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    Liber-Ation: Action That Creates Liberty: Leonardo BOFF

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    salomon44
    Liberty is an essential part of human nature and involves both freedom from oppression and the capacity for self-determination. True liberty requires liberation through autonomous actions that create freedom. At a personal level, liberty allows individuals to express themselves and organize their own lives. At a social level, countries may gain independence from colonizers but still lack liberation and self-governance if new elites maintain oppressive systems. Global liberation is also needed from financial systems that exploit natural resources and from the threat of climate change, which risks splitting humanity between those who can eat and those who cannot.

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    Liber-Ation: Action That Creates Liberty: Leonardo BOFF

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    salomon44
    22 views1 page
    Liberty is an essential part of human nature and involves both freedom from oppression and the capacity for self-determination. True liberty requires liberation through autonomous actions that create freedom. At a personal level, liberty allows individuals to express themselves and organize their own lives. At a social level, countries may gain independence from colonizers but still lack liberation and self-governance if new elites maintain oppressive systems. Global liberation is also needed from financial systems that exploit natural resources and from the threat of climate change, which risks splitting humanity between those who can eat and those who cannot.

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    Boff LiberAction

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    Liberty is an essential part of human nature and involves both freedom from oppression and the capacity for self-determination. True liberty requires liberation through autonomous actions that create freedom. At a personal level, liberty allows individuals to express themselves and organize their own lives. At a social level, countries may gain independence from colonizers but still lack liberation and self-governance if new elites maintain oppressive systems. Global liberation is also needed from financial systems that exploit natural resources and from the threat of climate change, which risks splitting humanity between those who can eat and those who cannot.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    22 views1 page

    Liber-Ation: Action That Creates Liberty: Leonardo BOFF

    Uploaded by

    salomon44
    Liberty is an essential part of human nature and involves both freedom from oppression and the capacity for self-determination. True liberty requires liberation through autonomous actions that create freedom. At a personal level, liberty allows individuals to express themselves and organize their own lives. At a social level, countries may gain independence from colonizers but still lack liberation and self-governance if new elites maintain oppressive systems. Global liberation is also needed from financial systems that exploit natural resources and from the threat of climate change, which risks splitting humanity between those who can eat and those who cannot.

    Copyright:

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    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Liber-ation: action That creates Liberty

    Leonardo BOFF, Petroplis, RJ, Brazil


    Liberty is more than one faculty of the human being, among others, the power to choose. Liberty belongs to the essence of the human being. Even enslaved, he does not lose, in his essence, his liberty. He is born whole but is never completed, because he is a being that is constantly building his life and in doing so completing it. And he does this by exercising his liberty. Among several definitions, I think that this one is the best: liberty is autodetermination. In this word there are the two principal forms of liberty: the liberty from, as independence from determinations and oppressions, and the liberty to as capacity to organize your life and live a personal, social and even global project. All are born within a group of determinations: ethnic, social class, in a world already built and always to be built. It is your determination. Nobody is free from this dependency. It can even assume an oppressive form, as when somebody is born in a slave condition or impoverished. Faced with this situation he can resign as well as rebel to become more independent, although he can never be free from some determination. It is the liberty from, this or that, independence. Liberty as self-determination is that interior and private (self) force that allows you to make your own path, decide your own personal and social life, and look for an alternative to the situation that you are living. It is liberty to. Here the singularity of the human being is shown, his own builder, beyond the determinations that surround him. Liberty is liber-ation, its worth mentioning, an autonomous action that creates liberty that was captive or not present. These two types of liberty gain a personal, social and global expression. At a personal level liberty is the most precious gift that we have, after life: to be able to express, go and come, build your vision of things, organize life as you please, work and family and choose ones representatives. The biggest oppression is to be refused this liberty. At the social level she shows well its two faces: Liberty as independence and as autonomy. Countries from Latin America and the Caribbean became independent from the colonizers. But this did not mean liberation nor self-governing. They became dependent from the elites that maintained the dominant relationships. With resistance, protest and the organization of the oppressed, a liberation process became victorious, gave autonomy to the popular classes, a liberty to organize another type of politics that would benefit the ones that were always
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    excluded. This occurred in Latin America at the end of the military dictatorships that represented the interests of the national elites articulated with the internationals. It is going on a process of liber-ation to, that will not be concluded even thought it made advancement in a democracy born from the bottom, republic and of popular inclination. Today we also need a double liberation: from the globalized financial-economy that explores globally the nature of the periphery countries, dominated by a group of big corporations, stronger than the majority of the States. It is a liberation for a global governance of this globalization that stand up for the global problems of global warming, shortage of water and of hunger of millions and millions. Either there will be global collective governance or there is a risk for a splitting up of humanity, between the ones that eat and the ones that do not eat or endure great needs. Concluding, today there is an urgent need for a special type of liberty from and liberty for. We live a geologic antropoceno era. This means: the big risk to the lifesystem and the earth-system is not a flying meteor but the irresponsible and ecomurder of the human beings. The predominant production system, capitalistic, is devastating the Earth and creating the conditions to destroy all our civilization. Either we change or well be going towards an abyss. We need liberty from this ecocide and biocide system that puts everything at risk in order to accumulate and consume more and more. We need a liberty to try alternatives that would guarantee a production of the necessary and the decent for us and for all the living community. This is being sought and experimented by the well living, the bien vivir of the Andean cultures, by the eco-agriculture, by the organic family agriculture, by the happiness social indicator and other forms that respect the life cycles. As Christians we also need to liberate the Christian faith of fundamentalists visions, of authoritarian and chauvinists ecclesiastical structures to get to a liberty to project a Christianity rooted in the cultures, especially in the popular more participative and creative that cares for the creation that God gave us. We need a church that, together with other spiritual paths, helps educate humanity to respect Earths limits and to worship Mother Earth that gives us all. The struggle for liberty never ends, because it is never q given but conquered by a liberation process.

    Translation by Stuart Sydenstricker

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