Arquivo para a ‘Social Network’ Categoria
If that night comes
24
Sep
Europe lives on the fear of a new wave of the pandemic, and yet 
the solidarity with those who die is still small, there is even an expression of feelings or some commotion, but the fraternal humanitarian feeling is localized to people who always walk in humanist actions in moments of crisis.
What would happen if there were any natural catastrophe or something that would call humanity to consciousness in an even more serious way, of course it is not desirable and this panic should not be spread, but hypothetically if a deeper night befalls humanity, perhaps a new awareness of the grave situation of civilization was thought and achieved on a large scale.
It is also visible that those who are most supportive are the last ones in social valorization, already living in a serious situation, the pandemic makes them more supportive, there fraternity is a necessity for human survival itself.
The night and the blindness is not announced now by the pandemic, here in this blog in several posts we call attention to the cultural, social and even religious night of humanity, the path of the civilizing process seems to be collapsing, that is, whoever observes history while over the last few centuries it has been clearly visible, two wars, a process of social isolation of cultures, races and creeds, prejudice against migrants and mainly an increase in inequality.
If the night comes, unlike those who imagine that humble lives are “wasted lives”, it will be the arrogant and opulent lives that are less prepared for a “civilizing night” already underway.
It was not the pandemic that made this emerge, it just made evident and palpable what has been in process for some time, but what should be asked is if there was an extended, visible night that puts us in check.
It is not an apocalyptic or even a prophetic vision, while respecting them, a deep look at the inhuman, violent and antisocial processes that are being experienced, the decay and the worsening of the crisis is there.
If the night comes, few will be prepared, only those who are already in supportive environments and processes, those who during the lull period worked and experienced the fraternal, humanity and supportive side of everyday life.
The Covax vaccine agreement
21
Sep
The agreement of several countries to streamline the vaccine
(Covax), including Brazil that signed at the last minute on Friday, provides for a minimum vaccination of 10% of the population (the option of Brazil) up to a maximum of 50% of the population , which once signed could not give up the compromised values, so Brazil signed at least, but this gives 42 million doses, it is not small and the risk is evident by the non-compliance with the whole testing protocol.
The government has not given up on the agreement already signed with AstraZeneca with the so-called “Oxford” vaccine that has the participation of the prestigious Brazilian Institute of FioCruz, while the government of the State of São Paulo promises to accelerate the process of the vaccine that is developed in China with participation USP – Butantan Institute.
The Brazilian agreement however provides that if the Oxford vaccine reaches the market first it may choose to maintain the bilateral vaccine purchase agreement, giving up the supply by the alliance, but it is likely that in the rush the Covax alliance will arrive first, then we will have to accept vaccination, which is fearful.
WHO director´s Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on August 13 that “COVAX already has nine vaccine candidates in its portfolio, which are in phase 2 or 3 of the trials”, but interestingly Janssen Pharmaceutics and Pfizer vaccine are not there.
To work the alliance needs U $ 38 billion, but it has less than U $ 3 billion, so it may be that this falls on the shoulders of countries that enter the alliance just to comply with international agreements, also in the social and economic aspect the agreement it’s w orrying.
A priori the agreement is so that the poorest countries have the same access as rich countries to the vaccines that are most likely to succeed, less than 10 are in the testing phase, and the financial volume can make the game of interest more serious. , as well as letting the use in poorer countries not have the concern of rich countries, these would be a kind of guinea pig, the WHO claims the opposite says that “it is to guarantee the access of poor countries”.
Brazil will receive 42 million vaccines, if there are any problems who will be responsible for this, it is clear that they will say that it is the country itself, by signing the agreement, it becomes “aware” of the “risks”, although they are not mentioned.
Even if it is very camouflaged it is a game of interests that seems very clear, it is likely that the less wealthy countries will receive doses of the vaccine first, and if verified safe will be used in rich countries, it is not an easy thesis to be proven, but the pressure in the less wealthy countries it was huge and Brazil signed at the last minute without saying the real reason.
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela are among the countries that signed the agreement, and the Covax agreement is only part of the “Covid-19 Tool Access Accelerator”, or simply ACT Accelerator, which is the mechanism for response that WHO created for the pandemic, despite the term “accelerator” being avoided in interviews.
I hope to be wrong, but the economic game continues to prevail over the health of the population, especially the poor.
Justice and unemployment in the pandemic
18
Sep
The number of labor lawsuits and injustices that do not even reach
the courts is expected to grow during the pandemic, according to expert data (some newspapers cite the Brazilian companies Datalawyer and FintedLab), indicate that this data should grow, among the complaints are the payment of monies. severance pay, for example the salary balance and a 40% fine on FGTS, Guarantee Fund for Length of Service in Brazil), and working conditions in the pandemic.
We have already stressed in previous posts the importance of seeking employability models that combat the sharp change in unemployment during the epidemic, which was already high in Brazil, now according to the Ministry of Economy, from March to April, about 8 million people. people lost their jobs or had their wages cut, with 1.1 million formal jobs having their contracts terminated, and informal ones have even more voluminous data.
It is fair to help and pay fair wages to these people, of course, the logic of reducing wages and abolishing jobs is not justified because the pandemic does not reduce demand in essential sectors, in addition to creating new demands such as online services, services home office, assistance in areas such as health, education and security is there.
The situation becomes even more serious with the increase in prices, this means that some sectors are benefiting from the crisis, in addition to the amazing corruption in the health area, with unused hospitals, embezzlement of funds and even medicines and equipment is simply criminal, burdens states and municipalities, and disfavors public policies for emergency assistance and aid.
There is a biblical passage where the parable of the vintner is told that needing workers for his vineyard, he leaves at 9 in the morning to pick up more workers and then at 3 in the afternoon to pick up more workers, he combines a silver coin with everyone, it seems unfair , but it is he who pays and combines the salary, and in fact corrects the injustice of unemployment.
He tells the workers that he hires at 3 pm (Mt 20, 6-7): “´Why are you there all day unoccupied they replied: ´Because nobody hired us´. The boss said to them: ´Go to my vineyard too´ “.
And they all received the same salary, nothing more fair, this should be the logic of combating unemployment in the pandemic.
The law of the weakest
17
Sep
All the logic, including part of the scientific logic, is in defense
of the law of the strongest, the pandemic shows that also the weakest should be thought of, people who have comorbidities, the elderly, diabetics, obese, in short, those who are weakened by some disease or living conditions (age, for example, and life on the outskirts).
It was the name of a film by Hector Babenco, Pixote: the law of the weakest, which is based on a true story, and which was starring by actor Fernando Ramos da Silva, the real Pixote of real life, that the director of the film knew, came dying shortly after the film, killed by police in city Diadema, in the neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil.
The film tells the story of a boy who, without having met his parents, goes to live on the street, and after the theft of a wallet by a judge, he goes to a juvenile recovery institution in Brazil, FEBEM, which should be a re-education house, but in fact it is where they suffer abuse, violence, humiliation and may even lose their lives.
Thinking about the weakest means looking at a society and wishing for greater balance, in addition to income distribution, the treatment of dignity for all, respect and protection for those who for some reason become fragile in a social context of competition, consumption and inhumanity , where they will inevitably suffer even more if there is no protection.
The situation of the pandemic, in addition to exposing the medical fragility of many people, aggravates the situation of income distribution, which puts millions of people in a situation of despair and anguish, only a major turn of love and fraternity can prevent social and social chaos. even a civilizing crisis already in process.
Of course, each one can do their little part, but the policies developed by governments at different levels of public administration must be thought about those who work in the informal sector, in addition to the unemployment rate that was already high before the pandemic, those who need immediate help. and the way out of the crisis.
If you think only of the central engines of the economy, the result takes time to reach formal employment, then other emergency solutions can be thought of, such as: work fronts, micro-enterprises and assistance to small businesses that can employ a lot of people in the short term.
It is time for solidarity, unfortunately it is not what is seen anywhere, not even in those who say they are really concerned and who seek more denunciation than initiative and support for good initiatives, it is time for solidarity.
Because the issue of poverty is not resolved
16
Sep
It is not only due to the factors of inequality, the flow of wealth that
always runs in one direction depends on the imbalance of areas such as education, infrastructures not only for health, but also for transport and sources of regional and national wealth, and for this external assistance is essential.
The relationship between foreign aid and combating global poverty is positive and effective, say reports from many forums.
Perhaps some of the strongest examples of the effectiveness of foreign aid are the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, but the goals have not been achieved, domestic corruption and inefficient foreign aid.
These goals, proposed by the United Nations and ratified by all countries in the world, aimed at: reducing poverty, hunger and child mortality, but local and regional development plans were timidly attacked.
The so-called Borgen Project was actually aimed at the actions of local capitalists and outside interests,
The objectives proposed and ratified by all were:
– reduce poverty, hunger and child mortality;
– achieving universal primary education, gender equality and environmental sustainability;
– improving general health, fighting treatable diseases; and
– act as a global partnership for development.
They seem praiseworthy and hardly anyone would fail to support these plans, but the local application was to reduce birth rates, environmental sustainability without development, and treatable diseases are not really attacked, still childhood diseases persist, malaria is common in many regions of the country. Africa and there is a risk now of the pandemic.
There remains the fundamental problem of the global partnership for development, where one must look at interests, culture and what is socially valued locally, and unfortunately the colonialist mentality still prevails, the so-called decolonization comes to face this issue.
A process that contemplates this new process must be considered, observing authors and local cultures.
Effective aid to poverty
15
Sep
If, on the one hand, emergency aid is necessary, mainly because the
pandemic prevents informal work and many families have saved with domestic workers, a medium and long-term recovery plan is needed to avoid even worse degradation and income distribution than the one that already exists.
Economist Muhammad Yunus is known throughout the world as “the banker of the poor”, but he is not really a banker in the conventional sense, as he assists people who have never had access to any banking system, what he fosters is an entrepreneurship, especially among women, and their results are surprising. It is true, however, that he founded a bank, the Grameen Bank in 1983 in Bangladesh, but today what he does most are lectures, he is one of the most requested speakers on the planet, and received among other awards, the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.
In his lectures, he censors and criticizes bankers who aim only at easy profits, exorbitant interest and little or nothing look at the social reality in which they live, one of his well-known phrases says: “Dealing with economic theories in the face of people dying ], for me it was a joke ”, this is even more true in a pandemic.
Utilitarian productivism, production is necessary mainly in essential goods, is one that targets only the most attractive sectors where profit is high and the social impact is not always so high, with regard to the poor, and in the case of education and health, it is necessary even if profit is not considered, as it is an investment.
The idea that invaded several sectors, and unfortunately also in education and public health, that these sectors need to be productive is nothing but a reproduction of a savage capitalism incapable of managing the current crisis, and is only on the rise because of disinformation of the population, in dark times authoritarian theories gain a voice.
What Yunus says about jobs is very interesting: “An essential issue is the idea of employment. Who said we were born to look for a job? The school? The teachers? The books? Your religion? Your parents? Someone put this on people’s heads.
The educational system repeats: ‘You have to work hard’. Human beings were not born for this. The human being is full of creative power, but the system reduces him to a mere worker, capable of doing repetitive work. This is shameful, it is wrong ”, here we must also overcome left´s-wing economism.
The digital world in which anyone can have an online system and work in it, where “informal” jobs can make people from any location, including the periphery entrepreneurs, goes against Yunus’ proposal, to make “services” closer to the population periphery is made possible by the ubiquity of digital.
Entrepreneurs exist in all social strata, I even venture to say that they are concentrated in the periphery, the problem is who risks putting capital there, who could finance these “microentrepreneurs” from the periphery, there is a solution, the number of jobs can grow quickly and circulation of goods and income in fragile environments
Number of covid grows in Brazil and vaccines
14
Sep
The number of data has returned to grow, if we look at the valley
of September 7, national holiday in Brazil, we see the valley of decrease with 10 thousand cases, in this short-term evaluation is better the number of infected, because the number of deaths will only be affected from 7 to 14 days, which in this period also returned to grow.
It was a scandal and commented throughout the country the descent of São Paulo to the coastal beaches, coincidence or not, is a real and scientific data, the number of cases has returned to grow and the number of deaths has returned to close to a thousand daily.
While the vaccine does not come, we will have to live with this reality, the period of a possible lockdown passed the virus is in every country and the only isolation that works is the social to prevent infection among people close, starting precisely from the idea that everyone can be carriers of the virus now and all care is necessary.
Now we are waiting for the vaccine, and the case of a side effect of a woman in London of the Oxford vaccine, which uses the viral vector principle, the effect was a transverse myelitis that causes a neurological problem and high blood pressure, being possible that the cause was an external factor the formula, the woman passes well, there is evaluation of the case by a committee that is independent (see how complex and serious the tests should be) , and the resumption of testing has already been authorised, there are 6 more in testing phase.
It is important to note that the problem was the side effect and not the infection, the vaccine from Oxford and the Laboratory Astrazeneca, which has participation of the laboratory of Brazilian Fiocruz, has no possibility of infection, it does not replicate the virus, so it is considered safe, but side effect exist in any medicines and vaccines and should prescribe cases, such as those we found in the leaflets , of type, children or adults cannot take, etc.
The case was important for all of us to be aware of the seriousness and slowness of the tests, which are necessary.
Other vaccines go up in the “quote”, the Pfizer vaccine. which follows the nucleic acid (RNA) principle, and with good quotation in the medical area, but this is also subject to testing and without the evaluation of “contraindications” should not be rushed its use, therefore, the delay is necessary and this phase cannot be dispensed with.
Socially what we expect, after a period of help (it should go until the end of the year, but that is already there), we must already start thinking about the economic, social and educational consequences, they will be strong and will require the effort of all and one should think not as a weight, but as a social need that certain groups have protection.
This is the case of the elderly, children and socially marginalized groups, if society and public policies do not embrace these people, the social consequences that are already serious, could go to the field of out of control and it would be a tragedy.
Hatred, disdain and reflection
07
Sep
It is not by chance that the brain region of structures such as the
medial frontal cortex, whose capacity to argue and therefore to dialogue is there, has as its core the putamen, the pre-motor cortex and the insular cortex, whose structures also participate in the perception of disdain and disgust, that is, the activation of hatred is physically in the brain close to those associated with judgment and reasoning, so you can both activate one as the other, there are both options.
Those who want to justify hate are full of arguments, are capable of even deep reasoning to act against the hated, but if the premise is dialogue, the same reasoning can be used to understand, care for and divert the violence of the other, as some martial arts teach, bypassing the “body”.
Hate will not disappear in the hope that external circumstances change, in general it does not happen, it is not a magic, to cure it, it is necessary to recognize diversity, its problems, as Gadamer would have to be aware of preconceptions, that is, of the fundamentals that start a disagreement or a type of credit, to recognize the Other in its bubble and to recognize ours, both as having preconceptions.
If we actually activate the reasoning, thinking part and put the disagreements on this level, we mitigate the hate part a little, but it is essential to ask and a part of our hatred would come down to reflecting in this way: “Why do I hate? What do I intend to achieve with this? What do I gain and lose from my hatred? ”.
I do not know of a situation that has been resolved in this case, in general it has led to a greater conflict, to a greater mutual hatred, if the objective is war we will probably get there, but I believe that for most people it is not, so what remains is to reflect , analyze the origins of such “evil” in its deepest bases.
Hate must be combated with the understanding and mainly that it leads to a new type of action, which implies to recognize in the first place that it exists and it is fostering on two sides and not by only one, in the manifestations of people and in their advertisements, denunciations are recurrent to say the whole truth is on this side and on the other just a lie, it is necessary to explain the consequences and that in fact those who benefit are those whose reason for existing and thinking is really “hatred”.
Wise people of various shades such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa of Calcutta with wisdom and intelligence in the face of enormous and absurd conflicts have been able to show that kindness and generosity, creativity and respect for others can lead to seeking a larger collective good and although a little longer will have more lasting fruits, with less violence and deaths, but because even in serious groups hatred persists, the answer is very simple. Encouraged by leaders and groups that live in political, ideological or religious bubbles, the main resource is the demonization of the adversary, identified with some disgusting aspect of evil: death, corruption, sexual, racial or gender violence, weakening of values or something of the like.
And once united in a group the fear disappears and this reduces the inhibition of those who hate to act in other ways not that of argumentation and exposure of facts, but violence against violence.
The leaders who incite this hatred, say they can no longer control it, but deep down they wanted it, develop this part of the reasoning that we say at the beginning near the part of the brain of the putamen, and released the hatred will be executed by the people who use the other part with less reasoning and more visceral, so the hate “explodes”.
What we should think about in face of unworthy facts, and at this moment there should be none greater than the pandemic, is that the feeling of fear and exhaustion by confinement is exploited not in achieving ways of relaxation and anti-stress, but in releasing it in violent ways, what are the consequences? and who are they favoring?
I think of the hateful ones, and not the loving ones who in fact have love for humanity and the most fragile appreciation. It seems like a path of no return, in the midst of a pandemic and with two tense elections approaching, the United States national and municipal elections in Brazil, I see little or no discussion about the pandemic and about those who die every day, bereaved families and compassion for them, neither on one side nor on the other. Fortunately, mortality levels have decreased, but the long weekend promises crowds, the village of cars to the beach was huge, and the pandemic?
Truth is ontological, is it logical or is it power
20
Aug
The sophists said that man is the measure of things (Protagoras),
not to affirm any ontological principle, only to reaffirm the current status quo that ultimately is power, they used the art of persuasion (Gorgias) for this and lastly they affirmed the convenience of the strongest (Trasímaco), almost all appear in the dialogues of Plato, through the dialogues of Socrates) and whose concern was to contest them to affirm the democracy of the polis.
Then we lived for several centuries organizing the laws until the transition from the Greek city-state to the post-middle age towns, where liberalism will grow until it becomes the modern state, creating the concept of nation and the social contract that governs a specific people .
For the modern epistemological view, truth is linked to the object (the thing itself) and this makes it relative, since it is subject to space, time and categories, this concept comes from Aristotle, but it was on him that the thought of middle ages were divided between nominalists and realists, but for both and also for Descartes who will establish the res-extensive (matter), the res-cogitans (thinking thing) and the divine res (perfect, infinite thinking thing).
It is Kant who makes the connection of the thinking thing about the object becoming relative, since such truth is to the knowing subject having then a subjective face, proper to the subject, for him the “thing in itself” (the object) becomes “The thing in me” (subject to subjectivity).
This means that before the object, the conscience develops the work in the production of the truth according to the space in which that object is occupying, the time that it is situated and in which category it fits, then it is a matter of categorizing and organizing the objects around concepts.
It is not difficult to understand that this creates a logical structure that will initially create a positivist logic and later a logical empiricism, or a neologicism, in both currents any metaphysical aspect is denied, so logic is no longer a function of an argumentative construction , but from a calculation of propositions that follows a logical structure, ultimately it is also what justifies power and its machinations.
We return to the sophist narratives, the idea that it is the power that says what is true, so it is a matter of conquering it many times in a logic in which the ends justify the means, thus corruption is justified, the absence of virtues morals and even death.
The ontological truth seemed to have succumbed, but it was hermeneutics and phenomenology that brought modern ontology back to its roots, Franz Brentano will use a subcategory of the ontological concept of consciousness, by elevating intentionality to a higher category and making it a “mental phenomenon” .
Husserl, a student of Brentano, will recreate the intentionality and remove it from the psychological aspect still with an empiric remnant, and will say that it only makes sense to call consciousness, the “awareness of something”, this means that there is no awareness of the thing-in- itself, but the intentionality in the awareness of something.
Intentionality distinguishes property from mental phenomenon: being necessarily directed towards an object, whether real or imaginary. It is in this sense, and in Husserl’s phenomenology, that this term is used in contemporary philosophy, also by Heidegger, but which will recover and transform the idea of Being.
However, it is necessary to remember that Heidegger in My Way in Phenomenology, was due to the reading in 1907 of Brentano’s dissertation written in 1862: “The multiple meaning of being in Aristotle” (Brentano, 1862) and this meant a resumption of the path of his master Edmund Husserl.
Heidegger, unlike Brentano, denies the fundamental characterization of being as a substance, since, Brentano was still linked to the medieval interpretive tradition, disregarding the dimension of the role in language, for this reason he will properly say that his Dasein is a “new question” .
The true-being (the ontological truth) as being-discoverer [Wahrsein (Wahrheit) besagt entdeckend-sein] is the way in which aletheia appears, it is what Heidegger calls unveiling, taking it literally (but translated that is already an interpretation):
“The statement is true means: it discovers the being in itself. He enunciates, indicates, “lets see” (apophansis) the being in his being and being discovered. The true-being (truth) of the statement must be understood in the sense of being-discoverer. ” (HEIDEGGER, 2009, p. 289)
HEIDEGGER, M. (2009) Ser e Tempo (Being and Time). 4ª ed. Trad. Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback. (Brazilian edition) Petrópolis: São Paulo.
