How utilitarianism has turned us into strangers on our planet - OPINION April 29, 2025
- Ana Cunha-Busch
- Apr 28
- 2 min read
How utilitarianism has turned us into strangers on our planet - OPINION
In April, I had a multicultural experience that few people can access: a conversation circle with indigenous people from the Kariri-Xocó village in Porto Real do Colégio, Alagoas. I went without knowing what to expect—after all, the meeting was taking place far from indigenous territory, at a university in southeastern Brazil, an unfamiliar environment for the chief and the warriors.
I arrived on autopilot to tick that box on my to-do list: work – check; deliver a gift to a friend – check; indigenous experience – check. While looking for the best angle for a photo to capture the “experience,” Chief Kayran was asked:
“Chief, how do you understand death?”
Beyond the belief in reincarnation, what struck me was his explanation of penance:
“For you, penance is the church. For us, it is nature. Our medicine comes from it. We embrace a tree because it is a tree, and thus we exchange energy with it.”
Professor Nathalia Nascimento, from the Laboratory of Education and Environmental Policy at ESALQ/USP, added:
“That statement is fundamental. We live in a world where a tree is no longer a tree, but 'stored carbon.'
The meeting lasted two hours, but it only took two sentences for me to realize how the Western worldview has dehumanized us. We have turned everything into a resource, data, or a commodity, and that is the root of the socio-environmental crisis.
It takes just five minutes on Instagram to learn how to reduce food to macronutrients: steak becomes “protein,” rice becomes “carbohydrates,” olive oil becomes “good fat.” We no longer eat for taste, for the affection of our grandmother's cooking, for the smell that fills the kitchen, but for utilitarianism.
While the “civilized” disconnect from themselves, indigenous peoples—called “backward” by colonial logic—teach us that to be present is to resist. Reconnecting is revolutionary. Whether it's hugging a tree not for your story, but to honor its existence. Whether it's calling cassava by the name your grandmother used—and not “a source of resistant starch.”
The Kariri-Xocó remind us that nature is not a backdrop, but a relative. While we calculate how many trees compensate for a flight, they would ask: “How many do you know by name?” True sustainability begins there—in the embrace that the algorithm does not recognize.
The future is ancestral!
By Ana Letícia R. Ferro
Comments