Those who have read my recent texts on ecology and the dramatic situation of the Earth, have perhaps been left with an impression of pessimism. Those who perceive the real dangers that endanger our destiny cannot be pessimists. We must always respect reality, but at the same time, we must broaden our understanding of that reality. That is key, because the potential is also part of the actual. All events present a utopic reserve. If we understand reality thus enriched, a static pessimism is not justified, but a hope-filled realism. This captures the eventual emergence of the new, that which is hidden within the potential and the utopic. The new then makes history, creates another state of consciousness and inaugurates a different social essay.

Moreover, if we step back and measure our history against cosmic time, we find even more reason for hope. If we condense into one year the 13.7 billion years that is the presumed age of our universe, we will notice that as we humans have existed for only a tiny fraction of that time. Thus, on December 31st, at 5 p.m., our pre-human ancestors emerged. On December 31st at 10 p.m. the primitive human being entered the scene. On December 31st at 10 seconds after 11:58 p.m., the humans of today, called sapiens, emerged. On December 31st at 56 seconds after 11:59 p.m., Jesus of Nazareth was born. On December 31st at 59.2 seconds after 11:59 p.m., Cabral arrived to Brazil.

As can be seen, time-wise we are almost nothing.

Further, if we consider the 15 great destructive events that Earth has endured, especially the Cambrian of 570 million years ago, in which between 75 and 90% of the biotic capital disappeared, we can see that life has always endured and survived. And if we concentrate only on human beings, we have survived the many glaciations. In addition, the human being had a highly accelerated process of encefalization (increasing brain size relative to total body mass). For some 2.2 million years, there appeared homo habilis, then homo erectus, and in the last one hundred thousand years, homo sapiens, already clearly human. They were social beings, demonstrated cooperativity, and used speech, a human characteristic.

In the space of one million years, the brain of these three types of homo doubled in volume. After the appearance of homo sapiens, 100 thousand years ago, brain size did not increase. It was no longer necessary, given the development of the exterior brain, artificial intelligence, that is, the capacity of knowing, of creating instruments and artifacts to transform the world and create culture, a singular characteristic of the homo sapiens sapiens.

Starting with the neolithic age, around 10 thousand years ago, the first cities were established, thus beginning the process of developing culture, the state, bureaucracy and also, war. The systematic use of the instrumental reason to dominate nature, to conquer and to submit to others, was also established. There were obviously other types of reason as well, such as the emotional, symbolic and cordial, but they were subordinate to instrumental reason, a form of reason that is simultaneously both creative and destructive, and which, up to the present, has assumed hegemony.

The process of the butterfly offers us a suggestive metaphor. The butterfly is not born a butterfly. It is at the beginning a simple egg that transforms itself into a caterpiller, an insatiable devourer of leaves. Then she coils up and builds around herself a cocoon (chrysalis). Inside the cocoon, nature weaves her body and paints it with colors. When all is ready, the cocoon breaks and the splendid butterfly surges.

We are still in the stage of caterpillars and cocoons. Caterpillars, because day and night we devour nature; cocoons, because we have closed in on ourselves, seeing nothing around us.

Wherein lies our hope? That reason may break forth from the cocoon and emerge as butterfly-reason. Perhaps the present situation of grave danger will force the birth of butterfly-reason. She will fly about, not destructive but cooperative, because the butterfly aids the pollenation of flowers.

We are still in genesis. We have not finished being born. Once we are fully born, we will respect and coexist with all beings. We will have overcome forever the phase of the caterpillar and the cocoon . As butterflies, we will be carriers of the sensible reason that enables us to share with the Earth a future without threats.

 

 

 

We are not mistaken if we understand the present tragedy of humanity, incapable of explaining its crisis and of projecting an aura of hope, as a failure of the type of reason that has been predominant for the past five hundred years. We have already analyzed how the break between objective reason (the logic of things) and subjective reason (self interest) has occurred. The latter was imposed on the former, to the point that it was established as the exclusive force for organizing society, and history.

Thus subjective reason was understood as a desire for power, and power as domination over people and things. Today, the power of «I» is central. It is the exclusive carrier of reason and meaning. It spawned what naturally follows: individualism as the supreme affirmation of the «I». It took shape in capitalism, which is powered by individual accumulation, with no social or ecological considerations. Trusting subjective reason alone as the framework for all of reality was a high risk cultural decision. It has implied a true dictatorship of reason that has diminished or destroyed the exercise of other forms of reason, such as sensible, symbolic and others.

The ideal is that the «I» will endlessly seek unlimited progress, in the unquestioned supposition that the resources of the Earth are also limitless. The infinite nature of progress and of resources constitute the ontological a priori and the parti pris.

But, after five hundred years, we have come to see that both infinities are illusory. The Earth is small and finite. Progress has approached the limits of the Earth. Those limits cannot be exceeded. The time of the finite world is here now. Failing to respect this finitude means inhibiting the capacity for reproducing life on Earth, and thus endangering the survival of the species. The historic time of capitalism has passed. To continue with capitalism will cost so much that it will end up destroying sociability and the future. Persisting in that effort will reveal the destructive character of the irrationality of reason.

What is even more serious is that capitalism/individualism has introduced two conflicting forms of logic: the logic of the private interests of the «I», the enterprises, and the logic of the collective interests of the «we», of society. Capitalism, by its nature, is anti-democratic. It is not at all cooperative, but is only competitive.

Will there be a way out? With reforms and regulations designed only to maintain the system, as Neo-Keynesians in the style of Stiglitz, Krugman and others want, no. We must change if we want to save ourselves.

In the first place, it is important to build a new accord between objective and subjective reason. This implies broadening reason, and thus freeing her from the yoke of power-domination. She can be emancipating reason. For the new accord, it is urgent that we rescue sensible and cordial reason, to blend them with instrumental reason. It is based in the limbic brain that appeared more than two hundred million years ago, when, with the mammals, affection, passion, caring, love and the world of values came into being. This allows us to give an emotional and value-filled reading of the scientific data that comes from instrumental reason, that emerged only 5 to 7 million years ago. This sensible reason awakens in us the necessary re-enchantment for life and for Mother Earth, so that we may care for them.

Then a new centrality must arise: instead of the private interest, the common interest, respect for the goods common to life and to the Earth, destined to all. Then, economics needs to return to being that which it naturally is: a guarantee of the conditions needed for the physical, cultural and spiritual life of all persons. After that, politics must be rebuilt, as an endless democracy, always inclusive of all humans, so that they may be the subjects of history and not merely attendants or beneficiaries. Finally, the new world will not have a human face unless it is governed by shared ethical-spiritual values, with contributions from many other cultures, together with the Judeo-Christian tradition.

These steps are all very utopian. But without utopia we would drown in the swamp of private and corporative interests. Happily, essays are appearing everywhere that are forerunners of the new, such as solidarian economy, sustainability and caring, lived as paradigms to perpetuate and to reproduce all that exists and lives. We do not renounce the ancestral longing for fellowship: everyone eating and drinking together, as brothers and sisters, at home.

Post Festum, we can say: the final Rio+20 document offers a generous menu of suggestions and proposals, none of which is obligatory. There is a dose of moving good will, and a scary, even pitiful, analytical naiveté. It is not a compass leading us to «the future we want», but in the direction of an abyss.

This failed outcome is due to the almost religious belief that the solution to the present systemic crisis is found in the poison that produced it: the economy. It is not about the economy in the transcendental sense, namely, the process –without regard to the means– that guarantees the material basis of life, but the economic structure, that which actually exists, that has recently dealt a blow to everything else (to politics, culture and ethics) and installed itself, sovereign, as the sole engine of society. It is the «Great Transformation» that the Hungarian-Northamerican economist Karl Polanyi energetically denounced in 1944. This type of economy fills all aspects of life. Governed by a ferocious competitiveness, it proposes accumulating as much wealth as possible, utilizing, to the point of depleting all ecosystems, everything that can be commercialized and consumed. This logic has thrown all relationships with the Earth and among humans off balance.

Facing this chaos, Ban Ki Moon, General Secretary of the United Nations, never tires of repeating at Conference openings: we are running out of time to save ourselves. In 2011 in Davos, Switzerland, he emphatically declared in front of the «lords of money and of the economic war»: «The present world economic model is a pact for global suicide». Albert Joacquard, the well-known French geneticist, titled one of his last books: Has the countdown begun? (2009). The decision-makers do not pay the least attention to the warnings of the world scientific community. Never before have there been such chasms between science and politics, between ethics and economics. It reminds me of Napoleon’s cynical comment after the battle of Eylau, on seeing thousands of dead soldiers in the snow: «One night in Paris will make up for all this». They continue reciting the creed: more of the same, of economics, and we will emerge from this crisis. Can there be a pact between the lamb (ecology) and the wolf (economy)? All indications are that it is impossible.

You can add any adjective you want to this type of economy — sustainable, green… or any other — but it will not change its nature. They imagine that polishing the wolf’s teeth will remove its ferocity, when the ferocity does not reside in the wolf’s teeth, but in its nature. The nature of this economy is to grow constantly, even if it means devastating the nature-system and the life-system. Not to grow would mean death itself.

But the Earth can no longer tolerate this systematic assault on her goods and services. To this, add social injustice, which is as grave as the ecologic injustice. The average rich man uses 16 times more than a poor one. And an African has a thirty year shorter life expectancy than a European (Jaquard, 28).

Facing such crimes, how can one not be indignant, and demand a change of direction? The Earthcharter offers us a secure path: «As never before in history, the common destiny calls us to seek a new beginning, one that requires a change of mentality and of heart, a new sense of global interdependency and universal responsibility… to reach a sustainable mode of life at the local, regional and global levels» (final). A change of mentality implies a new view of the Earth, not as a «world-machine» but as a living organism: Mother Earth, who deserves respect and caring.

A change of heart means overcoming the dictatorship of scientific-technical reason, and regaining sensible reason, wherein reside profound feelings, passion for change and love and respect for everything that exists and lives. Instead of competition, to experience global interdependency, another name for cooperation; and instead of indifference, universal responsibility, that is, deciding to face global danger together.

The words of the Nazarene are on point: «unless you change, all of you shall perish» (Luke 13,5).