Arquivo para a ‘Politics’ Categoria
Bad thinking, bad politics and bad religion
20
Nov
The structure of the civilizational crisis that we
are experiencing, the nuclear threat has become real after the release of missiles into Russian territory these days, the energy crisis and the problem of world misery are on the civilizational agenda, but thought, politics and religion (in their deviations) do not perceive them clearly.
It’s about making allies and not building bridges and breaking down political, cultural and even religious walls. Enlightenment thinking still dominates the West, a shallow cultural vision invades the discourse of even the most educated and religion, when it’s not pure commerce, deviates towards human precepts and preconceptions that have little or nothing pure and divine about them.
On the subject of thought, an interesting text to read is Edgar Morin’s “Cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento” (Well-made head: rethinking reform, reforming thought, brazilian edition). He says of the crisis that was already present in discourses on “civilizational malaise”: “So that we can, at the same time, integrate and distinguish human destiny within the Universe; and this new scientific culture makes it possible to offer a new and capital knowledge to the general, humanistic, historical and philosophical culture, which, from Montaigne to Camus, has always raised the problem of the human condition” (Morin, 2003, p. 38). 38).
He says in the book’s introduction: “Knowledge has become increasingly esoteric (accessible only to specialists) and anonymous (quantitative and formalized). Technical knowledge is likewise reserved for experts, whose competence in a restricted field is accompanied by incompetence when this field is disturbed by external influences or modified by a new event.” (Morin, 2003, p. 19).
But the networks have invaded the discourse of experts and made cultural and political knowledge worse, now under the influence of the “digital swarm” (read Byung-Chul Han: The Swarm), a wave of bad politics and bad religion has been unleashed and invaded by “influencers”, pseudo-prophets and politicians whose anti-civilization conduct already denounces their falsehoods and evil.
It’s time for opportunists, for little thought (it has already reached the select layer of “cults”) and for bad religion, which prophesies evil, disorder, and announces as a “prophecy” the religion of easy profit, of contempt for culture and cultures other than one’s own.
But the light persists, the resistance persists among those who proclaim the good news and a more human world, the new civilization and the protagonism of what is good, beautiful and human; and little by little what is outdated thinking, bad politics and false religions and prophets will disappear, it will be a long and painful process, but the night only persists in the absence of light.
From those who have little (thought, culture and faith) even the little will be taken away.
MORIN, E. A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento / Edgar Morin; tradução Eloá Jacobina. – 8a ed. -Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2003.
COP20 and geopolitics
18
Nov
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.
Going beyond earthly consciousness
14
Nov
At the end of the century, we seemed to
become aware of our reality.
Suddenly, new conflicts erupt and the dormant wars awake: ethnic hatreds, racial and ideological hatreds. Morin wrote about this moment:
“Still until the 1950s-1960s, we lived in an unknown land, we lived on an abstract Earth, we lived on an object Earth. Our end of the century discovered the Earth-system, the Earth Gaia, the biosphere, the cosmic parcel, the Fatherland. Each of us has our genealogy and our earthly identity card. identity card. Each of us comes from the Earth, is from the Earth, is on the Earth.
We belong to the Earth that belongs to us” (Morin, 2003, p. 175).
So what would this awareness be, Morin writes:
– “the awareness of the unity of the Earth (telluric consciousness);
– the awareness of the unity/diversity of the biosphere (ecological
ecological awareness);
– the awareness of the unity/diversity of man (anthropological awareness);
– becoming aware of our anthropo-bio-physical;
– becoming aware of our dasein, the
fact of “being there”, without knowing why;
– becoming aware of the planetary era;
– the awareness of the Damoclean threat;
– the awareness of the doom on the horizon of our lives, of
every life, every planet, every sun;
– the awareness of our earthly destiny. “ (Morin, 2003, p. 175)
Although he recognizes that he needs to go further, as he writes: “And it is through these awarenesses that messages can now come from the most diverse horizons, some from faith, others from ethics, others from humanism, others from ro- mantism, others from the sciences, others from the awareness of the planetary iron age” (Morin, 2003, p. 176), he is stuck with the idea of the humanism of the Enlightenment “which recognizes the quality of all men” (idem), but comes up against human limitations without knowing how to overcome them.
“Mastering nature? Man is still incapable of controlling his own nature, whose madness drives him to dominate nature by losing control of himself. Mastering the world?” (Ibidem), the author is not clear about the awareness of the divine in the ‘most diverse horizons’.
Without being part of the imaginary high point of civilization, which sees a new civilization in the distance, which the author himself acknowledges: “This man must relearn earthly finitude and renounce the false infinity of omnipotent technique … “ (p. 177), but the cosmos is not the limit.
Morin, E. e Kern, B. (2003) Terra-Pátria. Transl. Paulo Neves, Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
Civilizing civilization
12
Nov
This is one of the central chapters of Edgar Morin’s
book “Terra-Patria”, and it is always important to remember that this was long before the current war crisis, which is the culmination of one of the most dangerous points in the crisis of civilization.
He wrote about what it means to civilize: “The quest for hominization, which would bring us out of the planetary iron age, urges us to reform Western civilization, which has become planetary in both its riches and its miseries, in order to bring about the era of planetary civilization” (Morin, 2003, p. 110).
The motto is beautiful, it seems so simple when we talk about love, but achieving it is much more difficult than you might think: “Nothing is more difficult to achieve than the desire for a better civilization” (Morin, 2003, p. 110).
It’s like when the French Revolution took place, its trinitarian motto: “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” seemed simple and achievable, but Morin warns that the democratic norm of 1848 is complex because: “its terms are both complementary and antagonic: liberty alone kills equality and fraternity; imposed equality kills liberty without achieving fraternity; fraternity, a fundamental need for a community bond lived between citizens” (Morin, 2003, p. 112).
These antagonisms range from economic selfishness to political hatred, and also the exercise of democracy: “ … requires both consensus and conflict, it is much more than the exercise of the sovereignty of the people” (idem). requires both consensus and conflict, it is much more than the exercise of the sovereignty of the people” (idem) and this limit that requires tolerance has been crossed.
So what we have at stake is “… the difficulty of establishing democracy after the totalitarian experience. The rule of the democratic game requires a political and civic culture whose formation has been impeded by decades of totalitarianism; the economic crisis gives rise to an excess of conflict that threatens to break the democratic rule” (Morin, 2003, p. 113) and in various parts of the planet this rupture has already happened.
Morin wrote in a prophetic tone for the times (written in 1993): “Correlatively, the collapse of the great hopes for the future, the profound crisis of revolutionaryism, the exhaustion of reformism, the flattening of ideas in everyday pragmatism, the inability to formulate a great project, the weakening of the conflict of ideas to the advantage of conflicts of interest or ethnic or racial ethnocentrism …” (p. 114).
We need to overcome these weaknesses in order to rediscover the path of the common good and social welfare, which is not far off, the problem is that this path, like love and fraternity, is not so simple and requires the resilience to do good by doing it.
MORIN, E.; Kern, B. Terra-Pátria. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
In a new geopolitical scenario, the pax romana
11
Nov
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
08
Nov
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.
Other cancellations and joy
07
Nov
Not only are there cancellations of identities
and ethnicities, there are also cancellations aimed at policies that eliminate fraternity, solidarity and love.
Edgar Morin wrote about “salvation”: “Life, consciousness, love, truth and beauty are ephemeral. These marvelous emergencies presuppose organizations of organizations, unusual opportunities, and they run mortal risks all the time. For us, they are fundamental, but they have no foundation” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
This type of cancellation is not only the most dangerous, it is itself a cancellation of the possibility of good news: “Love and conscience will die. Nothing will escape death. There is no salvation in the sense of the religions of salvation that promise personal immortality. There is no earthly salvation, as promised by the communist religion, that is, a social solution in which everyone’s life would be free from misfortune, chance and tragedy. This salvation must be radically and definitively renounced” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
Morin quotes another author who is fundamental to his argument: “As Gadamer says, it is necessary to ‘stop thinking of finitude as the limitation in which our infinite will-to-be fails, (but) to know finitude positively as the true fundamental law of dasein’. The true infinite is beyond reason of intelligibility, of the powers of man” (Morin, 2003, p. 164).
How is this beyond finitude can be written according to the author: “The gospel of lost men and the Fatherland tells us: let us be brothers, not because we will be saved, but because we are lost*. Let us be brothers in order to live authentically our community of earthly life and death destiny. Let us be brothers, because we are in solidarity with each other in the unknown adventure” (Morin, 2003, p. 166), and explains in a footnote (*):
*In fact, the idea of salvation born of the refusal of perdition carried within it the repressed awareness of perdition. Every religion of life after death carried within it the repressed awareness of the irreparability of death.
He quotes Albert Cohen to explain: “That this astonishing adventure of humans who arrive, laugh, move, then suddenly stop moving, that this catastrophe that awaits them does not make us tender and compassionate towards one another, this is unbelievable” (Cohen, apud Morin, 2003, pgs. 166-167).
This is his call for fraternity: “The call for fraternity is not confined to one race, one class, one elite, one nation. It comes from those who, wherever they are, hear it within themselves, and it is addressed to each and every one. Everywhere, in every class, in every nation, there are beings of ‘good will’ who convey this message” (Morin, 2003, p. 167).
MORIN, E. e Kern, Anne-Brigitte. Terra-Pátria, trad. por Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. — Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2003.
Beyond pain and agony
06
Nov
Both personal and humanitarian crises must bring
about a new dawn and a greater glory than the civilizing process has allowed.
Edgar Morin, when analyzing the polycrisis we are experiencing, makes an analysis of a certain agony:
“If we consider globally the two critical cyclones of the world wars of the twentieth century and the unknown cyclone in formation, if we consider the mortal threats to humanity coming from humanity itself, if we consider finally and above all the current situation of entangled and inseparable polycrises, then the planetary crisis of a humanity still incapable of realizing itself as humanity can be called agony, that is, a tragic and uncertain state in which the symptoms of death and birth struggle and confuse each other” (Morin, 2003, p. 97).
And he concludes: “A dead past does not die, a nascent future cannot be born” (idem).
He seeks to save here what is beyond these pains and difficulties: “There is a global advance of blind forces, of positive feedback, of suicidal madness, but there is also a globalization of the demand for peace, democracy, freedom, tolerance…” (Morin, idem) maintaining hope.
But the scenario was already difficult when he wrote the book: “The struggle between the forces of integration and those of disintegration is not only located in relations between societies, nations, ethnicities, religions, it is also located within each society, within each individual” (idem) it is an inner struggle…” (idem).
Are we doomed to this,” he writes: ”Are we hopelessly compromised in the race towards generalized cataclysm? From which birth do we hope to emerge? Or will we continue, by leaps and bounds, towards a planetary Middle Ages of regional conflicts, successive crises, disorders, regressions – with only a few islets preserved?” (p. 98).
This way out is the rediscovery of our earthly purposes, which is the subject of the following pages and which we have already touched on, this path requires reflection and a return to balance and peace.
MORIN, E. and Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Pátria, transl. by Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre: Sulina.
A new meta-development
05
Nov
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
04
Nov
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.
