Descolonizando a Administração Responsável. Gerhard Häfner and Vanda Shiva
Decolonizing Stewardship
by Gerhard Häfner and Vanda Shiva
Encontrei Gerhard Häfner em Stuttgart entre 2.000 e 2.002, quando ele contou como, com um ex-colega Waldorf, eles solucionaram o problema de uma pequena cidade que precisava reformar seu balneário. Naturalmente o Prefeito tinha outros planos, a reforma sairia cara para os contribuintes e o balneário ficaria fechado por um período longo. Porém o balneário era frequentado pelas crianças, jovens e idosos que ficariam mais de ano sem poder frequentar. Então Gerhard e seu amigo se reuniram com os cidadãos locais e juntos criaram uma "força-tarefa", bolaram o projeto, cada cidadão entrou com sua especialidade, conseguiram adquirir os materiais a um preço mais razoável e não fecharam o balneário para que a reforma fosse realizada. Isto se tornou um caso de sucesso, por um custo muito menor do que almejava o Prefeito que não pode ter seu nome inaugurando a obra, como uma realização da Prefeitura. O melhor de tudo é que durante muito tempo o balneário não foi pichado pois todos os cidadãos estiveram super envolvidos na reforma.
Gerhard Häfner foi um político alemão filiado ao Partido Verde (1990), membro do Parlamento Federal Alemão, a Câmara de Deputados, (1987-2002) e membro do Parlamento Europeu (2009-2014). Editor e Professor Waldorf. Co-fundador do "Mais-Democracia", Democracia Internacional. Desde 2.015 lidera a Seção de Ciências Sociais do Goetheanum.
Vanda ou Vandana Shiva é uma estudiosa indiana, pesquisadora, ativista ambiental, advoga a sobarania de alimentos, autora ecofeminista e e anti-globalista. Ela já escreveu mais de 20 livros e é conhecida como a "Ghandi do Grão" por seu ativismo inclusive na agricultura biodinâmica (Demeter) e contra alimentos geneticamente modificados.
O artigo abaixo está publicado no Das Goetheanum e foi republicado no
https://southerncrossreview.org/154/shiva-hafner-decolonizing.html
a quem agradeço.
Sugiro que usem a possibilidade da tradução para português que está na lateral do meu blog.
Sonia von Homrich
São Paulo, 14 Set 2023. Brasil.
Decolonizing Stewardship
by Gerhard Häfner and Vanda Shiva
Vandana Shiva spoke at the Goetheanum in February of this year. Before her talk, Gerald Häfner interviewed her about changing the world.
Gerhard Häfner was a German politician (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), member of the German Bundestag (1987-2002) and the European Parliament (2009-2014). Publicist and Waldorf teacher. Co-founder of Mehr Demokratie, Democracy International. Since 2015 he is the head of the Section for Social Sciences at the Goetheanum.
https://southerncrossreview.org/154/shiva-hafner-decolonizing.html
You could
have had a perfect career in physics, philosophy, economy, or academia, but you
didn’t. Why not?
I gave up
my academic path even though I was totally passionate about quantum theory. I
chose to dedicate my life to ecological work and activism because I realized
that, yes, I would have amazing mental challenges—I could have been busy with
quantum puzzles for 100 years—but it would have been an indulgence. Small
studies were actually saving valleys, rivers, and forests. I realized that my
service must go to the earth and to people.
When did
you know that you needed to do something for the earth?
It began
visiting a forest before I went off to do my Ph.D in Canada. I just wanted to
carry memories with me and the oak forest that I wanted to trek in had been
destroyed. I felt it as a personal, physical pain. That’s when I heard about
the Chipko movement, where women of my region decided, “We’re going to hug the
trees.” Chipko means to hug. “You will have to kill us before you kill the
trees.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll do my PhD, but every vacation I will volunteer
for this movement.” It became my other university and that’s what I’ve done
since then: being an activist in the Chipko style.
Then you
did research on the death of the indigenous form of agriculture through
industrialized agriculture.
Every
question I’ve tried to answer has been related to unnecessary violence against
the earth or against people. The destruction of the forests in my home region
was the first, but the eruption of violence in Punjab, where the Green
Revolution was first applied, was the second. The Green Revolution is the name
for industrial agriculture in the Third World. In 1984, a pesticide plant in a
city called Bhopal leaked and killed thousands. People are still dying,
children are still born maimed—the disaster is not over. That year I decided to
study this model of farming. I found out that to sell leftover war chemicals,
the industry had changed our idea of farming, our relationship to the land, our
relationship to food, and defined soil as an empty container and plants as
machines run with fertilizer as fuel. The life of living systems disappeared
and the amazing knowledge of farming communities was erased. I realized, “I’ve
dedicated my life to ecological work, but agriculture is an orphan of the
ecology movement.” So I said, “I will look for a nonviolent path for farming.”
You weren’t
looking for money or power but asking, “What can I do?”
Absolutely.
It came from a deep, deep compassion for the living earth and a deep, deep
compassion for fellow human beings. I believe compassion is the real currency
that flows between us. Words have been impoverished by colonialism, which
reduced currency to money and investment to making money. Currency means flow.
What flows between us is love and compassion. That flow is disrupted by the
growth of fictitious currencies: money, profits, power.
One could
say that life is compassion, that it’s a gift from the very first day.
You’re so
right. I’ve just done a book called From Greed to Care. The economy of care
begins with us coming into this world from our mother’s womb. If there wasn’t
unconditional love, no child would be taken care of. The first economy is the
gift economy.
But how is
it then, Vandana, that we are destroying the earth, each other, and ourselves?
Well, in
India, it’s extremely clear. It begins with colonialism—a handful of people in
Europe deciding they want rich lands in other places. India was 30% of the
world economy at that time. The British, overnight, declared that the soil of
India belonged to England and started to collect rent. Adam Smith, who merely
described how colonial commerce works and the biases in it, is called the
father of modern economics. This is not economy. Economy is derived from oikos:
our home. So the home disappeared, oikos disappeared, and with it, greed became
not only dominant, but worse: it brutally declared that those who live with
compassion and care are primitive and barbarian. In a way, I feel it’s our time
to say, “If compassion is to be barbaric, I’d rather be barbaric.” I think it
is time for us to shift our minds, to think in different ways.
Should we
change the structures or should we change ourselves?
I don’t
think it’s given to us to change structures because they’ve made themselves
invisible. They’ve made themselves remote—distant and unaccountable. But we can
change ourselves and structures will change in the process. You can either keep
hammering on Monsanto’s and Bayer’s door saying, “Please don’t, please don’t”,
or, you can just save a seed with love and create a seeds commons—and
Monsanto’s project shrinks simultaneously. Begin with ourselves. As Gandhi
said—and he is my teacher—“Be the change you want to see.”
I
completely agree but when we say we should begin with ourselves, what are
Monsanto or Bayer or these companies other than concepts created, organized,
and run by humans?
Take the
first corporation that was created: East India Company. It was created by a few
human beings, not all of humanity. I think it’s extremely important to not
universalize the false constructions of the powerful and the privileged. They
are the worst aspect of humanity. And yes, of course, we must begin with
ourselves. We change in our minds and in our hearts, but we live in an
interconnected world. In the quantum world, nothing can be separated: the
‘fact’ of separation is an illusion. It’s oneness that is the reality.
Interconnection is reality. Therefore, the actions and thinking and values that
you bring to the world in your life begin to become values and changes in the
larger world.
I am
creating the future constantly, with the way I think. It starts with the way I
feel, with the way I act.
Absolutely.
I think a big part of the colonial instinct is that the plunderers declare
themselves as the creators. When I shoot a gene into the cell of a plant, I’m
not creating that plant—it is not a creative act, it’s a warlike act. So this
illusion of destruction being creation has blocked us from recognizing our own
power and our own creativity. Our creativity is not separate from the
creativity of the earth. The earth was declared dead: Terra nullius. That’s
where all the violence against her is legitimized. But we are part of a living
earth, a living universe, an intelligent, conscious universe. Playing our role
within that universe, as an ordinary farmer will tell you, we uphold the
universe by the right action.
Could we
say that evil begins with the loss of relation?
I think
reality is relation. Objectification is a violent illusion that gives
permission to treat a seed, a plant, a river or a mountain, as if it was just
an object. Then there is the deeper illusion that by destroying it, by bringing
in bulldozers and spreading glyphosate, I am improving the land. The idea of
improvement is part of an acceleration of violence.
We forgot
about the divine, about other spiritual beings, and we took things just as mere
matter to conquer, to reign. How can we overcome that?
Well, you
know, we’re sitting in the Goetheanum. Goethe had another mind, right? I think
that Europe needs to rediscover its other mind.
You spoke
about the Green Revolution. I started a political organization called the
Greens—we invented that name in the late seventies in Germany. We called it the
Greens because we wanted to relate to nature, to hope, to the living, and then
it was used as a concept to kill. How is this that good impulses are turned to
evil?
The use of
the word green for the industrial agriculture of killing precedes the use of
the word green for the Green Party. There were two projects, two impulses for
the Green Revolution. First, to contain the Red Revolution spreading from
China—so, green rather than red. The second was to create a market for leftover
war chemicals and technologies. The assumption was that by calling it green, no
one would look at what it really was about. The first application was in my
country in 1965-66. I was in high school at that time and it wasn’t in our
consciousness. No one knew that this was happening until 1984 when the violence
erupted. I realized that it’s not that good intentions turn to evil, it’s much
more simple and crude—evil is always looking to co-opt good words, good values,
and put them in the service of greed.
I still
believe, even in this world of companies and governments that try to rule the
world, that within every human being there is a self that is searching for
relation, for resonance, for being equivalent with the other and the world. How
can we set this free?
I think
every crisis, as the Chinese say, has to be an opportunity. We are now living
through a crisis where even ordinary people of the richer part of the world are
suffering like the southern world has always suffered. Globalization was
nothing but the destruction of local economies. Now it’s coming here [Europe],
with the welfare state being dismantled. Any capacity for redistributing wealth
and power in society is under attack. I think this is a moment for the common
search of a life fulfilled, where all of us have our place on earth, both in
terms of nourishing the earth and letting the earth nourish us. That is both a
duty and a right. It’s Indian peasants saying, “We will not be pushed off the
land. We will not allow laws to dispossess us.” But we need similar movements
everywhere. Young people want to go back to the land, to live lives beyond
consumerism, beyond the money machine of Wall Street.
If we open
our imagination to the future, to what needs and wants to come, do you have
ideas how to transform this economy we live in and with?
The first
is to not allow it to be treated as inevitable that the 1% will own all the
resources and wealth of the planet. That’s an illusion. We need ways to share
the wealth, to stop taking more than is right from the earth. We need to shift
from an extractive economy and measuring growth, to giving and the gift economy
that Howard called the Law of Return. That means reclaiming the Earth’s gifts
as a commons. What are the basic things we need? We need food and clothing; we
need knowledge; we need culture. None of this requires the billions of the
philanthrocapitalists. It requires compassion within society and a refusal to
feel hopeless or afraid.
Should we
rethink our concepts of land ownership?
Again,
these ideas of private property were created by colonialism. Land in India
could not be bought and sold. As we used to say, the creator created the land
and owns the land—we are merely custodians. Custodians don’t have ownership
rights—they have a duty to care. I feel grateful that I’ve had an opportunity
to prevent the privatization of seed: before they could do it, we stopped them.
How many movements have I worked with in India to not allow the privatization
of water? The women of Plachimada who fought Coca-Cola; the citizens across the
beautiful Ganges who joined hands—I remember the petition to the World Bank:
“our mother Ganga is not for sale”. Land, seed, water and food are commons.
Knowledge is too. Think of the Vedas and the Upanishads of India—brilliant
people never said, “written and authored by so-and-so…” Mr. Gates, who
constantly patents things, said “I have invented the flood tolerance gene.” You
cannot pretend that you have created what nature creates or that you have
created what other people create through their collective creativity.
We started
a movement in Germany that we call responsible
ownership—Verantwortungseigentum—which asserts that companies are not
commodities. If you look behind the curtain when Bayer “bought” Monsanto, the
main owner of Bayer at that time was BlackRock, Vanguard, and Capital St, and
the main owner of Monsanto was Capital St, BlackRock and Vanguard—the same.
This idea of global capitalism, where you can buy and sell everything—you buy
and sell a company, you buy and sell people with all their knowledge and their
capacities—it’s completely crazy. Now most young entrepreneurs who want to
build up companies say, “We don’t want private ownership: we want to work with
others, we want the company to belong to all of us.”
I wrote the
book Oneness Vs. the 1% precisely because we found out how Monsanto was being
bought by Bayer, and we found exactly what you’re saying: Blackrock and
Vanguard. Who are they? Asset management companies, managing the financial
assets of billionaires. The land, the minerals, the forests, and the rivers
have been privatized, and that’s why we are in a crisis. Those who created the
economy of illusion now want to own the last drop of water, the last inch of
land, the last capacity for carbon sequestering on the planet. But I know a
river can only be looked after by the people around the river; the soil can
only be taken care of by the farmer who works it. Trading on Wall Street is not
care. Trading on Wall Street is not stewardship.
Who could
be the agent of this change that is needed?
I don’t
think we are in the kind of times when a Gandhi or a Marx or a Mandela will
emerge. What we should look for is catalytic leadership from everywhere: from
soil organisms that make land flourish again; from plants that are elders on
this planet, that have lived much longer and can teach us how to belong, how to
grow, and how to give in generosity. Young people and children can be our
teachers, elders can be our teachers. And indigenous people, for sure.
What can we
in Europe learn from indigenous people?
First that
the earth is sacred. Second, that their first identity is common identity.
Third, that your purpose on earth is to take care of the Earth and of
community. Indigenous people have amazing cultures of constantly engaging in
gifting. When I saw a ceremony where the seed was brought by the tribes to be
shared, I realized this idea of the commons was a reality as an organizing
principle in indigenous cultures.
Live
lightly. Increase your creative articulations through the homes you build, the
music you create, and the way you nourish young children. Don’t follow the idea
that if you can extract more and dominate more, you’re somehow superior.
I think
there are two really serious problems. One is anthropocentrism, that humans are
superior to other beings. Indigenous people teach us that we are members of the
Earth family and all other beings are our relatives. The second is that there
is no intelligence beyond a few people’s minds. But intelligence is
everywhere—intelligence is life. New research on intelligence and the
indigenous peoples’ knowledge of everything being conscious are now converging.
Does this
mean that indigenous people are wiser than today’s academics?
Well, you
know, academics have a particular way of knowing the world, by not knowing it.
The epistemology of mechanistic reductionism that permeates every field began
with how physics and natural sciences were thought about by Mr. Bacon. But the
way natural sciences are done is also the way social sciences are done.
Mechanistic reductionism basically says that the world is full of objects that
are separate from each other To recognize that there is no separation and the
world is not populated by objects but beings—that, for sure, is wisdom that
indigenous people have and those groomed in mechanistic thought have lost.
Is there
anything that academics, or we Western and European people, can contribute?
I think
everyone can contribute, as long as it is with humility, without superiority or
thinking that other beings or other cultures are less. Huge advances have been
made in Western science that can be put to the service of the earth and
society. All the work being done on ecology, epigenetics, evolutionary biology,
symbiosis, all of those amazing streams of knowledge actually have total
coherence with indigenous paradigms. I work on soil. I work with farmers and
their knowledge, but we have a lab where we dialogue with the soil
microorganisms, which we could not see without the microscope.
The first
time we met was 1992, in Münich, where I co-organized The Other Economic
Summit—the summit against the World Economic Summit. Now we sit here, 30 years
later, and I’m listening to you tell me about spiritual science. You’re aware
of the Goetheanum and the background behind biodynamics and anthroposophy. Do
you have any relation to them?
Not in the
deep way that you all do, but of course I’ve heard and read about Goethe. I
don’t know the details of Steiner’s thinking, but I know Waldorf schools. In a
way, that thinking is exactly the same as Tagore’s thinking about learning and
Gandhi’s thinking about what education should be. There are amazing
convergences.
It’s such a
pity that Goethe and this whole stream was forgotten or broken through German
history. Steiner took it up and tried to evolve it for all realms of knowledge
and practice. When I listen to you, I have the feeling that you might have
never heard or read about it, but you have found it another way, through
another door.
When you
talk about how that stream of Goethean thought was put underground, my mind is
going to 1484, eight years before the papal bull which legalized the doctrine
of taking over the land of other people. But eight years before that was the
papal bull on the Inquisition and the witch hunts, targeting anyone who thought
differently, who had their own knowledge of healing plants, most of them women
healers. I believe we are living under witch hunts again. When we think of the
power of those who control Big Pharma, they basically see any free thinking,
any independent, sovereign path, as something to be afraid of—to extinguish
like a swatted fly.
It’s about
relation and resonance, but it’s also about freedom, about developing one’s own
thinking in a way that we flee this imprisoned kind of thinking.
Change
begins with you, and it begins with enlarging your capacity, your own
potential. That potential gets enlarged through your relationships. The wider
and deeper our relationships become, the more we ourselves get enhanced. That’s
our freedom.
I wrote the
book Earth Democracy in terms of freedom for the Earth and ourselves as part of
the Earth, because we were defined as the anti-globalization movement. I said,
“No, we are an Earth democracy movement.” Every time they said, “Oh, you know
what you’re against, but you don’t know what you’re for,” I said, “No, we are
for life. We are for love. We are for community. We are for the commons. That’s
why we are against privatization and seed patents, against corporations
controlling our food supply, against the idea that one World Trade Organization
sitting in Geneva can set the rules of how we live.”
We had a
beautiful moment. I think 6,000 communities in India got organized on the 5th
of June 1999, because I told them what’s happening with the WTO, etc. I said,
“Tell them. Tell Mike Moore,” who was the Director-General of WTO, “tell him
what you think.” And they sent postcards. They said, “We understand that you
want to own the seed, you want to own the plants. Even in our society we have
people who steal. Usually there’s a desperation: a child will steal because the
mother is ill, a mother will steal because a child is hungry. And if they
explain, then we clearly do not treat them as criminals—we ensure that they get
medicine, that they get the food that they need, as part of our community. Come
and sit under the banyan tree in our village and explain to us: what is your
desperation that makes you want to steal the last seed from the poorest farmer
of the world?”
It’s those
kinds of creative actions that came from the people themselves, that then
shifted the discussion and the imagination. Just like it’s wrong to say that
some plants are weeds and should be killed by herbicides, it is wrong to say
that people are useless. Every plant, every insect, every human being has a
contribution to make and society collectively has a duty to defend their space
and let them evolve on their terms.
Many young
people are afraid about whether there will be a future at all and whether we
still have the time to make this deep transformation. Vandana, do we still have
time?
Well, life
is a process, and in this process, there’s never a moment that says, “there is
no time.” So I think we need to get out of the mechanistic idea of time and the
idea that urgency means now, and switch to the recognition that time is the
flow through which life evolves and recycles. Urgency means importance, not
speed. It means doing the right thing, finding the right niche for us to occupy
as human beings, not another wave of mastery of the kind that’s being planned:
geoengineering and changing the climate even more, or engineering lab food and
cellular meat. As Einstein said, to do the same thing again and again and
expect a solution is a clear sign of insanity.
I think
part of it is that children are being made afraid. But I have seen what happens
when I bring children to the Navdanya farm and I work with them on the carbon
cycle. I work with them on the power of the soil and the power of the green
leaf of the plant to draw down carbon dioxide. And suddenly the child’s mind,
instead of being the mind preoccupied by fear, becomes the creative mind to
become one with the earth, to say, “I am here to serve you. You show me the
way.”
I think
there’s hope. As long as there’s life. As long as there’s potential for life,
there’s hope.
Thanks to:
Das Goetheanum online where this interview originally appeared.
https://dasgoetheanum.com/en/
