Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria
The time of the clearing
19
Jan
If we are in times unsuitable for thought and
intelligence, unsuitable for human and moral values, it means that it is also a time of clearing, it is a time that many consciences and men will be able to awaken and see and find the clearing.
For this, a metanoia is necessary in philosophical, political, everyday and even religious thinking, remember that the prophets were killed and ignored precisely by “religious” people.
The threshold of an unlimited civilizing and humanitarian crisis is close, but if we look at everyday culture, we talked about this so much from the very Brazilian Ariano Suassuna to the Englishman Anthony Daniels in previous posts, politics and thought also seem polarized between two extremes that in many values are confused, and one of them is war and the desire for power.
Even those who invoke peace hide interests of power, of greed for greater wealth and oppression of those they believe to protect, it is a sad scenario of little light and where men of good will who desire a less dark look at the future should have.
Looking at the etymology of the word clearing in Heidegger’s philosophy, it comes from the German word Lichtung, whose meaning, in addition to clearing in the forest (he himself lived for some years in the black forest of Germany), its root Licht is the word for light, which will mean hidden things, or entities whose truth must come to light, as some translators use as unveiling.
What a propitious time this is, and why we are approaching it, because whenever the prophetic words of thinkers and mystics who ask for a change of course in humanity have not been heard, this time of darkness approaches followed by a great clearing.
In the biblical passage of Mark 1:1-19, Jesus clarifies that the death of John the Baptist is this sign of the clearing, that Herod asked for the head on a platter for his wife after his daughter Herodias danced for the king, the death of the last and greatest prophet begins a new era.
The reading says (Mc 1,15): “Time has already come to an end and the Kingdom of God is near. Convert yourselves and believe in the Gospel”, and for those who believe in the biblical clearing, it is the time of change.
Time to recover and live true humanitarian values, even if they are not Christian, the desire for peace, to look at Others with the dignity that each one has and to live justice
Idealism and real experience
18
Jan
The great discovery of real life (or rediscovery if
we take classical and medieval ontology as a basis) is a radical critique of idealism, which separates the subject of life from the real world, what is promised in life projected onto things and not things (our posts from last week) is the real-life catastrophe that does not translate into real and concrete values.
Phenomenology returns to real life through the Lebenswelt (world of life) that was taken up by the philosopher Husserl and that is touched upon and cited by Habermas, without really developing it.
The objective of this philosophy is to show that the human being must be the center of the knowledge process, human consciousness is a giver of meaning to the world of things, or the phenomena of this world, from which the name phenomenology comes, non-things can also reacquire meaning if we penetrate this human reason (which idealism calls subjectivity).
With this, human consciousness reacquires meaning and meaning to phenomena and things in the world, directing them to what each thing is in essence, in a path that is always intentional and thus gives meaning.
Husserl in his work “Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”, is where this concept appears in a clear and in-depth way, because it establishes a relationship between epistemology (the systematization of knowledge) and philosophy and rediscovers asceticism.
Thus, a true asceticism does not separate the world of things and non-things, just showing that there would be an unreality in one of these worlds, as it is not separated from life, it is there that we verify that we move from the concrete world of life to a path whose evolution destroys the basis of the human and the real, wars and personal declines are this.
In Habermas the world of life is treated as something that is immediately available to social actors in the form of meaning and/or representations available to everyone, whereas for Husserl the phenomenological foundation refers to an ethics for the science and technique of the world, given that science has not managed to reach this level as a discourse on action in which the life of reflection is absent, and within science, which is what Kant’s criticism does.
Sloterdijk developed something close to this concept as a despiritualized asceticism, that is, despite working on the concept of “phenomenology of the spirit” they remain in the abstract field and their real updating in the world of life does not happen, because it is not clear what type of exercise this is.
So we carry out a series of “exercises”, we are the society of physical and mental exercises, but their translation into the world of life does not lead to concrete social and moral acts.
Husserl, Edmund. (1986). La crise des sciences européennes et la phénomènologie transcendentale. Trad. De Gerard Granel. Paris: Edittrice CLUEB.
The included third of physics and thought
17
Jan
The fact that we are trapped in dualism, A
and not-A, Being is and Non-Being is not, and now transformed into political thought as if nature and society were just always two options in conflict with no third (or even the fourth and fifth options) is an outdated thought if we look at the logical paradox developed by the physicist Barsarab Nicolescu that finds parallels not only in quantum physics (photo), but also in social and ontological thinking: the third option.
So much so that this is true that Barsarab’s own text that calls for a reform of Education and Thought (Barsarab, 1999) indicates that this change can be seen as a way out of the center of a crisis greater than physical or logical issues, says Barsarab : “One thing is certain: a large gap between the mentality of the actors and the internal development needs of a type of society invariably accompanies the fall of a civilization”, or said in another, more ontological way, between Being and non-being -Being there is a state of Non-Being that breaks dualisms and paradoxes.
Both Barsarab’s letter that calls for an education reform, and other thinkers such as Edgar Morin and others perceived a crisis in modernity with roots in thought and education, the theorist of the Included Third T, gives a worrying sentence: “The risk is enormous , because the continuous expansion of Western civilization, on a global scale, would make the fall of this civilization equivalent to the burning of the entire planet, in no way comparable to the first two world wars”.
There is also a linear and monodirectional thinking where intentionality is always polarized and creating a “single” and monochromatic path, with the eternal danger of authoritarianism and misuse of power, to detente it will be necessary to have a more open world where everyone is included and not just what is convenient for power.
Education must support and assist this context, Barsarab says in his letter: “The harmony between mentalities and knowledge presupposes that such knowledge is intelligible and understandable. But can this understanding still exist, in the era of the disciplinary big bang and extreme specialization?”
The harsh reality of the pandemic shows that we oscillate between true solidarity and detente to face the crisis, and the opportunist polarization that wants to take advantage of the deaths and deviations of a poorly managed health crisis, in some countries more, but in almost all .
Barsarab’s sentence, which seems harsh, is not: “Is there something between and across disciplines and beyond each and every discipline? From the point of view of classical thought there is nothing, absolutely nothing. The space in question is empty, completely empty, like the vacuum of classical physics”, in this epoché (the Greek vision of emptiness) a true philosophy can flourish, even when it is not (the suspension of judgment, new horizons beyond the pre -concepts, etc.) is what it is.
NICOLESCU, Basarab. The manifesto of transdisciplinarity. Trans. Lúcia Pereira de Souza. Brazil, São Paulo: Trion, 1999.
Bad taste is becoming common
16
Jan
The word is not mine, but none other than the
northeastern brazilian writer Ariano Suassuna, in a talk that someone had the happy idea of turning into a short YouTube post, he adds: “the ability to be outraged by what It’s ugly, he said, I watch a soap opera, I think the soap opera is an important thing that we have to watch, a soap opera was on and it was actually good, but in the entrance music there’s a verse, notice what, my stone is amethyst, my color is the yellow one, but I’m honest I need to go to the scientist urgently”… the audience laughed… and he added: “be patient, this is too bad” (short talk with Ariano Suassuna).
Theodore Dalrymple, is the pseudonym of the English psychoanalyst Anthony Daniels, who decided to write essays and transformed 26 essays into a book Our Culture or what’s left of it, and now working as a volunteer in a work that re-educates addicts and understood more deeply what the author wanted to say, it’s not about sentimentality or simply giving the recipe: “society did this to him”, it’s partly true, but by their own decision these people can change their lives. (interview in Brazil)
The decision is individual and can change lives and realities, it is possible to give hope back to people who life has pushed aside, without using demagoguery or treating these people with prejudice, helping them to face their own reality head on, and then the social reality , but the decision is a first personal step.
The taste for the ugly, unethical and immoral is not a final option, it can be reversible, but the recipe for success is to face personal and social reality, without running away from its responsibilities and willing to see alternatives of education, respect and ethics that neither it’s always the takes.
Giving alms, a plate of food can be an immediate measure, but preventative measures require a change in perspective on life, of an often-complex metanoia that dismantles adopted antisocial values, and psychoanalyst Anthony Daniels speaks with authority, because he has dealt with many of these extreme cases in prisons and in his office.
He adopted the pseudonym probably to demonstrate that these are not just cases and psychic disorders, but addictions and antisocial attitudes that transform into destructive and negative thoughts and actions.
The first part of the book deals with arts and letters and the second part with society and politics, but the author does not fail to deal with the future in both parts, where we were going and are almost there: the downhill slope we entered and if It is possible to reverse this process.
In addition to criticizing the Eurocentric, idealistic way of thinking and the demand for efficiency, he, who is European, shows paths similar to those that seek to take people off the path of degradation.
Anyone who watches these influencers who offer rewards out there, basic questions, such as the first capital of Brazil, the capital of a state other than São Paulo or Rio Grande do Sul, the others seem unknown, math questions then border on ignorance.
Questions like how much is 10 to the power of 0 in mathematics, fruits that start with P (Pera (pear), Pitanga (typical in Brazil), Ponkan (type of tangerine), etc.), in short, very simple questions that few people answer.
Dalrymple, Theodore. “Our culture, what-s left of it”, ed. Ivan R. Dee Pub., Chicago, 2005.
A new war front
15
Jan
The fear that the war between Hamas and Israel
would set the Middle East region on fire is little by little confirmed and escalated, the bombings carried out by Western forces (USA, United Kingdom and Holland) in the Yemen region, where the extremist Houthi movement has its bases. The group is aligned with Iran, and the region is one of the poorest on the planet, and the Houthis maintain control over international flag ships that sail through the Red Sea, a strategic location for military forces in the region (see map).
In the distant past it became part of the Kingdom of Sheba, more than a thousand years ago, being mentioned even in Genesis, and also in the Quran, more recently because it had more rain than other regions of Arab countries, it had good agriculture, with coffee plantations.
This is where the type of Arabic coffee comes from, and it came to be called Happy Arabia along with Oman in the period when sedentary tribes developed an agricultural economy.
It came to be divided into North and South Yemen, a period in which one region became communist dominated, but was reunified again and during the Arab spring the country entered into great political and social instability, plunging into a bloody civil war, which according to UN data left 22 million people in a vulnerable situation.
The US and UK military incursions in the region increase tension with Arab countries and could provoke an even greater military escalation in the region. Another source of tension was the election in Taiwan of the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) candidate, Lai Ching-te, 64 years old, he achieved 40.1% of the votes against Hou Yu-ih (Koumintang, KMT) with 33.5 % and Ko Wen-je (Taiwan People’s Party, PPT) with 26.5%, his election represents the approval of a nationalist policy contrary to China, Lai was vice-president of the current president.
The escalation of the war in Ukraine follows, where winter favors the “winter general”, due to the difficulty of moving and maintaining troops across Ukraine in cold regions, Russia has carried out intense bombings in several cities using the air force.
The crisis in Israel has completed 100 days since the October 7th attack by Hamas, and is now driven by attacks by Hezbollah that are supported by Iran, which has declared itself as having no role in the attacks that started the conflict.
The situation of belligerence across the planet is intensifying, the American elections will be held this year in November and the parties are already using war situations as a campaign.
Non-things and subjectivity, the distorted eidos
12
Jan
Subjectivity comes from idealism that judges Being
separate from things, thus only being if projected onto objects, but the Greek “eidos”, from which nascent idealism came, there was no such separation, both in Aristotle’s 4 causes: material, formal, efficient and final, as well as in the theory of Platonic ideas, which is the essence and which we have already related to the thing.
Those who think the world is immersed in eroticization are mistaken, be it the world of fantasy, that which comes from works of fiction, from children’s imagination and from looking with hope at a better future, today in an increasingly worrying present, Chul- Han writes like this:
“Without fantasy, there is only pornography. Today, the perception itself has pornographic features. It occurs as an immediate contact, even as a copulation of image and eye. The erotic occurs in the blink of an eye” (Han, 2022), that is, it is precisely its opposite, we are in the existential void, in the denial of Being and in it only pornography remains, as a degradation of Being.
Quoting Barthes, Hul-Han clarifies the part of the piece that is: “Absolute subjectivity can only be achieved in a state of silence, the effort to achieve silence (closing the eyes means making the image speak in the silence). Photography touches me when I remove it from its usual blahblablah […] not say anything, close my eyes […]” (Han, 2022) and he is quoting Roland Barthes in his work (photo): The camera lucida (or Lucid, depending on the translation).
Photography is therefore a way of perpetuating silence, the desire of many to take photos as an individual act is to remove it from everyday life and insert something that is eternal, while the public exposure that the digital universe has allowed is to return it to the “ usual blahblabla”, says the author: “The disaster of digital communication arises from the fact that we don’t have time to close our eyes” and maybe he doesn’t know but this is even physical, by not blinking our eyes we should use eye lubricants if We expose it for a lot of time on screens.
“Noise is both acoustic pollution and visual pollution. It pollutes attention” (Han, 2022) and citing Michel Serres says that this instinct is of animal origin, as dogs, tigers and other animals that urinate to demarcate land, pollute with their stench to inhibit other animals from approaching.
Allowing others to approach is not demarcating territory. Jesus’ biblical response to the initial contact of two new disciples is wise (John 1:38): “Jesus asked: “What are you looking for?” They said, “Rabbi (which means: Master), where do you live?” and he replied: “Come and see” and they went and stayed with Him, because he did not demarcate ground and did not close himself.
The logic of silence is contrary to noise, which does not just mean the pollution of an audible sound, but a complete void capable of containing and receiving the Other.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida , transl. of the Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
The non-thing and the amoral world
11
Jan
For Byung Chul-Han, what is changing is the
world of merchandise with the digital, he will analyze the power of the book and the ebook, the latter as a non-thing, the smartphone and other digital objects, but the world of morals as well is changing, he quotes in passing:
“A person uninterested in things, in possessions, does not submit to the “morality of things” based on work and property. She wants to play more than work; experience and enjoy more than possess. In its cultural phase, the economy also shows playful traits. Theatrics and performance are becoming increasingly meaningful. Cultural production, that is, the production of information, increasingly adapts artistic processes. Creativity becomes its motto”, using Vilém Flusser’s reasoning about the moral of the thing.
What Chul-Han calls the cultural phase should be an in-depth analysis of the period of the cultural industry, radio, cinema and television, which was nothing more than a transition from merchandise to the imagination through advertising, where the brand and not the content, so not only are the work and the product alienated, but its very essence is alienated, using a term from the medieval period, as we have already analyzed in a previous post, it loses its quiddity, its identity and singularity, as it was the cultural industry that gave everything the appearance of sameness.
Also in the final section he will analyze things of the heart, and it is good to remember that these also had their singularity in the past, today transformed into an amoral and timeless character, in the wrong sense of the word, what is eternal is essence and singular and then returns to quiddity.
The final section says, things of the heart, recalling the fox’s dialogue with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “The little prince asks the fox what “apprivoiser” means. To which the fox responds: “It’s something almost forgotten […]. It means becoming familiar, establishing relationships. […] For me, you are just a little boy like a hundred thousand others” and this is the loss of singularity, there it will introduce listening and the relationship with the Furthermore, these relationships cannot be developed without a moral conception.
The exposure of personal relationships, the end of private life through legal and illegal filming, the increasing exposure of even children, is increasing and amoral, there is no room for growth and respect for the morals of each age, not even old age, Rejected as moral and as an age of wisdom, it is increasingly common to expose this “good age” in a pejorative and amoral sense, without limits of respect (Chul-Han calls it symmetry in The Swarm) and a balanced morality.
Everything seen as “freedom”, but which plunges into “upheavals in the world of life”, the author’s subtitle, we are heading towards a civilizational crisis and the return depends not on things, but on a new morality of the state, of human relations and of public life.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
The escalation of wars
08
Jan
Although it cannot yet be declared a world 
war, the interference of Russia and the United States in several wars on the planet is already open and declared, Ukraine, on strong air attacks in all regions, issued a warning this Monday about these attacks, in Palestine the news They say that over 70% of the territory is uninhabitable due to the war.
Tension continues in the East, the North Korean dictator considers himself at war with the United States and on Saturday (06/01) more than 60 artillery shots were observed on the border with South Korea, tension in the area is growing, and there are American ships nearby.
Kim Jon-Um’s motivation was the naval exercise near the Baengnyeongdo and Yeongpyong islands, a border region between the Koreas (map above) although North Korea’s response could be thought of as defensive, Kim’s declaration was of open war with the In the USA, the warmongering stance of conservative South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol strains relations with North Korea, which calls him a “gangster”.
The United States does not rule out open intervention in Eastern Europe, China maintains reservations, but always declares that the island of Taiwan is a rebel province and considers it part of Chinese territory, it is a declaration that an inevitable American defense and probable Japan in the area would also mean China entering the war, this scenario is a third world war, and we are on a very fragile threshold of this possibility.
From an economic point of view, the road in the BRICS of countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Ethiopia is also a cause of tension, since the Arab countries ally themselves with the socialists.
There is no longer any way to ignore the level of global tension for 2024, although hope will always remain with those who sincerely desire peace, and do not use it as warlike rhetoric.
From information to narration
02
Jan
The title is purposefully the opposite of the first
chapter of Byung Chul Han’s book on the crisis of narration, although he quotes Walter Benjamin who cites the experience of narration in a period before the internet, but the Korean-German philosopher does not clearly see this previous crisis the internet, and thus he himself falls into what he condemns, the absence of analysis in time.
If it is true that the Internet and its tool for making information available to laypeople, which is the Web (born in the 90s, more than 20 years after the internet) not only created a profusion of means of disseminating information and its narratives, but also created the possibility of its profusion in audio and video, which gives rise to a new possibility of recorded narration for podcasts and videos.
Of course, this does not mean that that primitive narrative prior to writing and the press, typical of primary orality, has returned, it exists in original cultures and also in some Western cultures and beliefs, for example, among the Kurds there are the “çîrokbê” who, if it were Literally translated, it would be what we understand in Western culture as “history”.
Byung Chul Han’s sentence about the digital universe is clear: “Digitalization deobjectifies and disembodies the world. It also eliminates memories” (Han, 2022) this is partly true, but digital media itself, once recorded, becomes a thing, and once a narration is made, just for example, by Kurdish narrators, the information (in the sense of Chul Han) returns to narration, that is, the reverse process is possible.
Its error, from a philosophical point of view, is an old question about what things are (or what they are), the relationship between subject and object is the result of Western dualism since Parmenides, and only a non-dual vision can understand that the A thing is also not a thing in itself, once narrated.
Thus, information will always be paradoxical, it is narrated when it is and not narrated after it has become narrated-information and is subject to historical distance, but if seen from the point of view of quantum physics it is even more complex, because there are both things, from which the question arises from some physicists that time does not exist, difficult for today’s culture.
This question of time arose in 2012 in a TedTalk by the Italian Carlo Roveli: “Time Doesn’t Exist and I’ll Tell You That in 15 Minutes”, but has gained popularity now because the James Webb mega-telescope proposes several new paradigms when looking deeper into the universe, We are at the end of the Copernican era, the center of our galaxy is a black hole and they have already started to say what they are, dark matter and dark energy are also beginning to be revealed.
The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku gives the history of this idea, “In The God Equation” (ed. Record, 224 pp, trans.: Alexandre Cherman), and there he gives a written account of today’s physics.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022). Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. – Petrópolis, RJ : Vozes, Brazil.
2024: wrath or peace, hope
29
Dec
In 2023 we saw an escalation of wars: the war in
Ukraine intensified, after a terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, the war there broke out and intensified, the threat of a dispute between Guyana and Venezuela which is now returning to the issue of sending from an English warship to the area.
The climate is far from being seen with possibilities of peace, in Ukraine, Russia carried out intense attacks at the end of the year and Poland accuses that there were missiles from Russia that violated its airspace, Hezbollah began an escalation of attacks on Israel, and Venezuela says it will respond to the British warship with “defensive” military action.
As if that weren’t enough, the election now in January in Taiwan puts pressure on China since conservative parties are in the lead and the defense of the territory that China considers its province is one of the mottos for the election and the provocations in Taiwan’s territorial waters are frequent (photo).
There is always hope, there are many forces that seek to demonstrate the senselessness of wars, the deaths of innocent people, the immense damage to national economies, and the first thing that is lost in all wars: the truth about the real interests in conflicts , are never what they proclaim: interests in defending “the people” and the most fragile who are precisely the biggest victims.
In the midst of the great conflict, what can happen is what they try to hide: the great clearing of consciences, not only collective ones, but mainly individual ones, countries and economies in ruins, poverty everywhere and on an individual level, what we are and what that we do around our personal conscience in the face of serious situations around us.
Although my personal hope is small in relation to war, it is great in relation to the individual plan, in great conflicts and great scourges, great men and great leaders appear who march in the opposite direction to the powerful and arrogant.
Those who have experienced great scourges and conflicts are those who witness the horror of wars.
