By Leonardo Boff on November 1, 2020
Solidarity, Photo: Jaine Amorin / MST-PR
In these days, especially during social isolation due to the dangerous presence of Coronavirus, humankind has awakened from its profound sleep and has begun to hear the cries of the Earth, and the cries of the poor; it has begun to recognize the need to care for each other and also for nature and Mother Earth. Suddenly we realized that the virus didn’t come out of nowhere and cannot be considered in isolation, but rather in context: it came from nature. It is the response of Mother Earth to the Anthropocene and the Necrocene, which is to say the systematic destruction of lives due to the aggressive advancement of industrialized processes, which is to say, of globalized capitalism. This has invaded nature, causing deforestation of thousands of acres in the Amazon Basin, in the Congo, and in other places where there are jungles and rain-forests. This has destroyed the habitat of hundreds and hundreds of viruses that were found in animals and even in trees. They moved to other animals and from there to us.
As a consequence of our uncontrolled voracity, each year about one hundred thousand species of living beings disappear, after millions of years of life on Earth, and still, according to recent data, a million live species are at risk of disappearance.
The dominant idea of modern culture was, and continues to be, power, as domination of nature, of other peoples, of all the natural resources, of the lives and even of the limits of matter. This domination has caused threats that now weigh heavily on our destiny, this dominant idea must be overcome. Albert Einstein expressed it well, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A new type of thinking is essential…”
The alternative is this; in place of power as domination we must put brotherhood and sisterhood and the necessary care. These are the new dominant ideas. As brothers and sisters, we are all interdependent and we should love and care for one another. Care implies an affectionate relationship both with other people and with nature; one must be a friend of life and protect and spread peace to all those who surround us.
If power as domination means a closed fist to conquer, now we must offer our hand extended to clasp other hands, to care and to embrace affectionately. This caring hand makes an unaggressive gesture toward everything that lives and exists.
Thus, it is urgently necessary to create a culture of brother- and sister-hood without borders and of the necessary care that unites all. Care for all things, for our bodies, our psyches, our spirits, for others, and in a more basic example, for our household garbage, the water, the forests, the soils, the animals, and for each other, beginning with the most vulnerable.
We know that we care for everything we love, and also that we love everything we take care of. Care heals the wounds of the past and prevents future harm.
In this urgent context one of the most beautiful myths of Latin culture, the myth of Care, is relevant.
One day, walking along the banks of a river, Care saw a piece of clay. Care was the first to have the idea of taking this piece of clay and making a human figure out of it. While Care contemplated it, content with what had been made, Jupiter, the supreme god of the Greeks and Romans, appeared. Care asked him to breathe life into the figure just modeled. Jupiter agreed to this with a good will. But when Care wanted to name the creature, Jupiter prohibited it. Jupiter said that the privilege of naming was his. Care insisted on the right to name because of molding the creature in human form and having the idea in the first place.
While Jupiter and Care discussed this heatedly, the Goddess Earth appeared suddenly. She also wanted to name the creature because, she said, it was made of clay, a material of the earth. A prolonged argument took place without any consensus. They agreed to ask ancient Saturn, also called Cronus, the founder of the age of gold and also of agriculture, to act as mediator. He arrived and made the following decision, which seemed just to all:
“You, Jupiter, have given the spirit, and due to this, you will receive back the spírit when this creature dies.”
“You, Earth, have given the body, and due to this you will also receive back the body when this creature dies.”
“Since, you, Care, were the one who gave form to this creature, it will remain under you care as long as it lives.”
“and since there is no consensus among you regarding the name, I will decide: this creature will be called human being, that is, creature made of humus, which means fertile soil.”
We can see the uniqueness of this myth. Care comes before all other things. It comes before spirit and before the Earth. In other words, the conception of the human being as composed of spirit and earth is not the true origin. The myth is clear in declaring “that it was Care who first molded the clay in the form of a human being.”
Care appears as the conjunction of forces without which the human being would not exist. Care is the original force from which the human being springs and from which it draws its being. Without care, the human being would simply continue to be a clay doll or a disembodied spirit, without root in our earthly reality.
Care, when molding a human being, employed love, dedication, devotion, feeling, and heart. These same qualities passed to the figure that was made, which is to say, to us, the human beings. These elements made up our constitution a loving, sensitive, affectionate, dedicated, pleasant being, full of feeling and brother- and sisterhood. These are what make us become truly human.
Care received from Saturn the mission of caring for the human being during its lifetime. Otherwise, without care, it would not subsist or live. Truly, we are all sons and daughters of the infinite care of our mothers. Had they not embraced us with love and care, we would not have even known how to emerge from our cradles to seek food. We would have died in short order, because we have no specialized organ ensuring our survival. Care is thus the essence of the human being. But that is not all. It is the essence of all beings, especially of all living beings. If we do not care for them, they whither, they gradually become ill, and finally they die.
The same occurs with Mother Earth and all that exists on it. As Pope Francis so truly said in his Encyclical that has the subtitle Caring For Our Common Residence, “we should increase our passion for the care of the world.”
Care is also a cosmological constant. The cosmologists and astrophysicists tell us that if the four forces which maintain everything – gravity, electro-magnetic force, and weak and strong nuclear interactions – had not developed with extreme care, expansion would have thinned out everything to the point where there would not be sufficient density for the universe to begin, with our earth and ourselves. Or it would be too dense, and there would be chain explosions so that nothing that currently exists would be present. And this care rules the course of the galaxies, the stars, and all the heavenly bodies, the Moon, the Earth, and we ourselves.
If we live with the culture and ethics of care, associated with a spirit of sister- and brotherhood among all, including all natural beings, we will have placed the foundations on which we can build a new way of inter-relating and of living in our common house, the Earth. Care is the great medicine that can save us and generalized brother- and sisterhood will allow us to achieve the always-desired mutuality, love and affection among all of us. Then we can keep shining and developing on this beautiful planet.
These thoughts about care concern all of us who care for life in all its diversity, and for the planet, especially now with the COVID epidemic: the medical workers, the nurses and all those who work in hospitals, since care can heal past wounds, prevent future injuries and guarantee the future of our civilization of brothers and sisters, all together in our Common Dwelling Place.
Source: America Latina en Movimento, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau