By LEONARDO BOFF*
It is still possible to avoid a planetary tragedy by giving importance to values such as care, love, solidarity, compassion, creation and spirituality to guarantee the sustainability of the Common Home.
1.
If we look at the frequency of disruptions occurring on Earth, especially with increasing global warming, coupled with the fact that deniers are as powerful as US President Donald Trump, it is worth seriously asking whether the planet is still sustainable or is heading towards a phenomenal tragedy.
Let us take as a warning the data published by Institute and Faculty of Actuaries at Exeter University (United Kingdom), known for its seriousness: it states: “with temperatures 3°C above pre-industrial levels – human mortality could reach half of humanity, around four billion people” not in the distant future, but in a few decades.
We need a broader concept of sustainability than the famous one from the Brundland Report (1987) that focuses only on human beings and omits nature. I propose a more inclusive one: “Sustainable development is any action aimed at maintaining the energetic, informational, physical-chemical conditions that sustain all beings, especially the living Earth, nature and human life, aiming at their continuity and also meeting the needs of the present and future generations in such a way that natural capital is maintained and enriched in its capacity for regeneration, reproduction and co-evolution”.
What can be done to ensure this type of sustainability? I am convinced that the narratives of the past no longer point us to a hopeful future. This does not mean that we will give up trying to improve the situation. The principle of hope that burns within us can project minimalist utopias that make life easier and preserve nature. To do this, we must start from below, from the territory, where sustainability can be built within the framework of the ecological conditions outlined by nature, with its forests, its rivers, its population and its religious traditions.
It is up to us whether we want to change or continue on the same path. There comes a time when we have no other alternative but to believe, trust and hope in ourselves. We have to drink from our own well. It contains the principles and values that, if activated, can save us. Here are some of the main ones.
2.
First, “care”. We know from ancient reflection (Hyginus’ myth of care) and from modern reflection (Martin Heidegger) that the essence of the human being resides in care, a condition for living and surviving. If all the elements of evolution did not have a subtle care for each other, the human being would not emerge. Since it does not have any specialized organs, it needs care to live and survive. In the same way, if nature is not cared for, it withers away.
Then, as biologists (Watson/Krick) have shown, “love” belongs to human DNA. To love means to establish a relationship of communion, of reciprocity, with all things and implies creating an emotional bond with them.
The value of “solidarity” is fundamental. Bioanthropology has shown that the search for food, consumed communally, allowed the leap from animality to humanity. What was true in the past is even more true in the dark days of today.
We are also beings of “compassion”: we can put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, cry with them, share their anguish and never leave them alone. It is one of the virtues most lacking today.
We are still “creative beings”: we are continually inventing things to solve our problems. Today, more than ever, innovation is urgent if we do not want to fall behind in safeguarding life and nature.
Since our earliest ancestors, when the limbic brain emerged 200 million years ago, we have been beings of heart, affection and sensitivity. In the sensitive heart resides tenderness, spirituality and ethics. Today more than ever we must unite mind and heart, rationality and sensitivity, because the entire scientific edifice was built on placing affection under suspicion. Today it is out of humanitarian sensitivity that we condemn the perverse genocide, carried out in the open air, in the Gaza Strip of more than 13 thousand innocent children and more than 60 thousand civilians.
We are, in the deepest part of our humanity, spiritual beings. Spirituality belongs to human nature, with the same right of citizenship as intelligence, will and libido. It must be distinguished from religiosity, although they can come together and enhance each other. But not necessarily. Natural spirituality, however, is more original. Religiosity presupposes and feeds on spirituality.
Spirituality lives on unconditional love, solidarity, compassion, and care for the most vulnerable and for nature. Furthermore, as spiritual beings we are able to identify that vigorous and loving Energy that sustains all things and the entire universe, to which we can reverently open ourselves. Either we integrate natural spirituality, living as brothers and sisters together with nature, or we condemn ourselves to repeat the past with all the risks that today threaten our existence.
An eco-civilization founded on such values and principles can guarantee the sustainability of our Common Home. Within it are the various cultural worlds that can and should coexist peacefully. A utopia? Yes, but a necessary utopia if we still want to have a sustainable future together with Mother Earth.
*Leonardo Boff is an ecologist, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of The painful birth of Mother Earth: a society of fraternity and social friendship (Vozes).
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