By Leonardo Boff on March 16, 2021
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Pope Francis’ dream, formulated in Fratelli tutti, of a fraternity without borders and social friendship, the basis for a new world order, is based on the awareness that we are in a planetary emergency. The threats to life and the sustainability of the Earth led him to say: “We are all in the same boat; either we all save ourselves or nobody is saved”.
For this we must necessarily change: make a paradigm transition, that is, move from the dominant paradigm created by modernity, of the human being as master and lord of nature, who does not consider himself part of it and therefore can exploit it as he sees fit, to the paradigm of brother and sister whereby the human being feels part of nature, brother of all beings and with the mission to guard and care for it.
Therefore, it proposes the virtues that are absent or only lived subjectively in the “lord and master” paradigm: universal love, social friendship, care for all that exists and lives, solidarity without borders, tenderness, and kindness in all relations between humans and with nature. He universalizes such virtues that were previously private.
Therefore, his alternative is nourished by what is essential and best in human beings, what makes us human. The Pope realizes how unusual his proposal is, acknowledging: “it seems a naïve utopia, but we cannot give up this lofty goal”.
There are indeed voices of scientists and wise men who warn us of the dangers we are running. I list a few of them to make the Pope’s proposal more concrete and urgent, almost to the point of despair, despite his indestructible faith and his deep-rooted hope in “God, the passionate lover of life”. “I invite you to hope that speaks to us of a reality that is rooted in the depths of the human being, independently of the concrete circumstances and historical conditioning in which he lives”
Hope has an objective basis: the virtual character of reality. The objective datum is not all that is real. The real also includes the potential and the utopian, what is not yet but can be. The current data tells us that we are behaving like the Satan of the Earth, like wolves with each other, hostages of the culture of capital, of unrestrained competition, and unbridled consumerism. But this is not all, nor are we condemned to perpetuate it. Within us, there is also the potential and the viable utopia of being the caretakers of life, brothers, and sisters to each other and to all other beings in nature.
Such a proposal is emphatically preached by Fratelli tutti. This potential is part of our reality. And if it is potentially in it, it can be activated, it can be made a personal and political project, and it can inspire practices that will give a saving sense to history. Hope will save us from despair and destruction. In the meantime, let us be aware of the grave dangers that weigh on our destiny, as confirmed by the best names in the various life and earth sciences.
Here are just a few examples:
French geneticist Albert Jacquard tells us “that we are making an Earth on which none of us would like to live. We must hurry because the countdown has begun”.
Norberto Bobbio, a notable jurist, and philosopher, although melancholic by temperament, believed in the potential of two great revolutions in the West: that of human rights and that of democracy. Both would serve as the basis for his proposal for a legal and political pacifism capable of resolving the problem of violence as the logic of antagonism between states. But the events of globalized terrorism overturned the convictions of the old and respected master. In one of his last interviews he declared:
“I cannot say what the Third Millennium will be like. My certainties are falling away and only a huge question mark is shaking my head: will it be the millennium of the war of extermination or the millennium of harmony among human beings?
At the end of his life, the great historian Arnold Toynbee (+1975), after having written ten volumes on the great historical civilizations, recorded this opinion in his autobiographical essay Experiences, 1969: “I lived to see the end of human history become an intra-historical possibility capable of being translated into fact, not by an act of God but of man”.
The warnings of Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of the United Kingdom, are very serious. Based on much knowledge to which he has access, he states in his book The Final Hour: A Scientist’s Warning (2005): “Humanity is in greater danger than it has been at any other time in its history… our chance of survival to the end of this century is no more than 50%”
It is also time to quote, because of its great authority, the warning of one of the greatest historians of the 20th century, Eric Hobsbawn, in his well-known book-synthesis The Age of Extremes (1994). Concluding his reflections, he considers:
“The future cannot be the continuation of the past… Our world is in danger of explosion and implosion… We do not know where we are going. But one thing is clear: if humanity is to have a worthwhile future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on this basis, we will fail. And the price of failure, that is, of the alternative to societal change, is darkness”
The Covid-19 pandemic is a grave warning: if we continue to attack nature and the Earth, something even worse may happen to us: other viruses more lethal than Covid-19 will be able to attack us. This situation gives rise to a humanistic and philosophical inquiry: is it still possible to have hope in the human being, in the sense of seeing and feeling the other as brother and sister? Can he or she improve in terms of social relations, morality, and humanity, or are we condemned to live our historical tragedy to the end, to our self-destruction?
Pope Francis in his ecological encyclicals does not exclude such a tragedy. Surely there is no complete answer to such radical questions, but if in the post-pandemic we do not initiate a substantial transformation in the way we produce, distribute, consume and relate to nature, then we may be surprised by the destruction of a large part of humanity, or all of it. Mother Earth, amidst the pain of losing beloved but rebellious sons and daughters, will continue her trajectory around the Sun, but without us.
Source: Leonardo Buff’s blog, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English