Reforming thought and its viaticum
21
Nov
At the beginning of chapter 5 of Edgar Morin’s
Cabeça bem-feita (Heads on straight), he uses an epigraph from Euripides’ Edita: “The gods invent many surprises for us: the expected doesn’t happen, and a god opens the way to the unexpected” (Morin, 2003, p. 61), only those who meditate and have a well-developed spiritual side know how to work with the unexpected.
He gives us three viaticums in this chapter, the first of which is “Preparing for our uncertain world is the opposite of resigning oneself to a generalized skepticism.” It is necessary to resist what is anti-human not as an act of courage, but in the only certainty which is the error of the path that our mistaken convictions can lead us down (pictured is Leonardo Alenza’s viaticum, 1840).
The second viaticum is strategy; we get lost on the road to what is good and what we want.
“Strategy is opposed to program, even though it can include programmed elements. The program is the a priori determination of a sequence of actions with a view to an objective. The program is effective under stable external conditions, which can be determined with certainty” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) so we need to think about strategy by exercising it, if we want more humanity we need to be human, if we want peace we need to practice it.
The third viaticum is the challenge, we usually look for our comfort zone or security, but neither comfort nor security are there, in general they require a challenge to conquer them, says Morin: “A strategy carries within it the awareness of the uncertainty it will face and, for this very reason, contains a bet. It must be fully aware of the stakes, so as not to fall into false certainty. It is false certainty that has always blinded generals, politicians and businessmen, and led them to disaster” (Morin, 2003, p. 62) – this is the disaster of today’s false peace.
The answer is not exactly a Christian, but someone of Jewish origin who lives a secular life: “Betting is the integration of uncertainty into faith or hope. Betting is not limited to games of chance or dangerous undertakings” (Morin, 2003, p. 62). If we work for peace and for the correct process of civilization, we can certainly count on some extra help, why not: divine.
Morin, E. (2003) A cabeça bem-feita: repensar a reforma, reformar o pensamento. transl. Eloá Jacobina. Brazil, 8a ed. -Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil.
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.
Joy and re-building the Earth
19
Nov
Amid threats of total war: the US authorized the
use of long-range weapons in the war in Eastern Europe, Finland and Sweden prepare for possible war (RFI press) and the Russian threat of a total war over the approval of missiles (Terra online press).
All of this seems contradictory to the possibilities of Terra-Pátria that we posted last week, but a theologian, paleontologist and philosopher Teilhard Chardin also points out something beyond this: re-constructing the Earth.
Chardin’s text, dated at the end of his life in the 1930s (there are several extracts), compiled and published after his death in 1958, only said in Building the Earth, but there was not yet the strong environmental imbalance, the growth of atomic plants (energy was used in the war for bombs) and the danger of a global cataclysm, threats present today, in addition to social imbalance.
He was already aware of the crisis of democracy and the growth of totalitarian systems (fascism and communism), he defined his belief in the future in three aspects: passion for the personal, the universal and the future itself, and seeing the planet as an organism gave his sentence: “each cell thinks, because it is free, that it is authorized to build a center for itself” (Chardin, 1958), but it noted the dispersion of this false intellectual and social liberalism.
See, however, the contradictions in dialogue, these forces do not have “merely destructive power, each of them contains positive factors… no matter how little these components talk, each of them contains positive components… each of them is the world itself is the world itself who defends himself and wants to reach the light”, it is clear that conflicts of war and extremism must be avoided.
In the sense he gives to the “spirit of the Earth”, this was written combining extracts from 1931, on a journey across the Pacific Ocean, he defined this spirit as “the passionate sense of common destiny that drags, ever further away, the thinking fraction of Life” , and it gives meaning to our consciousness in growing circles of families, homelands, races, finally discover that the only true, natural and real human Unity is the Spirit of the Earth”.
Edgar Morin in his book Terra Pátria created a similar concept as planetary citizenship, but it is necessary to give a “common soul” to this idea of a planet as home for everyone.
In Chardin’s cosmology, he insistently works on this theme in his Noosphere (this thinking layer that creates this spirit capable of involving everyone), he will say that “love is the most universal, the most formidable and the most mysterious of cosmic energies”, today With so many poles and so many forces in conflict, it is necessary to rediscover this essential point of convergence.
On the path to unity, “to the wonders of a common soul”, he wrote “these brief and pale words must make us understand that a formidable power of joy and action still sleeps within human unity”, rediscover this value and this cosmic force, like the defines, it is our destiny.
This is the joy of those who believe in the divine participation that corrects human history.
Chardin T. (1958) Construire la Terre. Paris: Editions du Soleil.
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.
Words that will not pass
15
Nov
When the Greeks thought up the Greek polis, 
almost simultaneously the Jewish world was reinvigorated and updated by the Christian world, there were hundreds of false prophets, one was the expected one, he came not with a bang, like a euphoria, but like a gentle breeze.
On the threshold of a new civilization, Edgar Morin leaves four challenges for humanity: ”
Coming out of the planetary iron age, saving humanity, co-piloting the biosphere, civilizing the earth are four terms linked in a recursive ring, each necessary for the other three” (Morin, 2003, p. 178).
Simplists and false prophets insist on apocalyptic or warlike solutions, or both, but Edgar Morin warns: “For how much blindness there is today among traditionalists, moderns and postmoderns! How much fragmentation of thought! How much ignorance of the planetary complex! How much unawareness everywhere of the key problems! How much barbarism in human relations! How many lacks of spirit and soul! How many misunderstandings!” (Morin, 2003, p. 179).
So we can have two attitudes depending on our spiritual and conceptual view of the future: “In any case, we must reassume the principle of resistance. In addition, we have principles of hope in hopelessness…” (Morin, 2003, p. 180).
He points out six possible attitudes to this: the first is vital: “… vital principle: just as everything that lives self-regenerates in an incoercible tension directed towards its future, so what is human regenerates hope by regenerating its living; it is not hope that makes one live, it is living that makes hope, or rather: living makes hope that makes one live” (idem).
He lists five others, but we want to highlight the fifth: “The fifth is the principle of rescue by becoming aware of the danger. According to Hõlderlin’s phrase: ‘Where danger grows, so does that which saves. (ibid).
The book ends bleakly: “The adventure remains unknown. The planetary age will perhaps succumb before it has had a chance to blossom. The agony of humanity will perhaps only produce death and ruin” (Morin, 2003, p. 181).
But for those who believe, God will not remain indifferent to the fate of humanity, so it is necessary to think beyond the resistance of the spirit, to hope that the words of salvation will not pass and then the whole world will be able to recognize the power and divine action over our lives.
How much barbarism there is in human relations! How many lacks of spirit and soul! How many misunderstandings!” (Morin, 2003, p. 179).
So we can have two attitudes depending on our spiritual and conceptual view of the future: “In any case, we must reassume the principle of resistance. In addition, we have principles of hope in despair.
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.
Being grateful is not that simple
13
Nov
Some philosophers and even scientists have
placed the external atitude (so-called objetive) and internal attitude (having compassion for others) in distinct, almost opposite fields.
For common sense describe Popper, is not the simple objectivity or subjectivity developed by idealist philosophy, or the intersubjectivity that connects the subjectivity of individuals or discourses, is the possibility of attaining knowledge of things, situations and people that leads to knowledge. in a way of knowing that they have cultural, social or even beliefs that lead them to proactive attitudes.
So you take acts done in isolation into a virtuous circle of attitudes, of course Popper did not speak of gratitude, but Marcel Mauss wrote in the 1920s the theory of giving, or the “gift” of simply rewarding or rewarding positive attitudes, But there is no problem in having remuneration, this is its idealistic aspect, even in this case there may be gratuity if made as a gift to those who receive the service.
What leads to gratitude rather than reward is how the word etymological origin is the notion of gratuitousness that must accompany even those acts for which there is just compensation, without being an instrumentalized or corrupting form of that act.
Thus collaboration, cooperation and even totally free actions that may involve values, such as paid wages, which should be thought of as acts of brotherhood and compassion as those involved in that act.
Just as continuous acts lead to an attitude, so continuous gratitude can lead to gratitude, can and should not because there is a difference in both cases that it is the fact that if it does not become an act and a social gratitude, even though attitude and gratitude can getting lost and leading to discontinuity of acts and gratitude, this is a problem in certain cultures.
Internal and external attitude for grateful é complementary gratitude.
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.
