By LEONARDO BOFF*

Brazil was subjected to its greatest challenge in our history. We are hopeful that the new president can rebuild what was destroyed

During the four years of President Jair Bolsonaro's administration, the country was affected by all the plagues of Egypt. Of the many possible options for a problem, the president usually chose the worst one. Psychotic, he was apathetic in the face of the misfortunes inflicted on the people, particularly the most vulnerable. The peak of his psychotic orgasm was reached when he prohibited water, vaccines and medicine to the natives, whom he considered sub-human. For this reason, he will probably have to face a genocide case, already filed by the indigenous people themselves, with the Criminal Court for Crimes against Humanity in The Hague. He was the most corrupt president in our history, not just in monetary terms, but in terms of corrupting the minds and hearts of Brazilians into hatred and contempt.

Everyone knows the list of omissions, common crimes and crimes against humanity, violations of laws and the Constitution perpetrated by this diabolical figure (which separates, contrary to the symbolic that unites) in a continuous manner and without any scruples. At the same time, it is worth recognizing that our democracy, being of low intensity along with most of its institutions, did not prove to be up to the anti-democratic and anti-national challenge to face such madness. Let's leave aside the atrocities committed by this president, whose name must appear in the book of crimes committed against his own people.

The gravity of the disaster produced in all fields is of such magnitude that perhaps only a historical and sociological reflection will not be enough to decipher it. It demands a philosophical inquiry, something I tried in some previous articles. I used two categories, one Western, the shade, and another oriental to the karma, talking to each other.

Perhaps a small reference to the theoretical assumptions of this reading is necessary: ​​quantum physics and modern ecological thinking help us to understand this sinister phenomenon.

We know today that all beings are inter-retro-connected, all are involved in networks of relationships. Each relationship leaves a mark among related beings and thus a story, cosmogenesis, emerges. Dramatic experiences leave marks that, not infrequently, we try to repress, but which remain in the collective unconscious. Jung calls this shadow. Something similar happens with the karma. Each action leaves a mark that provokes a corresponding reaction. Both Jung and the Japanese philosopher Daisaku Ikeda converge in this sense. In other words, there is not just the shadow and individual karma. They can assume a collective character present in the substratum and in the unconscious of each people.

Returning to our theme: we are heirs to a stormy history of shadows: that of the indigenous genocide, the colonization that prevented us from having our own project, slavery, the most serious, which reduced human beings to slaves and used as animals in production, shadow of our fragile republic and democracy that were never inclusive, because the conciliation of wealthy classes never made a national project for everyone, only among them with the exclusion of the great majorities of blacks, poor, indigenous people and others.

These inhuman shadows worked in the collective unconscious, provoking quilombos and revolts, all of them exterminated with iron and fire to maintain the advantages of “the elite of backwardness” (Jessé Souza). They also worked on the unconscious of wealthy minorities, usually in the form of fear and insecurity. Realizing that the shadows of the humiliated classes began to gain historical strength to the point of having elected one of their representatives to the presidency, Lula, they were soon demoted, repressed, fought to the point of cutting him off in a coup civil-military in 1964 and in another form, repeated in 2016 with the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. The motivations were the same: to secure their power and fortunes.

In the mediocre person, without any personal project and manipulable these classes found the ideal representative they needed. They elected the former president, always supported by them, because, with their ultraneoliberal economy, combined with a far-right policy, they accumulated, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, like never before in history. They did everything to guarantee his re-election (figuratively, they made him buy the soccer arena, buy the team, buy ball boys, buy the referee, and they still lost). There is a force greater than the architected evil.

The karmic force (apart from the many reincarnations) according to Ikeda impregnates history and institutions with its shadow, positively or negatively. Arnold Toynbee, who had a long dialogue with Ikeda, prefers another category and not the karmic one, saying that history carries its own weight, which are the failures and successes of a people. It also generates a shadow in the collective unconscious that is projected on social networks and shapes the destiny of a people.

Returning to the topic at hand: with the current government we had to suffer under the weight of our many dark shadows that were expressed through hatred, lies, fake news, by distorting reality. It took shape in the sinister figure of the former president, whose megasomba had the power to raise and animate the collective shadow of an already fragile people. He created a field karmic or forged the cabinet of hate and all forms of political and ethical obscenities.

Destiny wanted this foolishness, whose project was to take us to the pre-enlightenment world, as it promoted school for all, human rights and modern freedoms, civilizing advances, which were systematically denied by Bolsonarism.

Brazil was subjected to its greatest challenge in our history. He was humiliated internally and shamed externally. But hope never faded, that inner engine, greater than virtue, that makes us never give up, that sustains us in confrontations and makes us rise when we fall. This hope-principle never dies because it is the secret force of all life that refuses to die and always reaffirms the intrinsic strength of life, forces us to forge new paths and worlds “not yet experienced” (Fernando Pessoa). Paulo Freire's hope and the hopeful hope, which never give up, always insist and create the historical conditions for the viable utopia to become reality. We passed the test.

A great calamity of Bolsonaro was won by the expectant hope from Lula. We are hopeful that the new president, with the team of excellence that he articulated, can rebuild what was destroyed and, much more, open new paths, good for us and for the world, because, through Brazil, the ecological future of life will surely pass. and of humanity.

*Leonardo Boff, ecologist, philosopher and writer, is a member of the International Commission of the Earth Charter. Author, among other books, of Brazil: complete the refoundation or extend the dependency (Vozes).

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