A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth

I've been lucky enough to find someone who's long known the truth of the words posted below. Long before we become entangled in our Western "mind," we are feeling creatures, joyous in the moment, immortal....lacking nothing.


Published on Friday, March 24, 2006 by Inter Press Service

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth
by Mario Osava

CURITIBA, Brazil - Emotions and sensitivity are "the essence, the core dimension of the human being," said the Brazilian theologian at a panel on "ethics, biodiversity and sustainability". The panel formed part of the Global Civil Society Forum, held parallel to the Mar. 20-31 Eighth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP8).

It is not reason but feeling that is involved in our first contact with reality, and "today's great crisis is not economic, political or religious, but a crisis of affect, of the capacity to feel a connection with others," he said.

It is indispensable to "take care of all living things," and science shows that cooperation is the "supreme law of the universe," he added.

"The world is not made up of objects but of relationships. It was cooperation that made possible the leap from animal to humanity, and without it we are dehumanised, which is what occurs in the case of capitalism," the theologian told around 300 activists, most of them small farmers.

He added that the principle of responsibility underlies the criticism of transgenic products, the need to take precautions in the face of unpredictable and unknown consequences, the possibility that genetic modification of food could break down the balance between the "billions of bacteria" and molecules that make up a human being.

Boff, who left the priesthood after suffering sanctions at the hands of the Vatican for expressing "dangerous ideas" over the past two decades, has outlined his ecological concerns in several books. He has been invited to give talks at several panels at the COP8.

Boff is one of the founders of liberation theology, which is based on a "preferential option for the poor", whose proponents' involvement in the struggles of the poor and marginalised sectors of the population often brought them into conflict with a more conservative Catholic Church hierarchy in the past.

The expression "sustainable development" is "a deception to undermine the demands of environmentalists" by joining together two contradictory concepts, he told the participants in the Global Civil Society Forum.

Development "comes from the capitalist economy," which supposes a constant rise in production, consumption and wealth as part of an illusion of "infinite resources," while sustainability has to do with biology, "the dynamic equilibrium of interrelated beings," he said.

In order for the consumption levels of industrialised countries to become universal, "two additional planet earths" would be needed, he said.

But earlier international conferences have already concluded that by continuing along that road, the earth would no longer be sustainable by 2030 or 2035, and would suffer major catastrophes, said Boff. "We have become the earth's Satan," said Boff. "Either we change or we die."

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