Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
The War scalated
28
Oct
At the weekend, Israel retaliated against the
attacks of the 1st. October when Iran launched around 200 missiles against Israel, following the death of the leader of the extremist group Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, the targets apparently were all military bases and Iran mourned the death of 4 soldiers.
The targets are also unclear, but there are reports from the Syrian cities of Homs, Damascus (capital) and Daraa, in Iran the cities of Karaj (outskirts of Tehran), the cities of Mashhad, Isfahã and Shiraz (graphic), to Last night (27/10) few retaliations from Iran took place.
However, with the direct involvement of Iran and Israel, the climate in the region is explosive and has already escalated.
Also in Russia, North Korean soldiers were sent to reinforce the war in Ukraine, in addition to the training that will be received, many, according to Ukrainian sources, will also be sent to the invaded region of Kursh, where Ukraine maintains dominance, this involvement It also affected South Korea, with which it has the biggest disputes.
Involvement was also projected at the Brics meeting held in Kazan, the formation of an economic bloc is one of the ways to face the various forms of blockades made to countries that are at war or under military dictatorships, not surprisingly, they are involved in wars.
There is still hope for peace, always for those who do not want authoritarian and warlike solutions, even though the problems involved are serious, but wars do not solve them and in most cases they worsen possible sustainable solutions.
We pointed out in the last post, rereading Edgar Morin, we highlight his chapter Conservar/Revolucionar from his book Terra-Pátria, where he emphasizes that we cannot move to a new future horizon by abandoning the humanistic achievements already achieved, human rights, democratic freedoms and cultural-religious tolerance of all ethnicities.
We always hope for a turnaround, even in this serious situation, there is a need for resistance of the spirit, that is, where fundamental human values are assured.
Conserving/revolutionizing and resisting
25
Oct
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches
human limits and continues to humanize itself ?
Edgar Morin’s answer can be found in chapter 4 of the book Earth-Land when he sets out “Our terrestrial goals”, where he states: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99), and stresses that the former is conservative and neglects “deliberately here the adjective ‘revolutionary’, which has become reactionary and very tainted with barbarism” (idem) and it is enough to see the atrocities of the escalation of current wars.
Conservative because “it is a question of preserving, of safeguarding not only the cultural and natural diversities degraded by inexorable processes of standardization and destruction, not only the civilizational conquests threatened by the returns and manifestations of barbarism” (idem p. 99) we cannot regress in the civilizational milestones we have already reached, but we must evolve.
It’s a paradox, but a justifiable one: “Conservation needs the revolution that would ensure the pursuit of hominization” (Morin, 2003, p. 100) where the paradox “apparently contradictory, conserve/revolutionize: it is the paradox progress/resist” (idem), where resisting is “being on the defensive on all fronts against the returns and manifestations of the great barbarism, written before the new millennium, this is very current in the face of the possibility of war.
To resist, for the author, is to oppose two growing barbarities: the “hateful cruelty” that expresses itself “in murder, torture, individual and collective rages” and the “anonymous cruelty that comes from the techno-bureaucratic barbarity” of assumed or presumed totalitarian states.
Thus, the author, who speaks of “hyper-specialization”, “anonymization, abstraction, commodification, which together lead to the loss not only of the global”, sees the imperative need to resist this mentality, which necessarily leads to barbarism and the process of degradation.
Thus the search “for hominization must be conceived as the development of our psychic, spiritual, ethical, cultural and social potentialities” (p. 101) is part of this paradox of resisting/revolutionizing, so development must be conceived in an anthropological way, i.e. “breaking with the conception of progress as a historical certainty in order to make it an uncertain possibility…” (p. 102).
And he adds that he must “understand that no development is acquired forever: like all living and human things, it suffers the attack of the principle of degradation and needs to be constantly regenerated” (p. 102) and points out the false idea of development, because “: the underdevelopment of the developed increases precisely with their techno-economic development” (p. 104), war and conflict are precisely the “developed”.
Thus the notion of underdevelopment: “however barbaric it may be, it establishes an anthropological link between the so-called developed and the so-called underdeveloped; it encourages useful technical and medical aid – drilling wells, developing energy sources, fighting endemic diseases and nutritional deficiencies – even though it is carried out under conditions of economic exploitation, natural degradation and miserable urbanization that cause new evils” (p. 105).
It is therefore necessary to “tolerate” differences and even establish advantages over them, to no longer ignore or demonize different cultures, to establish aid and agreements for global development and the process of broad humanization, which the author calls “hominization”.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
Dilemmas about peace in Europe and the Middle East
21
Oct
The first major dilemma, although quite
obvious, has no support in the mainstream international press: there is a lack of forces that want peace in a way that is equidistant from the countries in conflict.
The UN could once play this role, but with infighting between the major powers, this power is limited to speeches and attempts to sensitize the warring parties.
The second major dilemma stems from a serious misconception that is common among warmongers: if you want peace, prepare for war, but the opposite is true: if you want peace, fight for it.
In Eastern Europe, for example, it was reported in the German press that Estonia, which has only 6,500 active military personnel and a population of 1.3 million, had recently simulated an evacuation plan to withdraw the population, although 60% of the citizens say they are willing to defend the country, they have no military preparation for this.
A curious defense structure has been set up on the border of many Baltic countries (photo from the German newspaper DW – Deutsche Welle). It’s not known how effective it will be, but it’s for war, and the proximity of Ukraine and Russia is making several Baltic countries prepare for the worst.
In the midst of Israeli attacks and little public aid, activist forces in Lebanon are taking action, albeit politicized and insufficient for the people in need, according to the same DW newspaper, the Syrian military and opposition forces charge exorbitant amounts for the transport of refugees fleeing the war.
This leads to a third serious dilemma: the red cross and the red crescent (the Arabic version of the red cross) do not accept the religious controversy, but it is this that divides aid forces.
The fourth dilemma is to resolve the ideological and cultural-religious background to the conflicts. During the Cold War (USA vs. Soviet Union), the sociologist Raymond Aron uttered a well-known phrase: “The Cold War was a period in which war was improbable and peace impossible.” The dilemma is now reversed: “Peace is improbable and war is possible.” The imperialist forces at play will not easily give up their disputed interests.
How to think about peace seems like an arid and impractical path, but great thinkers have called for it: “the resistance of the spirit” and as a consequence “the resistance of hope”, Edgar Morin among others point to this path, perhaps the only one to change the mentality of power, to think about solidarity and serving all of humanity, not one group of interest.
Lack of balance and Being
17
Oct
An analysis of Western culture cannot be
complete without an understanding of Anger. Various authors have analyzed the issue. Byung-Chul Han recalls that one of the first words in Homer’s Iliad begins: “Aira, Goddess, celebrates the wrathful Achilles, who brought so many sorrows to the Achaeans and cast countless souls into Hades,” but that’s not all.
Aristotle defines anger as: “a desire, accompanied by pain, for perceived revenge, on account of a perceived disregard for an individual or his neighbor, coming from people from whom disregard is not expected” (2.2.1378a31-33) wrote in Rhetoric, but Peter in his essay Anger and Time reframes this psychoanalytical view that reduces the feeling to a mere escape valve for unfulfilled desires and rediscovers it as a 21st century political concept.
The author says: “While the link between spirit and resentment was stable – the demand for justice for the world – whether beyond earthly life or in the history that takes place – was able to take refuge in fictions that have been dealt with in detail here: in the theology of the wrath of God and in the world timotic economy of communism” (Sloterdijk, 2021), which takes on a controversial theme (image is part of book cover).
What is certain is that there is anger on both sides, and the “already” but “not yet” that was discussed in the previous post does not reside in them, because both thoughts are affiliated with modern idealism, and this is the central criticism of Kant and Hegel’s German idealism, they do not point to a new idealism.
In it there is an absence of pain, which precedes com-passion, more than an act of mercy (miseri cordis, of the heart), it is an act of adherence and justification of the existential peripheries, where the pain of justice resides, but as existential it also resides in disillusioned and tired hearts.
Contemplation and the already and not yet, which reaches both the earthly and the divine spheres, requires a vita activa which is that of psychological, family and social equilibrium which does not exclude the other, not infrequently those who defend only earthly or only divine justice, do not have a proactive action that leads to the encounter of pain, widely analyzed in Byung-Chul Han’s “Palliative Society”, eliminated pain by transferring to earthly or divine “paradise”, without our com-passion.
The balance of Being, which is already realized, but not yet (completely), has something to say about justice, the common good and peace.
Sloterdijk, P. (2021) Ira e tempo. Trad. Marco Casanova. Brasil, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade.
Ontology, idealism and truth
16
Oct
Heidegger’s thought must start from the question
of Spirit in Hegel, read by Byung-Chul in Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit “in terms of the forgetfulness of being” (Heidegger’s central question), he sees it as an “arid self” that finds “its limitation in the being that meets it” (Han, p. 334 quoting Hegel).
Although he recovers Hegel, in part, in the epigraph to the last chapter: “truth is the whole”, he re-discusses dialectics and its metaphysics in idealism: “in relation to ‘just being’, which empties it to a name ‘that no longer names anything’, natural consciousness … when it becomes aware of being, assures itself that it is something abstract. “ (Han, 2023, pg 336).
Natural consciousness (seen in this way) “dwells on ‘perversities’ … “it tries to eliminate one perversity by organizing another, without remembering the authentic inversion” where ‘the truth of the essence of being is gathered into being’ (pg. 336 with quotes from Heidegger), which sees this as a step backwards and the forgotten, misunderstood ‘already’ (pg. 337), does not appear completely negated, it appears in the form of ‘not yet’ which is not a negation, nor a barricade, placed ‘next to the already prevents it from appearing’ (pg. 337).
There is a whole development in contrast to Hegel’s dialectic, more than a topic, it could well be a book, but the dialogue he engages in with Derridá and Adorno in the chapter on Mourning and the work of mourning, leads to his vision of the whole outside of dialectical abstraction, he says the concern with immortality, with death and with the work of mourning.
The “cardiographic” archive of the history of philosophy, in which the philosopher “works” to reverse the negative of being, is not the only secret in the heart of Plato or Hegel (p. 384).
This is what will form the basis of his “work of mourning”: “to be capable of death as death”, that is, to be capable of mourning, this “tragedy” “differs radically from the noisy work of mourning of the Hegelian dialectic” (Han, 2023, p. 385).
“Tears free the subject from his narcissistic interiority … they are the spell that the subject casts over nature“ (Han, p. 394) now quoting Adorno, and the author states that ‘Aesthetic Theory is the book of tears (idem) and that contrary to Kant, and that ’the spirit perceives, in the face of nature, less its own superiority than its own naturalness” (p. 395).
“The aesthetic experience shakes the narcissistic subject who thinks he is sovereign and causes the hardened principle of the ‘I’ to crumble … the tear of the shaken and moved subject proves to be capable of truth” (p. 395).
Capable of truth, of the infinite and for those who believe in God, not a God of passing goods and false joy, but that of the already, but not yet, that beyond the pain and transience of temporal things.
Han, B.C. (2023) Coração de Heidegger: sobre o conceito de tonalidade afetiva em Martin Heidegger. Transl. Rafael Rodrigues Garcia, Milton Camargo Mota. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Noetics, Ontologie and War
14
Oct
For Plato, noesis is superior to dianoia, which
is discursive and apparently logical, while the former is a high possible mental activity, inhabiting the sphere of Good and Harmony.
It is a possibility of access to the “divine” world (Plato’s highest good which is in the eidos), it is transcendent, absolute, beyond ordinary human reasoning, philosophers pursue it without even touching on the question of the belief in a higher God where noesis “dwells”, it is not Being, but a mental attitude.
Dianoia, on the other hand, while it inhabits logical, mathematical and technical reasoning, is attached to what the mind can grasp of the earthly world, even though it admits to mistakes, truths that are not absolute and sometimes confusing, they inhabit the daily life of the human being, who is also disconnected from Being.
There is a foundational line that goes from phenomenology to the anthropotechnics of Peter Sloterdijk and Byung-Chul Han, essentially involving the question of Being, the link between noesis and noema, weakened by the bombardment of narratives that the digital universe has provided, but the forgetting of being, the absence of interiority have led to what Chul-Han calls “deauritization” and “pure facticity”:
“The disenchantment of the world expresses itself as de-auritization. Aura is the radiance that elevates the world beyond its pure facticity, the mysterious veil that envelops things” (Han, 2023, p. 80).
It’s not a question of denying facticity, but of not allowing its noesis, that is, the initial comprehension in the mind in all its aura, it makes a “narrative selection”, in the words of Byung-Chul (talking about photography): “It extends or shortens the temporal distance. It skips years or decades. Narrativity is opposed to chronological facticity” (Han, 2023, p. 81).
These are the lies of wars, of all wars because they hide their real motives, but particularly of current wars because they use narratives to change what is evident if read in chronological facticity, in a very current example, last week’s bombing of a hospital for the elderly in Ukraine (photo) and the bombing of UN bases in Lebanon, this correlates with cruelty and the absence of any narration to justify them.
Peace lies in the hearts and authorities that maintain the aura of hope, the spirit of solidarity.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) A crise da narração. Transl. Daniel Guilhermino. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes.
Truth, noesis and The Bad
11
Oct
In the prolegomena to the first volume of Logical Investigations, Husserl,
who had been strongly influenced by Franz Brentano, the father of social psychology, sees relativism and its basis in the turbid worldview as a problem, so the relativity of the existence of a world is neither objective nor subjective, but “the complete objective unity that corresponds to the ideal system of all truths of fact, and is inseparable from it” (HUSSERL, 2005, p. 136).
This is because each type of object has its own possible developments, so to speak, it has its own method prescribed a priori by laws of essence determined by the eidos of the objectivity in question (Husserl, 2006, 309), which means that it is the essence of the objectivity that predetermines the type of concordant development one has in experiencing it.
There can be the experience of evidence in this experience of the object, and this contributes to its status as an entity as a “true being” (Husserl, 2006, p. 309), what Husserl called “Lebenswelt”, a logic of life, in this case of the experience of the object.
In this way, an object that is “pure X” remains stable in the midst of the multiplicity of noematic characters that emerge in the course of an experience, the object targeted in thought by human consciousness, it precedes the first intuitive idea that is noesis (thinking X).
Husserl wrote that this noetic vision is a synthesis of identity, a central concept for establishing the “effective”, “true” object, the objectivity apprehended in evident donation, in a synthesis of concordant identity:
To every “truly existing” object corresponds as a matter of principle (in the a priori of unconditioned eidetic generality) the idea of a possible consciousness, in which the object itself is originally apprehensible and, moreover, in perfect adequacy. Conversely, if this possibility is guaranteed, the object is ipso truly existent” (HUSSERL, 2006, p. 316).
The syntheses involved in phenomenological thinking, for establishing the “being” or “non-being” of noematic correlated objects, are “intentionalities of a higher order”, which is what Husserl took from Franz Brentano’s neo-Thomist thinking, getting rid of the psychologism, the eidos that we have of good and evil, still scholastic from the father of social psychology.
In Husserl’s view, the intentionality of the evident giving of aspects of the object that are not yet present forms an intentional horizon, which in turn brings its predetermined potentialities, so the factual visions of war and peace, of the devil and evil are false.
They are ill-formed intentionalities (in the sense that they don’t have a noetic truth), the truth as “being”, as “the true” in the phatic and idealist readings, is for Husserl an “effectiveness” (Wirklichkeit) since it has coherence at its core.
Husserl, E. (2005) Investigações lógicas. Primeiro volume: Prolegômenos à lógica pura. Tradução de D. Ferrer. Lisbon, PT: Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa.
Husserl, E. (2006) Ideias para uma fenomenologia pura e para uma filosofia fenomenológica. Tradução de M. Suzuki. Brazil, Aparecida, SP: Ideias & Letras.
Wars and narratives
08
Oct
Aeschylus, writing from ancient Greece, is the
author of the phrase: “truth is the first victim of war”, retired Russian general Andrey Gurulyov, spoke on the Russia-1 channel, pointing out what Russia’s targets would be, that it was preparing for a major war, Islamic Jihad is a group with strong influence in Iran and which preaches the end of Israel, its discourse is theocentric and not geopolitical.
These are just a few half-truths about the war. Of course, Israel and Ukraine are allies of the West in the economic geopolitical struggle to preserve the rights of companies and big capital, which is why both sides find it difficult to understand “civilizational” peace.
In Plato’s dialogue Theaetetus, regarded as one of the first in history on relativism, the ideas of appearance, truth and soul are combined; Socrates’ first demand to start the dialogue is that Theaetetetus abandon his initial ideas, and when he asks what knowledge is and gets an answer about geometry and other arts, Socrates replies ironically: “You are noble and generous, friend, for they ask you for something simple and you offer multiple and diverse things.” The second question is how to reach knowledge.
The second question is how to arrive at knowledge, and Theaetetetus’ answer is “sensation” (or perception). Socrates indicates that we must abandon the “familiarity” we have of things, he says in the dialogue: “It seems to me that he who knows something perceives what he knows, and to say the thing as it now manifests itself, knowledge is nothing more than sensation.”
The second answer is an advance on the first, because this is how the Greeks considered them: “On this all the wise men, one after the other, except Parmenides, must agree: Protagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles and, among the poets, those who are at the top of each of the compositions, Epicarmo, in comedy, and Homer, in tragedy…”, quoting the Greeks up until that period, the so-called pre-Socratics.
Thus, until then, truth was confined to sensation. When he begins his dialogue with Protagoras, he arrives at the idea of the first misconception of relative truth: “The man who is the measure of all things would not, in the end, be a man confined to the restricted circle of his most immediate experience and of what seems true to him alone,” and this refers to appearance.
Using this idea of “familiarity” with things, Plato opens up a crisis in the Greeks’ idea of knowledge, and thus opens up a new ontological path about the soul, starting from Homer’s “heart of the soul” (194c), there would hardly be any occasion for error, because it (the soul) would promptly make the correct identification of the current impression, breaking down prejudices.
Plato. (2010) Teeteto. Trad. Adriana Manuela Nogueira e Marcelo Boeri. LisboN: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Totalitarianism and innocent lives
04
Oct
In war the first victim is the truth, a phrase
attributed to Aeschylus of ancient Greece, but the tragic thing is the proportion of innocent victims, pure and elevated souls that war consumes because of the dread that totalitarian leaders have of freedom, free people and true humanism.
There are countless cases, from hospitals and schools being bombed to cases of torture and cruelty to people who would bear great fruit for an elevated humanity, and that’s exactly why sick minds fight them.
I discovered among these various names, through a student, a Jewish woman named Etty (Esther) Hillesum, a Dutch daughter of Dutch father Louis Hillesum and Russian mother Rebecca Bernstein (Riva), a professor of ancient languages, from whom the interest in languages was probably born, but she goes to study Slavic languages, perhaps inspired by her mother, and then takes a master’s degree in law.
Her diaries and letters were written during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, and among the first books I came across were “Une vie bouleversée” (A Life Turned Upside Down) and 15 Days of Prayer with Etty Hillesum (published in Portuguese by Paulinas).
One of her phrases “inside me there is a deep well”, where inside there is sand and stones that prevent you from reaching something clearer, reveals a mystical path and the search within her to reach a deeper interiority, it is a refuge, I would say a spiritual resistance to Nazism and the climate that was generated around her.
Her relationship with psychiatrist Julius Spier (who was influenced by Karl Yung), initially for treatment and then for personal involvement, awakened her intellectuality, and in March 1941 she began to write her first of eight diaries.
In June and July 1942, he deepened his mystical dialog, writing: “God has become an interlocutor…” and it is in this context that we can talk about his writings on prayer.
He wrote in “15 Days of Prayer with Etty Hillesum”: “He took me by the hand, so to speak, and said to me: ‘That’s how you have to live’.” On the first day, he said of the second: “An hour of peace, you have to learn … I’m going to turn inward … half an hour of gymnastics and half a prayer of meditation”, the third day: ‘Hineinhorchen: listening inwardly’, listening to oneself, to others and to God.
This is how Etty’s itinerary goes: day four: “forgive my parents and their limits”, day five: “surrender to yourself and to your own guardianship”, in short, of a pure and innocent soul who indicates not just a path of repetitive and meaningless prayers, but an interior path.
One of the millions of innocent souls who died in concentration camps, she met her death in the Auschwitz camp at the young age of 29. Her writings are pure and profound, reminiscent of the purity of children and of people who live a human humanity.
Ferrière, P., Meeûs-Michiels, I. (2016) 15 dias de oração com Etty Hillesum (15 days of prays with the Etty Hillesum). Brazil, São Paulo: Paulinas editions.
Believe in divine protection and do good
02
Oct
Despite the climate of war, we must wish for peace.
We warned in yesterday’s post that an escalation was imminent and it has happened, the climate and hate speech on both sides in the current global polarization is advancing and only those who continue to do good will be at peace.
It seems heroic, innocent or even childish to continue to wish for and do good, but this is the only way not to fall into the trivialization of evil, polarization and inhuman discourse.
Yesterday, on Monday night in Brazil and early Tuesday morning in Israel, more than 180 missiles from Iran were launched at Israel, hypersonic missiles that traveled in 12 minutes until they hit Jewish soil; the number of victims and targets hit were not disclosed.
The involvement of the Arab world, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria have already declared their support for the attack, which had Palestinian celebrations in Gaza, takes the confrontation to a global scale, in the United States, Biden asked the forces in the area to defend Israel, which promises retaliation to Iran.
The possibility of the closure of the Gulf of Oman will affect the price of oil worldwide and, with it, the cost of products that depend on transportation and global logistics.
Only by adhering to goodness, peace and your daily life can we remain emotionally balanced and serene, even in the face of adverse circumstances, where everyone gives in to panic, hatred and the trivialization of evil.
For the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the banality of evil is the phenomenon of our character’s refusal to reflect and the tendency not to assume the consequences of actions that do not assume the consequences of evil, and thus prevent us from adhering to the good.
We only have protection in our spirit and soul when we resist the temptation to evil, what the philosopher and educator Edgar Morin also calls “resistance of the spirit” in the midst of polarization, hatred and war; by doing good actions we attract peace around us and divine protection.
