In this book the reader will find diary entries made from the time I first set foot in a Brazilian favela, or slum, as a social worker in 1965. It also covers the later years when I started a favela project together with students from a Waldorf School, which continues to this day. It shows how such a project can become a life's work, and how experiences from childhood, adolescence and adulthood can acquire meaning.
As a child during the Second World War, while begging for food in the Austrian countryside, I realized how valuable a slice of bread can be, how good it smells and tastes, but also how humiliating it can be when the farmer's wife turns her back and you have to try somewhere else.
During my adolescent and young adult years, I often thought about the injustices in the world and how one might remedy them. I thought especially about the "underdeveloped" countries, in which I had lived many years. So in 1965, when the "German Development Service" was founded, I volunteered immediately. You could work for two years in Asia, Africa or Latin America in slums, in the countryside, hospitals or trade training centers, for which you were paid some pocket money. This was the way I intended to make my contribution to the elimination of the world's injustices. However, the problem continued to worry me and from my present place of domicile and work, Sao Paulo, Brazil, I am still trying to make my contribution -- but with an essential difference. Favelados (occupants of Brazil's urban slums) and the poor in general have long since become more than mere hardship cases. They are human beings through whom I can become a human being myself. While I am trying to help them in their development, they make their contribution to my understanding of myself and the world.
When you open the newspaper and read statistics your flesh creeps at the revelation of so much cruelty. Here, for example, are some facts about Brazil: There are thirty-six million needy children. Seven million of them live on and from the street Approximately a half million children are housed in state orphanages. Thirty-five per cent of the population has had no schooling. Of the seven million underage criminals, sixty per cent are from broken homes. Thirty per cent of the population lives a nomadic existence, continually looking for work.
Such statistics can go on forever. But what good are they if they only serve to paralyze our will and create psychological defense mechanisms? Nevertheless, this feeling of complete helplessness and impotence can awaken a strength that lends us wings and stimulates us to action. The inventory of facts and their translation into reality then makes sense.
In order to make sense of this avalanche of horror, injustice and inhumanity, two different theories can be applied. The first contends that in order to eliminate injustice from the world the institutions, forms of government and laws must first be changed. The other says that you must first change people in order to develop a humane world.
Once you have worked and lived for many years in a favela and have attained an insight into the social structures and the secret wishes of the people who live here, you understand that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Why? A slum, a favela, is the result of an unjust social-economic system in the country and in the whole world. It is capitalism's final destination. This historical fact is given a very personal, mostly painful stamp in a favela inhabitant's life.
From the situations I have tried to describe in this book one can easily come to the conclusion that the system must be changed. During the years I have worked in favelas as part of the Monte Azul Community Association I have noticed, however, that phenomena such as exploitation, displays of power, manipulation and discrimination against those who are different are also practiced in them. In every favela there is a shop-keeper who overcharges for food and other essentials and exploits those who must buy on credit. There are those who are somehow cleverer, more favored by destiny, perhaps even more diligent than others, who despise those who aren't able to rise above the lowest level of existence. Those who are different, such as homosexuals, are discriminated against by the so-called "normals". These are just a few examples.
The insight grew stronger in me that only a transformation of the individual in the direction of a loving empathy towards other human beings can result in a lasting, meaningful reduction of misery in the world. It is self-evident that worthy schools, hospitals, trade-schools and dwellings are necessary; that is, social institutions that respond to the inner human need for personal development. It is also self-evident that people should participate in voluntary initiatives for better health, dwellings, cheaper and healthier nutrition, agrarian reform, child protection laws, etc., in order to create the framework for a more human existence. However, in my opinion the history of the past decades has shown that these outward changes and improvements will only have a lasting effect if they go hand in hand with a profound understanding of the miracle of man -- knowing the human being not only in his visible physical form, but also in his original spiritual essence. To recognize in every individual a creative, spiritual Self who has come to the earth in order to evolve toward freedom and love and to carry this result into future lives on earth, is an enhanced point of departure for today's social work, social art, social science.
Once this conviction has impregnated our human encounters, the struggle for each individual soul can develop into a multiplying movement which is a formidable opposition to the forces that are based on hunger for power, self-destructing influences and contempt for humanity. The scenes of future conflicts aren't battlefields visible to the eye, but the souls of men -- even though, as an extension, outward warlike conflicts will arise. The antidote for power-hunger, hate, sectarianism and fundamentalism is a loving approach to the other, an understanding of his differences, sympathy for his capacity to learn and develop, thanks to his individual spiritual essence.
Love even evil - so speak
wise souls well,
For even the scoundrel
was once woven of light.Christian Morgenstern