By LEONARDO BOFF*
We Westerners are heirs to a linear thought that constantly works with the principle of identity and contradiction, belatedly enriched by dialectical thought.
In recent times we have been witnessing horrifying conflicts and wars in various parts of the planet, over pieces of territory, especially in the Gaza Strip, Sudan and Ukraine. From an ecological perspective, all of this seems somewhat ridiculous to us.
Already in 1795 in his famous text Perpetual Peace The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote that the Earth belongs to Humanity and is a common good for all. No one owns the Earth or has received a deed of ownership of it from the Creator. For this reason, there is no reason for us to fight among ourselves, if everything is ours. Today we would enrich this reading of Immanuel Kant by saying that the Earth belongs to the community of life, to nature, to flora and fauna and to the quintillions of quintillions of microorganisms hidden underground, bacteria, fungi and viruses. The Earth belongs to all of them, because they were generated by it and need it to live.
If there were a minimum of common sense in the minds of humans, this would be obvious and we would all live on the same Earth as Our Common Home in perpetual peace. But since we are, at the same time, wise and insane, bearers of reason and insanity, there are times when insanity prevails and at other times, common sense. Today, widespread insanity seems to prevail. Hence the dispute over lands over which lethal wars are waged. But let's look at some facts.
The universe has existed for 13,7 billion years. The sun for 5 billion years. The Earth for 4,45 billion years. Early humans for 7-8 million years. homo sapiens sapiens, from whom we descended, 100 thousand years ago. If we reduce the 13,7 billion years into a cosmic year, as cosmologist Carl Sagan did, we were born on December 31st, at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
We are, therefore, an almost imperceptible moment in the cosmic course, a tiny grain of sand in the group of beings. But our greatness lies in our awareness that we are this and that we know our place and our responsibility in the face of the group of beings.
From there on the Moon, the astronauts witness, the Earth emerges as a splendid planet, blue and white, that fits in the palm of the hand, a tiny body in the dark immensity of the universe.
It is the third planet from the Sun, a suburban Sun, a medium-sized star of the fifth magnitude, one among two hundred billion other suns in our galaxy, the Milky Way. This galaxy is one among one hundred billion other galaxies along with endless conglomerates of galaxies. The solar system is 28 thousand light years from the center of the Milky Way, on the inner face of the Orion spiral arm.
The testimony of astronaut Russel Scheweickhart, who can see the Earth from outside, sums up the accounts of his companions: “Seen from outside, you realize that everything that is meaningful to you, all history, art, birth, death, love, joy and tears, all of this is in that little blue and white dot that you can cover with your thumb. And from that perspective you understand that everything in us has changed, that something new begins to exist, that the relationship is no longer the same as it was before” (The Overview Effect, p. 200).
As Isaac Asimov, a great Russian disseminator of cosmological data, testified on October 9, 1982 at the request of the magazine New York Times, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, which inaugurated the space age: “the legacy of this quarter century of space is the perception that, from the perspective of spacecraft, the Earth and humanity form a single entity”. Note that he does not say that they form a unit, resulting from a set of parts. He states much more, that we form a single entity, that is, a single being, complex, diverse, contradictory and endowed with great dynamism.
Such an assertion presupposes that the human being is not only on Earth. He is not a wandering pilgrim, a passenger coming from other parts and belonging to other worlds. No. He, as homo (man) comes from humus (fertile land). He is Adam (which in Hebrew means the son of the fertile Earth) who was born of the Adamah (Fertile Earth: Gen 2,7:XNUMX). He is the son and daughter of the Earth. Furthermore, he is the Earth itself in its expression of consciousness, freedom and love. Through him, it contemplates the universe.
As Pope Francis' encyclical on integral ecology testifies Laudato Sì: How to Care for Our Common Home (2015): “The interdependence of all creatures is willed by God. The sun, the moon, the dawn and the flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities means that no creature is sufficient in itself; they exist only in dependence on one another, to complete one another in the service of one another” (n. 86).
The universe has traveled 13,7 billion years to produce this admirable work that we, human beings, have received as an inheritance to care for as gardeners and preserve as faithful guardians. We share the same destiny, Earth-Humanity, because we belong to each other. Unfortunately, we have not fulfilled our mission and we do not know what awaits us from now on. May something blessed happen.
China-Brazil beyond economics
China is one of Brazil's main trading partners. With the clear drift of Western dominance/domination, it has emerged as the main power of the 21st century. The Chinese style is notably different from the Western style. The latter not only believes itself to be the best and strongest, but also needs to be promoted worldwide. The Chinese are restrained and value silence, medium and long periods. They know how to wait for time to mature. The great ideal proposed by Xi Jinping is: A Community with a Shared Future for Humanity, also translated as Community of Common Destiny. This is a generous ideal to be realized.
It is often said among analysts of global geopolitics that after an economic war, such as the one being waged by Donald Trump mainly against China, a military war follows. This is not unlikely. The Anglo-Western Saxon axis will never give up being the only pole to guide the course of the world and having the dollar as the only reference currency of value.
It took Donald Trump's arrogant decision to allocate 500 billion dollars to the production of new, more powerful artificial intelligence chips for China to break its silence and announce the platform. Deep seek, with its trillions and trillions of algorithms, cheaper and more accessible to everyone. It brought to their knees the proud owners of the large well-known platforms that, due to the immense Chinese superiority, lost, together, in a single day, a trillion dollars of market value. If a war eventually occurs, China will prevail, only using artificial intelligence or even tactical nuclear weapons, not strategic ones that would mean the end of the human species.
It is clear that China-Brazil relations have a strategic significance that goes beyond essential trade exchanges. Brazil can only benefit if it opens itself up to the ancient cultural values and ancestral wisdom of China. This is characterized by the insatiable search for the integration of opposites and the harmonization of cosmic and psychic forces. In a country as divided as ours, this would be a remedy.
We Westerners are heirs to a linear way of thinking that constantly works with the principle of identity and contradiction, belatedly enriched by dialectical thinking. Our anthropological stance has made us imperialists and dominators of all peoples and destroyers of all differences.
Either they are incorporated into Western sameness or they are subalternized and even destroyed. This is the tragedy of the West, now in its decline. Consulted Deep seek denounced the “human unsustainability and historical obsolescence of the neoliberal Western economic model.” It is destined to disappear. This undermines the current Western unipolarity.
Chinese wisdom always seeks to include opposites. This stance is expressed by the famous tai chi, the circle within which two fish heads intertwine as if. It is the presence of the two universal forces – yng and yang – (heaven and earth, light and shadow, masculine and feminine) that are part of the composition of all beings. Yng and yang realize the Shi, the primordial and mysterious energy that sustains everything, also called Tao.
O Tao It has been interpreted in a thousand ways. But for me the most suggestive is the conventional path. The Tao would be the energy with which we build the path and underlies all and any reality. The Tao is found in everything, as Chung-tzu says, in the dung of the field to the head of the Emperor. Taoism is not a religion, but a path of wisdom. The existing religions are one of the responses to the perception of the Tao, as are cuisine, art, politics and ethics.
When I visited China with others, at an official invitation, what impressed me most was this holistic vision that became a general culture. It penetrated the people and permeated their daily lives, making the average Chinese person pragmatic, hard-working and detail-oriented, as in paintings, and simultaneously contemplative, serious and serene, as in the figures of the masters. This convergence of opposites introduced a culture of care, fundamental to the Chinese ethos. Care always seeks to balance energies, even opposing ones. What results is an attitude of respect, almost sacred, for each being, because they are the bearers of the energy of the Tao. Chinese medicine, with its teas, acupuncture and massages, represents the activation of this energy. Health is being in tune with the energies and with the Tao.
The most important value in Chinese tradition and politics lies in friendship. It is not so much a subjective feeling as the acceptance of differences in a reverent way. Friendship is shown through sharing and solidarity. “Sharing is fair” says a maxim of Chinese ethics. For us, sharing belongs to the order of “gratuity, of what may or may not be”. Whenever a group is welcomed in China, a rich banquet is offered, an expression of friendship. For the Chinese, sharing belongs to the objective order of being. Sharing and showing solidarity is making the ying coexist with the yang. Then the rights of each person are respected and there is justice.
Another important value is consensus, unlike our political culture that seeks hegemony first. Consensus does not imply the reduction of all differences to a single position. It is the accepted coexistence of their richness that, together, builds a higher and better convergence for all parties.
Finally, the homeland constitutes a very lofty concept. It is the archetypal representation of heaven and earth, it is the tent of the Tao, the social realization of ying and yang. Homeland is the ancestors, whose ashes accompany families for centuries. China is one, governments can be divided and pass away. But China always remains, it is said.
Finally, the motto of the proclamation of the Republic in 1911 by the Christian Sun Yat Sen, which can be found on the buttons, is grandiose: “Love is universal and heaven belongs to all.” Now, with the rise of China on the world stage, Brazil would have so much to learn from its ancestral wisdom to enrich our own culture through exchange.
*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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