Categoria: Idiomas

  Love belongs to the human being’s DNA

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

We are witnessing, appalled, in our country and also in a large part of the world, a wave of hatred, contempt, exclusion, and symbolic and physical violence that raises the question: What inscription does this sinister data have within human life? As we will see in a moment, researchers into the secret of human life assure us that love, cooperation, solidarity and compassion are inscribed in our DNA, by nature and not simply by a personal or social project. Those who live and nurture hatred are enemies of themselves and of life itself. For this reason, they produce nothing more effective than misfortune, exclusion, crime, and death. This is what we are unfortunately witnessing.

In this matter, the first name to be mentioned is, without a doubt, James D. Watson with his famous book “DNA: the secret of life” (2005). Together with his colleague Francis Crick they scientifically sustain that love is present in the essence of DNA. Both in 1953 decoded the genetic code, the structure of the DNA molecule, the double helix that contains the program of all life, from the primigenic cell that appeared 3.8 billion years ago until it reaches us, human beings.

We all consist of the same basic genetic code, which makes us all related to each other. Watson states: “against pride, the sublime achievements of the human intellect reveal, we have only twice as many genes as a lowly earthworm, three times as many genes as a rotting fruit fly, and only six times as many genes as simple baker’s yeast”.The stretched DNA cell reaches a meter and 85 centimeters; reduced to its original form is a trillionth of a centimeter and is present in every cell, even the most superficial of the skin of our hand. Watson defines: “Life as we know it is nothing more than a vast array of coordinated chemical reactions. The secret of this coordination is a complex and overwhelming set of instructions inscribed chemically in our DNA.

Much new knowledge enriched the Watson/Crick vision especially by the two Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. The best of this research was wonderfully summarized in the book by the ecologist and quantum physicist Fritjof Capra in his book “The Web of Life” (1997). Living beings, in open systems that make them dialogue with all the surroundings, are not static, they are always in a process of self-creation (Maturana’s autopóiesis). They not only adapt to changes, but create new ones together with other beings in such a way that they continuously co-evolve.

A decisive contribution was brought by Humberto Maturana who studied the biological basis of love. He sees love present from the very beginning of the universe. Each being is governed by two processes: the first is of necessity to interconnect with all the others to more easily guarantee its survival. The second is of pure spontaneity. Beings interrelate by rare gratuitousness, creating new bonds among themselves and by affinity, as if they were reciprocally in love. The love that emerges between two beings, millions of years later, had its origin in this ancestral, spontaneous loving relationship.

All this occurs as a given of objective reality. When it reaches the human being, it can become something subjective, a love consciously assumed and lived as a life project.

All this reflection is aimed at delegitimizing and accusing as inhumane, contrary to the movement of the universe and to the biological basis of life, the prevalence of hate, exclusion, and rage present in our country, encouraged by a head of state who excels in hate, deviant and necrophilic behavior. He has made himself an enemy of the lives of his compatriots by allying himself with Clovd-19, presenting himself as a master healer through chloroquine and compounds, as if he were a doctor and a specialist. He passed for a mere charlatan and, with reference to the indigenous people, a genocide.

I end with Watson’s testimony in the aforementioned book:

“Although I am not religious, I see profoundly true elements in St. Paul’s words about love in his epistle to the Corinthians: ‘If I could speak all languages…if I had the knowledge of all mysteries and all knowledge…if I had not love, I would be nothing. Paul, in my understanding, has clearly revealed the essence of our humanity. Love, that impulse that makes us care for others is what has allowed us our survival and success on the planet. So fundamental is love to our human nature that I am certain that the capacity to love is inscribed in our DNA. A secular Paul (he Watson) would say that love is our genes’ greatest gift to humanity”(p.433-434).

Such words lead us to respond to the Bolsonarist hatred with love, to the offense of his fans with love: Such attitudes give us the certainty and guarantee that these harmful times of anger and hatred will pass.

Leonardo Boff is a theologian, philosopher and writer and has published The house,spirituality,love,Paulinas,SP 2017; The rights of the heart, Paulus,SP 2015.

Homage to Paulo Freire in his birth centenary: Frei Betto

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Frei Betto is one of the best experts on Paulo Freire. Besides being a personal friend, he applied his method in popular education, which he exercises until nowadays. This homage to him on the 100th anniversary of his birth is a mixture of experiences lived with him and a simple and exemplary exposition of his method. I join him in this celebration. I met him when Paul was part of the scientific committee of the group of theologians and philosophers that edited and still edits the International Journal Concilium (in 7 languages). Right at the beginning there was a great dialogue, of which he was a master. He is counted among the founders of Liberation Theology, something he said with honor. Here is Frei Betto’s lucid and experiential text. LBoff

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         I can say, without fear of exaggeration, that Paulo Freire is the root of the history of Brazilian popular power in the 50 years between 1966 and 2016. This power emerged, like a leafy tree, from the Brazilian left active in the second half of the 20th century: groups that fought against the military dictatorship (1964-1985); the Ecclesial Base Communities of the Christian Churches; the comprehensive network of popular and social movements that emerged in the 1970s; combative trade unionism; and, in the 1980s, the founding of the CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores); of ANAMPOS (Articulação Nacional dos Movimentos Populares e Sindicais) and, later, of CMP (Central de Movimentos Populares); of PT (Partidos dos Trabalhadores); and of MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra); and of so many other movements, NGOs, and entities.

        If I had to respond to the suggestion, “Name one person who is the cause of all this.” I would say, without any doubt: Paulo Freire. Without Paulo Freire’s methodology of popular education, these movements would not exist, because he taught us something very important: to see history from the oppressed’s point of view and make them protagonists of the changes in society.

The excluded as political subjects

 When I came out of political prison at the end of 1973, I had the impression that all the struggle out here had ended because of the repression of the military dictatorship, even because all of us, imbued with the pretension of being the only ones who understood the struggle capable of recovering democracy, were in jail, dead, or in exile. What was my surprise to find a huge network of popular movements spread all over Brazil.

       When the PT was founded, in 1980, I saw fellow leftists reacting: “Workers? No. It is too pretentious for workers to want to be the vanguard of the proletariat! It is us, theoretical intellectuals, Marxists, who have the capacity to lead the working class. However, in Brazil the oppressed were beginning to become not only historical subjects, but also political leaders, thanks to the

Paulo Freire method.

Once, in Mexico, some leftist comrades asked me:

       – How do we do something here similar to your process there in Brazil? Because you have a leftist sector in the Church, a combative unionism, the PT… How do you obtain this popular political force?

       – Start doing popular education,” I answered, “and in thirty years…

       They interrupted me:

       – Thirty years is a lot! We want a suggestion for three years.

       – For three years I don’t know how to do it,” I observed, “but for thirty years I know the way.

       In summary, the whole process of accumulation of popular political forces, which resulted in the election of Lula as president of Brazil, in 2002, and kept the PT in the federal government for thirteen years, did not fall from the sky. Everything was built with a lot of tenacity from the organization and mobilization of popular bases through the application of the Paulo Freire method.

The Paulo Freire method

         I first met the Paulo Freire method in 1963. I lived in Rio de Janeiro and was a member of the national direction of the Catholic Action. When the first working groups of the Paulo Freire method emerged, I joined a team that, on Saturdays, went up to Petrópolis, 70km away from Rio, to teach literacy to the workers of the National Motor Factory. There I discovered that nobody teaches anybody anything, some help others to learn.

       What did we do with the workers of that truck factory? We photographed the facilities, gathered the workers in a church hall, projected slides and asked them a very simple question:

       – In this picture, what didn’t you guys do?

       – Well, we didn’t do the tree, the woods, the road, the water…

       – That what you didn’t do is nature – we said.

       – And what did human work do? – we asked.

       – Human labor made the brick, the factory, the bridge, the fence…

       – That is culture,” we said. – And how were these things made?

       They debated and answered:

       – They were made as human beings transformed nature into culture.

       Then a picture appeared of the courtyard of the National Motor Factory occupied by many trucks and the workers’ bicycles. We simply asked:

       – In this photo, what have you made?

       – The trucks.

       – And what do you have?

       – The bicycles.

       – Wouldn’t you be wrong?

       – No, we make the trucks…

       – And why don’t you go home by truck? Why do you go by bicycle?

       – Because the truck costs a lot of money, and it doesn’t belong to us.

       – How much does a truck cost?

       – About 40 thousand dollars.

       – How much do you earn per month?

       – Well, we earn an average of $200.

       – How long does each one of you have to work, without eating, without drinking, without paying rent, saving all your salary to one day own the truck you make?

       Then they began to calculate and became aware of the essence of the capital vs. labor relationship, what is surplus value, exploitation, etc.

       The most elementary notions of Marxism, as a critique of capitalism, came through the Paulo Freire method. The difference was that we were not teaching a class, we were not doing what Paulo Freire called “banking education”, that is, putting political notions into the worker’s head. The method was inductive. As Paulo said, we teachers did not teach, but helped the students to learn.

Distinct and complementary cultures

       When I arrived in São Bernardo do Campo (SP) in 1980, there were leftist militants who distributed newspapers among the workers’ families. One day Ms. Marta asked me

       – What is “crasse contradiction”?

       – Doña Marta, forget it.

       – I’m not much of a reader,” she justified, “because my eyesight is poor and my handwriting is small.

       – Forget it,” I said. – The left writes these texts for themselves to read and be happy, thinking that they are making a revolution.

       Paulo Freire taught us not only to speak in popular, plastic, not academically conceptual language, but also to learn from the people. He taught the people to recover their self-esteem.

       When I got out of prison, I lived for five years in a slum in Espírito Santo. There I worked with popular education using the Paulo Freire method. When I returned to São Paulo at the end of the 1970s, Paulo Freire proposed that I write an account of our experience in education and, thanks to the mediation of journalist Ricardo Kotscho, we produced a book called “Essa escola chamada vida” (Ática). It is his account as educator and creator of the method, and of my experience as a basic educator.

       In the book, I tell that in the slum where I lived there was a group of women pregnant with their first child, assisted by doctors from the Municipal Health Secretariat. I asked the doctors why we should work only with women who were pregnant with their first child. 

       – We don’t want women who already have maternal addictions. – they said – We want to teach them everything.

       Well, a few months later, there was a knock at the door of my shack.

       – Betto, we want your help.

       – My help?

       – There is a short circuit between us and the women. They don’t understand what we say. You, who have experience with these people, could advise us.

       I went to see their work. When I entered the slum’s Health Center, I was scared. There were very poor women there, and the center had been decorated with posters of Johnson babies, little blondes with blue eyes, Nestle advertisements, and so on. At this sight, I reacted:

       – It’s all wrong. When the women come here and look at these babies, they realize that this is another world, it has nothing to do with the babies on the hill.

       I watched the work of the doctors. I noticed that they were talking on FM and the women were tuned into AM. The communication really didn’t work. In one session, Dr. Raul explained, in scientific language, the importance of breastfeeding, and therefore of proteins, for the formation of the human brain. When he finished his presentation, the women stared at him as I do when I open a text in Mandarin or Arabic: I don’t understand anything.

       – Do you understand what Dr. Raul said? – I asked.

       – No, I didn’t understand, I only understood that he said that our milk is good for the children’s heads.

       – And why didn’t you understand?

       – Because I am uneducated. I didn’t go to school much, I was born poor in the countryside. I had to work with a hoe and help support the family.

       – And why was Dr. Raul able to explain all this?

       – Because he is a doctor, he is studied. He knows and I don’t know.

       – Dr. Raul, can you cook? – I asked.

       – I don’t even know how to make coffee.

       – Mrs. Maria, can you cook?

       – Yes, I can.

       – Can you make chicken “ao molho pardo” (a dish that, in Espirito Santo, and also in some areas of the Northeast, is called “galinha de cabidela”)?

       – Yes.

       – Please, stand up – I asked – and tell us how to make a frango ao molho pardo.

       Dona Maria gave us a cooking lesson: how to kill the chicken, which side to remove the feathers, how to prepare the meat and make the sauce, etc.

       When she sat down, I said

       – Dr. Raul, do you know how to make a dish like this?

       – No way, I like it, but I don’t know how to cook.

       – Mrs. Maria,” I concluded, “you and Dr. Raul, both lost in a closed forest, hungry, and suddenly a chicken appears. He, with all his culture, would die of hunger, but not you.

       The woman grinned from ear to ear. She discovered, at that moment, a fundamental principle of Paulo Freire: there is no one more cultured than another, there are distinct cultures, socially complementary. If we weigh all my philosophy and theology and the cooking of the cook at the convent where I live, she can do without my knowledge, but I cannot do without her culture. Here is the difference. The culture of a cook is indispensable for all of us

Paulo Freire and Future Challenges

Facing the emergence of so many authoritarian governments and the profusion of antidemocratic, racist, homophobic, sexist, and negationist messages in digital networks, it seems to me of utmost importance to revisit Paulo Freire on this date of the centennial of his birth.

       The ebb of progressive forces in Latin America in recent years, and the emergence of neo-fascist figures like Bolsonaro in Brazil, force us to recognize that for decades we have abandoned the grassroots work of popular organization and mobilization. This void with the populations of the periphery, of the slums, of the poor rural areas, has been occupied by religious fundamentalism, drug trafficking, and militia.

       In his works, Paulo Freire teaches us that there is no mobilization without prior awareness. It is necessary that people have a “clothesline” on which to hang their political concepts and the keys to analyze reality. The “clothesline” is the perception of time as history.

       There are civilizations, tribes, groups, that have no perception of time as history. The ancient Greeks, for example, believed that time is cyclical. Today, cyclical time returns through esotericism, negationism, fatalism, and religious fundamentalism. But it returns, above all, through neoliberalism.

       The essence of neoliberalism is the dehistoricization of time. When Fukuyama declared that “ahistory is over,” he expressed what neoliberalism wants to instill in us: We have reached the fullness of time! The neoliberal capitalist mode of production, based on the supremacy of the market, is final! Few are the chosen, and many are the excluded. And it is no longer enough to want to fight for an alternative society, for “another possible world”!

       In fact, nowadays it is difficult to talk about an alternative society. Socialism, no way! A shame has been created, an intellectual and emotional block. “The alternatives that are put forward are, in general, intrasystemic.

       The notion that time is history comes from the Persians, passed on to the Hebrews and accentuated by the Jewish tradition. Three great paradigms of our culture are of Jewish origin – Jesus, Marx and Freud – and, therefore, worked with the category of time as history.

       One cannot study Marxism without delving into the previous modes of production, to understand how the capitalist mode of production was arrived at. And then to understand how its contradictions could lead to socialist and communist modes of production. Marxist analysis presupposes, therefore, the rescue of time as history.

       If someone is undergoing analysis or therapy, the psychoanalyst soon asks the patient about his past, his childhood, his upbringing. If the patient can talk about his intrauterine life, so much the better. Freud’s whole psychology is a rescue of our temporality as individuals.

       Jesus’ perspective was historical. The God of Jesus presents himself with curriculum vitae: he is not just any god – he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – that is, a God who makes history. The main category of Jesus’ preaching is historical: the Kingdom of God. Although placed up there by ecclesiastical discourse, theologically it is not located up there. The Kingdom is something up ahead, it is the culmination of the historical process..

.        It is curious that in the Bible history, as a factor that identifies time, is so strong that in the Genesis account the Creation of the world is already marked by this historicity of time before the appearance of human beings.

       For many, history is what men and women do. So, there would be no history before the appearance of men and women, so much so that they speak of prehistory. For the Bible, there is already history before the appearance of the human being. So much so that the Greeks considered the god of the Hebrews to be a very incompetent entity. A true god creates like Nescafé: instant, and not in time, as the biblical account shows. Now, in the Creation story, in seven days, there is already historicity. And Paulo Freire, a man of Christian background and a militant supporter of the foundations of Marxism, knew how to perceive the importance of reading the world as a condition for reading the text.

       Neoliberalism does not suit this perspective. Therefore, one cannot do popular education without having a “clothesline” to hang the clothes… This “clothesline” – time as history – is fundamental to visualize the social and political process. This also happens in the micro dimension of our lives. Why, today, do many people find it difficult to have life projects? Why do young people reach the age of 20 without the slightest idea of what they want to be or do with their lives? For many of them, everything is here and now.

       Therefore, if we want to rescue Paulo Freire’s legacy, the way is to return to the grassroots work with the popular classes, adopting his method in a historical perspective, open to libertarian utopias and democratic horizons. Outside the people there is no salvation. And if we believe that democracy must be, in fact, the government of the people for the people and with the people, there is no alternative but to adopt the Paulo Freirean educational process that places the oppressed as political and historical protagonists.

       When Paulo Freire returned from 15 years of exile, in August 1979, we met in São Paulo. We were neighbors and I often visited him. We had very close personal relationships.

My personal testimony  

So I end this tribute with this text that I wrote on May 2, 1997, the date of Paulo Freire’s transvivencation:

       “Ivo saw the grape,” the literacy manuals taught. But Professor Paulo Freire, with his method of teaching literacy by raising awareness, made adults and children, in Brazil and Guinea-Bissau, in India, in Nicaragua, and in so many other places, discover that Ivo did not only see with his eyes. He also saw with his mind and asked himself if grapes are nature or culture.

       Ivo saw that fruit is not the result of human work. It is Creation, it is nature. Paulo Freire taught Ivo that sowing grapes is human action in and on nature. And the hand, a multi-tool, awakens the potentialities of the fruit. Just as the human being himself was sowed by nature in years and years of evolution of the Universe.

       To pick the grapes, crush them, and turn them into wine is culture, Paulo Freire pointed out. Work humanizes nature and, by doing it, men and women humanize themselves. Work establishes the knot of relationships, social life. Thanks to the professor, who started his revolutionary pedagogy with Sesi workers in Pernambuco, Ivo also saw that grapes are harvested by labourers, who earn little, and commercialized by middlemen, who earn much more.

       Ivo learned from Paulo that, even without knowing how to read, he is not an ignorant person. Before learning how to read, Ivo knew how to build a house, brick by brick. The doctor, the lawyer or the dentist, with all his study, is not able to build like Ivo. Paulo Freire taught Ivo that there is no one more cultured than another, there are parallel, distinct cultures that complement each other in social life.

       Ivo saw the grape and Paulo Freire showed him the bunches, the vine, the whole plantation. He taught Ivo that the reading of a text is better understood the more the text is inserted in the context of the author and the reader. It is from this dialogical relationship between text and context that Ivo draws the pretext for action. At the beginning and end of learning, it is Ivo’s praxis that matters. Praxis-theory-practice, in an inductive process that makes the learner a historical subject.

       Ivo saw the grape and did not see the bird that, from above, sees the vine and does not see the grape. What Ivo sees is different from what the bird sees. Thus, Paulo Freire taught Ivo a fundamental principle of epistemology: the head thinks where the feet step. The unequal world can be read from the oppressor’s perspective or from the oppressed’s perspective. The result is a reading as different from one another as between Ptolemy’s vision, when observing the solar system with his feet on the Earth, and Copernicus’ vision, when imagining himself with his feet on the Sun.

       It is curious that in the Bible history, as a factor that identifies time, is so strong that in the Genesis account the Creation of the world is already marked by this historicity of time before the appearance of human beings.

       For many, history is what men and women do. So, there would be no history before the appearance of men and women, so much so that they speak of prehistory. For the Bible, there is already history before the appearance of the human being. So much so that the Greeks considered the god of the Hebrews to be a very incompetent entity. A true god creates like Nescafé: instant, and not in time, as the biblical account shows. Now, in the Creation story, in seven days, there is already historicity. And Paulo Freire, a man of Christian background and a militant supporter of the foundations of Marxism, knew how to perceive the importance of reading the world as a condition for reading the text.

       Neoliberalism does not suit this perspective. Therefore, one cannot do popular education without having a “clothesline” to hang the clothes… This “clothesline” – time as history – is fundamental to visualize the social and political process. This also happens in the micro dimension of our lives. Why, today, do many people find it difficult to have life projects? Why do young people reach the age of 20 without the slightest idea of what they want to be or do with their lives? For many of them, everything is here and now.

       Therefore, if we want to rescue Paulo Freire’s legacy, the way is to return to the grassroots work with the popular classes, adopting his method in a historical perspective, open to libertarian utopias and democratic horizons. Outside the people there is no salvation. And if we believe that democracy must be, in fact, the government of the people for the people and with the people, there is no alternative but to adopt the Paulo Freirean educational process that places the oppressed as political and historical protagonists.

       When Paulo Freire returned from 15 years of exile, in August 1979, we met in São Paulo. We were neighbors and I often visited him. We had very close personal relationships.

       So I end this tribute with this text that I wrote on May 2, 1997, the date of Paulo Freire’s transvivencation:

       “Ivo saw the grape,” the literacy manuals taught. But Professor Paulo Freire, with his method of teaching literacy by raising awareness, made adults and children, in Brazil and Guinea-Bissau, in India, in Nicaragua, and in so many other places, discover that Ivo did not only see with his eyes. He also saw with his mind and asked himself if grapes are nature or culture.

       Ivo saw that fruit is not the result of human work. It is Creation, it is nature. Paulo Freire taught Ivo that sowing grapes is human action in and on nature. And the hand, a multi-tool, awakens the potentialities of the fruit. Just as the human being himself was sowed by nature in years and years of evolution of the Universe.

       To pick the grapes, crush them, and turn them into wine is culture, Paulo Freire pointed out. Work humanizes nature and, by doing it, men and women humanize themselves. Work establishes the knot of relationships, social life. Thanks to the professor, who started his revolutionary pedagogy with Sesi workers in Pernambuco, Ivo also saw that grapes are harvested by labourers, who earn little, and commercialized by middlemen, who earn much more.

       Ivo learned from Paulo that, even without knowing how to read, he is not an ignorant person. Before learning how to read, Ivo knew how to build a house, brick by brick. The doctor, the lawyer or the dentist, with all his study, is not able to build like Ivo. Paulo Freire taught Ivo that there is no one more cultured than another, there are parallel, distinct cultures that complement each other in social life.

       Ivo saw the grape and Paulo Freire showed him the bunches, the vine, the whole plantation. He taught Ivo that the reading of a text is better understood the more the text is inserted in the context of the author and the reader. It is from this dialogical relationship between text and context that Ivo draws the pretext for action. At the beginning and end of learning, it is Ivo’s praxis that matters. Praxis-theory-practice, in an inductive process that makes the learner a historical subject.

       Ivo saw the grape and did not see the bird that, from above, sees the vine and does not see the grape. What Ivo sees is different from what the bird sees. Thus, Paulo Freire taught Ivo a fundamental principle of epistemology: the head thinks where the feet step. The unequal world can be read from the oppressor’s perspective or from the oppressed’s perspective. The result is a reading as different from one another as between Ptolemy’s vision, when observing the solar system with his feet on the Earth, and Copernicus’ vision, when imagining himself with his feet on the Sun.

       Now Ivo sees the grape, the grapevine and all the social relationships that make the fruit a feast in the cup of wine, but he no longer sees Paulo Freire, who plunged into Love on the morning of May 2, 1997. He leaves us a priceless work and an admirable testimony of competence and coherence.

       Paulo should have been in Cuba to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Havana. Sensing the pain in his heart that he loved so much, he asked me to represent him. I was scheduled to fly to Palestine, but was unable to attend. However, before leaving, I went to pray with Nita, his wife, and their children, around his peaceful countenance: Paulo saw God.

Frei Betto is a writer, author of “Por uma educação crítica e participativa” (Rocco) and “Essa escola chamado vida” (Ática), in partnership with Paulo Freire and Ricardo Kotscho. Virtual bookstore: http://www.freibetto.org

“Though I should pass through the valley of the shadow of death”

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

                                                      Leonardo Boff

In these dark times under the dangerous action of Covid-19 a mantle of fear and anguish extends over our lives. We live existentially weary, because of the loved ones we have lost, because of the threats of being contaminated, and even more because we don’t see when it will all end. What will come next?

A pious Israelite went through the anguish table and left us a picture of his situation in the famous Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. In it there is a verse that comes in handy exactly for our situation: “Though I should pass through the valley of death, I will fear nothing, for you go with me”.

Biblically, death is to be understood not only as the end of life, but existentially as the experience of profound crises such as severe life-threatening, fierce persecution by enemies, humiliation, exclusion, and devastating loneliness. It speaks then, of descending into the hells of the human condition.

When we say in the Christian creed that Jesus descended into hell, we mean that he experienced extreme loneliness and absolute abandonment, even by his Father (cf. Mk 15:34). He effectively passed through the valley of the shadow of death, the hell of the human condition. It is consoling, then, to hear the words of the Good Shepherd: “Fear not, I am with you”.

Our great novelist João Guimarães Rosa in Grande Sertão:Veredas observed well: “living is dangerous. We feel expelled from the garden of Eden. We are always trying to build a possible paradise. We live in risky crossings. Threats lurk everywhere. And at this moment with the virus, like never before.

No matter how hard we try, and how well societies organize themselves, we can never control all the risk factors. Covid-19 has shown us the unpredictability and our vulnerability That is why the human crossing is dramatic and sometimes tragic. In the end, when it comes to securing our lives, we are forced to entrust ourselves, beyond medicine and technology, to a Greater One who can lead us “to green pastures and quiet springs,” to the Good Shepherd God. This entrustment overcomes hopelessness.

Let’s widen the horizon a little: great drama weighs upon the future of life and the biosphere. Thousands of species are disappearing because of human greed and negligence. The increasing warming of the planet together with the scarcity of drinking water may confront us with a dramatic food crisis. Millions of people may be displaced in search of survival, threatening the already fragile political and social balance of nations.

Here we must invoke once again the Shepherd of the universe, the One who has power over the course of time and climate to create opportune situations and arouse a sense of solidarity and responsibility in the peoples and heads of state.

Today what destroys our joy of living is fear.  It is the consequence of a type of society that has been built in the last centuries based on competition and not on cooperation, on the will to accumulate material goods, on consumerism, and on the use of violence as a way to solve personal and social problems.

What invalidates fear and its sequels is the care for each other, especially now, so as not to be contaminated by the virus and not to contaminate others. Care is fundamental for us to understand life and the relationships between all beings. Without care, life is not born or reproduced. Caring for someone is more than managing their interests, it is getting affectively involved with them, caring for their well-being, and feeling co-responsible for their destiny. For this reason, everything we love we also care for and everything we care for we also love.

Caring is also the anticipator of behaviors so that their effects are good and strengthen coexistence.

A society that is governed by care, for the Common House, the Earth, care for the ecosystems that guarantee the conditions of the biosphere and of our life, care for the food security of every single human being, care for fresh water, nature’s most echosen good, care for people’s health, especially for the most deprived, care, caring for the spiritual environment of culture, so that everyone can live a meaningful life, experience and welcome limitations, aging, and the passing of death without major drama, this caring society will enjoy the peace and harmony necessary for human coexistence.

It is comforting, in the midst of our current tribulations, threatened by Covid-19, to hear the One who whispers to us: “Do not be afraid, I am with you” (Psalm 23) and through Isaiah assures us: “Do not be afraid, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, yes, I will help you, yes, I will support you in the palm of my hand” (Is 41:10).

In this way, our personal life takes on a certain lightness and, even in the midst of risks and threats, it retains a serene youthfulness as we feel that we are never alone. God walks in our own walk as the Good Shepherd who takes care that “we lack nothing”.

Leonardo Boff is a theologian and philosopher: The Lord is my shepherd: divine consolation for human helplessness, Orbis Books, 2013.

Do we have enough time and wisdom to avoid ecological catastrophe?

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Leonardo Boff

On August 8, 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the report, made every two years, on the Earth’s climate situation, the result of the research of more than one hundred experts from 52 countries. Never has the document been as clear as it is now, unlike previous reports. Before it was stated that there was 95% certainty that global warming was anthropogenic, that is, of human origin. Now it is sustained without restrictions that it is a consequence of human beings and their way of inhabiting the Earth, especially because of the use of fossil energy (oil, coal and gas) and other negative factors.

The scenario presents itself as dramatic.The Paris Agreement specifies that countries should “limit warming to well below 2˚C, and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5˚C.” The current report insinuates that it will be difficult but that we have the scientific knowledge, technological and financial capacity to tackle climate change, provided everyone, countries, cities, companies and individuals already now make a serious commitment.

The current situation is worrying.In 2016 global greenhouse gas emissions amounted to about 52 gigatonnes of CO2 annually. If we do not change current course we will arrive in 2030 at between 52 and 58 gigatons. At this level there would be a fantastic decimation of biodiversity and a proliferation of bacteria and viruses such as never before.

To stabilize the climate at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the scientists say, emissions would need to fall by half (25-30 gigatonnes). Otherwise, with the Earth on fire, we would experience terrifying extreme events.

I am of the opinion that science and technology alone is not enough to reduce greenhouse gases. It is too much to believe in the omnipotence of science that even today does not know how to fully face Covid-19. Another paradigm of relationship with nature and with the Earth is urgently needed, one that is not destructive but friendly and in subtle synergy with the rhythms of nature.

This would require a radical transformation in the current capitalist mode of production, which still moves, for the most part, under the illusion that the Earth’s resources are unlimited and therefore allow for an unlimited growth/development project. Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato Sì: On the Care for our Common Home (2020) denounces this premise as a “lie” (n.106): a limited planet, in an advanced degree of degradation and overpopulated, cannot tolerate an unlimited project.

Covid-19 in its deepest meaning requires us to put into action a paradigmatic conversion.In the encyclical Fratelli tutti (2021) Pope Francis seized this warning from the virus. He contrasts two projects: the current one, of modernity, whose paradigm consists in making the human being dominus (lord and master) of nature, and the new one he proposes, that of frater (brother and sister), including everyone, humans and other beings of nature.

This new paradigm of planetary frater would establish a fraternity without borders and a social love. If we don’t make this crossing, “everyone is saved or no one is saved” (n.32).

Here is the big question: does the globalized capitalist mode of production show the political will, has the capacity and the reasonability to allow itself this radical change? It has made itself the dominus (Descartes’ maître et possesseur) of the earth and all its resources, its mantras being: the highest possible profit, achieved by fierce competition, accumulated individually or corporately, through a devastating exploitation of natural goods and services. From this mode of production originated the lack of climate control and, what is worse, a culture of capital, to which, in some way, we are all hostages. How can we get out of it to save ourselves?

We have to change, otherwise, according to Sygmunt Bauman, “we will swell the ranks of those who are heading for their own grave. Logically, this urgent conversion of paradigm demands time and implies a process of transformation, because the whole system is geared to produce and consume more. But the time for change is expiring. Hence the feeling in the world of great names, whose unquestionable credibility is not of simple pessimism, but of a well-founded realism:

The first is Pope Francis’ warning in Fratelli tutti: “we are in the same boat, either we all save ourselves or no one is saved” (n.32).

The second is the formulator of the theory of the Earth as a living super-organism, Gaia, James Lovelock, whose latest title says it all: “Gaia: final warning” (Intrínseca, Rio 2010).

The third is Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom: “Hora final:o desastre ambiental ameaça o futuro da humanidade” (Companhia das Letras, SP 2005), which needs no comment.

The fourth is Eric Hobsbawm, one of the most renowned historians of the 20th century, who says at the end of his The Age of Extremes (Companhia das Letras, SP 1995): “We do not know where we are going.However, one thing is clear: if mankind wants to have a meaningful future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present.If we try to build the third millennium on this basis, we will fail.And the price of failure, that is, the change of society, is darkness” (p.562). This warning goes for all those who think of the post-pandemic as a return to the old, perverse normality.

The fifth is the well-known French geneticist Albert Jacquard with his “Has the countdown begun? (Le compte à retours a-t-il commence? Stock, Paris 2009), in which he argues that “our time is numbered, and having worked against ourselves, we risk forging an Earth where none of us would like to live. The worst is not certain, but we must hurry” (fourth cover).

]Finally, one of the last great naturalists, Théodore Monod with the book And if the human adventure should fail (Et si l’aventure humaine devait échouer,Grasset, Paris 2003) asserts: “The human being is perfectly capable of senseless and insane conduct; from now on we can fear everything, even the annihilation of the human species”(p.246).

The process of cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis also provided for the emergence of faith and hope. They are part of the total reality. They do not invalidate the warnings cited, but open another window that assures us that “the Creator created everything out of love because he is the passionate lover of life” (Wisdom 11:26).

This faith and hope allow Pope Francis to speak “beyond the sun” with these words: “Let us walk in song, that our struggles and our concern for this planet do not rob us of the joy of hope” (Laudato Sì n. 244).

The principle of hope surpasses all limits and always keeps the future open. If we cannot avoid climate decontrol, we can take precautions and minimize its most harmful effects. This is what we believe and hope.

Leonardo Boff is a brazilian philosopher and ecotheologist who wrote The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity without borders and of social friendship, Vozes 2020.