The Eagle and the Hen a metaphor about human condition Leonardo Boff Philosophical Antropology Every point

t of view is a view of one point. This means that to understand how people perceive what they read its necessary to understand how their eyes see the world, know the social history of these people: how they live, their dreams, the problems they face and what hopes make them happy. Thats why the interpretation of a text or a book is unique: we can only interpret and understand experiences we are able to rebuild, step by step, with our own efforts. This makes understanding always a unique interpretation. Its clear that every reader is a co-author since he understands these experiences according to his own universe. So, according to this presupposition, well narrate the story of The Eagle and the Hen. The ancient said: Habent sua falta libelli, which means that the books have their own destiny, and they were right, cause the destiny of books is connected to the destiny of readers. Take a chance and make up your own story! The philosopher Leonardo Boff rettels and analyses the story of the Ganense educator, James Aggrey who told it in a meeting, in the middle of 1925, where people and some politicians discussed the ways to free a country named Golden Coast , first dominated by Portugal and then by England. Golden Coast is located in the Guinean Gulf, between Ivory Coast and Togo. In the XVI century, Golden Coast was conquered by Portugal which dealt in gold and slaves. Every colonization process restricts severely the rights to full development of people and their natural characteristics since learning culture and even language of the colonizing country is forced. Later, in 1874, with the excuse of fighting against slaverys traffic to the Americas, Golden Coast was invaded by England. In this colonizing process, they demoralized the Goldens Coast people, telling them they were inferior and uneducated people and spred these rumors in books, schools, in the churches pulpits . The pression was so high that the colonized people began to really believe the colonizers were right: their lives werent worth a thing, their traditions were ridiculous, their gods were false, their history had not true heroes. Unfortunately, the same things still happens nowadays with the poor, the weak, women, disabled, against HIV bearers and others who doesnt belong to the social parameters.

Besides being an educator and an active politician whose dream was to free his people, he didnt have time to see it: he died in 1927 but he sowed many seeds of dreams and freedom. The liberation came with Kwame NKrumah, one generation after Aggreys death and who took his ideals of liberty. He founded a political party in 1949, called Peoples Convention. This party put the English under hard pressure and, in 1952, Kwame was elected prime minister. His greatest victory would come on March 6, 1957, when he proclaimed the independence of Golden Coast which became Gana, again, the first African colony to conquer its independence. Ganas capital is Accra. Now, lets tell the story: Once upon a time, there was a farmer who wanted to keep a bird as a captive pet. One day, he found an eagles nest on the woods with the mom eagle dead and a hungry baby eagle. The farmer took the baby eagle and started taking care of it. He decided to raise it with the hens, even tough knowing the eagles are hens predators. The eagle was growing up and getting used to the hens habits and company; it even ate hens food. A naturalist passing by saw the captive eagle and couldnt believe his eyes. He decided to ask the farmer how he had done that: I think, said him, the eagle was not given any option so it resigned. The naturalist found difficult to accept that so he asked the farmer one chance to make the eagle fly. Two attempts failed but on the third one, the eagle, recovering its loftiness and focusing the sun, flied away winning the sky, recovering its majesty, its behavior that was asleeping inside it. This story is quite true whenever its read; we all are hen-eagles, depending on the moment we are through: shy and retracted when in crisis, courageous and invencibles when in love. Wherever we look at, we can notice the eagle-hen dimension, although covered with several names: reality and dream, body and soul, necessity and desire, chaos and cosmos. All these oppositions express one unique and complex reality. This can be called duality, not dualism. The dualism defines these pairs like joined realities without any connection between each other, for example, left and right. On the other hand, duality considers the two sides that complete each other the duality puts the word and instead the word or, creating a dynamic system, always open to new synthesis. The human being is dual and complex: he doesnt have body and soul - he is body and soul. Hen and eagle, body and spirit, material and immaterial: two sides of the same things, like religion and faith which should unit in its duality to help mankind instead of being used like authority and power.

According to this point of view, there is another complex unit, now analyzed: Ethics and Moral. Ethics can be defined as everything that helps to improve the worlds environment, so it can become a better place: materially dependable, psychologically coherent and spiritually fertile. Moral is connected to specific habits and traditions of each people and to a system of values and spiritual beliefs. By its nature, moral is always something plural: there are as many types of moral as many societes and cultures exist. Ethics means a set of attitudes that surpur these acts. The act is always something concrete and closed in itself. The attitude is always open to life and its countless possibilities. Ethics give us the courage to leave behind elements of several morals weve known. Its not enough being only moral, attached to traditional values: we have to be ethical, too: opened to values that belong to all humans, like improve our planet, our house, respect to the bodys dignity, of defending others points of view, of love to the truth, of compassion to the poor ones; values to fight against corruption, violence and war. Thats why the ethical acts go along with the dynamic of life. And this is the greatest challenge: make our eagle get along with the hen and like the Buddhists say: The middle path is always desirable. We are all hens concrete and historical creatures but we should not have to desire to be only hens: trapped in a small world, with limited interests and weak desires; however, we shouldnt be only eagles, that fly in the heights and only have like limit the sun and the infinite of universe. We will starve if we do so its necessary to land on Earth to hunt for survival. We are all eagles but have to recognize our roots. What makes us behave more likely hens or eagles? Our own nature tells us which portion is stronger or weaker, depending on the situation so, only selfknowledge is essential to make we listen to this inner nature. Its also necessary to learn with our daily challenges, understand how they affect us and how we react facing them. At this present moment that mankind is going through, which one should be more evoked? The eagle, we say, since the power keepers are trying to reduce the majority of worlds population into hens so they can dominate their own henhouse. Now its the time to awake the inner eagle that allows us to strongly repel the crisis that threatens specially the planets supporting. The story of the eagle and the hen evokes on us the personalization process, that every human being must face. Our existence is not definite: it must be gradually build and exposing us to the risks through the journey of life: familiar conflicts, betraying of friend, professional disappointments, love frustrations; however, we also have positive feelings to achieve: the discovery of friendship, growing love, the happiness that constructive experiences bring, the developed maturity and the wisdom of life.

Every creature feels, sometimes, the sensation of abandon and has to deal with the loss: a close relative, a love relation, a job. Its when he needs encouraging words, some caring, a friend to bring comfort: this is the situation of the fallen eagle that can or not be rescued. In all difficult and hurting situations we are tempted to ran away from them, not facing the helplessness and so we blames others (family, bosses, God) which clearly shows lack of initiative and escape from responsibility. But we have the chance to face the challenges and grow with them. The experiences of losses and falls will last along our whole life. The personal and common life is made by highs and lows, ups and downs. At any moment we may fall from our ideals to the painful reality of life. In many moments we feel as we dont belong to this world, in which it seems there is not enough room for our deepest dreams of love, freedom, understanding, compassion and peace. Meanwhile, were free to mould and modify our destiny. We can presume each fall is a challenge of inner overcoming. And this overcoming happens by our command, and also happens when our situation awakes the compassion in another human being this compassion can be called unconditional love, too that has no boundaries to be felt: blood links, character, religion, ideology. It loves just for loving and its deeply therapeutic: helps to make stronger who is loved and starts a huge libertation process of all kinds of limitations. This unconditional love creates the reprocity-complementarity: one helps the other to exist and develop just because believes in the potential gifts of each one. Life in society is like this: we all have something to give that only we can offer to the worlds whole development. If we deny this contribution, there will be an emptiness that no one will replace, bringing frustration to the whole Universe. Liberty is a whole process: its not enough to be free of we need to be free for! Free yourself to love yourself unconditionally, taking care of: . the body: what we eat, the water we drink, the air we breath and the clothes we wear. . the mind: take care of our thoughts, and the examples we follow. . the spirit: be aware of all messages that are around us, the signs that means reality. Eagle and hen symbolize archetypes of human condition: Hen: the man in his daily routine, habits and cultural traditions. Eagle: the creativity of the mankind, the capacity to overcome barriers, their dreams and boldness. Permanent and transcendent: means duality - synthesize the duality in the human being, in ourselves with balance: thats the way. And who knows maybe neither Paradise is so far from here nor its lost at all