By LEONARDO BOFF*
The ecosocial tragedy is the result of a type of reason that has degenerated into rationalism
Faced with the current crisis that is dangerously affecting the entire planet, as it could lead to a third world war that would put the biosphere and human life at risk, we must rescue what could change the course of history.
I share the interpretation that the current state of the world derives from at least two great injustices: a social one with the generation, on the one hand, of perverse social inequalities and, on the other, an accumulation of wealth like never before in history to the point where eight people (not companies) hold more wealth than more than half of the world's population.
The other is ecological injustice: planet Earth and its biomes have been depredated for centuries to the point that we need more than one and a half Earths to meet human consumption, especially in the consumerist countries of the Global North.
The reaction of Gaia, the Earth as a living super-organism, is shown by a significant range of viruses and by increasing, probably irreversible, warming, which causes highly destructive typhoons, cyclones and tornadoes threatening biodiversity, children and the elderly, unable to adapt and condemned to die.
I return to the theme: this eco-social tragedy is the result of a type of reason that has degenerated into rationalism (despotism of reason) and has translated into techniques that, on the one hand, are beneficial to our modern life and, on the other, are so deadly that they can destroy everything we have built over millennia of history, threatening the ecological bases that sustain the life-system.
It originated in the West, back in the 5th century BC, from the shift from mythical thought to rational thought by the Greek masters. Initially, a great balance was maintained between the main existential elements: Pathos (ability to feel), of Logos (way of understanding reality), the Ethos (our way of living well and coexisting), Eros (our life power) and the Daimon (the voice of conscience).
This ideal was excellently expressed by Pericles (495-429 BC), a great democratic statesman, general, and excellent orator, in Athens: “We love the beautiful but not the vulgar; we dedicate ourselves to wisdom, but without vainglory; we use wealth for necessary enterprises, without useless ostentation; poverty is not shameful for anyone; what is shameful is not doing what is possible to avoid it.”
Here is an example of the right measure. Not without reason, on all the porticos of Greek temples, one could read: meden agan (nothing excessive).
But soon the hunger for power, characteristic of Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), who at the age of 33 extended his empire to India, broke the balance. Reason, transformed into a will to power and an instrument of domination over others and nature, gained primacy. This is what still underlies the current way we organize our societies, especially its most excessive and inhumane form, capitalism, which has taken over the entire globe.
This type of Western instrumental-analytical reason has become global. Could it have been different? Was it inevitable? What we can say is that it was a historical-social choice, our “manifest destiny” today in a radical crisis of its foundations..
I want to give the example of a culture that placed the heart, not reason, as the structuring axis of its social organization: culture nahuatl of Mexico and Central America (today there are about 3,3 million inhabitants), being this ethnic group the Aztecs and Toltecs. The language nahuatl is spoken in several Mexican states by 1,6 million people. For the nahuatls the heart occupies the center. The definition of a human being is not, as among us, that of a rational animal, but that of an “owner of a face and a heart”.
The type of face identifies and distinguishes a human being from other faces. In face-to-face contact, in face-to-face contact, the ethical imperative is born, Levinas taught us. The face shows whether we welcome the other, whether we distrust them, whether we exclude them. The heart, in turn, defines the way of being and the character of the person, the sensitivity towards others, the cordial welcome and the compassion for those who suffer.
The refined education of nahuatls, preserved in beautiful texts, aimed to form in young people a “clear, kind and shadowless face”, combined with a “firm and warm heart, determined and hospitable, supportive and respectful of sacred things”. According to them, it was from the heart that religion is born, which uses “flowers and songs” to venerate its deities. They put their hearts into everything they do. This cordiality was passed on to beautiful works of art, to the point of enchanting the German Renaissance painter Albert Dürer when he contemplated them.
Let us draw some lessons from this culture of the heart and cordiality.
(i) Put your heart into everything you think and do. Speech without heart sounds cold and formal. Words spoken with heart touch people's hearts. This is what makes it easier to understand and win people's acceptance.
(ii) Try to include cordial emotion along with your articulated reasoning. Do not force it, because it must spontaneously reveal your deep conviction in what you believe and say. Only in this way will you move the other person's heart and become convincing.
(iii) Intellectual intelligence, which is essential for organizing our complex societies, when it suppresses cordial intelligence, generates a reductionist and partial perception of reality. However, an excess of cordial and sensitive intelligence can also lead to saccharine sentimentality and populist proclamations. It is always important to seek the right balance between mind and heart, but articulating the two poles from the heart.
(iv) When you have to speak to an audience or a group, do not speak only from your head, but give priority to your heart. It is the heart that feels, vibrates and makes others vibrate. The reasons of intellectual intelligence are only effective when they are amalgamated by the sensitivity of the heart.
(v) Believing is not thinking about God. Believing is feeling God from the totality of our being, starting from within, from the heart. Then we realize that we are not subject to a judging God, but to a loving and powerful reality that always accompanies us.
*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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