Categoria: Idiomas

“Only a God can Save us”

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

This phrase does not come from a pope, but from Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), one of the most profound German philosophers of the XX century, in an interview with the weekly Der Spiegel, of September 23, 1966, but only published on May 31, 1976, a week after he died. Heidegger was always an attentive observer of the threatening destinies of our technological civilization. To him, technology, as an intervention in the natural dynamics of the world for human benefit, had penetrated our way of being in such a way that it had become second nature. 



We cannot imagine ourselves today without the vast scientific-technological apparatus on which our civilization is based, but which is dominated by an opportunistic compulsion that translates into the formula: if we can do it, we must do it, without any ethical considerations. Weapons of mass destruction came from this attitude. They exist, so why not use them?



For the philosopher, such a technique, without conscience, is the clearest expression of our paradigm and mentality, both born at the dawn of modernity, in the XVI century, but whose roots already existed in classical Greek metaphysics. This mentality is guided by exploitation, by calculation, by mechanization and by efficiency, applied in all fields, but mainly in relation to nature. This understanding has so overtaken us that we consider technology to be a panacea for all our problems. Unconsciously we define ourselves in opposition to nature, which must be dominated and exploited. We, ourselves, become objects of science, as our organs and even our genes are manipulated. 



The divorce of human beings from nature is shown by the ever increasing environmental and social degradation. The maintenance and acceleration of the technological process, according to the philosopher, can lead us to eventual self-destruction. The death machine was already built decades ago. 



Ethical and religious calls, and, least of all, simple good will, are not enough for us to escape this situation. It is a metaphysical problem, that is, of a way of seeing and thinking about reality. We are on a fast moving train; headed towards an encounter with the abyss ahead, and we do not know how to stop it. What can we do? That is the question. 



If we wanted, we could find a different mentality in our cultural tradition, in the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Heraclitus, among others, who still recognized the organic connection between human beings and nature, between the divine and the earthly, and nourished a sense of belonging to a main Whole. Knowledge was not placed at the service of power, but of life, and of the contemplation of the mystery of being. Or, it could be found in all the contemporary reflections about the new cosmological-ecological paradigm, that see the unity and complexity of the sole and great process of evolution, from which all beings emerge and are interdependent. But this path is forbidden to us by the excess of techno-science, of calculating rationality, and by the immense economic interests of the great consortiums that live off the present status quo.



Where are we headed? It was in this context that Heidegger pronounced this famous and prophetic sentence: «Philosophy cannot directly provoke a change of the present situation of the world. And this is not true only for philosophy but also for all activity of human thought. Only a God can still save us (Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten). The sole possibility we have, in thought and poetry, is to prepare our availability for the appearance of that God or for the absence of God in sunset times (Untergrund); given that we, if God is absent, will disappear.» 



What Heidegger affirmed is also being forcefully expressed by notable thinkers, scientists and ecologists. Either we change our ways, or our civilization endangers its own future. Our attitude is one of openness to an advent of God, that powerful and loving energy that sustains every being and the whole universe. That God can save us. This attitude is well represented by the openness of poetry and free thinkers. And since God, according to Scriptures, is «the supreme lover of life» (Sabiduría 11,24), we hope that God will not allow a tragic end for the human being. Humans exist to shine, to live in harmony and to be happy.


Another Paradigm: Listening to Nature

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário


Now that the great rains will be coming soon; floods, storms, hurricanes and landslides, we must learn again to listen to nature.

Our entire Western culture, of Greek origin, is based on seeing. It is no accident that the central category – idea (eidos in Greek) – means vision. Tele-vision is its main expression. We have developed our vision to the fullest. With high powered telescopes we have penetrated even the depths of the universe, to see more distant galaxies. We have delved down to the most elemental particles and to the intimate mystery of life. To see is everything for us. But we must be aware that this is the way of Westerners, and not of everyone else.


Other cultures very near to us, the Andean cultures of the Kechuas, Aymaras and others, structure themselves around escuchar — to listen. Logically, they also see, but it is their touchstone to listen to the messages of what they see. A peasant from the Bolivian altiplano told me: «I listen to nature and I know what the mountain tells me». And talking with a chaman, he said to me: «I listen to Pachamama and know what she is communicating to me».

Everything speaks: the stars, the sun, the moon, the magnificent mountains, the serene lakes, the deep valleys, the fleeting clouds, the jungles, the birds and the animals. These people learn to listen thoughtfully to these voices. Books are not important to them because they are mute, while nature is filled with voices. And they are so specialized in this listening that, seeing the clouds, listening to the wind, observing the flames or the movements of the ants, they know what is going to happen in nature. 

This reminds me an old theological tradition elaborated by Saint Augustine and systematized by Saint Bonaventure in the Middle Ages: the first divine revelation is the voice of nature, the true speaking book of God. But since we had lost our capacity to listen, God, taking pity on us, gave us a second book, the Bible, so that listening to the Bible’s contents we could hear once again what nature is telling us.


In 1532 in Cajamarca, when Francisco Pizarro, by means of a treacherous ambush, captured the Inka chief Atahualpa, he ordered the Dominican friar, Vicente Valverde, to read to him, through his interpreter Felipillo, the requerimiento, a text in Latin, so that they would accept being baptized and would submit to the Spanish sovereigns, because the pope had ordered it. If they refused, they would be enslaved for disobedience. Atahualpa asked him where the authority came from. Valverde handed him the book of the Bible. Atahualpa put the book in his ear. Since he did not hear anything, he threw the Bible to the ground. Pizarro took that as a signal to massacre the whole royal guard and imprison the sovereign Inka. From this, we can see that escuchar, to listen, was everything for Atahualpa. The Bible did not speak.


For Andean culture, everything is structured within a web of living relations, full of meaning and messages. The Andean people perceive the thread that penetrates, unifies and gives meaning to everything. We Westerners, see the trees but not the woods. Things are isolated from one another. They are mute. Speaking is our thing only. We understand things apart from their relationships, that is why our language is formal and cold. With it, we have developed philosophies, theologies, doctrines, sciences and dogmas. But that is only our way of experiencing the world, not the way of all the peoples of the Earth.


The Andean help us make relative our supposed «universalism». We can express messages through other relational and inclusive forms, rather than the objective and mute ones to which are accustomed. The Andean peoples challenge us to escuchar the messages that come to us from everywhere. In these days, we must listen to the warnings of the dark clouds, the woods on the mountainsides, the rivers that swell and tear down barriers, the steep slopes and loose rocks. The natural sciences can help us in this listening. But it is not our cultural habit to heed the warnings of that which we see, and our deafness makes us victims of regretable disasters. We can only dominate nature by obeying her, that is, by listening to what she would teach us. Deafness will give us bitter lessons.

Judgement Day For Our Culture?

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

The end of the year offers a chance to make an accounting of our human situation on this planet. What can we hope for and what way will history go? Those are worrisome questions, because the global landscape is somber. A crisis of structural magnitude lurks in the heart of the dominant economic-social system (Europe and United States), with repercussions for the rest of the world. The Bible has a recurrent theme in the prophetic tradition: judgment day is near. It is the day of revelation: the truth comes out, and our mistakes and sins are revealed as enemies of life. Great historians like Toynbee and von Ranke also speak of judgment of entire cultures. I believe we really are faced with a global judgment of our way of living on the Earth, and of the relationship we maintain with her.

Considering the situation at a deeper level, one that looks beyond the economic analysis prevailing with governments, businesses, world forums, and the media, we can see with ever more clarity the contradiction that exists between the logic of our modern culture, with its political economics, individualism and consumerism, and the logic of the natural processes of our living planet, the Earth. They are incompatible. The first is competitive, the latter, cooperative. The first is exclusive, the latter, inclusive. The first puts its principal value on the individual, the latter, on the good of all. The first gives centrality to merchandise, the latter, to life in all its forms. If we do not do something, this incompatibility could lead us to a very severe impasse.

This incompatibility is aggravated by the premises underlying our social process: that we can grow without limits, that the resources are inexhaustible and that material and individual prosperity bring us the happiness that we so desire. These premises are illusory: resources are limited and a finite Earth cannot sustain infinite development. Prosperity and individualism are not bringing us happiness, but great loneliness, depression, violence and suicide.

There are two problems that interact, and could cause upheavals in the future: global warming and human overpopulation. Global warming is a term that encompasses the impact our civilization has on nature, threatening the sustainability of life and the Earth. The result is the annual emission of billions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane, which is 23 times more destructive than the former. The accelerating thawing of the frozen soil of the Siberian tundra (the permafrost), will create in the coming decades the danger of an abrupt warming of 4 to 5 degrees centigrade, that could devastate great portions of life on Earth. The increase in human population causes more goods and natural services to be exploited, more energy used, and more greenhouse gasses to be expelled into the atmosphere.

The strategies for controlling this threatening situation are largely ignored by governments and decision-makers. Our deeply rooted individualism has precluded a consensus from being reached in UN gatherings. Each country sees only its own interests, and is blind to the collective interest and the planet as a whole. And this way we are recklessly approaching an abysm.

But the mother of all the above-mentioned distortions is our anthropocentrism, the conviction that we human beings are the center of everything, and that everything has been created for us alone, losing sight of our dependency on everything around us. That is the source of our destructiveness, that causes us to devastate nature to satisfy our desires.

Some humility and perspective is urgently needed. The universe is 13.7 billion years old; the Earth, 4.45 billion; life, 3.8 billion; human life, 5-7 million; and the homo sapiens, some 130-140,000 years. Consequently, we were born only “few minutes” ago, the fruit of all the previous history. And from sapiens we are going to demens, threatening our companions in the community of life.

We have reached the apex of the process of evolution, not to destroy, but to guard and care for this sacred legacy. Only then will judgment day reveal our true identity and our mission here on Earth.

The Nativity of yesterday: always new

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

I am from a time, the 1940s, when Santa Claus had not yet arrived in his sleigh. In our Italian, German and Polish colonies, explorers of the Concordia region (Santa Catarina), known as the site of Sadia and Seara, with their good meat products, only the Baby Jesus was known. Those were times of ingenuous and profound faith, that informed all the details of life. To us children, the Nativity was the culmination of the year, prepared for and eagerly awaited. The Baby Jesus would come at last, with His little donkey (musseta, in Veneto) bringing us presents.

The region had pine groves as far as we could see, and it was easy to find a beautiful pine tree. We adorned it with rudimentary materials that are still being made in that region. We used colored and cellophane paper and paintings we ourselves would make at school. Mother would prepare cookies with different figures of humans and small bugs, which we hung from the branches of the pine tree. On top of the tree there was always a large star, wrapped in yellow paper. Below, around the tree, we put the Nativity Scene, made of paper figures cut from a magazine to which my father, a school teacher, subscribed. There was Good Joseph, Mary, quietly withdrawn, the Magi, the shepherds, the little sheep, the ox and the donkey, a few dogs, and the singing angels that we hung from the lowest branches of the pine tree. And, naturally, in the middle, the Baby Jesus. Seeing him almost nude, we imagined him shivering from the cold, and we were filled with compassion.

We lived the glorious era of the myth. Myths express truth better than pure and simple historical description. How can one speak of a God who becomes a child, of the mystery of the human being, of salvation, of good and evil, other than by telling stories and offering myths that reveal the profound meaning of the event? The stories of the birth of Jesus that are in the gospels contain historical elements, but to emphasize their religious meaning, they are told in mythical and symbolic language. To us children, all of that was truth, that we accepted enthusiastically.

Before receiving their thirteenth salary, the teachers were given an extra Nativity bonus. My father spent that money on gifts for his 11 children. They were gifts that came from far away, and they were all instructive: a pack of cards with the names of important musicians, of famous painters, whose names were hard for us to pronounce, and we would laugh about their beards, their noses, or of any other detail. A gift that was very successful: a box with materials to build a house or a castle. We older children, who were starting to participate in modernity, got a jeep or a car moved by cord, or a wheel that sent sparks when moved, and other similar things.

So that there would be no fights, each gift had written below the name of the son or the daughter. And after, the negotiations and exchanges began. The irrefutable proof the Baby Jesus had passed by our house was the disappearance of the bundles of fresh grass. We would run to prove it. And it was a fact: the musseta had eaten it all.

Now we live in times of reason and debunking of myths. But that is only true for adults. Children, who now have Santa Claus instead of the Baby Jesus, live in the enchanted world of dreams. The good little old man brings presents and good advise. Since I have a white beard, no boy or girl who walks by me fails to call me Santa Claus. I tell them that I am not Santa Claus, but his brother, who comes to see if the children are doing as they should, and after that, I tell everything to Santa Claus so that he may bring them a nice present. In spite of that, many doubt. They come close, touch my beard and say: No, you are the real Santa Claus. I am a person like any other, but the myth makes me be a true Santa Claus.

 If we adults, children of criticism and myth debunking can no longer be enchanted, let’s allow our sons and daughters to be enchanted, and to enjoy the kingdom of fantasy. Their existence will be filled with meaning and joy. What more do we want from the Nativity, than those precious gifts that Jesus also wanted to bring to this world?