Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
Science, conscience and complexity
12
Nov
Modern science, especially from the seventeenth century onwards, built a new 
world that renounced metaphysics, theory, and was methodologically rooted in the mathematical project of nature mastery and the experiments and measurements for this domain project.
But has dominated nature reacted and reacted in unthought ways, extreme climates whether from European summers or American colds, rains and burns, where even the oceans already show signs of depletion, dominate or destroy nature?
The very limits of science as logic and power are in check, will we rule our lives solely by markets and their values, do cold numbers say anything about man?
In addition to the physical and scientific paradigms about new technologies, there are emerging social problems that worry even those who have always taken advantage of markets, economist Federico Cingano in an OECD study said: “When income inequality increases, economic growth falls,” thus it is inevitable to approach the subject from any perspective.
Beyond the problem of consciousness, philosophically or technically, there is a social dimension that is correlated, not indifferent, this also holds for consciousness in the historical question.
Edgar Morin warns of the teaching system, where it is still hermetically taught: “We do not teach the understanding of the other, which is fundamental in our day, we do not teach uncertainty, what is the human being, as if our human identity does not it was of no interest.
The most important things to know are not taught, ”he said in the Fronteiras do Pensamento (Thought Borders), a Brazilian cultural program.
He sees the crisis of democracy as the obscure relationship with the “enormous powers of money, which has led to corruption everywhere.
The emptiness of thought, coupled with this corruption, leads to a loss of confidence in democracy, and this has favored the neutral authoritarian regimes as we have seen in Turkey, Russia, Hungary and as we now see in the crisis of democracy in Peru and Brazil, ”the case Bolivia today is a separate case.
He also sees with concern the fundamentalist and ethnic closure: “Unless people become aware of the human destiny community on earth, people will close in on their religious, ethnic identities, and so on.
We live in a dark period of history, the only consolation is that these dark periods are not eternal ”we believe in the future. Edgar Morin’s full interview on Thought Frontiers follows below:
Between the eternal and the temporal
08
Nov
There is no dualism between body and mind, as the
idealists want, but there is that which is temporal and what is eternal, but in a strictu sense at least in the broad sense, it takes principles to determine the values and what drives humanity in critical times of society.
Byung Chul Han, in a January lecture at the Barcelona CCB where he showed the tearing of our time between narcissism, self-consumerism and an absence of relationship with the other, which must revolutionize time, or the way we manage it.
He said of the other and in reference to the universities: “In any case, we live in a time of radical conformism: the university has clients and only creates workers, it does not form spiritually; the world is at the limit of its capacity; maybe that will short circuit it and we get that original animal back. ”
He stated at the Barcelona CCB: “The current acceleration diminishes the ability to remain: we need a proper time that the productive system does not allow us to have; we need some free time, which means standing still with nothing productive to do, but not to be confused with recovery time to keep working; time worked is time lost, not time for us. ”
Modern humanism criticized by his master Peter Sloterdijk who asserts this sense back to the original animal, of course, is not in the sense of wild animality, but the idea that he must regain his relationship with nature will not be saved and will even condemn planet. Sloterdijk clearly outlines these ideas in the video below.
What the natural man means and his relations with the eternal, now not only nature, but in a worldview of paradise and eternal life, means that we must look at remaining values.
When questioned by the Sadducees, who were a more aristocratic class in Judaism, about who a woman who would marry several brothers after their deaths, would tell them that believing in eternal life means that the people will no longer die, Jesus response the question would not make sense and also that God is “God of the living” (Luke 20:38).
Looking only at temporal values and conjunctural situations prevents us from seeing the future and the eternal.
Follows Peter Sloterdijk’s interview on the braziliam program Fronteiras do Pensamento *“Borders of Thought”).
Between affliction and peace, the infinite and the eternal
01
Nov
Many seek happiness at any price, so we reflect 
empathy early in the week, then reflect on the anguish and distress that are axes of growth and suffering, but it is they that understandably lead us to real happiness, built peace.
Kierkegaard’s “Concept of Anguish” (1884) shows multiple forms: the anguish of freedom or nothingness, there is a personal choice of this that the author calls the choice of oneself, the anguish of goodness and obstinacy, the anguish of sexuality, that of tomorrow and that of the finite, it is prior to faith.
At this point it is possible to link to a phenomenological view, and still to link it to the interpretation of the biblical passage of man’s fall into sin (Genesis 3), ignoring the Enlightenment / Idealist culture, which is the anguish of freedom or choice that occupies a essential role for the Self.
According to Kierkegaard man is called, as spirit (addition and mind), to place the relation between the elements that characterize him structurally, likewise those that can conflict with each other (body and soul, temporality and eternity), choosing a form of existence among the innumerable ones historically presented to him, here the phenomenology.
Although innumerable, Kierkegaard pedagogically lists some choices that are choices in three life styles (or “stages”): the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious, is reductive but interesting.
The openness I see (in it is only existence but could be essence as Being) is that anguish is therefore “nothingness” that each person in his indeterminacy “is” at the moment of establishing synthesis to the point of being. give yourself an “identity”, a controversial theme in idealism, here that I think is possible to connect it to Heidegger’s “being in the world”, although different concepts.
Contrary to the fall the biblical passages of the New Testament could be placed on the beatitudes in Mt 5: 1-12, we highlight two that were dealt with in these days, verses 4 and 5: “Blessed are the afflicted, for they shall be comforted, blessed. the meek, for they shall possess the earth, ”and verse 9,” Blessed are they that bring peace, for they shall be called the children of God.”
But Kierkegaard’s fundamental help is on the question of identity, definitions as being-in-itself and being-in-the-world, and the concept of the eternal which is a launch into the “infinite.”
The crisis of Reason and Kant’s critique
23
Oct
What Kant has tried to solve in his Critique of Pure Reason, as its name implies,
is that reason would not be enough, and thus I intend to make two critiques, namely the very idealism to which it proposes itself as a realist (although it seems contradictory, for the Kantians it is not), and the second is the Transcedental Deduction, the essence of their gnosiological method which confuses with another view of the transcendent, which is that of mystery, beyond the idealistic rational view.
What Kant called “transcendental realism” (of course there are several versions, including many that are contradictory to each other), was to conceive a critical distinction between epistemic conditions (it was Henri Allison who used this term) and are forms of systematization of knowledge with conditions. supposedly ontological, which are nonetheless ontic, for they are but possibilities of things themselves, and separate from the subject, is the idealistic transcendent.
Their refutation of idealism is viewed by the Kantians themselves as having: problematic, dogmatic, and empirical versions, which at bottom refer to the object of the “outside world,” that is, it contests every possibility of objective knowledge, and for this they hold or on the plane. empirical (clear through experience) or the transcendental plane, here as a resource for the subject to reach the plane of objects, in a clear separation between subjectivity and objectivity.
Kantian dualism remains in the problematic or dogmatic question, the former as a primacy of subjective awareness of perceptions and self-awareness of the domain of objectivity.
What characterizes Kant with his attempt to approach realism is in fact a transcendental dualist. It is because it ends by realizing the impossibility of knowing things as they are in themselves, and ends by defending isolation in subjectivity and a false interiority of presentations (making it present) and concluding, here, that it is dogmatic or skeptical that What we believe to be objective knowledge is actually a flow of perceptual impressions devoid of any objectivity, so the idealistic dualism of equidistant subject and object remains.
The way in which Kant will understand his “principled” relationship with self-awareness (in the Cartesian sense “I think”) and is with objective knowledge, must come along with his “deduction” which is essentially divergent with respect to his own. view of the Cartesian conception of the cogito, but both will not escape the conception of the ego, the transcendent self, or other analogies, which are well described in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations.
The instrumental reason that much of the idealist discourse struggles with the object of knowledge and its corresponding cognitive subject, its cognitive transcendence, will always be tied to the essential dualism of the separation of subject and object, its consequences to daily life are clear.
So what we think of everyday as objective, concrete or any substitute in the relationship with things, and with the knowledge of them as a result, will always be in the “outer world” or the physical world, with which the relationship will always remain under false mystery, subjectivity or the perceptions of self-awareness, or even, is an experience of the subject.
See the video about idealism realistic em TEDx of the Daniel Wong:
The crisis of reason: technophobia
22
Oct
It was not Gerard Lebrun who coined the term technology, it was Jean-Pierre 
Séris (1941-1994) who among several issues in his text “La Technique” talks about a “strange transformation” that recalls the memories of Kantian questions: “What should I do? What can I do? What am I allowed to wait for? ”And that he ironically said what seems increasingly common:“ What should I ignore? What should I refrain from doing? ”(Lebrun apud Novaes, 1996, p. 471).
Speaking of the impact of the technique, it will not exemplify with the digital world, but bioethics, as a science of survival according to its inventor the American Potter in 1970, but well reminds Lebrun that in 1995 the International Bioethics Committee declared the genome “common heritage”. of humanity ”, saying that 20 years earlier the speech stigmatized this“ technique ”.
Lebrun says that the author “never takes sides ideologically”, and moves away from what he calls “passionate speeches”, does not adopt a “contrary to technique detractors” stance and reassures that “nothing in this book minimizes the dangers this or that risky technological intervention could bring the biosphere or animal life ”(idem, p. 471).
Clarifying that criticizing “was never synonymous with demonizing: in using the word criticism, neither Marx nor Kant preached a witch hunt” (Lebrun, p. 472), and was by the way another text in the same book of the “crisis of reason” we used in the previous post, the dissent, to disagree is to dialogue.
Lebrun clarifies that the use of the “technology” anglicism, “which erases the difference between things and the discourse about the thing … even more criticizable is the technoscience neologism, used to designate, very nebulously, a symbiosis between technique and technology. science, whose modalities, most of the time, are not careful to need ”(idem), using the concepts of Séris.
The fact that users are ignorant of using a technical device does not mean that there is an “intrinsic malignancy of the technique” (p. 472), or is it sufficient that Chernobyl, or a major blackout in New York or even a boy who can get secrets out of the Pentagon from his computer … which we use all the time (the Thaumata, as the Greeks used to refer to machines), become, at least potentially, unethical objects again ”(pages 472- 3).
It is fear that wants us to inculcate control of “technological progress,” the author cites Hans Jonas in his work “The Principle of Responsibility” is what makes JP Séris dissatisfied, but he also draws on Bernard Sève’s arguments that what Jonah calls “second-degree power,” distinguishing him from first-degree power “that which man exercises over nature through technique, that is, from man’s traditional image and power of intervention, in always controllable principle ”(page 473).
Remember that this power comes from Bacon who created a formula for this power in the first degree, and that Jonah will say that in unleashing the power in the second degree it will be necessary “unless the sentence is dictated by the disaster itself, it is a power over the power. power, ”
Then, is nothing other than the failure of the Baconian ideal, but who agrees not to subdue nature? thus the problem is not of technique but of the original domination of nature. We thus return to the initial questions “What should I do? What am I allowed to wait for? ”Jonas himself acknowledges that one cannot know the long-term effects of either technology or drugs, so“ will not undefined fear lean us against innovation, in favor of abstention? ”(Pag 476), I add, is it not fear that drives tyrants to power?
LEBRUN, G.Sobre a Tecnofobia (About technophobia). In: Novaes, Adauto. A crise da Razão: (The crisis of Reason). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996.
The crisis of Reason: the dissent
21
Oct
Much has been written about it, but usually without leaving it, it’s like postmodernity,
everyone shudders at the term, but any serious thinker knows we’re in the end of the modern, which will come later only crystal ball, but read The signs and understanding what changes we are experiencing can help a lot.
First I explain the prison we live, years ago when reading Horkheimer’s book the “Eclipse of Reason”, original from 1947, that Editora Unesp did a good translation of German, the author analyzes the technoscientific signs of modernity, but as instruments of More than those who can take dangerous and arduous tasks out of the hands of workers, the economic subjugation of course continues, which will lead to a mechanistic analysis of the digital universe, which is something other than Fordism and Toyotism.
In the philosophical aspect the work is between “objective reason” and “subjective reason”, which is basically the realization of human potentials as ends, with the development of practical instruments that enable such goals, the “means”, without escaping beyond rationalism. of ideas of progress.
It was another work that aroused my analysis beyond rationalism and development and progress at all costs, a compendium parading several national authors on “The Crisis of Reason”(Companhia das Letras, 1996), among several interesting essays highlighting the Jacques Rancière “The Dissent” and Gerard Lebrun’s “About Technophobia”, written in 1996.
Rancière makes a correct analysis based on the idea that “the currently dominant discourse that identifies political rationality to consensus and the consensus to the very principle of democracy” (Rancière apud Novaes, 1996, p. 367), and made his criticism pointing out three paradoxes.
The first paradox is soon after the fall of the former Soviet Union its opponents while celebrating its fall, resumed the “objective necessity”, ie the idea of resuming the productive forces of development in full swing, emptying the alternatives, thus established the “consensus” democracy as “the pure regime of economic necessity” (idem).
The second paradox is the mismatch of political wisdom, criticizes the discourse “which glorifies the actor, the individual who argues, who hires, who acts” (idem), the less things are to be discussed, “the more the ethics of the discussion are celebrated. , of communicative reason, as the foundation of politics ”(idem), is not what he says, but paradoxically when there is less ethics and less dialogue.
The third paradox is almost a prophecy, which Rancière calls “the national consensus of political parties and the advent of the great supranational spaces, reappear the brutal, more archaic forms of ethnic wars, exclusion, racism, xenophobia” (Rancière apud Novaes, 1996, pp. 368), it should be noted that the text is old, but this revival of the “national” was already evident.
His discourse is more complex as the text progresses, highlighting a passage that I consider important about consensus: “In its ordinary statement, consensual wisdom is presented as a thesis on the evolution of the politician summarized in the following idea: The old form of politics, that of conflict, has lapsed. The modern form is that of covenant, to deal between responsible partners…” (idem, p. 378), that is to say, it is not consensual, therefore, the dissent.
Ranci{ere, J. (1996)O dissenso. In: NOVAES, A. A crise da Razão. Sâo Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1996.
(in Picture, between among several paintings in text, I chose the Divine Freedom of Goya).
Gratitude or indifference
11
Oct
The attitude of gratitude can lead to gratitude, a
virtuous way in which gratitude is taken socially and becomes a value of people, groups or cultures, but what the opposite effect.
The absence of gratitude can gradually lead to the breaking of social ties, little or no recognition leads people who do not feel valued to seek other groups and people.
Of course, a person or group who has already understood gratitude, that is, is already a virtuous circle from which can only escape by violent attitudes or some anomalous fact that interferes with the circle, even without recognition will continue to exercise gratitude for having become value.
But what we see in many Western societies and cultures, especially in the West, is a cooling of social relations because of the lack of recognition and gratitude, which leads to a decrease in daily life and cordiality, and a circle of Relationship cooling begins to evolve.
It is necessary for a group, even a small group, to react with resilience, with gratitude being a value that leads to collaboration, cordiality and solidarity.
The tendency is for more people to react to this new spirit, and this leads to more people seek friendliness.
There are analyzes that say acts of free collaboration seek a “form” of recognition, for example, voluntary services on social networks, clarifying that this does not depend on media although they can be used, this analysis is incomplete because existing “services” have forms such as installing software or environments, maintaining and increasing the prestige of the person or company.
It is also gratitude, this has been posted here before, even with high remuneration if done only by obligation there is no system of gratitude, and if done without remuneration but with little appreciation, there is also no gratitude.
In Christian cosmology, gratitude is always a value, but gratitude is one that is reinforced by faith, that is, belief in a superior force or being that accelerates and collaboration with the inclusion of gratitude, is what counts the healing of the ten lepers. when only one came back to say thank you.
In the biblical passage Jesus to the 10 lepers who ask for compassion with them, he sends himself to the priest and halfway through are healed, but only one has gratitude, perhaps the others were grateful, but did not return to a proactive attitude of gratitude. Then Jesus says Luke 17: 17-19: “Were not ten healed? And the other nine, where are they? 18Have none returned to give glory to God but this stranger? ”And he said to him,“ Arise and go! Your faith has saved you. ”
Collaboration and ingratitude
08
Oct
Seemingly so distant terms are deeply connected, collaboration
that almost always involves a dose of gratuitousness (may even be paid, but does it with some generosity), and the ingratitude, which is not acknowledging the gratitude, of what is done. with some donation dose.
This always involves the means of power, in times of psycho-power, the choice of means for certain ends is fundamental, what the individual influences or challenges for his own benefit, is explained in Habermas using the concept of Hanna Arendt and polemizing with Max. Weber: “It is this capacity for disposition over means that enables one to influence the will of others that Max Weber calls power. H. Arendt reserves for this case the concept of violence ” (Habermas, 1980: 100).
Thus, it can be theorized that what does not lead to collaboration can lead to a form of power or violence, if we admit that collaboration has an essential opposition to ingratitude, or to even theorize, a dose of ingratitude.
Still in the field of theorizing, in phenomenological life I think that “means” have accelerated the idea of collaboration, Habermas will speak of a “methodological individualism” applying it to forms of power that do not allow “mutual understanding” or overcoming ” egoic sense of power ”, which leads to non-collaboration and non-recognition of gratuitousness.
I think Hanna Arendt is more straightforward because her model is “a communicative model” (interactive) where consensus would be reached by non-coercive means, by “reciprocal understanding” that would lead to “common will”, in my view, is still lacking, idea of gratitude.
In environments where collaboration and reciprocity, mutual actions of co-working, that is, working together, is already a reality, power is dispersed and the leader does not appear as coercive, Latin coercive power, meaning retention.
What is proposed then, starting from Hanna Arendt is to think of the way that allows collaboration as a communicative way of influencing the will of the other without coercing it, this leads to systems of ingratitude, misunderstanding and power struggle through of violence.
Habermas, J. (1980). A crise da legitimação do capitalismo tardio. (The crisis of legitimation of late capitalismo). Rio de Janeiro, Tempo Brasileiro.
Change and boundary cosmology
04
Oct
The changes of our time bring concerns and some setbacks,
however it is dangerous and borderline what can happen in thought, if we think everything is very simple, because it is not.
Looking at what we do not understand suspiciously means how complex change is, the risk of inadequate analysis, and seeing the most essential changes as obstacles, while they are the great drivers of change, the pure and simple reaction to it is what promotes in our day ignorance, its manipulation is bad policy.
No one has a crystal ball, but the arguments of faith and hope can be used, if well used, to look to the future with generosity and conviction that it will be possible.
Already mentioned in the previous post, the world is one of them, and it is the best example, because it is at the same time simple to have the Earth as Homeland, as Edgar Morin claims, and very complex because it involves cultures, economic interests and social complexity.
A simple hope is that man has always overcome in history the obstacles that arose in classical antiquity the Greco-Persian wars (449-499 BC), the decay of the Roman empire, the Westphalian peace treaty (October 24, 1648) that ended the religious wars between states, and was a landmark of international law, and finally, the two world wars, which made the UN emerge even though its role must be even greater at this time.
It cannot be said that we are heading for a war, perhaps this is the moment when we can deal with the possibility of world conflict in a preventive way, there are many places, and by these we must begin to address the fundamental aspects of our time: good use. natural resources, cooperation between nations, and greater social equality.
The aspect of faith is important, because it mobilizes billions of people, it has to be given a cosmological and unifying character, different peoples have different beliefs, and even if it is the same, cultural expression needs to be given to each people. In every cosmology.
There is the consciousness of a greater cosmic essence, a God expressed as Being or as some physical form, but always superior to worldly and immediate impulses, it can be used not as a borderline with our preconceptions and interpretations, but as that Something bigger that brings our distinctions together and shortens the differences.
T he appeal, however, must be to those who have faith, that it is at least the size of a mustard seed, as the Christian reference states, and that all serve God, the passage from the apostle Luke who speaks of the tiny faith that believers should have, says (Lk 17,6): “If you had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Pull yourself from here and plant yourself in the sea,’ and she would obey you.”
But the biblical text didactically afterwards explains that this CAN ONLY be done by superior force and not by skill, human appeal, or manipulation of faith for misuse, says the following passage (Lk 17: 8): “Prepare me the dine, gird yourself and serve me, while I eat and drink; after that can you eat and drink? ”to say that faith serves the Lord, not those who use it, so that the planet and the whole cosmos can have harmony.
It must have true faith and hope in the future human and planet, it cannot serve religious, political or social manipulation, it must serve everyone, especially those who have another kind of belief or culture, respect diversity.
The missing future, semi-open dialogues
03
Oct
The idea that we are about to change is in the mouth
of many apocalyptics and some idealist theorists and philosophers, although most claim openness and dialogue, what they think about it is not elaborate, make long speeches and weave unrealistic narratives.
The true dialogue between tradition and change, fortunately in this field many people are doing this properly, must at the same time provide a rereading of the past, a respect and an understanding of why the events happened this way or that.
This is the reading from the pre-Socrates, through the high and low middle ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, although criticism can be done throughout, and even it must be well done, it is easy to do critical rereading because this time It has been difficult because the time has come.
Especially difficult for the Enlightenment and modernity, postmodernity or late, or its continuity, is still difficult to read because the transition has not taken place and the problem is the difficulty of overcoming it, almost everyone will agree that the Modernity is already more tradition than any possibility of a new “revolution” within its thinking, although the attempts are many.
Nietzsche called this dilemma “eternal return”, he already realized in his time and some think this is new, and in part was right for the horizon he saw in his time, but when the new is not born traditional thinking suffers from aging. and sameness.
It tries to look ‘new’ or ‘creative’, but there is nothing that really changes reality. Great sociocultural problems of our time, moral and even religious, will not change without a new perspective, although redundant one would say a brand new “new”, and in order not to be pure imagination, one must find elements already living that point to the future.
Three new elements are visible: a globalized planet, it is already possible to see itself as a world although different cultural aspects are not yet respected, an exhaustion of the forces of nature, the domination of nature by man was the great mode of modernity, and the end of hunger and misery on the planet, though with resources available for it, has not been realized.
Of course there are many other factors, but they stem from a lack of dialogue with the future, the centralization of autocratic groups, the absence of a networked politics and culture, although the mechanisms for this exist, are countered as “alienation” and even as responsible for problems that exist long before any thought about new technologies.
