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Arquivo para a ‘Information ethics’ Categoria

An un-avoidable war

26 Aug

The escalation of the war continues without a light at the end of the tunnel, despite efforts to ensure that the two most dangerous wars do not exceed limits that make 3G inevitable, on the Iran and Israel side of the conflict there were unsuccessful conferences in Doha, on the Ukraine side x Russia, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Zelensky in Kiev.

Symbolically, both events are important for Peace, Mahatma Gandhi’s India has a pacifist tradition, Narendra Modi 14th. Prime Minister of India, he is the first to have been born after independence from England, achieved in a peaceful war on the Indian side, as England acted with repression and violence.

The conference in Doha also has its significance, in addition to several conferences from Western countries, it also hosted the 5th. conference for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) that seeks to respond to the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through a program of Action (Doha Program of Action – DpoA).

The military incursion into Russia continued in a significant area of ​​1,200 km and there were also drone attacks, the objective is to reach military posts and oil reservoirs on Russian soil, but Russia is advancing on eastern Ukraine in areas close to Kharkiv and Belarus also concentrates troops in other side, Ukraine acuse.

The escalation of both wars, there is a video showing tunnels inside Lebanon of the pro-Iran Hezbollah group. With enormous mobility where motorcycles and trucks pass, where a large part of the weapons for attacks would be located, which in the early hours of yesterday (Sunday 25/08) would have already started, Israel is on high alert and is removing residents from the border.

Lithuania announced that it already has collaboration areas with the German army for exercises in case the war with Russia escalates, the initial forecast is to place 5 thousand soldiers in areas already reserved for the German army.

Biden announced new military aid to Ukraine, the conversation between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov on Friday (23/08) talks about a package worth US$ 125 million, in reais around R $685 million.

India’s involvement and the countries that meet in Doha (among them the United States and Egypt) is possíble, but is necessary first desarm the spirits.

 

The limits of total war

19 Aug

With hope and with great fear of a total war, which would culminate in a great civilizational crisis, we post weekly analysis of the evolution of situations in which the limits of a total war can be broken and lead to an inevitable confrontation.

Now countries in Europe and the United States are trying to understand these limits, recognizing that Israel exceeded this limit by assassinating the leader of Hamas in the middle of Iranian territory, the idea of ​​putting an end to the tension created runs the risk of not being heard by Iran and a war Direct agreement between Israel and Iran would involve the world’s great war powers.

The situation in Ukraine is similar, although in the opposite direction, the country was severely attacked and punished in these two years of war on the way to the destruction of its energy sources, now it has organized a bold retaliation by invading a Russian border zone and establishing itself in an area of around a thousand kilometers, in the Kursk region of Russia (photo region of bridge destroyed).

Yesterday, Sunday 18/08, Volodimir Zelenski spoke for the first time that the objective is to create a “buffer zone” to prevent attacks in the region of the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, however this advance infuriated the Soviet leaders, who accuse the West to prepare and help Ukraine in the invasion, this limit was also exceeded there.

The sending of a submarine capable of firing missiles to the Middle East, according to White House spokesman John Kirby, who stated that the situation in the region was discussed with France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, an influential Russian deputy, Mikhail Sheremet, said on Friday that the presence of a military arsenal on Russian soil is “irrefutable evidence of foreign participation” in Ukrainian military action.

All of this is a pre-World War scenario, there is no longer a limit between Western involvement and these two outbreaks of war, there is always hope, the men who provoke wars can regain their serenity and understand that these limits should not be exceeded and go to a negotiation table, but tension escalated to maximum level.

 

 

Temporal power and forgiveness

15 Aug

Temporal power rarely finds space for forgiveness, but this does not mean that it never passes through human thought and philosophy, even though in essence, forgiving is divine, and this means going beyond what is humanly thinkable.

For the philosopher Jacques Derrida: “when forgiveness is in the service of a purpose, be it noble or spiritual, such as redemption or reconciliation, that is, every time it intends to reestablish normality, social, national, political or psychological, through mourning work or therapy, it is not pure […] Forgiveness should remain exceptional and extraordinary, putting the impossible to the test, as if it interrupted the ordinary course of human temporality”, thus it remained within human limits.

There is no doubt that crimes against humanity, atrocities and barbarities are beyond the limit of “human temporality” and so is earthly power, since it is temporal, even dictators who remained in power all their lives had a tragic or disastrous end. temporal death, and some were forgotten, others even banished from popular memory.

Therefore, forgiveness must be considered as something fundamental in addition to temporal power, and it could be a regulator for periods of crises and wars, in almost all of which it is not possible to measure the degree of atrocities committed, both on the part of the “winners” and “losers” and the rational (and divine) thing would be to consider that they got themselves into a fight that they should never have entered into.

Likewise, our personal and social sorrows and disagreements, how useful and healthy a moment of serenity would be and to sit at the table of dialogue and be able to discuss unthinkable solutions, or in Derrida’s words “putting the impossible to the test”, the moment looks like this.

If we have the courage to listen to that “enemy” that we would never listen to, to give a hand to someone whose hurt or disagreement is very great, we could return to a destructive path that seems to have no return, and whose overcoming depends only on one attitude: forgiving.

Even those who will never ask us for forgiveness have lost the serenity and humanity of seeing the other beyond judgments and disagreements, there is always another being there, ontologically we only deny the Being if we refuse to listen to it and give it some credit, maybe you need this.

Forgiving is divine, whoever takes this step understands that there is another reality beyond what we imagine to be real and possible, the impossible is also within the reach of those who forgive.

 

Innocence, purity and peace

13 Aug

It seems contradictory and even innocent, in a way it is, but in a world so troubled with so many urgent problems, talking about peace, purity of feelings and behaviors is not only naive for those who believe in violent solutions, they are proving insufficient.

If we prepare for war we are convinced that it and only it is the solution, however, they produce more injustices, more inequalities and only dictators and powerful people benefit from them, they are not bothered by financial crises, innocent deaths because In your mind, only your personal safety and well-being matters.

Also authors of great works, such as Edgar Morin, who talks about the resistance of the spirit, the limitation of a tragedy of great proportions feeds sick minds in all spheres, they believe that this could be a “sign of the future”, but it is the sign of a past, also on the threshold of the First and Second World Wars, many authors warned of this, such as Karl Kraus.

The purity of children should be observed more closely, they may even fight, but soon they want to make new friends so they can play with their friends, they don’t take everything to heart and fire, unless they are encouraged by adults, and there are those who do this unfortunately.

They want the common good, wishing everyone well and wanting a more equal and peaceful world is not just any thought, it is at the foundation of every civilization that bears this name, the warlike nations and empires disappeared after a tragic decadence.

 In ancient times, the Greeks spoke of the Highest Good, aretê (virtue) and the education of the citizen, the ultimate objective of both Plato and Aristotle, it was still a society of slaves and where children and women had few rights, but this goal already existed.

Desiring peace, being inspired by the purity and joy of children’s coexistence, can take us away from the perverse thoughts that surround our daily lives, from divisions, hatred and grudges.

 

Putting out fires

12 Aug

With the initiative of Egypt and Qatar, supported by other countries, there is an attempt for a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that would avoid a likely retaliation from Iran for the assassination of Hamas leader, Ismil Haniyeh, in Tehran, at the end of last July .

Iran considers it possible, but demands an end to Israel’s incursions into the Gaza strip, Israel is preparing as if war were inevitable, and this would raise a new front of global war between the West and now the Arab world.

The other front in the war between Ukraine and Russia with increasing NATO involvement, Ukraine launched a surprise attack on Russian territory in the city of Kursk where intense fighting is taking place, with Russia recruiting young people for military service again.

Two worrying situations at nuclear plants also occurred this weekend, one in the city of Rostov, where a new plant was switched on and there were concerns about a unit having some malfunction, but the plant’s chief engineer, Andrey Gorbunov, said according to press sources: “we are working at maximum efficiency”, saying that it was routine maintenance.

More serious was a fire yesterday, at the facilities of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in the south of Ukraine, this Sunday (11/08), as reported by the Reuters agency, located in a war zone, on Ukrainian territory, but under the control from Russia, both countries exchanged accusations for the fire caused, the president of Ukraine, Zelensky, claims that the situation is under control and radiation levels are normal.

Evgeny Balitsky, an official stationed by Russia in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, accused Ukraine of starting the fire by shelling the nearby town of Enerhodar, and Russian officials said the plant “suffered serious damage for the first time” from the attack.

Thus, the danger of wars, which produce enormous losses and human lives, the risk of an “accident”, a hasty or cruel attitude, such as murders, can trigger irreversible processes and create an irreversible global climate of wars and horrors.

The hope that peacekeeping forces, and in the case of competent technical force plants, will avoid greater tragedies than those that wars already cause, deaths and human despair of civilians and innocent people.

 

What is love after all

07 Aug

In a polarized world and now on the verge of regional wars that can escalate, talking about love seems innocuous and has no reflection on reality, but there are good works produced by humanity.
Paul Ricoeur wrote and we have already posted about this a few times about Le socius e le prochain (The partner and the neighbor), separating interests from true love for others.
However, Hannah Arendt’s work, although not definitive regarding love, the advisor Karl Jaspers himself expressed this about his doctorate “Love in Saint Augustine”, developed and appropriated some fundamental categories on the subject, of course we are not talking about erotic nor familial love.
According to author George McKenna, in a review of her thesis, Arendt tried to include a revision in her “The Human Condition”, but it is not very clear in Arendt’s book that, despite this, it has good development.
If this love can also be expressed in ancient Greek literature, such as agape love, which differs from eros and philia in this literature, from a Christian point of view the best development made is in fact that of Saint Augustine.
First because he separated this concept from good x evil Manichaeism, a dualism still present in almost all Western philosophy due to idealism and puritanism, then because he was in fact raptured upon discovering divine love, he wrote: “Late I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so young! Too late I loved you! Behold, you lived within me and I was looking for you outside!” (Confessions of Saint Augustine).
Then man must love his neighbor as God’s creation: […] man loves the world as God’s creation; in the world the creature loves the world just as God loves it. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously reclaims your God-given importance. This achievement is love for others (ARENDT, 1996, p. 93).
Man can love his neighbor as a creation by returning to his origin: “It is only where I can be certain of my own being that I can love my neighbor in his true being, which is in his createdness.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 95)
In this type of love, man loves the divine essence that exists in himself, in others, in the world, man “loves God in them” (ARENDT, 1996, 9
The biblical reading also summarizes the law and the Christian prophets like this (Mt 22, 38-40): “This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is similar to this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. All the Law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
Love contains all the virtues: it does not become conceited or angry, it knows how to see where the true signs of happiness, balance and hope are found, even in a troubled world.
ARENDT, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

 

 

Global tension grows

05 Aug

The death of the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in the middle of Iranian territory by “a short-range missile” that was in Iran for the inauguration of the new president of Iran Masoud Pezeshkian, raised tension between Israel and Iran to the highest level, and the Iran’s response will be inevitable.

The sending of the former commander of troops in Ukraine, Valerri Zaluzhnyi, to be ambassador to the United Kingdom, also raises serious concerns not only due to the proximity of the British government, which will certainly remain informed of military actions, the new ambassador outlined a dark and painful for the future of the war in Eastern Europe.

Ukraine received the expected F-16 fighter jets (photo) to reinforce its air defense, thanks to Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, apparently the donors of this shipment, however it is still waiting for others, the political result is a greater involvement of forces from other countries in the war.

Countries in the Balkans and Scandinavia have already begun compulsory conscription for military service fearing an expansion of the war.

Latin America is also suffering from the controversial Venezuelan election, the AP news agency obtained photos of almost 79% of the election minutes and would prove the election of the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzáles, while the CNE, Maduro’s body for counting the ballots, gave the dictator as winner.

There were several protests on the streets, and according to Maduro himself there are already more than 2,000 people detained, with deaths and injuries in the demonstrations that are repressed by the military forces.

There is always hope for those who believe in peace, respect for cultural, religious and political differences, improvement in income distribution and help for needy populations. The problems of today’s world are justice and freedom, war only worsens these conditions.

 

The heart and beliefs

02 Aug

The heart is a vital organ, it irrigates blood throughout the organism reaching all the cells of the human body, when we talk about beliefs (they are also hidden in objects of human knowledge, we believe that something is a certain “way”) we do not we just talk about faith.

Byung-Chul Han, when carrying out his analysis based on the classic authors of Western philosophy, approaches a perspective of what he will call “affective tone”, focusing mainly on Heidegger.

His book, unlike others that are just essays, has “Heidegger’s heart: on the concept of affective tonality in Martin Heidegger” (Ed. Vozes, 2023), his first book in my opinion, with a new, human and spiritual analysis. even spiritual at the core of Western philosophy.

Part of a concept dear to Judeo-Christian civilization, which is that of circumcision, but circumcision of the heart and not of the failed organ (the skin attached to the beginning of the penis), it is necessary to remember that although it is a male organ, it is an emblem of power, of authority and desire, was culturally a warlike culture.

The part of his vision with his eastern vision and that has a spiritual sense for his entire philosophical question, Han will develop that it is the circumcision of the heart, that which modulates and governs affection, circumcision has a different meaning than what is commonly spoken, the controversy between Christians and Jews at the beginning of the Christian era, is the circumcision of the heart.

Circumcision is the act of removing the skin of the male sexual organ, but even in the biblical sense it was the skin of the heart, in Deuteronomy it reads: “Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and no longer stiffen your neck” (Dt 10,6), citing in the epigraph of the first chapter of the book: “Circumcision of the heart” (Han, 2023, p. 7).

Thus, “this circumcision frees the heart from subjective interiority” (Han, 2023, p. 11), and there is a surprising preliminary conclusion in Heidegger: “Heidegger’s heart, on the other hand [confronts with Derrida], listens to one voice , follows the tonality and gravity of the “one, the only one that unifies” (Han, 2023, p. 14-15), for him it is an “ear of his heart” and thus there is something strong spiritual in this.

It is there that the human being finds his essence: “he remains in tune with that from which his essence is determined. In the tuning determination, man is affected and called by a voice that sounds all the purer the more silently it resonates through the sonant” (Han, 2023, p. 15) literally quoting Heidegger.

He will not say that it is faith, and it reveals the Buddhist influence of his thought, the author’s only link, in my opinion, with idealism, because in Buddhism there is only a personal elevation, there is no Person on the other side, who resonates through the resounding, that voice of the Holy Spirit.

The author clarifies the disagreement between Derridá and |Heidegger: “The ‘polyphony’ that Derrida opposes to totality does not exclude tonality” (pg. 16) we would say if these authors: Han, Derrida and Heidegger were Christians, that Heidegger and Han would be monotheists and Derrida would be polytheist, but it is clear that this “resounding voice” is not that of God, but from within.

Han, B.C. (2023) Heidegger’s Heart: on the concept of affective tone in Martin Heidegger. Trans. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.

 

 

 

Build a life and not exclude

30 Jul

Both Nietzsche in The Gay Science and Peter Sloterdijk’s Post-God stated the death of God, in fact it is just an attempt to kill God, because if he does not exist we cannot kill him and if he exists he is immortal, so we can only just erase it from our mind temporarily as it will come back intuitively, the proof is that atheists do not ignore Him.

Nietzsche’s text is clear, but it was also distorted: “The mad man threw himself into their midst and pierced them with his gaze. ‘Where has God gone’, he shouted, ‘I will tell you now! We killed him – you and me. We are all your killers! But how did we do this? How do we manage to drink the sea entirely? Who gave us the sponge to erase the horizon? What did we do, untying the earth from its sun? Where are you moving now? Where do we move? Away from all the suns?” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, § 125)

Thus, not being able to kill him, they destroy his “symbolic” values, such as the Holy Supper in the Olympics, for example, or distorting the true history of the God-man: Jesus, as did the idealist theology of Ludwig Feuerbach that we recently posted, created an “absolute” empty and abstract, which cannot be God as a trinitarian person.

However, the reaction to the Hegelian Theocide, that of Feuerbach, in which God only exists in the mind and thus is something of ideal thought and only with idealistic “transcendence” do we reach him, there is the religious reaction of closing oneself in the “community of the elect” , of God’s favorites, those chosen by criteria that a certain community determines and the rest are lepers, public sinners and unworthy of the “kingdom”, bad seed.

The parable of the tares and the wheat is clear, both are born in the same environment, but one does not bear fruit, will not participate in the wheat harvest and will be separated like chaff.

In a way, the reaction to this elevated God, distant from men, “all powerful” is nothing more than a vision of power that is also mundane and temporary and a form of despiritualized asceticism, the life of “exercises” as advocated by Peter Sloterdijk.

Spiritual truth is one in which everyone is included, there is unity and respect for all and no one is seen as a leper or bad seed, this is a Pharisaic interpretation, but it is clear that good seed bears good fruit so one can look at reality in its own way. back, but without prejudiced or exclusionary judgment.

Founded on perfectionism and extreme moralism, morality is important and should not be denied, however, taken to the extreme it makes “addiction” much closer and more likely to fall into it, that is, they are in fact false moralists because they are unable to put into practice what they defend, and it is these false exercises that lead to a practice of deviations and moral aberrations.

The union of these concepts with true humanism, one whose inspiration is divine, cannot and should not lead to attitudes of exclusion, isolation and lack of charity.

Everything has to be thought of in a balanced way, from politics to religiosity, from family to social life, from social action to contemplation.

 

Acts of sabotage and opening of the Olympics

29 Jul

Hours before the opening of the Paris Olympics, several “acts of sabotage” were carried out in a “prepared and coordinated” manner, affecting France’s railway lines, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal described the event, according to French sources, as “massive and serious” and thanked the firefighters and expressed indignation at the disruption to the movement of tourists and French people.

The opening ceremony had a strange message and without the beauty that always accompanied it in previous versions, Lady Gaga’s performance was recorded according to explanations “due to the rain”, a ceremony of trans people at a table seemed like an irony with the holy supper (that famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci) and a masked man who appears with the Olympic torch looks like a character from the Assassin’s Creed video games.

Also the white horse simulating riding on the water is something of enigmatic symbolism, perhaps the horse of the apocalypse or some allusion to war.

Except for the famous French song L’Hymme á l’amour by Edith Piaf, performed by Celine Dion, several French athletes paraded with the torch and lit the Olympic cauldron in a balloon, the lighting of which is maintained by an electrical system.

There was also a blackout on Saturday in Paris and the Olympic Committee itself, through the spokesperson for the Organizing Committee of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games: “we assume that we have crossed the line”.

The wars continue, the hope for peace increased since Russia for the first time admitted a return to the “Istanbul agreement” prior to the invasion of Ukraine.