We sense an urgency now to establish perpetual peace with the Earth. For centuries we have been at war with her. We have confronted her in a thousand ways, trying to overpower her strengths and take maximum advantage of her services. We have won some victories, but at such a high price that it seems that the Earth is now turning against us. We cannot possibly win. To the contrary, there are signs that we must change, otherwise, the Earth will continue under the benevolent light of the Sun without us.

It is past time that we achieve a balance, and ask ourselves, when did we go wrong? Most analysts say that it began almost ten thousand years ago with the neolithic revolution, when human beings became sedentary, built houses and cities, invented agriculture, began to irrigate and to domesticate animals. This allowed them to move from the dire situation in which they had to get food every day, through hunting and foraging.  Then, with the new means of production, food storage was invented. That made it possible to mount armies, make war, and create empires. But the equilibrium between nature and human being was lost. That was the beginning of the process of conquering the planet, that has reached its highest point in our time, with the commercialization and artificiality of practically all our relations with the environment.

However, I believe that process began much earlier, in the very womb of anthropogenesis. From its earliest dawn, we can distinguish three epochs in the relation between human beings and nature. In the first, the era of interaction: human beings interacted with the environment, without interfering with it, using all that the rich environment offered.  A great equilibrium prevailed among them. The second era was that of intervention: it corresponds to the period in which homo habilis appeared, about 2.4 million years ago. This ancestor of ours began to intervene in nature, using rudimentary tools such sticks or stones to better defend himself, and to master everything around him. The rupture of the original equilibrium began. The human being placed himself above nature. This process became more complex, until the third era, when the era of aggression began. It coincided with the neolithic revolution mentioned above. Here, a path opened which greatly accelerated the conquest of nature. After the neolithic revolution, several other revolutions have occurred: the industrial, nuclear, and biotechnological revolutions, as well as those of information, automation and nanotechnology. The tools of aggression become ever more sophisticated, up to the penetration of subatomic particles(topquarks, hadrons), and the genetic code of living beings.

In all these processes, a profound displacement of the relation with nature has been in operation. The human being, rather than being an integral part of nature, has transformed himself into a being outside and above nature. His purpose is to dominate and to treat her  - in the expression of Francis Bacon, who formulated the scientific method - as the inquisitor treats his victim, torturing him until the victim reveals his secrets. This is the prevalent method in the universities and laboratories.

But the Earth is a small, ancient planet, with limited resources. She can no longer self-regulate alone. The stress can spread, and take catastrophic forms. We have to recognize our mistake: we strayed too far from her, forgetting we are of the Earth, that she is the only home we have, and that our mission is to care for her. We must do it with the technology we have developed, but assimilate it into a paradigm of synergy and benevolence, the basis of the perpetual peace of which Kant so fervently dreamed.

Leonardo Boff
http://leonardoboff.com/
10-17-2008

Free translation from the Spanish by

contacto@servicioskoinonia.org  ,

sent by Melina Alfaro, done at

REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas

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