Categoria: Religião

Characteristics of the emerging new cosmologican paradigm

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

There is much talk today of the destruction of paradigms. But there is a great paradigm, formulated almost a century ago, that offers a unified understanding of the universe, of history and of life. We would offer some aspects of the thinking that characterizes it.

1) Totality/diversity: The universe, the Earth system, the human phenomenon are evolving. They are organic and dynamic wholes built from the networks of multiple diverse interconnections. Along with an analysis that separates, simplifies and generalizes, it is good to elaborate the synthesis by which we do justice to this totality. It is a holism, not as the sum, but as the totality of the diversities organically interlinked.

2) Interdependence/re-link/relative autonomy: Since one needs others to exist and co-evolve, all beings are interconnected. For this reason there is a basic cosmic solidarity that limits natural selection. But each enjoys relative autonomy and possesses meaning and value in and of itself.

3) Relationships/power fields: All beings are part of a network of relationships. Outside the relationship there is nothing. Along with the beings themselves, it is important to grasp the relationships between them. Everything is within these fields, therefore everything relates to everything else.

4) Complexity/interiority: Everything is charged with energies of different degrees of complexity and interaction. Highly concentrated and stabilized energy presents itself as matter, and when it is less stable, as a field of energy. Given the interrelationships among everything, beings are endowed with accumulated information, especially the superior living beings, carriers of genetic codes. This phenomenon of evolution shows the intentionality of the universe, pointing towards an interiority, towards a supremely complex consciousness. Such dynamism causes the universe to be seen as an intelligent and self organizing totality. Quantitatively, the process is indivisible, but it always occurs within the cosmic genesis, as a global process of the emergence of all beings. This understanding allows us to pose the question of a constructive thread that runs through the entire cosmic process that unifies everything, and that causes chaos to be creative and order always to be open to new interactions (Prigogine’s dissipative structures). The Tao category, Jehovah and God could hermeneutically fill this meaning.

5) Complementarity/reciprocity/chaos: All reality occurs in the form of particles and waves, energy and matter, order and disorder, chaos and cosmos and, at the human level, in the form of sapiens and demens. This is not a defect, but the mark of the global process. But they are complementary dimensions.

6) The Passage of time/entropy: All that exists pre-exists and co-exists. Thus, the passage of time confers on the relationships a characteristic of irreversibility. Nothing can be understood without a reference to rational history and personal trajectory. It is open to the future. This is why no being is ready and finished, but full of potential. Total harmony is future promise and not present celebration. As the philosopher Ernst Bloch put it so well: “genesis is at the end and not the beginning”. Universal history obeys the laws of thermodynamics: the passage of time, that is: in the closed systems (the limited natural goods of the Earth) entropy must be taken into account in considering temporal evolution. The energies are irremediably dissipating and no one can stop it. But the human being can prolong the condition of his life and of the planet. As a whole, the universe is an open system that self organizes and continuously transits towards higher levels of life and of order. They escape entropy (Prigogine’s dissipative structures) and open it to the dimension of the Mystery of a life without entropy and absolutely dynamic.

7) Common destiny/personal: Because we have a common origin and everything is interconnected, we all have a common destiny in an always open future. Within it must be found one’s personal destiny and that of every being, because in each being the process of evolution culminates. What this future will be and what will be our final destiny fall in the realm of Mystery and the unforeseeable.

8) Cosmic good/particular common good: The common good is not only human but of the whole community of life, planetary and cosmic. All that exists and lives deserves to exist, to live and to coexist. The individual common good emerges from being in harmony with the dynamics of the universal common good.

9) Creativity/destructiveness: The human being, man and woman, in the collection of related beings and interactions, has its singularity: it is an extremely complex and co-creative being because it intervenes in the rhythm of nature. As an observer it is always interacting with everything around it, and this interaction causes the collapse of the wave function that congeals into particle matter (Heisenberg’s indetermination principle). The human enters into the world as it presents itself, as a realization of quantum probabilities (particle/wave). S/he is also an ethical being, able to think of the pros and cons, to act beyond the logic of self interest and in favor of the interests of the weaker beings, and equally capable of attacking nature and destroying species (the new era of the antropocene).

10) Holistic-ecological attitude/antropocentrism: The attitude of unconditional openness and inclusion speaks of a radically ecological cosmo-vision (of pan-relationality and re-linking of the whole), surmounting the historic anthropocentrism. It also allows us to be more unique and, at the same time, solidarian, complementary and creative. In this manner we are in harmony with the whole universe, whose final end lies under the veil of the Mystery found in the field of human impossibility. The possible repeats itself. The impossible happens: God.

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar,
done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

DILMA E O GRUPO EMAÚS: Frei Betto

Leonardo Boff18 Comentários

A presidenta Dilma recebeu, a 26/11, uma delegação do Grupo Emaús: Leonardo Boff, Márcia Miranda, Maria Helena Arrochellas, Luiz Carlos Susin, Rosileny Schwantes e eu. Entregamos a ela a carta “O Brasil que queremos”, com críticas e sugestões ao governo. E insistimos no diálogo com os movimentos sociais.

O Grupo Emaús existe há 40 anos. O nome deriva do episódio evangélico (Lucas 24, 13-35), no qual Jesus ressuscitado, a caminho do povoado chamado Emaús, encontra dois discípulos abatidos por ele ter sido crucificado sem que suas promessas se cumprissem.

Sem se darem conta de que estão acompanhados pelo próprio Jesus, ouvem o que este diz e, enfim, abrem os olhos da fé e, no jantar em Emaús, reconhecem, ao partilharem o pão, a presença viva daquele que fora crucificado.

A ideia do grupo nasceu de frades dominicanos encarcerados sob a ditadura. A teologia da libertação despontava na América Latina. Leonardo Boff havia lançado, em 1972, no Brasil, seu “Jesus Cristo libertador”, e Gustavo Gutiérrez, no Peru, “Teologia da Libertação” (1971), dedicado ao padre Henrique Pereira Neto, assessor de Dom Helder Camara, assassinado no Recife pela ditadura.

Nossa proposta era aglutinar teólogos e assessores de Comunidades Eclesiais de Base em um grupo capaz de dar consistência metodológica à teologia da libertação (que encara a fé pela ótica dos pobres) e criar ferramentas para difundi-la. Sociólogos(as), educadores(as), filósofos(as) e militantes de pastorais populares se incorporaram ao grupo.

Somos, hoje, cerca de 40 participantes, entre católicos e protestantes. Reservamos dois fins de semana do ano para nos encontrar. Então, relatamos nossas atividades pessoais, analisamos as conjunturas política e eclesial, debatemos um tema previamente escolhido, oramos e promovemos uma celebração litúrgica no domingo.

Nesses 40 anos, o Grupo Emaús produziu frutos consistentes: assessorias às Comunidades Eclesiais de Base e a seus encontros nacionais, denominados intereclesiais; curso anual de atualização teológica para bispos da América Latina; criação do Movimento Fé e Política, do CESEEP (Centro Ecumênico de Serviço à Evangelização e Educação Popular), e do CEBI (Centro de Estudos Bíblicos), do Curso de Verão (em várias capitais, destinados a militantes de pastorais populares); edição da coleção “Teologia da Libertação”, pela editora Vozes; assessoria às Campanhas da Fraternidade, promovidas anualmente pela CNBB e o CONIC; realização, em maio deste ano, do I Encontro de Espiritualidade para Jovens etc.

Somos um grupo apartidário e ecumênico, aberto ao diálogo com outras denominações religiosas. O que nos une é a fé cristã, o serviço à fé dos mais pobres e o amor à Igreja.

Temos opiniões políticas distintas, razão pela qual nem todos assinaram a carta à Dilma. Porém, não somos uma “academia teológica”, e todos mantemos vínculos com as comunidades cristãs populares e os movimentos sociais.

Entre nós há quem trabalha com catadores de material reciclável, comunidades de favelas, jovens, direitos humanos, proteção ambiental, grupos de oração, grupos de estudos bíblicos e assessorias internacionais em âmbito pastoral, ecumênico, e de diálogo entre fé e ciência, religião e Estado.

Convidamos, às nossas reuniões, amigos que, eventualmente, possam participar de uma reflexão específica. Assim, já estiveram conosco Luis Dulci, Gilberto Carvalho, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Michael Lowy e outros. O mais recente convite foi à presidenta Dilma.

Frei Betto é escritor, autor de “Oito vias para ser feliz” (Planeta), entre outros livros.

If we knew the White man’s dreams…

Leonardo Boff3 Comentários

The economic-financial crisis that afflicts much of world economy has made it possible for the very rich to become even richer, more than ever before in the history of capitalism, and, logically, at the expense of disgracing entire countries such as Greece, Spain and others, and in general terms, the whole Euro zone, perhaps with one minor exception, Germany. Ladislau Dowbor (http://dowbor.org), economics professor of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica, (PUC-SP), Sao Paulo, Brazil, reviewed a study by the famous Instituto Federal Suizo de Investigacion Tecnologica (ETH) which competes in credibility with research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (MIT), of Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In this study Dowbor explains the workings of the world corporate power network, comprised of 737 principal actors that control the main financial functions of the world, mainly through great banks and other immense multinational corporations. To them, the present crisis is an incomparable opportunity to realize the biggest capitalist dream: ever greater and more concentrated accumulation.

Capitalism has now realized its dream, possibly the last in its already long history. It has reached the top. And after the top? No one knows. But we can imagine that the answer will not come from other models of production and consumption, but from Mother Earth, Gaia, herself, who, being finite, cannot support an infinite project. She is giving clear warning signals that, according to the Nobel Laureate in Medicine, Christian de Duve (see the book, Vital Dust: life as a cosmic imperative, (Polvo Vital: la vida como imperativo cosmico, 1997), are like those that preceded the great devastations that have occurred in Earth’s already long history, (3.8 billion years). We must be on guard because the extreme events we are already experiencing point to eventual socio-ecological catastrophes, perhaps even during our lifetimes.

Worst of all is the fact that politicians, much of the scientific community, and of the population, are not taking note of that dangerous reality. It is distorted or concealed, because it is too contrary to the system. It would force us to change, something that few desire. Antonio Donato Nobre put it well is a very recent study (2014) on The Climatic Future of the Amazon, (El futuro climatico de la Amazonia): «If conscientious farmers knew what the scientific community knows (the great droughts to come), they would be in the streets with banners demanding that the government protect the jungles and plant trees on their lands».

We need a big dream that galvanizes people to protect life on the Planet and guarantee the future of the human species. Ideologies die. Philosophies get old. But the great dreams remain. They guide us through new visions and encourage us to create new social relationships, with nature and with Mother Earth.

Now we understand the relevance of the words of Duwamish Main Elder Seattle to Governor Stevens of Washington State, in 1856, when the Governor forced the sale of Native lands to the European colonizers. Main Elder Seattle could not understand why they would want to buy the earth. Could one buy or sell the breeze, the green of the plants, the cleanliness of the crystalline water or the splendor of the sceneries? To Main Elder Seattle the Earth was all that, not just soil, as a means of production.

In this context, note that the Native people of our continent could understand the reasons for the civilization of the Whites, «if they knew what hopes they transmit to their sons and daughters in the long winter nights, and what visions of the future they offer for tomorrow».

What is the dominant dream of our civilization’s paradigm, that makes market and merchandise the structural axis of all social life? It is possession of the most material goods, the greatest possible financial accumulation, and the most intense enjoyment we can obtain from all that nature and culture can offer us, to the point of satiation. It is the triumph of refined materialism, reaching even the spiritual, turning it into merchandise, with doubtful self-help literature full of thousands of formulas for happiness, built from bits of psychology, new cosmology, oriental religion, Christian messages and the esoteric. It is a pure swindle, designed to create the illusion of an easy happiness.

Even so, groups are appearing everywhere that bring a new reverence for the Earth, inaugurating alternative behaviors, elaborating new dreams of an agreement of friendship with nature, and a belief that the present chaos is not just chaotic, but is the genesis of a new paradigm of civilization that I would call the civilization of re-linking, synchronized with the most fundamental laws of life and the universe, that is pan-relational, synergetic and complementary.

Then we would have made the great journey towards the truly human, friends of life and open to the Mystery of all things. It is the path to follow.
Free translation from the Spanish by
Servicios Koinonia, http://www.servicioskoinonia.org.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Características del nuevo paradigma cosmológico emergente

Leonardo Boff6 Comentários

Hoy se habla mucho de la quiebra de paradigmas. Pero hay un gran paradigma,el cosmológico, formulado hace ya casi un siglo, que ofrece una lectura unificada del universo, de la historia y de la vida. Nos atrevemos a presentar algunas figuras de pensamiento que lo caracterizan.

1) Totalidad/diversidad: el universo, el sistema Tierra, el fenómeno humano están en evolución y son totalidades orgánicas y dinámicas construidas por las redes de interconexiones de las múltiples diversidades. Junto con el análisis que disocia, simplifica y generaliza, es menester elaborar la síntesis mediante la cual hacemos justicia a esta totalidad. Es el holismo, no como suma, sino como la totalidad de las diversidades orgánicamente interligadas.

2) Interdependencia/re-ligación/autonomía relativa: todos los seres están interligados pues unos necesitan de otros para existir y coevolucionar. En razón de este hecho hay una solidaridad cósmica de base que impone límites a la selección natural. Pero cada uno goza de autonomía relativa y posee sentido y valor en sí mismo.

3) Relación/campos de fuerza: todos los seres viven en un tejido de relaciones. Fuera de la relación no existe nada. Junto con los seres en sí, es importante captar la relación entre ellos. Todo está dentro de campos por los cuales todo tiene que ver con todo.

4) Complejidad/interioridad: todo viene cargado de energías en distintos grados de complejidad e interacción. La energía altamente condensada y estabilizada se presenta como materia y cuando está menos estabilizada como campo energético. Dada la interrelacionalidad entre todos, los seres vienen dotados de informaciones acumulativas, especialmente los seres vivos superiores, portadores de código genético. Este fenómeno evolutivo viene a mostrar la intencionalidad del universo apuntando hacia una interioridad, una conciencia supremamente compleja. Tal dinamismo hace que el universo pueda ser visto como una totalidad inteligente y auto-organizante. Cuánticamente el proceso es indivisible pero se da siempre dentro de la cosmogénesis como proceso global de emergencia de todos los seres. Esta comprensión permite plantear la cuestión de un hilo conductor que atraviesa la totalidad del proceso cósmico que unifica todo, que hace que el caos sea generativo y el orden siempre abierto a nuevas interacciones (estructuras disipativas de Prigogine). La categoría Tao, Javé y Dios hermenéuticamente podrían llenar este significado.

5) Complementariedad/reciprocidad/caos: toda la realidad se da bajo la forma de partícula y onda, de energía y materia, orden y desorden, caos y cosmos y, a nivel humano, en forma de sapiens y de demens. Tal hecho no es un defecto, sino la marca del proceso global. Pero son dimensiones complementarias.

6) Flecha del tiempo/entropía: todo lo que existe, pre-existe y co-existe. Por lo tanto la flecha del tiempo confiere a las relaciones carácter de irreversibilidad. Nada puede ser comprendido sin una referencia a la historia racional y a su trayectoria personal. Está abierto al futuro. Por eso ningún ser está listo y acabado, sino que está cargado de potencialidades. La armonía total es promesa futura y no celebración presente. Como bien decía el filósofo Ernst Bloch: “el génesis está al final y no al comienzo”. La historia universal cae bajo la flecha termodinámica del tiempo, es decir: en los sistemas cerrados (los bienes naturales limitados de la Tierra) al lado de la evolución temporal se debe tomar en cuenta la entropía. Las energías se van disipando irremediablemente y nadie puede nada contra ellas. Pero el ser humano puede prolongar las condiciones de su vida y las del planeta. Como un todo, el universo es un sistema abierto que se autoorganiza y continuamente transciende hacia niveles más altos de vida y de orden. Estos escapan de la entropía (estructuras disipativas) y lo abren a la dimensión del Misterio de una vida sin entropía y absolutamente dinámica.

7) Destino común/personal: Por el hecho de tener un origen común y de estar todos interligados, todos tenemos un destino común en un futuro siempre en abierto. Dentro de él se debe situar el destino personal y de cada ser, ya que en cada ser culmina el proceso evolutivo. Como será este futuro y cual será nuestro destino terminal caen en el ámbito del Misterio y de lo imprevisible.

8) Bien cósmico/bien común particular: El bien común no es solo humano sino de toda la comunidad de vida, planetaria y cósmica. Todo lo que existe y vive merece existir, vivir y convivir. El bien común particular emerge a partir de la sintonía con la dinámica del bien común universal.

9) Creatividad/destructividad: El ser humano, hombre y mujer, en el conjunto de los seres relacionados y de las interacciones, posee su singularidad: es un ser exstremadamente complejo y co-creativo porque interviene en el ritmo de la naturaleza. Como observador está siempre interactuando con todo lo que está a su alrededor y esta interacción hace colapsar la función de onda que se solidifica en partícula material (principio de indeterminación de Heisenberg). Él entra en la constitución del mundo tal como se presenta, como realización de probabilidades cuánticas (partícula/onda). Es también un ser ético porque puede pesar los pros y los contras, obrar más allá de la lógica de su propio interés y en favor del interés de los seres más débiles, como puede también agredir a la naturaleza y destruir especies (nueva era del antropoceno).

10) Actitud holístico-ecológica/antropocentrismo: La actitud de apertura y de inclusión irrestricta propicia una cosmovisión radicalmente ecológica (de panrelacionalidad y religación de todo), superando el antropocentrismo histórico. Favorece además que seamos más singulares y al mismo tiempo, solidarios, complementarios y creadores. De esta manera estamos en sinergia con todo el universo, cuyo término final se oculta bajo el velo del Misterio situado en el campo de la imposibilidad humana. Lo posible se repite. Lo imposible sucede: Dios.

Leonardo Boff escribió: Opción Tierra: la solución para la Tierra no cae del cielo, Nueva Utopía 2010.

Traducción de MJ Gavito Milano