Arquivo para October, 2018
To quench fears and hatreds: meekness
31
Oct
There is little philosophical literature on meekness, but on fears and hatreds are
abundant, we explored this in the posts of the previous week, now we want to mature and overcome both the hatreds, the fears and especially the hurts that entered our lives is necessary something related to temperance, meekness and of course a good deal of critical wisdom.
It could be combined with peace, with tolerance, but they are matters with direct relation to the social, to the just and mainly to some dose of power in the positive sense that we said in our previous post, inner peace or resilience interior as a form of tolerance are nothing other than the negation of the external social and human context.
Meekness is that force capable of even before the contradictory being able to hear, argue and in many cases just shut up until the other person can hear.
Unlike “inner peace” or the social concepts of peace, it is a peaceful way of looking at the world, the Other beyond its limitations, its momentary or habitual outbursts, and is able to convey serenity and calm in hostile environments.
Fears are born of immaturity, incomprehension or fragility in the face of a situation, the use of arms does not lead to greater meekness, leads the attempt to take fear to the other, but almost always this builds an escalation of hatred.
Now it can be conjugated with the idea of social peace, the Roman pax foresaw the submission of the peoples, the Pax of Westphalia, which was nothing more than a treaty of religious tolerance that would lead to a political peace, already the eternal right of the state of interfere in a conflict, even with violence if necessary, this returns the discussion in the Brazilian reality.
Kant argued that “by the use and predominance of reason, by the constitution of the individual sphere, the construction of the modern individual, by the establishment of the public space for the debate and resolution of social conflicts,” such was the constructive model of the eternal pax of modernity, without meekness, a dose of interpretation of hermeneutics of interpretation.
This discourse reminds Heidegger that he has an essay on Serenity (1959), Byung-Chul Han recalls that “serene courage to face an essential fear” [Heidegger], and when this fear lacks, the identical remains, is at the mercy of the “silent voice” that “awakens him with the horrors of the abyss.”
Incomplete verses and power
30
Oct
All incompleteness is human, but it is also the cause of our blindness, we could complete it with
dialogue, attentive listening to the Other, or with the postmodern philosophy that has nothing to drink but is very solid: living in the Other , a post-me.
I see libertarian, literary and biblical verses, all incomplete, by the absence of the Other, or by the simple idealistic division between subjects and objects, here made plural, to give meaning to a verse by Fernando Pessoa (importante portuguese poet):
“I only want to make it of all humanity; even if I have to lose it as mine. More and more like this I think “, also incomplete, but final because at first it is only that many know “Navigate is accurate, live is not necessary “, which was not his, but the motto of many Portuguese navigators.
This poem also needs completeness: “I am increasingly putting the impersonal purpose of magnifying the homeland and contributing to the evolution of humanity. It is the form that in me has taken the mysticism of our Race, “as this is welcome in times of eternal return.
I wanted to make a thought about power, but I cannot but be power, says our Portuguese poet: “Everything I think, All I am Is an immense desert Where I am not”, are verses of “Everything I think” (Fernando Pessoa) being also incomplete.
Complete with my student life, fighting for democracy in an authoritarian country, I said the final verses of this poem of everything I think: “Extension stopped With nothing to be there, Sand sifted I’ll give you the sting of the life I’ve lived.”
Said Faust in his Goethe (it was the character to say): “although I do not cast my being if it solves in nothing”, power of whom? What can you do about my Being?
Time of being
29
Oct
There is a time of not being, we are complaining today of the acceleration, but Chul-Han’s
diagnosis in The burnot Society is not so distant from that made by St. Augustine 14 centuries ago: “What is time? How are the past and the future, since the past is no longer and the future is not yet? “And the present? We barely say “now” and it has already fallen in the past “, this in a time when neither the technology of the press existed, what changed then?
Salvador Dali’s picture gives us an idea about the “persistence of memory” and the right to forgetfulness sanctioned by the European Union court on May 13, 2014 gives the diagnosis of a modern “disease”: hyper connectivity, in a Brazilian slang: we enter the “stack”.
The aid of machines that should give us rest periods in transmitting part of our work to them, and being able to perform long tasks faster should give us rest, but we no longer know how to have the period of contemplation and leisure, it seems to be “a time lost”.
We blame this acceleration for the machine of efficiency, concentration of capital, and other phenomena that predate the internet, there are many authors of the last century who touch the subject, after all Paulicéia Desvairada (Crazy people of St. Paul) (write in 1922) is a well-known novel of Mario de Andrade of 1922, and the first studies of the information explosion in the area of science date back to the 1940s.
Says Mário de Andrade about the artist in his poem dedicated to this:
My desire is to be a painter – Lionardo.
whose ideal in mercy heats you;
making the open to the world of the wide corolla
illustrious dream that I await in my bosom.
My longing is, bringing to the dark background of life.
The color of the Venetian school,
give shades of pink and gold, for alms.
how much there is of Penedia* or thistle.
When you find the source of the inks
and the exalted brushes with which you paint,
Veronese! your pictures and your friezes.
I will live where misfortunes live;
And I’ll live to color smiles.
on the lips of those who imprecate or who weep.
It may be a hard time to do poetry, or to contemplate, but we cannot let the Self-die because of a Time whose fragility is always gone. * (type of rocks group)
The cure of the blind from birth
26
Oct
In his Essay on Blindness (in brazilian edition of the Companhia das Letras, 2002), José
Saramago gives a very simple lesson on ontology: “Within us there is something that has no name, this is what we are”, social interaction, culture and politics reveals us gradually to others.
In a way we all see a little and we all have “blind spots” and we need the Other.
Among all the biblical miracles, certainly many consider the resurrection of Lazarus as something extraordinary, but I remember many cases of people who have been in a coma for years and come back to life, I consider the case of the most fantastic birth blind (John 9: 6- 7), why?
A person who has never seen does not have the functional cognitive part prepared to discern the worlds, until the 2 years are the sensations of distance and obstacles that are stimulated attached to the movements, until the child walks, until the age of the symbolic constructions where each object of the complex universe of things is identified.
Therefore to cure blindness, is ultimately to reconfigure the symbolic system of a blind, in a democracy means to grope from the “infantile” universe until reaching a symbolic universe of values that must be present in a mature democracy: respect, tolerance and discussions the symbolic universe.
We would say that democracy in Brazil has matured, it has had little space in history to develop, it is at the end of the critical age of adolescence, energetic parents seem to solve problems, but at the same time they distance youth from dialogue.
But there is another passage that is that of the blind Timaeus, who wants to be cured of blindness, is the case of some in Brazilian democracy, and asks Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mk 10,49 ) and Jesus heals him and says, “Thy faith hath saved thee.”
The vow of those who have true faith and who want to cure true blindness can decide an election, if we want peace, justice and a country that will make us proud, we can reflect on our own blindness, the difficulty of seeing everything clearly and ask for healing
Blindness and fear
25
Oct
The euphoria of a conservative retreat is short-lived because, despite setbacks, society as a whole,
including the economy, cultural values and even ecology (in a crisis at a good time to the point of announced catastrophes) must give vital signs or of the Danger.
It was the American warning about possibilities of real bombs against democracy, which includes former President Barack Obama, the candidate Hillary Clinton and some Democratic deputies, as here the suspicion of authoritarian and even reprehensible acts give signs.
The result reflected in the economies, the stock markets fell and the dollar rose, little of course, but it is a clear sample that if we are on the wrong track the euphoria soon falls into reality: fear.
In an official note, the FBI clarified that the packages directed to the Clinton and Obama families were identified during “routine mail sorting procedures,” which made the White House try to minimize the facts by saying they were “despicable”, what they saw were facts.
The Time Warner building, for example, in New York City was evacuated (photo) where Democrat deputies are housed, and according to news agencies, the first to receive packages would have been the stock investor, known in Brazil for his manipulations, George Soros .
Such is the obscurantism and blindness that spread fear in the first instance, the discourse may seem to have foundation, but in revealing its true face, blindness follows fear and often leads to terror.
Of course, it is only a symptom, a small but not “despicable” event, as the White House points out.
If not taken seriously, it can trigger a climate of panic in society that follows fear, and repercussions on the “pocket” of the economy that hurts the powerful, is affected.
We all want a secure society, the paths that lead to it are that they are different, without a path guaranteeing rights to all indistinctly, overcoming inequalities and prejudices, generating a lasting “peace”, different from the one proposed by Kant as “eternal pax” the modern society that has witnessed two world wars knows that it is not effectively real.
Byung Chul Han wrote in The Expulsion of the Other (Lisbon: Relógio d´água, 2018, 22): “the fear of each one in itself unconsciously provokes the nostalgia of an enemy … the enemy is, although in a way a provisor of identity “, taken from the text Theorie des Partisan by C. Schmitt, quoting it verbatim.
Wikipedia and Artificial Intelligence
24
Oct
Having already almost surpassed the point of singularity (see our post), the point that the
machine would surpass human intelligence, the question now turns to consciousness and a well-considered point is the question of consciousness.
In this sense the main criticism is the perpetuation of prejudices, which would avoid what I call hermeneutics, but it is an incorrect view of the evolution of digital technology, for example, the use of Digital Ontologies and the ability to seek scientific studies outside of Wikipedia.
This is what recently announced an article in The Verge, and the most serious omission after researching scientists who are omitted from Wikipedia, was to note that 82% of written biographies are about men.
In a blog post, according to The Verge website, John Bohannon, director of science at Primer, explains the development of Quicksilver tool to read 500 million original documents, sift through the most cited numbers and then write a basic article about the work of these scientists not mentioned in Wikipedia.
Two examples of illustrious women found and written for AI are Teresa Woodruff, a scientist who designed mice ovaries using 3D printers, was cited by Time magazine in 2013 with one of the most influential people in the world scientist, and the other case is that of Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London, who wrote the new entry for Pineau.
Wade was one of the scientists who said “Wikipedia is incredibly tantalizing, and the underrepresentation of women in science is particularly bad,” and praised Quicksilver stating that with it you can quickly find large amounts of information very quickly.
Wikipedia will have to evolve with Machine Learning tool, this may happen in the coming years, the fact that there are specific tools for this does not invalidate Wikipedia, shows that it has weaknesses and should be corrected
The expulsion of the Other
23
Oct
Byung-Chul Han’s gaze on contemporaneity could not be more authentic for the author of 
, the Salvation of the Beautiful and the Aroma of Time, among other books of course, but has in its first pages the relationship with all this and the beautiful: “If a flower had in itself its ontic fullness, it would not need to be contemplated” (Han, 2016, 13), this sentence is paradoxical but it is not, it is in his book “A expulsão do Outro” (the expulsion of the Other) (Han, 2016).
The author analyzes the question [in Max Scheler] of Saint Augustine to attribute “in a strange and dangerous way ° a necessity to plants:
“That men behold them, as if, through a knowledge of their being guided by love, they experienced something analogous to redemption” [Han apud Scheler, 2016, p. 13).
Han clarifies that knowledge seen in this way is redemption, but it should be noted that there is no way in this form to separate subject from object in contemplation, which is discussed at length in his other book, The Society of Fatigue. object while another.
In this the author distinguishes the simple news or information, “to which the dimension of otherness is utterly lacking” (idem, page 13), that which would be able to reveal a new world, a new understanding of what it really is, suddenly that the new one appears (idem).
Going back to Heidegger, he asserts that all this false objectivity means nothing other than “otherwise this blindness to events” (Han, 2016, 14).
Although his view is excessively pessimistic about the network and the digital, he is right in saying that “proximity brings in itself distance as its dialectical opposite. The elimination of distance does not generate more closeness, but rather destroys it “(Han, 2016, p.15) and pronounces it categorically, which in the absence of distance or the identical that it creates contains life.
He retakes the theme of another book “The Agony of Eros”, saying that “in pornography all bodies resemble” and the body is reduced to sexual does not know anything else.
He makes a quick analysis of the animation film Anomalisa (pictured above) made by Charlie Kaufman in 2015, which reveals the hell of the identical, puts the painting Golconda by René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist in his book “Swarm”.
The book also analyzes the terror of authenticity, fear and alienation before analyzing the language and thought of the Other, modern thought is nothing else as a consequence of the “forgetting of being”, the separation of subject and object, expulsion from the other.
HAN, Byung Chul. A expulsão do Outro (portuguese edition). Lisbon: Relógio d´água. 2016.
Missing Dialogue
22
Oct
There were no dialogues, there were still abysses, and we were not always clear, there were no clearings, 
but abysses, few safe bridges, and much lack of love and disrepute.
Brazilian writer Elisa Lucinda says: “My literature is full of this subject of injustice in the world, love as a great antidote is one of my favorite themes” (Interviews Dialogues, Itaú Cultural, 2017).
He wrote about Fernando Pessoa: “The Knight of Nothing”, along with Rubem Alves: “The Poetry of the Encounter”, about its fullness in “Vozes guardadas”, are the ones I know, but there are others in my pile for when the leave space for the pleasant ones.
Elisa Lucinda is an actress, singer, journalist, teacher, singer and poet, little known by the mainstream media, even by committed and conscientious people, but it is an “unprecedented binge”, as she likes to refer to her books, loves and revere.
It makes the most beautiful, unprejudiced and authentic defense of the books: “Children go to school and leave without knowing that book is art, that writer is an artist, unaware that when they love Harry Potter, Snow White and Sun Quixote in the movies, this was all a book. ”
In a time of absent dialogue it is good to remember this brilliant writer, who wrote in the latest fashion book:
“In the sweet seas and in the difficult waters of the raw life, my joy continues, continues.
Stripped of guns and fears, I’m more beautiful naked”, writing Elisa.
If many are afraid, if the news is harsh and unhealthy, we will not be silent or afraid because we will pluck fear out of our hearts and fight the madmen in the streets.
There are no bridges, they erect walls, close doors and talk about darkness, as for us, we keep searching for clearings
The will to power and the sacred
19
Oct
It is a fact that Nietzsche’s concepts are strong: in our instincts the ideas of the will for power
are always present, while nothing changes we remain in the eternal return (Ewige Wiederkehr) and we imagine a superman (übermensch), however this is a form of emptying, nihilism.
There are other instincts that bind us to the sacred, the idea of serving and respect for the other (which are the limits to our will), and without them any scope of our social relation can fall into what I will call “social nihilism”, or that is, the emptying of social thought.
Limited to the will to power, it is only our instincts that speak, and the attitudes even in politics become emotional, in love in the bad sense, it is possible to fall in love with the Good.
I place Capital well because it should not be confused with the Manichaean good, by imagining that we are fighting against an often symbolic “evil” (read Paul Ricoeur’s The Symbolic of Evil) we return in “eternal return” to our instincts of power and intolerance.
The point that Nietzsche was right about is that such instincts exist, they lead to the false concept of authority as an iron hand, and these lead to totalitarianisms, even in everyday life, that empty the sense of education, of service, what I call of “social nihilism”.
Linked to the sacred this concept is purified, can become generosity, benevolence and even a theological virtue that is “charity”, and without this “social nihilism” is a way. This is what makes even people with good intention fall into the temptation of the blue fly, power for power, even the disciples who walked beside Jesus had this “temptation”, ask Jesus in your kingdom: “let us sit a right and another to your left “(Mc, 10,37).
Jesus will say that they do not know what they are asking, we would say today they do not know what they choose, the idea of a strong power that solves deep social issues, that depend on a new worldview, to leave the eternal return, depends on the mobilization of the popular will and not of a stronger central power.
Is a temptation also for those who defend the social. It was the idea of a strong state, led by leaders with “charisma”, who led the world to a second world war, the networked society, and the network are people, needs to get out of their “social nihilism”.
It know what it takes to go through sacrifices to change, Jesus asked the apostles who wanted to sit beside him: “Can ye drink the cup that I drink?” Mk 10,38.
The great change we need requires a global citizenship, not a return to Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” time, even though the feeling of nation and people is good
Heidegger and the Power
18
Oct
Although speculation can be made on the question of power in the concept of pre-existence
which is a response of Heidegger to rationalism, the being-for-the-end “does not originate first from a posture that sometimes happens, but belongs, in an essential way, to the presence of the presence, which in the disposition (of humor) is revealed in this or that way “(Heidegger, 2015, 327).
It is the idea that this being launched, the presence “exists for its end” (idem), the for it is highlighted because it is in the relation with the concept para-si of Hegel, and through this it would be possible to make the speculation of what is in fact the relation Heidegger sees with power, from the presence.
The path we are going to take is more direct, because Heidegger directly analyzed this question, studying the question of the Will to Power in Nietzsche, and the eternal return that indirectly made the analysis in the eternal state and we want to deepen the concept
The affirmation that in our instincts are always present the ideas of will to power, eternal return (in German Ewige Wiederkehr) and superman (in German übermensch), and the last two are driven by the will to power, therefore its main category.
The entity for Nietzsche is not thought as being, but as wanting inherent to the will, so the being that always wants itself in an unstable and insatiable way is what makes it, a metaphysical entity of wanting and not necessarily of Being.
In Nietzsche it is a “makes who you are” worth and not the Socratic principle “know thyself” which is closer to the ontological being, and Heidegger will propose the “confrontation” which is the revision of the original reasoning of thought Western world, around the essence and its necessity, described as follows: “If a more original consideration of being must become necessary from a historical urgency of Western man, then such thinking can only happen in confrontation with the first beginning of Western thought.
This confrontation takes place fully, “it remains closed in its essence and necessity, while the greatness, that is, the simplicity and purity of the fundamental affective tone of thought and the power of proper saying, refuse for us “(Heidegger, 2015). , pp. 479).
It is not by chance that the Nietzschean Brazilian Oswaldo Giacóia Jr wrote “Urgent Heidegger: an introduction to a new thinking” (GIACÓIA Jr, 2013), which is a very precise guide for reading Heidegger, clarifies that Heidegger intends to resume an even more ” originating from that which was experienced in Greece … “(Giacóia Jr, 2013, p. 46), to correspond to the truth of Being as unveiling (alétheia) would still say a return to its essence.
In this context the Being, in a new poesis (the creative and infinite way of thinking the Being), owes above all the will to power that is present in the messianism and mythology of all contemporary thought, source of the authoritarian bases of doing politics and of society.
The eternal return is the most fragile concept, there is no question of historical consciousness or of time, which profoundly differentiates Heidegger’s hermeneutic circle.
GIACOIA JÚNIOR. Oswaldo. Heidegger urgente (Heidegger urgent – Introduction to a new thinking). Brazil, S.P. Três Estrelas, 2013. HEIDEGGER, M. Ser e tempo, 10a. edição, Trad. Revisada de Marcia Sá Cavalcante, Bragança Paulista, SP: Editora Universitária São Francisco, 2015.
