Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
Deserts and the oracles
04
Dec
We walk like somnambulists in the dark, points out Edgar Morin, this
is not a favorable time for thinking, says Peter Sloterdijk, Byung Chul Han says that our time is the “desert or hell of the same”, but I would say that the desert can still be fertile, and having an Oasis, however sterile, is mass, depersonalizing and more than authoritarian, it identifies us to nothing.
These are some of the voices that I identify as a desperate search for a return not to the old normal, but to a really new normal, it must not be this at the end of the pandemic, but the hell that leveled us all below, for the inhuman, the irrational and cynicism.
Edgar Morin points to education as a path to this renewal, but who will be teachers with new thinking and new mentality, Byung Chul Han points to the care of the land, his new book “Praise of the Earth” that points to a community garden, where the rhythms and characteristics of each flower are registered and received with their oriental attention, centered on the simple elements of each flower.
Peter Sloterdijk had already written if Europe Awakened, we could say now if the world woke up in the post-pandemic, if we really looked at the Moral Good that Morin proposes, for a concrete and truly universal fraternity offered by Father Francisco in his encyclical Fratelli Tutti but I think they are voices that cry out in the desert like John the Baptist who died beheaded by the request of a sensual dancer who had enchanted Herod.
When the Pharisees went to John the Baptist, who lived in the wilderness, wearing camel skins and eating bee honey and cereals, he replied (John 1:23): “I am the voice of the one who cries out in the wilderness, ‘Make a straight path to the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
When there are oracles, thinkers, and scholars who speak in the wilderness a change is near.
The pandemic is a warning about education
02
Dec
The pandemic could have helped our human understanding, 
about our limitations, about our interdependence and above all about the uncertainties we have lived since our birth, life as well as goodness and goodness are fragile and need to be taken care of.
Throughout his 99 years, the thinker Edgar Morin lived what many of us read only in books, the experience of this remarkable educator is that there is an evil that all provided in different degrees, human understanding, humanism that encompasses every man and change your life.
The fundamental philosopher’s concern in times of pandemic is political and religious polarization, which, in convergence with Jonathan Haidt’s thinking, leads to the idea that empathy and collective consciousness are essential to avoid or minimize this dangerous polarization.
The thought developed by Haidt around the pandemic is the fact that “we are stuck together here”, takes the idea of everyone in the same boat, also the name of a book by Peter Sloterdijk, it is from there that he starts trying to lead to a new horizon of well-done and civilized dialogue, patient listening and acceptance of different views, in fact always happened, but the issue is moral differences.
It is not an easy task, says Morin, the ways in which our moral psychology has evolved, precisely for education, it is necessary to teach human understanding in schools and understanding, because it is an evil that we all suffer to a certain degree.
In addition to this, the philosopher, who is almost a hundred years old, must be taught that the only certainty in every human destiny is that life is made up of uncertainties, last week we posted Heidegger’s being-to-death poorly understood and that in this time of pandemic it can lead the human being just to the opposite to which we are heading, the discovery of the infinite, of respect for the other and of morals, as Morin wants.
A cold analysis makes us pessimistic, because the dangers are so many, even with the vaccine, with it there may come an even bigger problem, which is ignoring the problems we have beyond the pandemic, but Morin’s insistence on educational and moral issues points a way good
Routes and paths
01
Dec
While the West suffers from covid-19, the east in the midst of the
crisis continues to show signs of vitality and strength, formed a bloc of 15 countries with China, South Korea, New Zealand, Japan and Australia ahead, called RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) was signed at a regional summit in Hanoi on 11/15, although the conference was online.
One of the objectives is to progressively reduce tasks in key areas in the coming years, in addition to the countries that were part of the Asian ASEAN treaty, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, bloc has half the world population and almost 40% of the GDP of the entire planet.
In addition to the pandemic, the West is struggling with polarizations, crises with minority and racial rights, a degrading moral environment, in which corruption is only part of the whole structural gear around it, with an increasing presence of migrants from the whole planet, but especially the Arabs, who have a very different culture.
The Eurozone will have to strengthen ties to get out of the economic crisis imposed by the pandemic, the departure from England that ends in December, still has unpredictable effects also for England, but the conservative government has managed to impose itself in the midst of the pandemic and prepares the first mass vaccination in the west.
In Latin America, the step taken by Bolsonaro from Brazil and Fernandez from Argentina to hold the first bilateral meeting is still encouraging, but the call for cooperation from the Brazilian government’s armed forces and the request for collaboration on the environmental issue despite of the diplomatic touch also represent a provocation in what the presidents believe.
The elected government of Bolivia, supporter of the deposed Evo Morales, tries to break the isolation by inviting the opposition leader of Venezuela, but used the Bolivian flag and Whipala, symbol of the indigenous peoples’ congregation, in the liberation party of the state of Potosi.
The call for cooperation and the formation of a cohesive Mercosur bloc is difficult to leave the paper for concrete measures where cooperation, respect for political and cultural diversity, and cooperation across borders is a step taken as in the East or in the still fragile European Union, agreements of the Americas, as was the proposal of NAFTA, if they go forward with Joe Biden they must be a very slow process
An incomplete epistemology and eschatology
22
Nov
What phenomenology and ontological philosophy seeks is at the
center of the scientific crisis and of the thought that the West is experiencing, and whose epicenter is European, in Peter Sloterdijk’s enlightened saying that Europe is no longer the center as in the colonial period (empire of the Center) and looks for other forms of colonialism to take idealism forward, what in literature has been called epistemicide. In denying the cultures originating from other peoples, he thinks he is finding his own diffusion between barbarism and classical antiquity, he tries a new renaissance exploring the Greek culture in a diffuse way.
At the religious level the disaster is greater, Slavov Zizek recently wrote about the religious concept in Hegel, and the latter of the thinkers who tried to revive classical Marxism, reworked the Hegelian religion, but which was already present in Feuerbach and Marx himself criticized, in the bottom is an atheistic theology, a dead eschatology.
Dead because this is in fact the great mistake of idealistic eschatology, there is no transcendence for it without the separation of subject and object, it needs to deny the substantiality to affirm its “subjectivity” where the subject must always be dead, it denies being-for-dead Heidegger’s motto, but affirms death in life (it isnt epoché).
Every form of original culture, it is obvious that it includes those non-Christian cultures, has an origin (the name says it), the eschatological life and end, which is not where it is going, and at this point this incomplete theology diverges on the that in fact is death, in times of a pandemic one could say the disease that can kill.
For this reason, even if the appeal to phenomenology will be incomplete, it will lead those who incorporate it to exhaustion, to contempt for life, which even in the religious sense is something deeply sacred, its “biós”, its substantiality, to be clear to idealists, its objectivity, fall into theoretical abstractionism.
The only substantiality of this incomplete eschatology is to deny religion in order to make it idealistic and to ask for what is inhuman, what in biblical terms he calls “putting heavy burdens on the shoulders of others” and which they themselves refuse to carry in times of pandemic neither enter nor let others in.
The final exam will be substantial: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink…” and you will not be asked whether you have developed a good epistemology or theology, the one that made colonialism the terror of original cultures.
The problem of water and sanitation
19
Nov
Although the planet has plenty of water, the water problem is
not negligible and what directly affects the planet, especially the poor and those who live in regions without basic sanitation, is the problem of drinking water, and therein lies the serious problem of contamination by agricultural activities.
Thus, it is necessary, together with the urgent problem of sustainable water management, to think about sustainable development in three dimensions: social, economic and environmental, even those who affirm public policies for this do not accept the reduction of profitable and polluting economic activities.
Studies show that the main causes, about 70%, are due to poor land use in agriculture (pesticides, river silting, intensive monoculture, etc.), followed by industry pollution 20%, domestic use 7% and losses 3% (see the figure above).
Because it was from biology and ecosystems that the ideas of complexity came, this is the sector most sensitive to small attitudes that can and should change the planet in the future, collect polluting waste, do selective collection and even reuse rainwater and using solar energy are attitudes that we can take individually and will be beneficial as a whole, see that complexity can involve simple ideas to be practiced.
The education of the new generations should therefore be the responsibility of everyone, the government, schools and families, small habits inserted in everyday life can transform a huge number of situations in scale, an effect known in complexity as the “butterfly effect”, the flapping of the butterfly wing can influence the climate, and deforestation and neglect of nature has a negative effect on the climate.
Research on planets where there may be life has as its first item the presence of water, and providing drinking water is therefore the first attitude in defense of life.
Eroticism in times of crisis
18
Nov
The subject is difficult when it does not deviate towards general liberalism,
defense of the erotic at any price or “freedom of the body”, but what happens is that among the various civilizing crises, human love is also in crisis.
I find little literature exists about it that does not go to laisses faire or to unhealthy moralism, what happens is that, recognizes the philosopher Byung Chul Han, we live The agony of eros, the inability to love, and in the diagnosis of the Korean philosopher- German, we are destroying relationships based on the erosion of the Other, which affects all areas of life and goes hand in hand with a “sick narcissism” that invades our lives.
He writes his most profound diagnosis: “The fact that the other person disappears is a dramatic process, but it fatally advances, in a sneaky and barely noticeable way”, an indication is the number of selfies where people try to show their different faces, without choosing a situation and anywhere.
If we do not recognize the other person as an “other”, we become unable to love, and thus to reach a living and liberating experience of love, it is liberating even from ourselves, from our frustrations and inconsistencies, summarizes Han is the other who saves us from ourselves.
In times of crisis, love, affection and true interest in the Other is what can make the crisis less serious, if we are living the opposite, more selfishness, more narcissism and more competition (Han argues as the society of efficiency and appeal success) means more crisis and less eroticism.
There is no way to develop love and joy around these situations, even those who have a love relationship suffer the consequences of the violent environment and calls for attitudes contrary to love and affection, even friendly relationships that require empathy are at stake .
I also make a reflection beyond Han, because precisely the society that most exalts eroticism suffers from his agony, perhaps what we see as erotic goes beyond the limits of privacy, of some modesty and of respect for the limits of the Other and of the body itself.
The discourse of respect is not outdated, after all, what are the frightening numbers of domestic violence of all kinds, but the absence of respect, André Groz’s “Inside and Outside” (1929) image gives interesting outlines on the connection aspect of eroticism with a lack of sensitivity;
The poor and poverty
17
Nov
The poor is the inhuman condition of living of a certain person
who may or may not be linked to social status, while poverty is structural and where there is a good part of the population there, they are condemned to be poor.
2019 UN report gave the figure of 500 million people living in poverty, below the line of human dignity, the Portuguese Pedro Conceição, director of the Office report that made the Human Development of the United Nations Development Program, creates an important concept of multidimensional poverty, which creates indicators related to health, education that are the structural impact on their lives:
“Multidimensional poverty is an important concept, because it tries to understand how people live in poverty, but not only. Through the fact of low levels of income. It also tends to measure how health and education indicators impact the way people live their lives. When we have this concept a little more comprehensive of poverty, what we find is that the number of people living in poverty is greater than that number of people living in poverty when we measure only through income. There are 500 million people living in multidimensional poverty than those living in extreme poverty, if we look only at income indicators. ”
So when we only measure income we are finding those who are poor, and we need to tackle the structural problem that is multidimensional.
The report says that 85% of the world’s poverty is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, in countries like Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Niger and South Sudan, there are 90% of children under the age of 10 considered to be multidimensionally poor.G
The report assesses the progress that has been made towards achieving Goal 1 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to eradicate poverty “in all its forms everywhere”, in this report the number grows to about 2 billion people who encompass global poverty.
Places where there is “statistically significant progress” towards goal 2 and faster reductions occur in India, Cambodia and Bangladesh, but this development cannot be thought to be “natural” if there is no effort on the part of rich countries to rethink income distribution.
The second wave and vaccines
16
Nov
The second wave arrived in the United States, it is good to remember
that it is in the same hemisphere as Europe, so the seasonal period in which the virus prefers colder and wetter periods, there are in the middle of autumn and approaching winter, caused the numbers of infections and deaths to rise in the U.S. territory, last Thursday reached the
The vaccines follow coronavac’s controversy, while the initial success of pfizer and biontech testing pointed to an efficacy of more than 90%, made until the exchanges rose and there was an optimism around the pandemic, affecting even the exchanges.
The development formula has a different action from the traditional ones, functions as an immunizer that rather have the ability to end the pandemic of Covid-19, most vaccines use the idea of the weakened virus or the inactivated virus, which is the case of Coronavac.
The vaccine of pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech, pointed out an efficacy greater than 90% and the formula has a different action from traditional vaccines, it has an immunizing the idea is to make our own body produce the protein of the virus and thus expand the possibility of producing antibodies.
The reported cases that claim that the vaccine causes a “hangover”, as the name says are cases and there are no scientific studies that indicate any problem due to this side effect, almost all vaccines cause some effect a small fever, a tiredness or some pain in the body.
Also the anticipation of the vaccine is possible for both Pfizer and coronavac, with proof of a second wave coming, the number of cases in the U.S. grew surprisingly reaching 76,195 last Thursday (the record of July 16 was 77,299) and Europe already adopts social isolation measures to try to contain the second wave , which have already announced measures to close schools and restrict bars and restaurants.
In Brazil the numbers are also rising, still without concrete measures, most state governments falter in taking hard measures due to the tiredness of the population with the restrictions that are prologing, although there has never been a hard measure such as a lockdown or restriction of movement.
A comparative analysis of the second wave of the Spanish flu (figure) that killed 50 million people in a much smaller global population than the current one shows that the second wave may in fact be much worse than the first, and also seasonality (autumn and winter in Europe) should be considered.
Gifts and talents
12
Nov
Gifts are things we do and we seem to be born with it, that’s why it
was translated into Portuguese as a “dádiva” (godsend), while talent we can have an aptitude but it needs to be developed and improved to become really a gift, so we receive it from someone, from a structure or culture and we need to spend it.
Some cultures bring natural gifts, so it is said that that culture has good cooks, those are born workers, but a harmful or unnatural culture may not develop talents and even depending on authoritarian structures, suffocate it, but also in a white way a culture can spoil them.
Artistic, aesthetic and even moral gifts depend on a culture that promotes their development and make them talents that can be “donated” to the population in general, any culture that suffocates natural gifts is retrogression and may even lose its original roots , so many people who were colonized, marginalized or inferiorize suffer this type of mutilation, but there is always a way to resist, Picasso’s work “Guernica” is an icon of the Spanish resistance to authoritarianism, it only returned to Spain with democracy.
Also social, educational and religious structures can stifle natural gifts, and with that the talents that must be developed do not arise, they perceive the crisis process that lives, but they do not perceive the root and focal point of the crisis, they kill the talents and stifle the natural gifts that will generally endure.
It is the main characteristic of an authoritarian system, stifling talents and trying to control gifts, so few artists have survived in both Soviet Stalinism and Nazism and totalitarian regimes that served as support, such as Spanish Francoism and Italian fascism, but also modern perish from this evil.
Art is always a moment of resistance, Byung Chul Han developed the concept of Secret Garden, where it is possible to smell, feel and things, without mediation, a way to recover what he calls “original beauty”, the term it is good, but it should be combined with the concept of original gifts.
Da Vinci also stated that the “supreme law of art is the representation of the beautiful”, already for Kandinsky: “It is beautiful what proceeds from an inner need of the soul”.
According to Aristotle “beauty is the splendor of order”, but because of the association of this word with positivism, I would make a paraphrase saying that beauty can contribute to an original harmony that leads us to the good and beautiful as intended by Plato, a dialogue that leads the soul beyond the physical world, then there is the gift, the part of the original culture of each person and each people.
Combining gift and talent, we have a natural gift that, developing within a favorable culture, becomes a talent and elevates us as Being.
The “gift” theory
11
Nov
We leave a question at the end of the previous post (Power and gift), how gifts could serve society, and there are sociological studies on this.
Marcel Mauss, along with his uncle Emile Durkheim were animators
of the French magazine Année Sociologique, and he was the main systematizer of the “don” (French) theory that was translated into Portuguese dádiva (“godsend”), as a gift, in English it is even worse because it became the theory of the godsend (gift in English), important thoughts for the founders of solidarity and fraternal alliances in contemporary societies.
Alain Caillé, founder and editor of Revue du M.A.U.S.S. (Anti Utilitarian Movement in Social Sciences) and one of the propagators of Marcel Mauss’ thought at the present time stated that this theory “provides the guidelines not only of a sociological paradigm among others, but of the only properly sociological paradigm that can be conceived and defended” (Caillé, 1998, p. 11).
The book by Marcel Mauss Essay on gift: form and reason of exchange in archaic societies (2003), brought among many contributions the sociological idea that the value of things cannot be greater than the value of the relationship and that symbolism is fundamental to the social life.
The emergence of a collective moral obligation involving the members of a society, supposes aspects as diverse since the exchange of goods as the simple exchange of a mere smile, it is necessary to emphasize the complexity of the motivations and the modalities of the interactions not to reduce them to the simplism of purely economic ideas, what he called homo economicus.
The notions of honor and prestige permeate the gift economy, being essential to guarantee the circularity and reversibility of the exchanges.
The Essay on donation inaugurates a fruitful tradition of studies on reciprocity and the circulation of things, expanding the theme of the alliance, central to French Anthropology from the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), and which knows specific readings in the works of Maurice Godelier (1934-) and Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), he elaborates not only the theory of gift or giving, but the threefold obligation of giving, receiving and giving back, based on the analysis of different peoples that studied.
In their studies, goods circulate between clans and tribes following the rule that, the greater the donations, the greater prestige granted to their donors, but the benefits must be returned, if not immediately, at a later time, assuming a character disguisedly disinterested or informal.
According to his study, this occurs with the Taonga in Polynesia (photo above), with the Vaygu’a in Melanesia and with the copper emblazoned in the American Northwest.
This idea of a gift (or gift as it was translated) is that what we have either as value or as talent can be given, reciprocated or received.
CAILLÉ, Alain. (1998) “Nem holismo, nem individualismo metodológicos: Marcel Mauss e o paradigma da dádiva”, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais.
MAUSS, Marcel. (2003) Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques, Paris, PUF, 2007 (Trad. Bras. Paulo Neves. São Paulo, Cosac Naify).
