Arquivo para a ‘Economia’ Categoria
True commitment to the common good
06
Oct
Bad managers and dictators also promise to
work for the excluded and the common good, what happens is that their true personal interests remain hidden.
No one openly says they are going to do evil, except declared psychopaths who are already at a level of mental illness that can no longer disguise their desires.
Political and social analyzes hide interests of violence, hatred and war against opponents, there is no shortage of justifications, but any initiative of exclusion is already an indication that no common good will be well managed by these managers.
They begin with small actions that initially confuse people with good faith and who actually want the common good for all, a peaceful and balanced life for everyone, but little by little the true personal desires for personal possession of goods are revealed.
Corruption also starts like this, small unrestrained thefts lead to large ones when there is no impunity, parents who correct and educate without children know this, it is necessary to always be attentive to actions and what each small gesture leads to, educators also know this.
As a biblical reading says, an owner of a vineyard rented it and traveled, after a certain time he ordered the employees to collect the rent (Mt 21:33) they beat him and sent him back, he sent others and they also caught him and returned with nothing and finally sent his son, so the tenants thought let’s kill him and keep the vineyard, and Jesus remembers himself at the end of the parable: the stone that the masons rejected became the cornerstone.
This is how good is established, with those that the evil people rejected, oppressed and after much suffering it is possible to establish peace and the common good.
Resilience and the development of good is greater than great evil, although avoiding them also means avoiding injustice, social imbalances and mainly innocent deaths.
Exercises for political reflection
03
Oct
When we enter Manichaeism we only perceive
opposing forces without clearly discerning where evil and ethics lie, every philosophical exercise about evil is seen from a moral perspective.
However, what is moral has become confused, precisely because power has become confused with violence, and Hannah Arendt’s reflection on this is quite enlightening: “Power and violence are opposites; where one absolutely dominates, the other is absent (ARENDT, Between the past and the future: Eight exercises for political reflection, 1961).
The philosopher’s argument is simple, difficult to understand in a polarized world, but I would say it is the first of her reflections on politics when power is exercised legitimately, violence is absent. This means that in a healthy political system, power must be based on consent and voluntary cooperation, rather than resorting to violence to impose the will of one group over others, as there is no consent by others.
Much of political reasoning today is to exercise violence against opposites, this is its own denial, Arendt argued that freedom and political action are synonymous, since politics has no meaning enclosed in itself, the famous bubbles, being free is a necessary condition for political exercise, the exercise of citizenship, any limitation becomes violence.
Freedom exists as a plural condition of man, in religious terms it is free will, in social terms it is the possibility of acting freely as a citizen and having protection for this, if this condition is removed there is no other definition to the system other than the authoritarianism.
Just as in the arts: music, dance and theater, political action is valued as a “virtue”, all serious theories since Plato aimed at this participation in the “polis”, even Machiavelli’s amoral concept of virtú, performance requires a “audience” and a space for the spectacle to take place, in Arendt’s view, the Greek polis was “a kind of amphitheater where freedom could appear (Arendt, 2001, p. 201).
Listening to the contradictory, allowing it to express itself is a necessary condition for politics, the model of excluding opponents is nothing more than a euphemism for dictators.
Arendt does not fail to analyze the violence advocated by Marx, and returns to Aristotle’s zoon politikon, poorly read by hasty readers: “… which may be difficult to perceive, but what Marx, who knew Aristotle very well, must have been conscious” (ARENDT, 2001).
And he continues: “Aristotle’s double definition of man as a zoon lógon ékhon, a being who reaches his maximum possibility in the faculty of speech and in life in a polis, was intended to distinguish the Greeks from the barbarians, and the free man from the slave. The distinction was that the Greeks” (Arendt, 2001, p.50), living in a polis […] conducted their actions through discourse, through persuasion, and not through violence and through mute coercion.
For philosophy it would have been a contradiction in terms to “realize Philosophy” or transform the world in accordance with Philosophy without it being preceded by an interpretation, thus Heidegger warned that Marx’s statement “philosophers have interpreted the world, now it is up to transform it” is contradictory, because you must think about what transformation you want.
ARENDT, Hannah. Between the Past and the Future Trans. Mauro W. Barbosa de Almeida. 5th ed. Brazilian edition, São Paulo: Ed. Perspectiva, 2001. Em english (pdf)
Good people can do evil
29
Sep
Far from the aporia (ignorance of evil) is the
realization of good, the universal good, the common good, the good that sees and explains the will of the Other, the one that eliminates the symbolic nature of evil.
Hell is paved with good will, but it is not quite like that, because if it is a right intention it can produce fruit at the right time, but there is good not done and poorly done, that is evil.
There is a determination in the will, which is intention, the topic has already been treated by countless philosophers, most clearly in phenomenology where it is an essential category, but intention requires a habit, and making it a habit requires courage and determination.
There is confusion about intention and confusing it with purpose, psychologists don’t like the term very much because it involves the future and places the cause of behavior in individuals and not in their life history, many hasty and mistaken judgments start from “purpose”. .
However, a purpose made in order to overcome traumas, bad conditioning or something that disturbs a healthy and intentionally active mind for personal and social good, is a purpose that leads to an intention linked to consciousness.
In philosophy, the term intention is linked to and is a subcategory of consciousness, and this is very different from the magical action that some defend as the “law of attraction”, which is why psychologists do not like it, it is about activating consciousness and with this make the intention healthy.
This conscious intention leads to a flow of learning that re-elaborates and makes clearer awareness of the possibilities and healthy perspectives for life and makes the future present in actions that lead to this learning and elaboration of intention.
So it’s possible for someone to go and not go, just as it’s possible for someone to say maybe I’m not going, but ends up going, assuming, of course, a healthy direction of a straight intention.
A biblical parable that explains what will is in a fuller sense is the one that tells how a father who owns a vineyard invites his two sons to go and work in the vineyard (Mt 21,28-30), the first one said I will and no It was, the second one said I won’t go and it was, which of the two fulfilled the father’s wishes, everyone responded that it was the second one, so intention is different from purpose and is related to conscience.
Narrative and ethical coherence
27
Sep
Polarization has led to ethical relativism and ethical
relativism leads to social instability, there is no coherence between what is said and what is done, everything is done to justify this or that view.
Ethical coherence must accompany all of our lives or it is not ethics, just a convenient behavior, we need to cultivate it in social, professional, religious and family terms, it is not just in one area because the behavior becomes a habit.
The nudity at a university volleyball game (sporting event at a university), the discussion about abortion, the logic of ideological political punishment and the emblematic speeches in the country’s official bodies are not a mere coincidence, they are not autocratic attempts, they are the lack of results of a long social process where ethics does not predominate.
An ethics professor at a university, after discussing a subject in class, asked students during the break to write down at least one unethical act in the canteen: feet on the wall, papers on the floor, jumping in line, etc., when all students returned from break they had something to tell.
It is also not about exaggeration or the absence of punishment, but the fair measure, what in law is called disproportionate punishment, but the absence of punishment is also dangerous.
The problem is that Discipline and Punish is a process that can lead to the logic of a madhouse, Foucault in his famous book shows that justice in his time stopped applying deadly torture and started seeking the “correction” of criminals, but the practices Educational measures are rare and today even worse, it has become unilateral, that is, the punishment depends on the condition and situation of the defendant.
It is what Byung Chul Han called psychopolitics, a kind of return to torture through propaganda and a distorted view of true social problems, it is about fighting the “enemy”, and the law only applies in this case.
The narratives confuse society, create religious holes and animosities, are not conducive to any healthy social process, create more division and injustice.
A cold and dangerous European winter
25
Sep
We are entering spring in the southern
hemisphere and autumn in the northern hemisphere, in Europe the concern about fuel stocks for the winter due to the Russian embargo is growing, there is a danger of rationing and a rush to use coal, in Poland for example there is already queues to buy stocks.
But this is not the only aspect, the reduction in the supply of diesel by Russia will affect the entire world market and the price of fossil fuels could skyrocket, according to Abicom (Brazilian Fuel Association) the defense in Brazil is 7% in relation to the international market and 12% in the case of diesel, and may increase.
Another crisis is that of food, because Ukraine has maintained a large part of its production, which helps the international market, but there is a conflict over the flow through Poland where the country’s producers have protection and the port of Gdansk is famous, since in Black Sea military clash in Crimea grows.
The geopolitical crisis is the most serious problem, if Ukraine loses part of its territory, Baltic countries such as Estonia and Latvia which border Russia and Belarus, and Lithuania which borders Belarus feel threatened (map), and the question is who will be the next target.
The news talks about NATO’s help, but these small countries, due to their fragility, have supported Ukraine militarily and materially, there are even several reports of military enlistment in the war in Ukraine.
The United States announced long-range missiles (ATACMS type) and winter is always a strategy during war due to difficulties in logistics and troop mobility, now also due to supplies and heating energy.
Ukraine proposed a peace plan that was rejected by Russia, Zelensky went to the assembly that was taking place and had bilateral talks, including with Brazil, which certainly irritated Russia, but beyond the principles of peace and mutual aid there is no indication of a Brazilian position in the confrontation.
What can be expected for winter, if there is no peace, it is dangerous not only for the countries in conflict, but for all of Europe due to its proximity and everyone due to economic issues, fuels are just one aspect.
Administer the common good and peace
22
Sep
I thought about keeping silent and just
writing PEACE, PEACE, PEACE today, but that would be silent.
Managing the common good is making peace prosper, disregarding it is allowing a large space for hatred, intolerance, violence and on a larger scale: war.
The 21st of September was established by the UN as an international day of Peace, the secretary general António Guterres cited in a video the effect of conflicts that expel a record number of people from their homes, and did not fail to also talk about these factors people, other factors such as: fatal fires, floods and high temperatures, combined with poverty, inequalities and injustices in a reality of distrust, division and prejudice.
In Italy, a group with numerous social initiatives launched a campaign “Italy united for peace”, the Community of Sant’Egidio stands out for a dispassionate and bilateral vision on the problems of wars and peace, it has the authority to talk about peace.
On the 10th to 12th of September in Berlin, Germany, they had already promoted a religious meeting that they called “The boldness of peace”, and there was no shortage of reflections on social inequalities, intolerance and injustices present in various areas across the planet.
We need to manage what Nature, the Planet and human development itself have given us to allow for a more fraternal, more just and more humane world.
For those who believe, all this is a divine gift, but it is necessary to manage it well as we will be charged in some way for the consequences of our actions, as the biblical parable says of the employees who were entrusted with talents through the owner of a vineyard.
The contract workers arrived, but as he needed more he went to the square and also hired those who were unemployed, and asked why they were there without work, they replied: “because no one hired us” (Mt 20,7) and then they were also hired.
At the end of the afternoon he paid the same salary, 1 silver coin to everyone, and some who were there from the beginning didn’t think it was very fair, but the boss remembers that the agreement was a silver coin so everyone was receiving the agreement.
So the meaning of the common good is that everyone has the right to a decent wage, but correct administration and honesty and zeal on the part of those who pay are necessary, it is fair for everyone to receive a decent wage.
But peace also requires a heart open to the just and dignified rights of the excluded other.
Exemption from violence and anger
12
Sep
It was not the Abrahamic religions (Islam,
Judaism and Christianity) that exempted violence, as Peter Sloterdijk thought in Wrath and Time (Sloterdijk, 2010), in fact it was the idea of the Enlightenment that made violence and domination, from the beginning of expansion of mercantilism and which later became colonial-imperialism, which was anti-clerical and little religious, and was later sacralized in Hegel’s “absolute”, whose image of power and the State is juxtaposed with power and domination and has nothing linked to God.
Thus this power is the relief from violence and its capture and guardianship by the state, this way the colonial and imperialist plan can be developed, the basis of today’s civilizational crisis, it is a military and autocratic arrogant state, liberal only in name, it cannot result in something else: anger.
Sloterdijk’s observation about lightness and relief is particularly clear. Supposing that progress would go on a progressive journey, we would think of a more trivial answer that he would be leading people in better conditions than before, and this is not true.
The author also talks about pain, he remembers that until 1940 the idea of pain was normal in surgical center treatments, he doesn’t mention it but I remember that scars on men’s faces indicated virility and some were done on purpose, predecessors of current tattoos, the author remembers that painkillers appeared in the 40s and then little by little antidepressants and stimulants and finally plastic surgeries that corrected what needs to be corrected in us.
The author says that thinking on the right is discipline and on the left is the salvation of the poor, discipline falls into dreams and leads to the world of the moon, while poverty in its fallen condition, persecuted by an unjust system is always seen victimized, which is not always real, so both narratives escape a concept of justice, peace and balance and we find ourselves in narratives that justify anger and contempt for the Other, moving towards anger.
If the being must be light it is to be someone who is not serious, so the lightness of the being is unsustainable, it must be in both narratives “heavy”, transforming into gas balloons that are flying aimlessly, the flight itself is not is reasonable, although the ultimate desire is everything can, but nothing is.
If the being must be light it is to be someone who is not serious, so the lightness of the being is unsustainable, it must be in both narratives “heavy”, transforming into gas balloons that are flying aimlessly, the flight itself is not is reasonable, although the ultimate desire is everything can, but nothing is.
The popular Brazilian songbook says: “there is no sin on the side below the equator”, but that was already the case in post-Renaissance Europe, in Dante’s “divine comedy” which became Balzac’s human comedy, it was there that did the circumnavigation (in picture the Art for Jacob Hashimoro), yes the earth is round, so the people should be dominated and colonized, again Slotertijk’s spherology makes sense.
The fundamental event of our time is to get out of this heavy burden of dogmatism, from the perfectionist stress of the tired society, to get out of the physical, discursive, political, design and spatial battles, technology for man and not for man, robots are machines.
It’s the agony of what was heavy and no longer has a coherent narrative. spherology is based on the principle that a kind of “hermeneutics of existence” must form art of figures, meanings and vocabularies of a light existence, let’s say, discharged from hatred for the Other who is not our mirror, of course the reverse path is there, he leads to anger and violence.
Sloterdijk, P. (2010) Rage and Time, translation by Mario Wenning, New York, Columbia University Press.
The cold war is heating up
11
Sep
It seems like a paradox, but it is not, as the fact is
that Europe and the entire northern hemisphere are heading towards autumn and then winter and in the middle of the cold the limits of ideological polarization seem to go beyond, new weapons, narratives of victories on battlefields, etc.
Not even the tragedy in Morocco (photo), despite the condolences, seems to awaken a greater feeling of solidarity among the people, sub-Saharan Africa itself is heating up with coups and new military dictatorships.
The expansion of the Brics economic bloc also strengthens this polarization, despite the G20 meeting, a more diverse bloc, the possible creation of a new currency and new geopolitics point to a conflict that has already resulted in coups and authoritarian regimes, it does not mean that this diversification of currencies and new economic and political forces should not exist, but they should favor the diplomatic field and the establishment of peace.
On the front of the most declared battle, Russia announces an imposing weapon, not by chance called Satan II, capable of transporting several missiles at the same time without bothering with demonic names, on the front of the war a general called Armageddon, Sergey Surovikin, was sent. , who worked in Syria and against demonstrations in Russia, is now at the front.
On the side of Ukraine, whose counteroffensive is slower than expected, new weapons with weakened uranium have been received from the USA, while it trains pilots of its allies’ new fighters, a more aggressive change of tactics should take place before winter.
There is a weakened peace front, the president of Turkey tried to reach a new agreement to release the grain leaving Ukraine through the Black Sea, but apparently without success and a large grain producer in Ukraine died with his family when a missile hit his house in Odessa, Olesky Vadatursky.
Propaganda of deeds in war are also growing on the Web, peace seems distant and the spirits and voices of balance and common sense seem suffocated, there is always hope and peace.
Urgent: earthquake in Morocco
09
Sep
The news began to emerge in the early hours of 
Brazil, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit the center of Morocco approximately halfway between the historic cities of Agadir and Marrakech, the region is called Adassil, according to the country’s interior ministry 820 people have already died (the number exceeded 2000 in the early hours of Sunday), 672 people have been injured and 205 are in serious condition, according to the latest information.
People rushed into the streets and the earthquake was felt in Portugal, Spain and Algeria, an aftershock of magnitude 4.9 was felt 19 minutes later.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the epicenter was in the mountains known as the High Atlas, 71 km from Marrakech, at a depth of 18.5 km, the city was heavily hit and has a historic center declared a world heritage site, it occurred in middle of the night, but online newspapers don’t give the exact time.
Several governments declared solidarity and promised help, the pain is hard, but it awakens solidarity, even Zelesnky from Ukraine and Putin from Russia declare their regret.
All solidarity with the Moroccan people, the under-20 Brazilian team is there and there were no injuries.
It is in autumn that the chickens are counted.
28
Aug
Spring is approaching in the southern
hemisphere and autumn in the northern hemisphere, it is the period when Europeans know that they must have provisions to make repairs in their houses for some type of protection against the cold: heating systems, coal, gas and organize the pantry for this period.
There is a saying in Eastern Europe, a version of our saying “you don’t count the eggs before the hen lays”, there it is said “in the autumn you count the chickens”, this serves for the war that approaches to complete two years in the Eastern Europe and which spills over to all humanity.
Many analysts, including the Portuguese Miguel Monjadino, claim that Kiev’s main objective “is to recover enough territory by the autumn to maintain the support of its society, Washington and the European capitals for a military campaign in the spring” from there that will be our autumn here, only after March 2024.
American analysts indicate that more than 500,000 military personnel have already been killed in this war, and the end of the agreement on the shipment of grain from Ukraine in the region of Black Sea ports and the increase in arms, and now also planes, has yet to be considered.
But the count of losses has already begun, the disaster with a Brazilian plane that crashed in Russia and killed its occupants draws attention to yet another strange death of Putin’s opponents, the death of the head of the paramilitary group Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, all occupants of the plane was confirmed in genetic analysis.
While offering condolences to Prigozhine’s family, Putin said that he had made many mistakes in life, in a clear allusion that he no longer enjoyed his sympathy.
On the economic side, the BRICS, an alliance in which Russia and Brazil participate, announce an increase in its members and a possible currency in the future, the objective is to compete with the euro and the dollar.
Peace seems more and more distant and the tension is increasing
