Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria
Idealism and the bread of the life
10
Aug
Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynic Reason of the 80s is a direct allusion to Kant’s classic Critique of Pure Reason,
it is impossible to read in one breath, and also difficult to agree on at first reading, but two things strike my eyes the fact that we live in a time of lost innocence, everything is cruel and cynical, and the fact that we have become “accomplices,” academics and scholars in particular, from a general disorientation, from politics to the sacred.
Sloterdijk works alongside Rüdiger Safranski, biographer of Kant and Heidegger, until 2012, is therefore an attentive and accredited reader for the reading of the current world, and especially for Kant’s critique, in our view the most fundamental of our time.
In a 2016 interview, for Borders of Thought, the philosopher clarifies Feuerbach’s misconception that God is a projection of humanity into heaven, and for Marx, religions would be an erroneous invention of mankind.
Before making a difference between the naive illusion, it exists in the less enlightened layers of society, and the “enlightened false consciousness,” which is its definition of cynicism, makes it clear that religions are part of the more comprehensive (and not the only) which he calls culture.
It is Sloterdijk’s way of explaining that idealism could only do this, I make a shorter way separating subjects from objects is the easiest way to make objects “ideal” including all conceptions of these in cultures (Sloterdijk’s immune systems ) and demand from the subjects an “ideal” behavior of relation to objects.
I make a religious contrast with the bread of life, the concrete food of humanity, for bread is in almost every culture and bread is not a direct food of nature, but wheat “processed” by man, in other words a product human being sacralized as food of life, and that in the pedagogical use of Jesus becomes sacred, without ceasing to be a real object: bread.
In John 6: 49-50 one can read the update of the Manna of the Desert from the time of Moses: Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and yet they died. Here is the bread that comes down from heaven: whoever eats it will never die “, a direct relation between subject and object, which can not even be separated.
The Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence
06
Aug
Due to overzealousness with distortions of technology use, a delayed entry into the educational
and entrepreneurial sectors, some countries and industrialized nations begin to lose the foot of the technological race.
This has become more serious in the last two years, when technologies related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have become emerging.
Some authors speak of the fourth industrial revolution or Industry 4.0, where the issue is no longer the simple digital automation of existing jobs, but the total transformation of the model into digital, this means creating models of production, business, innovation and technological convergence in order to allow mass data processing and machine learning, this frightens by the social implications, but can not cause paralysis.
An emergency field that can help job creation is the “collaborative economy,” where Wikipedia and Uber are clearer examples, but there are many others. In the field of geopolitics it is easy to understand why the United States and China are winning this battle with ease, in addition to the economic and school structure for this, their transnational corporations in Europe, Russia and many other countries guarantee sustainable development and insertion in the market, but the the main issue is the non-negative criticism of the use of technologies and the understanding of the social aspects of this option.
A report by the Ecuadorian-British journalist Sally Burch, in the magazine América Latina en Movimento: integración en tempos de incertidumbre, 07-2018, shows the still incipient movement of this scenario in Latin America, without a serious political scenario.
Whatsapp will monetize
02
Aug
According to Facebook information Whatsapp since 2014, the most popular chat in the world will monetize and sell ads,
there are curious things about it, like buying ads within Facebook and they circulate in WhatsApp.
To buy ads within Facebook itself will be put a built-in button in WhatsApp embedded, when users click on this element, they will immediately start a conversation by the messenger of the company making the announcement, it is not known if there will be intelligence detecting the conversation, be talking about travel and at the same time arise offers of flight, on Facebook this already happens.
Curiously, if the person is answered within 24 hours, there will be no charge for the deal made when talking to WhatsApp users, if the response is over 24 hours, the “messages due” dialogs will be charged.
A new feature that can greatly explore users will be able to receive company information directly from WhatsApp.
The example again is that of an area company, which may send you boarding passes a few hours before your flight, and Netflix already sends warnings about new seasons and episodes of the series that you have watched in the streaming service.
Strictly speaking WhatsApp Business has existed since January of this year, but did not generate a penny for the company, the company launched on Wednesday a service API.
It remains to be seen what will be the reaction of the users, since this will put a “noise” in conversations that should be private, and the use of personal information is somewhat questionable.
The dualism and the state
04
Jun
Perhaps in no area is dualism as “unjust” as in law, it is so true that for 
international law there are two theories: dualism and monism.
The dualist theory argues that international law and domestic law (that which concerns the State in relation to others) are two totally distinct and independent systems, the latter regulates relations between states and, therefore, is not obligatory among individuals, allusion to idealism is clear because the “state” as well as the “individual” are “ideal” elements.
The monist theory, on the other hand, argues that law is unique both in the relations of the State with society and in relations between States, and this current is divided into two: the first that is called internationalist monism, foreseeing that there are norms of international law to domestic law, prevails in the domestic law, and the other called Nationalist Monism that argues that in this same situation, the primacy is of the Internal Law over the International, in times of exacerbated nationalism this is important to be debated.
Brazil in its Constitution is silent (in law is silent) as to the theory adopted, but the position of the Federal Supreme Court is in the sense of a moderate Dualist Theory, receiving the International Treaty the Status of Ordinary Law, by constitutional provision, except the Human Rights treaties, whose 2nd. Of Article 5. From the Federal Constitution it attributes efficiency to normal supralegal, that is to say that it is superior to the law in the legal hierarchy.
As a matter of fact, we must have international laws beyond the general UN human rights provisions, the humiliations and prejudices with foreigners in many countries of the world have generated an odious relationship that often explodes in violence.
The need to discuss these “doctrinal” questions is time, and we should no longer speak only in the United Nations, but in a treaty of “unity” between nations, something in the line that already goes to the European Union, maybe a good way, would be the Union of Latin America, the Pan-African Union and perhaps the Asiatic, recomposing the fragmented globe to nations.
By no means does it mean the submission or denial of local cultures, quite the contrary, international agreements may prevent the submission of some “more prevalent” crops be it financial, colonial, or warlike over others.
You have to look at the planet as a whole and think about world citizenship.
Networks and global crises
22
May
Social networks are provoking an organic change in society as
a whole, it is already more evident than it was ten years ago, but networking is still confused with decentralization and there are strong conservative forces calling for a new social “hierarchy”.
The perception that this or that country is a country in “crisis” more acute than others is valid, but the truth is that it is those who learn the most from the crisis that can get out of it faster, the first lesson is that there is a society more attentive, more diversified and less able to support centralized and authoritarian schemes, but why then this wave?
Precisely because the vast majority of the “silent” now reveal the true face, that of convenience and coexistence with values that were only “supported” by those who suffered some form of exclusion, and I do not speak only financially, even if it is serious.
Edgar Morin points out that now the public space “gathers society in its diversity. The right, the left, the crazy people, the dreamers, the realists, the activists, the piadistas, the rebels – everyone. Abnormal would be legions in order, organized by a single flag and led by party bureaucrats. It is creative chaos, not the pre-established order. ”
All this can go back in a civil war, I agree with Manuel Castells: “civil war and social movements are incompatible!”, But social movements are now not only the masses maneuvered by unions and parties, this is what the caudillos fear, there is much distrust and according to Castells “parties are universally despised by most people,” because we know that we pay his salary (high) and do not do what they should do.
But it is necessary to save social values so as not to fall into the temptation of violence and authoritarianism that is what the radicals and their masses want, Castells says “you need a lot more courage not to be violent. Being violent is easy. ”
I am in Portugal that experienced a deep crisis and still feel reflexes of it, but they learned to live together, to talk and to have a little more patience with serious social problems, but this weekend there was a mega manifestation of teachers who had salaries affected and retirement (reform here) delayed, some may be entitled only at 70´s years old.
Life and the Vine
27
Apr
The tree that gives the fruits of the grape is particular,
first by the I am vine name because it gives the life to one of the fruits more rooted in the cultures due to the wine, and also is curious because its trunk and its shade are of little value, and there are still the aspect that it dries and must be pruned.
If civilizing processes are cyclical use of the vine metaphor seems conducive to understanding the ways of humanity, a generation grows on a particular culture, but almost always question exactly why young people look to the future, their future.
Who would have thought that the solid Roman empire would decay before the Persians, the Portuguese conquerors, the Napoleonic wars, the Soviet Union, and now the resilient money empire.
Analyst of diverse levels types, currents and thinkers of various specialties are convinced, civilization undergoes one of these changes and it is a critical time of options.
There are in our view three essential points: combating centralization of capital and corruption on a world scale, changing educational paradigms and the ecological issue.
At the heart of these discussions are still economic and governmental powers, often confused by the influence of techno-science that can do nothing without these powers, but the focus of discussion should be on valuing human dignity and the ecological issue.
The truth is that one can not discuss life, without here being the origin of life, the responsibility and dignity of the human “vine” that sometimes seems to dry with the grape tree, but then spring comes and it blooms, if the farmer is attentive.
As said the Bible passage Jo, 15: 1-3: “I am the true vine and my Father is the farmer. Every branch that does not bear fruit in me cuts off it; and every branch that bringeth forth fruit, he maketh it clean, that it may bear more fruit. You are already lean because of the word which I have spoken to you. “
Life: origin and destiny
26
Apr
To exist life is essential water and some other elements
in abundance: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, sulfur, potassium, sodium, chlorine and magnesium, so the search for inhabited or inhabited planets, scientist Arthur C. Clarke said, “Whether we’re alone in the universe or we’re not, either scenario is scary.”
As important as the origin of life, which is still an enigma, is to investigate the original societies that are submerged in the underground layers of our society, some are able to see these traits and understand that modernity is not the eternal destiny of men, others immersed in the conflicts of our time want to eternalize it as if it were the last human civilizing stage.
To understand what life is, it is also to understand where we came from, whether in the scientistic perspective of modernity we have to know whether we come from matter or not, and for this question I recommend Terrence Deacon’s book “Incomplete Nature: how mind emerged fom matter” (see our post), precisely because it unites the anthropological perspective with the cosmological word, in a broader sense that includes the cosmogonies of the diverse cultures and civilizations.
The subject is too broad for a post, so I tell an experience being in Portugal, I went to visit one of these small Portuguese towns Coruche, it is not the villages that are even smaller, and there I came across vestiges of the prehistoric men in the region, the first signs of Western civilization: Roman columns, the one believed to be the first bell of Portugal and also the beginning of Christian evangelization in the region, the Church of Our Lady of the Castle has this name because it was made on the ruins of a castle.
So one civilization buries the other, the city also lies in a border region between the Kingdom of Portugal and that of Al-Andaluz, where Arab Muslims lived and where the origin of the Portuguese tile designs is.
I felt that all this was composed in a civilization originating from unknown Portugal, and we grandchildren of this original civilization. It does not fail to have, as in all Portugal the fields of vines, almost every place has one. As it is written in the museum of Coruche on the city: “The sky, the earth and the men”.
About the essence of life
25
Apr
What is finite or temporary is entity, but everything that exists has not
always existed, then it is entity.
We do not speak of essence without speaking of Being, for the essence without e-sistance is a being for Nothing, the nihilism that has already explored a little, now we go to this existence, finite in the now, but ephemeral because in a second she it will only be a fleeting “memory”.
We assume as Camus, who are only beings, the myth of Sifico to push the stone of life while in this life that is finite and absurd, but that does not admit not being.
As beings, always finite, it is inevitable that we move only in the plane of the beings, that is, only of what it always is, avoiding as far as possible the virtual “being”.
It seems sensible and rational to be only in what is, but also when in the movements for a greater understanding of the Being, if it is not, by the logic of the essences, it is nihilism, since starting only from the plane of the is, everything that is not is nothing, falling and falling on the plane of nihilism.
It is possible, remaining on this plane of existence to find meaning for life and also reap the fruits of a look at the infinite within the existential plane, a film seen in my youth marked me.
Akira Kurosawa Living’s film (Ikiru, 1952), an icon of his still little-known work, tells of a bureaucrat from a public office who discovers stomach cancer and lives the drama of rethinking his life, finds out in ladies who were going to complain of the mud in a peripheral neighborhood a reason for its existence.
Before dying the public servant of a miserable existence discovers in the complaint of those ladies a meaning for their existence and will fight with all the forces to create a park for children where before it was a mall, where he will die on a cold winter day in a chair of swing that square.
It is possible to be as a person, although it is necessary to reach some transcendent objective, to discover in fact what life is, when I went to see the film I thought to myself: I think now Kurosawa will fall into my concept, for me it will always be a myth of cinema not Japanese, but universal.
I also remember that today is the Day of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, which overthrew fascism.
Justice and Freedom for all
20
Apr
Amartya Sen reflects in his book The Idea of Justice on the
Challenges of Social Development and asserts that there are “plural and competing reasons for justice, all with a pretense of impartiality, though different – and rivals – of each other” (p. 43).
One of the fundamental aspects of his work, originally published in 2009, is that despite his 1998 Nobel Prize for Economics, it is even “the economy is supposed to be my profession, no matter what I do with my love affair with philosophy” (p. 303), reflecting that their concerns and response seek to go beyond this.
As Sen’s own reflections on knowledge indicate, the question he has about the ability to both enlighten and generate illusions, and this is what we call sustainable and distributive justice.
As he explains in another book Development as Freedom Field of Moral Theory of Economic Argument developed in his book, in which he argued that “development can be seen as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy” (Sen, 2000, p. 17), and any model based on restricting human freedom is not a sustainable model because it will be a source of conflicts and interests.
The role of education as well as being fundamental to sustainable social justice is also a model of moral and human development, and if there is lack of freedom, this development will never be complete, of course, without neglecting the aspect of economic development that guarantees life .
Thus the idea of single-mindedness, of philosophy or single-party politics, which has been at various times in history rejected by man, and which comes to light again is not politically, morally and socially sustainable.
The idea of a planetary citizenship today must be linked to the idea of a world of less economic discrepancies allied to the free expression of cultures and peoples, only then we can think of a planet for all.
Education is the way out?
18
Apr
Despite major improvements in recent years, progress toward
education for all has stagnated globally, few initiatives exist to make leaps higher, Open Education for All in Massive Online Courses can be the solution?
In total, 263 million children, adolescents and young people so out of school for the school year that ended in 2016, statistics for 2017 were not at all optimistic.
This means that more equitable progress will become increasingly difficult if huge barriers are built already in youth education will be doomed to emergency resources rather than to an equitable and sustainable improvement of the distribution of assets across the globe. The reason why this process is not equitable has some evidence: children face the most severe barriers to education that have a lower chance of professional and personal development, this becomes dramatic when they are associated with gender, poverty, displacement, nomadism, disability and / or ethnicity, and even when they are left behind in displacements due to wars.
There is a disproportionate number of out-of-school children living in countries characterized by instability and conflict and / or extreme poverty, little is said about Africa, but every day there is a new conflict. Many of the countries with the greatest number of out-of-school children do not have adequate outside funding or funding to meet their needs, and the NGOs and actions of some countries are localized and loss-making.
Beyond the obvious question of a global policy of income distribution is a massive attack on the issue of education, if armaments money were invested in this, we would have great solutions in the medium term, the short would be a strong intervention to the UN.
