Arquivo para January, 2024
The included third of physics and thought
17
Jan
The fact that we are trapped in dualism, A
and not-A, Being is and Non-Being is not, and now transformed into political thought as if nature and society were just always two options in conflict with no third (or even the fourth and fifth options) is an outdated thought if we look at the logical paradox developed by the physicist Barsarab Nicolescu that finds parallels not only in quantum physics (photo), but also in social and ontological thinking: the third option.
So much so that this is true that Barsarab’s own text that calls for a reform of Education and Thought (Barsarab, 1999) indicates that this change can be seen as a way out of the center of a crisis greater than physical or logical issues, says Barsarab : “One thing is certain: a large gap between the mentality of the actors and the internal development needs of a type of society invariably accompanies the fall of a civilization”, or said in another, more ontological way, between Being and non-being -Being there is a state of Non-Being that breaks dualisms and paradoxes.
Both Barsarab’s letter that calls for an education reform, and other thinkers such as Edgar Morin and others perceived a crisis in modernity with roots in thought and education, the theorist of the Included Third T, gives a worrying sentence: “The risk is enormous , because the continuous expansion of Western civilization, on a global scale, would make the fall of this civilization equivalent to the burning of the entire planet, in no way comparable to the first two world wars”.
There is also a linear and monodirectional thinking where intentionality is always polarized and creating a “single” and monochromatic path, with the eternal danger of authoritarianism and misuse of power, to detente it will be necessary to have a more open world where everyone is included and not just what is convenient for power.
Education must support and assist this context, Barsarab says in his letter: “The harmony between mentalities and knowledge presupposes that such knowledge is intelligible and understandable. But can this understanding still exist, in the era of the disciplinary big bang and extreme specialization?”
The harsh reality of the pandemic shows that we oscillate between true solidarity and detente to face the crisis, and the opportunist polarization that wants to take advantage of the deaths and deviations of a poorly managed health crisis, in some countries more, but in almost all .
Barsarab’s sentence, which seems harsh, is not: “Is there something between and across disciplines and beyond each and every discipline? From the point of view of classical thought there is nothing, absolutely nothing. The space in question is empty, completely empty, like the vacuum of classical physics”, in this epoché (the Greek vision of emptiness) a true philosophy can flourish, even when it is not (the suspension of judgment, new horizons beyond the pre -concepts, etc.) is what it is.
NICOLESCU, Basarab. The manifesto of transdisciplinarity. Trans. Lúcia Pereira de Souza. Brazil, São Paulo: Trion, 1999.
Bad taste is becoming common
16
Jan
The word is not mine, but none other than the
northeastern brazilian writer Ariano Suassuna, in a talk that someone had the happy idea of turning into a short YouTube post, he adds: “the ability to be outraged by what It’s ugly, he said, I watch a soap opera, I think the soap opera is an important thing that we have to watch, a soap opera was on and it was actually good, but in the entrance music there’s a verse, notice what, my stone is amethyst, my color is the yellow one, but I’m honest I need to go to the scientist urgently”… the audience laughed… and he added: “be patient, this is too bad” (short talk with Ariano Suassuna).
Theodore Dalrymple, is the pseudonym of the English psychoanalyst Anthony Daniels, who decided to write essays and transformed 26 essays into a book Our Culture or what’s left of it, and now working as a volunteer in a work that re-educates addicts and understood more deeply what the author wanted to say, it’s not about sentimentality or simply giving the recipe: “society did this to him”, it’s partly true, but by their own decision these people can change their lives. (interview in Brazil)
The decision is individual and can change lives and realities, it is possible to give hope back to people who life has pushed aside, without using demagoguery or treating these people with prejudice, helping them to face their own reality head on, and then the social reality , but the decision is a first personal step.
The taste for the ugly, unethical and immoral is not a final option, it can be reversible, but the recipe for success is to face personal and social reality, without running away from its responsibilities and willing to see alternatives of education, respect and ethics that neither it’s always the takes.
Giving alms, a plate of food can be an immediate measure, but preventative measures require a change in perspective on life, of an often-complex metanoia that dismantles adopted antisocial values, and psychoanalyst Anthony Daniels speaks with authority, because he has dealt with many of these extreme cases in prisons and in his office.
He adopted the pseudonym probably to demonstrate that these are not just cases and psychic disorders, but addictions and antisocial attitudes that transform into destructive and negative thoughts and actions.
The first part of the book deals with arts and letters and the second part with society and politics, but the author does not fail to deal with the future in both parts, where we were going and are almost there: the downhill slope we entered and if It is possible to reverse this process.
In addition to criticizing the Eurocentric, idealistic way of thinking and the demand for efficiency, he, who is European, shows paths similar to those that seek to take people off the path of degradation.
Anyone who watches these influencers who offer rewards out there, basic questions, such as the first capital of Brazil, the capital of a state other than São Paulo or Rio Grande do Sul, the others seem unknown, math questions then border on ignorance.
Questions like how much is 10 to the power of 0 in mathematics, fruits that start with P (Pera (pear), Pitanga (typical in Brazil), Ponkan (type of tangerine), etc.), in short, very simple questions that few people answer.
Dalrymple, Theodore. “Our culture, what-s left of it”, ed. Ivan R. Dee Pub., Chicago, 2005.
A new war front
15
Jan
The fear that the war between Hamas and Israel
would set the Middle East region on fire is little by little confirmed and escalated, the bombings carried out by Western forces (USA, United Kingdom and Holland) in the Yemen region, where the extremist Houthi movement has its bases. The group is aligned with Iran, and the region is one of the poorest on the planet, and the Houthis maintain control over international flag ships that sail through the Red Sea, a strategic location for military forces in the region (see map).
In the distant past it became part of the Kingdom of Sheba, more than a thousand years ago, being mentioned even in Genesis, and also in the Quran, more recently because it had more rain than other regions of Arab countries, it had good agriculture, with coffee plantations.
This is where the type of Arabic coffee comes from, and it came to be called Happy Arabia along with Oman in the period when sedentary tribes developed an agricultural economy.
It came to be divided into North and South Yemen, a period in which one region became communist dominated, but was reunified again and during the Arab spring the country entered into great political and social instability, plunging into a bloody civil war, which according to UN data left 22 million people in a vulnerable situation.
The US and UK military incursions in the region increase tension with Arab countries and could provoke an even greater military escalation in the region. Another source of tension was the election in Taiwan of the Democratic Progressive Party (PDP) candidate, Lai Ching-te, 64 years old, he achieved 40.1% of the votes against Hou Yu-ih (Koumintang, KMT) with 33.5 % and Ko Wen-je (Taiwan People’s Party, PPT) with 26.5%, his election represents the approval of a nationalist policy contrary to China, Lai was vice-president of the current president.
The escalation of the war in Ukraine follows, where winter favors the “winter general”, due to the difficulty of moving and maintaining troops across Ukraine in cold regions, Russia has carried out intense bombings in several cities using the air force.
The crisis in Israel has completed 100 days since the October 7th attack by Hamas, and is now driven by attacks by Hezbollah that are supported by Iran, which has declared itself as having no role in the attacks that started the conflict.
The situation of belligerence across the planet is intensifying, the American elections will be held this year in November and the parties are already using war situations as a campaign.
Non-things and subjectivity, the distorted eidos
12
Jan
Subjectivity comes from idealism that judges Being
separate from things, thus only being if projected onto objects, but the Greek “eidos”, from which nascent idealism came, there was no such separation, both in Aristotle’s 4 causes: material, formal, efficient and final, as well as in the theory of Platonic ideas, which is the essence and which we have already related to the thing.
Those who think the world is immersed in eroticization are mistaken, be it the world of fantasy, that which comes from works of fiction, from children’s imagination and from looking with hope at a better future, today in an increasingly worrying present, Chul- Han writes like this:
“Without fantasy, there is only pornography. Today, the perception itself has pornographic features. It occurs as an immediate contact, even as a copulation of image and eye. The erotic occurs in the blink of an eye” (Han, 2022), that is, it is precisely its opposite, we are in the existential void, in the denial of Being and in it only pornography remains, as a degradation of Being.
Quoting Barthes, Hul-Han clarifies the part of the piece that is: “Absolute subjectivity can only be achieved in a state of silence, the effort to achieve silence (closing the eyes means making the image speak in the silence). Photography touches me when I remove it from its usual blahblablah […] not say anything, close my eyes […]” (Han, 2022) and he is quoting Roland Barthes in his work (photo): The camera lucida (or Lucid, depending on the translation).
Photography is therefore a way of perpetuating silence, the desire of many to take photos as an individual act is to remove it from everyday life and insert something that is eternal, while the public exposure that the digital universe has allowed is to return it to the “ usual blahblabla”, says the author: “The disaster of digital communication arises from the fact that we don’t have time to close our eyes” and maybe he doesn’t know but this is even physical, by not blinking our eyes we should use eye lubricants if We expose it for a lot of time on screens.
“Noise is both acoustic pollution and visual pollution. It pollutes attention” (Han, 2022) and citing Michel Serres says that this instinct is of animal origin, as dogs, tigers and other animals that urinate to demarcate land, pollute with their stench to inhibit other animals from approaching.
Allowing others to approach is not demarcating territory. Jesus’ biblical response to the initial contact of two new disciples is wise (John 1:38): “Jesus asked: “What are you looking for?” They said, “Rabbi (which means: Master), where do you live?” and he replied: “Come and see” and they went and stayed with Him, because he did not demarcate ground and did not close himself.
The logic of silence is contrary to noise, which does not just mean the pollution of an audible sound, but a complete void capable of containing and receiving the Other.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida , transl. of the Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
The non-thing and the amoral world
11
Jan
For Byung Chul-Han, what is changing is the
world of merchandise with the digital, he will analyze the power of the book and the ebook, the latter as a non-thing, the smartphone and other digital objects, but the world of morals as well is changing, he quotes in passing:
“A person uninterested in things, in possessions, does not submit to the “morality of things” based on work and property. She wants to play more than work; experience and enjoy more than possess. In its cultural phase, the economy also shows playful traits. Theatrics and performance are becoming increasingly meaningful. Cultural production, that is, the production of information, increasingly adapts artistic processes. Creativity becomes its motto”, using Vilém Flusser’s reasoning about the moral of the thing.
What Chul-Han calls the cultural phase should be an in-depth analysis of the period of the cultural industry, radio, cinema and television, which was nothing more than a transition from merchandise to the imagination through advertising, where the brand and not the content, so not only are the work and the product alienated, but its very essence is alienated, using a term from the medieval period, as we have already analyzed in a previous post, it loses its quiddity, its identity and singularity, as it was the cultural industry that gave everything the appearance of sameness.
Also in the final section he will analyze things of the heart, and it is good to remember that these also had their singularity in the past, today transformed into an amoral and timeless character, in the wrong sense of the word, what is eternal is essence and singular and then returns to quiddity.
The final section says, things of the heart, recalling the fox’s dialogue with The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “The little prince asks the fox what “apprivoiser” means. To which the fox responds: “It’s something almost forgotten […]. It means becoming familiar, establishing relationships. […] For me, you are just a little boy like a hundred thousand others” and this is the loss of singularity, there it will introduce listening and the relationship with the Furthermore, these relationships cannot be developed without a moral conception.
The exposure of personal relationships, the end of private life through legal and illegal filming, the increasing exposure of even children, is increasing and amoral, there is no room for growth and respect for the morals of each age, not even old age, Rejected as moral and as an age of wisdom, it is increasingly common to expose this “good age” in a pejorative and amoral sense, without limits of respect (Chul-Han calls it symmetry in The Swarm) and a balanced morality.
Everything seen as “freedom”, but which plunges into “upheavals in the world of life”, the author’s subtitle, we are heading towards a civilizational crisis and the return depends not on things, but on a new morality of the state, of human relations and of public life.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: ed. Vozes.
What are things
10
Jan
When rereading Byung Chul-Han’s “Non-Things”,
he correctly recalls that the term comes from Vilém Flusser, who lived in Brazil for a good part of his life, and also takes up the concepts of Hanna Arendt and Heidegger, but does not penetrate in the essence of the thing, which is not just information.
Medieval philosophers had already developed the question of quiddity, which is neither an idea nor a concept, but something that sought to understand the essence of things, from the Latin, “quidditas” means “what is that” and was related to the idea of identity and uniqueness.
Thus, by transforming it into information, it does what Luhman did with the concept (remember that this author deals more with the issue of communication than the thing in itself), he says, quoted by Byung Chul-Han: “His cosmology is a cosmology not of being, but of contingency”, that is, something that has no essence, no identity or singularity and cannot “be”.
Clarifying that it is a particular way of seeing information, as a “transmitted thing”, and in this the author is right: “Information cannot be possessed as easily as things. Possession determines the paradigm of the thing. The world of information is not governed by possession, but by access” (Han, 2022), this is so true that the Portuguese dictionary in Brazil now has a new word which is “logar”, from the English, log “registration” in the sense of marking access to “information”, in Chul-Han’s sense.
Quoting Jeremy Rifkin, Han warns that the transition from possession to access is a paradigm shift that leads to drastic change in the world of life, subtitle of the book, he predicts a new type of human being: “access, therefore, ‘access’ are key terms of the nascent era (Han, 2022).
Jeremy Rifkin, the transition from ownership to access is a profound paradigm shift that leads to drastic changes in the lifeworld. He even predicts the emergence of a new type of human being: “Access, ‘logon’, ‘access’ are the key terms of the nascent era. […]
Regarding the modified identity of the medieval sense, the author says: “We produce ourselves on social media. The French expression se produire means to put oneself on the scene. We act out. We perform our identity” (Han, 2022), mind you: it produces in the media Media are means, the confusion with the idea of networks, not on purpose of course, destroys the third characteristic of the thing which is its singularity, not in this essay, but in others, the author remembers that everything in the world is characterized by sameness, everything it looks very the same.
This world of “non-possession” is differentiated by enjoying more than living, it makes the “idealization of things” a task, it is not uncommon to see in programs and on social media a large number of utopian and bizarre questions, such as, what it would be if you were an object, if you lived on another planet, etc. and this amuses the public of non-things.
Revolutionaries should not be alarmed, but quoting Walter Benjamim, Chul-Han writes: “the deepest relationship one can have with things”, this substantiality is not materialistic but rather a rational and “informational” relationship with things, information here in another sense.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. Brazil, Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, 202
Being, the clearing and non-things
09
Jan
Studying the etymology of Glade, taking it from
Heidegger’s philosophy, it comes from the German word Lichtung, where in addition to the meaning of clearing in the forest (he himself lived for a few years in the black forest of Germany), while Licht is the word for light, it will mean hidden things, or entities whose truth must come to light, thus some translators use unveiling.
The light reminds us of what the magi followed, who were followed by a star that they carried until the birth of Jesus, they were probably Persian followers of Zoroaster, a painting from Ravenna (Picture in wall of Ravenna church, 526 DC) that is very old reveals the hats they wore and the pants that were from that region.
The clearing is, in the context of modern philosophy, what is hidden within a whole, where Being must emerge, and this seems more appropriate to modernity, since the fragmentation where only the part emerges, is most often opposed to the whole. to which the entity belongs, thus the question of Being.
The being that discovers itself, Heidegger himself stated: “lets itself be seen in its being and be discovered. The true-being (truth) of the statement must be understood in the sense of being-discoverer” (Heidegger, 1986, 219).
First we see this ontological truth as Being, and no longer as logic, second we see this relationship between knowing the object and the relationship with Being itself, which in modern philosophy could be called subjectivity, but it is not because they are not separate instances, However, separated from their object materiality they can become something beyond what was conceived until recently, the philosopher Byung Chul-Han wrote an essay about non-things, the world of digital objects where the “inflation of things deceives us into believing in opposite”.
The author will refer to the contemporary world as “As information hunters, we become blind to silent, discreet things, even ordinary things, trivialities or conventionalities that lack stimulation, but that we perceive in our daily lives”, and thus we plunge into a darkness of Being as opposed to clearing.
The digital order is making the world unearthly, unsubstantial, says the author in the preface: “Today, the earthly order is being replaced by the digital order. The digital order dethings the world by computerizing it” capturing a category from Vilém Flusser states: “Non-things are currently invading our environment from all sides, and are supplanting things. These non-things are called information”, citing Flusser’s work: Dinge und Undinge – Phenomenological Sketches. Munich, 1993, it is worth remembering that Flusser lived in Brazil from 1940 to 1972.
In this logic, silence, the vita (life) contemplative (another book by the author) escapes, and Being collapses.
Han, Byung-Chul (2022) Não-coisas : reviravoltas do mundo da vida / Byung-Chul Han ; tradução de Rafael Rodrigues Garcia. – Petrópolis, RJ : Vozes, 202
HEIDEGGER, M. Sein und Zeit. 17 ed. Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1986.
The escalation of wars
08
Jan
Although it cannot yet be declared a world 
war, the interference of Russia and the United States in several wars on the planet is already open and declared, Ukraine, on strong air attacks in all regions, issued a warning this Monday about these attacks, in Palestine the news They say that over 70% of the territory is uninhabitable due to the war.
Tension continues in the East, the North Korean dictator considers himself at war with the United States and on Saturday (06/01) more than 60 artillery shots were observed on the border with South Korea, tension in the area is growing, and there are American ships nearby.
Kim Jon-Um’s motivation was the naval exercise near the Baengnyeongdo and Yeongpyong islands, a border region between the Koreas (map above) although North Korea’s response could be thought of as defensive, Kim’s declaration was of open war with the In the USA, the warmongering stance of conservative South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol strains relations with North Korea, which calls him a “gangster”.
The United States does not rule out open intervention in Eastern Europe, China maintains reservations, but always declares that the island of Taiwan is a rebel province and considers it part of Chinese territory, it is a declaration that an inevitable American defense and probable Japan in the area would also mean China entering the war, this scenario is a third world war, and we are on a very fragile threshold of this possibility.
From an economic point of view, the road in the BRICS of countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Ethiopia is also a cause of tension, since the Arab countries ally themselves with the socialists.
There is no longer any way to ignore the level of global tension for 2024, although hope will always remain with those who sincerely desire peace, and do not use it as warlike rhetoric.
Globalism or Universalism, a new period
05
Jan
The current crisis clearly points to a civilizational
crisis, Eurocentric and Enlightenment visions already showed their exhaustion in previous periods, by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Shopenhauer who sought elements in Western philosophy, but quantum physics and studies on an era called “anthropocene ” such as the transdisciplinary studies of Anna Tsing, founder of AURA (Arhus University Research on the Anthropocene) and one of the editors of the Feral Atlas (feralatlas.org) published by Stanford University Press.
Thus, the theories of globalism and NWO (New World Order) are nothing more than conspiracy theories, although the political forces at play may also have influences from various political organizations that desire new forms of imperialism and population control.
Simply looking at an increasingly complex universe in which old Copernican and Newtonian paradigms, of great influence on Western thought, die, show a much more complex reality, such as string theory pointed out by Michio Kaku as one of the few alternatives to explain the universe as we now see it through megatelescopes.
Even Einstein’s idea of understanding the mind of God is very far from what a theory of Everything and the Whole really means, where it is almost impossible not to think of a Being with an unimaginable intelligence who created everything, a simple energy or chance is simplistic Too many and even theoretical physicists such as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku have admitted this hypothesis.
However, it is difficult to imagine a mega-intelligent consciousness in the face of such primary reasoning that involves the majority of Christian thinkers, figures such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scottus and Boethius, these last two are considered saints by Catholics, seem to be overshadowed by a fundamentalist primarism that ignores the complex universe we live in and which still reveals itself to be incomprehensible within human limits.
For serious religious people, it would be enough to examine the visit of the wise (see youtube) men (people from other beliefs and cultures) who came to worship the newborn in Bethlehem to become aware that God is universal and is not limited to human dictates and customs, but there is a lot of false prophecy.
The limit of a true Christianity should be as Augustine of Hippo said: “the limit of Love is to love without limits”, this should be essential to a true God of Love.
The 3 Wise kings – Documentary Discovery Civilization l Dublado l – YouTube
The mystery of black holes
04
Jan
The center of the Milky Way, the galaxy where our
solar system inhabits, is formed by a disk with spiral arms and a dense, yellowish central region known as the “bulge” and there are around ten billion stars orbiting the colossal object that is its center called the supermassive black hole Sagittrius A*.
So, if in the past geocentrism (the Earth as the center) was a naive idea, now Heliocentrism (the sun as the center) is also a provincial and outdated idea, but what black holes are, it was not Einstein but Karl Schwarzschild who was the first to propose its existence.
Steven S. Gubser’s book “The Little Book of Black Holes”, deals in a simple way, as much as possible, explains Einstein’s special and general relativity and Schwarzschild’s equations that gave rise to the topic, black holes are one of the strong themes in current astronomy and one of the sources of research for the James Webb mega-telescope.
The book begins by recounting an experiment carried out on September 14, 2015, almost a hundred years after Einstein announced his theory of general relativity, two massive detectors, one in Louisiana and the other in Washington, were carrying out a gravitational wave experiment when they detected an audible signal, such as a serious knock and five months later they announced that they had detected two colliding black holes forming a larger one, the discovery was spectacular.
Both black holes and gravitational waves were predicted in Einstein’s Theory. In this theory, the black hole is a region of space-time (the notion of absolute time and space has already been overcome) where all nearby matter is attracted and is impossible to escape.
There is a popular saying that everything that goes up must come down, says the author, however the idea of the Schwarzschild equations is that nothing can go up, only come down and in the case of black holes where does that which must come down go, that is, what happens to what is attracted to the black hole.
We know the story of the apple that would have inspired Newton’s law of universal gravitation, the author of the book then suggests an apple falling into a black hole.
An apple outside the black hole events everything is static, at the horizon of these events everything is dynamic, flowing towards an all-encompassing singularity (where space-time changes dynamically in an extraordinary way, there two dimensions compress and the third is stretched.
Stephen Hawking, famous for proposing Big Bang equations, speculated that black holes are not actually black, they have their color (in fact, outside our visual range of colors from violet to red) determined by temperature, energy and entropy of its surface (if we can call the two dimensions that, since it is space-time).
This simplified introduction is developed over seven chapters of the book, in astronomical details and their equations, which requires some more specific knowledge of physics.
Gubser, Steven S., Pretorius, F. 2021. The Little Book of Black Hole. US: Princeton Press, 2018.
