Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
Polycrisis and hard words
20
Aug
We have already talked about the crisis of thought, the excess of very
special people who lose sight of the whole, the idealist prison, which was born in a pre-Socratic idealism, as Popper pointed out, and an emptiness of the capacity to renew thought.
Morin’s proposal to reform thought is to open the drawers of thought and articulate them in a complex model (from the Latin complexus, which is woven together) outside of “specialty” and conceptualism.
What before seemed like a warning is now present in several speeches besides ecologists: the planet shows signs of exhaustion, extreme temperatures, even in places where it seemed impossible: cold in the southern hemisphere and intense heat in the northern hemisphere, also animal life is perishing, the current news is the almost extinction of the emperor penguin, which were large colonies.
The planetary core also manifests itself, the number of volcanoes and earthquakes grows, Haiti calls for help after a new earthquake and a hurricane that weakened even more that poor country.
The return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan, the military in Myanmar and other neo-totalitarianism, all these seem harsh and pessimistic words, of course we always hope, it is not humanity’s first crisis, but perhaps this is the most global and the most general of all and could become a civilizing crisis, in the midst of a pandemic that persists, and it is neo-denial to say that it has passed, the new variants are threatening, and the WHO itself and many scientists are warning.
Perhaps a barely perceptible level is that of religiosity, in addition to the disrespect for various beliefs, there is internally a crisis that we can call a “despiritualized ascesis”, using a word from Peter Sloterdijk, which we translate here by its root, ascesis “without” admitting The spirit.
It says a biblical passage in which Jesus is questioning his disciples who thought his word was too harsh (Jn 6:61-63):
“Knowing that his disciples were murmuring about this very thing, Jesus asked: “Does this offend you? And when you see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? The Spirit gives life, the flesh does nothing. The words I spoke to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe”.
He is speaking to his disciples and to those who believe, and if he does not have spirituality, he does not have Faith.
Genomic surveillance and precautions
16
Aug
According to José Eduardo Levi, coordinator of the Genomic
Surveillance Scientific Project (Genov), 11 of the 1380 analyzed between May and June had a mutation called P681H, in which the amino acid proline is replaced by another one, histidine, and is being called Gamma plus.
The Delta variant is already spread across the country with a record of 760 cases up to 5 days ago, however, Gama-plus: “a convergent mutation with a characteristic of Delta, a variant that usually presents this structural change” said the project coordinator Genov.
Many experts have warned that easing may be premature, and we may have to live with restrictions for a while, although the rate of vaccination has advanced, it still does not have a sufficient safety margin beyond the risk of new variants.
The death of actor Tarcisio Meira from complications of covid-19, having taken the two doses of the vaccine, rekindled the debate on the effectiveness of vaccines, but experts are categorical in saying, based on studies by USP and UNESP, that 91.49% of those who died did not have the second dose or the single dose in the case of the Janssen vaccine.
On the other hand, the Delta, Delta-plus and Gama-plus variants are of concern to infectologists around the world and many countries are reviewing the flexibility measures, however the WHO itself warns of the “false sense of security” due to 80% of cases of infection of the last 4 weeks are of the Delta variant.
It should also be noted that the younger population, the most prone to activities that can cause crowding, still do not have the second full dose and it is important to maintain restrictions so that the new, more lethal variants do not cause countless deaths.
Maieutics and giving birth to knowledge
11
Aug
The Socratic method was that the philosopher believed that
no one had definitive answers to his questions and so walked the streets of Athens asking questions he considered basic about politics, morality and truth, the young democracy was corrupting itself.
In this way, each person could “give birth” answers, and with each answer he asked new questions, thus he defined himself as an “idea midwife”, he sought to instruct the “citizens”.
His opponents were the sophists who relied solely on the art of persuasion, and their aim was to flatter the rulers and give answers that people wanted to hear.
But many people, especially young people, were involved by his wisdom and teachings, among them was the disciple Plato who describes the various Socratic dialogues.
Thus his method was opposed to those of the sophists based on rhetoric and the art of persuasion, their theses were the most diverse, Gorgias for example, defended that “nothing exists”, Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things”, besides of this they charged for the lessons.
Aristotle will define it as “apparent but not real wisdom (sapientia), but it has not disappeared completely, it has changed form and discourse throughout history, but essentially it is rhetoric, today for example, performative thinkers and self-referentials.
Socrates’ great opposition to the sophists was that they, using persuasion and rhetoric, only proclaimed “opinion” called doxa and Plato, disciple and disseminator of Socrates, will organize the “episteme”, knowledge must be organized from the its “currencies, limits, its aspects and its appearance”, described as its “dialectic”.
Also Bachelard in our time criticizes opinion as unscientific: “Science, both in its need for completion and in its principle, is absolutely opposed to opinion” in his work: The Formation of the Scientific Spirit: contribution to a psychoanalysis of knowledge .
Socrates, accused of subverting the young and not worshiping the gods of the state, was sentenced to death, Plato will develop his method and create a school of thought.
Delta variant and slow vaccination
09
Aug
The delta variant of covid 19 has lit a warning around the world that
the pandemic may not yet be under control. In Brazil, the recent Oswaldo Cruz Foundation Bulletin (FioCruz) states after a study that there is a dangerous combination, high Delta contagion and slow vaccination .
The risk of the explosion of a new wave of contamination and infection is worrying, the study points out that Brazil already has 435 confirmed cases of the Delta variant and in 19 states the levels of contamination are dangerous despite being declining.
In an interview with CNN, last Friday (08/06), deputy director Jarbas Barbosa of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that confirmed cases of the Delta variant in Brazil are just the “tip of the iceberg” and highlighted the importance “that the vast majority of cases of the variant are asymptomatic or mild, which do not realize and are not tested”.
We cannot relax prevention and isolation measures, recalled Jarbas Barbosa, in the cases of Chile and Uruguay that after relaxing measures had a new wave of infections, although Uruguay announced a weekend without deaths for the first time.
The contagion comparison made with the Delta variant is didactic, as contagious as chickenpox, can cause more severe symptoms than the previous variants and are also transmissible among vaccinated, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC), in an article published in The Washington Post, in a note signed by Maíra Menezes, the Fiocruz postcard also warns of the danger of this variant.
Vaccination is important, which is still slow, the current numbers are close to 45 million for the two doses and 100 million for the first dose, it is possible to accelerate and as there is still no explosion of the Delta variant in the country, if combined with preventive measures, we can prevent a new wave of infections, hospital overflows and deaths.
Both infections and deaths that fall slowly in Brazil have a tendency towards stability with a slight increase, it is too early to say that it is the Delta variant, but a policy of testing and prevention would be important, researchers of Fiocruz warns of the lack of a plan B.
The danger of the delta variant and vaccination
02
Aug
Concerns are growing about the delta variant of the coranavirus, 
the indication is that some vaccines may not be fighting this variant, the growing number of infections, even in countries with advanced vaccination, is worrying.
WHO Director Tedros Ghebreyesus said two days ago to various media outlets at a press conference: “New cases of contamination and deaths continue to rise. There were 4 million new cases in one week. At this rate, we will surpass the mark of 200 million of infected in two weeks, although we know that this is an underestimated number”, he pointed out.
Since the third week of July, Europe and the United States have again registered an increase in infections due to the delta variant.
Even in China, which had controlled the pandemic, this number grew again, still small (200 cases), but it is already spread over several regions. peoples in dangerous cities will be tested.
In Brazil the moving average is below a thousand daily deaths, it slowly drops as vaccination progresses, but cases of the delta variant already appear in the country, and the real effectiveness of the vaccine in relation to this variant is concerned, there is poor monitoring in some states, testing should begin immediately and en masse, there is no evidence.
The idea of making the measures more flexible continues and will probably not go back until another outbreak, only one state (Rio de Janeiro) registers an increase, 8 states in stability and 15 in decline (São Paulo is one of these).
The WHO and the World Bank call for the urgent application of vaccines in poor countries, the average in high-income countries is the application of 98.2 doses per 100 inhabitants; while in low-income groups, the number is 1.6 doses per 100 people.
Regardless of the effectiveness of vaccines, vaccination must continue and so must restriction.
Civilization and being’s malaise
15
Jul
The phrase widely used in literature and sometimes in
the public domain is from Freud: Civilization and its malaise, however, is not only in the field of psychology, the author clarified to be: “impossible to despise the extent to which civilization is built on the renunciation of instinct , how much exactly does it presuppose the non-satisfaction (by oppression, repression, or some other means?) of powerful instincts. This “cultural frustration” dominates the vast field of social relationships among human beings. … It is not easy to understand how it can be possible to deprive an instinct of satisfaction. This is not done with impunity. If the loss is not economically compensated, one can be sure that serious disturbances will result from it”. (Freud, 1930/1997, p. 118).
See that “oppression, repression or some other means” belongs to the author, who could hardly imagine a digital world capable of this, and cultural frustration placed in quotation marks by the author dominates relationships, and who states even more curiously that the search for “economic compensation” is a refuge.
But this was registered in other areas as well, Edmund Husserl wrote about the crisis of the sciences: “In the urgency of our life – we have heard it said – this science has nothing to say to us. It initially excludes precisely the questions that, for men of our unfortunate times, abandoned to the most fateful revolutions, are the pressing questions: the questions about the meaning or absence of meaning of all human existence” (The crisis of the European sciences ), one can also speak of the crisis or night of God, of the identity and the oblivion of Being.
Thus, in Postmodernity, if we dispense with superegoic resources in the Freudian sense, what assures us a cultural mask is the dispute between nations and a new form of defense of honor, for example, which are disguises for the various types of urban violence, the drug addiction, the new presence now of psychopolitics that drives us to consumption and polarization and angers us.
This omnipresence of violence camouflaged in different social relations is what characterizes the end of respect that characterizes a healthy distance between I and the Other, or we include the equal that is my mirror, or we violently repel as an Other.
FREUD, S. (1997). O mal-estar na civilização. In Obras psicológicas completas de Sigmund Freud: edição standard brasileira (Vol. 21, pp. 75-174). Rio de Janeiro: Imago. (Original publicado em 1930). (Civilization and its Discontents)
Fall trend and vaccination in Brazil
12
Jul
According to the consortium of press vehicles, the number
of vaccine doses in Brazil reached 83,794,712 for the first dose, while 28,108,088 for the second, to this value must be added 2,465,295 single doses, for a total of 114.3 million doses applied, it is expected to grow to maintain the declining curve seen in infections and deaths.
In percentages it means 14.4% who have already received either the second dose or Janssen, which is a single dose, while the percentage that received the first dose is close to 40%, this being important to contain the most offensive variants, the delta and the delta plus, which are already in the country.
It should be noted that clinical analyzes indicate that the second dose is needed for the new variant, and a wider range above 60% starts receiving the second dose, but the application of Janssen is the most optimistic because the number of can make the immunization grow.
When will we achieve so-called herd immunity that will allow for the relaxation of protective measures is the question we all want to know, Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the leading physicians in the efforts against covid-19 in there, it estimates that it should reach 70% of the population, but there are others who indicate that it would be 80% to 90%, as the biggest problem is the mutability of the virus.
Japan, which has numbers close to Brazil, 17% for the two doses and above 30% for the first dose, has already announced that there will be no public at the Olympics starting in a week, and the athletes’ trips will be monitored with all measures of protection.
At the pace of vaccination, all precautions are still needed, whenever there has been some relaxation, there has been an increase in cases and deaths, we expect the curve to keep falling.
There will be no return to frivolity
06
Jul
Although media philosophers and optimists out of context want
some return to some kind of normality, we already have two irreversible structural changes, the need to understand total interdependence, no one is isolated and the restructuring of social and urban life.
England about to return to normality and the United States, which celebrated its Independence Day, thinking of celebrating the independence of the coronavirus, admit failure, in both countries the authorities declared that we must live with this difficulty, in UK the same.
The concept of co–immunity was developed by Peter Sloterdijk in another context, a kind of mutualism in which everyone is responsible for everyone, finding scapegoats either in the creation of the virus or in ineffective combat became difficult to accept conspiracy theories, in both cases political opportunism is present, even though it is possible to perceive a fight that is not always effective.
On the individual commitment aimed at mutual protection, Peter Sloterdijk thinks that neither is the time for national withdrawal nor has the world become small for everyone, consumption exists thanks to frivolity, there is no public consumption if there is no appeal to it.
What should happen is a new requirement of mutualism, it is still just a trend, but the idea that we will not easily get out of living with the danger of the virus and new mutations leads us to the need for a new community consciousness, in addition to the one mentioned and not practiced.
What Sloterdijk calls mutualism could become something even broader, he said in an interview with the newspaper El País: “The need for a universal shield that protects all members of the human community is no longer a utopian thing. The huge medical interaction around the world is proving that this already works”, the problem is that disputes and nationalism prevent this.
Sloterdijk’s answer is quite interesting: “these movements are not operational, they have impractical attitudes, they express dissatisfaction, but they are in no way capable of solving problems. I think they will be the losers of the crisis”, I agree with him.
The only caveat is that these disputes can lead to irreversible clashes, which would be catastrophic for all of humanity and, moreover, a topic that he also touches, democracies are at risk.
His answer is: “in the future, the general public and the political class will have the task of monitoring a clear return to our democratic freedoms”, the desire to suppress them is on the agenda every day.
The knowledge and doing
22
Jun
The society we live in is a performance society, as 
Byung Chul Han calls it, who did his doctorate at Heidegger, it is a society of doing, but not of knowing how to do.
Remembering “old theorists”, deifying ancient theories that had a determined temporal functioning, constitutes the setback and crisis of philosophy, not of thought, because man as a Being is capable of unveiling and discovering, because there is a forgetfulness of being.
Knowledge not closed in logic, with openness and possibility of new discoveries is the constitutive movement of time, there is not something fully understood and finished, it is constitutive of what happens in time, and it is subject to history, it is knowledge practical and of life, a Lebenswelt as Husserl called him.
Heidegger started from there with the direct influence of Husserl, the meaning of his Phenomenology supposes this opening for seeing things as they manifest themselves, the principle of knowledge.
Thus, there is not something understood, finished, what there is is a comprehensibility in a constant becoming, implying practical knowledge, a know-how that is more than the objective of science, it must be the foundation of every comprehensive act as one that seeks to know.
The essential opening is not for the hermeneutic consciousness as seen by Heidegger a primarily rational act, it is an affective disposition, one of the structural existences of the being-there, it is shown that understanding is always an affective understanding, in the sense of “affecting”.
Interpretation follows affection, but what is interpreting here if not revisions and elaborations of meaning, set in motion, thus interpretation is for Heidegger:
“The interpretation of something as something is essentially based on having-prior, seeing-prior and concept-prior. Interpretation is never an unassuming apprehension of something previously given […]” (HEIDEGGER, 2014, p. 427).
One of Heidegger’s central philosophical problems is the question about the possibilities of language, it is from this that the Being elaborates its worldview, from which it cannot escape, it enables us to understand the world, it elaborates the being-in -world.
Being in the world that would imply know-how depends on the worldview, impoverished and obscured by performance, the demand for efficiency and poor articulation with time.
HEIDEGGER, M. Ser e tempo (Being and time) Translation, organization, previous note, attachments and notes by Fausto Castilho. Campinas, SP: Publisher of Unicamp; Petrópolis, RJ: Editora Vozes, 2014.
The Delta strain and new dangers
21
Jun
The new Indian strain, called Delta by WHO, re-infects and can
become dominant, it is 40% more transmissible and can present twice the risk of hospitalization, in addition the symptoms are deceiving because they seem more like a bad cold and people continue to come out, according to the English newspaper The Guardian.
This is prompting the UK to re-evaluate the easing date, previously scheduled for 21 June, which is now expected to be delayed.
Vaccination continues, however, the effectiveness of some vaccines is beginning to be put in check, AstraZeneca itself already admits setbacks in the third phase of tests, carried out on a larger scale of vaccinated people, some newspapers mention 33% but the official WHO indication is 63.09%, slightly above Coronavac, which is around 51%, and below Pfizer, which is 70%, but with the 2nd. dose the numbers are similar around 80%.
A breakthrough in research, done by Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, finally explained why blood clotting in patients with Covid 19 is high levels of pro-coagulation VWF (von Willebrand Factor) molecules and low levels of ADMTSS (a plasma protease which is anticoagulant) due to alterations in proteins in severe cases of covid.
Basil received a batch of 824.4 thousand doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine from the Covax Facility consortium that arrived at Viracopos airport in Campinas (SP), the first batch of this vaccine by the consortium, the others were purchased.
Brazil reached the sad mark of 500,000 deaths, with a number of deaths above 2,000, and with a number of infected at around 80,000, these are still high numbers, but the leap above 3,000 would mean a third wave that continues to threaten us.
According to the consortium of companies in Brazil, more than 63 million people received the first dose, totaling almost 30% of the population, and almost 80% of the available vaccines were used, it is believed that this number could reach 100 million and total close to 50% of the population with the first dose, a number that we reaffirm will be enough to hold the 3rd. wave.
It is necessary to redouble the care and avoid crowding, more rigorous isolation measures need to be taken.
