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False prophets and hope
Bad religion and false prophecies are those that do not announce the good news; there is no historical or truly prophetic reading of what the divine kingdom is: peace and hope.
Yes, it is true that we are in dark times, but it is still necessary to announce peace and hope. It is a fact that man has built civilization on wars and revenge to this day. However, it was peace and hope that developed agriculture, commerce, and the production of social goods. Even in the midst of wars, hope survived and made its way.
They are bad Bible readers. When the disciples asked when the times of destruction would come, the reading says in Luke 21:8-9, “Jesus answered, ‘Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, saying, “I am he!” And again: ‘The time is near’. Do not follow these people! When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be terrified. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away”
The reading about world conflicts continues (Luke 21:10-11): “And Jesus continued: “Nation will rise up against nation, and country will attack country. There will be great earthquakes, famines and plagues in many places; fearful things will happen and great signs will be seen in the sky”, but this is not the prophecy but rather what men will do before a time of peace and a true civilizing process on the planet. We learn more through pain than through reason and love. Even though these times are said to be rational, the vision of the whole, of the Earth as a homeland common to all peoples and nations, has not yet arrived. Worldly power prevails, attempts at plunder and revenge among peoples, and there is nothing divine in this, it is just the insanity of a shallow and antisocial rationalism.
The hope is that it will lead men to another level of civilization, that will help the poor, that will renew life and healthy models of development. Even what is considered a principle of sustainability is unable to manage the Earth’s resources.
A new civilization will be the one that survives these dark and intemperate times, as the forgotten cardinal virtues say (last week’s post by philosopher Philippa Foot): temperance, prudence, wisdom and courage are forgotten moral virtues, but not for everyone.
War escalation and hope
The use of long-range weapons by Ukraine and hypersonic missiles that can carry atomic payloads have already been tested in the war, and the threat of war with European countries has even appeared on Russian TV and made headlines around the world.
NATO military bases in Germany, Warsaw and London appear on a supposed map of first strikes in case Russia feels threatened, internally it has already changed its statutes on the use of nuclear weapons, breaking international agreements, and the Kremlin has authorized an increase in the production of missiles for these nuclear payloads.
The psychology that can be understood about Putin is that he’s not bluffing, and the Nordic countries seem to be the most afraid of a Russian attack. Norway distributes a handbook to its population on what to do in the event of environmental disasters or wars, alluding to this, and Finland and Sweden (pictured above) have already prepared for this hypothesis and are new members of NATO.
The war between Israel and Hezbollah continues to escalate. On Saturday (23/11), an Israeli attack killed at least 11 people and injured 23. The type of missile used is capable of hitting even bunkers and, according to the authorities, there was a strong explosive explosion after the attack.
At least there are attempts at peace agreements there, but negotiations seem to be stagnating. In Eastern Europe, it is hoped that after the take office Donald Trump, who won the US elections, some kind of agreement will be reached, but Ukraine would certainly lose part of its territory.
Hope is never forgotten among people who want peace, more than that who reject hate speech and war, because many of those who talk about peace don’t really want it, they believe that some kind of “victory” is possible on battlefields, where everyone loses.
So we can do our bit, if the war becomes unpopular the governments will move, the only thing that can move them is public opinion, because not even a possible economic, environmental or civilizational catastrophe moves them, despite the rhetoric.
COP20 and geopolitics
The topic will not be touched upon directly, as Arab countries such as Egypt and Turkey are taking part in the conference and Russia will be present through Foreign Minister Serguei Lavrov.
Brazil is hosting the conference, which is expected to last until Monday. The G20 or Group of 20 was formed with an economic purpose after the successive financial crises of the 1990s. In 1999, finance ministers and heads of central banks from the 19 largest economies in the world, plus the African Union and the European Union, aimed to create a strong economic group that would coordinate global actions in the economy.
These countries account for 90% of the world’s GDP and 80% of world trade (including intra-EU trade) and two thirds of the world’s population. We would expect something of great economic interest, but issues such as gender options and geopolitics (indirectly the topic will be touched on) should be avoided and, as in previous editions, the climate should be the big topic, but there is an expectation that the topic of taxing large fortunes will be taken forward.
The basic text is already being drafted behind the scenes and the final text is expected to be presented in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The meeting is important for peace, even if it is not the subject of the meeting, but the talks between the leaders and ministers of these countries will improve relations.
Meanwhile, the war in Eastern Europe is taking on dramatic contours, the Ukrainian capital Kiev has been constantly attacked by drones and the United States has given Kiev permission to use long-range missiles that could hit targets inside Russia.
In the Middle East, Israel is expected to reach an agreement with Lebanon, but the bombings continue and Iran is not taking part in the negotiations, so Hezbollah remains at war.
It is hoped that in addition to the traditional issues of gas emissions and climate problems, COP20 will launch some kind of nod towards peace, given that Russia, China and the United States will be present at the conference.
In a new geopolitical scenario, the pax romana
During the election campaign Donald Trump said he would find a solution to end the war “in one day”, his recent actions and speeches point to a Pax Romana (in the image Emperor Julius Caesar on campaign).
The Roman peace was considered to be when a nation submitted to the Roman Empire, and the conversations of the new president-elect (not yet sworn in) Donald Trump with Putin and Zelensky, as well as his speech on the Middle East, point in this direction.
According to the American newspaper the Washington Post on Sunday, Trump has already spoken to Putin and Zelensky. He told the Russian president that we must avoid escalating the war and Zelensky said that he would continue to support Ukraine, but without clearly establishing what the limits and budgets would be.
With Israel, the message to the anti-Semites was tougher, telling them to desist from taking action against Israel.
Curiously, in the American elections, the Republican had a slight lead with 21% of the Islamic vote against 20% for the Democrat, but the majority was for the Green Party, with Jill Stein getting 53% of the vote, a segment she won in the elections for the House of Representatives.
Trump’s victory was celebrated by Israelis; there the pax romana will be clearer, submission to Israel’s interests and acceptance of territorial limits.
His speech on the region was what he told Netanyahu to “get it over with” although he added “the killing has to stop”.
The problem with the pax romana is that it doesn’t eliminate disputes and grudges, which remain dormant and can explode again at any moment, in short, it’s what Trump called “peace through strength”
True peace means new horizons beyond conflicts and peoples who can live in peace through reasonable agreements.
Development, power and civilization
Politics dominated by the arrogance of power, by little service to social causes and by contempt and disrespect for the citizenship of ordinary citizens is public life gone awry.
The polarization into two large political blocs has not happened recently. Edgar Morin, in his book Terra-Pátria, already stated: “The cold war began in 1947. The planet is polarized into two blocs, waging an unrelenting ideological war everywhere. Despite the balance of atomic terror, the world is not stabilized” (Morin, 2003, p. 30).
What kind of crisis is this? In other books Morin talks about the crisis of thought, in this one about a crisis of development: “Isn’t our civilization, the model of development, itself sick of development?” (Morin, 2003, p. 83).
The crisis of civilization that we are experiencing has side effects: “Individuals only think about today, they consume the present, they allow themselves to be fascinated by a thousand futilities, they chatter without ever understanding each other in the tower of Babel of trinkets. Unable to sit still, they throw themselves in every direction” (Morin, 2003, p. 84).
Another effect is on young people: “When adolescence rebels against society, when it ‘goes astray’ and dives into hard drugs, it is believed that it is only a youthful malady; it is not realized that adolescence is the weak link in civilization, that the problems, evils, diffuse and atomized aspirations elsewhere are concentrated in it”. (Morin, 2003, p. 85).
What happens is that we enter a “blind race” as Morin calls it: “The race of the triad that has taken charge of the human adventure, science/technology/industry, is uncontrolled. Growth is uncontrolled, its progress leads to the abyss”. (Morin, 2003, p. 92).
We have certainly produced important fruits of civilization: “Oh, certainly! Shelley, Novalis, Hulderlin, Pushkin, Rimbaud, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Mussorgski, Berg are the historical fruits of a civilizational development; but their work transcends this development, it expresses our being-in-the-world, it speaks to us of the unspeakable, it takes us to the edge of ecstasy, where the irremediable influence of time and space is attenuated” (Morin, 2003, p.107).
However, the owners of power, wrapped up in their megapolitical daydreams, empires and struggles that do not contemplate human and civilizational greatness, incapable in their arrogance of giving up privileges and other peoples and nations as allies and friends, incapable of solving social and climatic problems.
The Gospel says of these, who are also those of Pharisaical religiosity: “Jesus said in his teaching to a large crowd: ”Beware of the teachers of the Law! They like to wear flashy clothes, to be greeted in public squares; they like the first seats in the synagogues and the best places at banquets. They devour widows’ houses, pretending to say long prayers. For this they will receive the worst condemnation” (Mk 12:38-40).
Morin, E.; Kern, Anne-Brigitte (2003). Terra-Pátria, transl. por Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
A new meta-development
We see living as an intense life of action, pleasure and disregard for the true joy of living, that joy and peace that only caring hearts can feel.
Edgar Morin wrote about meta-development:
“Development is a goal, but it must cease to be a short-sighted goal or an end-goal. The goal of development is itself subject to other goals. Which ones? To live truly. To live better.
Truly and better, what does that mean?
To live with understanding, solidarity and compassion. To live without being exploited, insulted, despised” (Morin, 2003, p. 106).
This must be extended to all peoples, religions and cultures on the planet; there will be no true civilizing process, justice and freedom without these values, dear conquests of humanity.
Not only Edgar Morin dreamed of a planetary citizenship, all true dreamers and humanists have dreamed of it, although some limit themselves to looking at the failures, the full life and freedom that does not ignore the rights of others is the only one capable of leading to a new moment.
Perhaps wars and all the evils they involve: economic, political and even religious struggles (a true religion would never contemplate the slightest violence against life). Above all, we must resist and hope that a new future can come, perhaps with the current suffering, I would say a “violent passion” in planetary life with threats and wars.
To what kind of regression, a true barbarism, we are heading, I have already perceived Morin’s genius and sagacity, of the double barbarism: “It is true that at all times, in all places, humanity has been faced with the need to resist diffuse cruelty made up of malice, contempt, indifference. The two present barbarisms are formidable developments of cruelty: hateful cruelty comes from the first barbarism and is expressed in murder, torture, individual and collective punctures; anonymous cruelty comes from techno-bureaucratic barbarism” (Morin, 2003, p. 100).
Morin noticed the backlash after the spring experienced in 1989-1990, when the walls came down, and now they are rising again.
MORIN, E. and Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Pátria, transl. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Provocations, threats and hopes
Wars continue to threaten world peace, and the great powers are crucially involved in making this happen. There are no peaceful or humanitarian speeches, the forces involved are casting a great shadow over all of humanity: a global war.
The former Russian president and current vice-president of the Russian Security Council, Dmitri Medvedev, in an interview with the RT news agency declared: “The United States is wrong to think that Russia will never cross a certain line when it comes to using nuclear weapons” and indeed Russia has carried out military exercises in this direction, but in other speeches the former Russian president always recognizes that it would be an unprecedented disaster.
Another pole of tension is a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, aggravated by recent attacks and retaliation between the two nations. Iranian President Ali Khamenei declared: “The enemies, both the US and the Zionist regime [Israel], must know that they will certainly receive a devastating response for what they are doing against Iran and the resistance front,” referring to groups allied to Iran, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
China is also carrying out military exercises around the island of Taiwan, on Sunday (04/11) 35 drones crossed the dividing line between the two countries in the Taiwan Strait, which only maintained the readiness of its defense service, since no attacks were carried out.
There is always hope for peace and that leaders understand the number of victims, injustices and scourges that wars bring, peace is a condition of civilization for all.
If the night of humanity comes
What to do if the crisis of civilization reaches its human limits and continues to humanize itself? In previous posts, we discussed Edgar Morin’s awareness of “our earthly purposes” in chapter 4 of his book Earth and Homeland
It is here that the author also addresses the apparent paradox: conversation/revolution, it is about understanding change without abandoning the main humanitarian principles: “Awareness of our terrestrial roots and our planetary destiny is a necessary condition for realizing humanity and civilizing the Earth” (Morin, 2003, p. 99) because the adjective “revolutionary” has become reactionary and heavily tainted with barbarism” (idem).
The author goes on to say: “Another problem arises here: is there a power of ideas over reality, which would presuppose a reality and a power of ideas? As we have already shown, ideas and myths acquire reality, impose themselves on spirits and can even impose themselves on historical reality, violating it, diverting it” (Morin, 2003, p. 126) and this is very relevant in the current context.
This is complemented by Morin when he points out that “conserving/revolutionizing: it is the paradox of progressing/resisting”, 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.
Morin wrote at that time, which today is the fulfillment of a prophecy: “The spring of the people of 1989-1990 suffered a freeze. All its seeds of freedom are on the verge of destruction. The great barbarism makes a great return” (Morin, 2003, p.100).
Resisting now then means not abandoning humanitarian values, also nowadays Morin spoke about “resistance of the spirit” which is preserving within ourselves the most cherished values of life, humanism and belief in truly “divine” values.
Not believing that we were made for war, for barbarism and have a cruel destiny, although the world outlook is bleak, we must resist with the armor of peace.
Morin, Edgar & Kern, Anne-Brigitte (2003). Terra-Pátria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
The War scalated
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.
Real danger, decisive week for peace
The death of Ibrahim Akil, one of the heads of Hezbollah’s military operations, led the organization to declare “indefinite war” against Israel.
This Sunday they exchanged heavy fire, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah for its part firing rockets towards northern Israel.
The peace talks are thus at a standstill, although US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin exchanged six phone calls in the week with his Israeli counterpart, showing serious concern about the escalation of the conflict and calling for a diplomatic solution.
In Ukraine, the peace talks are also polarized in this respect: Brazil and China are trying to talk to Putin, while European countries and the United States are trying to reach a dialogue that is more favorable to Ukraine’s claims for peace.
What’s most frightening are the nuclear threats, which Russia always brings up and now Ukraine is saying that the Russians are also planning attacks on nuclear power plants, the effects of which would be terrifying, just think of Chernobyl, of course in this case it was an accident, but the effects should never be repeated by these two countries that came to that moment.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then a Soviet republic linked to Moscow, suffered a catastrophic meltdown that caused the government to evacuate 30 km around the plant, the area of which is uninhabitable to this day. C, 4 times higher than volcanic lava.
Sources indicate that between 2 and 50 people died in the explosion, dozens of others contracted serious illnesses caused by the radiation, some of whom died later. Between 50 and 185 million curies (unit of radiation activity) of radionuclides (radioactive forms of chemical elements) escaped into the atmosphere – several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (pictured is a monument to the workers who fought the Chernobyl fire).
Modern reactors incorporate more safety devices to prevent a disaster like Chernobyl, but in the event of a war “accident” control can be difficult.
The fact that there are countries committed, albeit polarized, is an encouragement and also those who see the civilizational crisis that they would unleash can serve to allow minds inflamed by hatred to cool their anger.