Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria
Other wars and heroes
16
Jun
Africa lived through a long period of colonization that it would not be an
exaggeration to call genocide or at least the erasure of a culture and an imperiocentric worldview, in the sense that every idea of liberation in Africa is accompanied by some form of epistemicide, which is the imposition of a worldview on the most unarmed nations that don’t share in the wealth.
I came across the book I got from a friend: “História Geral da África – África desde 1935” (General History of Africa – Africa since 1935) (2011, Cortez and UNESCO). I was careful to check the publishers, who are independent, and the translation was done by the Center for Afro-Brazilian Studies at the Federal University of São Carlos, where I studied and later taught.
Ali A. Mazrui was a Kenyan professor and political writer, who died in 2014. His assistant was Christophe Wondji, who died in 2015, a university professor from Ivory Coast.
Chapter 21 of the book, written by Ali A. Mazrui himself. Mazrui himself and colocabolaradores, I find a definition of the African soul in the form of a poem: “Nous sentons [we feel], donc nous pensons [therefore we think], donc nous sommes [therefore we are] (Mazrui, 2011, 763), the highlights are by the translators, we translate from it: we feel (perception) precedes we think (logos) which precedes we are (ontological), and with this we understand African ontology as perception and I would add hay intuition maybe fenomenology.
The book sets out an in-depth history of post-35 Africa, as well as part of colonized Africa (apartheid, for example, lasted until 1994) and there is a gap from 2015 onwards; in the previous period there would have been an analysis of the Kingdom of Congo, which had already been colonized since 1942.
I’ll make another point: “The colonialism of maintaining order was, in essence, a substitute for the colonialism of development. Belgian colonialism in Zaire (today’s DR Congo) was only marginally better than Portuguese colonialism in Angola” (Mazrui, 2011, p. 772), which we want to analyze.
Initially colonized by Portugal, the Republic of Zaire under Belgian rule (hence Belgian Congo) after revolts had its name and constitution changed to the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1971 to 1997. It is the second largest country in Africa (Algeria is the first) after Sudan was divided creating South Sudan, which is also experiencing a war and there are others in Africa.
Zaire suffered a military coup in 1965 led by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, after a crisis known as the Congo crisis (1965), democratically elected Patrice Lumumba did not take office, becoming the Democratic Republic of Congo, but Mobutuism became known for its nepotism, corruption and messianism and was deposed in 1995 by Laurent-Desiré Kabila, politically considered ambiguous, he is an ally of the Tutsis who are enemies of the Hutus.
The regime of the Democratic Republic of Congo is semi-presidential and the current president is Félix Tshiseked, The country will be elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023, and the prime minister is Judith Tuluka, the country has enormous mineral wealth including the famous rare earths, important for today’s technology (columbite tantalite), and among the conflicts, the northeastern province of North and South Kivu, which involve both political and ethnic issues.
Today a young man from Kivu, Floribert Bwana Chui (pictured at a school for peace), who opposed the delivery of spoiled food to the population, died under torture and refused to be corrupted and to abandon his beliefs and values, will be proclaimed “servant of God” in a ceremony at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, with the presence of Congolese Bishop Willy Ngumbi and other cardinals of the Congo, and the presence of the Cardinal for the Causes of Saints, Marcello Semeraro.
MASRUI, Ali A., WONDJI, C. (Eds) (2011) História Geral da África: África desde 1935, v. 8, 2a. ed. Brazil, São Paulo: Cortez Editora, Brasilia: MEC/UNESCO.
Escalating war: Israel attacks Iran
13
Jun
Since the early hours of yesterday, the movement in the US embassies
in the Middle East indicated that the Trump administration had authorized the attack on Iran and it happened, and in Russia too the war is escalating, as Ukraine is now attacking military systems on Russian territory.
Defense Minister Israel Katz himself told the press: “After the State of Israel’s pre-emptive strike against Iran, a missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the near future.” The population is already stockpiling food and looking for protective bunkers.
There were also Russian planes close to the conflict region, indicating strategic support, since Iran is a Russian ally, having supplied drones and Russia supports Iran’s nuclear weapons, one of the main points of conflict between the US and the Israeli government.
Iranian state TV confirmed that the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hossein Salami, was killed in the attacks. There are indications that other members of the high command have been killed, but Iran won’t confirm this, but it is only known that Iranian military systems were targeted.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio assures that he is not taking part in the offensive, but that the government aims to protect “interests and personnel” in the region.
In Russia, Ukraine’s kamikaze drones hit the control station of the Navodchik-2 system, which is responsible for commanding the flights of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). Russia accuses NATO of direct involvement in the current operations in Ukraine, while Europe expects attacks outside Ukraine, especially by troops concentrated in Belarus.
The region is close to Sumy in northwestern Ukraine, where Russia has concentrated its attacks.
In the early hours of the morning, sirens were sounding in Israel (photo) and in Europe the atmosphere was tense as Russia waited to respond outside Ukraine in the southern countries or in the Baltics.
In Israel there was a motion to call new elections and Netanyahu resisted, the Trump administration is facing demonstrations and protests in various regions of the country, and the war is likely to escalate.
War interests are drowning out the voices of peace, but there is only one way out of civilization without more tragedies and conflicts: diplomacy, that governments return to sanity and dialogue.
Early this morning (13/06) the international community called for a de-escalation and UN Secretary General António Guterres asked Israel and Iran to show maximum restraint.
Domestic life and its asceticism
27
May
I recall that the word economy also comes from oikonomia, which means
“house” or “domicile”, which means “rule” or “administration”, so administering the house is the origin.
We are reminded of Heidegger’s clearing and Sloterdijk’s treatment of it also in the sense of theory: “a kind of domestic leisure in its old definitions resembles a serene look out of the window: it is above all a matter of contemplation” (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 37).
Thus, the windows would be glimpses of the houses in the walls (in the photo primitive houses in the rocks), behind which people can think and dream, and he adds: “even walks, in which movement and reflection merge, are derived from domestic life.
But since domestic life gives rise to the clearing, Sloterdijk explains: “we are only touching on the most harmless aspect of the humanization of houses. The clearing is both a battlefield and a place of decision and selection … one must decide what the men who inhabit them will become; one decides, in fact and by deeds, what kind of house builders will come to command” (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 37) and this is why there are battles.
He then turns to Nietzsche, in the third part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, under the title “Of the diminishing virtue”, who sees houses as these environments that mean modestly embracing a small happiness and calls it “resignation”, “virtue is for them that which makes modest and domesticated: with it they make a dog of the wolf, and of men themselves the best domestic animals for men” (Nietszche apud Sloterijk, 2000, p. 49).
It should be remembered that Nietszche came from a Lutheran family and a pietist mother who had a profound impact on him.
So it could be said that Nietszche was the first to deal with “domestication” and, as Sloterdijk observes, “he read Darwin and St. Paul with the same attention and sees the school as another environment for human domestication, ‘a second horizon, this one darker’” (p. 40). 40), and Sloterdijk himself has a diagnosis that it is “likely that Nietzsche had gone a little too far in propagating the suggestion that the transformation of man into a domestic animal was the premeditated work of a pastoral association of breeders, that is, a project of the clergy…” (p. 42).
I saw a documentation by Carl Sagan famous for the Cosmos series talking about the richness and universe of a library, and Sloterdijk says that this was not just a question of an “alphabet”, “reading (lesen) had an immense power of human formation – and, in more modest dimensions, still does; selection (auslesen) however – however it was carried out – has always functioned as the eminence the brown eminence behind power” (Sloterdijk, 2000, p. 43).
Thus, lesson and selection, close words in German, play a fundamental role in the formation of the “home”, of cohabitation, and knowing how to read and write has played a central role in today’s culture, and Plato’s reflections on education and the state “are part of the pastoral folklore of Europeans”.
It will only be by rediscovering the domestic environment (the oikos) that we will find a way out of this civilization crisis.
Sloterdijk, P. (2000) Regras para o parque humano: uma resposta à carta de Heidegger sobre o humanismo. Trad. José Oscar de Almeida Marques. Brazil, São Paulo: Estação liberdade.
Peace and the death of the pope
21
Apr
The truce talks between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and the Hamas and Trump’s tariff-only war put the world on alert for a serious period of civilizational instability.
The death of Pope Francis this morning in Brazil and Italy also means the loss of a tireless defender of peace and has repercussions throughout in all world.
In an official statement this afternoon (21/04) the Vatican clarified that Pope Francis’ death occurred at 7:35 am (Italian time), therefore 2:35 am in Brazil, caused by:
– Stroke
– COMA
– IRREVERSIBLE CARDIOCIRCULATORY COLLAPSE
I leave you with a personal video where I reflect on the Pope’s true thinking on controversial issues expressed in chapter 3 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (all brothers), as follows:
The great civilizational passion
14
Apr
Military wars, market wars, endemic situations (dengue fever in Brazil
is not under control, for example) and endless polarizing rhetoric is a civilizational crisis, the basis of which is not the current situation, it has been going on since the beginning of colonization and worsened with two world wars.
It seemed at the end of the Second World War that with the UN, the establishment of human rights and the nuclear agreements we had found the way out, but the basis of this whole process, as we have seen here, is idealistic thinking, which the polarization calls neoliberal and the other pole communist, but every war is one of plunder and the death of innocents.
At a meeting concluded by NATO (photo) on Sunday (April 13), European defense ministers stressed that despite the United States’ negotiations with Russia, which both consider to be progress, Europe is discredited because Russia’s aggressions continue and threaten the region.
No matter the rhetoric, the basis of all idealistic/enlightenment thinking is a strong state and many countries are not abandoning this thinking, the tariff crisis is now the manifestation of Trump’s motto: “American first”, confronting even Europe.
The little I understand about economics, I understand that there is an interdependence of nations, a car produced anywhere in the world has parts produced all over the world, the Americans want them to be produced there again, with tariffs the American car becomes more expensive, while China’s tactic has been to produce cheaply and dominate the markets.
In fact, at the request of American carmakers, Trump backed down on car production, and on Saturday (April 12) he also backed down on taxing smartphones, computers and chips.
There will be more jobs in the US, but this didn’t seem like a problem to me, a lot of people were going there because there were jobs and they paid well, but in this regard the deportation of illegals is also going the other way and the lack of labor could represent another problem.
The war in the Middle East continues to be cruel to the Houthis, in the attacks the group’s intelligence chief Abdul Nasser Al-Kamali was killed, and the threats to Iran continue down a dangerous path.
There is always hope, there are always negotiators with a sincere desire for peace. What makes the crisis of civilization advance is that imperialist and warmongering thinking is on the rise with the increasing election of authoritarian governments, influenced by Enlightenment thinking, who see other peoples’ countries as enemies and won’t give in to any negotiation process.
It’s a week for Christians that involves the passion of Jesus, it seems to be closer to a civilizing passion of humanity, we need to think about the innocent, the future of humanity and the peace that is so desired, but so little remembered at the time of a conflict, we need to sow peace.
Finitude, wars and passion
07
Apr
We are not referring here to emotional passion, but to that which suffering causes and which, according to religious sentiment (recalling Jesus’ passion), is also a time of many tragic changes and the reaffirmation of a saving breath.
When man forgets his finitude, he imagines himself to be the master of his future and doesn’t look elsewhere.
Humanity seems to be experiencing this, now on the economic side, with an economy that is already fragile due to wars, the Trump administration’s tariffs on imports from that country are causing strong instability in international trade, with repercussions on the financial exchange rate and stock markets.
Only a few countries with little economic significance have been left out of this tariff, the Seychelles, Burkina Faso and some Pacific islands. Even the Argentine government, which rushed to reach an agreement (Milei personally went to the US), came back empty-handed, the excuse being the delay of the helicopter carrying Trump, but shortly afterwards he said that he was demanding a withdrawal from China, which has strong investments there since the previous government.
The tariffs are reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, passed by a margin of 20 votes in the US Senate, which provoked a global world war and deepened the Great Depression, according to trade experts.
Not only because of these tariffs, as the Trump administration’s unpopularity grows, there were several demonstrations this weekend in the US, even traditional partners neighboring Mexico and Canada are in this war, already with retaliatory measures against US imports.
The Asian stock markets have already opened with a “sharp drop” this Monday, according to several news channels, and this should lead to a worsening of the wars, in addition to the economic problems, and an even stronger wave of authoritarian governments, measures to restrict freedom, etc.
It’s a climate of passion, not divine, but human. The process of civilization could enter a more accelerated phase than the military wars in an economic and humanitarian crisis, which is already serious almost everywhere in the world.
Brazil at the time, during the beginning of the Vargas government (which after being elected would become a dictatorship) burned tons of coffee in the ports, then a national wealth, to hold down prices and this ended the great coffee cycle in Brazil and especially in the state of São Paulo, a major producer.
Two economic analysts André Valério and Rafaela Vitória said that “the scenario, which was already complex, has become considerably more uncertain”, also referring to production rates in Brazil, which fell slightly in February/2025, Rafaela pointed out in X (see in graphics).
Pure heart and overcoming
13
Feb
Only those who manage to maintain a pure heart,
a desire to always move forward, need to go beyond the world full of hurt, resentment and hatred, of valuing the “I” and not the Other, overcoming is possible if we don’t look at what passes and is of little value.
Challenges, pains and difficulties are part of life. Winners are those who go beyond these contingencies and, more than that, show solidarity with those who pass by them.
The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han wrote: “Thus, every critique of society must carry out a hermeneutic of pain. If we leave pain to medicine alone, we miss out on its character as a sign” (Han, 2021), because we don’t know how to overcome pain and we don’t have solidarity with those who suffer.
In his book The Palliative Society: Pain Today, he wrote: “The art of suffering pain has been entirely lost to us … Pain is now a meaningless evil that must be fought with painkillers. As a mere bodily affliction, it falls entirely outside the symbolic order” (Han, 2021, p. 41).
Society finds it difficult to experience empathy, happiness and and affectivity, it is condemned to silence, and “the palliative society does not allow us to revive, to verbalize the pain in a passion” (Han 2021, p. 14), emphasis added, so passion seems to lose meaning or to be “a weakness”, when in fact it is from it that we draw the desire to persist and move forward.
In this way, we can transform pain into love, and better than this, we can better understand what passion is and what com-passion is, feelings that are becoming less and less the order of the day. The desire to diminish the other, as haters, memes and the denial of the Other do, makes society more aggressive, valuing not pain, but ´haters´, mockery and humiliation.
Believing and persisting in the belief in fundamental values for true humanism is an essential source of civility, which can contribute to a positive civilizing process in which what is most human can be valued.
In the photo above, System of Pain/Networks/Networks of Resilience, curated by Cecilia Vargas, at the Dickson Center at Waubonsee Community College, 7 June, 10th July, 2018
Han, B.-C. (2021) A sociedade paliativa: a dor hoje: Trad. Lucas Machado. Brazil: Petrópolis, Vozes, 2021.
Society in bubbles
28
Jan
The question of the Other has arisen in
philosophy as a result of a self-centered philosophy coming from extreme rationalism, which exploits exacerbated hedonism, utilitarianism as a way of life and economy, in a society of rights without duties, where what goes for me doesn’t go for the Other.
Philosophical authors such as Paul Ricoeur (cited even by the Pope), Emmanuel Lévinas and Martin Buber, who comes from a Jewish philosophy, speak of this existential emergency that is the relationship with the Other, but our closed circles try to establish narrative half-truths that are only valid for our bubbles.
The essential existential question of who is the Other, Martin Buber, in The I and the Thou, comes to see the most sacred in the Other and the question is, in a way, in Peter Sloterdijk’s Spheres I, where he says that children seem to be born with a kind of “instinct for relationships”? which develops throughout the book the idea that we are not born alone and, therefore, through cooperative work and language, we should socialize, and bring out this inner instinct for the relational.
Sloterdijk rejects the liberal, idealistic principle of Cartesian origin, where the isolated individual seeks his existential reason. He starts from an ontology where the primitive is always Two, but if we include the divine that Buber saw, we are three.
But he’s not so idealistic as to say that these two are fused, we could say using Gadamer’s concept, who sees in the “hermeneutic circle”, a “fusion of horizons”, and so we can think of the individual who comes out of the placenta, which will then be dead, as coming out of their primordial bubble, and finding themselves somewhat separated from their mother.
The pre-modern world had a model, for which this separation was not total, of remaining in subjectivity or intimacy (not the interiority that does not separate), this can be seen in some peoples who planted the placenta like trees, and others, like the Egyptians who made pillows, and in the tombs of the pharaohs were buried with them, as if to remain in the initial existential bubble.
We are thus seen in the self-sufficiency of the liberal model, but this model is also criticized, for example, by Rousseau, who sought an isolated life of non-thinking, see as in the experience of the lake, in his writing of the daydreams of the solitary walker, compatible with his model of the man of the good savage, on which many modern democracies are inspired, Rousseau was the contractualist of the most liberal model.
Even the hope of regaining a “general will”, in a stronger state, where a kind of “national religion” is proclaimed, which today erupts in nationalisms all over the planet, is nothing more than a contemporary vision of a self-sufficient “bubble” of various kinds of social closure in ‘communities’, but with a selfish principle inside, what Sloterdijk calls an “inflated community”, social media are just “means” where these ideas of bubbles are propagated.
The real chances of peace in 2025
30
Dec
A 2024 assessment of the war is disastrous:
the conflict that has broken out in Gaza, with Israeli forces invading that territory and carrying out actions that are reprehensible for their acts of cruelty and difficulties in accessing international aid organizations, the increase in the conflict in Eastern Europe, now also with aggressions on Russian territory and China’s threats against Taiwan paint a very sad and worrying picture.
The American government-elect that takes office in January, Donald Trump, has promised to put an immediate end to the war. The problem is that the 4 provinces dominated by Russia by force: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, are not in question, although Russia says that “some border adjustments” are possible, and demands that Ukraine be left out of NATO.
Russia would thus gain 18% of Ukraine’s territory, but fears that a “ceasefire” agreement is just a way for Ukraine to take a breather and rearm; if the current escalation continues, greater involvement by European nations could make the conflict off-limits to negotiations.
The other worrying pole is the escalation of the war in the Middle East. Israel is not backing down from its pretensions to eliminate its enemies in the region, but it is doing so outside humanitarian limits and what is considered abominable, even though the war is already a humanitarian disaster, the bombing of schools, hospitals, the last one that was functioning precariously also seems to be out of operation in Gaza, goes beyond the limit and to the point of being an abomination, Even if we know that war is already a humanitarian disaster, the bombing of schools and hospitals, the last of which, which was functioning precariously, also seems to be out of operation in Gaza, goes beyond the limit and makes those responsible guilty of a war crime, of course, the terrorism atack in october 7th in Israel its crime too.
There are reasons to consider peace, yes, because it creates global tension, weakens the economy and affects the most vulnerable peoples, bringing more misery and hunger. Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t interest anyone, but there is a tragic reasoning behind wars, which is to know “if my enemy has lost more”, since everyone loses, and the most fragile are the first to be hit.
The world is polarized, even those who should be the most ardent defenders of peace have given themselves over to the bipolar game of hating the enemy, without the possibility of dialogue or understanding a different point of view, everyone says “this is unreasonable”.
So we frantically search social media for those judgments and hatreds that favor us, without realizing that we have become influenced by this bipolarity and this hostile climate between peoples, political positions and a rational dialogue about their positions and ideas.
There is always hope for a renewal of the civilizing process, but at the moment it seems stuck and regressing to absurd levels of education, health, culture, politics and even spirituality, which has become a business and without any exercise in analyzing the heritage on which most religions were built: solidarity, helping the vulnerable, greater social balance and environments of truly spiritual values and virtues.
Christmas and peace
23
Dec
In the midst of wars and hatreds, it is possible
to find peace ? and what peace we are talking about.
The roman´s pax was the rule of the Roman Empire over nations and territories, Kant’s eternal peace, although it has something to commend it when it talks about peace for all, in reality the idea was born out of the peace between the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire (see map), a treaty of indefinite duration, which concluded the Iberian War (527-531) between two imperial powers.
There was also a religious peace, called the Peace of Westphalia, where the agreement between Catholics and Lutherans took place, as there were kingdoms declaring war over religion.
The peace of Christmas, even if it is paganized, is that which the birth of Jesus promised to bring among men, of which he said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give it as the world gives it. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (Jn 14:27).
Yes, we are promoters of wars in our midst, between family members, between work colleagues, we don’t accept opinions and worldviews that differ from our own, we may not use weapons, but by spreading hatred and exclusion we are seeking a peace that has nothing divine about it, it’s just “our peace”, and there is no shortage of oratory and speeches asking us to ignore the Other.
So what kind of peace should we be thinking about at Christmas? The vast majority of people probably haven’t even heard of the Iberian War, nor of one of the empires involved, the Sassanids.
We see a world in imperial wars, everyone wants to colonize or eliminate their neighbor.
So the “imperial” wars we are involved in, even if it’s as a “cheer”, in the distant future will be seen as a period of atrocities and unjustifiable disputes. Of course, today the arguments seem plausible, there is no shortage of narratives to justify so much death and hatred, but they will not be eternal and there is nothing divine about them, even if religious people get involved in these worldly disputes.
The peace of Christmas transcends all this, it must proclaim more than a truce, a laying down of arms, the end of hatreds and grudges, and this peace that Jesus came to bring to the world.
