Arquivo para a ‘Tecnology’ Categoria
Interiority, truth and wars
10
Oct
The abandonment of conceptions that lead
humanity to elaborate inwardly, elevating thoughts and spiritualities, is pointed out in countless contemporary readings. We have posted here Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Peter Sloterdijk, Edgan Morin and Byung-Chul Han, among others, of course.
But here we want to start with the question of method and return to the phenomenology of Husserl, one of the first to question “The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology – An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy” (Brazilian edition by Forense Universitária, 2012), which points out this question and in the third part clarifies the transcendental question and the misunderstandings of contemporary science.
This is how he points out his questioning of the concepts of “outer experience” and “inner experience”: “The fundamental absurdity of wanting to seriously consider men and animals as dual realities, as a link between two realities of different kinds, comparable in terms of the sense of reality, and thus also wanting to research minds using the scientific-corporeal method, i.e. in a natural-causal way, existing spatio-temporally as bodies – resulted in the supposed obviousness of a method to be configured in a way analogous to that of the science of nature” (Husserl, 2012, pgs. 177-101). 177-178).
In this sense, he questions both Cartesian dualism and the foundation of a science that creates a “parallelism” where: “the physical-mathematical nature is the objectively true nature; this nature must be the one that announces itself in merely subjective appearances” (pg. 179), and his question is why “is not the nature of the world of life, this mere subjective element of external experience, but this is counterposed to external experience ?
Interiority in philosophy is a founding aspect as long as we look at the ontological question of Being, already present in Plato and Aristotle, and which in St. Augustine will play a central role in his worldview, where he seeks a profound sense of “beatitude” of the soul.
This interiority, reduced to the interior and immediate visions of the world, separates man from the world, from others, and he starts to project himself excessively onto objects, “things”, up to the apex of the digital world, called by Byung-Chul Han “non-things”, to talk about something that is currently on the rise, says the author: “artificial intelligence doesn’t think”.
This is how we move mechanically towards interests for external conflicts that lead us to increasingly contentious positions on values and non-values that justify violence.
The problem, as Husserl points out, is that all of this stems from a “method”, i.e. the particular way in which we look at the exterior and exercise our interiority, opposed in their origins by Brentano and Dilthey: “as in general in the 19th century, at the time of the passionate efforts to produce a rigorously scientific psychology, presentable alongside the science of nature” (pg. 180), but this psychologism is overcome by Husserl’s criticism of Brentano and later by Hans-Georg Gadamer.
What is interiority in sense of live, in new experience of conflits and wars ?
Husserl, E. (2012) A crise das ciências europeias e a fenomenologia transcedental: Uma introdução à filosofia Fenomenológica. Transl. Diogo Falcão Ferrer. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária.
(english edition) Husserl, E. (1970) Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Translated by David Carr. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Asymmetries, power and sociability
12
Sep
The Korean-German essayist Byung-Chul Han,
in his book In the Swarm, points out that only respect is symmetrical, the various forms of communication and power are asymmetrical, but this taken to the limit causes hatred, contempt and war.
Jacques Rancière, who wrote “Hatred of democracy”, points out that this theme has taken on dramatic contours today, but already exists in literature: “The author points out that rejection of democracy is nothing new, but it has new contours:
Its spokespeople inhabit all the countries that declare themselves not only democratic states, but democracy tout court. None of them claim a more real democracy. On the contrary, they all say that it is already too real. None complain about the institutions that claim to embody the power of the people, nor do they propose measures to restrict that power.
Rereading the literature, he recalls authors who defended it: “The mechanics of the institutions that enchanted the contemporaries of Montesquieu, Madison and Tocqueville do not interest them. They complained about the people and their customs, not the institutions of their power. For them, democracy is not a corrupted form of government, but a crisis of civilization that affects society and the state through it,” and so we don’t speak of a ‘crisis of civilization’ at random.
The discussion of the media influencing politics has been around for centuries, as has the fact that defaming opponents through situations that are not always true or even out of context is a common practice to try to impose an opinion in an asymmetrical way.
The fact is that we now have a more powerful medium that can potentiate these falsehoods and the new media are not just control algorithms or efficient Artificial Intelligence mechanisms, now a new technological approach, the fact is that we have to seek a balance, a symmetry from personal relationships to power.
You can’t apply laws unilaterally, or even make them to suit political situations, they must apply to everyone and if they change they must follow a rite and the appropriate institutions for this, trampling on powers, anticipating processes or making summary rites are abuses of power.
This is how we start with respect for opinion, for dialogue, for what is different, and arrive at the exercise of power with moderation and the utmost fairness, even if opposing forces confront the contradictory discourse, this must be done within the framework of legality and legitimacy.
On a personal level, overcoming stalemates, raids and personal differences with parsimony and respect helps to balance social relations, even if it often borders on offense on one side.
It’s not a heroic attitude, it’s a defense of coexistence, tolerance and social peace.
Rancieré, J. (2007). Hatred of Democracy. USA, NY: ed. Verso.
The logic of productivism and its inverse
21
Aug
Several authors argue about the logic of
modern society regarding productivism, this logic is not specific to a mode of production, but characterizes a society where values are all placed around the power and productivity of each individual, thus excluding, for example , the elderly, children, domestic workers and those with special needs.
According to the literature (A. Giddens and others): productivism is the logic that guides the lives of a group of individuals (the so-called “adequate consumers”) while another group (called “failed consumers”) are adrift in economic life , political and social.
For this reason, more critical social analysts place the allocation of work to directed groups as a factor of crisis in contemporary society, also in the academic, political and even spiritual world, a certain profile of a person with some “performance” is required.
Saying that these people take actions according to their abilities or choices is a farce, even if we find some rebellion among young people who opt for jobs such as cooking, sports or leisure sectors, the majority live on projects manipulated by the society of performance and consumption. .
How to reverse this logic, looking at the excluded sectors of society, it is increasingly common for people with special needs, people with certain types of diseases or syndromes to fit into a restricted market full of productivity demands.
The biblical parable of last-minute workers is a well-placed metaphor, where workers who are sitting in the square (discarded from productive spaces) are called to work and although they arrive at the final hour they will receive the same amount as other workers, not to be confused with Misguided projects (in Brazil) that place young people in work without having the remuneration corresponding to the same function performed by “experienced” workers.
The parable, also called “workers in the vineyard” or “generous employer” (Mt 20:1-16), could be the opposite of the productivist vision of the modern labor market.
Giddens, A. (2013) Consequencies of Modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
The limits of logical thinking
16
Aug
The full development of modern science and
technology was the realization of a program dreamed of by Francis Bacon, René Descartes and Immanuel Kant as a total domination of man over nature on a dangerous ethical threshold, manufacturing what is natural, but this comes up against two dilemmas: the natural was and (in my opinion) will always be the “unmanufactured” and by making the substance manipulable it continues to be in fact what it was naturally.
In excerpts from Heidegger’s notes between 1936 and 1946 (therefore in the final stage of the 2nd world war), the author wrote an essay called Overcoming Metaphysics, and with all his genius describes what would result in the technical and industrial production of life, wrote: “Since man is the most important raw material, one can count on the fact that, based on current chemical research [of course at the time], factories for the artificial production of human material will one day be installed. The research of the chemist Kuhn, distinguishing from planned directing the production of male and female living beings, according to their respective demands” (Heidegger, Uberwindung der Metaphysik, paragraph 26).
Adono and Horkheimer also expressed in the famous Dialectic of Enlightenment, that this “has always, in the most comprehensive sense of thought in progress, pursued the goal of removing fear from man and establishing him as master. However, the completely enlightened earth sparkles under the sign of triumphal misfortune.” (Adorno, Horkheimer, 1987, p. 25).
Habermas also spoke of this extravaganza of bad science fiction, experimental production of embryos, even a convinced atheist, in his work “Die Zukunft der menschlichen Natur. Auf dem Weg zu einer liberalen Eugenik?” complains about this vision of “partners in evolution” or even “playing God” as metaphors for the self-transformation of the species.
It is not about opposing the advancement of science, a retrograde thought present in all social circles, but about opposing bad science, bad progress that result in scourges for humanity itself.
The sense of fully recovering life, of opposing growing authoritarianism and warmongering, of proclaiming peace, sustainable development and the divine origin of human life is not just a proclamation of faith or serious and sincere humanism, it is a resistance of spirit, hope and a rationality above instrumental and agnostic logic.
Disenchantment, narration and pain
07
Jun
Chul Han remembers a very well-known habit in
many societies, which is telling children bedtime stories, I remember that it is old because they are famous: Aesop’s fables (ancient Greece), the tales of the Brothers Grimm, the stories organized by Charles Perrault and many others, Han will choose a little-known story (at least here in Brazil) by Paul Maar of young Konrad that he didn’t know how to narrate and his sister Susanne asks him to tell her a bedtime story.
The parents, on the other hand, liked to narrate, they were “almost addicted to it” and when the father finishes telling a story, the mother writes R for Roland on the paper and when the mother finishes telling the story, the father writes an O for Olivia, but the parents realize that Konrad can’t tell stories and send him to a certain Miss Muhse, he arrives at a small house and the lady who knows that he has come to learn how to tell stories asks him to go up a ladder and take a small package to his sister, but the The stairs seem endless until they meet a wall that opens like a door.
Inside it is all dark and he sees an owl with a strange voice and conversations and realizes that there is no floor and falls down a long path, finding Miss Muhse at the end who gives him another package and asks him to take it to her brother downstairs as he did not deliver the first one, Konrad is confused because he thought he had fallen to the ground floor, and he falls again into the “dark spaces” of the house and again Miss Muhse arrives who is now smoking a fine cigar and knows that he didn’t deliver the package and gives him another one again, he says “I’m not here to deliver little packages, I’m here to learn how to narrate”, she sees that she’s a lost cause, opens a door in the wall and says: “Happy sorting and all about bread” (she always changes the sayings) and this time he is back at his parents’ house (pages 74 to 77).
His parents and little sister are having breakfast and he says excitedly: “I have to tell you. You won’t believe what I experienced…”, Konrad’s world is now different and now his parents write K (for Konrad) on the paper they wrote down their narrations.
The disenchantment of the world is when everything is reduced to causality, facticity (today’s narratives say facts don’t lie, but under a partial interpretation), Walter Benjamin says that “children are the last inhabitants of the enchanted world” (pg. 79), I would say there is no more lightness, empathy and imagination in the “adult” world.
“Children today hunt for information like digital Easter eggs” (pg. 80), today the “lack of narrative interiority distinguishes photographs from souvenir images… photographs portray data without internalizing it… they don’t want to say nothing… “ and this is why I conclude that data may not be, and almost always is not, information.
It is even more difficult to understand what knowledge is as an experience: “the narrative is opposed to chronological facticity” (pg. 81), recalls Han reading Marcel Proust and also Benjamin that the aura is precisely the “distance of the gaze that awakens in the observed object ” (pg. 82) and will also remind you of Karl Kraus quoted in Benjamin: “the closer you look at a word, the further away it seems to be” (pg. 83).
The denarrativized memory is like a “junk store” here the author remembers Paul Virilio (Information and Apocalypse) being the “deposit full of all kinds of completely disordered, poorly preserved images and worn out symbols” (pg. 84), where one finds makes “a pile of data or information does not have a story. It is not narrative, but cumulative” (pg. 84).
This chapter ends in a very pleasant and sensitive way, after quoting excerpts from the works of Susan Sontag, Adorno and Gershom Scholem, paraphrasing the latter he writes: “The mythical fire in the forest has been forgotten. We no longer know how to say prayers. We are also not capable of secret meditations” (pg. 89) and I would say taking advantage of the topic Pain from the book “Heidegger’s Heart: on the concept of tonality” (see previous posts) we no longer know the meaning of pain, of affection and we have lost any notion of the “whole”.
Han, B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil: Petrópolis, Vozes.
Narration, digital culture and orality
06
Jun
Still in the section on Poverty and experience,
quoting Walter Benjamin, Byung-Chul wrote: “We became poor. We abandoned all the pieces of human heritage one after another, many of them had to pawn a hundredth of their value to receive in exchange the small currency of the ‘current’. The economic crisis is at the door, behind it is a shadow of the next war” (Han, 2023, pg. 37-38, citing Poverty and Experience by Benjamin), it was the threshold of the 2nd. World War.
In which modernity sums up happiness, the author explains “happiness is not a one-off event (pg. 43), today “when everything throws us into a current frenzy, when we are in the middle of the storm of contingencies, we are unhappy” ( pg. 44), recalls Marcel Proust “In Search of Lost Time” who understood the “rescue of the past as the narrator’s task” (pg. 45) and modern life as “a muscular atrophy”.
Disagreeing with Heidegger to reaffirm its contextual importance (also for today): “Being and time is not a timeless analysis of human existence, but a reflection of the temporal crisis of modernity” (pg. 45), “the being-itself of Heidegger is prior to the narrative context of life produced later. Being-a-i assures itself before telling itself a coherent story regarding the world of interiority” (pg. 47) and this explains the book we previously posted here, Heidegger’s Heart.
After a speech on some pages about new media: Phono sapiens, selfies, Facebook, it is a fixation of the author even though he recognizes Benjamin before this, even though he says correctly: “they are aligned in a syndetic way, without any narrative nexus” (pg. 51), recognizes that “Human memory always makes choices. In this aspect, it differs from a database”, a fundamental technical precision, which some people sometimes confuse with data without information, information without knowledge.
It predates even the emergence of the Gutenberg press and belongs to oral culture: “autobiographical narration presupposes a subsequent reflection on what was experienced, a work of conscious remembrance” (pg. 53) while “the quality of the data is better as they contain less consciousness” (idem), but it is necessary to remember the semantic search, the linking of data (linked data) and the use of Artificial Intelligence for narration that makes possible a consciousness beyond the “libidinal conscious” (idem) without ethics or morals.
Without mentioning oral culture, but the excerpt reminds her: “if everything that was experienced is present without distance, that is, it is available, the memory reappears” (pg. 56) and adds: “a flawless reproduction of the experience does not is a narrative, but a report or record” (ibidem) and remembers that whoever wants to narrate or remember “needs to be able to forget or let a lot of things slip” (pg. 57) and cannot be talking about anything other than the written culture, as oral culture is capable of forgetting details but will always remember what is experienced and through it remember the essentials and remember tradition.
Remembering the masters of cultures, their teachings and experiences is nothing other than oral culture, written culture is a “database”, a memory without reflection.
Han, B.C. (2023) A crise da narração (The crisis of narration). Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil: Petrópolis, Vozes.
Power in Foucault and Chul-Han
16
Apr
Michel Foucault broke with the classical
conceptions of the term power and defined it as a network of relationships where all individuals are involved, and we understand the network here with the modern sense of network, although it was vague in his time, individuals are both generators and recipients of power. movement of these relationships, however he identifies them as biopower, while Chul-Han identifies them as psychopower, and in a way adds the media to this.
State ideology, born from Hegel, is the basis of every history of contemporary power, authoritarianism and modern wars were born from a new idea of imperialism and colonialism, in which stronger states control power not only through weapons, but rather through biopower and now psychopower.
Foucault’s biopower, the state is the first level of power (he calls it a sector), the market is the second level, and the third is civil society, the idea of 4th. The power of the press comes from there.
He studied power not to develop a theory about it, but to identify aspects of subjectivity (in ontology it would be the question of Being), that is, subject over other subjects.
This is important to differentiate him from Chul-Han, who starts from the ontological relationships between beings and identifies the action of media and media structures that act on the psychology of power, so his idea of power (What is power) is like a domination technique that stabilizes and reproduces the dominated system through programming and psychological control.
Foucault sees biopower, as in the body as a training machine, since biopolitics, in the middle of the 18th century, was focused on regulatory controls on the population, the idea being that it was the population increase that caused misery and hunger.
Peter Sloterdijk, who supervised Chul-Han’s doctoral thesis on Heidegger, argues that this “training” process failed and thus, the control process develops towards the fourth power, which Chul-Han focuses excessively on the media, forgetting the 4th. power of the press, TV and cinema that had an enormous influence.
He develops pathologies of self-centeredness (narcissism), emotional instability (borderline) as responses to the demands of a society intoxicated with demands for efficiency, appearance and disciplinary coercion, wrote the author):
“The violence of decapitation is inherent to the pre-modern society of sovereignty; its medium is blood. Modern disciplinary society is, to a large extent, a society of negativity, being governed and dominated by disciplinary coercion, that is, by ‘social orthopedics’. Its form of violence is deformation. But neither decapitation nor deformation are capable of describing the postmodern performance society. It is dominated by a violence of positivity, which confuses freedom and coercion. Its pathological manifestation is depression” (Han 2018, pp. 183-184).
HAN, Byung-Chul. (2018) Psicopolítica: o neoliberalismo e as novas técnicas de poder. Brazil, Belo Horizonte: Âyiné.
Total war threats
18
Mar
Macron and Putin’s statements scare Europe,
although neutrality is not the exact term for involvement due to NATO’s presence in several countries, now Sweden and Finland, bordering Russia.
In an interview with the newspaper Le Parisien, published last Saturday (16/03), Macron declared: “Prepare for all possible scenarios” and added “perhaps at some point this will have to be done”, and “everyone will assume their responsibilities “, provoking reactions of different types, some against and others in favor.
In response, Putin said that if any Western country sends troops to Ukraine, a war between Russia and NATO would be inevitable, and threatened to use nuclear weapons “capable of destroying civilization”.
Putin has a highly secret electronic command and control briefcase called “Kazbek”, it is believed that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov also have these briefcases, they would control more than 4300 nuclear warheads.
Also NATO plans to implement a rotational air defense model in Lithuania are taking shape, according to Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anušauskas.
Russia’s election with 87% of votes for Putin was criticized in the West, Germany called it “pseudo-elections”, the French newspapers “simulacrum”, finally opponents arrested or killed and a lot of repression against the opposition.
Putin stated that Russia would consider testing a nuclear weapon if the United States did so, in 2023 the Russian president withdrew Russia from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), although it is reported that Russia did not carry out any tests , recently tested the Bulava missile (SS-NX-30 in NATO classification) can be equipped with ten nuclear warheads.
The tone has risen, but also the resistance of spirit and hope has not diminished, peace is possible.
The resistance of the spirit of humanity
29
Jan
Victor Serge wrote “Midnight of the Century” in
1939, in the middle of the 2nd. world war, now in an article published in La Reppublica, on 24-01-2024, the French sociologist Edgar Morin published an article: “The resistance of the spirit” about the crisis of current wars.
The war in Ukraine mobilized economic aid from much of the world, while on the Russian side, economically weakened by the sanctions imposed by Western nations, it strengthened both technical-scientific development and the bloc formed with China.
Serge, an anarchist by origin, who supported the Russian Revolution, saw it bureaucratize and persecute all real and imaginary enemies in the Stalinist period, described in “The Great Terror” (1934-38), years before describing the horror to midnight, and whatever you say about today.
A new focus emerged after a massacre of civilians by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by deadly Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip.
In Morin’s analysis, which has been developed for some time, the progress of knowledge occurred by creating barriers in disciplines that are increasingly closed in their object, which leads to a new type of almost blind thinking, linked to the dominance of calculation in a technocratic world, the progress of knowledge does not consider the complexity of reality and becomes blind.
The result of a lack of clarity and understanding of human life exposed by the ease of access to all life on the planet, without its understanding, has led to dogmatism and fanaticism, and a crisis of morals while hatred and idolatries spread.
Recalling the years of Nazi occupation in France (photo Carentan France, June 1944 From the LIFE Magazine Archives), in which Morin himself was a member of the French Resistance, he now evokes a resistance of spirit that avoids almost desperate or truly desperate action, and maintains hope through Resistance.
This resistance implies safeguarding or creating an oasis of communities endowed with a say in relative autonomy (agroecological) and social and solidarity economy networks.
This action also implies associations that are dedicated to solidarity and rejection of hate.
What are things
10
Jan
When rereading Byung Chul-Han’s “Non-Things”,
he correctly recalls that the term comes from Vilém Flusser, who lived in Brazil for a good part of his life, and also takes up the concepts of Hanna Arendt and Heidegger, but does not penetrate in the essence of the thing, which is not just information.
Medieval philosophers had already developed the question of quiddity, which is neither an idea nor a concept, but something that sought to understand the essence of things, from the Latin, “quidditas” means “what is that” and was related to the idea of identity and uniqueness.
Thus, by transforming it into information, it does what Luhman did with the concept (remember that this author deals more with the issue of communication than the thing in itself), he says, quoted by Byung Chul-Han: “His cosmology is a cosmology not of being, but of contingency”, that is, something that has no essence, no identity or singularity and cannot “be”.
Clarifying that it is a particular way of seeing information, as a “transmitted thing”, and in this the author is right: “Information cannot be possessed as easily as things. Possession determines the paradigm of the thing. The world of information is not governed by possession, but by access” (Han, 2022), this is so true that the Portuguese dictionary in Brazil now has a new word which is “logar”, from the English, log “registration” in the sense of marking access to “information”, in Chul-Han’s sense.
Quoting Jeremy Rifkin, Han warns that the transition from possession to access is a paradigm shift that leads to drastic change in the world of life, subtitle of the book, he predicts a new type of human being: “access, therefore, ‘access’ are key terms of the nascent era (Han, 2022).
Jeremy Rifkin, the transition from ownership to access is a profound paradigm shift that leads to drastic changes in the lifeworld. He even predicts the emergence of a new type of human being: “Access, ‘logon’, ‘access’ are the key terms of the nascent era. […]
Regarding the modified identity of the medieval sense, the author says: “We produce ourselves on social media. The French expression se produire means to put oneself on the scene. We act out. We perform our identity” (Han, 2022), mind you: it produces in the media Media are means, the confusion with the idea of networks, not on purpose of course, destroys the third characteristic of the thing which is its singularity, not in this essay, but in others, the author remembers that everything in the world is characterized by sameness, everything it looks very the same.
This world of “non-possession” is differentiated by enjoying more than living, it makes the “idealization of things” a task, it is not uncommon to see in programs and on social media a large number of utopian and bizarre questions, such as, what it would be if you were an object, if you lived on another planet, etc. and this amuses the public of non-things.
Revolutionaries should not be alarmed, but quoting Walter Benjamim, Chul-Han writes: “the deepest relationship one can have with things”, this substantiality is not materialistic but rather a rational and “informational” relationship with things, information here in another sense.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 202
