Arquivo para a ‘Information Science’ Categoria
Wars and their crimes intensify
02
Sep
Both in Eastern Europe and the Middle East,
violence against civilians increases and the war increasingly takes on global proportions with the presence of US and European forces.
Ukraine’s advance on Russia is met with multiple bombers of civilian regions by Russia, while Ukraine advances into Russian territory and tries to consolidate itself within this territory, suffering setbacks in the east where Russian forces approach Kharkiv.
On the border of Lebanon and the West Bank, Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire with rockets, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was convicted by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, Hamas on the other hand killed 6 hostages, four men and two women who were at the music festival, the scene of terrorism carried out by Hamas in Israeli territory.
The climate is one of total war, Israel has declared itself “at war”, there is an evacuation of civilians in Gaza, and several airlines have canceled flights to Israel.
The situation is quite worrying because it is increasingly a path of no return, a total war is increasingly possible, the Russian foreign minister spoke openly about the matter, last Tuesday (27/08) he said that “the The West is playing with fire.”
The minister and spokesperson directly threatened the USA by stating: “Americans unequivocally associate conversations about the Third World War as something that – if, God forbid, it happens – will exclusively affect Europe”, so he assumes that the possibility exists.
Certainly the warning is clear, and the situation of Ukrainian troops in an area of 1,200 km2 within Russia is not only a nuisance, but shows, at least occasionally, a military fragility of which Russia has always been proud, the country has never abandoned education warfare, which is even taught in state schools.
The world’s concern is the tension in the Middle East, unfortunately there is no prospect of disarmament and both Netanyahu’s conviction and the death of hostages by Hamas are fuel on the fire that fuels hatred and war. September, which begins, brings global concerns.
On the Eastern European side, it is possible to sew some truce and a path to peace, if Europe and NATO want, of course, and Russia admits the negotiation, with the recent defeats and the concern for its territory this can happen, but the involvement of several countries is very worrying, a clear sign of respect for Russian sovereignty is needed.
Peace must be desired and practiced by everyone, it is necessary to disarm spirits, the global climate is tense.
Inner life and happiness
30
Aug
We live in pure exteriority, modern man does not
know the interior life, he is projected onto things and actions, he believes he can extract from it what is missing internally.
Byung-Chul Han in his essay “Vita Contemplativa” [contemplation life] quotes a short story by Walter Benjamin “Do not forget the best” in which he recalls a little shepherd boy, “who is allowed, on “a Sunday”, to enter the mountain of his treasures, but with the cryptic instruction: “don’t forget the best”. The best means not doing it.” (Han, 2023, pg 33).
Reading Being in modernity, Han writes: “The crisis of the present consists of everything that could give meaning and guidance to life and is breaking. Life does not rely on anything resistant to support it.” (pg. 87), recalls quoting Hanna Arendt who claims to “find uncertain shelter in the darkness of the human heart” which still has the ability to say: “to remember and say: forever” (idem) and remembers immortality in this aspect.
When contemplating the being that has a temporal dimension: “It grows long and slowly. The current short term dismantles it.” (pg. 89) and quotes Niklas Luhmann about the (current) information: “His cosmology is a cosmology not of being, but of contingency” (pg. 89 quoting Luhmann).
But it remembers immortality translated in this crisis as: “The search for immortality, for immortal glory, is, according to Arendt, “the source and center of the vita activa.” Human beings achieve their immortality on the political stage” (pg. 145), but true immortality is the eternal.
Then Han writes: “In contrast, the vita contemplativa is not, according to Arendt, persisting and lasting in time, but the experience of the eternal, which transcends both time and the surrounding world.” (idem page 145).
Arendt admires Socrates, writes Han, “who voluntarily renounces immortality” (pg. 146) and thus remembers that even writing becomes vita activa, and creates a temporary immortality, which Han remembers that Arendt also sought when writing.
But it is not a question of abandoning the complement of the vita contemplativa which is the vita activa, what happens is that the “animal laborans” (as Arendt calls the modern one): “is ruining all human capacities, especially action” (Han, 2023, p. 149).
Remember that the capacity for action arises from thought “which is not irrelevant to the human future, because if we considered the different activities of the Vita activa [active life] in relation to the question of which of them would be the most active and in which of them the experience of the active being would be expressed in a purer way, then the result would be that thought all activities with regard to pure active being” (Han, 2023, pgs. 149-150).
So it is not from our outside that our bad actions come from, but rather they are inside us.
Han, B.-C. (2023). Vita contemplativa. Trans. Lucas Machado. Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
Justice, ideia and thinking
29
Aug
The three words are important at a time of
great crisis in thought (what is), what is an idea, and the idea of justice or the just, explored by current thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas (we mentioned in a previous post on the issue of including Outro) and we quote in passing the two volumes of Paul Ricoeur o Justo (volume two published by Martins Fontes in Brazil) although the author himself says that it is an essay, he penetrates a deeper aspect, the question of truth and morals.
Reading the text, Inclusion of the Other by Habermas, clarifies that in philosophical terms, that morality in John Rawls, in Kantian terms, has differences between Kant’s original political liberalism and Kantian republicanism, which is how Rawls defends it, this would be enough, but there is a long analysis in Volume 1 by Paul Ricouer on justice in Rawls.
To understand Ricoeur’s book 2 it is necessary to understand that for the Greeks the first philosophy is that which for them, and the ontological resumption has to do with this, metaphysics as questions about Being, existence, the cause and the meaning of reality and physis (nature) must be placed prior to the second, aspects linked to logic and ethics.
Book 2 addresses what seems most essential in Ricoeur, although he confesses that it is an essay, its goal is “to justify the thesis that theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy are of equal levels; as none of it is first philosophy in relation to what Stanislas Breton characterized as the meta- function (I myself defended this reformulation of metaphysics in terms of the meta- function, in which “the maximum genres” of the dialectic of Plato’s last dialogues would be united and Aristotelian speculation on the plurality of the meaning of being or beings) “ (Ricoeur, 2008, p. 63) … but he did not speak (initially it was written in a conference) about this but rather about the two second philosophy.
His analysis is based “initially, thinking about justice and truth without each other; in a second moment, think about them in a way of reciprocal or crossed presupposition” (Ricoeur, 2008, p. 64) and this undertaking “has nothing revolutionary, it is located in the line of speculations about transcendentals…” (idem).
When approaching the first stage of the analysis: “I thought of Rawls’ statement at the beginning of Théorie de la justice: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, just as truth is the first virtue of theories” (pg. 65) and There the author takes up the ethical part of another text of his: Soi-même comme um autre, to “guarantee the eminent status of justice”.
The idea developed there is that this triad leads to “equity”, it is not the dualism between the Self and the Other (the next one also uses Ricoeur), “the triad belongs to the horizontal axis and does not consist absolutely in the simple juxtaposition between the self, the near and far; it is the same dialectic of the self. The desire to live well roots the moral project of life, in desire and lack, as marked by the grammatical structure of the desire… but without the mediation of the other two terms of the triad, the desire for a good life would be lost in the nebula of the variable figures of happiness… I would say that the short circuit between wanting a good life and happiness is the result of ignorance of the dialectical constitution of the self” (pg. 66).
The author formulates the idea of distance in these terms: “fair distance, a middle ground between the very little distance typical of many dreams of emotional fusion and the excess of distance fueled by arrogance, contempt, hatred of the strange, unknown. I would see in the virtue of hospitality the closest emblematic impression of this culture of just distance” (pg. 66).
Justice on the vertical axis, that of power and norm, is seen by the author as follows: “on the vertical axis that leads to the pre-eminence of practical wisdom and, with it, justice as equity, a first observation can be made regarding the relationship between kindness and justice. The relationship is neither one of identity nor difference; goodness characterizes the goal of the deepest desire and, thus, belongs to the grammar of wanting.
I consider the triad to be the self, the other and the distant, if also seen as a transcendent alterity, there is another “unknown” that can be divine and a carrier of messages, in network theory for example the “weak link” is considered fundamental , Ricoeur’s essay is rich, however, when returning to the question of the Kantian categorical imperative, which justifies political idealism, I believe that Habermas is correct in stating that this is the mistake in John Rawls’ consistent and very current “A Theory of Justice”. influential.
A part of the biblical reading can expand the concept of this distant as transcendent otherness (Mt 5,20): “Unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, which in the deontological sense one could say “you will not enter into the truth of justice”.
A part of the biblical reading can expand the concept of this distant as transcendent otherness (Mt 5,20): “Unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven”, which in the deontological sense one could say “you will not enter into the truth of justice”.
Ricoeur, P. (2008) Justo 2: justice and truth and other studies (in portuguese). Trans. Ivone C. Benedetti. Brazil, São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2008.
Essence and linguistic turn
28
Aug
The dualism present today in human and
social relations, conceives the essence only as an analogy to Being, and this was lost in the Thomistic doctrine, becoming an onto-theology until the 20th century, that is, a theological vision that only has a dual relationship with the social being, only with the varied linguistics and phenomenology and with the reunion of the Other, non-Being is resumed not as a contradiction, but as the essence of Being.
The long discussion of the medieval period between realists and nominalists was based on a term little known today which was quiddity, which means that the thing the thing is, from the Greek hylé to the modern models of Heidegger’s metaphysics, where the thing that can be material or not, which was already thought along the lines of Husserl, his predecessor and teacher, who states that there is only consciousness of something, or of the thing.
There was a philosopher in the Middle Ages, Duns Scotto (1266-1308) who did not distinguish between the thing that exists (si est) and what it is (quid est), and theologically it was complicated because the thesis of Thomas Aquinas (1225 -1274) was by analogy, that is, the meaning of similarity between things or facts (Houaiss dictionary, 2009, p. 117), and religious people were always careful because in the 20th century Duns Scotto was accepted within Catholic Christian doctrine, making —he was blessed (John Paul II declared him).
Although called a moderate realist, he was already, in a way, a linguist and a precursor of the linguistic shift, also William of Ockham, his disciples worked on the issue of language, with the famous theme called Ockham’s Razor, more than simplifying the use of language as a way of overcoming the nominalism/realism dualism.
Scotto’s theory of knowledge, behind known distinctions distinctio realis (real distinction) and exists between two beings of nature, and the distinctio rationalis (distinction of reason) that occurs between two beings, but in the mind of the subject who knows, but breaks dualism by creating a third possibility, distinctio formalis (formal distinction), which occurs in the perceived entity and is neither real nor in the mind.
So in addition to his disciple William of Ockham, famous for the simplification principle called Ockham’s Razor, but in a way Descartes, Leibniz, Hobbes and Kant had their influence.
In times of pandemic, the fraternity of helping victims was much more important than the still uncertain debate about science and “beliefs” that this or that procedure is right, in hostile environments death was the winner, so dogmatists and authoritarians only got in the way, but this too was lost.
Thus, it is essential to regain awareness of the Being that we keep the Other in mind, without him, his essence and how he is for each man is neglected.
The being is important to turning the essence and new realism non dualism.
The poor and demagoguery
27
Aug
The easy speech, especially in times of politics,
is to appeal to the poor, the forgotten, the discriminated against, etc. for a while the populists even offered something to the population, income distribution policies and cheap credit, but the problem is that they don’t forget to supply allies and their own pockets, in addition to the public accounts that explode.
This happened in several countries in Latin America and the result is that the bill arrives and then we see the ghosts of authoritarianism and popular revolt come out, now they realize that this can also happen in African countries, the African National Congress ( ANC), Nelson Mandela’s party that freed South Africa from apartheid, lost the mayoral elections in Nelson Mandela Bay and also in the capital Pretoria.
South African President Jacob Zuma is involved in corruption processes and poverty and the economy do not work well there, so the population loses illusions about future promises.
Populism deceives with speeches, but in many parts of the planet, little by little, greater dissemination of facts is making concrete actions, honest stances and even more clear policies to lift the population out of poverty more necessary, Argentina was an example of this.
In many countries the homeless and unemployed population is increasing, even in Europe this is one of the sources of xenophobia, as people from poor countries do not refuse heavy work and lower wages, one gets the impression that they are “taking” the jobs of workers. locals, the demagogic analysis of something getting better is falling apart.
The threat of war can make this even more serious, because “tough” governments can be thought of as “necessary” at this moment, in short, a turning point is needed, and there is no way to do this without clear, sustainable and less populist policies to change the situation. scenario.
It is necessary to eliminate poverty in a radical and borderless way, welfare and immediate public policies are not enough, it is necessary to have a clear horizon where the dignity of every person is guaranteed, in addition to immediate relief from hunger, wars and endemic diseases.
The election of city halls and regional states, of course, has a more provincial bias, but it must not fail to consider a changing global scenario and a broader mentality, the world has been a global village for some time now.
Warning to politicians of all stripes, demagoguery’s days are numbered, change must be made.
An un-avoidable war
26
Aug
The escalation of the war continues without a
light at the end of the tunnel, despite efforts to ensure that the two most dangerous wars do not exceed limits that make 3G inevitable, on the Iran and Israel side of the conflict there were unsuccessful conferences in Doha, on the Ukraine side x Russia, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Zelensky in Kiev.
Symbolically, both events are important for Peace, Mahatma Gandhi’s India has a pacifist tradition, Narendra Modi 14th. Prime Minister of India, he is the first to have been born after independence from England, achieved in a peaceful war on the Indian side, as England acted with repression and violence.
The conference in Doha also has its significance, in addition to several conferences from Western countries, it also hosted the 5th. conference for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) that seeks to respond to the challenges of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals through a program of Action (Doha Program of Action – DpoA).
The military incursion into Russia continued in a significant area of 1,200 km and there were also drone attacks, the objective is to reach military posts and oil reservoirs on Russian soil, but Russia is advancing on eastern Ukraine in areas close to Kharkiv and Belarus also concentrates troops in other side, Ukraine acuse.
The escalation of both wars, there is a video showing tunnels inside Lebanon of the pro-Iran Hezbollah group. With enormous mobility where motorcycles and trucks pass, where a large part of the weapons for attacks would be located, which in the early hours of yesterday (Sunday 25/08) would have already started, Israel is on high alert and is removing residents from the border.
Lithuania announced that it already has collaboration areas with the German army for exercises in case the war with Russia escalates, the initial forecast is to place 5 thousand soldiers in areas already reserved for the German army.
Biden announced new military aid to Ukraine, the conversation between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov on Friday (23/08) talks about a package worth US$ 125 million, in reais around R $685 million.
India’s involvement and the countries that meet in Doha (among them the United States and Egypt) is possíble, but is necessary first desarm the spirits.
The Sophists’ Justification of Power
20
Aug
The sophists were intelligent men who educated
and influenced young people in Classical Antiquity, using oratory and rhetoric, to use speech to justify power, regardless of moral aspects.
They were fought first by Socrates, we only know about him through Plato, and then by Plato (428 BC – 347 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) who defended education for true citizenship, considering the sophists merely mercenaries of the powerful.
As we read in Plato, Protagoras was one of these sophists, he was born in 490 BC and thus can be considered the first sophist, another famous one was Hippias who would have debated with Socrates about natural and conventional laws, he was versed in astronomy, mathematics, painting and poetry which gave him great “authority”.
They have their origins in the pre-Socratics: Protagoras would be a disciple of Democritus (the famous phrase “man is the measure of all things”), Thrasymachus, the main figure in the beginning of Plato’s Republic, argued that “justice would be only the advantage of stronger”, and Gorgias, who is not considered a sophist by Socrates, creates a controversy with Parmenides (being is and non-being is not), according to this “sophist” one cannot communicate what is not known.
Two criticisms can be considered fundamental to the sophists, creating relative truths and this has a strong relationship with modern narratives, and the fact that they considered that virtues were not things that could be taught, thus dismissing moral values.
They, however, did not ignore the questions of the “soul” (what idealism calls subjectivity) in Gorgias’ speech we can read:
“[T]here is the same relationship between the power of speech and the disposition of the soul, the device of drugs and the nature of bodies: just as such a drug causes such a mood to leave the body, and that some cause illness to cease, others life, so Also, among the speeches, some afflict, others enchant, make fear, inflame the listeners, and some, due to some bad persuasion, drug the soul and bewitch it.”
Modern sophists go beyond disregarding the soul, as they praise drugs, drunkenness and temporal pleasures, education for citizenship and replaced by pure ideologisms, today little thought out and organized, are vague promises of a better future.
Thus the logic of power is inverted, Thrasymachus’s “strongest” speech makes sense again, the lack of reasonable moral values has been extinguished in exchange for momentary and fleeting happiness, and rhetoric and oratory are used to convince of many, but true moral discourse says: “the last will be first and the first will be last” (Mt 19:30) because this logic only leads to destruction and empty promises.
Plato. A república (The republic). Trans. And notes Maria da Rocha Pereira, 9th. ed. Colouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, s/d.
The limits of total war
19
Aug
With hope and with great fear of a total war,
which would culminate in a great civilizational crisis, we post weekly analysis of the evolution of situations in which the limits of a total war can be broken and lead to an inevitable confrontation.
Now countries in Europe and the United States are trying to understand these limits, recognizing that Israel exceeded this limit by assassinating the leader of Hamas in the middle of Iranian territory, the idea of putting an end to the tension created runs the risk of not being heard by Iran and a war Direct agreement between Israel and Iran would involve the world’s great war powers.
The situation in Ukraine is similar, although in the opposite direction, the country was severely attacked and punished in these two years of war on the way to the destruction of its energy sources, now it has organized a bold retaliation by invading a Russian border zone and establishing itself in an area of around a thousand kilometers, in the Kursk region of Russia (photo region of bridge destroyed).
Yesterday, Sunday 18/08, Volodimir Zelenski spoke for the first time that the objective is to create a “buffer zone” to prevent attacks in the region of the country’s second largest city, Kharkiv, however this advance infuriated the Soviet leaders, who accuse the West to prepare and help Ukraine in the invasion, this limit was also exceeded there.
The sending of a submarine capable of firing missiles to the Middle East, according to White House spokesman John Kirby, who stated that the situation in the region was discussed with France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.
On the other hand, an influential Russian deputy, Mikhail Sheremet, said on Friday that the presence of a military arsenal on Russian soil is “irrefutable evidence of foreign participation” in Ukrainian military action.
All of this is a pre-World War scenario, there is no longer a limit between Western involvement and these two outbreaks of war, there is always hope, the men who provoke wars can regain their serenity and understand that these limits should not be exceeded and go to a negotiation table, but tension escalated to maximum level.
Temporal power and forgiveness
15
Aug
Temporal power rarely finds space for forgiveness,
but this does not mean that it never passes through human thought and philosophy, even though in essence, forgiving is divine, and this means going beyond what is humanly thinkable.
For the philosopher Jacques Derrida: “when forgiveness is in the service of a purpose, be it noble or spiritual, such as redemption or reconciliation, that is, every time it intends to reestablish normality, social, national, political or psychological, through mourning work or therapy, it is not pure […] Forgiveness should remain exceptional and extraordinary, putting the impossible to the test, as if it interrupted the ordinary course of human temporality”, thus it remained within human limits.
There is no doubt that crimes against humanity, atrocities and barbarities are beyond the limit of “human temporality” and so is earthly power, since it is temporal, even dictators who remained in power all their lives had a tragic or disastrous end. temporal death, and some were forgotten, others even banished from popular memory.
Therefore, forgiveness must be considered as something fundamental in addition to temporal power, and it could be a regulator for periods of crises and wars, in almost all of which it is not possible to measure the degree of atrocities committed, both on the part of the “winners” and “losers” and the rational (and divine) thing would be to consider that they got themselves into a fight that they should never have entered into.
Likewise, our personal and social sorrows and disagreements, how useful and healthy a moment of serenity would be and to sit at the table of dialogue and be able to discuss unthinkable solutions, or in Derrida’s words “putting the impossible to the test”, the moment looks like this.
If we have the courage to listen to that “enemy” that we would never listen to, to give a hand to someone whose hurt or disagreement is very great, we could return to a destructive path that seems to have no return, and whose overcoming depends only on one attitude: forgiving.
Even those who will never ask us for forgiveness have lost the serenity and humanity of seeing the other beyond judgments and disagreements, there is always another being there, ontologically we only deny the Being if we refuse to listen to it and give it some credit, maybe you need this.
Forgiving is divine, whoever takes this step understands that there is another reality beyond what we imagine to be real and possible, the impossible is also within the reach of those who forgive.
Innocence, purity and peace
13
Aug
It seems contradictory and even innocent,
in a way it is, but in a world so troubled with so many urgent problems, talking about peace, purity of feelings and behaviors is not only naive for those who believe in violent solutions, they are proving insufficient.
If we prepare for war we are convinced that it and only it is the solution, however, they produce more injustices, more inequalities and only dictators and powerful people benefit from them, they are not bothered by financial crises, innocent deaths because In your mind, only your personal safety and well-being matters.
Also authors of great works, such as Edgar Morin, who talks about the resistance of the spirit, the limitation of a tragedy of great proportions feeds sick minds in all spheres, they believe that this could be a “sign of the future”, but it is the sign of a past, also on the threshold of the First and Second World Wars, many authors warned of this, such as Karl Kraus.
The purity of children should be observed more closely, they may even fight, but soon they want to make new friends so they can play with their friends, they don’t take everything to heart and fire, unless they are encouraged by adults, and there are those who do this unfortunately.
They want the common good, wishing everyone well and wanting a more equal and peaceful world is not just any thought, it is at the foundation of every civilization that bears this name, the warlike nations and empires disappeared after a tragic decadence.
In ancient times, the Greeks spoke of the Highest Good, aretê (virtue) and the education of the citizen, the ultimate objective of both Plato and Aristotle, it was still a society of slaves and where children and women had few rights, but this goal already existed.
Desiring peace, being inspired by the purity and joy of children’s coexistence, can take us away from the perverse thoughts that surround our daily lives, from divisions, hatred and grudges.
