By LEONARDO BOFF*
We must admit that we have not respected the rights of nature and its intrinsic value, nor have we controlled our voracity to devastate it.
An impactful and moving scene: all around are the murky waters of the floods, houses covered up to the roof, and behold, a horse appears on a roof: two feet on one side and two on the other from the top of the house.
He remained there, impassive, for 2-3 days, night and day, without being able to move. Any movement could make him slip and fall into the muddy sea. He would have drowned.
The horse represents a metaphor for resilience, for the hopeful hope of rescue by a compassionate soul; It is also a metaphor for nature, which is at risk of disappearing and insists on sustaining itself with its own strength. Another metaphor, and this one, sinister, of human negligence that allowed the waters to rebel and destroy everything in sight: people, houses, animals, churches, schools, universities, museums. The fury of the waters seems not to care about everything that human beings have built with sweat and struggle.
It must be admitted that we have not respected the rights of nature and its intrinsic value, nor have we controlled our voracity to devastate it for the enrichment of a few at the expense of the misery of the great majority and the ecological balance of the planet. The consequence was climate change, the irreversible scalding of the Earth that causes extreme events such as these floods in most of the cities of Rio Grande do Sul. These images, coming from the horse's unconscious, from his ancestors, would not be crossing Caramelo's mind ?
The new sciences of the universe, Earth and life (I just mention perhaps the greatest current representative of them, the cosmologist Brian Swimme from California, alongside Fitjof Caára, Mark Hathaway, Humberto Maturana from Chile and Amit Goswami from India among many others) , designed the cosmogenic paradigm, which is the immense and complex process of the evolution of the universe and the slow emergence within it of all beings.
These scientists maintain that the spirit is an attribute of the universe and not just of human beings. He would be as ancient as matter. From the moment when two elementary particles (bosons, topquarks?) were formed and entered into a relationship, establishing the beginning of what we call spirit: the ability to interact, to establish relationships between everyone and everyone and to accumulate information. The relational matrix underlies the entire universe and each of the beings in it. It is the presence of spirit. There are different degrees of realization of the same principle, but the principle is the same: universal pan-relationality.
A degree of spirit occurs, for example, on the mountain, unconscious and unreflective; another degree, perhaps the highest, in the human being, conscious and reflexive. The mountain relates to the energies of the universe, the sun's rays, the winds, the rain, the birds and the person who contemplates it, enraptured. It is the presence of your spirit.
We relate to ourselves, to others, to nature, to the sun, to the stars and to the entire visible universe (only 5%, the rest is invisible) and to Infinity. This bundle of differentiated relationships constitutes the reality of the spirit that permeates all things. And ours in a conscious and self-reflective way. In his level of spirit, Caramelo realized the tragedy that was occurring.
We also know that reality comes in three forms: as energy, as matter and as information. I stick to the information. Every time beings interact, they leave marks on each other, exchange information and accumulate it.
Because it is a spirit, in every being, especially in the living, there are images formed by endless relationships/information, from the most ancient to the most recent. CG Jung would call them archetypes. There are moments when the most ancient ones emerge as images accumulated in the collective unconscious of their “horse” species.
Applying it to the horse Caramelo: in this long wait, possibly ancestral images flooded his mind: the vague image of his appearance 56 million years ago, as a small herbivore, the size of a dog. It lived in forests and then in soft North American grasslands. It developed until it became a horse of its current proportions. There, it crossed the Bering land bridge via the North Pole and arrived in Asia. There were hundreds of species of horses.
For us, domestic horses like Caramelo are interested. According to archaeological data, it appeared between four and five thousand years ago in Western Eurasia, more precisely in southern Russia, at the intersection of the Volga and Don rivers. Its domestication probably began in Kazakhstan around four thousand years ago.
Then his saga began: in his mind, images probably emerged of the various ways in which the domestic horse was treated: as a strong horse for draft and use in agriculture, a more slender horse, a carriage horse, in the service of kings and queens, a racing horse and entertainment, a horse for hunting, therefore more agile and attentive to any noise. But mainly it was used for war, as horses were more resistant and faster. It was then used as a horse ridden by police officers in order to maintain order and repress demonstrations unwanted by the established powers. But living with humans made him an affectionate and even therapeutic being.
It has always been at the service of human beings, with the exception of wild horses that lived and live in groups in the forests. I can imagine that such archetypal images emerged in Caramelo's mind, in those hours of loneliness and fear, sleeping standing up as horses do. But surely, with a certain pride, they remembered that they, the horses, carried out the first globalization, as they were in all parts of the planet, making distances closer and more accessible.
Finally, possibly in Caramelo's mind the figure of the human being who always used him and who became an aggressor, hostile to the rhythms of nature, devastating goods and services essential for life appeared. The result of this behavior caused climate change, now irreversible, which is at the basis of the tragedy that claimed lives and so many material and cultural assets. He himself is being victimized, along with his dog and cat brothers. Caramelo, heir to the experiences of his race, must have felt this.
He, in his spirit, would have asked himself: have compassion, solidarity and love in human beings become extinct? When he saw boats approaching to save him, his mind cleared. He realized that there was still solidarity and compassion in them. That's why they moved to get me safely off this roof. Such figures probably appeared in his spirit.
Caramelo was rescued, under great difficulties and risks. He received the essential water and necessary food. May it serve as a lesson for us not to lose hope. As he was saved, we humans can also save ourselves.
*Leonardo Boff He is a theologian, philosopher and writer. Author, among other books, of The Earth option (All time lap record). [https://amzn.to/3WroJkR]
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