Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
Money, morals and ethics
15
Sep
As we established in the previous post, whatever the form of 
exchanges, in our current context bank cards, although bitcoin digital money has appeared in this scenario, which is controversial, at the basis of every relationship is the exchange of goods in markets.
So it is not money, but markets that can be corrupted by the practices of setting prices for products, and this is what can be ethical and moral or not, including practices that lead to corruption, favoring exchanges and market positions with some illegal rewards that are paid to people in decision-making positions.
Thus, markets are not limited to distributing goods, they also express and promote certain attitudes in relation to exchanged products: favoring reading in children, auctioning vacancies in educational institutions that are key to high positions and even hiring foreign mercenaries in wars.
Also the payment of professionals for fair values and consistent with the minimum standard of living and what is already a practically global issue: the levels of social security that guarantee everyone a minimum level of income for a healthy and dignified life.
As for moral values, countless examples can also be given, perhaps the clearest is a friend for whom you pay is not the same as a friend for whom you have a free friendship.
The relations of friendship and respect that we maintain towards all other people, whether in our circle or not, whether our political, religious or ethnic preference or not, signify a higher moral value than those values, that money “pays for”. and for which one has “respect”.
Byung Chul Han explains that where respect is gone, the public sphere goes into decline, and this is the root of the deep civilizational crisis they are experiencing, the social, economic and political effects are just a consequence, when laws must prevent disrespect is sign of decadence and serious crisis in the public sphere.
What is money
14
Sep
Until arriving at the form we know today, money went through
several changes, at the beginning, historians say that around the 7th century BC. coins in gold and silver appeared, which had an equivalent value to the goods that were purchased, thus avoiding the difficult direct exchange of goods, a rudimentary economy called barter.
In the Medical Age, the custom of keeping coins with goldsmiths arose and, as a guarantee, a receipt was given, this is the origin of “paper money” or paper money as we know it today, to avoid counterfeiting the type of paper and printing. It got more sophisticated.
Gold keepers are the origin of modern banks, so they had the “ballast”, the gold equivalent of the value of the commodity, and indebted people could deliver their goods in jewelry, other and silver for pledge, a kind of guarantee they would pay. debt in the future.
The equivalent in commodities was called ballast, and the value that each commodity had depends on its price. Initially, trades were carried out in ports or in places where commodity buyers went to trade, the modern form is the stock exchanges.
With the banks having the real values in gold and silver, they could offer credit to buyers and investors both to produce goods and to pay debts or make some type of investment in markets that they believe to be promising, with the electronic and digital universe credit cards emerged, modern version of borrowers’ letters of credit in banks.
The financial market has become more sophisticated and today it is itself a type of “commodity”, stronger nations start to have a stronger “currency”, in practice however this does not have an equivalent or an exactly corresponding value in goods and this leads to a financialization from the market.
Currency itself, or its equivalent, takes on a value that is often artificial and this comes into play in trade wars around the world, so, for example, Russia wants to receive for the sale of its gas and oil the equivalent in rubles (Russian currency) and not in dollars or euros (US and European currencies, respectively) and this is commoditization.
It would be a return to the initial values of barter equivalents, a reorganization of the entire world economy into equivalent commodity values, and this would remain free trade.
The freedom of the market against the market
13
Sep
One of the main drivers of the current crisis whose war is a consequence
rather than a cause is the so-called market crisis, several products face barriers of price control attempts against the high demand of commodities: gas, oil, iron and even silicon ( not the sand of course, but the manufactured producers).
So while the European Union discusses controlling the price of gas, it tries to increase the stock due to the war in Ukraine, since Russia is the main supplier, which is contradictory because more is bought to keep the stock with the winter in sight. (November), the cost must increase and so it is not possible to control prices.
Also the total shutdown of the largest nuclear plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia, which is being shut down, could further exacerbate the energy crisis, Russia continues to point out the dangers of weapons and bombings from Kiev to the region, which could lead to catastrophic consequences,
China’s crisis with Taiwan also hides a market crisis, on the one hand the power of the rebel island in the production of silicon chips, and on the other an internal crisis aggravated by the bankruptcy of Evergrande, the country’s largest construction company, which was private and now it will be nationalized in an attempt to contain the crisis.
Thus communist China also knows the perverse effect of the market.
The Chinese real estate giant failed to deliver the debt restructuring plan as promised until July 31 and since then the Chinese government, in addition to discovering the evils of capitalism, also resorts to nationalization to avoid a more serious failure, those of the banks that financed the default.
The company stopped paying the bonds in dollars in December last year, according to estimates released by CNN, the amounts will reach 300 billion dollars in liabilities, which generates a wave of lack of credit in companies that operate in the Chinese real estate market.
The sector is responsible for almost ¼ of the Chinese GDP, and the activity that most contributed to the recent growth of the economy there, is now facing a strong slowdown that also worries the western market, which has made many new investments in this market.
Dependence on Russian gas (graphic) can seriously affect the world economy, for example, even the UK being independent is already affected.
Energy crisis and tension in the east
06
Sep
Moscow’s retaliation to the sanctions imposed after the invasion
of Ukraine, begin to have an impact on the European economy and in the United Kingdom caused the resignation of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, although the problem is wider than inflation, which in 2023 could go even above 20. %, the main impulse is the rise of natural gas throughout Europe, Russia blames Germany for the crisis.
European Union countries are looking to stock up on natural gas for the coming winter period.
Prime Minister Liz (Elizabeth) Truss was sworn in, in an internal election of the Conservative party against former Treasury Minister Rishi Sunak, she is known for being a chameleon, adopting speech according to the context, in fact similar to many leaders today.
It was against, for example, Brexit and after it was adopted it became in favor.
The people of Taiwan watching the Ukrainian war always quoted in local news, are aware of a possible war with China, and prepare for possible crises with exercises, first aid training and logistics to avoid bombings.
Last week a drone was shot down traveling in Taiwanese territory, according to news from Deustche Welle, reproduced on the G1 portal, since March an NGO called the Forward Alliance, in addition to offering civil defense training, seeks to improve national resilience.
According to Enoch Wu, founder of the Forward Alliance: “The objective is to keep communities functioning, and the trainings help prepare citizens against natural or man-made crises”, but the backdrop is a possible war with China.
Tensions rise between China and the US due to the announcement of the sale of 1.3 billion dollars of weapons to Taiwan, China promises to respond to what it considers “destruction of peace”.
It may be a deception, but the main trainings that the Taiwanese prime minister participates in are on the island of Penghu (Fishers), it is small and although it has a defense structure, it is isolated and far from Formosa Island, which is in fact the territory of Taiwan.
Between affliction and peace, the infinite and the eternal
01
Sep
Many seek happiness at any price, so we reflect 
empathy early in the week, then reflect on the anguish and distress that are axes of growth and suffering, but it is they that understandably lead us to real happiness, built peace.
Kierkegaard’s “Concept of Anguish” (1884) shows multiple forms: the anguish of freedom or nothingness, there is a personal choice of this that the author calls the choice of oneself, the anguish of goodness and obstinacy, the anguish of sexuality, that of tomorrow and that of the finite, it is prior to faith.
At this point it is possible to link to a phenomenological view, and still to link it to the interpretation of the biblical passage of man’s fall into sin (Genesis 3), ignoring the Enlightenment / Idealist culture, which is the anguish of freedom or choice that occupies a essential role for the Self.
According to Kierkegaard man is called, as spirit (addition and mind), to place the relation between the elements that characterize him structurally, likewise those that can conflict with each other (body and soul, temporality and eternity), choosing a form of existence among the innumerable ones historically presented to him, here the phenomenology.
Although innumerable, Kierkegaard pedagogically lists some choices that are choices in three life styles (or “stages”): the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, is reductive but interesting.
The openness I see (in it is only existence but could be essence as Being) is that anguish is therefore “nothingness” that each person in his indeterminacy “is” at the moment of establishing synthesis to the point of being. give yourself an “identity”, a controversial theme in idealism, here that I think is possible to connect it to Heidegger’s “being in the world”, although different concepts.
Contrary to the fall the biblical passages of the New Testament could be placed on the beatitudes in Mt 5: 1-12, we highlight two that were dealt with in these days, verses 4 and 5: “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted, blessed. the meek, for they shall possess the earth, ”and verse 9,” Blessed are they that bring peace, for they shall be called the children of God.”
But Kierkegaard’s fundamental help is on the question of identity, definitions as being-in-itself and being-in-the-world, and the concept of the eternal which is a launch into the “infinite.”
War and peace
30
Aug
I read a recent commentary on Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) that another Russian
writer Ivan Turgenev claimed that knowing and reading Tolstoy is better than reading hundreds of works of ethnography and history” to know the character and temperament of the Russian people, conservatives such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) who came to be considered his successor, and Vladimir Lenin leader of the Soviet revolution who considered him one of the greatest Russian writers.
Many of his books were for the cinema, recently (2012) Anna Karenina was rewritten for the cinema, under the direction of Joe Wright, and was nominated for an Oscar and won the best costume design, but a masterpiece by Tolstoy is the book War and Peace.
From War and Peace I remember impressions and some loose phrases, and the context of the book that talks about the tsarist wars of their context and time, but which is revealing of Russian thinking about war, and that its scourges are not ignored.
The book deals with the lives of 5 aristocratic families, in the period from 1805 to 1820, in the midst of the march of Napoleonic troops and their brutal impact on the lives of hundreds of characters.
There are figures such as the brothers Natasha and Nikolai Rostóv, Prince Andrei Bolkónsky and Pierre Bezúkhov, the illegitimate son of a count whose spiritual quest serves as a kind of thread in the novel and transforms him into a complex and intriguing character of the 20th century. XIX, and whose pursuit will be a complement to peace in the midst of war.
A kind of refuge similar to the book-stealing Girl, which in this case is in the context of Nazi Germany and she will find in the books a refuge for the dark environment of the rise of Nazism in Germany.
I see a common feature in these two books, which is this “refuge”, something between the spiritual and the reader, but both manage to create, in a suffocatingly hateful environment, gaps and spaces of peace and spiritual elevation.
If war comes, what will be our refuge, at what level of spiritual life and knowledge do we want to put our lives that will be at risk, I believe these are contemporary readings.
TOLSTOI, L. (1889) WAR AND PEACE, transl. Nathan Hskell Dole, NY: Ed. Thomas V. Crowell & Co.
Covid-19 and future care
29
Aug
Covid 19 leaves some lessons, one of them is not to underestimate viruses, they
can have a greater mutation capacity than expected and can complicate immunity results, in the field of social policy, governments and administrative bodies need to respect life and sometimes you have to sacrifice efficiency and performance for the greater good.
Aspects of social life, there is still a lot to learn and even the results in a near end of covid, are still to be evaluated: anxieties, depressions and irritations are aspects that should not be underestimated and also need to be seen as public health.
In the field of viruses, there is now a debate about an immunity deficit” caused by the period of social isolation, in all age groups, but especially in children, this has favored diseases such as hepatitis and other viruses more intensely.
Last week we said studies that indicate a possibility of pandemic “evolution” for bacteria and fungi, I looked for some reports and studies about it and found that there is indeed a possibility.
According to a French study, in which one of the co-authors is a French doctor François Angouvalnt, the fact that some people did not catch so many viruses in the months of the pandemic was a relief on average from the tragedies of Covid-19 peaks, but it left the immune systems without training to face common pathologies and created population groups more vulnerable to some viruses and bacteria that are normally treated and resolved as simple cases.
The study followed some evolutions of these diseases since 2020 and observed the evolution in the population of Paris and caused apprehension a greater vulnerability.
Particularly in Brazil, the number of deaths from covid is around 70 daily deaths and falling, while the number of infections below 10 thousand, everything indicates an end of the pandemic by the end of the year, but with a new wave of cold in the country. south and southeast care must be maintained.
The negative asymmetry: humility
26
Aug
If all relationships are somehow asymmetrical, that is, they involve
some power and some form of domination or at least an attempt, the only way to oppose it is humility, which is not self-flagellation, devaluation or resignation, it is a way of not opposing the imposed power, like taking the body out of a violent and asymmetrical action.
It is asymmetrical in the negative sense, because power and communication is in the positive sense, as power means preventing the Other’s spirit of domination, revenge and depreciation from passing through you, as communication means listening carefully and waiting to disagree with what it is non-symmetric, which is more general than the asymmetric, it demonstrates the positive asymmetry, therefore it denies it.
So a response to violence with violence is a positive asymmetry, the response with the flag of peace is demoralizing and effective against a violent enemy, Gandhi used it to free India from British rule.
Also when violence is arrogant and inhumane, for example the death of civilians, children and the elderly in wars, it makes the mask of power fall and demonstrates all its asymmetry and arrogance.
In order to invert the logic of war and establish the logic of peace, it is necessary to overcome injustices and the disrespect for social diversities, but war is exactly the opposite: the opposition to respect for diversity, the imposition of a unilateral vision and the aggravation of injustices.
So what we should seek is the feast of the humble, the glory of the last and the peace of those who have no weapons and prefer the food of the table to the metallic food of the powerful.
True Christianity does not unite itself with power, but they are at the base of the pyramid, says the Evangelist Luke (Lk 4,12-14): “when you have lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends, nor your brothers, nor your relatives, nor your rich neighbors. For they could also invite you and this would already be your reward. On the contrary, when you have a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Then you will be happy! Because they cannot repay you.”
It seems like a mistaken logic, because it is not the logic imposed by power, but the logic of the righteous.
The position of power and symmetry
25
Aug
As we elaborated in the previous post, power is always a hierarchical
position and so the final decision and the instruments of oppression are the positions only of those who occupy the highest positions in the hierarchy and what remains at the base of the pyramid is rebellion or resignation.
If power is necessary, it is up to those in the post to exercise it with discernment and generosity, the ideal would be that they were in fact at the service, but with rare exceptions, most use the post, and in general all those who who sophism with power.
The Platonic and Aristotelian model assumed that the polis could be governed by those who were well prepared and for this they created instruments for the formation of the citizen of the polis, the politician par excellence.
The evolution of this model reached the Enlightenment, and practically all current models (there are some exceptions in Africa and in Asian countries) this is the model of power of most nations, by force, by vote or by what Byung Chul Han called psychopolitics, deceiving peoples.
But it is important to remember that there is power disseminated throughout the social structure, and also that there are networks (they may or may not use media) and through them each one can exercise their action for a better, more symmetrical world with greater reciprocity between co-citizens.
Sloterdijk created the model of co-immunity, but they presuppose that some “evil” always prevails, something like the “discontent of humanity”, what we call here the civilizational crisis, the absence of a real model to oppose the prevailing dictatorial models. or on an increasing scale, there is a return to the crises of the beginning of the century, precisely because there was no opposition to the root of the model: the Enlightenment and the idealist.
The economic reasons are consequences and not the root of these models, as Edgar Morin intended when emphasizing that there is no way to change without changing the roots of thought, Heidegger also says that abandoning the revolution in thought is not allowing real change in society, and that it is basically the reason why we reverted to the theses before the first war, that is, we repeated history.
Symmetry, reciprocity, understanding of human diversity and respect for it are almost always ignored by the models of the beginning of the last century, returning to them is nothing but a foreshadowing of a greater tragedy: the civilizational crisis with deeper roots than the previous ones. .
Who will suffer the most will be the base of the pyramid of power, but the volume of military power can lead to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, only solidarity, fraternity and reciprocity can avoid and redirect this crisis.
Power and violence
24
Aug
Historically, peaceful peoples or peoples with little defense 
structure were dominated by imperialist peoples, often justified by social values or noble causes, but the practice in the end is domination, developed by Max Weber.
In recent history, the ideas of the “sovereign” by Hobbes and the “prince” by Machiavelli started the idea of the State even in the period when there were kings (in England and other countries there are still), and later they were reworked by Kant and Hegel, where the concepts of city-state and citizenship from classical antiquity have been recovered and updated, but this is the idea of modern power.
The idea of democracy in the American sense of the word was developed by Alexis de Tocqueville, which is at the same time a compliment to the American model, but has gaps in interpretation that allow for a critical analysis.
The idea that all power emanates from the people, despite being an ideal model in the broadest sense of the word, is really the final project of idealism, but Sloterdijk notes that the model of “human domestication” has failed, there are two wars in the so-called “advanced” countries. ” and one lurking.
The most recent analyses, which deal with the “de facto” power present in forms of domination and ideological control of populations (ideology here in a broad sense) depart from Michel Foucault’s analysis that there are disparate, heterogeneous and constantly changing forms of how this power is exercised, so it is everywhere and not in an institution or in someone, where it develops the concepts of biopower and micropower.
Byung Chul Han, disciple and in line with Peter Sloterdijk, develops the most advanced form that we have today, which is psychopower, not only through the control of news and fake news, but especially through the relationships that develop socially where there is no reciprocity, what what Chul Han calls “symmetry”.
He says there is no symmetry in any form of power or in communication (so all communication is a form of domination and power), there is only symmetry where there is “respect”. and so the most “violent” form of politics today is to disrespect the adversary in various ways.
This is everyday violence, that it advances to its cruelest form which is war is nothing but a consequence, so violence begins in the actions of psychic violence in everyday life.
As Chul-Han establishes: “power is an asymmetrical relationship. It grounds a hierarchical relationship” (HAN, 2019, p. 18) and it is the basis of all social and political violence, a power that is truly democratic must re-elaborate the symmetry or reciprocity between citizens and the state.
Han, Byung Chul. (2019) No enxame (In the swarm). Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
