Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
Reforming thought and its viaticum
21
Nov
At the beginning of chapter 5 of Edgar Morin’s
Cabeça bem-feita (Heads on straight), he uses an epigraph from Euripides’ Edita: “The gods invent many surprises for us: the expected doesn’t happen, and a god opens the way to the unexpected” (Morin, 2003, p. 61), only those who meditate and have a well-developed spiritual side know how to work with the unexpected.
He gives us three viaticums in this chapter, the first of which is “Preparing for our uncertain world is the opposite of resigning oneself to a generalized skepticism.” It is necessary to resist what is anti-human not as an act of courage, but in the only certainty which is the error of the path that our mistaken convictions can lead us down (pictured is Leonardo Alenza’s viaticum, 1840).
The second viaticum is strategy; we get lost on the road to what is good and what we want.
“Strategy is opposed to program, even though it can include programmed elements. The program is the a priori determination of a sequence of actions with a view to an objective. The program is effective under stable external conditions, which can be determined with certainty” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) so we need to think about strategy by exercising it, if we want more humanity we need to be human, if we want peace we need to practice it.
The third viaticum is the challenge, we usually look for our comfort zone or security, but neither comfort nor security are there, in general they require a challenge to conquer them, says Morin: “A strategy carries within it the awareness of the uncertainty it will face and, for this very reason, contains a bet. It must be fully aware of the stakes, so as not to fall into false certainty. It is false certainty that has always blinded generals, politicians and businessmen, and led them to disaster” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) – this is the disaster of today’s false peace.
The answer is not exactly a Christian, but someone of Jewish origin who lives a secular life: “Betting is the integration of uncertainty into faith or hope. Betting is not limited to games of chance or dangerous undertakings” (Morin, 2003, p. 62). If we work for peace and for the correct process of civilization, we can certainly count on some extra help, why not: divine.
Morin, E. (2003) A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento. transl. Eloá Jacobina. Brazil, 8a ed. -Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
Bad thinking, bad politics and bad religion
20
Nov
The structure of the civilizational crisis that we
are experiencing, the nuclear threat has become real after the release of missiles into Russian territory these days, the energy crisis and the problem of world misery are on the civilizational agenda, but thought, politics and religion (in their deviations) do not perceive them clearly.
It’s about making allies and not building bridges and breaking down political, cultural and even religious walls. Enlightenment thinking still dominates the West, a shallow cultural vision invades the discourse of even the most educated and religion, when it’s not pure commerce, deviates towards human precepts and preconceptions that have little or nothing pure and divine about them.
On the subject of thought, an interesting text to read is Edgar Morin’s “Cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento” (Well-made head: rethinking reform, reforming thought, brazilian edition). He says of the crisis that was already present in discourses on “civilizational malaise”: “So that we can, at the same time, integrate and distinguish human destiny within the Universe; and this new scientific culture makes it possible to offer a new and capital knowledge to the general, humanistic, historical and philosophical culture, which, from Montaigne to Camus, has always raised the problem of the human condition” (Morin, 2003, p. 38). 38).
He says in the book’s introduction: “Knowledge has become increasingly esoteric (accessible only to specialists) and anonymous (quantitative and formalized). Technical knowledge is likewise reserved for experts, whose competence in a restricted field is accompanied by incompetence when this field is disturbed by external influences or modified by a new event.” (Morin, 2003, p. 19).
But the networks have invaded the discourse of experts and made cultural and political knowledge worse, now under the influence of the “digital swarm” (read Byung-Chul Han: The Swarm), a wave of bad politics and bad religion has been unleashed and invaded by “influencers”, pseudo-prophets and politicians whose anti-civilization conduct already denounces their falsehoods and evil.
It’s time for opportunists, for little thought (it has already reached the select layer of “cults”) and for bad religion, which prophesies evil, disorder, and announces as a “prophecy” the religion of easy profit, of contempt for culture and cultures other than one’s own.
But the light persists, the resistance persists among those who proclaim the good news and a more human world, the new civilization and the protagonism of what is good, beautiful and human; and little by little what is outdated thinking, bad politics and false religions and prophets will disappear, it will be a long and painful process, but the night only persists in the absence of light.
From those who have little (thought, culture and faith) even the little will be taken away.
MORIN, E. A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento / Edgar Morin; tradução Eloá Jacobina. – 8a ed. -Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2003.
Joy and re-building the Earth
19
Nov
Amid threats of total war: the US authorized the
use of long-range weapons in the war in Eastern Europe, Finland and Sweden prepare for possible war (RFI press) and the Russian threat of a total war over the approval of missiles (Terra online press).
All of this seems contradictory to the possibilities of Terra-Pátria that we posted last week, but a theologian, paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard Chardin also points out something beyond this: re-constructing the Earth.
Chardin’s text, dated at the end of his life in the 1930s (there are several extracts), compiled and published after his death in 1958, only said in Building the Earth, but there was not yet the strong environmental imbalance, the growth of atomic plants (energy was used in the war for bombs) and the danger of a global cataclysm, threats present today, in addition to social imbalance.
He was already aware of the crisis of democracy and the growth of totalitarian systems (fascism and communism), he defined his belief in the future in three aspects: passion for the personal, the universal and the future itself, and seeing the planet as an organism gave his sentence: “each cell thinks, because it is free, that it is authorized to build a center for itself” (Chardin, 1958), but it noted the dispersion of this false intellectual and social liberalism.
See, however, the contradictions in dialogue, these forces do not have “merely destructive power, each of them contains positive factors… no matter how little these components talk, each of them contains positive components… each of them is the world itself is the world itself who defends himself and wants to reach the light”, it is clear that conflicts of war and extremism must be avoided.
In the sense he gives to the “spirit of the Earth”, this was written combining extracts from 1931, on a journey across the Pacific Ocean, he defined this spirit as “the passionate sense of common destiny that drags, ever further away, the thinking fraction of Life” , and it gives meaning to our consciousness in growing circles of families, homelands, races, finally discover that the only true, natural and real human Unity is the Spirit of the Earth”.
Edgar Morin in his book Terra Pátria created a similar concept as planetary citizenship, but it is necessary to give a “common soul” to this idea of a planet as home for everyone.
In Chardin’s cosmology, he insistently works on this theme in his Noosphere (this thinking layer that creates this spirit capable of involving everyone), he will say that “love is the most universal, the most formidable and the most mysterious of cosmic energies”, today With so many poles and so many forces in conflict, it is necessary to rediscover this essential point of convergence.
On the path to unity, “to the wonders of a common soul”, he wrote “these brief and pale words must make us understand that a formidable power of joy and action still sleeps within human unity”, rediscover this value and this cosmic force, like the defines, it is our destiny.
This is the joy of those who believe in the divine participation that corrects human history.
Chardin T. (1958) Construire la Terre. Paris: Editions du Soleil.
Words that will not pass
15
Nov
When the Greeks thought up the Greek polis, 
almost simultaneously the Jewish world was reinvigorated and updated by the Christian world, there were hundreds of false prophets, one was the expected one, he came not with a bang, like a euphoria, but like a gentle breeze.
On the threshold of a new civilization, Edgar Morin leaves four challenges for humanity: ”
Coming out of the planetary iron age, saving humanity, co-piloting the biosphere, civilizing the earth are four terms linked in a recursive ring, each necessary for the other three” (Morin, 2003, p. 178).
Simplists and false prophets insist on apocalyptic or warlike solutions, or both, but Edgar Morin warns: “For how much blindness there is today among traditionalists, moderns and postmoderns! How much fragmentation of thought! How much ignorance of the planetary complex! How much unawareness everywhere of the key problems! How much barbarism in human relations! How many lacks of spirit and soul! How many misunderstandings!” (Morin, 2003, p. 179).
So we can have two attitudes depending on our spiritual and conceptual view of the future: “In any case, we must reassume the principle of resistance. In addition, we have principles of hope in hopelessness…” (Morin, 2003, p. 180).
He points out six possible attitudes to this: the first is vital: “… vital principle: just as everything that lives self-regenerates in an incoercible tension directed towards its future, so what is human regenerates hope by regenerating its living; it is not hope that makes one live, it is living that makes hope, or rather: living makes hope that makes one live” (idem).
He lists five others, but we want to highlight the fifth: “The fifth is the principle of rescue by becoming aware of the danger. According to Hõlderlin’s phrase: ‘Where danger grows, so does that which saves. (ibid).
The book ends bleakly: “The adventure remains unknown. The planetary age will perhaps succumb before it has had a chance to blossom. The agony of humanity will perhaps only produce death and ruin” (Morin, 2003, p. 181).
But for those who believe, God will not remain indifferent to the fate of humanity, so it is necessary to think beyond the resistance of the spirit, to hope that the words of salvation will not pass and then the whole world will be able to recognize the power and divine action over our lives.
How much barbarism there is in human relations! How many lacks of spirit and soul! How many misunderstandings!” (Morin, 2003, p. 179).
So we can have two attitudes depending on our spiritual and conceptual view of the future: “In any case, we must reassume the principle of resistance. In addition, we have principles of hope in despair.
Going beyond earthly consciousness
14
Nov
At the end of the century, we seemed to
become aware of our reality.
Suddenly, new conflicts erupt and the dormant wars awake: ethnic hatreds, racial and ideological hatreds. Morin wrote about this moment:
“Still until the 1950s-1960s, we lived in an unknown land, we lived on an abstract Earth, we lived on an object Earth. Our end of the century discovered the Earth-system, the Earth Gaia, the biosphere, the cosmic parcel, the Fatherland. Each of us has our genealogy and our earthly identity card. identity card. Each of us comes from the Earth, is from the Earth, is on the Earth.
We belong to the Earth that belongs to us” (Morin, 2003, p. 175).
So what would this awareness be, Morin writes:
– “the awareness of the unity of the Earth (telluric consciousness);
– the awareness of the unity/diversity of the biosphere (ecological
ecological awareness);
– the awareness of the unity/diversity of man (anthropological awareness);
– becoming aware of our anthropo-bio-physical;
– becoming aware of our dasein, the
fact of “being there”, without knowing why;
– becoming aware of the planetary era;
– the awareness of the Damoclean threat;
– the awareness of the doom on the horizon of our lives, of
every life, every planet, every sun;
– the awareness of our earthly destiny. “ (Morin, 2003, p. 175)
Although he recognizes that he needs to go further, as he writes: “And it is through these awarenesses that messages can now come from the most diverse horizons, some from faith, others from ethics, others from humanism, others from ro- mantism, others from the sciences, others from the awareness of the planetary iron age” (Morin, 2003, p. 176), he is stuck with the idea of the humanism of the Enlightenment “which recognizes the quality of all men” (idem), but comes up against human limitations without knowing how to overcome them.
“Mastering nature? Man is still incapable of controlling his own nature, whose madness drives him to dominate nature by losing control of himself. Mastering the world?” (Ibidem), the author is not clear about the awareness of the divine in the ‘most diverse horizons’.
Without being part of the imaginary high point of civilization, which sees a new civilization in the distance, which the author himself acknowledges: “This man must relearn earthly finitude and renounce the false infinity of omnipotent technique … “ (p. 177), but the cosmos is not the limit.
Morin, E. e Kern, B. (2003) Terra-Pátria. Transl. Paulo Neves, Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Being grateful is not that simple
13
Nov
Some philosophers and even scientists have
placed the external atitude (so-called objetive) and internal attitude (having compassion for others) in distinct, almost opposite fields.
For common sense describe Popper, is not the simple objectivity or subjectivity developed by idealist philosophy, or the intersubjectivity that connects the subjectivity of individuals or discourses, is the possibility of attaining knowledge of things, situations and people that leads to knowledge. in a way of knowing that they have cultural, social or even beliefs that lead them to proactive attitudes.
So you take acts done in isolation into a virtuous circle of attitudes, of course Popper did not speak of gratitude, but Marcel Mauss wrote in the 1920s the theory of giving, or the “gift” of simply rewarding or rewarding positive attitudes, But there is no problem in having remuneration, this is its idealistic aspect, even in this case there may be gratuity if made as a gift to those who receive the service.
What leads to gratitude rather than reward is how the word etymological origin is the notion of gratuitousness that must accompany even those acts for which there is just compensation, without being an instrumentalized or corrupting form of that act.
Thus collaboration, cooperation and even totally free actions that may involve values, such as paid wages, which should be thought of as acts of brotherhood and compassion as those involved in that act.
Just as continuous acts lead to an attitude, so continuous gratitude can lead to gratitude, can and should not because there is a difference in both cases that it is the fact that if it does not become an act and a social gratitude, even though attitude and gratitude can getting lost and leading to discontinuity of acts and gratitude, this is a problem in certain cultures.
Internal and external attitude for grateful é complementary gratitude.
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.
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.
A new Copernican revolution
24
Oct
The center of our universe is no longer the sun,
at the center of our galaxy there is a black hole, although the name seems to be negative, according to new theories after the James Webb super telescope it is just a new reality beyond current physical thinking, called Sagittarius A* it has a diameter of 35 million kilometers and is the most massive object in the galaxy (first photo taken in 2017 by the Event Horizon telescope, Feryal Ozel).
Edgar Morin points out that this and other scientific changes of our century are more “formidable” than the apparently revolutionary ideas of our time, which have changed little or nothing in the social, human and world conception we still have.
Morin wrote: “We have had to abandon an ordered, perfect, eternal universe for a universe in dispersive becoming, born in irradiation, in which order, disorder and organization act dialogically, that is, in a complementary, competing and antagonistic way” (Morin, 2003, p. 62), and also: “we are in a universe that is neither banal, nor normal, nor evident” (p. 63) and we should also think of human and social life in this way.
Thus, our tiny home in an almost infinite universe is “… a small cosmic wastebasket transformed in an improbable way not only into a very complex star, but also into a garden, our garden” (p. 64) and this is how we should think and not about conflicts.
“Our terrestrial family tree and our terrestrial identity card can now finally be known” (p. 64) and points to this as evidence of our problems.
The first piece of evidence he points to is economic unruliness: “We cannot consider the economy as a closed entity. It is an autonomous instance dependent on other instances (sociological, cultural, political), which are also autonomous/dependent in relation to each other” (p. 65), so the current wars are nothing more than a dispute over markets where we could recognize the interdependence and autonomy of each economy.
The second is the ecological crisis: the Meadows report commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972, but also: “the great local catastrophes with far-reaching consequences: Seveso, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, drying up of the Sea of Arai, pollution of Lake Baikal, cities on the verge of suffocation (Mexico, Athens)” and now more recently Fukushima and natural disasters.
He also pointed to the crisis of development and the universal crisis of the future, the one we are in today, with hatreds and world wars escalating where love and fraternity are suffocated.
“Thus, everywhere, the development of the science/technology/industry triad loses its providential character. The idea of modernity remains all-conquering and full of promise wherever there are dreams of well-being and liberating technical means” (p. 76).
Without a return to common sense, global cooperation, fraternity the crisis is inevitable.
MORIN, Edgar e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre.
