Two scenarios appear from the world economic-financial cataclysm: one ocrisis and another of tragedy.

It would be a tragedy if the world economic structure crumbled and fell apart. It would push us into total chaos, with millions of victims from violence, hunger and war. This is not impossible, because capitalism usually overcomes chaotic situations through war. Capitalism gains by destroying, and gains by rebuilding. But this solution does not appear plausible now, because a high-tech war would destroy the human species; only regional wars without the use of weapons of mass destruction are possible.

The other scenario would be that of crisis. In this scenario, the economic world does not end, what ends is neoliberalism. Chaos can be creative, giving birth to a new order, one that is different, and better. In that case, crisis would have a purifying function, opening a space for another paradigm of production and consumption.

We need not look to the Chinese ideogram of crisis to understand its significance as danger and opportunity. Suffice it to remember Sanskrit, the matrix of Occidental languages.

In Sanskrit, crisis comes from kir or kri that means, to purify or to clean. From kri also comes criticism, a process through which we understand the presuppositions, contexts, reach and limits, of a thought, or of any phenomena. From kri, moreover, derives crisol, crucible, a chemistry utensil used to clean gold from useless minerals and, finally, acrisolar, purify and clarify, that mean to cleanse and to decant. Thus, crisis represents the opportunity for a process of criticism, cleansing of the essential; leaving only the valid, the truthful. The accidental, without sustenance, falls.

Beginning with this nucleus another order is created: one that represents the overcoming of the crisis. The cyclical crises of capitalism are notorious. Structural cuts are never made to inaugurate a new economic order; only adjustments that preserve the basic logic of exploitation. Therefore, the crisis is never properly overcome. Its harmful effects are mitigated, and production is revitalized, only to fall into crisis again, and this way the cycles of recurrent crisis are prolonged.

 

The current crisis presents a great opportunity to create another paradigm of production and consumption. More than new regulations, alternatives are urgently needed. The solution to the economic-financial crisis goes along the same lines as the general ecological and global warming crisis. If these variables are not considered, economic solutions will lack sustainability, and the crisis will soon return, with even more virulence.

The enterprises in the stock exchange of London and Wall Street suffered loses of more than one and one half [trillion] dollars, loses of human capital. In this context, according to Greenpeace, the natural capital has annual loses on the order of 2 to 4 [trillion] dollars, caused by the general degradation of the ecosystems, deforestation, desertification, and water shortages. The first produced panic, the second was not even noticed. But this time it is not possible to continue business as usual.

The worst that can happen is that we fail to take advantage of the opportunity that comes from the generalized crisis of the neoliberal economy, in order to project an alternative means of production that combines conservation of natural capital together with the human capital. We must move from a devastating paradigm of industrial production to one of the sustainability of all life.

This alternative is indispensable, as the great Belgian sociologist, François Houtart, courageously showed in a conference in the General Assembly of the United Nations, on October 30th of this year: if we do not seek an alternative to the present economic paradigm, 20 to 30% of living species could disappear within fifteen years and by mid-century there willbe from 150 to 200 million refugees from climate change. Then the crisis, instead of representing an opportunity, could become a terrifying danger. The present crisis offers us an opportunity, perhaps one of the last, to find a sustainable way of living for humans and for all the community of life. Otherwise, we could be headed for an encounter with something even worse. 

Leonardo Boff
Theologian
Earthcharter Commission
Free translation from the Spanish by contacto@servicioskoinonia.org 
sent by Melina Alfaro, done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas