Leonardo Boff : Will It All End in Greece Where it Began?

Dualism via Magritte. Image from Natalie Sanders.
It all began in Greece.
Will it all end in Greece?

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / January 24, 2012

Our Western civilization, now globalized, has its historic origins in ancient Greece, during the VI Century, before the current era.

The world of myth and religion, which was then the organizing principle of society, collapsed. To bring order into that critical moment, over a period of about 50 years, one of the greatest intellectual creations of humanity took place. The era of critical reason appeared, expressed through philosophy, democracy, theater, poetry and aesthetics.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the sophists were paradigmatic figures who gave birth to the architecture of knowledge, underlying the paradigm of our civilization; there were Pericles, the governor at the head of the democracy; Phidias, of the elegant aesthetics; the great tragic writers, such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus; the Olympic Games, and other cultural manifestations, too numerous to list here.

The new paradigm is characterized by the predominance of a type of reason that omits any awareness of the Whole, any sense of the meaning of the unity of reality, that characterized the so-called pre-Socratic thinkers, founders of the original thinking.

In this moment the famous dualisms were introduced: world/God, man/nature, reason/sensibility, theory/practice. Reason created metaphysics, that in Heidegger's understanding objectifies everything, and sets itself as the holder of power over that object. The human being no longer felt he was part of nature, but placed himself above her, and subjected nature to his will.

This paradigm reached its highest expression one thousand years later, in the XVI century, with Descartes, Newton, Bacon, and others, founders of the modern paradigm. The dualist and mechanical world view was consecrated by them: nature on one side and the human being on the other, prior to and above nature, as her "teacher and owner" (Descartes), the crown of creation in function of which everything exists.

The ideal of boundless progress was developed, that assumes that progress can continue infinitely into the future. In recent decades, greed to accumulate transformed everything into merchandise, to be negotiated and consumed. We have forgotten that the goods and services of nature are for everyone and cannot be appropriated only by a few.

After four centuries of applying this metaphysics, this way of being and seeing, we see that nature has paid a high price for this model of growth/development. We are now reaching the limits of her possibilities. The scientific-technological civilization has reached a point where it can destroy itself, profoundly degrading nature, eliminating a great part of the life-system and, eventually, eradicating the human species. It could result in an eco-social armagedon.

It all began in Greece thousands of years ago. And now it looks as though it all will end in Greece, one of the first victims of the economic horror, whose bankers, to salvage their profits, have pushed the entire society into desperation. It has reached Ireland, Portugal, and Italy. It could extend to Spain and France, and perhaps to the entire world order.

We are witnessing the agony of a millenarian paradigm that is apparently completing its historic trajectory. It can still be delayed for a few decades, in a moribund state that resists death, but the end is predictable. It cannot reproduce itself with its own resources. 



We must find another way of relating to nature, another form of production and consumption. It must develop an awareness of dependency with the community of life and of collective responsibility for our common future. If this change does not begin, we will be sentencing ourselves to extinction. Either we transform ourselves, or we will disappear.

I make my own the words of the economist-thinker Celso Furtado:

The people of my generation have shown that it is within the reach of human ingenuity to lead humanity to suicide. I hope the new generation shows that it is also within the reach of the human being to open a path to a world where compassion, happiness, beauty and solidarity prevail.

If, that is, we change paradigms.

Translated into English by Melina Alfaro, Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Boff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity." See more articles by Leonardo Boff on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : Man as 'Lord and Master' of Nature

Art by Gorgok / Picable.
Man as 'lord and master':
Modernity's 'God complex'

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / July 19, 2011

The present crisis is not just a crisis of the growing scarcity of natural resources and services. It fundamentally is the crisis of a type of civilization that has put the human being as the "lord and master" of Nature (Descartes). In this civilization, nature has neither spirit nor purpose, and therefore, humans can do what they want with her.

According to the founder of the modern paradigm of techno-science, Francis Bacon, the human being must torture Nature until she yields all her secrets. This attitude has devolved into a relationship of aggression, and a true war against a supposedly savage Nature that had to be dominated and "civilized." Thus also emerged the arrogant projection of the human being as the God who dominates and organizes everything.

We must recognize that Christianity helped to legitimate and reinforce this understanding. Genesis clearly says: "replenish the Earth and subdue it, and have dominion over... every living thing that moveth upon the Earth." (1,28). It also affirmed that the human being was made in God's "image and likeness." (Genesis 1,26).

The biblical sense of this expression is that the human being is God's deputy, and as God is lord of the universe, humans are the masters of the Earth. Humans enjoy a dignity that is theirs alone: that of being above all other beings. This generated anthropocentrism, one of the causes of the ecological crisis. Finally, strict monotheism suppressed the sacred character of all things and centered it only in God. The world, lacking anything sacred, need not be respected. We can mold it at our pleasure.

The modern civilization of technology has filled everything with its devices, and has been able to penetrate to the heart of the matter, of life and of the universe. Everything comes wrapped in the aura of "progress," a sort of recuperation of the paradise that was lost some time before, but is now rebuilt and offered to all.

This glorious vision began to crumble in twentieth century with the two world wars and other colonial wars that produced 200 million victims. The greatest terrorist act of history was perpetrated when the U.S. army launched the atomic bombs against Japan, killing thousands of people and destroying Nature. This gave humanity a shock from which it has not yet recovered. With the atomic, biological, and chemical weapons built afterwards, we have come to realize that we do not need to be God to make the Apocalypse a reality.

We are not God and our desire to be such takes us to madness. The idea of man wanting to be "God" has become a nightmare. But man still hides behind the neoliberal tina: "there is no alternative, this world is definitive." Ridiculous. Let us understand that "knowledge as power" (Bacon) which lacks conscience and limits can destroy us.

What power do we have over Nature? Who can control a tsunami? Who controls the Chilean volcano Puyehe? Who restrains the fury of the flooding in the highland cities of Rio de Janeiro? Who blocks the deadly effect of the atomic particles of uranium, cesium, and of other elements, spewn by the catastrophes of Chernobyl and Fukushima? As Heidegger said in his last Der Spiegel interview: "only a God could save us."

We have to accept ourselves as simple creatures together with all others in the community of life. We have a common origin: the dust of the Earth. We are not the crown of creation, but a link in the current of life, with a difference, that of being conscious and having the mission to "guard and to care for the garden of Eden" (Genesis 2,15), that is, the mission of maintaining the conditions of sustainability of all the ecosystems that make up the Earth.

If we use the Bible to legitimize domination over the Earth, we must return to the Bible to learn to respect and care for her. The Earth generated all. God ordained: "let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind" (Genesis 1,24). She, consequently, is not inert; she is the generator; the Earth is mother. The alliance of God is not only with human beings. After the tsunami of the flood, God redid the alliance "with you and with your seed after you; and with every living creature" (Genesis 9,10). Without them, we are a diminished family.

History shows that the arrogance of "being God," without ever being able to do so, only brings us tragedy. It should be enough for us to be simple creatures with the mission of caring for and respecting Mother Earth.

Translated into English by Melina Alfaro, Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Boff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity." See more articles by Leonardo Boff on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : In Praise of the 'Siesta'

Did monks introduce the siesta to the West? Photo by DJW / Minnesota Renaissance Festival.
In praise of the siesta

"If you want to kill a friar, take away his siesta and make him eat late." -- old Spanish saying

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2010

RIO DE JANEIRO -- After journalist and friend Zuenir Ventura, in a major newspaper in Rio, dared to exalt the benefits of the siesta, calling it good for one's health and, even more, contending that it is a biological need that makes people more intelligent, I decided to praise the siesta.

It is an old goal that I have nourished for years, during which I have even done research on the matter. I hope to justify the fact that I am an inveterate siestero. So inveterate I am that I condition attendance at some conferences on the possibility off having a short siesta after lunch, even if it has to take place on a couch or in a chair.

In Freiburg, Germany, they took my wish so much to heart that they put a portable bed in a room so that I could take my blessed siesta. But I could not, because some Germans had the poor taste to organize a gathering during the lunch hour, with a group that even wanted to talk about metaphysical questions. The result is that the lunch hour is waste. Perhaps one ends up not eating anything or, what is worse still, there is no time to take my indispensable little siesta.

Personally, I am always reluctant to go to bed. I do not like to go to sleep and delay as long I can the hour of going to bed. There are few better things, among the pleasant satisfactions the Creator gave to the "degraded" sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, than a good siesta.

It is not necessary that it be long. Some 20 minutes are enough. Except on Saturdays and Sundays, when, as a person of good Italian descent, I have two glasses of wine. Not so much for the wine itself, but because of the belief that it fosters a deeper and longer sleep. Then I sleep without a care, "a pierna suelta," as the Spaniards say, well translated by our people of Minas Gerais: “durmo de pé espalhado."

The origin of the siesta is mysterious, but because of its intrinsic goodness it must be linked to the anthropogenic process; that is, it must have existed ever since the human being appeared. If even animals take siestas, why would not humans, the more complex brothers and sisters of the animals, do so as well?

Some believe that in the Occident it was officially introduced by monks and friars. There is a delightful Spanish saying that goes: "if you want to kill a friar, take away his siesta and make him eat late." In Spain the siesta is so sacred that most commerce shuts down during those hours. In the monasteries I could see that some friars would even wear pajamas for their siesta, especially after having a few glasses of wine followed by an excellent cognac.

It is said that Newton and Churchill had their best ideas after their siestas. Victor Hugo spoke of the siesta when mentioning the lion in a poem titled, "La meridienne du lion" ("The Siesta of the Lion"). Baudelaire, in "La belle Dorothée," explains well why he took siestas: "the siesta is a sort of tasty death, in which the one who naps, half asleep, samples the pleasure of its disappearance."

Rene Louis, in his Mémoires d\'un Siesteu (Memoirs of a Siesta Taker) says it well: "siesta allows me to observe sleeping; it is the moment when time stops and is quiet." F. Audouard, in his Pensées, says it beautifully "daybreak occurs twice in Provence: in the morning and after the siesta."

To me, the benefit of the siesta is this: it gives us a second night and the day breaks twice. Siesta lets us have, in the same day, a second day. Waking up from the siesta, everything starts over with renewed vigor, as if the day were beginning again.

If they take away my siesta, my body retaliates, especially if I am listening to a talk: I snooze, and blink, and it is not unusual for me to doze off. I cannot imagine a whole day of mental activity, paying attention to so many things and having to put I do not know how many ideas in order, without a restorative siesta.

Siesta is a wise invention of life. It relaxes the head, makes one forget annoyances and gives us the rare virtual experience of dying sweetly (sleep is a beautiful metaphor for death) and of being resurrected again.

Original in Portuguese; translated into Spanish by Servicios Koinonia; translated into English by Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

(TD: Posted after arising from my Sunday nap) / The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Wanted in Rio : 'Prophets of Ecology'

Landslide in Mangueira shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after a 17 hour downpour that ended on April 6, 2010, resulting in death and devastation. Photo by Marcelo Sayao / EPA.
High water in Rio:
'Prophets of ecology' would save lives

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / April 26, 2010

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Between April 5th and 8th the State of Rio de Janeiro (the city and other neighboring cities, especially Niteroi) experienced the worst flood in 48 years. There were high waters in main streets, landslides in the hillsides, and the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon rose one and a half meters, caused in part by the high tide that blocked the rain water from draining. Worst of all were the deaths of hundreds of people, who were buried alive by tons of earth, trees, rocks, and garbage.

There seem to be three principal causes for this tragedy, that from time to time envelops this city that is so enchanting for her scenery -- combining sea, mountains, and jungle -- and for her happy and welcoming population.

The first is the flood itself, which is typical of these subtropical areas. But with that is the added burden of global warming. The tragedy of Rio must be seen in the context of tragedies that have occurred in other parts of the country, with hurricanes and prolonged rains causing enormous landslides and hundreds of victims, and the city of Sao Paulo, that has been flooded for more than a month at a time, leaving whole neighborhoods constantly under water.

Some analysts talk of changes in the hydrologic cycles caused by the warming of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, as is already happening in the Pacific. This scene will tend to repeat itself ever more frequently, and with ever greater intensity, as global warming worsens.

The climatic tragedy brought to light the social tragedy endured by the most needy populations. This is the second cause. There are more than 500 favelas (slums), dangling from the sides of the mountains that twist and turn around the city. They are not the cause of the landslides, as the governor said. The people live in these dangerous zones simply because they have nowhere else to go.

There is a noticeable general insensibility toward the poor, resulting from the elitism of our colonial and slavery tradition. The State is not organized to care for the whole population, but primarily for the well-to-do classes. There has never been a consistent public policy that included the favelas as part of the city and, consequently, developed them, guaranteeing them safe living spaces, drainage infrastructure, water and electricity, and, least of all, transportation.

There have always been poor policies towards the poor, who are the great majority of the population, and good policies for the rich. The consequence of this lack of attention is seen in the disasters that end up taking the lives of hundreds of people.

The third cause is what I would call the lack of "prophets of ecology." Observing the flooded streets and avenues, all forms of garbage, bags filled with refuse, plastic bottles, wooden boxes, and even couches and wardrobes, could be seen floating in the water. This is to say, the population has not developed a minimum of ecological sensitivity, to take care of the garbage produced. That garbage blocked the sewers and other rainwater drains, which caused the sudden rise of the torrential waters and the slowness with which they receded.

Porto Alegre, in the State of Rio Grande del Sur, offers a good model. Under the guidance of Antonio Cecchin, a Marist Brother, who has been working for years in the poor areas that surround the city, hundreds of places to collect garbage were organized and created. He built some 20 large sheds near the center of the city, in the point of the Big Island of the Marineros, where the garbage is sorted, cleaned, and sold to different factories that reuse it.

That makes the garbage men and women conscious that their work helps keep the city clean, so that it can be a place where everyone can live happily. With pride the garbage people wrote in big letters, behind each of their little cars, their title of dignity: "Prophets of Ecology."

They assumed as an ideal the words of Joshep Lutzenberger, one of our main ecologists: "One single garbage person does more for the environment in Brazil than the Secretary of the Environment himself."

If there were such "prophets of the ecology" in the State of Río de Janeiro, the floods would not be as devastating and hundreds of lives would be saved.

Original in Portuguese; translated into Spanish by Servicios Koinonia; translated into English by Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

Street scene in Rio: Hundreds may have died in the flooding caused by torrential rains. Photo by Antonio Lacerda / EPA.
The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : The Church, Celibacy, and the Criminal Sinners

Why the Church neither can nor wants
To abolish the law of celibacy

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / April 13, 2010

The surge of cases of pedophile priests in almost every Catholic country persists, revealing the magnitude of this crime that causes so much damage to its victims. It is not enough to say that pedophilia shames the Church, or to ask for forgiveness and to pray. It is worse than that. It is impossible to pay the debt to the children who were abused in the shadows of the credibility and trust that the priestly function embodies.

The central thesis of the Pope Ratzinger, which I have become tired of hearing in his conferences and classes, is completely invalid. To him, the size of the Church is not what matters. It is enough that the Church be a "small flock," comprised of highly spiritual persons. It is a small "reconciled world" that represents the others and the whole of humanity.

But within this small flock there are criminal sinners, and it is anything but a "reconciled world." One must humbly accept what tradition used to say: The Church is saint and sinner, a "chaste harlot," as some ancient Fathers put it. It is not enough that it be the Church; it has to go through, as everyone else, the path of good, and integrate the pangs of sexuality -- that have a thousand million years of biologic memory, into expressions of tenderness and love, and not of obsession and violence against minors.

The pedophilia scandal is a sign of the present times. We learn from Vatican II (1962-1965) that we must glean from such signs the interpellation that God is transmitting to us. It appears to me that the interpellation goes along this line: it is time the Roman Catholic Church does what every other Church has already done: abolish celibacy imposed by ecclesiastic law, and free it for those who see meaning in it and can live it without obsession and with a profound sense of spirituality. But this lesson is not being accepted by the Roman authorities. To the contrary, in spite of the scandals, they reaffirm celibacy with greater insistence.

We know how insufficient in integrating sexuality is the education of priests. It is conducted away from normal contact with women, which produces a certain atrophy in the construction of identity. Psychological sciences have made it clear that the male only matures under the gaze of the female, and the female only under the gaze of the male. Man and woman are reciprocal and complimentary.

The cellular-genetics of sex has shown that the difference between a man and a woman, in terms of chromosomes, is reduced to just one chromosome. A woman possesses two X chromosomes and a man has one X and one Y chromosome. It follows that the sex-base is the feminine (XX), the masculine (XY) being a differentiation from it. There is not, then, an absolute sex, only a dominant one. In every human being, man or woman, there exists "a second sex." In the integration of the “animus” and “anima," that is, of the two dimensions of the feminine and the masculine present in every human being, sexual maturity gestates.

This integration is hindered by the absence of one of the parts, the woman, for which is substituted imagination and phantoms, which, if they are not disciplined, can create distortions. The teaching in the seminaries was not devoid of wisdom: who controls the imagination, controls sexuality. To a large degree, this is true.

But sexuality possesses a volcanic vigor. Paul Ricoeur, who reflected a great deal philosophically about Freud's psychoanalytic theory, recognizes that sexuality is not controlled by reason, moral norms, or the law. Sexuality lives between the law of the day, where rules and established behavior prevail, and the law of the night, the realm of impulses, the force of spontaneous vitality. Only an ethical and humanistic project of life (what we want to be) can give direction to sexuality and transform it into a force of humanization and fertile relations.

Celibacy is not excluded from this process. It is one of the possible options, which I defend. But celibacy cannot be born of an absence of love. To the contrary, it must derive from an over abundance of love for God, that overflows towards everyone around.

Why does the Roman Catholic Church not take a step forward, and abolish the law of celibacy? Because it is contradictory to her structure. It is a complete institution, authoritarian, patriarchal, highly hierarchical, and one of the last bastions of conservatism in the world. It takes the person from birth to death.

To one with a minimum of civic consciousness, the power given to the Pope is simply despotic. Canon 331 is clear: it is about a power “ordinary, supreme, plain, immediate and universal." If we replace the word “Pope” with “God,” it functions equally. For that reason it was said: ”the Pope is the minor god on earth," as many canonists have affirmed.

A Church that puts power at its core, closes its doors and windows to love, tenderness and compassion. The celibate person is functional to this type of Church, because that Church denies the celibate priest that which would make him more profoundly human: love, tenderness, the effective encounter with other persons, which could be more propitious if the priests could be married. They become totally disposable to the institution, that can send them to Paris or to South Korea.

Celibacy implies total cooptation of the priest, not into the service of humanity, but to the Church. That priest must love only the Church. When he discovers that she is not only "the holy mother Church" but that she can also be a stepmother who uses her ministers for the logic of power, the priest is disappointed, leaves the ministry with its forced celibacy; and gets married.

As long as this logic of absolutist and centralizing power prevails, we will not see the law of celibacy abolished, no matter how many scandals occur. Celibacy is too comfortable and useful to the ecclesiastic institution.

What then becomes of Jesus' dream of a fraternal and egalitarian community? That is another problem, perhaps the primary one. There, the question of celibacy, and of the style of Church, would be put differently, in a manner that would better befit His liberating message.

Original in Portuguese; translated into Spanish by Servicios Koinonia; translated into English by Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : Easter for the Crucified Earth

“The Crucified Land,” 1939, oil on canvas by Alexandre Hogue.
Our devastated common dwelling:
Easter for the crucified Earth

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / April 3, 2010

Easter is a celebration shared by Jews and Christians, and is a metaphor for the present situation of the Earth, our devastated common dwelling.

Etymologically, Easter means passage from slavery to freedom and from death to life. The Planet, as a whole, is passing though a severe Easter. We are within an accelerated process of loss: of air, of soil, of water, of forests, of ice, of oceans, of biodiversity, and of sustainability of the very Earth-system. Terrified, we witnessed the Earthquakes of Haiti and Chile, followed by tsunamis.

How does all of this relate to the Earth? When will the losses end, or where will they lead us? Dare we hope, as in Easter, that after Good Friday of the passion and death, new life and resurrection will always burst forth?

We need a retrospective look at the history of the Earth to shed some light on the present crisis. In the first place, we must recognize that earthquakes and disasters are recurrent in the geologic history of the Planet. There is a basic rate of extinction that is part of the normal process of evolution. Species exist for millions and millions of years, and, then they disappear. Like an individual who is born, lives for a certain time, and dies. Extinction is the destiny of individuals and species, including ours.

But beyond this natural process, mass extinctions exist. The Earth, according to geologists, may have experienced 15 such great extinctions. Two were particularly grave. The first, 245 million years ago, with the rupture of Pangea, that single land mass that broke apart, giving birth to the present continents.

That event was so devastating that it decimated between 75% and 95% of all the living species then in existence. Beneath the continents, the tectonic plates continue to be active, colliding with each other, overriding or drifting apart, in a movement called continental drift, which causes the earthquakes.

The second occurred 65 million years ago, caused by climatic disturbances, rising of the sea levels, and warming -- events generated by a 9.6 km asteroid that fell in Central America, causing huge firestorms, tidal waves, poisonous gasses, and a long darkening of the sun. Dinosaurs that had dominated, sovereign, upon the Earth, for 133 million years, totally disappeared, and 50% of other living species as well.

The Earth needed ten million years to completely remake herself. But it allowed for a wide range of biodiversity such as never before in history. Our ancestors who used to live in the treetops, feeding on flowers, shivering with fear of the dinosaurs, could come down to the ground and make their way, culminating in what we are now.

Scientists, like Ward, Ehrlich, Lovelock, Myers, and others, believe that another great extinction is occurring, one that began some 2.5 million years ago when vast glaciers began to cover part of the Planet, altering the climates and the sea levels. That process was greatly accelerated by the appearance of a truly devastating meteor, namely, the human being, through his systematic intervention in the Earth system, particularly in recent centuries. Peter Ward (O fim da evolução, 1977, p. 268), says that this mass extinction is clearly visible in Brazil, where over the last 35 years, four species were definitively extinguished each day. And he ends by warning: "a gigantic ecologic disaster awaits us."

It is the existence of earthquakes that destroy everything and kill thousands and thousands of people, such as in Haiti and Chile, that creates in us a crisis of meaning. Here we must humbly accept the Earth such as she is, generous mother or cruel stepmother.

She follows the blind mechanisms of her geologic forces and ignores us, which is why the tsunamis and cataclysms are so terrifying. But she passes information to us. Our mission as intelligent beings is to decode that information to avoid damage, or to use it for our own benefit. Animals capture that information, and before a tsunami hits, they fly to the highest places.

Perhaps at one time, long ago, we also knew how to capture that information, and defend ourselves. We have lost that capacity now, but to supplement our deficiency, there is science. Science can decode the information that previously the Earth passed to us, and suggest strategies of self defense and of salvation.

We are the Earth herself, with her consciousness and intelligence, but we are still in the youthful phase with very meager learning. We are entering the adult phase, learning how to better handle the energies of the Earth and of the cosmos. Then, the mechanisms of the Earth, through our knowledge, will stop being destructive. We all must grow, learn and mature.

The Earth hangs from the cross. We must take her from there and resurrect her. Then we will celebrate a true Easter, and we will be able to wish: Happy Easter!

Original in Portuguese; translated into Spanish by Servicios Koinonia; translated into English by Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : Social Justice / Ecological Justice

"The Innocent: Casualties of the Civil War in Northern Uganda." Photo by Heather McClintock / Blue Earth Alliance.
Humanity's intertwined dilemma:
Social and Ecological Justice

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / March 22, 2010

Among the many problems that afflict humanity, two are particularly grave: social injustice and ecological injustice. Both must be jointly dealt with if we want to put humanity and planet Earth on a secure path.

Social injustice is an old matter that derives from an economic model that, besides plundering nature, generates more poverty than it can handle and solve. It implies, on the one hand, great accumulation of goods and services, at the expense, on the other hand, of enormous poverty and misery.

The facts speak for themselves: there are one thousand million people who live on the edge of survival, on just one dollar per day, and 2, 600 million people (40% of humanity) who live on less than two dollars daily. The consequences are perverse. Suffice it to mention one fact: there are between 350 to 500 million cases of malaria, with one million avoidable victims annually.

This counter-reality has been kept invisible for a long time, in order to hide the failure of the capitalist economic model, made to create wealth for a few and not for the well-being of the whole of humanity.

The second injustice, the ecological, is linked to the first. The devastation of nature and current global warming affect all countries, without regard for national boundaries or their levels of wealth or poverty.

Of course, the rich have better means of adapting and mitigating the negative effects of climate change. In the face of extreme events, they have refrigerators or heaters and can build defenses against the floods that destroy whole regions. But the poor have no means of defending themselves. They suffer the consequences of a problem they did not create.

Fred Pierce, author of The Population Earthquake, wrote in The New Scientist, November 2009:

...the 500 million wealthiest people (7% of world population) are responsible for 50% of the gas emissions that produce global warming, while the poorest 50% (3,400 million of the population) are responsible for only 7% of the emissions.

This ecological injustice cannot be kept invisible as easily as the other type, because the signs are everywhere. Nor can it be solved only by the rich, because it is global and the rich are also affected. The solution must be born from the collaboration of everyone, in a differentiated way: the rich, being the more responsible in both past and present, must contribute much more with investments and transferal of technologies, and the poor have the right to an ecologically sustainable development, that will lift them out of misery.

Image from Enviroblog.
We certainly cannot overlook the solutions, but they alone are insufficient, because the global solution depends on a prior question: the paradigm of a society that is reflected in the difficulty of changing life styles and habits of consumption. We must point to universal solidarity, collective responsibility and caring for all that lives and exists (we are not the only ones who live in this planet and use the biosphere.) An awareness of the inter-dependency of all, and of the unity of the Earth and humanity, is fundamental.

Can the present generations be asked to follow such values if they have never lived globally before? How can we carry out this change, that must be done urgently and quickly?

Perhaps only after a great catastrophe that afflicted millions and millions of people could this radical change happen, because of the survival instinct. This metaphor occurs to me: if our country were invaded and threatened with destruction by some external power, we all would unite, beyond our differences. As in a war economy, all would be cooperative and solidarian; they would accept shortages and sacrifices in order to save motherland and life. Now the Motherland is the threatened Life and Earth. We must do everything to save them.

Original in Portuguese; translated into Spanish by Servicios Koinonia; translated into English by Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff : The World Society of Blindness

Image from Camelia Elias / FRAG/MENTS.
The World Society of Blindness

These are global problems that transcend our paradigm of specialized knowledge. Life does not fit into a formula, nor caring into a calculus equation.

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / March 7, 2010

Poet Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna and Portuguese Nobel Laureate for literature, Jose Saramago, have made "blindness" a theme of their severe criticisms of present day society, which is based on a reductionist vision of reality. They showed that there are many conceited seers who are blind, and a few blind men who are seers.

It is pompously publicized now that we live in the society of knowledge, a sort a new age of light. Effectively, that is the way it is. We know more and more about less and less. Specialization has colonized all areas of knowledge. The knowledge gained each year is greater than all the knowledge accumulated in the last 40 thousand years. If, on the one hand, this brings undeniable benefits, on the other, it makes us infinitely ignorant, putting blinders over our eyes, and thus preventing us from seeing the whole.

What is at stake now is the totality of human destiny and the future of the biosphere. Objectively, we are paving our way to the abyss. Why is this brutal fact not seen by most specialists; neither by the heads of State, nor by the immense means of mass communication that claim to predict possible scenarios for the future? Simply because, for the most part, they are cloistered within their specific knowledge, in which they are very competent, but which, for the same reason, blinds them to the urgent global problems.

Which of the great centers of world analysis of the 1960's foresaw the climatic changes of the 1990s? Which Nobel laureate in economics foresaw the economic-financial crisis that has devastated the more developed countries in 2008? They were all eminent specialists in their limited fields, but ignorant with respect to the fundamental questions.

In general, we see only that which we understand. Since specialists only understand the small portion that they study, they wind up seeing only that minimum part, remaining blind to the whole. To change this type of Cartesian knowledge we would have to undo consecrated scientific habits and recreate an entire world vision.

That the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, quantum mechanics, and others are independent is an illusion. All areas of knowledge are interdependent, a function of the whole. The science of the Earth system was born of this perception. From it derives the Gaia theory, which is not just a New Age topic, but the result of very detailed scientific observation. It offers a basis for global policies to control the warming of the Earth, which, in order to survive, tends to reduce the biosphere and even the number of living organisms, human beings not excluded.

The COP-15 on climate change in Copenhagen was emblematic. Since in our culture the majority is held hostage to its habit of the atomization of knowledge, what dominated the speeches of the heads of state were limited interests: levels of carbon, degrees or warming, investment quotas and other partial data. The central question was different: what destiny do we want for the totality that is our Common House? What can we collectively do to guarantee the necessary conditions, such that Gaia may continue being inhabitable for us and all other living beings?

To grasp that whole, we need systemic learning, together with cordial and compassionate reason, because it is this type of reasoning that moves us to action.

We urgently need to develop the capacity for integrating, for interacting, the capacity of re-linking, of re-thinking, to re-do that which has been undone; and the capacity to innovate. This challenge is addressed to all specialists, so that they may be convinced that a part without the whole is not a part.

By integrating all these pieces of knowledge we will redesign the global view of reality, to be understood, loved and cared for. That totality is central to a planetary consciousness: yes, this one, the era of a guiding light that will free us from the blindness that afflicts us.

Translated from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...

Leonardo Boff: Haiti : A Test for Humanity

"Village," acrylic on canvas by Haitian artist Hilome Jose.
Haiti: A test for humanity

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone.

By Leonardo Boff / The Rag Blog / February 21, 2010

The disaster that devastated Haiti, demolishing Port au Prince, killing thousands, and depriving the people of the minimum infrastructure needed for survival, is a test for humanity.

According to the predictions of those who systematically follow the state of the Earth, it will not be long before we confront several Haitis, with millions and millions of climate-change refugees, provoked by extreme events that could cause true ecological devastation and destroy countless human lives.

Two virtues, linked to the essence of being human, should have special relevance in this context: hospitality and solidarity.

Hospitalidad, as philosopher Kant saw it, is the right and duty of all, because all of us are inhabitants, or better, sons and daughters, of the same Earth. We have the right to move freely, to receive and to offer hospitality. Will the world's nations be prepared to attend to this basic right of the multitudes who will no longer be able to live in their over heated regions, without water or harvests?

The survival instinct does not respect the borders of nation states. The barbarians of yesteryear destroyed empires and the new "barbarians" of today will not do otherwise, unless they are exterminated by those who usurped the Earth for themselves. I will stop here because the probable, and the not impossible, scenarios are Dantesque.

The second virtue is solidarity. Solidarity is inherent in the social essence of the human being. The classics of the study of solidarity, such as Renouvier, Durkheim, Bourgeois, and Sorel, emphasize the fact that a society does not exist without the solidarity of one for the others. It presupposes a collective consciousness and the sense of belonging to the whole. Everyone accepts living together naturally, so that together we can realize the goal, namely, the search for the well being of all.

We must critique the concept of modernity that begins with the absolute autonomy of the subject in the solitude of its freedom. It is said: we should all attend to our own needs, without needing anyone else. For such solitary human beings to be able to live together requires a social contract, such as was elaborated by Rousseau, Locke, and Kant.

But that kind of individualism is false and illusory. We must acknowledge the undeniable fact that the human being is always a being in relationships, a-being-with-the-others, always intertwined in a tapestry of innumerable connections. Never alone. The social contract does not create society, it only organizes it juridically.

Moreover, solidarity has a cosmological background. All beings, from the topquarks, but particularly living organisms, are beings of relationships, and no one lives outside of the net of inter-retro-connections.

Therefore, all beings are reciprocally solidarian. Each helps the other to survive -- that is the meaning of biodiversity -- and thus do not necessarily fall victim to natural selection. At the human level, instead of natural selection, due to solidarity, we introduced caring, especially for the most vulnerable. This way they do not succumb to the selfish interests of groups or a kind of ferocious culture that puts ambition above life and dignity.

We have reached a moment in history in which we all find ourselves intertwined in a unique geosociety. Without the solidarity of all towards all, and towards Mother Earth, there will be no future for anyone. The tragedies of a people are our tragedies, their tears are our tears; their progress is our progress. Their dreams are our dreams.

Che Guevara put it well: "Solidarity is the tenderness of the people." It is the tenderness that we must give to our suffering brothers and sisters of Haiti.

Translated from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro.

[A Brazilian theologian, philosopher, educator, and author of more than 60 books, Leonardo Bofff lives in Jardim Araras, an ecological wilderness area in the municipality of Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. Boff is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. A former Franciscan priest with a doctorate from the University of Munich, Boff was an early advocate of liberation theology. In 1991, after a series of clashes with the Vatican, Boff renounced his activities as a priest and "promoted himself to the state of laity."]

The Rag Blog

[+/-] Read More...

[+/-] Summary only...