Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
Civilizing civilization
12
Nov
This is one of the central chapters of Edgar Morin’s
book “Terra-Patria”, and it is always important to remember that this was long before the current war crisis, which is the culmination of one of the most dangerous points in the crisis of civilization.
He wrote about what it means to civilize: “The quest for hominization, which would bring us out of the planetary iron age, urges us to reform Western civilization, which has become planetary in both its riches and its miseries, in order to bring about the era of planetary civilization” (Morin, 2003, p. 110).
The motto is beautiful, it seems so simple when we talk about love, but achieving it is much more difficult than you might think: “Nothing is more difficult to achieve than the desire for a better civilization” (Morin, 2003, p. 110).
It’s like when the French Revolution took place, its trinitarian motto: “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” seemed simple and achievable, but Morin warns that the democratic norm of 1848 is complex because: “its terms are both complementary and antagonic: liberty alone kills equality and fraternity; imposed equality kills liberty without achieving fraternity; fraternity, a fundamental need for a community bond lived between citizens” (Morin, 2003, p. 112).
These antagonisms range from economic selfishness to political hatred, and also the exercise of democracy: “ … requires both consensus and conflict, it is much more than the exercise of the sovereignty of the people” (idem). requires both consensus and conflict, it is much more than the exercise of the sovereignty of the people” (idem) and this limit that requires tolerance has been crossed.
So what we have at stake is “… the difficulty of establishing democracy after the totalitarian experience. The rule of the democratic game requires a political and civic culture whose formation has been impeded by decades of totalitarianism; the economic crisis gives rise to an excess of conflict that threatens to break the democratic rule” (Morin, 2003, p. 113) and in various parts of the planet this rupture has already happened.
Morin wrote in a prophetic tone for the times (written in 1993): “Correlatively, the collapse of the great hopes for the future, the profound crisis of revolutionaryism, the exhaustion of reformism, the flattening of ideas in everyday pragmatism, the inability to formulate a great project, the weakening of the conflict of ideas to the advantage of conflicts of interest or ethnic or racial ethnocentrism …” (p. 114).
We need to overcome these weaknesses in order to rediscover the path of the common good and social welfare, which is not far off, the problem is that this path, like love and fraternity, is not so simple and requires the resilience to do good by doing it.
MORIN, E.; Kern, B. Terra-Pátria. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
Development, power and civilization
08
Nov
Politics dominated by the arrogance of power, by 
little service to social causes and by contempt and disrespect for the citizenship of ordinary citizens is public life gone awry.
The polarization into two large political blocs has not happened recently. Edgar Morin, in his book Terra-Pátria, already stated: “The cold war began in 1947. The planet is polarized into two blocs, waging an unrelenting ideological war everywhere. Despite the balance of atomic terror, the world is not stabilized” (Morin, 2003, p. 30).
What kind of crisis is this? In other books Morin talks about the crisis of thought, in this one about a crisis of development: “Isn’t our civilization, the model of development, itself sick of development?” (Morin, 2003, p. 83).
The crisis of civilization that we are experiencing has side effects: “Individuals only think about today, they consume the present, they allow themselves to be fascinated by a thousand futilities, they chatter without ever understanding each other in the tower of Babel of trinkets. Unable to sit still, they throw themselves in every direction” (Morin, 2003, p. 84).
Another effect is on young people: “When adolescence rebels against society, when it ‘goes astray’ and dives into hard drugs, it is believed that it is only a youthful malady; it is not realized that adolescence is the weak link in civilization, that the problems, evils, diffuse and atomized aspirations elsewhere are concentrated in it”. (Morin, 2003, p. 85).
What happens is that we enter a “blind race” as Morin calls it: “The race of the triad that has taken charge of the human adventure, science/technology/industry, is uncontrolled. Growth is uncontrolled, its progress leads to the abyss”. (Morin, 2003, p. 92).
We have certainly produced important fruits of civilization: “Oh, certainly! Shelley, Novalis, Hulderlin, Pushkin, Rimbaud, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Mussorgski, Berg are the historical fruits of a civilizational development; but their work transcends this development, it expresses our being-in-the-world, it speaks to us of the unspeakable, it takes us to the edge of ecstasy, where the irremediable influence of time and space is attenuated” (Morin, 2003, p.107).
However, the owners of power, wrapped up in their megapolitical daydreams, empires and struggles that do not contemplate human and civilizational greatness, incapable in their arrogance of giving up privileges and other peoples and nations as allies and friends, incapable of solving social and climatic problems.
The Gospel says of these, who are also those of Pharisaical religiosity: “Jesus said in his teaching to a large crowd: ”Beware of the teachers of the Law! They like to wear flashy clothes, to be greeted in public squares; they like the first seats in the synagogues and the best places at banquets. They devour widows’ houses, pretending to say long prayers. For this they will receive the worst condemnation” (Mk 12:38-40).
Morin, E.; Kern, Anne-Brigitte (2003). Terra-Pátria, transl. por Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Other cancellations and joy
07
Nov
Not only are there cancellations of identities
and ethnicities, there are also cancellations aimed at policies that eliminate fraternity, solidarity and love.
Edgar Morin wrote about “salvation”: “Life, consciousness, love, truth and beauty are ephemeral. These marvelous emergencies presuppose organizations of organizations, unusual opportunities, and they run mortal risks all the time. For us, they are fundamental, but they have no foundation” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
This type of cancellation is not only the most dangerous, it is itself a cancellation of the possibility of good news: “Love and conscience will die. Nothing will escape death. There is no salvation in the sense of the religions of salvation that promise personal immortality. There is no earthly salvation, as promised by the communist religion, that is, a social solution in which everyone’s life would be free from misfortune, chance and tragedy. This salvation must be radically and definitively renounced” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
Morin quotes another author who is fundamental to his argument: “As Gadamer says, it is necessary to ‘stop thinking of finitude as the limitation in which our infinite will-to-be fails, (but) to know finitude positively as the true fundamental law of dasein’. The true infinite is beyond reason of intelligibility, of the powers of man” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
How is this beyond finitude can be written according to the author: “The gospel of lost men and the Fatherland tells us: let us be brothers, not because we will be saved, but because we are lost*. Let us be brothers in order to live authentically our community of earthly life and death destiny. Let us be brothers, because we are in solidarity with each other in the unknown adventure” (Morin, 2003, p. 166), and explains in a footnote (*):
*In fact, the idea of salvation born of the refusal of perdition carried within it the repressed awareness of perdition. Every religion of life after death carried within it the repressed awareness of the irreparability of death.
He quotes Albert Cohen to explain: “That this astonishing adventure of humans who arrive, laugh, move, then suddenly stop moving, that this catastrophe that awaits them does not make us tender and compassionate towards one another, this is unbelievable” (Cohen, apud Morin, 2003, pgs. 166-167).
This is his call for fraternity: “The call for fraternity is not confined to one race, one class, one elite, one nation. It comes from those who, wherever they are, hear it within themselves, and it is addressed to each and every one. Everywhere, in every class, in every nation, there are beings of ‘good will’ who convey this message” (Morin, 2003, p. 167).
MORIN, E. e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. Terra-Pátria, trad. por Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. — Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.
Beyond pain and agony
06
Nov
Both personal and humanitarian crises must bring
about a new dawn and a greater glory than the civilizing process has allowed.
Edgar Morin, when analyzing the polycrisis we are experiencing, makes an analysis of a certain agony:
“If we consider globally the two critical cyclones of the world wars of the twentieth century and the unknown cyclone in formation, if we consider the mortal threats to humanity coming from humanity itself, if we consider finally and above all the current situation of entangled and inseparable polycrises, then the planetary crisis of a humanity still incapable of realizing itself as humanity can be called agony, that is, a tragic and uncertain state in which the symptoms of death and birth struggle and confuse each other” (Morin, 2003, p. 97).
And he concludes: “A dead past does not die, a nascent future cannot be born” (idem).
He seeks to save here what is beyond these pains and difficulties: “There is a global advance of blind forces, of positive feedback, of suicidal madness, but there is also a globalization of the demand for peace, democracy, freedom, tolerance…” (Morin, idem) maintaining hope.
But the scenario was already difficult when he wrote the book: “The struggle between the forces of integration and those of disintegration is not only located in relations between societies, nations, ethnicities, religions, it is also located within each society, within each individual” (idem) it is an inner struggle…” (idem).
Are we doomed to this,” he writes: ”Are we hopelessly compromised in the race towards generalized cataclysm? From which birth do we hope to emerge? Or will we continue, by leaps and bounds, towards a planetary Middle Ages of regional conflicts, successive crises, disorders, regressions – with only a few islets preserved?” (p. 98).
This way out is the rediscovery of our earthly purposes, which is the subject of the following pages and which we have already touched on, this path requires reflection and a return to balance and peace.
MORIN, E. and Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Pátria, transl. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
A new meta-development
05
Nov
We see living as an intense life of action, pleasure
and disregard for the true joy of living, that joy and peace that only caring hearts can feel.
Edgar Morin wrote about meta-development:
“Development is a goal, but it must cease to be a short-sighted goal or an end-goal. The goal of development is itself subject to other goals. Which ones? To live truly. To live better.
Truly and better, what does that mean?
To live with understanding, solidarity and compassion. To live without being exploited, insulted, despised” (Morin, 2003, p. 106).
This must be extended to all peoples, religions and cultures on the planet; there will be no true civilizing process, justice and freedom without these values, dear conquests of humanity.
Not only Edgar Morin dreamed of a planetary citizenship, all true dreamers and humanists have dreamed of it, although some limit themselves to looking at the failures, the full life and freedom that does not ignore the rights of others is the only one capable of leading to a new moment.
Perhaps wars and all the evils they involve: economic, political and even religious struggles (a true religion would never contemplate the slightest violence against life). Above all, we must resist and hope that a new future can come, perhaps with the current suffering, I would say a “violent passion” in planetary life with threats and wars.
To what kind of regression, a true barbarism, we are heading, I have already perceived Morin’s genius and sagacity, of the double barbarism: “It is true that at all times, in all places, humanity has been faced with the need to resist diffuse cruelty made up of malice, contempt, indifference. The two present barbarisms are formidable developments of cruelty: hateful cruelty comes from the first barbarism and is expressed in murder, torture, individual and collective punctures; anonymous cruelty comes from techno-bureaucratic barbarism” (Morin, 2003, p. 100).
Morin noticed the backlash after the spring experienced in 1989-1990, when the walls came down, and now they are rising again.
MORIN, E. and Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Pátria, transl. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Provocations, threats and hopes
04
Nov
Wars continue to threaten world peace, and the
great powers are crucially involved in making this happen. There are no peaceful or humanitarian speeches, the forces involved are casting a great shadow over all of humanity: a global war.
The former Russian president and current vice-president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, in an interview with the RT news agency declared: “The United States is wrong to think that Russia will never cross a certain line when it comes to using nuclear weapons” and indeed Russia has carried out military exercises in this direction, but in other speeches the former Russian president always recognizes that it would be an unprecedented disaster.
Another pole of tension is a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, aggravated by recent attacks and retaliation between the two nations. Iranian President Ali Khamenei declared: “The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime [Israel], must know that they will certainly receive a devastating response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front,” referring to groups allied to Iran, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
China is also carrying out military exercises around the island of Taiwan, on Sunday (04/11) 35 drones crossed the dividing line between the two countries in the Taiwan Strait, which only maintained the readiness of its defense service, since no attacks were carried out.
There is always hope for peace and that leaders understand the number of victims, injustices and scourges that wars bring, peace is a condition of civilization for all.
Querela pacis and the true life of peace
01
Nov
Although a philosopher with many limitations,
Erasmus of Rotterdam, more than 500 years ago, wrote Querela Pacis, a lament for Peace, which spoke in the first person about Peace and said “peace always needs someone to give it a voice”, it is rather an attitude from within the Being.
Byung-Chul Han’s texts, three of which I would highlight: The Society of Tiredness, The Crisis of Narrative and Vita Contemplativa, may seem alienating in a world on the brink of war, but it is a text that also points to this path, an inner peace that gives voice to the world of pure externality.
He says in The Crisis of Narrative: “Philosophy as ‘poetry’ (mythos) is a risk, a beautiful risk. It narrates, even dares, a new way of living and being” (Han, 2023, p. 106), italic highlights by the author, he even points to the Enlightenment and Kant’s conception of the soul as ‘daring’, but they are narratives and later recalls that Nietzsche points to a ‘transnarrated’ world.
It is from this author that he points to a world where “a narrative of the future, based on a ‘hope’, on a ‘faith’ in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow” (Han, 2023, p. 108) is the same one that the author points to in another text as the “already” but not “yet”.
What has happened to philosophy today, and this has spilled over to the other sciences, is that “the moment philosophy claims to be a science, to be an exact science, its decline begins. Philosophy as a science denies its imaginary narrative character” (p. 108).
As the author says, “it deprives itself of its language. It becomes mute” (idem), exhausted in the administration of history, and incapable of narrating (p. 109), hence all the modern narratives.
Then the author points to narration as a cure, from pages 111 to 129, to end in the next chapter “the narrative community”, which recovers the ability to narrate and imagines “a world family” (p. 125), beyond nation and identity, the desired peace.
The pax romana and even eternal peace (Kant) do not leave the confines of personal narratives or group-restricted identity; this narration of the citizen of the world must come from voices that have the capacity to see humanity as a family, as a whole in diversity.
This is the paradigm of complexity developed in this week’s posts: “the individual lives in the whole and the whole in the individual. It is through poetry that the highest sympathy and coactivity originate, from the most intimate community” (Han, p. 125, recalling a text from Schriften Novalis), this peace comes from the inner voice, but points to the collective, to humanity.
It is this beatific, divine and true peace that can give voice to effective and lasting peace.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Beyond “generous” fraternity
29
Oct
Edgar Morin’s book, in chapter 3, explores the
“biological sources of fraternity: mutual aid”, addresses the misinterpretation of social Darwinism, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” (1859-1860), as well as other authors in his book Method 2 “The Life of Life”, where he points out that there is a solution to the problem between cooperation and conflict, in order to understand societies as well.
Thus, he responds to this “complex relationship”, present in all societies, there is a “complementary and antagonistic (dialogical) relationship between solidarity and conflict.
The fourth chapter opens with the philosophy of Heraclius (540-470 B.C.) “Concord and discord: father and mother and all things”. The author uses the idea of the universe itself: its formation, development, dispersion and death, further supported by the discoveries of the James Webb mega telescope (the book is older) and today with the expansion of the worldview it is confirmed.
The fifth chapter finally arrives at a more complex conception of fraternity, for Morin the three notions: paternity, maternity and fraternity, argues that, unlike what patriarchal society has shown, the concept of father is late in the history of humanity.
He recalls that the idea of male (father) and female (mother) is not a universal concept for all of nature, and with this the relationship of brotherhood (a more horizontal concept of fraternity) is what should prevail, but he recalls that the concepts of birth and dependence are very important for mutualism and cooperation, which are present in all forms of life.
To develop the sixth chapter, he draws on personal experiences, and recalls that the spheres of fraternity within a family are the origin of the external fraternities that we find in social relationships throughout life.
The author’s experiences will become more explicit in Chapter 7 “My Fraternities”, which are the author’s experiences and a short, inspiring chapter that clarifies the author’s position on such an important topic in the dramatic context of civilization in which we live.
The author thus presents what he calls, in chapter 10, an “Oasis of Fraternity”, where modern society, of globalization, opposes the reduction of human life to only a “techno-economic” dimension that reduces the human to a particular, more material dimension of life.
Long before the current crisis, which Morin seemed to anticipate, he will write in the final chapters “Changing paths?” where our social environmental problems are a response to Sapiens demens (linked only to technology, transhumanism and now artificial intelligence), only a radical change of path can we recover serenity, peace and a return to the civilizing process.
Morin, E. (2019) Fraternidade: para resistir à crueldade do mundo, trad. Edgar de Assis Carvalho, Brazil, SP: São Paulo, Ed. Palas Athena.
The War scalated
28
Oct
At the weekend, Israel retaliated against the
attacks of the 1st. October when Iran launched around 200 missiles against Israel, following the death of the leader of the extremist group Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, the targets apparently were all military bases and Iran mourned the death of 4 soldiers.
The targets are also unclear, but there are reports from the Syrian cities of Homs, Damascus (capital) and Daraa, in Iran the cities of Karaj (outskirts of Tehran), the cities of Mashhad, Isfahã and Shiraz (graphic), to Last night (27/10) few retaliations from Iran took place.
However, with the direct involvement of Iran and Israel, the climate in the region is explosive and has already escalated.
Also in Russia, North Korean soldiers were sent to reinforce the war in Ukraine, in addition to the training that will be received, many, according to Ukrainian sources, will also be sent to the invaded region of Kursh, where Ukraine maintains dominance, this involvement It also affected South Korea, with which it has the biggest disputes.
Involvement was also projected at the Brics meeting held in Kazan, the formation of an economic bloc is one of the ways to face the various forms of blockades made to countries that are at war or under military dictatorships, not surprisingly, they are involved in wars.
There is still hope for peace, always for those who do not want authoritarian and warlike solutions, even though the problems involved are serious, but wars do not solve them and in most cases they worsen possible sustainable solutions.
We pointed out in the last post, rereading Edgar Morin, we highlight his chapter Conservar/Revolucionar from his book Terra-Pátria, where he emphasizes that we cannot move to a new future horizon by abandoning the humanistic achievements already achieved, human rights, democratic freedoms and cultural-religious tolerance of all ethnicities.
We always hope for a turnaround, even in this serious situation, there is a need for resistance of the spirit, that is, where fundamental human values are assured.
Conserving/revolutionizing and resisting
25
Oct
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches
human limits and continues to humanize itself ?
Edgar Morin’s answer can be found in chapter 4 of the book Earth-Land when he sets out “Our terrestrial goals”, where he states: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99), and stresses that the former is conservative and neglects “deliberately here the adjective ‘revolutionary’, which has become reactionary and very tainted with barbarism” (idem) and it is enough to see the atrocities of the escalation of current wars.
Conservative because “it is a question of preserving, of safeguarding not only the cultural and natural diversities degraded by inexorable processes of standardization and destruction, not only the civilizational conquests threatened by the returns and manifestations of barbarism” (idem p. 99) we cannot regress in the civilizational milestones we have already reached, but we must evolve.
It’s a paradox, but a justifiable one: “Conservation needs the revolution that would ensure the pursuit of hominization” (Morin, 2003, p. 100) where the paradox “apparently contradictory, conserve/revolutionize: it is the paradox progress/resist” (idem), where resisting is “being on the defensive on all fronts against the returns and manifestations of the great barbarism, written before the new millennium, this is very current in the face of the possibility of war.
To resist, for the author, is to oppose two growing barbarities: the “hateful cruelty” that expresses itself “in murder, torture, individual and collective rages” and the “anonymous cruelty that comes from the techno-bureaucratic barbarity” of assumed or presumed totalitarian states.
Thus, the author, who speaks of “hyper-specialization”, “anonymization, abstraction, commodification, which together lead to the loss not only of the global”, sees the imperative need to resist this mentality, which necessarily leads to barbarism and the process of degradation.
Thus the search “for hominization must be conceived as the development of our psychic, spiritual, ethical, cultural and social potentialities” (p. 101) is part of this paradox of resisting/revolutionizing, so development must be conceived in an anthropological way, i.e. “breaking with the conception of progress as a historical certainty in order to make it an uncertain possibility…” (p. 102).
And he adds that he must “understand that no development is acquired forever: like all living and human things, it suffers the attack of the principle of degradation and needs to be constantly regenerated” (p. 102) and points out the false idea of development, because “: the underdevelopment of the developed increases precisely with their techno-economic development” (p. 104), war and conflict are precisely the “developed”.
Thus the notion of underdevelopment: “however barbaric it may be, it establishes an anthropological link between the so-called developed and the so-called underdeveloped; it encourages useful technical and medical aid – drilling wells, developing energy sources, fighting endemic diseases and nutritional deficiencies – even though it is carried out under conditions of economic exploitation, natural degradation and miserable urbanization that cause new evils” (p. 105).
It is therefore necessary to “tolerate” differences and even establish advantages over them, to no longer ignore or demonize different cultures, to establish aid and agreements for global development and the process of broad humanization, which the author calls “hominization”.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
