By LEONARDO BOFF*
If we follow this project of civilization, based on power-domination, which is now globalized, we will inevitably encounter an ecological-social tragedy to the point of making planet Earth uninhabitable.
It is a commonplace to say that we are in the midst of a great crisis of civilization. It is not regional, but global. In fact, this global crisis encompasses an infinity of other crises, economic, political, ideological, educational, religious and even spiritual. We do not know what awaits us. We are increasingly aware that the world cannot continue as it is.
The current path is taking us to the edge of a precipice. We have to change. Albert Einstein is credited with saying: the thinking that created the current crisis cannot be the same thinking that will get us out of it. We have to define a new path. How can we build it so that it truly is a different kind of world?
The undeniable fact is that there is too much destructive chaos with no prospect of it being generative. There are forms of inhumanity that surpass anything we have experienced and suffered in history up to the present moment. Just look at the genocide that is taking place in the open air in the Gaza Strip, perpetrated by a cruel and merciless Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, supported by a Catholic American president and by the European Community that betrays its historic ideals of human rights, freedom and democracy.
All of these are accomplices in the heinous crime against humanity. There is a huge wave of hatred, contempt for solidarity and science, denial of the truth and the dominance of ignorance. This anti-phenomenon is especially prevalent in the West.
The mere fact that 1% owns the wealth of more than half of humanity demonstrates how perverse, profoundly unequal and unjust the global social scenario is. Added to this is the ecological emergency with the unsustainability of planet Earth, which is old and has limited resources that, in itself, cannot support a project of unlimited growth, an obsession of countries' social policies.
This process has exhausted, through over-exploitation, the terrestrial biomes and is putting at risk the natural bases that sustain our life and the life of nature (Earth Overshoot). The continuity of the human adventure on this planet is not assured. Pope Francis wrote well in his encyclical Fratelli tutti (2020): “We are all in the same boat; either we all save ourselves or no one is saved.” Everything is summed up by increasing global warming, inaugurating, what seems to be, a new, warmer and more dangerous phase in the history of Earth and humanity.
Why have we reached the current threatening situation that could endanger the future of human life and nature?
There are several interpretations of the current critical situation. I do not claim to have a sufficient answer. But I will put forward a hypothesis, the result of a lifetime of study and reflection. I estimate that our situation dates back more than two million years, to when the homo habilis, the human being who invented instruments to intervene in the cycles of nature. Until then, his relationship was one of interaction, tuning into the natural rhythms and taking what his hand could reach.
Now how homo habilis ou faber intervention in nature begins: hunting animals and systematically felling trees. After thousands of years, intervention continued until 10-12 thousand years ago, in the Neolithic, with the aggression of nature. It interfered in the course of rivers, inaugurating irrigated agriculture and the management of entire regions that implied changes in the relationship with nature and already destroying it.
Finally, the era of industrialism and the modern and contemporary mode of production through technology, automation and artificial intelligence has led to the destruction of nature. We are projecting a new geological era, that of the Anthropocene, Necrocene and Pyrocene, in which human beings appear as the Satan of the Earth. They have transformed the Garden of Eden into a slaughterhouse, as denounced by biologist E. Wilson. They have not behaved like the angel who cares for their habitat, Mother Earth.
This historical-social process gained its theoretical justification by the founding fathers of modernity, Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and others. For them, human beings are “masters and owners” of nature. They do not feel part of it, but are outside and above it. The Earth, until then considered Magna mater that gives us everything, began to be considered as an inert thing (extensive res), without purpose, at most, a chest of resources given over to the use and pleasure of human beings.
The guiding principle of this way of seeing the world is the “will to power,” as domination of others, of peoples, of their lands (colonization from Europe), of the working class, of nature, of life down to the last gene, of matter down to the smallest topquark. Science was designed to serve domination, not only as theoretical knowledge of how things work, but it was soon appropriated by the will to power, converting it into a technical operation for the transformation of reality.
With it, a real war was waged against the Earth, with no chance of winning it, tearing everything from it in favor of the dream of unlimited growth of material goods. The Earth was attacked on the ground, in the air, in the water, in the forests at all levels, resulting in the devastation of practically the main biomes, without measuring the side effects.
It is the empire of instrumental-analytical and technocratic reason. We cannot fail to appreciate the immense benefits it has brought to human life. But at the same time it has created the principle of self-destruction with lethal weapons that can wipe out all life. Reason has become irrational and maddened.
Today we have reached the limit point where the Earth is seriously ill. As a living super-organism, it reacts by sending us extreme events: severe droughts and severe blizzards, a wide range of viruses and bacteria, some of which are lethal, as well as typhoons, tornadoes, floods and earthquakes. We are not heading towards global warming. We are already in it. Science arrived late; it can only warn of its arrival and mitigate its harmful effects. In fact, this climate change threatens biodiversity and puts the future of the life system at serious risk.
There is another important fact to add. The despotism of reason – rationalism – has repressed what is most human in us: our capacity to feel, to love, to care, to live the dimension of values such as friendship, empathy, compassion and the capacity for renunciation and forgiveness, in short, the world of excellence. All of this was seen as an obstacle to the objective view of science. We separated mind and heart, intellectual reason and sensitive reason. This rupture caused a profound distortion of behavior, causing insensitivity to the plight of millions and millions of poor and destitute people and the lack of care for nature and its goods and services.
If we were to summarize the civilized crisis in a short formula, we would say: it has lost its “just measure,” a value present in all ethical traditions of humanity. Everything is out of proportion: the assault on nature, the use of violence in personal and social relationships, wars without any measure of restraint, the excessive predominance of competition at the cost of cooperation, excessive consumption alongside the canine hunger of millions, without any sense of solidarity or humanity.
If we follow this project of civilization, based on power-domination, which is now globalized, we will inevitably encounter an ecological-social tragedy to the point of making planet Earth uninhabitable for us and for living organisms. It would be our end after millions of years on this beautiful and smiling planet. We have not known how to take care of it so that it can be the Common Home of all humans, including nature.
But since the cosmogenic and terrestrial process is not linear, capable of leaping upwards and forwards, the unexpected can occur, making it probable through a great impact. This would transform the collective consciousness of humanity. As the German poet Friedrich Hölderin said: “Where danger dwells, that which saves it also grows.” This rescue would mean the necessary change of paradigm and thus guarantee our future. This would represent the possible and viable utopia for the current situation of the Earth and humanity.
*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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