**1. Introduction**

The essay was written at a time of tremendous acceleration in history, where, after a syndemic pandemic,1 we experienced the impactful images of war.2 Placed at the center of a dramatic design of humanity and the Planet Earth, breathing the uncertainty of its survival, we join our voice to a multitude of voices that have swelled more and more, over the last decades, in a pathetic clamor dissolving between despair and hope.

It is a painful epochal change that is underway. It is a living process that has marked our history over the last few decades. Many thinkers and humanists followed one another in the search for the elucidation of the main causes and, also, the possible ways of overcoming them. At the same time, we also witness important advances in knowledge and design of paths to sustainability, amid the manifestations of chaos and strong signs of unsustainability, which multiply in a dizzying way.

<sup>1</sup> The essay dates from March 2022. The concept of "syndemics" was conceived by Merril Singer (2009), meaning the aggravation of health problems by the combination of several interrelated factors. In Brazil, philosopher Paulo Ghiraldelli [1] uses the concept of "syndemics" to characterize the high political, cultural, and economic impact in the pandemic moment that Covid-19 represented.

<sup>2</sup> War of occupation of Ukraine, declared by Russia, at the end of February 2022.

Some voices fill us with faith in life and are of great encouragement. Among them, we highlight the voice and witness of the Holy Father Francis, who has vigorously resumed dialogue in the construction of a horizon of the future, supported by *integral ecology* and the Christian theology of reconciliation. The Church's Social Teaching and the effort of dialogue are outstanding under the leadership of this Pope.

Over the last few decades, the search for global ethical standards has also intensified, increasingly becoming a fundamental requirement. In this sense, the efforts made by the German theologian Hans Küng [2, 3] are well known. From the same perspective, the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff [4–6], in his very perceptive reading of the world, brings us some important clues to a necessary spirituality in today's times.

The essay reports also, in summary, a collective effort, which I had the opportunity to coordinate in the Jesuit Province of Brazil, proposing an operational concept of promoting socio-environmental justice in coherence with the dreamed future horizon. The idea of *spiritual dialogues* is seen as a base amalgamation in this operational conception. Thus, this idea ends the essay not as a conclusion but as an invitation to deepen the reflection or fruitful signaling of a future of overcoming. This ending also includes some mobilizing questions within the present historical moment, whose dramatic design is outlined at the beginning.

This is the path taken in the essay that unfolds in six moments or subtitles.

### **2. A dramatic design**

*What sense do absurd military budgets have in our time? What is the meaning of human life if we are not able to react (in the face of all this) and leave prehistory? Because I believe that, as long as war is our way of overcoming our conflicts, resolving our conflicts, we will continue in prehistory … How long? This is a challenge for young people from now on, to fight for a better world, and we realize the collective responsibility we have as a society. Is it impossible to dream? Is it not possible that, in today's world, the utopia that man can improve himself and society can be affirmed? It's a little question that I leave in the air. (José Mujica – Ex-President of Uruguay).<sup>3</sup>*

We live in times of civilizational degradation in human society. This reality is mirrored in different ways in most countries. The most correct, perhaps, is to say: We live in a planetary civilizational crisis! Assertions about this phenomenon, which marks our times with sick humanity on an equally sick planet, are nothing new. There are also many studies and manifestations of all kinds that focus on the theme of increasing and explicit symptoms of the seriousness of this global disease. Many elements come together for the analysis of this diagnosis.

The main symptoms are: Humanity has lost its "common human sense," involved in superficialities, and with its fundamental values shaken. Among these values are life itself and dignity. The syndrome of arrogant and self-sufficient prepotency of some small groups is wide open to everyone's eyes, hiding under false facades. There are clear signs of neglect which, in many political, economic, and social situations, is not only misguided but blatantly irresponsible, resulting in the ignominious accumulation of concentration of wealth and the exclusion and death of the most suffering

<sup>3</sup> José Mujica: "Mujica sobre a crise na Ucrânia e a 'loucura da guerra'." (23/02/2022). (2819) Mujica sobre a crise na Ucrânia e a "loucura da guerra"—YouTube.

#### *Integral Ecology and Spiritual Dialogues DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105126*

people, who are poor, discarded from the world, and vulnerable in their dignity.4 In many places, too, manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and various discriminatory prejudices have become frightening. The accelerated process of environmental degradation and the increase in inequalities and situations of exclusion are clear signs that sustainability, despite all the technological advances we have experienced, is always more fragile and shaken.

Humanity suffers, above all, from a glaring disregard for the very future of life, in every sense, concerning "Mother Earth" and the "Common Home." In the context of countries like Brazil, it is degradation, verging on depravity, that threatens the civilizational achievements of humanity, generally carried out with struggle and blood.5

The Brazilian Commission for Justice and Peace—CBJP, on February 21, 2022, in its periodic analysis of the conjuncture,6 when referring to the geopolitics of the moment, began with a reflection on Pope Francis's expression, who spoke of the "world war in parts":

*Still in 2014, eighteen months into his pontificate, Pope Francis, after visiting a military cemetery, warned that "the world is experiencing the Third World War in parts," whose most latent face is "crimes, massacres, and destruction." What appeared to be a rhetorical exaggeration, embraced under the emotion of witnessing to those who had died in combat, demonstrated a remarkable analytical lucidity.7*

It is an expression associated with the idea of "hybrid warfare."8 It is a war where more than missiles, tanks, ships, or planes,9 most crimes happen through "cyber bombings," with the practice of spreading cyber infections, stealing information, and fraud in operating systems. The truculent dissemination of partial versions full of falsehoods is associated with economic sanctions that suffocate national and international production and trade. "Hybrid warfare" is a resource that has strengthened and expanded with the advent of weapons of mass destruction.

*The tendency is that weakly or moderately constituted national states, poor, and/ or divided by religion, ethnicity, and internal political disputes are victims of global rivalries on a larger scheme. The divisions will get decisively exploited by the powers.* 

<sup>4</sup> Attention to the rule of the great oligarchs and big corporations is becoming ever more common today, both in the East and in the West.

<sup>5</sup> The three preceding paragraphs, in the present item, reproduce partially three paragraphs of author's Preface to the second edition of "Promoção da Justiça Socioambiental - Marco de Orientação," Província dos Jesuítas do Brasil [7].

<sup>6</sup> This organization provides a periodic analysis service of the conjuncture for the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil—CNBB. It is a group of experts linked to various research centers and Catholic Universities.

<sup>7</sup> CBJP situation analysis, February 21, 2022. https://justicapaz.org See references in https://www.bbc.com/ portuguese/noticias/2014/09/140913\_papa\_guerra\_1k

<sup>8</sup> Hybrid Warfare—New Threats, Complexity and "Trust" as the "Antidote." Bilal, Arsalan. Nato Review, November 30, 2021. https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/11/30/hybrid-warfare-new-threatscomplexity-and-trust-as-the-antidote/index.html.

<sup>9</sup> Although its concrete terror remains alive, as shown by examples in dozens of countries around the world, and, at the moment, also in Ukraine, with the violent Russian occupation war, in March 2022. (The writing of this text coincided with the outbreak of the "Ukrainian occupation war," declared by Russia and which began in late February 2022).

*Consequently, there is a growing trend of fierce political disputes, separatist demonstrations, religious and ethnic massacres on the periphery of the world, especially where resources and trade are abundant [8].*

If we move to another scenario, in which the same actors on the agenda are also present; in another focus of reality, we can echo a phrase that most must have heard, several times, in early November 2021: "The Earth is talking to us, and it's saying we don't have time anymore." These are the words of the young indigenous Txai Suruí, a Brazilian representative, in the opening speeches of the Climate Summit (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland (October 31—November 12, 2021). The Earth wants to talk to all the inhabitants who live on it.

The whole point is that our "Common Home" [9]10 is falling apart, too neglected and disordered to provide sustainability and good living conditions for the entire "big family" that lives in it. It becomes very serious because the main groups, or large oligarchies and corporations of power, become ever more insatiable and mysteriously untouchable within this "great family," to the detriment of most of humanity and specifically of peoples who have already been accumulating historical suffering.

Often, when talking about socio-environmental problems, the bias immediately leads us to the issues of dispute for natural assets, far from the urban context. However, as serious (or more serious) than these conflicts are those generated in the daily life of the socio-environmental conflict lived in the urban context, more directly evidenced, or witnessed in the countless slums and the underworld of the discarded. For example, it rarely happens in academies to present the large concentration of black population in Brazilian *favelas* as an expression of one of the biggest socio-environmental problems, which cuts the country from north to south. It is a living expression of environmental racism, whose concept, incidentally, is at the very origin of the concept of environmental justice or environmental injustice, as it is widely known from the contributions of Robert D. Bullard [10] and others. In these subhuman and violent contexts, the "world war in parts" is also taking lives, in an endless process. Of course, the socio-environmental problems of large urban centers should be seen on a broader horizon. We must be aware, for example, above all, of the stark fact of the growing demands of consumption of goods, which large urban concentrations, by their own characteristics, demand.

Pay attention! I am not trying to divert attention from the grave attacks on the environment that occur, for example, in the Amazon context or relation to biomes in general, resulting from criminal extractivism. I reinforce the awareness regarding the deleterious and devastating force for Planet Earth and humanity that is present in the growing and scandalous aggressions regarding the reserve of life on the planet that is the Amazon biome and other similar biomes in the world. I just want to draw attention to the extent of the socio-environmental injustice that surrounds us, and that is concentrated, above all, in large urban centers, which are, on the one hand, spaces for the consumption of goods in a disorderly and almost "savage" way, and, on the other hand, machines of concentrated pollution and agglomerations of very aggressive housing degradation.

I only want to draw attention to the extent of the socio-environmental injustice that surrounds us, and that is concentrated, above all, in large urban centers, which

<sup>10</sup> In this text official documents of Pope Francis will be quoted with their respective abbreviation acronyms: LS = Laudato Si′ (LS, 2015); EG = Evangelii Gaudium (EG, 2013); FT = Fratelli Tutti (FT, 2020). In textual references or quotations, the acronyms and the numbers of the paragraphs referred to or cited, will be used, such as: (LS, 17).

are at the same time machines of concentrated pollution and clusters of very aggressive housing degradation.

Perhaps it should be said that at the heart of this problem is humanity itself as such, which is muffled, repressed, and forgotten. In other words: The human being seems to have been, in different ways, deviated from its own humanity. I have heard the statement several times: Humanity has lost its soul! Perhaps, putting ourselves in Leonardo Boff's perspective [6], we can say that human beings are neglecting their "dimension of depth." ([5], p. 162–164)
