Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
Terrestrial identity and the black hole
01
Nov
Chapter 2 of Edgar Morin’s book is “The
Terrestrial Identity Card” where he states that after the discoveries of astrophysics, biology, paleontology, ideas about the life of the universe, the nature of the Earth and man’s own life were “subverted in the 1950s-1970s” and we still didn’t have James Webb and the discovery of the ties between homo sapiens and Neanderthals.
“Afterwards, with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, the Earth stopped being the center of the universe and became a round planet around the Sun, like the other planets” (page 43) and seemed to “witness the perfection of its divine creator” for order and regularity, until an expanding universe was discovered based on Hubble’s observations of the separation of stars in 1923, the astrophysicist would later give his name to the famous telescope already surpassed by James Web.
At the beginning of the 19th century, “Laplace expelled the Creator God from a self-sufficient universe that had become a perfect machine for all eternity” (pg. 44) and not cited there, but also in a Mathematics Conference at the beginning of the 19th century. . XX Hilbert proposes some last problems not solved by mathematics, to say that everything is logical and mathematical.
In 1965, Arno Penzias and Harold Wilson would give facts for this expansion of the universe as an “isotropic radiation originating from all horizons of the universe” and this “cosmological background noise” a kind of “fossil residue” from the initial deflagration of the initial explosion that would confirm the famous Big Bang theory, today the new data casts doubt on this, but something remained from this period, which is the conception of anti-matter and the investigation of black holes.
The 1960s, when Penzias and Wilson won a Nobel Prize, would bring new celestial bodies among them: “quasars (1963), pulsars (1968) (pg. 44), then black holes, and astrophysicists’ calculations suggest that we only know 10% of the matter, 90% of which is still invisible to our detection instruments” and that James Web is only now looking at.
The center of our galaxy is no longer the sun, but a black hole, and in it unfolds a whole new vision of the universe as “in its beginning the Unknown, the Unfathomable and the Inconceivable” (pg. 44), here we are now in a galaxy 8 billion years after “the birth of the world, and which, with its neighbors, seems attracted to a huge invisible mass called the “great Attractor” “ (idem), which is a black hole.
And we, a small planet, created 4 billion years ago, discover that it has a history, “and takes shape in the 19th century” and on the threshold of the 20th century, the German Alfred Wegener elaborates the theory of continental drift, despite the initial resistance, proven later.
After its initial long periods of cooling, the formation of the first microorganisms, and finally man appears, “the last and deviant branch of the tree of life, appears within the biosphere, which, linking ecosystems to ecosystems, now involves the entire planet”, This early birth, in recent discovery also unites Neanderthals and homo sapiens.
If “Bacon, Descartes, Buffon, Marx make it their mission to dominate nature and reign over the universe” (pg. 54), “from Rousseau onwards, romanticism will umbilically link the human being to Mother Nature” and thus, having a mother, man can be born and inhabit this Mother Earth.
MORIN, E. and Kern, A.B. Terra-Pátria. Trans. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.
The concept of Love in Augustine of Hippona
24
Oct
Hanna Arendt’s thesis was a milestone in her 
philosophical development, from a foundational aspect, it is the first of her works and marks an involvement with Heidegger, her first advisor with whom she became emotionally involved, and Karl Jaspers, who influenced the choice of the theme.
The work can be divided into three thematic axes: love for others, or life in society, love in the relationship between man and God the creator and love as desire, called appetitus.
The author also states that the bishop never completely excluded the philosophical ideas of antiquity, notably Cicero, Plato and Plotinus in his thinking, and no matter how faithful and Christian he became, “he never completely lost the impulse to question philosophical.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 3).
The first part of the author’s dissertation called “Love as desire: the anticipated future”, within a philosophical perspective and in continuity with Hellenic thought, could not have a better title, since it is not love in the present, but “ anticipated future”, something that one hopes to have as a means of achieving happiness.
This love called cupiditas is shaped by a “desirous desire, that is, appetitus”, but caritas also has this aspect of “future” desire, but it is a free love.
Augustine asks in Confessions: “What do I love when I love my God?” (Confessions own essence, finally finds eternal love in his own Being.
Love for others, or social love, was developed by the author: 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 as how God loves. This is the realization of a self-denial in which everyone, including yourself, simultaneously reclaims your God-given importance. This fulfillment is love for others.” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 93)
Augustine differentiates the polis from the city of God, the name of another of his works, and clarifies Arendt: “This defense is the foundation of the new city, the city of God. […] This new social life, which is based on Christ, is defined by mutual love (diligire invicem)” (ARENDT, 1996, p. 108).
Thus, Augustine’s work is philosophical, theological and political, although this aspect is ignored.
ARENDT, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Your fathers rejected the prophets
20
Oct
After the period of the Judges, which was a
truly theocratic period, ended, the people of Israel began to ask for Kings (Samuel 8,6-8), the kings ruled from 928 BC until the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem (586 BC), but the people had already gone into captivity in Babylon in 722 BC, more than 100 years later the kingdom of Judah was destroyed.
Already in the last period of the judges, Samuel, who was also a prophet, saw the people going astray, and even his children no longer followed divine laws, the very division between Israel and Judah (it must be said that this is where the name of Jews), and was the second king of Israel, David, who unites the two kingdoms and names the capital Jerusalem, where his son Solomon will build the first temple.
It was the prophet Ezekiel who lived in Babylonian exile, between 593 BC and 571 BC, who prophesied the destruction of the temple and spoke of the infidelities of the Hebrew people, the prophet Isaiah had also preached that sin had reached Israel and Judah in such a way that the curse would hit the Hebrew people, the biggest of which, of course, was the exile from Babylon.
When Cyrus becomes king of Persia and takes Babylon in 538 BC, he allows the Hebrew people to return to their land and the possibility of rebuilding their temple, the second, but the people’s deviations continue to occur until the last and greatest of the prophets John the Baptist , the one whose head Herod asked for in exchange for Salome’s dance, which he asks for at his mother’s suggestion.
Jesus was rejected for challenging the Pharisees and teachers of the law of his time, there were also those who wanted a leading position in the war against the Roman empire, after the death and resurrection of Jesus in the year 70 AD, the second temple was destroyed by the general Roman Titus and only the wailing wall remained (photo).
Jerusalem was burned and the Jewish people were dispersed, the Jews who settled in Eastern Europe were called Ashkenazi and those from the Iberian Peninsula Sephardim.
Jesus’ position on the Roman empire was clear, since the Romans also feared him, Herod especially, and Pilate washed his hands at his crucifixion, when the Pharisees set a trap asking if it was fair to pay taxes, Jesus takes a coin and upon seeing the figure of Caesar he says: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Mt 22,34-40) this trap remains in religious circles to this day.
Israel’s first disputes
19
Oct
So Abram, who was a Chaldean, from the city of
Ur in the south of Mesopotamia, under divine inspiration under the river Euphrates and goes to Haran, and then goes down to Canaan, passing through Sodom, where he separates from his nephew Lot, and leaving from there they should not look back, Lot’s wife looks and becomes a pillar of salt.
They arrive in Canaan and there were already inhabitants there (the Canaanites), there was a divine promise to give him a son, but with the consent of his wife Sarah (the original name Sarai was changed by God), Abram fathers the son Ishmael from the slave Hagar. , but later Sarah will also have her son Isaac.
God asks him for his son as a sacrifice, but when he is ready to do so, an angel appears to him and asks him to sacrifice a lamb instead, and then promises him infinite descendants and becomes called Abraham.
The site of this sacrifice is today a mosque, but there is an agreement between Muslims, Christians and Jews to be able to visit the place, today called Dome of the Rock (photo).
The family issue was important at the time, after all Abram was supposed to be the patriarch of the people chosen by God, so he wanted a woman from his lineage and not a Canaanite, he found Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel, sister of Laban, this one from a branch of the family who remained in Haran.
New drama, Rebeca has difficulty having children, but ends up having twins, Esau and Jacob, this one is born later and would lose his right to birthright, if it weren’t for a bad trick with his mother to prepare a supper to the liking of Isaac who was almost blind, and dressing his son in furs because his brother born minutes earlier, therefore older, was hairier, and Isaac blesses Jacob.
But Jacob knows that he needs God’s blessing, so going to meet his brother, one night he fights with an angel to obtain divine blessing, after that he will be called Israel, the suffix el in the bible means God, so he who fought with God, in fact, with a year Gabriel, “fortress of God” or Michael, which means “no one like God”, leader of the “armies”.
Jacob will have as his sons those who will give their name to the twelve tribes of Israel (see previous topic) and Joseph, sold as a slave to the Egyptians, having gifts of revelation, reveals to the Egyptian king what his dreams about “fat cows and lean cows” meant. ”, that a time of scarcity would come and receives a role from Pharaoh precisely to take care of the kingdom’s dispensations.
The brothers who sold him then leave Canaan and go to Egypt, where Joseph, after expressing his discontent (a scream was heard throughout the palace), welcomes the brothers, so Israel no longer has the lands and other peoples take their place. .
However, the next pharaoh, apparently Sethi, is not a friend of the Jews and wants all newborn babies to be killed, but Moses’ mother, Jochebed, throws him into a basket in the Nile River and he is welcomed by a princess and she takes him to reign in her care.
Moses is trained as a nobleman, but he wants to free his people who live as slaves, and in a certain mystical event, called the “burning bush”, God reveals his destiny and asks him to command his people back to Canaan, after several battles the kingdom of Israel is revived, but divided with Judah to the South, judges are appointed, rulers who were called by God.
This is the only true theocratic period of the Bible, the judges were appointed by divine inspiration, some were simple people, like Gideon (woodcutter) and Deborah, there were 14 judges, but the people later asked for kings “like other peoples” and they depended on the prophets
Between narratives and inner development
18
Oct
Before continuing with the history of Israel,
which will also involve two exoduses until its attempted dissolution as a nation, a reading of the book “La crisis de la narración” (published by Herder, Argentina) clarifies an important aspect of modern narratives, or what the author calls it “post-narratives”, “telling stories is selling them”.
He clarifies that the “art of storytelling as a strategy to convey messages emotionally”, today everyone talks about narratives to justify their post-truth, has led us to a paradox “that the inflationary use of narratives can manifest a crisis in the narrative itself” , in other times, narratives “accommodated us in our being”, giving meaning and guidance to life.
There was an intrinsic truth, or at least a complete theory of solutions that included man as a whole, and unlike the current lightened narratives (distorting the original narrative, when based on any), “they are the description of the micronarratives of the present, which They lack all gravitation and all pretense of truth.”
True to its style, it is neither informative nor illustrative, examples and categorizations chaotically shape facts and ideas throughout the text, and when there is an original narrative, it is distorted.
Clarifies, now, to understand [a certain topic], there is nothing that explains, orders and one. There is no report, because there is no past. There is no community. Without history, then there is no hope for the future.
He concludes that “with current hyperactivity, which seeks to drive away boredom, we never reach a deep state of spiritual relaxation”, which is developed in other books of his such as “The Society of Fatigue” and “The Aroma of Time”.
He calls modern man “phono sapiens”, who does not know “the development of inner existence”.
Eclipses of the civilizing process
13
Oct
Harmony between peoples, acceptance and
tolerance of differences, dialogue and diplomacy on conflicting issues seem to be further away than ever, like an annular eclipse, it obscures the light and lets only a ring of fire pass through, and as they are There are several points of light sources, there are also regions of shadows that will be confused, looking like night.
Various research shows that this happens to birds when faced with an eclipse, they see that it is getting dark and they behave as they do at dusk, they reduce their activities, withdraw and almost go to sleep, as the eclipse is quick, then they return to normal activities.
These are civilizing processes, there are periods of darkness and it seems like it could be an endless night, but after this moment seeing the mistake of “sleep” during the twilight, they rediscover life and return to normal activities, in the human case with a new perspective of Peace and tolerance, of course, always leave terrible marks: innocent deaths, destruction and misery.
We could have prepared a party, a concert and harmony between peoples, there was no shortage of educators, prophets and futurists who tried to design this scenario, but men always have free will, in our case, we can choose between the eclipse and the twilight and the day.
Eclipse because whether by natural forces or by divine intervention, those who believe desire and wait for this day, even if millions of innocent people perish, the desire for the triumph of good, common sense and peace among men is always an irreversible path, even if they suffer.
There is a biblical parable that depicts this scenario well, a man was preparing a party and as the guests did not come (they chose other paths), he sent for men on the street, but among them there was also one with inappropriate attire (anti-party attitudes) and asked to be removed, says the reading (Matthew 22, 10-12):
“Then the servants went out into the paths and gathered together everyone they found, both bad and good. And the party room was full of guests. When the king entered to see his guests, he noticed a man who was not wearing a party attire and asked him: ‘Friend, how did you come in here without your party attire?’ “.
“Then the servants went out into the paths and gathered together everyone they found, both bad and good. And the party room was full of guests. When the king entered to see his guests, he noticed a man who was not wearing a party attire and asked him: ‘Friend, how did you come in here without your party attire?’ .
The civilizing process is like this, whoever will win a conflict situation, everyone will lose and in the end those who were on the margins of the conflict process will prepare a new path
Walter, Jennifer. Lunar eclipses have one weird effect on birds. Inverse. March 17, 2022, Available in: https://www.inverse.com/science/lunar-eclipse-bird-flight .
Annular eclipse: historical and mystical data
10
Oct
On October 14th, an annular eclipse should
take place, one in which the moon leaves a small ring with southern light and settles in the center of the king star, and which has curious historical and mystical data.
The first historically narrated eclipse, by Herodotus, describes the battle of the Medes and Lydians (590-585 BC) which ended with an agreement after they realized that the day turned into night and in their understanding the darkness should cease for peace, Herodotus describes it like this:
“In the sixth year of the war, a battle took place, and when the fighting had begun, suddenly the day turned into night. (…) The Lydians and the Medes, when they saw that the night had replaced the day, ceased their fight, anxious for peace to be established between them.” Herodotus (1.74).
Before calculating the date of the eclipse, it was believed that the battle would have been fought on September 30, 610 BC (according to William Smith’s Dictionary of the Greeks and Romans), but modern astronomical calculations have established the date as May 28 from 585 BC
The second data was established with the help of the biblical reading of the battles in Israel of Ajailon and Gibeon, which helped, according to the BBC, to reveal the date of an even earlier eclipse, at the time of the retaking of Israel by the Jews returning from Egyptian exile. , the reading that helped reveal this date, also known as Joshua’s prayer, is this (Joshua 10:12-14): “Sun, stand over Gibeon, and you, Moon, over the Valley of Aijalon”.
The BBC report, physicist Colin Humphreys, director of research at the University of Cambridge in England, and astrophysicist Graeme Waddington using this passage calculated the date of the annular eclipse and found October 30, 1207 BC.
The report also mentions that the first person to suggest such a date was the linguist Robert Wilson (1918) and that he even suggests a re-reading of the biblical text:
‘Eclipse, O Sun, in Gibeon,
And the Moon in the Valley of Aijalom´.
Since today we know that there will be a band where the eclipse is total (image) and bands next to it where the eclipse gives a partial shadow.
Heródoto, Histórias, Livro I, Clio, 74.
Religions and evil
04
Oct
One of the biggest mistakes, already developed
in some of the posts, is the Manichaean duality of evil x good, without understanding that evil is precisely the absence of good, great Christian thinker, Augustine of Hippo converted precisely by abandoning Manichaeism.
Religious concepts that have long been forgotten, or that are submerged in mistaken preaching, impede what would be the “natural flow of humanity towards the enlightenment of the soul”, evil has deep-rooted sources in the form of old thoughts and emotional burdens from the past and, despite obsolete, still persist, hindering the progress of souls.
The remedy would be very simple, the closer the soul is to enlightenment, the less evil is present, and the more enlightened souls make the world more empathetic, harmonious and free from injustice.
The ethics and morals that derive from the need for civilizing progress do not find space if there are not souls and people in prominent positions with clear and convincing illumination, that is why evil has become a social, theological or ideological issue, and the both times.
It’s not just Christian thinkers who say this, Hannah Arendt talks about the Banality of Evil, Nietzsche about the “death of God” (or how we “kill” Him, of course impossible), Paul Ricoeur and Lévinas about the Other and Byung Chul Han about the “ Society of Fatigue” speaks of the vita contemplativa as a complement to the vita activa (which Hanna Arendt also spoke of), even remembering Christian thinkers.
The return of threats of war, the social crisis of moral values (everything is permitted!), before a true civilizational crisis occurs, a new enlightenment of souls is necessary (in Picture st. Francis expelling devils from Arezzo, by Benozzo Gozzoli).
The lack of understanding of subjectivity and human imagination, or its submission to unenlightened values, the absence of compassion towards others, the misunderstanding of progress as having fundamental positive aspects, even to save the civilizing process, leads society to exhaustion , disbelief or the fatality of wars and hatred.
It is not difficult to find positions in newspapers and social media in favor of the process of excluding people with a certain opinion, religion or even simple disagreement with dubious moral values (see the case of abortion in Brazil at the moment), the debates are sterile and instead of arguments the reactions are sarcasm and irony.
They are seeds of the broader process of civilizational crisis in progress and detected by great thinkers since the last century, crediting them to new media, to the resurgence of nationalism and authoritarian currents is to look only at the consequence, the root is the absence of enlightened souls who help humanity to contemplate its future with greater grandeur.
*When Francisco was in Arezzo, there was a great scandal and a war almost throughout the city, day and night, because of two factions that had long hated each other.
Good people can do evil
29
Sep
Far from the aporia (ignorance of evil) is the
realization of good, the universal good, the common good, the good that sees and explains the will of the Other, the one that eliminates the symbolic nature of evil.
Hell is paved with good will, but it is not quite like that, because if it is a right intention it can produce fruit at the right time, but there is good not done and poorly done, that is evil.
There is a determination in the will, which is intention, the topic has already been treated by countless philosophers, most clearly in phenomenology where it is an essential category, but intention requires a habit, and making it a habit requires courage and determination.
There is confusion about intention and confusing it with purpose, psychologists don’t like the term very much because it involves the future and places the cause of behavior in individuals and not in their life history, many hasty and mistaken judgments start from “purpose”. .
However, a purpose made in order to overcome traumas, bad conditioning or something that disturbs a healthy and intentionally active mind for personal and social good, is a purpose that leads to an intention linked to consciousness.
In philosophy, the term intention is linked to and is a subcategory of consciousness, and this is very different from the magical action that some defend as the “law of attraction”, which is why psychologists do not like it, it is about activating consciousness and with this make the intention healthy.
This conscious intention leads to a flow of learning that re-elaborates and makes clearer awareness of the possibilities and healthy perspectives for life and makes the future present in actions that lead to this learning and elaboration of intention.
So it’s possible for someone to go and not go, just as it’s possible for someone to say maybe I’m not going, but ends up going, assuming, of course, a healthy direction of a straight intention.
A biblical parable that explains what will is in a fuller sense is the one that tells how a father who owns a vineyard invites his two sons to go and work in the vineyard (Mt 21,28-30), the first one said I will and no It was, the second one said I won’t go and it was, which of the two fulfilled the father’s wishes, everyone responded that it was the second one, so intention is different from purpose and is related to conscience.
The Symbolism of evil
21
Sep
One of Paul Ricoeur’s characteristics is the search
for explanations about who men are and the circumstances that affect them, among them there is an approach to evil as it affects all people, directly or not.
This search in philosophy comes from Plato, who defined the Supreme as: the final destiny of all things, which for Aristotle is the best good, linked to the logos, thus science, while in Christian philosophy it will be God and paradise.
Also important is the Neoplatonic thought of Augustine of Hippo, for whom evil is the absence of good, and thus is not its opposite, but its absence.
Medieval philosophy associates Good with paradise and evil with that which leads man to his destruction, not only in eternal life, but already in this life, see for example Boethius in his “Philosophical Consolations” and Thomas Aquinas for whom it is an “imperfection” of the Being, of virtues in the nature of the being, which deprives it of good.
In contemporary philosophy, the idealist and Enlightenment vision relativizes it and will almost inevitably fall into Manichaean views of evil and good, that is, arbitrary, much more dependent on conventions and social collusion.
Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas stand out in their treatment of good, they revisited the question of the relationship between good and being in a similar and different way.
For Levinas, good precedes being, but it is not in consciousness or in discourse, thus it transcends being, thus defining it as the otherness of being, that which links it to infinity and its ontological sense, it is that of the ethics of Other.
Paul Ricoeur, when penetrating through hermeneutics more deeply into the question of evil, takes up the question of myth, especially the Adamic myth (Cain killed Abel) where myth “is the sought-after place of fusion between history and fiction” (Ricoeur, 1976, p. 295), but also addresses the “symbolic” issue of evil.
This text cited above is fundamental to understanding Ricoeur’s thought because he deals with it within what for him is today’s “crisis of philosophy”.
The symbolic issue of evil is the salvific death that does not end, but reinscribes the history of humanity in mythical guidelines and even the Enlightenment and idealism are not outside this, as they will create symbolic structures of “salvation” of man.
Ricouer, P. (1976) La philosophie aujourd´hui: entretien sur ce qu´on appelle la crisis de la philosophie. Lousanne: Grammont-Salvat, 1976.
Ricoeur, Paul. (1969) The Symbolism of Evil. Boston : Beacon Press.
