Categoria: Idiomas

Sustainability and Education

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

Sustainability, one of the central themes of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Río+20, that will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from June 20 to 22 of this year, is not produced mechanically. Sustainability results from a process of education, through which humans redefine all the relationships maintained with the universe, the Earth, nature, society and with themselves, within the criteria of ecological equilibrium, of respect and love for the Earth and the community of life, of solidarity with future generations and of building an unending socio-ecological democracy.

I am convinced that only a generalized process of education can develop, as the Earthcharter seeks, the new minds and hearts capable of carrying out the paradigmatic revolution demanded by the global threat under which we currently live. As Paulo Freire often said : «education does not change the world: education changes the people who will change the world». Everyone is urged to change now. We have no alternative: either we change, or we will know darkness.

I will not address here the many aspects of education so well presented by UNESCO in 1966: learn to know, to do, to be and to live together; to these, I would add, learn to care for Mother Earth and for all beings. But even this education is insufficient. The changed world situation demands that everything be ecologized, this is, that every human being lend his and her cooperation to protect the Earth, to save human life and our planet. Consequently, the ecological moment must permeate all knowledge.

On December 20, 2002, the UN approved a resolution proclaiming the years 2005 to 2014 as the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. That document defines 15 strategic perspectives towards a sustainable education. We will mention some:

Socio-cultural Perspectives, including human rights, peace and security, equality among the sexes, cultural diversity and inter-cultural understanding, health, AIDS, global government.

Environmental Perspectives includes natural resources (water, energy, agriculture and biodiversity), climatic changes, rural development, sustainable urbanization, prevention and mitigation of catastrophes.

Economic Perspectives, whose objectives are reducing poverty and misery, and building responsibility and accountability of business. Thus, the ecologic moment must be present in all disciplines. Otherwise, generalized sustainability will not be attained.

When the ecological paradigm burst, we all became aware of the fact that we all are eco-dependant. We participate in a community of interests with all the other living beings that share the biosphere with us. The basic common interest is maintaining the conditions for the continuity of life and of the Earth herself, understood as Gaia. That is the final goal of sustainability. Starting now, education must quickly include the four great tendencies of ecology: environmental, social, integral, and mental or profound (the one that deals with our place in nature).

Among educators, this perspective is ever more present: to educate to live well, which is the art of living in harmony with nature, and of deciding to share equitably with other humans the resources of culture and of sustainable development. We must understand that it is not just a question of making corrections to the system that caused the present ecologic crisis, but to educate for its transformation. This implies overcoming the still prevalent reductionist and mechanical vision, and building a culture of complexity, that allows us to see the interrelations of the living world and the eco-dependencies of the human being. This awareness requires environmental questions to be addressed in a global and integrated manner.

This type of education creates the ethical dimension of responsibility and caring for the Earth and humanity’s common future. It makes the human being become the caretaker of our Common House and guardian of all beings. We want democracy without end (Boaventura de Souza Santos) to assume socio-ecologic characteristics, because only that way will it be suitable for the ecozoic era, and respond to the demands of the new paradigm. Human beings, Earth and nature mutually belong to each other. That is why it is possible to forge a path of peaceful coexistence. That is the challenge of education in our days.

Who Cares for the Caregiver?

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

The first and most ancient of caregivers were our mothers and grandmothers, who from early humanity have cared for the children. But for them, none of us would be here to talk about caring.

We would like to mention in this context two figures, true archetypes of caring: the Swiss physician, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) and the British nurse, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910).

Albert Schweitzer was an exceptional Biblical exegete and one of the best concert interpreters of Bach of his time. When he was 30 years old, already famous throughout Europe, he left everything, and studied medicine, in the spirit of the beatitudes of Jesus, to care for the poorest of the poor, the lepers, in Lambarene (Gabon). He explicitly confessed in one of his letters: «what we need are not missionaries who want to convert the Africans, but persons ready to do what must be done for the poor, if the Sermon on the Mount and the words of Jesus are to have any value. My life is neither in the arts nor in science but in being a simple human being who, in the spirit of Jesus, does something, no matter how insignificant it may be». He was one of the first Nobel Peace prize laureates.

Schweitzer lived and worked for about forty years in a hospital he built with money earned from his Bach concert tours. In his scarce free hours, he managed to write a vast work centered on the ethics of caring and respect for life. He expressed his motto this way: «ethics is the unlimited responsibility for all that exists and lives». He affirms in another book: «the key idea of good consists of preserving life, developing and raising it to its highest value; evil consists of destroying life, damaging and precluding its full development; this is the necessary, universal and absolute principle of ethics».

Another archetype of caring was the British nurse, Florence Nightingale. A humanist, and profoundly religious, she decided to improve the nursing models in her country.

In 1854, with 38 companions, Florence went to the Crimean war, in Turkey, where fragmentation bombs that caused many casualties were being used. Strict application of the practice of caring in the military hospital reduced mortality from 42% to 2% in 6 months. This success brought her universal notoriety.

Back in her country, and shortly thereafter in the United States, she created a network of hospitals that applied caring as the fundamental principle guiding nursing, and as its natural ethic. Florence Nightingale continues to be an inspiring reference.

Health workers are fundamentally caregivers. They care for the well being of the others, as a mission and a life option. But, who cares for the caregiver? ¿Quem Cuida do Cuidador? is the title of a beautiful book by physician Eugenio Paes Campos (Vozes 2005).

We start from the fact that the human being is, by nature and essence, a being of caring. The human being feels predisposed to care for the other, and also feels the need to be cared for. To care for and to be taken care of are existential elements (permanent structures) that are inseparable. It is known that caring is demanding, and can cause stress to the caregiver. Specially if the caring constitutes, as it should be, not a sporadic act, but a permanent and conscious attitude. We are limited, subject to becoming tired, and to experiencing small failures and deceptions. We feel alone. We need to be cared for, if not, our desire to care for others diminishes. What must we do then?

Logically, each person must confront with resilience (the capacity to heal) this painful situation. But this effort is no substitute for the desire to be cared for. It is then that the community of caregivers, other health workers, physicians and the body of nurses, must take action.

Nurses and physicians, male and female, also need to be cared for. They need to feel welcomed and revived, exactly as mothers do with their sons and daughters. At times they feel the need for caring as support, sustenance and protection, things that a father offers to his sons and daughters.

That is when what pediatrician D. W. Winnicott called holding is created: namely, the group of caring and animating factors that strengthen the stimulus to continue caring for the patients. When this spirit of caring prevails, lateral relationships of trust and mutual cooperation appear, and the discomfort born of the need to be cared for is overcome.

Happy is the hospital and still happier are the patients who can count on a team of caregivers. They will have neither «signers of medical prescriptions» nor providers of formulas, but human beings «caring» for infirm lives that seek health. The good energy that caring irradiates reinforces healing.

Some improvements to the current model of Sustainability

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

To be sustainable, development must be economically viable, socially just and environmentally correct. We have already criticized the standard model. But we must be fair. There have been analysts and thinkers who have noticed the deficiencies of this tripod, and have added other complimentary pillars. Let us examine some.

Conduct of the sustainable mind.

For there to be sustainable development, there must first be created a new mental scheme, which its formulator, professor Evandro Vieira Ouriques of the School of Communications of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, has called, conduct of the sustainable mind. It attempts to revive the value of sensible reason, through which the human being is aware of being part of nature, imposes self-control to limit productivity and consumerism, and seeks an integral development, not only economic, but with human dimensions. It is an undeniable advance. It would be better if it understood the Earth-Humanity-Development as a unique and great interconnected system, creating a new paradigm.

Generosity:

Rogerio Ruschel, editor of the electronics magazine \”Business of the Good\”, added another pillar: the ethical category of generosity. It is founded on a basic anthropologic fact: the human being does not just egotistically seek his individual good; the human being is much more of a social being, who puts the common good above the individual good or the interests of others at the same level as himself. Generous is the person who shares, who distributes knowledge and experiences, expecting nothing in return. A society is human when it goes beyond a necessary justice, to incorporate the generosity and spirit of cooperation of its citizens.

For Ruschel, generosity is in direct opposition to the basic tenet of speculative capital, that greed is good, namely, profit is good. Profit is not good, it is perverse, because it has almost destroyed the whole world economic system. There is in generosity something true, because it is specifically human. In the metaphor of the Marcondes journalist of the UN “Envolverde”, a distinction must be made between simple philanthropy and generosity, social responsibility and sustainability. Philantropy gives a fish to the one who is hungry; social responsibility teaches him how to fish; and sustainability cares for the river and allows for fishing and, with the fish, overcomes hunger. However, it seems to us that generosity alone is insufficient. It requires other solutions, such as overcoming inequality and the practices of consumption, and developing a concern for the community of life, that must also be nourished and preserved.

Culture:

In 2001, Australian John Hawkes launched «the fourth pillar of sustainability: the essential function of culture in public planning». In Brazil, credit goes to Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, founder of the enterprise, “Seeking Solutions” and author of the book, Economics of Sustainable Culture and Development, who has taken it on, and spread it through her many courses and lectures. This aspect of culture is fundamental, because it contains principles and values absent from the standard concept of sustainability. It favors cultivating such typically human dimensions as social cohesion, arts, religion, creativity and the sciences. It eliminates the obsession with profit, and is in better harmony with the logic of nature. As it happens, the dimension of culture has been kidnapped by commercial interests. It can only be truly efficacious when, liberated, it develops a creative relationship with nature.

The neuroplasticity of the brain:

Scientists have come to recognize that the neuronal structure of the brain is extremely plastic. Through critical analysis to the consumerist system, one can create habits of moderation, respectful of the cycles of nature. The brain co-evolves according to the exterior evolution, thus creating a relationship of inter-dependency.

And, finally, the essential caring:

I myself have developed the category of caring as essential for sustainability. As presented in two texts –Essential Caring: ethics of the human–compassion for the Earth (1999) and The necessary Caring (2012)–, I understand caring as a cosmological and biological constant. The details can be found in the afore-mentioned books.

In this phase of the search for more adequate means of guaranteeing the sustainability of the Earth and the future of our species, all contributions are welcome, and they always shed some light.

Panteism and Panenteism: a necessary Distinction

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

A radical and coherent cosmological vision holds that the ultimate subject of everything that happens is the universe itself. The universe causes the appearance of beings, complexities, biodiversity, consciousness, and the contents of that consciousness, of which we are a part.

Thus, before it arose as an idea in our heads, the reality of God was in the universe itself. Because the reality of God was in the universe, the idea of God could come forth in us. Starting from this concept, we can understand that God is inherent in the universe. God is mixed with all the processes, without being diluted by them. Better yet, God orients the arrow of time towards the formation of ever more complex and dynamic orders, (that, consequently, distance themselves from the equilibrium to seek new adaptations), that are filled with purpose. God appears, in the language of cross-cultural traditions, as the creative Spirit, and organizer of all that exists. God is mixed with all things, participating in their development, suffering with mass extinctions, feeling crucified with the impoverished, and happy with the advances towards more convergent and interrelated diversities, pointing towards an Omega end point.

God is present in the cosmos and the cosmos is present in God. The old theology expressed this mutual inter-penetration by the concept of «pericoresis» applied to the relationships between God and creation, and thereafter, to the Persons of the Divine Trinity. Modern theology has coined another expression, «panenteism» (in Greek: pan=all; en=in; theos=God). This is: God is in everything and everything is in God. This word was proposed by an Evangelical, Frederick Krause (l781-1832), who was fascinated by the divine splendor of the universe.

Panenteism must be clearly distinguished from panteism. Panteism (in Greek: pan = all; theos=God) affirms that all is God and God is all. It holds that God and the world are identical; that the world is not a creation of God, but the necessary mode of being of God. Panteism accepts no differentiation: heaven is God, the Earth is God, the rock is God and the human being is God. This lack of differentiation easily leads to indifference. All is God and God is all, consequently it makes no difference whether I concern myself for a girl abused in a bus of Rio, or about the Carnival, or the indigenous peoples facing extinction, or a law against homophobia. This is manifestly erroneous, because differences exist and persist.

Not all is God. Things are what they are: things. However, God is in things and things are of God, by reason of His act of creation. The creature always depends on God and without God the creature would return to the nothingness whence it came. God and the world are different, but they are neither separated nor closed, they are open one for the other. They are different so as to make possible mutual encounter and communion. Through it, transcendence and immanence, the contrasting categories of Greek origin, are left behind.
Immanence is this world, here. Transcendence is the world that is beyond this. Christianity, by the incarnation of God created a new category: transparence, that is the presence of the transcendence (God) within the immanence (world). When this happens, God and the world mutually make each other transparent. As Jesus said: \”who sees me, sees the Father\”. Teilhard de Chardin lived a moving spirituality of the transparence. In The Divine Milieu, an essay on the interior life, (Le milieu divin, 162), he said: «the great mystery of Christianity is not the apparition, but the transparence of God in the universe. Not only the ray that emerges, but the ray that penetrates. Not the Epiphany but the Diaphaneity».

The universe in cosmogenesis invites us to live the experience that underlies panenteism: in every minimal manifestation of being, in every movement, in every expression of life we are in the presence and action of God. Embracing the world we embrace God. Those who are sensitive to the Sacred and to the Mystery pull God out of anonymity, and give the Divine a name. They celebrate the Divine with hymns, songs and rites, through which they express their experience of God. They are witness to what Paul said to the Greeks from Athens: “We live, we move, we exist in God.” (17, 28).