Rescuing Utopia
03/03/2008
- Opinión
In the present state of abandonment in which humanity now finds itself, it is urgent to rescue the liberating spirit of utopia. In truth, we live in the eye of a crisis of civilization of planetary proportions. Every crisis offers opportunities of transformation, and risks of failure. Crisis blends fear and hope, especially now that the process of global warming is underway. We need hope, which is expressed in the language of utopias. By their nature, they never will be totally achieved, but they keep us going. Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer, put it well: "A map of the world which does not include utopia is not worth being seen, because it ignores the only territory where humanity always slows down, and immediately heads towards an even better land." In Brazil, poet Mario Quintana correctly observed: "If things are unattainable ...¡hey! / That is no reason not to want them/ ¡How sad the paths would be were it not for/ the magical presence of the stars!"
Utopia is not the opposite of reality; utopia more nearly belongs to reality, because reality is made not only of what is, but of what is still just potential, and which one day could be. Utopia is born in this undercurrent of potentialities present in history and in each person. Philosopher Ernst Bloch coined the expression "principle of hope". By "principle of hope", which is more than the virtue of hope, Bloch grasps the inexhaustible potential of human existence and of history, that allows us to say "No" to any concrete reality, to the limitations of space and time, to the political models and to the barriers that limit life, knowledge, desire, and love.
The human being says "no" because he first said "yes": yes to life, to discernment, to dreams and to the longed for plenitude. Even though realistically the human being does not see the total plenitude on the horizon of the historic concretizatons, that does not mean that he stops longing for it, with a hope that never ends. Job, at the very brink of death, could scream to God: "even though You kill me, even then I hope in You." The earthly paradise narrated in Genesis 2-3 is a text of hope. It is not the story of a lost past we long for, but rather it is a promise, a hope for a future encounter towards which we are striving. As Bloch commented: "the true Genesis is not the beginning, but the end." Only at the end of the process of evolution will the words of the Scriptures become true: "And God saw that all was good." As we evolve not everything is good, just perfectible.
What is essential in Christianity is not that it affirms the incarnation of God — other religions also did that —, but that it affirms that utopia (that which does not take place) turned into eutopia (a good place). There was One in whose death not just death was defeated, which in itself would still be small, but in whom irrupted all the inner and exterior possibilities hidden in the human being. Jesus is the "newest Adam," in an expression of Saint Paul, the homo absconditus now revealed. But He is only the first among many brothers and sisters; we will follow Him, Saint Paul concludes.
To announce such hope in the present somber context is not irrelevant. It transforms the eventual tragedy of the Earth and of Humanity, due to social and ecological threats, into a purifying crisis. We are on a dangerous journey, but life will be guaranteed and the Planet will yet be regenerated.
The groups who are carriers of the message, religions and the Christian churches, should proclaim such hope from the highest rooftops. Weeds did not grow on the grave of Jesus. Beginning with the crisis of Crucifixion on Good Friday, life triumphed. This is why tragedy cannot have the last word. Life, in its solar splendor, has it!
(Free translation from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro, done at Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.)
Utopia is not the opposite of reality; utopia more nearly belongs to reality, because reality is made not only of what is, but of what is still just potential, and which one day could be. Utopia is born in this undercurrent of potentialities present in history and in each person. Philosopher Ernst Bloch coined the expression "principle of hope". By "principle of hope", which is more than the virtue of hope, Bloch grasps the inexhaustible potential of human existence and of history, that allows us to say "No" to any concrete reality, to the limitations of space and time, to the political models and to the barriers that limit life, knowledge, desire, and love.
The human being says "no" because he first said "yes": yes to life, to discernment, to dreams and to the longed for plenitude. Even though realistically the human being does not see the total plenitude on the horizon of the historic concretizatons, that does not mean that he stops longing for it, with a hope that never ends. Job, at the very brink of death, could scream to God: "even though You kill me, even then I hope in You." The earthly paradise narrated in Genesis 2-3 is a text of hope. It is not the story of a lost past we long for, but rather it is a promise, a hope for a future encounter towards which we are striving. As Bloch commented: "the true Genesis is not the beginning, but the end." Only at the end of the process of evolution will the words of the Scriptures become true: "And God saw that all was good." As we evolve not everything is good, just perfectible.
What is essential in Christianity is not that it affirms the incarnation of God — other religions also did that —, but that it affirms that utopia (that which does not take place) turned into eutopia (a good place). There was One in whose death not just death was defeated, which in itself would still be small, but in whom irrupted all the inner and exterior possibilities hidden in the human being. Jesus is the "newest Adam," in an expression of Saint Paul, the homo absconditus now revealed. But He is only the first among many brothers and sisters; we will follow Him, Saint Paul concludes.
To announce such hope in the present somber context is not irrelevant. It transforms the eventual tragedy of the Earth and of Humanity, due to social and ecological threats, into a purifying crisis. We are on a dangerous journey, but life will be guaranteed and the Planet will yet be regenerated.
The groups who are carriers of the message, religions and the Christian churches, should proclaim such hope from the highest rooftops. Weeds did not grow on the grave of Jesus. Beginning with the crisis of Crucifixion on Good Friday, life triumphed. This is why tragedy cannot have the last word. Life, in its solar splendor, has it!
(Free translation from the Spanish by Melina Alfaro, done at Refugio del Rio Grande, Texas.)
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/127753
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