we standardized humanity, with the techno-science advances already reached, we would have the means to enable everyone to enjoy the quality services that only the privileged and opulent sectors have at their disposal today.

Until now, knowledge has been understood as power at the service of accumulation by individuals or groups that create inequalities, consequently, at the service of the prevailing unjust and inhumane system. We can postulate a power at the service of life and the necessary changes that life demands. Why not to have a moratorium on research and invention, in favor of the democratization of the knowledge and inventions that civilization has already accumulated, to benefit the millions and millions of dispossessed humanity?

This is the great challenge for the XXI century. We can either self destruct, because we have already created the means to do so, or we could finally start to create a truly just and fraternal society, together with the whole community of life.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

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

The karmic weight of Brazilian history

15/07/2018 Leonardo Boff1 comentário

The grave magnitude of the Brazilian crisis is such that we lack means of explaining it. Trying to go beyond the classic approaches of critical sociology or history, I have invoked the explanatory capacity of the psychoanalytical categories of “light” and “shadow;” generalized as personal or collective anthropological constants. I tried out a possible understanding that comes to us from the theory of chaos, an important chapter of the new cosmology, because from this chaos, in a situation of the highest complexity and relationship interaction, life as we know it arose, including our life. This has proven to be capable of identifying that Powerful and Loving Energy that sustains everything, the Generating Principle of all Beings, and of opening to Him with veneration and respect.

I ask myself what other category in the repository of human wisdom could shed light on the darkness in which we all are now submerged. Then I remembered a telling dialogue between the great British historian Arnold Toynbee and eminent Japanese philosopher Daisaku Ikeda, that took place over several days in London. (cf. Choose life, Elige la vida, Emece. Buenos Aires 2005) Toynbee and Ikeda both believe that karma is real, be it personal or collective. Putting aside the different interpretations that have been given to karma, it seemed to me that this is a category of the highest antiquity, used by Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Spiritualism to explain personal and collective phenomena.

Originally, Karma was a Sanskrit term meaning strength and movement, centered in the word “action” that provokes a corresponding“reaction”. This collective aspect seemed important, because I do not know (I could be wrong) of any conceptual category in the West that explains the historic evolution of entire communities and their institutions in their positive and negative dimensions. Perhaps, given the strong individualism that is typical of the West, the conditions needed to give rise to a sufficiently embracing concept have not yet been present.

Each person is marked by the actions taken in life. This affects not only people, but the whole environment. It is about a sort of ethical current account whose balance is in constant flux, according to the good or bad actions realized; the “debits” and “credits”. Even after death, the person, in Buddhist belief, carries this account into all future rebirths, until the negative ledger diminishes to zero.

Toynbee gives it another twist that is illuminating and seems helpful in understanding our history. History is comprised of inter-related networks, into which each person is inserted, linked to those that preceded the person and those in the present. There is a karmic functioning in the history of a people and its institutions, according to the levels of goodness and justice, or evil and injustice they produced over time. This is a kind of a heritage that remains, impregnating everything. The hypothesis of the many rebirths is not necessary, because the network of connections guarantees the continuity of a people’s destiny (p.384). The karmic realities impregnate institutions, landscapes, shape the people and mark the singular style of a people. This karmic force operates throughout history, marking the facts, be they beneficial or malignant. C.G.Jung somehow noted that in his archetypical psychology.

Let’s apply this karmic law to our situation. It is not hard to recognize that we carry a very heavy karma, derived in great part from the genocide of the Native nations, the super exploitation of the slave work force, the injustices perpetrated against large parts of the Black and Mestizo populations, relegated to the peripheries with families destroyed and corroded by hunger and disease. The Way of the Cross of suffering of those sisters and brothers of ours has more stations than the Way of the Cross of the Son of Man, when He lived and suffered among us. There is no need to mention the other evils.

Both Toynbee and Ikeda agree: “modern society (us included) can only be cured of its karmic charge through a spiritual revolution in the mind and heart” (p.159), along the line of compensatory justice and healing politics with just institutions. Without this minimal justice the karmic charge will not be dissolved. But that alone is not enough. There must be love, solidarity, compassion and a profound humanity for the victims. Love will be the most effective motor because, deep down, “love is the last reality” (p.387). A society that is not capable of effectively loving and of being less perverse will never overcome a history so marked by its karma. This is the challenge of our present crisis.

This is what the masters of humanity teach, such as Jesus of Nazareth, Saint Francis of Assisi, the Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr, the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis. Only good karma redeems the reality of the force of evil karma..

If Brazil does not make this karmic reversion, Brazil will keep struggling from crisis to crisis, destroying her own future.

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher Earthcharter Commission

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

Dramatic times are coming with Trump

01/07/2018 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Humanity faces several threats: the nuclear threat, shortages of drinking water in vasts regions worldwide, increasing global warming, the dramatic consequences of overuse of the natural goods and services indispensable for life (the Earth Schoot Day).
To these threats is added another, no less dangerous one, already noted by several world analysts, such as Nobel Prize Laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglizt. Italian-Argentinian economist Roberto Savio, co-founder and general director of Inter Press Service (IPS), now emeritus, recently wrote an article that should give us pause. It is titled: Trump came to stay and to change the world (ALAI-America Latina en Movimiento, June 20, 2018).

In that article, Savio asserts that Trump is not the cause of the new world disorder. Rather, Trump is a symptom: a symptom of a time when the civilizing values that gave cohesion to a people and to international relations, are, simply put, annulled. What counts is the narcissistic will of the all powerful head of state. Trump replaced those values with money and business: pure and simple. Money and business definitely are what count. Everything else is a cover for world domination.

America first must be interpreted as being only America, and her world interests, that count. In furtherance thereof, as he foretold in his electoral campaign, Trump has broken commercial treaties with old European allies, pulled out of the Transpacific Alliance, and started a risky trade war with the biggest rival, China, imposing tariffs on products worth billions of dollars, as well as tariffs on steel and other products from other countries such as Brazil.

It is the nature of authoritarian and narcissistic figures to dispense with legislatures. When it is convenient, they go around them without giving reasons. Trump values the invention of «a truth» more than a factual truth itself. The fake news is a resource always present in his tweets. According to Fact Checker, from the time he assumed the Presidency, Trump has said about 3.000 lies. Truth and lies only have value to him to the degree they support his interests. Curiously, he won his principal battles, and has the approval of 44% of the public, and 82% of the Republican Party.

Trump does not tolerate criticism, and surrounds himself with servile advisers who must say «yes» to him, or risk being summarily fired.

If he is re-elected –what is not improbable–, this style of government, and elimination of all ethics, could be irreversible. Let’s not forget that Hitler and Mussolini were also elected and created their own lies, which they sold to their people as «truths». We may be facing a world marked by xenophobia, the exclusion of thousands and thousands of immigrants and refugees, excessive affirmation of nationalism, and rejection of the values of the others.

Such attitudes, transformed into official policies, can be the source of grave conflicts, whose «growth» can even threaten the human species. Nearly 1300 Northamerican psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have identified serious psychological deviations in the personality of Donald Trump.

What would be the destiny of humanity in the hands of a narcissist such as Trump, whose parallel is found only in Nero, who enjoyed seeing the fire that engulfed Rome; with the difference that now it is not about just any fire, but a fire in our whole Common Home. Since he is unpredictable, and can change his position at any time, we wonder, both frightened and terrorized, what will be his next move.

May God, who announced Himself as «the passionate lover of life» (Sabiduria 11,24) save us from the tragedies that may befall us, given the irrationality of someone who sees «only one world and only one empire» (the Northamerican empire).

Leonardo Boff Eco-Theologian-Philosopher and Member of the Earthcharter Commission