Fundamentalism of the West and Far West

15/02/2015 Leonardo Boff9 Comentários

Islamic fundamentalism is predominant. But there is also a wave of fundamentalism, especially in France and Germany, where xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are strong. The many attacks by al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups feed the feelings that dehumanize everyone: the victims and those who victimize. We can understand the global concepts that underlie terrorist violence, but never, for any reason, can we approve of it, given its criminal character.

The fundamentalism of several Islamic groups is radical, creating a new type of war: terrorism. It is an insult today to accuse someone of being a fundamentalist. Generally we consider that only others are fundamentalists, often forgetting that the accuser also lives in a fundamentalist culture. I would like to briefly touch on this, although it may irritate not a few readers. I am thinking of the fundamentalism found in broad sectors of the West and Far West (the American continent).

Historically, fundamentalism, although already in existence, came into the open in North-American Protestantism, between 1890 and 1915, when a group of Pastors published a collection of 12 theological fascicules, titled Fundamentals: a testimony of the Truth. It rejected secularization, affirming the absolute truth of the faith, outside of which there only could be error. That fundamentalism still prevails today in many Christian denominations and in sectors of conservative Catholicism of the Lefebvre style.

I would say with some exaggeration, but not very much, that fundamentalism is one of the chronic and more deleterious diseases of the West and Far West. This fundamentalism is so deeply rooted that it has become unconscious, but it was well expressed by the most hilarious and gross politician in Europe, Silvio Berlusconi, who declared that Western Civilization was the best in the world and therefore should be imposed on everyone. I mention two types of fundamentalism: religious and political.

The Roman Catholic version of Christianity was for centuries the hegemonic ideology of Western society, of the orbis catholicus. Seen through this lens is the absolutism of two Popes, a clear expression of fundamentalism.

Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) through the papal letter, Inter Caetera, to the kings of Spain, declared: «By the authority of all powerful God, given to us in Saint Peter, as the Vicar of Jesus Christ, we give, concede and hand over to you, the islands and dry lands found and to be found, with all their domains, fortress cities, places and villages». This was taken seriously and used to legitimate Spanish colonization, with the destruction of ethnic groups, ancestral cultures and religions.

Pope Nicholas V (1447-1455) in the papal letter Romanus Pontifex, addressed to the kings of Portugal, was even more arrogant: «I give you full and free power to invade, conquer, combat, defeat and submit Saracens and Pagans wherever they may be found, and to reduce such persons to perpetual servitude». That power was also exercised «to expand the faith and the empire» at the cost of exterminating our Indigenous peoples (there were 6 million in what is now Brazil) and the devastation of our jungles.

That religious doctrine attained a secular version in the colonizers who practiced such terror over the people.

Sadly, this absolutist version was resurrected through a controversial document by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Dominus Jesus (2001), where he affirmed the medieval concept that there is no salvation outside of the Church. Everyone else is in a dangerous situation with regard to eternal salvation.

The religious version gained political expression with the Manifest Destiny of the United States. This expression was coined in 1845 by the journalist John O‘Sullivan, to justify North American expansionism, with the annexation of parts of Mexico. In 1900 Indiana senator Albert Beveridge explained: «God designated the North American people as the chosen nation, to initiate the regeneration of the world». Other presidents, especially George W. Bush, based their actions on that pretentious exclusivity. It justified wars of conquest, especially in the Middle East. It looks like Barak Obama is not totally innocent.

In short the West and Far West imagine themselves to be the best in the world: with the best religion, the best form of government, the best technoscience, the best cosmovision. This is fundamentalism, which makes its truth the only truth, and imposes it on others. That arrogance is present in the Western conscious and subconscious. Thanks to God, we have also an antidote: self criticism for the evils that such fundamentalism has brought upon humanity. But it is not shared by all.

The phrase of Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet is on point: «Not your truth. The truth. And come with me to search for it. Your truth, keep it to yourself». If we search for together, through dialogue and cordiality, then my truth increasingly disappears, giving way to the Truth, which is shared by all. And thus, perhaps, it can rein in the fundamentalism that the West and Far West visit on the world.

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

People: in search of a concep

10/02/2015 Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

Few words are used in more different contexts than «people». Its meaning is so fluid that social scientists have little respect for the term, preferring to speak of society or social classes. But, as Ludwig Wittgenstein says, «the meaning of a word depends on its usage». Among us, those who use «people» more positively are those who are interested in the fate of the lower classes: the «people».

We will attempt to give analytical content to «people» so that its use may serve those who feel excluded from society and want to be «people».

The first philosophical-social meaning has its roots in the classical thinking of antiquity. Cicero and then Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas affirmed that «people is not just any gathering of men, it is the union of a multitude around a consensus of the correct and common interests». It is the State that must harmonize the different interests.

A second meaning of «people» comes from cultural anthropology: it is the population that is part of a given culture, and inhabits a given territory. So many cultures, so many peoples. This meaning is legitimate because it distinguishes one people from another: a Bolivian quechua is different from a Brazilian. But this concept of «people» obscures differences and even internal contradictions: both an agro-business landlord and the poor peon who lives on his lands are part of the «people». But in a modern state power is legitimate only if it is rooted in the «people». This is why the Constitution says that «all power comes from the people and must be exercised in the name of the people».

A third meaning is key to politics. Politics is the common search for the common good (the usual meaning) or the activity that seeks the power of the State in order to administer society (specific meaning). On the lips of professional politicians «people» is very ambiguous. On the one hand, it means the undifferentiated gathering of the members of a given society (populus), and on the other, it means the marginalized and generally uneducated poor, (plebs = common people). When politicians say that «they go to the people, talk to the people and act for the benefit of the people, they are mostly thinking of the poor».

Here lies a dichotomy between the majorities and their leaders or between the masses and the elites. As Nelson Werneck Sodre said: «a secret intuition makes everyone think of himself as being more of the people to the degree that he is more humble. He has nothing, and therefore, he is proud of being of the «people» (Introdução à revolução brasileira, 1963, p. 188). For example, our Brazilian elites do not consider themselves to be of the «people». Before he died in 2013, Antonio Ermirio de Moraes said: «the elites never think of the people, they only think of themselves». That is the problem.

There is a fourth meaning of «people» that comes from sociology. Here some rigor of the concept is needed in order not to fall in populism. Initially, it has a political-ideological meaning, to the degree that it obscures the internal conflicts of the group of persons with different cultures, social status, and different projects.

That meaning has little analytical value because it is too all-encompassing, even though it is used most in the language of the mass media and of the powerful.

Sociologically, «people» is also a historical category, between the masses and the elites. In a class-based society that was colonized, the concept of the elite is clear: it is those who hold power, who are the owners, and have education. The elite has its ethos, habits and language. In contrast to the elite is the Native, those who neither have full citizenship nor can implement their own projects. They assumed, and unconsciously incorporated, that of the elites. The elites are expert manipulators of «the people»: that is populism. The «people» is co-opted as a supporting actor in a project formulated by the elites, for the benefit of the elites.

But there are always bumps in the process of hegemony or class domination: from the masses charismatic leaders slowly appear, who organize social movements with their own vision for the country and their future. They stop being «people-mass» and start to be relatively autonomous, active citizens. New unions appear, movements of the landless, the homeless, women, the Afro-descendants, the Indigenous, among others. From the creation of those movements a concrete «people» is born among them. That «people» no longer depends on the elites. They develop a consciousness of their own, a different plan for the country. They teach means of resistance and for transforming the current social relationships. Thus the «people» is born, as a result of the development of the movements and active communities. This is the new reality in Brazil and in Latin America in recent decades, that is culminating now in new democracies of a popular and republican nature. A leader of the new political party, «We Can» in Spain, put it well: «it was not the people who produced the uprising, it was the uprising that produced the people». (Le Monde Diplomatique, January 2015 p. 16).

Now we can speak with some conceptual rigor: a «people» is emerging here, to the degree that it has consciousness and its own vision for the country. «People» also has an axiological dimension: all are called upon to be people: to be neither dominated nor dominators, but citizen-actors of a society where all can participate.

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

Intolerance in present day Brazil and in the world

05/02/2015 Leonardo Boff6 Comentários

The recent murder in France of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, and the last Presidential elections in Brazil, have highlighted a latent fact of Brazilian culture and the world: intolerance. I will restrict myself here to intolerance in Brazilian culture, because my previous article dealt with that reflected in the Charlie Hebdo murders. Brazilian intolerance is part of what Holland’s Sergio Buarque characterizes as «cordial» in the sense that hate and prejudice, like hospitality and sympathy, come from the heart. But rather than cordial, I would prefer to call that of Brazil passionate.

What the last electoral campaign showed was «cordial-passionate», in the form of class hatred (contempt of the poor), and racial discrimination (Blacks and Northerners). To be poor, or to be Black and a Northerner, was deemed a defect, hence the absurd desire of some to divide Brazil between the South «rich» and the North-East «poor». That class hatred derives from the archetype of La Casa Grande and the Senzala that persist in some social sectors, well expressed by a wealthy madame from Salvador: «the poor, not satisfied with meeting basic family needs, now want to have rights as well». That presupposes that if previously they were slaves, they should do everything for free, as if the abolition of slavery had not occurred and rights meant nothing. Homosexuals and other LGBTs are insulted even in official debates between candidates, revealing an «intolerable» intolerance.

To better understand intolerance we must delve deeper, to the crux of the problem. Today’s reality is contradictory at its core, and complex, because it is the convergence of the most varied factors. In it is found original chaos and cosmos (order), light and shadows, the sym-bolical and the dia-bolical. In fact, they are not construction defects, but the very real condition of in-plenitude that exists in the universe. This forces universal coexistence with differences and imperfections, and tolerance of those who do not think or act as we think and act. Expressed in direct language: they are two opposing poles, but the poles of a singe and unique dynamic reality. These polarities cannot be suppressed. All attempts at suppression result in terror by those who presume to have the truth and try to impose it on others. The excess of truth ends up being worse than error.

What everyone (and society) must know is how to distinguish one pole from the other and to make one’s choice. Humans show themselves to be ethical beings when they take responsibility for their actions and for the consequences of those actions.

One could think: but then, is all good? Is there no longer difference? It is not that all is good or that differences are erased. Distinctions must be made. Weedy grasses are weedy grasses, and not wheat. Wheat is wheat and not just a weedy grass. The torturer can not have the same fate as the tortured. Humans must not equate and confuse them. Humans must be discerning, and make decisions.

To achieve coexistence without confusing these principles we must nourish tolerance in ourselves. Tolerance is the ability to positively maintain this difficult coexistence and tension between the poles, knowing that they are opposite, but that they are part of one unique dynamic reality. Even though they are opposite, they are the two sides of the same whole, the left and the right.

The ongoing risk is intolerance. Intolerance diminishes reality, because it only accepts one pole and denies the other. Intolerance forces everyone to adopt one pole and annul the other, as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda do in a criminal form. Fundamentalism and dogmatism deem their truths to be absolute. Thus they condemn themselves to intolerance, and neither recognize nor respect the truth of others. Their first action is to suppress freedom of opinion, pluralism and to impose their unique thought. Attacks such as the one in Paris derive from this intolerance.

One must avoid passive tolerance, the attitude of accepting the other’s existence, not from choice, and recognition of its value, but because it cannot be avoided.

Rather, active tolerance must be encouraged, consisting of coexistence, with an attitude of positive coexistence with the other, out of respect, and an awareness of the value of difference, through which we can enrich ourselves.

Above all, tolerance is an ethical experience. Tolerance represents the right of all people to be who they are, and to continue being that. That right was universally expressed in the golden rule: «do not do to others what you would not have them do to you». Or positively stated: «Do unto others as you would have them do unto you». This principle is obvious.

At its core, the truth found in tolerance is summarized thusly: each person has the right to live and coexist on planet Earth. They all have the right to be here with their specific differences. That right precedes any expression of life as a vision of the world, a belief, or ideology. This is the great difficulty of European societies: the lack of acceptance of the other, be it an Arab, Muslem, or Turk, and in the Brazilian society, it is the lack of acceptance of the African descendant, the Northerner, the Indigenous. Societies must be organized in such a way that, by right, everyone may feel included. Hence peace is born, that according to The Earthcharter, is «the plenitude created by correct relationships with oneself, with other persons, with other cultures, with other lives, with the Earth and with the main Whole of whom we are part» (n. 16 f).

Nature offers us the main lesson: no matter how diverse the beings are, they all coexist, interconnect and create the complexity of reality and the splendid diversity of life.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
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Intolerance in present day Brazil and in the world

25/01/2015 Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

One must avoid passive tolerance, the attitude of accepting the other’s existence, not from choice, and recognition of its value, but because it cannot be avoided.