Arquivo para a ‘SocioCibercultura’ Categoria
Serenity, originality and peace
19
May
Serenity refers to the idea of a super quality of Being, it comes
from the Latin serenus, which is different from patience which comes from patientia, “resistance and submission” and is rather confused with serene.
Three qualities of the Self can be directly linked to serenity: peaceful, which means solving problems with peace, calm, which means keeping your inner peace at peace, and clear, which means expressing and communicating peace with clarity.
Heideger wrote a booklet on Serenity, at the initial chapter end it with a sentence that expresses in philosophy a synthesis of serenity: “when serenity towards things and openness to mystery awaken in us, we should reach a path that leads to a new ground. On this soil the creation of immortal works could put down new roots” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 27).
We are lacking in the conception of Being and that Heidegger highlights in his idea about the originary the idea of Region, as it was translated from German, but a nation could be the locus of belonging as Being in its true originary identity, Heidegger wrote:
“We are not and never are outside the Region, since as thinking beings […] we remain on the horizon […] The horizon is, however, the side of the Region facing our power of representation (Vor -stellen). The region surrounds us and shows itself to us as a horizon” (HEIDEGGER, 1959, p. 48).
Here it is necessary to return to a dilemma in Heidegger’s thinking, considering that being in the midst of the Region is to remain on the horizon: to be, but not to be, on this original path, means that it is a revelation of the Region, which becomes visible to the being, in it his Being is.
The philosopher states that serenity presupposes being free (Gelassensein) and the Region itself (Ge-eignet) and entrusts to the serene entity (gelassen) the guard of serenity. Now, if waiting is fundamental and decisive, what we are talking about is the appropriation to which “we belong to what we wait for” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 50)
The author does not ignore the absence of this concept in the West, a historical lack of knowledge: “the essence of thought cannot be determined from thought, that is, from waiting as such, but from the other of oneself (Anderer seiner selbst), that is, from the Region, which is insofar as it is religionalized” (Heidegger, 1959, P. 51).
This is where contemporary wars are based, without forgetting that many of them had their origin in the dispute over the territories of native peoples where their Being was completely ignored.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1959) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisboa: Instituto Piaget.
There will be humanism after barbarism
17
Mar
Wars, plague (pandemic) and famine (crisis in the economy and supply)
all seem to indicate imminent chaos, and in fatigue people want to return to routine (the old normal) and resume life.
It is, however, necessary to be careful, review the way of living, in fact the true “Society of Burnout” that we lived before the Pandemic, treat the problems that emerge and not give in to hate.
It is hatred, wars and little concern for life that feeds those who have lost a true humanist perspective, authoritarian power, force and disrespect. Life is not human, nor does it really mean “normality”.
Athens survived the war narrated in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, probably part of it is mythical, and this was an important language of the time, but the power of the Persians did not prevail, the small Athens united with the warriors of Sparta won and it was they who gave rise to Western civilization (picture), not by chance called the Hellenistic period, already Paris, Trojan prince desired Helen, daughter of Zeus and queen of Sparta, and this would be the reason for the war.
We survived the Black Death and the Spanish Flu, it’s true not without a lot of death and in the midst of wars, but humanity found its way, in fact it was the humanism of the Renaissance that gave rise to modernity, today in crisis along with Western civilization.
There is the nuclear danger and without a doubt it threatens the entire planet, it is not just Ukraine but an entire civilization in check, and the only alternatives seem to be total war, but we will survive.
More than the resolutions taken in the midst of conflicts that gave rise to two wars, it is now necessary to present a new civilization, a new humanism capable of uniting the human family and surpassing anthropocentrism and respecting diversity, as Morin says in search of the “ Lost Paradigm: human nature”.
Mahatma Ghandi, the Hindu leader who peacefully led freedom in India from the British Empire, said of the 7 sins that cause social injustice: “The seven sins are: wealth without work; unscrupulous pleasures; knowledge without wisdom; commerce without morals; politics without idealism; religion without sacrifice and science without humanism”.
Humanity has always found paths in the midst of eminent barbarism, it will now find it too, not all have given in to hatred, indifference and unscrupulous power.
Different reactions to dominant thinking
03
Feb
In countries that were colonies of Europe, the term decolonization
emerged, which differs from decolonization because it penetrates precisely into the dominant thought and epistemology (some authors will call it epistemicide), which is not the simple liberation of domination, but also the resurgence of cultures. subalterns.
Thus, authors appeared in Africa (such as Achiles Mbembe), in Latin America (Aníbal Quijano and Rendón Rojas y Morán Reyes), as well as authors of original culture such as indigenous peoples (Davi Kopenawa and Airton Krenak), but a dialogue with European authors is possible. open to this perspective like Peter Sloterdijk (speaks of Europe as the Empire of the Center) and Boaventura Santos (speaks of epistemicide and also some concepts of decolonization), there are many others of course.
Christian culture must also be highlighted in these cultures, seen by many authors as a collaborator of colonialism, one cannot deny the historical perspective and also the doctrine that is the liberation of peoples and a culture of fraternity and solidarity, it is also a minority today in Europe and persecuted in many cases.
Among the Europeans who defend a new humanism, or a humanism in fact, since the Enlightenment and materialist theories failed to contemplate the human soul as a whole, and are therefore a one-legged humanism, among the Europeans I highlight Peter Sloterdijk and Edgar Morin, the first who defends the concept of community as a “protective shield” capable of saving our species, and the second, a planetary humanism, where man is a citizen of the world and diversities are respected.
Both consider the proposals populist, it is good to know that there are left and right, they must lose with the current crisis and global consumerism depends on an atmosphere of “frivolity” or superficiality that humanity will be forced to rethink, we will not go back to that what we consider stable, the original writers themselves, as Davi Krenak highlights in several interviews, what we want to return to was not good, there was no real happiness and well-being in what was considered normal.
As an aspect of the construction of thought, in Sloterdijk I highlight anthropotechnics, for him modernity was a de-verticalization of existence and a de-spiritualization of asceticism, while the knowledge and wisdom proposed in antiquity leave the empirical and the deceptive to go towards the eternal and of the true, as religion does not exist for him, it would be a movement of wisdom and knowledge, and not just an asceticism of exercises, where the immortal soul was exchanged for the body.
In Edgar Morin’s perspective, it is the hologrammatic perspective that can give man a vision of the whole, now fragmented by the specialization and particularity of each branch of science, a paradox of the complex system in which man is a part that must be integrated into the whole, where “not only the part is in the whole, but in which the whole is inscribed in the part”, the pandemic taught us this, but the lesson was still poorly learned, in the middle of the pandemic crisis it was decided that everything is released and there is no protocol for protection of all in each (each part), and there is no co-immunity.
An appeal for peace
26
Jan
Tensions on the borders between Russia and Ukraine are growing,
after stationing more than 100,000 men in the northern region of Russia, to the north, while a good region of Ukraine continues with conflicts in the cities of Luhansk and Donesk, where the rebels pro-Russians still control part of the territory and it is a region where more than 50% of the population speaks Russian as their native language.
The crisis already reached its peak in 2014, when Ukrainians deposed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, in demonstrations that became known as EuroMaidan because most Ukrainians supported joining the Eurozone and the president did not, after several battles, some bloody with armed struggles, the president was deposed and Petro Poroshenko was elected, who promised to fight corruption and pacify the country, and in 2019 the screenwriter and actor Volodymyr Zelensky was elected, Ukraine is semi-presidential, so the prime minister effectively governs, currently is Denys Shmygal.
Elections will take place next year and the president occupies the third position, so Russia knows the internal fragility, while making Ukraine a NATO country means the defeat of pro-Russian forces operating in the Luhansk and Donesk region.
The talks that are taking place today with the presence of France, Germany and Ukraine with Russia will have as their main agenda the issue of the internal conflict in northern Ukraine, since the United States and the United Kingdom follow a line of confrontation with Putin and not rule out economic punishments, and in case of invasion retaliation, both countries have already sent troops and armaments in support of Ukraine, as have Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, while Belarus (which borders Ukraine) received fighter jets and weapons.
Russia has carried out war exercises in the Black Sea and is expected to do joint training with Belarus next month, as negotiations ramp up Putin while increasing pressure with military forces at the borders, repeating that he does not intend to invade Ukraine but the The list of demands it makes is huge, the main one being that Ukraine not join NATO, but it doesn’t give in to anything.
China’s position is discreet so far, just remember that China is Ukraine’s biggest trading partner and a major buyer of grain and meat.
However, the current crisis is already compared to the missile crisis in Cuba in the 60’s, more precisely in 1962 when the world was close to a world war.
As of today (26/01) Ukraine government websites have suffered a strong hacker attack and few government systems are down, in response a cyberattack on Belarusian railways brought trains to a standstill.
2021 was a year of hope
30
Dec
The start of vaccination against covid 19, the rebalancing of political
forces (Joe Biden took office in the US, Olaf Scholz replaces Prime Minister Angela Merkel after 16 years in power and the recent election of former student leader Gabriel Boric is new Chilean president), show that the shift towards conservatism is contained, but there have been shifts to the right, such as the resumption of the military in Myanmar deposing elected president Aung Suu Kyi.
Although with many agreements and promising news, Belgium for example is going to deactivate its nuclear plants (because they are even dangerous), the environmental imbalance is a theme not only of what happens with the planet’s living vegetation, waters and climate, but mainly natural phenomena that emerge in a dangerous way: active volcanoes, forest fires, storms (recent tragedy in Bahia), magnetic poles and concern with earthquakes and movement of tectonic plates, spatial phenomena for the time being are in the field of fiction and fertile imagination.
Despite the advance in vaccination, we ended the year concerned about the new omicron variant, which is already the majority of cases of infection, worries Europe and has significant progress in other countries, including Brazil, and comes together with a new H3N2 flu that has already has a vaccine, however the omicron variant seems to circumvent current vaccines, even with the 3rd. dose.
Hope persists, although tired of isolation, which had brief moments of relaxation in preventive measures, but caution and resilience are needed.
The end of the year, the holidays and the trend of agglomerations in Brazil are worrying, amid other tragedies such as the floods in Bahia, the authorities seem to have little or no capacity to react and intervene in the face of a possible new wave in the country, the number of deaths that had fallen from the range of hundreds, rose again to 117 yesterday (29/12), and some hospitals are already noticing the increase in the number of cases, the country already has 80% vaccination in the population -target.
The word “hope” seems to be the predominant word to characterize this year, what is expected for 2022 will depend not only on this word but on the use of courageous preventive measures and not just “monitoring” of the situation, which is a delaying measure, which will not prevent infection either from the H3N2 flu or the omicron variant.
Active hope, not just waiting but acting for it to happen, the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is to look not only at our past and our origins, but at a promising future capable of building a new humanity, a more just and fraternal world.
Emptiness and hyperpolitics
01
Dec
The subject that should interest theologians first interests philosophers
and writers like Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending), which won the Man Booker award, wrote: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him” while skeptical Peter Sloterdijk wrote: “In a monotheistically conditioned culture, declaring that God is dead implies shaking all references and announcing a new form of world” (Slotertijk, 1999, p. 59) and implies abandoning the project of planetary unity.
In an opposite line, English literature professor and writer Terry Eagleton wrote “Culture and Death of God”, identifies the Enlightenment substitutes for this death beyond reason and his most finished work: the Modern State, some ways of rationalizing this “death” in addition to the State itself: science, humanity, Being, Society, the Other, desire, life force and personal relationships, calling them “forms of displaced divinity”.
As substitutes, Sloterdijk elaborates in “in the same boat: essays on hyperpolitics” (1999): “a literary wave begins that speaks of nothing but the State, life in society, human formation” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 58), says Sloterdijk reflecting Nietzsche that the Theological Code is part: “that which inspires our time with hope and horror; something is dead and can only fall apart faster or slower, but somehow life and civilization advance and crystallize into ununderstood novelties” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 60) and this is not just about the new strain of the coronavirus that scares, but of novelties that advance in polarized and radical discourses.
He recalls that it is not just the speeches of some political adventurer from countries with political upheavals, but: “You can see the political cast parading through the media and we are reminded of the premeditated inappetence of municipal tournaments” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 64) , you know that there are here and there: “convincing megalopaths of the old guard” (idem), but a “global disproportion between the forces in need and the existing weaknesses” (ibid.), or to put it another way, statesmen capable of dealing with contemporary crises .
He calls some of these characters that appear here or there “globality state athletics”, but emphasizes that it has not yet been written highlighting the “required consciences” that it should not have for a “profession: political”, a residence with opacity, a program with which it is difficult to belong, in the Moral aspect of small works, no passion: an absence of relationship, evolution towards self-recruitment based on knowledge and they should be athletes of a “synchronous world” (p. 65).
Sloterdijk’s hyperpolitics sentence is drastic: “the theme of the ‘conservative revolution’, experienced two or three generations ago” (p. 67) in which he predicted a certain kind of new fundamentalist wave, predicted some contemporary politicians like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson they show not only that it was no accident, but that they continue to be on the lookout for a new policy that emerges in the aftermath of the “Krause syndrome” (German politician involved in corruption scandals), showing that it is not the work of chance, it is not just the absence from Geist (spirit) or from the lack of subjectivity and acceptance of planetary cultural diversity, “politics appears as the equivalent of a collective-chronic near-accident on a road covered by fog” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 69). The book was written well before the rise of the conservative wave.
In his final sentence Sloterdijk calls for “hyperpolitics to become the continuation of paleopolitics by other means” (p. 92).
Sloterdijk, P. in the same boat: essay on hyperpolitics. Trans. Claudia Cavalcanti. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 1999.
The truth and the method
17
Nov
Hans Georg Gadamer is the heir to Heidegger’s ontological
hermeneutics, and he developed philosophical hermeneutics through his masterpiece Truth and Method, first published in 1960.
To develop it, it needed to revolutionize modern Western hermeneutics, through the critique of aesthetics, the theory of historical understanding and the development of the ontology of language, to complement the Heideggerian method of the hermeneutic circle.
The publication of Truth and Method still means, today, a new study in the science of interpretation, which enters an important phase called philosophical hermeneutics, which should help human disciplines to seek, from experience, the understanding of their own being, constituting a a new philosophical attempt to assess understanding itself as a process of knowledge of the ontological status of man, thus founding a new anthropology.
As a philosophy of language, we are in the middle of a linguistic turn, it is not just access to the thing and not the truth, as the correspondence between word and thing only occurs when the thing is known, thus learning (teaching, search , question, answer and the information itself) is only done by thinking that leads things to the world of ideas, and thus words are no more than representation of signs to which meaning is attributed. and begins his study by Humboldt.
It was Wilhelm von Humboldt who used the theory of the human “strength of the spirit” as a source of language production, his thesis addresses an “idealist philosophy that highlights the subject’s participation in the apprehension of the world, but also the metaphysics of individuality, developed by the first time by Leibniz” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 568).
As a way of questioning the history developed in an idealistic way, Gadamer, when criticizing Dilthey, starts from preconceptions, where the historian “submits the otherness of the object to the previous concepts themselves” (Gadamer, 2008, 513), and is thus illustrated in his text: “despite all scientific methodology, he behaves in the same way as anyone who, a child of his time, is uncritically dominated by previous concepts and prejudices of his own time” (Idem).
For a new understanding, as a starting point for a new anthropology, interpreting is not a means of reaching understanding, but entering into the very content of what one wants to assign a meaning in a unitary or unilateral way, but that the “Thing of which speaks the text comes to the speech” (GADAMER, 2008, p. 515).
The text at the end questions linguistics itself, which states that each language does this in its own way, but the author emphasizes another focus looking for a unity between thinking and speaking, this infers from the fact that any written tradition can only be understood, despite the great multiplicity of ways of speaking, identifying an existing unity between language and thought, thought and speech, and in this case what is the conceptuality of all understanding? Conceptual interpretation is the way in which the hermeneutic experience is carried out.
As all understanding is an application of language, the interpreter is always in a continuous development of concepts, language remains alive both in speaking and in understanding the entire process of understanding, interpreting and thinking.
GADAMER, H.G. Truth and Method I. Fundamental features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 10th ed. Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 2008
Peace and related concepts
05
Nov
Peace is desired, but rarely cultivated, whenever a certain worldview
or a worldview in the deepest philosophical sense is to prevail, in fact a conflict is brewing where divergent points cannot find a common horizon.
The Roman eternal pax was the submission of territories to the Roman Empire, the Westphalian peace (1648) was a political agreement so that the conflicting Christian worldviews (Roman and Lutheran) did not provoke wars between the monarchic kingdoms at the time, but it was the treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) that decreed peace between France and Spain, the final stage of the conflict and for this reason it is also part of the peace of Westphalia.
This treaty was an embryonic notion for the concept of eternal peace, coming from idealism, which was deepened in the Congress of Vienna (1815) and the Treaty of Versailles (1919).
The concept of Eternal Peace was developed by Immanuel Kant, as one of the ideals of the French Revolution, the state of world peace actually created the concept of a single “republic”, capable of representing the naturally peaceful aspirations of peoples and individuals, this concept in addition to being neocolonized (and thus incorporating concepts from the pax Romana), it is based on a Western cosmovision and does not encompass the concepts of the Arab and Eastern world, in addition to ignoring the concepts of the original peoples.
Peace in a broader worldview implies accepting the different visions of the relationship with nature and with other peoples, says Caio Fernando de Abreu in Small epiphanies: “we demand the eternal of the perishable, madmen”, because only in a model of a broad worldview that encompasses peace we could walk towards a new human and natural reality.
In a correspondence exchanged between Freud and Einstein, entitled “Why War?” in 1933 and which was banned by the Third Reich, in Freud’s text the question of interiority, because many who speak of peace want and provoke war, insist on their cosmovisions and they want to submit the others, so they do not pose the question of anteriority, which consists in understanding, considering war as an almost universal and trans-historical concept, but which originates in human interiority: ambition and power.
The Freudian reading, also Lacan will do this later, is to inscribe peace in an inverse way from the Kantian perspective, approaching the question of the infinite, and it also escapes any form of moral consideration, the psychoanalytic reflection is the possibility of power continuing to be confront, to develop a new approach to the “political” thing.
There is a question of the common good, also but not only, a second reading of the letters of Freud and Einstein, it is added “because the choice of war”, as well as the previous existence of war itself, phenomenon, process or fact that it is not possible to eradicate or replace, it can become a search looking at human ambition less or more clearly announced, discovering the nature, essence and reason for being, it is therefore an ontological question of “choice” of war and not of peace, often difficult to find, but which should be a primary desire.
FREUD, S. (1995) “Pourquoi la guerre? Lettre d’Einstein à Freud”, in OCP, v.XIX. Paris: PUF.
Nature, man and the divine
29
Oct
It is the development of human culture that can develop
these potentialities, as Morin says: “It is certainly culture that allows the development of the potentials of the human spirit” (Morin, 1977, p. 110), it depends, therefore, on the development of a culture of peace, solidarity and of preserving life within the human spirit.
We are part of nature and the anthropocentric concept needs to be modified, but it is “only at the level of individuals who have possibilities of choice, decision and complex development that impositions can be destructive of freedom, that is, become oppressive” (ibid.), but this depends on the development of culture, or on the sphere of thought (Teilhard Chardin’s Noosphere) Morin will say: “It is certainly culture that allows the development of the potential of the human spirit” (idem ), depends, therefore, on the development of a culture of peace, solidarity and preservation of life that cannot exclude Nature.
Morin will say in the chapter of his conclusion about the “complexity of Nature”, that in the so-called “animistic” universe, or mythological in the case of the Greeks, “human beings were conceived in a cosmomorphic way, that is, made of the same fabric as the universe” (Morin 1977, p. 333), and at this point Teilhard Chardin develops the concept of a deified universe, or said within Christian cosmology: “Christocentric”, which is why he was for some time accused of pantheism (many gods).
Science penetrates more and more into a universe full of surprises, from the Higgs boson to the Hubble constant that establishes both the size and the age of the universe, but is this the consolidation of the unity of physics, called today as standard Theory of Physics , but this constant has already been modified.
In astronomical terms there is the measure megaparsec, which is equivalent to 3.26 million light years away, Hubble first time measured 500 km per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc) earth´s diameter, but this measurement now varies between 67 and 74 km /s/Mpc.
The nature of the interior of the planet also varies and there are many uncertainties, due to the exposure of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands, many serious scientists and researchers, there are many fake News on the subject, it is clear that there are still no clear theories about nature of these planetary organisms, always present in the stories.
The dialogue between different worldviews, far from simplifying or reducing the thinking of their culture, broadens and helps to develop the others, but it is necessary to be clear that each one has a contribution to make, and each one can remain in their cultural identities, for the most part of them there is always a precedence of the divine over human love.
For many worldviews the divine means to be able to dialogue with the human penetrates the mysteries of the universe and thought (the noosphere), in the Christian worldview this is explained in two steps: Love God and love your neighbor, so says the biblical passage (Mc 12, 29-31) on Pharisaism’s questioning of Jesus about what the commandments were: “Jesus replied: “The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is the only Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength! The second commandment is: You shall love your neighbor as yourself! There is no commandment greater than these”.
Thus, Pharisaism will relativize the first “commandment” to prioritize the second, only love of neighbor matters and defines the Christian, in general they reduce to their group and do not dialogue with other cultures, the second (love God above all things) , denies the inclusion of the second commandment and moves towards fundamentalism and the denial of science as a culture, in addition to also denying other non-Christian worldviews.
The dialogue between different worldviews, far from simplifying or reducing the thinking of their culture, broadens and helps us to develop the others, but it is necessary to be clear that each one has a contribution to make, and each one can remain in their cultural identities.
CHARDIN, T. (1997) Man’s place in nature, trans. Armando Pereira da Silva, Ed. Instituto Piaget, Lisbon.
MORIN, E. (1977) The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA., 1977.
Man’s place in nature
27
Oct
Edgar Morin we’ve already done some posts here. However, we
want to dialogue with the anthropocentric concept that dominates many studies and increasingly we see that it is a limitation since nature has its own course, and the brutal interference of man can modify and harm this course.
According to Ways (1970) cited in Chisholm (1974) there is a tendency in Western epistemology to objectify nature to see it “from the outside”, and this is responsible for the arrogant and insensitive way of dealing with the natural world, according to the author’s own attitude of separation of man from nature constitutes the basis of the growing human knowledge of nature, being, therefore, an anthropocentric interpretation of the evolution of the natural world.
On the other hand, the complexification of nature in man is undeniable, as an animal that is aware, or in other words aware of its own conscience, which can lead to another extreme, which is the “internalization” where culture and nature are confused , where subjectivism can be a responsible trend for this aspect.
The paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, in his work “The Human Phenomenon”, observes that there is no anatomical or physiological trait that distinguishes man from other higher animals, on the other hand, it has the zoological characteristic that makes it a being apart in the animal world. , is the only one that inhabits the entire planet, another characteristic that comes from its form of consciousness is its organization as consciousness and thought structure, which Teilhard de Chardin calls “noosphere”, a sphere of thought that is also world-wide.
As for man, it remains to be seen, and even science does not know, if it is a mere superficial accident that has happened or if there is an intention in him since the Universe was created, whether Big Bang or not, reflects Teilhard Chardin: “that we should consider it – about to sprout from the smallest fissure anywhere in the Cosmos – and, once it has arisen, unable to waste all the opportunity and all the means to reach the extreme of everything it can reach, outwardly of Complexity, and inwardly of Consciousness” (CHARDIN , 1997).
CHARDIN, T. (1997) Man’s place in nature, trans. Armando Pereira da Silva, Ed. Instituto Piaget, Lisbon.
CHISHOLM, A. (1974) Ecology: a strategy for survival. Rio de Janeiro: Zahar.
