From Saint Augustine (“in every man there simultaneously exists an Adam and a Christ”), through Abelard (“Sic et non”), Hegel and Marx, up to Leandro Konder, we know that reality is dialectic. That is, reality iincludes contradictions, because the opposites do not annul each other but are in permanent tension, and coexist, generating dynamism in history. This is not a defect in construction, but the trade mark of reality. No one has expressed it better than the poverello from Assisi, when he prayed: “where there is hatred that I bring love, where there is darkness that I bring light, where there is error that I bring truth…” It is not about denying or annulling one of the poles, but of opting for one, the luminous one, and strengthening it to the point of preventing the other, the negative one, from being so destructive.

Why this reflection? It is an attempt to show that evil is never so evil that it precludes the presence of the good; and that the good is never so good that it suppresses the force of evil. We must learn to deal with these contradictions. In a previous article I attempted to make a global, negative, balance sheet: showing that we are going from bad to worse. But dialectically there is a positive side that is also important to point out. A local balance sheet will show that, filled with hope, we are witnessing the blossoming of flowers in the desert. And this is happening all over the planet. One need only attend the World Social Forums and popular bases in many places to note that new life is springing up among the victims of the system, even in businesses, and the leaders who are abandoning the old paradigm and starting to build a Noah’s Arc.

We should note some points of change that could safeguard the vitality of the Earth and guarantee our civilization.

The first is overcoming the dictatorship of the instrumental analytic reason that is principally responsible for the devastation of nature, by incorporating the emotional or cordial intelligence that involves us with the destiny of life and the Earth, by caring, loving and seeking the good life.

The second is the worldwide strengthening of solidarian economics, agro-ecology, organic agriculture, bio-economics and eco-development, alternatives to material growth through the GNP.

The third is democratic eco-socialism that proposes new forms of production, with nature rather than against nature, and the required accompanying global governance.

The fourth is the bio-regionalism that is arising as an alternative to homogenizing globalization, valuing the goods and services of each region with its population and culture.

The fifth is the good living of the Andean original nations, that involves creating an equilibrium between humans and nature through a community democracy and respect for the rights of nature and Mother Earth, or the Gross Happiness Index of the government of Bhutan.

The sixth is shared sobriety or voluntary simplicity, that strengthens food sovereignty for all, the just measure and self-control over the obsessive desire to consume.

The seventh is the visible leadership of women and the original nations that offers a new benevolence towards nature and more solidarian forms of production and consumption.

The eighth is the slow but growing acceptance of the categories of caring as preconditions for true sustainability. This means separation from the category of development, and is seen as the logic of the web of life that guarantees the interdependency of all with all, thus assuring life on Earth.

The ninth is the penetration of the ethics of universal responsibility, because we are all responsible for the common destiny, our destiny and the destiny of Mother Earth.

The tenth is the retaking of the spiritual dimension, beyond religion, that allows us to feel part of the Whole, to perceive the universal Energy that penetrates and sustains everything, and makes us the caretakers and guardians of the sacred inheritance we received from the universe and from God.

All these initiatives are more than just seeds. There already are shoots that show the possible flowering of a new Earth, with a humanity that is learning to be responsible, to care for and to love, which strengthens the sustainability of this our small planet.

See Leonardo Boff and Mark Hathaway, The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation, (El Tao de la Liberación, explorando la ecología de la transformación, Trotta 2013).

Translation: Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

The human being is, by nature, a creature of many needs. Humans require great determination to satisfy them sufficiently to be able to live, not miserably, but with a quality life. Behind each need lies hidden a fear and a desire: a desire to satisfy the needs in the best way possible and the fear of not being able to do so, and, consequently, to suffer. Those who have, fear its loss: those who have nothing, want to have. Such is the dialectic of human existence.

Teachers from very different traditions of humanity and from the sciences of the human being, more or less converge on the following fundamental needs:

We have biological needs: in a word, we need to eat, to drink, to be clothed and to have security. A large part of our time is devoted to satisfying those needs. The great majority of humanity can barely satisfy them, either for lack of work, or because solidarity and compassion are scarce. The first petition to Our Father is for our daily bread, because hunger cannot wait.

But we do not ask God to make miracles every day, so as to avoid having to make the bread ourselves. We ask for favorable weather and fertile soil, and for cooperation in producing and distributing the food. Only then do we exorcise fear and take care of our basic desire.

Furthermore, we have a need for security: we could get sick and succumb to dangers that extinguish our lives. Those dangers can come from nature, tempests, the suns’ rays, prolonged droughts, landslides, and all forms of accidents. They can come, principally, from humans themselves, who carry within not only the instinct for life but also the instinct for death; a human can lose self control and eliminate the other. All this produces fear in us. And we hope to escape it. The fact of having lived in caves and then in houses shows our search for security.

The reality is that we can never control all the factors. We can always be innocent victims, or the guilty ones. And then we call out to God, not for God to remove us from the edge of the abyss, but for God to give us the courage to avoid it and to survive.

We have, in the third place, the need to belong: we are social beings. We belong to a family, to an ethnic group, to a place, a country, to the planet Earth. What makes suffering painful is loneliness, not having a friendly shoulder to lean on, not having a helping hand. As we are the fruit of the care of our mothers, who carried us in their arms, we want to die holding the hand of someone near us or of the one who loves us.

In the depth of the existential abyss we call out for our mother or for God. And we know that God listens to us because God is sensitive to the voices of his sons and daughters, and feels the trembling of our terrified hearts. To be reduced to loneliness is to be condemned to an existential hell and to the absence of any communion. This is why it is important to satisfy the feeling of belonging, otherwise we feel like abandoned dogs wandering through the world.

In the fourth place, we have a need for self esteem. To exist is not enough. We need for our existence to be welcome, for someone by words and deeds tells us: «welcome among us, you can count on us». Rejection forces us, even though we are alive, to sense the experience of death. Thus, we need to be recognized as persons, with our differences and peculiarities. Otherwise, we are like a plant without nourishment that withers until it dies. How important it is when someone calls us by name and embraces us. Our negated humanity is restored, and we can forge ahead with hope and without fear.

Finally, we have the need for self-realization. This is the longing and challenge of the human being: to be able to realize itself and to become human. What makes the human being human? We do not exactly know, because even the inhumane is part of the human. We are a mystery to ourselves. It is not that we know nothing about humans. To the contrary, the more we know, the more the dimensions of what we do not know are magnified. We yearn for the stars, whence we came.

But we know enough to discover that we are beings who are open to the other, to the world, and to the Whole. We are beings of unlimited desire. No matter how we search for something to placate our desire, we do not find it among the beings around us. We desire the essential Being and we only bump into accidental beings. How then, can we accomplish self-realization, if we perceive ourselves as an infinite project?

In this regard it makes sense to speak of God as the essential Being and the obscure object of our infinite desire. Only God fills the characteristic of the Infinite, adequate to our infinite project. Consequently, self-realization implies becoming involved with God. To become involved with God is to awaken the spirituality in us, the capacity for feeling the powerful and loving Energy that passes through all reality. It is to be able to see in the wave, the sea and in the drop of water, the immensity of the Amazon River. Spirituality is to feel the hunger and the thirst for a final refuge, to feel secure in the arms of a trusted one, where, in the end, all our needs will be satisfied, where all our fears die and where we could rest.

As long as we do not develop that Center in ourselves, we will always feel that we are in our own prehistory; whole beings, but unfinished, and in the end, frustrated.

When we enter into communion with the essential Being, through silent and unconditional surrender, through prayer and meditation, we open an incomparable and irreplaceable fountain of energies. The effect is pure joy, a levity of life, a possible blessedness for the wayfarers.

Translation: Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.