Arquivo para March, 2025
Serenity: choosing what is good
07
Mar
There is no serenity without reasonable choices
about personal, social and spiritual life, even worse is the one who tries to eliminate one of the three. Without personal life there is no being-there (Heidegger’s Dasein), without social life we live in a bubble, and without spiritual life we do not develop our essence.
Among the choices we have to make in life, they cannot involve only one of the three aspects: the personal only makes us selfish and narcissistic, without the social we become alienated and have difficulty understanding reality, and without the spiritual we do not have a true asceticism that elevates us as human beings.
On the occasion of the centenary of his fellow countryman, the great musician Conradin Kreutzer, in a 1949 conference in his hometown of Meßkirch, Germany, wrote the text on Serenity.
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks if it is not through music and singing: “is not music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resounding of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
Heidegger questions the difficulty of thinking even at that time, and asks whether it is not through music and song: “isn’t music distinguished by the fact that it ‘speaks’ through the mere resonation of its notes and does not need everyday language, the language of words?” and: “is it already a commemoration, which involves the act of thinking?” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 10).
When remembering his hometown, he recalls that [due to the war]: “they had to abandon their villages and cities, expelled from their native soil… they became strangers… and those who remained? They are often even more uprooted (heimatloser) than those who were expelled. Every hour and every day they are tied to radio and television… the cinema transports them weekly to the unusual domains, of representation that simulates a world that is not.” (Heidegger, 2008, p. 16), showing the relationship with technology. If you lived in our day and age, you would see how visible the relationship that is maintained is, now not transporting you to other realities, but to unrealities that transport your mind to the vulgar.
Thus, the choices that must be made become more radical. More than ever, it is necessary not only to choose what is good and healthy, but to fight so that this awareness is not lost in illusions.
Heidegger, M. (2008) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisbon: Instituto Piaget.
Beyond pain: choosing life
06
Mar
No to war, hatred and indifference means
going beyond pain. It is often difficult to go through differences of opinion, conflicts of culture and even ideologies, but this is exactly what pain implies as a normal contingency of life.
Byung-Chul Han, in his analysis of painkillers, describes permanent anesthesia as one that limits not only feelings: “Pain is stopped before it can set a narrative in motion” (p. 72), and also: “Hell is just like a palliative well-being zone” (p. 73).
“Today, we are not willing to expose ourselves to pain. Pain, however, is a midwife to the new, a midwife to the entirely other” (p. 73), so it leads to an encounter and to life, ‘it allows only the prose of well-being, that is, writing in the sunlight’ (idem).
In the inability to understand pain as a process of change, it is often replaced by resilience, which can make sense with great obstacles or a great effort to overcome a certain circumstance of pain, but in many cases, it is just a stubbornness with situations that lead to true happiness, what Sloterdijk calls a “society of exercises”, efforts that do not lead to overcoming.
The Greeks had the myth of Sisyphus (we’ve already posted about this, see the image), a cunning king who defied Death and Hades, resulting in his being condemned to eternally push a stone to the top of the hill, Albert Camus has a book that talks about this and updates the theme.
True resilience understands that there is a new path, a pain that “midwives the new”.
When the people complained about the passage from Egypt to the promised land, saying that they missed the onions and leftovers they ate as slaves to Pharaoh, Moses rebuked them and said (Deuteronomy 30:19): “I take heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live…”, indicating the path to freedom and the building of their nation.
Facing difficulties, pain and even afflictions in difficult times certainly requires resilience, but it cannot be confused with error, sheer stubbornness or “exercises” that lead to nothing and do not favor finding happiness.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
Pain and ashes
05
Mar
The period of Lent is the 40 days after Carnival,
as it was already part of the early church, coming from the Easter of the Jews, it is before Carnival, it recalls the Jewish Easter (Pesach), which has the meaning of passage or liberation, remembering the period when they were slaves in Egypt.
Christian Easter is a renewal, it recalls the death and resurrection of Jesus. We are reading and remembering the book by Byung-Chul Han (who is not a Christian) where he talks about the ontological meaning of pain and its current erasure, clarifying: “we live in a society with increasing loneliness and isolation” (Han, 2021, p. 59).
The author quotes Viktor von Weizsäcker in his essay “The Pains”, where he characterizes pain as a “truth that has become flesh”, as a “becoming flesh of truth” (p. 61), and also “Everything that is true is painful” (idem).
Society without truths, says the author in the following passage, is “an unparalleled hell”, and “pain can only arise where true belonging is threatened. Without pain, then, we are blind, incapable of truth and knowledge” (p. 62).
So in Christianity and Judaism, the ashes and Passover as a way of of 40 days, appear to remind us of the dust we are and the path of salvation and belonging we must follow: “pain is distinction [Unterschied]. It articulates life” (pg. 63), ‘it marks boundaries’.
“Pain is reality. It has a reality effect. We first perceive reality in the resistance that hurts. The permanent anaesthesia of the palliative society derealizes [entwirklicht] the world” (p. 64) and ‘reality returns in the form of a viral counter-body’ (p. 65) wrote the author because it was the period of the pandemic.
So the ashes and the period of Lent for Christians is to renew the period of Jesus’ passion as its apex in Holy Week, where there is the apex of the pain of crucifixion and the apex of renewal that is his resurrection, Christians or not, this is the true and real logic of life.
If we don’t understand this, we become paralyzed by the pain of hatred, wars, indifference, various types of injustice, the exclusion of the Other, in short, the non-life that all this senselessness of pain causes, and so it is necessary to remember the dust of ashes, everything that passes and that only makes sense if we understand pain not as an end, but as a passage to life.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
Pain and its meaning
04
Mar
In his book “Palliative Society: Pain Today”,
Byung-Chul Han characterizes the being who has “objectified pain” as one who lives in a “purely bodily affliction”, because being “endowed with meaning [Sinnhaftigkeit] pain presupposes a narrative that inserts life into a horizon of meaning”, so without a bodily life linked to a greater meaning it is “a bare life emptied of meaning, which no longer narrates” (Han, 2021, p. 46).
He quotes Walter Benjamin, in Images of Thought, where he shows the healing power of narration: “The child is sick. The mother brings her to bed and sits down beside her. And then she begins to tell stories” (p. 47), at least that’s what used to be done in the old days, before taking the child to the doctor.
As we quoted in last month’s blog: “today we live in a post-narrative time” (p. 48), “the hypersensitive human being of late modernity, who suffers senseless pain … that wave of pain in which the spirit recognizes its impotence sinks rapidly today” (p. 49).
He also quotes E. Jünger’s “On Pain”: “The human being deludes himself that he is safe, while it is only a matter of time before he is dragged into the abyss by the elements” (p. 55).
Jünger explains that pain cannot be made to disappear, he speaks of an “economy of pain, if placed in the background in this way, it appears hidden in an ‘invisible capital’, which ‘increases with interest and interest on interest’. Paraphrasing Hegel’s “cunning of reason”, Jünger postulates the “cunning of pain”, in this way, it is not autocratic power, but pain that has not been objectified in some form of domination.
He writes, quoting Jünger: “No claim is more certain than that which pain has on life. Where pain is spared, equilibrium is restored according to the laws of an entirely determined economy” (pp. 55-56).
Thus it is possible to speak, according to the author, “borrowing a well-known expression, of a ‘cunning of pain’, which achieves its goal by all means” (p. 56), “… the scattered light with which pain, in return, begins to fill the space” (idem), only if this light is outside our objectified “security” (that linked to material goods and comforts) can we find another, more lasting type of ‘conquests’, which are not objectifiable.
The author goes on to explain that “in a palliative society hostile to pain, silent pains multiply, crowded into the margins, persisting in an absence of meaning, speech and image” (p. 57).
Far from narcissism and selfishness, we find a meaning to pain, we find more than a meaning, a reward that comes from our solidarity, from the encounter with the Other and with the true happiness of life in the family, in the community and in true security.
Han, B. C. (2021) Paliative Society: pain today. Transl. Lucas Machado, Brazil, Petrópolis: Ed. Vozes.
Pax Romana and conflicts
03
Mar
President Zelensky’s Friday meeting (02/28) with Trump
and his vice-president in the “oval office” of the White House was a reaffirmation of Trump’s policy of Pax Romana, where the weakest must yield to the strongest, and also asked for Zelensky’s gratitude to the US, not unlike the policy for the Middle East, the control of the Palestinians by Israel and the US.
Zelensky reacted by taking part in the summit in London on Sunday (02/03), reaffirming Europe’s position of support for Zelensky, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Great Britain stating that it was “a unique moment in a generation for the security of Europe” which fears further advances by Putin on the continent, all countries are militarizing.
The Roman Pax was the mere surrender of its adversaries by force, this is the tactic of both imperialism and colonizations, which are still happening in the contemporary world. After the meeting, Zelensky also met with Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s premier, who said she wanted to build a bridge between Italy and the US and a future conference with the US.
The idea of a new ceasefire agreement in the Middle East (which ended on the 1st) now involves the American proposal for control of the Gaza Strip and Israel has suspended humanitarian.
At the beginning of last week, Turkey’s stance in support of Ukraine came as a surprise, with President Recep Erdogan stating that Ukraine should take part in the negotiations and that Turkey controls the passage of ships through the Bosphorus Strait (photo), through which Russian ships pass on their way to the Black Sea, and that Turkey is also important for peace in the Middle East, where it can be a key player, and that the country is a member of NATO.
The Turkish autocrat also said that he is in favor of the full return of Ukrainian territory: “The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law,” a very difficult point.
The situation is fragile in Ukraine, but Russia needs to demonstrate a real interest in the desire for peace, just as it distrusts NATO, European countries fear a future advance on Europe, already a conflict area like Transnistria in Moldova.
Every war involves some kind of plunder, and the interest is in Ukraine’s rare lands.
Trump has also expressed imperialist interests in Greenland and even territories in Mexico and Canada. Remember that a large part of New Mexico and nearby states once belonged to Mexico (Texas, California and parts of neighboring states). The Guadalupe-Hidalgo agreement of 1848 established the new American border, after several wars following the annexation of Texas in 1821.
It is necessary to establish the rights of peoples and many international treaties already speak of respect for borders and respect for national laws, interferences are always conflictual, we must also remember the stateless peoples (the Kurds and the Palestinians, but there are others).
A new world of solidarity requires a new vision of borders, where emigration is not a crime and each people can live in its own territory and exploit it commercially without wars.
A significant milestone for this blog
01
Mar
In February, we reached a milestone of 
almost two thousand hits a day on our content, 55,980 in total. If we had just 20 more hits, we would have reached exactly 56,000, which divided by the 28 days of February would give us 2,000 hits a day.
The main concern of this blog is to maintain a healthy culture of dialogue, respecting the different positions, trying to divert the current polarization without omitting the excesses and outbursts of hatred and bravery that characterize the contemporary world and without forgetting good culture.
We don’t omit our Christian vision, which in our view should be one of dialogue and respect for all other cultures, ecumenism with other religions and the defense of life, greater social justice and the reaffirmation of scientific culture, without forgetting that it depends on method and not opting for the current polarization that distorts true scientific knowledge, ignores original cultures and other peoples who have their own culture in their development.
I would also clarify that our vision of Christianity involves true spirituality and recognizes a culture confused about its true roots: solidarity, humanitarianism and empathy between peoples. Fundamentalism has nothing to do with orthodoxy, which recognizes as theological values: charity (infuse), true hope (Psalm 146:5, Jeremiah 17:7,8, Ephesians: 1, 18) and true faith that believes in the historical and divine truth of Jesus.
We will never deny science and good culture, remembering that they need method and good storytelling, a theme that is almost always present in our analysis of today’s society and culture.
But our central concern in the contemporary world is peace, empathy and justice.
Thank you to my readers, especially those who, while disagreeing, keep the dialog going!!!
