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The wisdom of pure thoughts
01
Oct
Simplicist is naive thinking, while simplicity is pure thinking, pure noesis.
It is not in the capacity for theoretical elaboration, in the bookish
culture that resists wisdom, it unites simplicity (which is not simplistic) and complexity in the sense of putting everything under the cloak of nature and the universe and understanding that there is original knowledge that is not simplistic, but they were elaborated in real contact with nature, so I reject the idea of naturalization.
Culturalization is what has taken over the natural and perverted it, said philosopher, writer and indigenous leader Ailton Krenak of the current pandemic crisis: “Earth is speaking to humanity: ‘silence.’ This is also the meaning of withdrawal.”
Much of Western culture is in crisis, because it has brutally seized nature and does not want to understand it and has difficulty understanding visible and clear signs, this crisis comes from before the current technological revolution, many philosophers at the beginning of the century XX pointed to her, and the silence asked by Krenak can also be what Theodor Adorno identifies as true contemplation: “The bliss of contemplation consists in disenchanted enchantment.” Theodor Adorno, I remember that this philosopher is neither mystic nor religious.
Ailton Krenak wrote “Ideas to postpone the end of the world” (Cia. da Letras, s/a), within an indigenous cosmovision, but aware that this is a planetary problem, he said in an interview with Daily Estado de Minas (03 /04/2020): “I don’t understand where there is something other than nature. Everything is nature. The cosmos is nature. All I can think of is nature”, denouncing that the way we live is artificial and not in keeping with human nature.
Interpreting the book by Davi Kapenawa, another indigenous leader, Viveiro de Castro and Danowski also see that our “cultured” and Western thinking is concentrated in the world of merchandise, and Kapenawa says: “white people dream a lot, but they only dream of themselves”, that is, with its own culture without being able to contemplate a wider world, where everyone is present.
These worldviews may seem naive, but they mean that we must always think beyond our culture, also the Christian worldview calls for this effort, and after teaching his apostles what the master himself should go through, and they still don’t understand, Jesus will make use of of a new metaphor for them to think in a purer and less culturalized way.
In chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark, seeing that they wanted to keep the children away from him, He says (Mk 10:14-15): “Let the children come to me. Do not forbid them, because the Kingdom of God belongs to those who are like them. Truly I say to you: whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a child will not enter it”.
The world to come, in different worldviews, even if they seem childish, shows the crisis and exhaustion of cultural thought in our time, and the exhaustion of natural means.
Volcanoes, between science and superstitions
28
Sep
The volcano in the Canary Islands, which has been burning for
more than a week, and for the time being just increasing the volume and quantity of glowing lavas have raised questions and fears, not everything is really right, volcanologists and geologists have no forecast for the volcano to cool down and not all superstitions came only from prophecies and apocalyptics.
The possibility of a megatsunami, starting from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean has more volcanoes and earthquakes in the so-called circle of fire (photo) than the Atlantic was studied after the Indonesia tsunami that gained notoriety, but it was Japan, which affected the Fukushima Plant the most amazing.
The warning came not from superstitious, but from British researchers in a 2001 article (Ward & Day, 2002), the article gained notoriety for directly citing the Canary Islands (see photo above), and was published in the scientific journal Yearbook of Science and Technology , carried out other studies in cases that have already happened, such as the 1st. April 1946 in the Aleutian Islands where there was a landslide similar to the one off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
Cited that the largest land displacement, which caused megatsunami, was the landslide in 1929 due to an earthquake in Newfoundland National Park, Canada, on the Burin peninsula, which reached the coast of Scotland and Holland, but only was noticed because of fragments that were deposited on the coasts of these countries.
The article carried out experiments by computer simulation, which shows that the efficiency of tsunami generation increases with the speed and volume of the landslide, and made a simulation precisely with the Cumbre Vieja volcano (fig. 3 above), on the island of La Palma (one of the Gran Canary Islands), and wrote verbatim: “continuous and recent movements of the flanks of a number of oceanic island volcanoes including Kilauea in Hawaii and Cumbre Vieja in La Palma in the Canary Islands are possibilities that these can break [the flanks] during an eruption in the not-too-distant future” (Ward & Day, 2001).
T he volume has increased since last Sunday (19/09) and one of the flanks opened, but it did not collapse and the lavas had not reached the sea until the present day yesterday.
We had other volcanoes during the year, in Italy Etna, in Russia the Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands and in Iceland the Fagradalsfjall, but these do not pose any danger, in the case of Iceland there was a period of interruption of air traffic in the region.
Other volcanoes in the world have manifested this year, in Africa the Nyiragongo in early June, in Indonesia the Sinabung in early March, in Guatemala the Fire Volcano, but the eruption has already ceased, there are others around the world, active volcanoes ( but not in eruption) there are more than a thousand altogether, Brazil is far from the tectonic plates that, in addition to volcanoes, cause earthquakes.
For a few hours the Cumbre Vieja Volcano stopped spouting lava, but it returned, whether the duration and volume of material will be sufficient for a tsunami depends on the intensity and duration, neither volcanologists nor geologists who follow the volcano can say with certainty.
Ward, N. and Day, Simon. Suboceanic Landslides. Steven Yearbook of Science and Technology,
Ward, N. and Day, Simon. (2001). Suboceanic Landslides. Steven Yearbook of Science and Technology, McGraw-Hill, Available in: ward&day.pdf (ucsc.edu)
The finality of beings and machines
23
Sep
Edgar Morin says that “we are therefore in the prehistory
of finality”, using the Hegelian discourse he will say “the whole ‘itself’ becomes almost a for-itself” (Morin, 1977, p. 242), and so the machine living (to differentiate from artificial ones) from soft cells to the most complex living organisms “are almost specialized in function of quasi-programmed tasks that aim to achieve ends, and all these ends are united in the global end: to live” (idem).
It can be said then, in the author’s expression, that “this living being that self-finalizes is the product is the finished product of the reproductive act that originated it” (ibid.), and “retracing” this to the origin of life, the question remains “how is the purpose born of the non-purpose?” (MORIN, 1977, P. 243).
You will then ask what kind of “information” is capable of reproducing and controlling proteins with which they were not yet associated? The idea of information, and therefore of program, and therefore of purpose, cannot be prior to the constitution of a first protocellular ring” (idem), it will conclude from there that “the idea of a final process before the appearance of the life”, perhaps here we separate artificial machines from living beings, its beginning.
He will say in a categorical and essential way that “the biological, and evidently anthropo-sociological, purpose is immersed in a recurrent process of self-generation of which it is a part. It is the immersed and informational face of this generation-of-itself” (ibidem), for those who believe, I say that this is what I think is “God’s image and likeness”, being in an original vital process.
Living and artificial machines will have in common, according to the author, “purposes of the origins of life have repercussions and are reflected in the global purposes of living machines, and even of artificial machines” (MORIN, 1977, p. 243).
It will further differentiate the artificial machine from the live, quoting Paul Valéry: “Artificial means that it tends towards a defined end and, therefore, it opposes live”, for example, the purpose “of a manufacturing is to manufacture cars, whose purpose it is displacement, which serves for constructive activities of the individual’s life in society and of society in the individual” (Morin, 1977, p. 244).
So while the machine has an extrinsic purpose of life, and this purpose should have the intrinsic purpose of biological life, these “complementary purposes can become concurrent and antagonistic, as happens with the purposes of individual existence and reproduction…” (Morin , 1977, p. 245), if they become antagonistic, they can lead to the exclusion of one purpose for the other.
And so, concludes this topic Edgar Morin> “in Homo sapiens, gastronomic pleasures and erotic enjoyments become ends to the detriment of feeding and reproductive purposes; knowledge, a means of surviving in an environment, becomes, in the thinker turned thinker, to which his own existence subordinates” (MORIN, 1977, pp. 245-246).
Thus ends shift, degenerate and become uncertain, like the future of civilization.
MORIN, E. (1977). A natureza da NATUREZA. Lisboa PUBLICAÇÕES EUROPA-AMÉRICA, LDA.
Reification, objects and subjects
22
Sep
If on the one hand it is true that there is in the dominant
idealist/enlightenment mentality a complete reification of life (the life that projects itself on the thing, res-thing), on the other hand the separation of subject and objects creates a dualism in which nature and objects that are part of life are ignored.
The so-called subject-object dualism is explained by Edgar Morin as follows: “the concept of system can only be constructed in the object/subject transaction and not in the elimination of one by the other.” (MORIN, 1977, p. 136).
Morin will explain that both “naive realism” and “naive nominalism” (antagonistic currents since the medieval period) eliminate the subject, in nominalism the ideal system is one that does not have the subject, and in realism the ideal object is the system .
But the object “whether ‘real’ or ideal, is also an object that depends on a subject” (Morin, idem), and through the systemic way “the observer, excluded from classical science, the subject, stripped and thrown into the cans of garbage of metaphysics, they return to the fulcrum of the physis” (MORIN, ibidem).
Morin observes that the observer and the physis (Nature, with N) are confined in terms of a system, and proposes a new systemic totality “is constituted by associating the observer-system and the observer-system can, from there, become a metasystem in relation to one and the other, if it is possible to find the metapoint of view, which allows the observation of the whole constituted by the observer and his observation” (MORIN, 1977, p. 137).
He explains that one can, in a maximal simplifying view, reduce both the importance of the observer and the physis, “creating a supersystem, whose theory reveals the autonomous phenomenal systems”, it is good to clarify here that it is not a question of phenomenology but of a ” suprasystem” which has the characteristic of an autonomous phenomenon, is not the eidetic reduction.
The second meaning of the metapoint of view, “the ideological, cultural and social character of the theoretical system (the theory of systems) in which the conception of a physical system is inscribed” is emphasized (idem).
We cannot escape from this elaboration of the key epistemological problem: “the systemic articulation established between the anthroposocial universe and the physical universe, via the concept of system, suggests to us that an organizational character is fundamentally common to all systems” (MORIN, 1977 , p. 137).
Although there is talk of life linked to objects, in philosophy of the reification (or reification) of life, the dualistic mentality of separation between subjects and objects crystallizes and enlivens this in everyday life.
MORIN, E. (1977) The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA.
Order, disorder and dialogue
17
Sep
Understanding the process of complexification of nature also
means understanding that it is man and that it actually means humanism forgotten in traditional idealist and positivist schemes.
Thus for Edgar Morin (2001), the paradigmatic issue goes beyond the simple understanding of the theory of science (epistemology or methodology), as it involves the questioning of the frameworks of knowledge we have (gnoseology and what we think is reality) and more Deep ontology (what is the nature of reality), these principles govern the phenomenon of what we know and cannot be separated from physical, biological and anthropo-sociological systems.
It is an open reason, not irrationalism or relativism, but based on the idea that an evolutionary, complex and dialogical knowledge can be built, in which disorder is a part.
Systems develop in a process of entropy, but it is negentropy (the denial of entropy at each stage of evolution) that makes self-organization a living and evolving system.
It defines it as a body that develops and expands, entropy, dispersion and crisis appear in the original organization, but negentropy means new self-organization and if we look at man within it, within nature and in its evolutionary aspect, it returns question of a supernatural order, because it was precisely the opposite path that denied this transcendence.
When the repudiation of naturalism won and took hold, the humanist myth of the supernatural man became the very center of anthropology (and of all other sciences) and the oppositions nature-culture, man-animal, culture-nature took shape. of paradigm.
Of course, the role of man in nature depends on the worldview, animists for example, all non-human realities also have supernatural power, others stand out a God also human as in Christianity (created in the image and likeness of God) and others an ascesis that we are at one end of the scale of evolution (complexity), the Hindu and Eastern religions.
In Christianity, last week we reflected Jesus’ question to the disciples, “Who do they say I am?” and he prepared them for death, for the “disorder” of his death, even though the disciples still understood they wanted to dispute the power, position and positions they would occupy in the ascesis, and Jesus, seeing what they said, will give them a harsh sentence (Mk 9,35): “If anyone wants to be the first, let him be the last of all and the one who serves all!”, do you understand today?.
What is natural and the possibility of knowing
15
Sep
The problem of knowing the world (natural and not cultural,
this is what we have) must start from a premise of clearing our minds of cultural convictions, most of them idealistic, that blind us to the possibility of understanding that we do not dominate nature as proposed the Enlightenment, and worse, we run the risk of destroying it and putting civilization in check.
Quoting Edgar Morin in the epigraph of his general introduction of the book “The Nature of NATURE”, he write the second in capital letters even to deify it in the sense that it is still unknown to us, and contains mystery that affects us, as proved by the current Pandemic that still challenges us.
Edgar Morin, opening the first chapter: “The Spirit of the Valley”, quotes Karl Popper: “Personally I think there is at least one problem… that interests all thinking men: the problem of understanding the world, ourselves and our knowledge as part of the world”, so this knowledge is neither definitive nor eternal, as everything evolves and is perishable.
To introduce these convictions, he makes a second quote by Jacob Bronowski: “The concept of science is neither absolute nor eternal”, and he will make a third, which is for the next post.
He begins with 5 convictions that made him start this book and where is his “cogito” his suspension of judgment of everything he thought before, his first conviction of these problems states that he: “holds us to the present, they demand that we let go of it to consider them in depth” (Morin, 1977, pg. 13), and professes his second conviction: “the principles of knowledge hide what, henceforth, it is vital to know” (idem) thus detaches himself from his previous ideas.
His third conviction is the strongest, increasingly convinced that the relationship science Ʌ politics Ʌ ideology [Ʌ in text it´s triangle] when it is not invisible, continues to be treated in an indigent way, through the reabsorption of two of its terms in one of them that has become dominant” (idem) , gives you food for thought.
His fourth conviction is that “that the concepts we use to conceive our society — the whole society — are mutilated and lead to inevitably mutilating actions” (idem).
Finally, his fifth conviction is: “that anthroposocial science must be articulated in the science of nature, and that this articulation requires a reorganization of the structure of knowledge itself” (Idem), so the knowledge we have needs to be modified to from its bases.
He knew that his task was really encyclopedic and vast, that’s why he even isolated himself in a castle (I don’t have the precise data) because his task: “I myself needed exceptional circumstances and conditions’ to move from conviction to action, that is, to work” (idem).
And it is from there that he wrote his complex method with three initial questions: “What does the radical self of self-organization mean? • What is the organization? • What is the complexity?” (page 14).
MORIN, E. The nature of NATURE. Lisbon PUBLICATIONS EUROPA-AMERICA, LDA., 1977.
Was the old normal normal?
14
Sep
In his book “A Change Path: Coronavirus Lessons Needed”,
Edgar Morin elaborates 15 lessons of the pandemic and the challenges that will come when we overcome it, and it must be said that we are still close to halfway through immunization.
He points out in his book: “Isolation was a reclusion, but also an inner liberation from timed time, the workers’ driving-work-bed rhythm, the workload of the liberal professions (…) Ending the isolation, let’s go resume the infernal race?” asks the centenary thinker.
A more sustainable world, with greater global cooperation (and fewer centralizations), harsh social isolation has shown that some of these changes are possible.
The regeneration of nature, the small respite we gave showed that nature can still recover, but with less transport, with more sustainable industries, with more solidary actions and emergency relief for the poor in vulnerable situations, with little circulation of planes and ships through the world gave some positive signs of nature.
The unpredictability of the Pandemic, the proximity of death and the halt to the force of humanity put in check old “truths” and laws that seemed solid were not, in this moment of crisis it is possible to think of a new direction, the time to “change lanes” as the sociologist wants.
In addition to a great social reform, a personal reform that takes into account all human complexity (not the man focused only on the conquest and domination of nature), the change in ethical values, and a new regenerated humanism, can be a utopia , but perhaps it is a last chance for a civilization in crisis.
Morin wrote: “Solidarity and responsibility are not only political and social, but personal imperatives. We should already understand that social reform and personal reform are inseparable. Ghandi wrote: Let’s be the change we want to see in the world”, without changing course we will arrive at the same dilemmas of modernity: injustices and tiredness.
MORIN, E. It’s time to change course – Coronavirus lessons. Bertrand of Brazil, 2020.
The The return to frivolity will not be simple
06
Sep
This is the phrase of the most respected living German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, and a lot of news indicates that they may have to live with the covid 
for longer than we imagine, the feted New Zealand for fighting the pandemic, announced last week a death for the covid.
Vaccination remains important because there are still cases of death, the numbers in Brazil until the weekend are 66,862,534 people who completed the vaccination schedule, this corresponds to 31.34% of the country’s population, while those with the first dose is over 134 million, corresponding to 62.90% of the population, which is insufficient to make the measures more flexible.
It would be enough if it weren’t for the Delta variants and now the Mu (5 cases in Brazil and many cases in Colombia), which has already arrived in Colombia and is even more lethal, the delta is already present in many regions and is the probable cause of high deaths in Rio de Janeiro, Roraima and Espírito Santos, the others we are remain falling but slow.
Peter Sloterdijk’s analysis for the newspaper El Pais about an improbable (his view) returns to the old normality, what he calls frivolity is explained by conceiving the current reality where a “gigantic sphere of consumption is based on the collective production of a frivolous atmosphere . Without frivolity, there is no public or population that shows an inclination to consumption”, and in a way the pandemic broke this link.
Everyone is waiting now, even so-called progressive conceptions, as the philosopher says: “that this link will be reconnected again, but it will be difficult”, many have learned to live the essentials.
Using a modern concept also used for disruptive technologies, his vision of an anthropotechnics is important for a more sensible analysis, explains the current phase: “after such a big disruption, the return to frivolity standards will not be easy”, he says in interview with daily El Pais.
Understanding that the process is now global and this is the “new of this current outbreak”, says the philosopher, before we had “relatively regular outbreaks, but, in the past, people tended to return to their common habits of existence”, ie, a frivolous thought, life and consumption.
While we have not been able to elaborate some form of mutualism, which Sloterdijk defends, he goes back to using his concept of community, prior to this crisis, and states: “this crisis reveals the need for a deeper practice of mutualism”.
It will come, but the polycrisis, as Edgar Morin called the current crisis before the pandemic, will widen, the environmental, social and justice.
The orgic birth
13
Aug
How modern knowledge can give birth to a new world, overcome
the humanitarian crisis (which is beyond the pandemic), overcome the crisis of thought warned by so many thinkers Bachelard and the new science, Husserl and the crisis of scientific thought, Morin and the crisis of humanitarian thought, which Sloterdijk also criticized by revising Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”.
Reviewing the three changes, in antiquity Socrates through Plato gave birth to the episteme that surpassed the sophist model and Plato organized the model of the city-state, with the limitations that did not entitle women and slaves, a model that collapses along with the Roman empire, we inherited the law from them, but in what was translated the natural law: in the social contract.
The modern republic comes precisely from a discussion of what human nature is, the anthropocentrist model ignored the Being and its relationship with the Being, it is not just about the relationship with Nature, but with human nature itself, which is also a phenomenon.
We have already posted here about the orgic change, the relationship with nature itself and with ours, which Sloterdijk calls “matrix in grêmio” (picture), an appropriate name for Christian eschatology, where there is the female figure as the promoter of this orgic change, the relationship tense with nature that will bring profound changes in the planet and in the human relationship.
What we developed in our previous post about aorgic mutation was the necessary overcoming of anthropocentrism, the nature of nature (developed in Edgar Morin’s Method I), the place of man in nature (the title of one of Teilhard Chardin’s books) and many others point out that anthropocentrism is a paradox, we are co-dependent and co-participants of Nature.
But nature shows signs of agony, climate change is just a symptom, the very structure of the planet (volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.) can profoundly and dangerously alter the planet, remember the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, and polarization behind the danger of war.
In Christian eschatology, the book of the Apocalypse of St. John reads (Rev. 12-19a-12): “The Temple of God in heaven was opened and the Ark of the Covenant appeared in the Temple. Then a great sign appeared in heaven: a Woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars”.
Theologians and exegetes shuffle over this passage, of course the figure of Mary comes to the fore, but the temple of God is nothing more than the universe and nature, including human nature, and the crown of twelve stars, the doses tribes of Israel, but curiously the European flag has two stars too, and metaphorically I would say that it represents a more united world, in the initial European model because it also suffered cracks like the English Brexit.
The orgic change is a possibility not a fatality, and everything depends on human action, as the centenary philosopher Morin says, one can hope and believe in change.
Birthing knowledge and phenomenology
12
Aug
The definition of the phenomenology method as a form of knowledge
is according to the philosophy dictionary (Abbagnano, 2000, p. 437) as “description of what appears or science that has as its objective or project this description”, with the phenomenon being “what appears or manifests itself” (idem).
The German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) developed it as a radical way to review methodologies and concepts of science with logical and positivist assumptions, starting from how things (the concept of object is also surpassed here, it is linked to the subject) have its appearance to consciousness, and from there “going towards things in themselves” (HUSSERL, 2008, p. 17).
Intentionality is the fundamental mark in phenomenological consciousness, it is always turned outwards, towards something, but it is neither substance nor envelope, it is an intuition, an apodictic evidence, and this is the birth of phenomenology.
The first step of this method to “search” the phenomenon is the phenomenological reduction (epoché), a suspension of our concepts or preconceptions, placing them in parentheses, since it is impossible to separate the subject from the object, when something appears will manifest itself now.
Starting from this “suspension of judgment” (it is used by other currents of thought), scrutinize the phenomenon in its “purity” and avoid what would be a “natural attitude” in the apprehension and analysis of the phenomenon, then carry out an eidetic reduction or variation ( the idea in the Greek sense is an image rather than a concept), it passes through a psychological level and a transcendental level.
Here, becoming something like “pure consciousness”, Husserl calls it “phenomenological attitude”, it allows new perspectives (Abschattungen) and several profile variations (Abschatung), the German roots are important, because it is perceived that one is a “variation” of the other is eidos.
It is precisely in this eidetic variation that something takes place in consciousness that goes from the perceived object (noesis) to the noema, a complex of predicates and modes to be given by experience.
The thing that presents itself to my consciousness is not only abstract, it does not have its existence denied, what Husserl defends is that we have a perception of something (object for idealism), which is only supported by the possibility of different profiles (abschatung) that he is apprehended. We are left with two questions whether this is separate from its materiality (hylé for the Greeks) and whether it is possible to think of this consciousness as consciousness of the world, transcendence in history.
HUSSERL, E.(2008) The crisis of European humanity and philosophy. Brasil, Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS.
