By LEONARDO BOFF*
Migrant peoples are making their way back. They are meeting in one place: on planet Earth, understood as their common homeland and motherland.
As much as the would-be “emperor of the world” Danald Trump puts the “America first"First of all, which basically means, "only America" counts and the rest is just the field of its expansionism, it is not in its power to interrupt a process that escapes its arrogant pretension. It is the unstoppable process of globalization.
It has been seen almost exclusively as an economic and financial phenomenon. This is its iron age, according to Edgar Morin. But this process represents a much more fundamental reality, political, cultural and spiritual: a new phase of humanity and of the Earth itself, understood as a living super-organism called Gaia. She forms with humanity a single, large and complex entity, witnessed by the astronauts who saw the round Earth from their spaceships.
Humanity emerged about 7-8 million years ago in Africa. Our ancestors remained there for about 2 million years. There, the basic structures that make us human were formed in their minds and hearts. Therefore, all whites and blacks, Westerners and Easterners, are all Africans by origin.
After this long period of time, the great dispersion began across the Earth, beginning in Eurasia and eventually occupying all the continents. Now, this constitutes a new phenomenon: these migrant peoples are making their way back. They are meeting in one place: on planet Earth, understood as their common homeland and motherland. How will they live together? What meaning will each people's own cultures have? What role do nation-states still have?
All these realities will have to be redefined from this new human level and the new state of planetary consciousness that is slowly taking hold of people's consciences. This was clearly demonstrated by the coronavirus, which did not respect national sovereignty and placed the Earth and humanity at the center of our attention.
This new level of the anthropogenic process reveals to us that we all have one and the same common destiny. It demands a governance that is appropriate for it. Political institutions and legal configurations will be sought that will assume the governance of the earthly republic – Weltrepublik foreseen in 1795 by Kant – and will look after the common heritage of the biosphere and humanity.
Until such instances arise, it is up to States, in a spirit of global partnership, to seek solutions for the entire Planet and for humanity. Donald Trump irresponsibly refuses to make his contribution to the new that will be imposed. He is trapped in an iron cage – manifest destiny – a political invention to cover up the arrogant claim to be the masters and lords of the world.
Despite Donald Trump's denialism, it is important to recognize that the nation-state category is gradually becoming obsolete. This is demonstrated by the growing awareness of planetary citizenship – “the Earth is my homeland”. Movements such as the World Social Forum and other international entities linked to health and the preservation of the common natural and cultural heritage of Humanity and the biosphere are taking on the concern for the common future of the Earth and humanity.
Globalization has not yet found its institutional expression. It will certainly be ecocentric. It will place at the center not this or that country or geopolitical and economic bloc (a unipolar or multipolar world), this or that culture, but ecology and the Earth understood as a macro organic system to which all instances must serve and be subordinate. At this center belongs humanity, composed of sons and daughters of the Earth, humanity understood as the Earth itself that has reached the stage of feeling, of reflective thought, of responsibility and of love. We are a living and conscious Earth.
From these demands we realize that everything depends on safeguarding the Earth and maintaining the conditions for its life and reproduction. This concern is urgent, especially now that we are already in the midst of global warming and the brutal erosion of biodiversity. We are going beyond anthropocene (the aggressor human being), passing through the necrocene (extinction of species) and culminating in pyrocene (the fire of the great fires). We are truly at risk of no longer being able to remain on this planet.
The awareness of this new perception is still far from being collectively shared, as the dominant system still pursues the illusion of unlimited development/growth (an ever-increasing GDP) within a small and limited planet. If we do not wake up to this alarm, we run the risk, as denounced by Zygmunt Bauman, a week before he died: “we have to be in solidarity, otherwise we will join the procession of those who are heading towards their own graves”. Let us wake up and drive away this nightmare of a possible end of the species, due to our own irresponsibility. The meaning of life is to live, to radiate and to be eternal.
*Leonardo Boff is an ecologist, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of Caring for our common home: clues to delay the end of the world (Vozes). [https://amzn.to/3zR83dw]
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