The contemporary human, who seemingly enjoys the vastest and most sophisticated resources, perceives himself as powerless and limited in his ability to respond to emerging challenges, and thus often positions himself in opposition to life. In the relentless pursuit of acquiring more and more, he destroys himself, as it is costly for him to recognize the value of his “habitat,” whether it be his own body or the body of the Earth.
Neither technological advances nor the conquest of cyberspace, which characterize human experience in the 21st century, have managed to help us overcome the unprecedented existential and socio-environmental crisis that shakes all dimensions of human experience. This is partly due to the paradigm of domination, the foundation of our world, which fosters, and even stimulates, a fragmented and utilitarian conception of humanity that seems to devalue everything that does not yield profits. We end up believing that it is humanity that is not worth it, when, in truth, what disaggregates and creates pain is the model of life we agree to follow. Among other fields of knowledge, Environmental Education has made efforts to show the fragilities of this dominant paradigm, leading us to question what it means to be human in the concreteness of this historical moment.
Indeed, the ways of living in contemporary times do not contemplate care for oneself or for the planet, and this lack of care is one of the evidences of the originality of our time, which seems to cling to a civilizational paradigm that ignores and condemns life.
The philosopher Leonardo Boff corroborates this argument when he says that the “civilizational crisis” we are going through gives rise to a widespread malaise that has been ongoing for decades, in which “carelessness, ignorance, and abandonment” synthesize a phenomenon that appears on a global scale and compromises the sustainability of all dimensions of life, both in the public and private spheres.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that, by neglecting our needs for care, we also omit the needs of others, and often, we become indifferent to others. This is one of the ideas defended by philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, when he states that relationships between people are losing solidity and that we live in the time of liquid relationships, without commitment and easily diluted.
I dare to affirm that, in this contemporary paradigm, the way we are treating relationships, the fragility of the bond that unites us to others contributes to increasing our disconnection from life and the living, and thus, with each passing day, we feel more alone and more separated from the whole.
When I speak of the living, I refer to both the subtle manifestations of life and the inhabitants of the Earth, non-human, such as minerals, plants, and animals, which are left at the mercy of our apathy and disregard.
As far as we are concerned, it seems that we will see nothing while we continue to take abusive actions without realizing that the planet, as a whole, is at great risk. We have already reached a state where human forces act alongside geological influences, even influencing changes in the atmosphere.
We are transitioning to a new geological era, called the Anthropocene. In this era, Humanity has shown that it is capable of producing planetary changes that compromise the continuity of life on Earth. We are undoubtedly facing a crisis that shakes all dimensions of life. In my view, the words of Professor Alexandre Dittrich capture the essence of what is happening when he states that “the contemporary human feels the pain of a life that has moved from the flow of creative love to the obscurity of death. He sees his planet dying and life weakening.”
And this is extremely concerning because it affects all of us, making the conditions for thinking about a common and sustainable future increasingly difficult, as these are the fundamental premises of an environmental knowledge that constitutes itself as a field of knowledge, struggles, and resistance.
Currently, the call is even greater. It is no longer just about acquiring maturity and learning to care. Now, the need to change paradigms is emphasized in the face of the risk of losing minimal sustainability. Boff’s position is categorical: he calls for a change in the “civilizational paradigm.” And this entails a reinvention of the relationship with oneself, with others, and with nature, as well as a “minimal ethics,” a collaborative understanding among nations that contemplates cultural and religious diversities.
Within the same sphere, sociologist Enrique Leff questions the paradigm that supports instrumental rationality, one that divides and fragments, that observes the world from the outside and, by placing it as the “other,” separates it from itself, leading to its ruin. It must be for this reason that this instrumental rationality, which has accompanied us since Descartes’ “Cogito ergo sum,” has not been able to address or even resolve the gravity of the problems that afflict us.
Among these, one of the most alarming is the fact that Humanity has lost the senses of existence, senses that are expressed in the theses that support the Cosmocentric Ecological theory that I present below:
• A new relationship between Nature and Humanity;
• The deceleration of time as a guarantee of life;
• The attunement with new wisdoms;
• Care as relearning vs. rampant consumption;
• The decolonization of the world of life;
• The need for a diverse world without prejudices;
• The condition of incompleteness;
• Environmental Education in Cosmocentric Ecology as a place of redefinition of the human being in the cosmos.
Source: Clube da Histórias, by Patricia Maria Ingrasiotano