Posts Tagged ‘paz’
Perspective of war and intoxication of the spirit
19
Feb
The tone and actions of a non-stop war are
expanding, there are few nations and voices that are not under what the century-old philosopher Edgar Morin calls “collective intoxication”, and calls for there to be resistance capable of reacting to all the lies spread .
The commander of NATO forces, Chris Cavoli, announced an army of 90 thousand men, and an exercise called Steadfast Defender 2024, which should take place in May, with 50 ships, from aircraft carriers to destroyers, 80 fighters, helicopters and drones participating. and more than 1,100 combat vehicles, including 133 tanks and 533 infantry vehicles.
Russia misleads and says it would not invade Latvia and Poland, it took the city of Avdviika (photo) once and for all, one of the strategic fronts and where the war is most violent, Zelensky minimizes the loss by stating that he retreated to “save lives”, however the war remains bloody.
In an interview this Sunday (18/02) Putin says that Ukraine “is a matter of life and death” for the country, the death of opponent Navalny had repercussions throughout the world and will be a watershed for those who clearly support a regime warlike and authoritarian.
In the Gaza strip, the city of Rafah with millions of Palestinian refugees remains under Israeli threat, a hospital was invaded because there was news that “hostages were there”, but they were not found, only weapons and with the invasion patients in the ICU died.
There are international calls for Israel not to put civilians at risk, the majority of whom are taking refuge in Rafah, and Egypt has built a huge wall so that they cannot flee to Egypt and this puts thousands of women, children and other civilians at risk. who are there and have nowhere to escape.
Negotiations become more difficult with each Israeli action and the involvement of Iran and other Arab countries becomes more inevitable every day, it will be on this front that a possible 3rd. war will occur, the resistance of the spirit claimed by the century-old philosopher and educator Edgar Morin must fight against fanaticism and hatred that only spread death and war.
In a previous interview published in the Italian newspaper La Reppublica, Morin had said: “all war embodies Manichaeism, unilateral propaganda, war hysteria, espionage, lies, the preparation of increasingly deadly weapons, errors and illusions, unexpected events and surprises”, it takes a resistance of the Spirit for Peace.
Ethical and spiritual resistance
16
Feb
Ethical resistance, or the resistance of the spirit
that Edgar Morin speaks of, is the recognition “of a return to dogmatism and fanaticism, and a crisis of morals while hatred and idolatries spread,” said the philosopher.
It is not possible to establish ethics by breaking the most elementary rules of ethics than respect for the dignity of the Other, it is not possible to strengthen morality if we spread all types of immorality from politics to customs and it is not possible to speak of spirit if what exists is only pure idolatry, in many senses, from culture to religious.
It is no longer just about wars, which in themselves are already a catastrophe, but “the qualities of our civilization have deteriorated and needs have increased, particularly in the development of selfishness and the disappearance of traditional solidarities”, said Morin in an interview with Italian newspaper La Reppublica.
The appeal to political fanaticism has polarized society, those who defended democracy attack it with the most arbitrary forms of power, in the religious field those who defend religious practices and rites forget to do good to others and to respect different faiths, everyone is right in their own way, according to their own morals and the result is moral scandals.
Like that Pharisee who practices fasting and makes shady deals and mistreats his employees, or like those who, despite knowing the religious precepts, try to justify their faults with arguments or factual and non-contextual religious reading.
An asceticism that does not include changes in attitudes and behaviors, a resistance of the spirit to everything that seems justifiably immoral and spiritually dubious, must be a path to a true asceticism that involves a true resistance of the spirit.
The temptations of Jesus in the desert, in which he was offered honor, glory and power to give in to evil, more than an allegory is a path for achievements to be made in a modest, fair way and without offending those who are for some reason dependent on us for sustenance.
Appeals to wealth, power and luxury in the name of religiosity are the clearest idolatries and the reverse of any resistance of the spirit or moral resistance to civilizational decadence.
Wars are nothing more than the temptations of power and oppression for peoples, groups or cultures that will be subjugated by brute force, humiliation and even the death of innocents.
The hope for peace, morality and ethics lies in maintaining resistance of the spirit.
Morin, E. The resistance of the Spirit, Italy: La Reppublica, 01/24/2024.
Human fragility in the face of Infinity
14
Feb
One of the important works to understand the
linguistic shift from the point of view of ontology is the work of Emmanuel Levinas, highlighting here a work that addresses the entire issue of the impossibility of objectifying the Other and human limitation in the face of weaknesses such as vices, ethical difficulties and war.
Levinas draws part of his experience from what he experienced in the Second World War, where he was held prisoner by the Nazi regime, in addition to having his parents and brothers executed, he saw the atrocities of the so-called “enlightened reason” which proved to be violent and totalitarian, these experiences are in tension in his thinking, and are important in a context of threat of a new world war.
Ontology has its role within metaphysics according to the author, but not its primacy as that of first philosophy, the transcendence of the scope of “self” and “being”, since this movement has been unveiled (the categories of reality) veiling is a new veiling) returning the movement to the self, to the identical, to being and its preservation, not to the recognition of the Other.
In contrast to Heidegger, for whom the relationship between being and others is subordinated to a relationship with being in general and nothing interferes with the emergence of the self, Levinas understands that the self is not due to being, but to the Other, and thus this relationship It is fundamental as in Paul Ricoeur.
The author proposes in Totality and Infinity a new choice for understanding being in which exteriority is not sacrificed, thus the relationship with the Other and with the exterior “world” is a reflection and path to interiority, in which it finds a relationship with the all and infinite.
This relationship between the self and the face of the Other that presents ethical resistance, for the author, is through its epiphany, through its “appearance” (a fundamental category in phenomenology), that the exteriority of infinite being can manifest itself as resistance.
His thinking is more complex, but we can understand that the weakness and limitation of the self, if kept in tension with exteriority and with the Other, reveals the infinite and our relationship with it, which cannot be other than the recognition of its “ transcendence”.
Levinas, E. (1969) Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, London: Kluwer Academic Pub.
Russian and Israeli strategy
12
Feb
On the one hand, a power on the left, which
does not negotiate with opponents and does not give up power, on the other, a Western power where war can help keep right-wing forces in coalition in power.
Wars are political and we cannot see them only from the perspective of dictators and genocides, even though any war is based on the illegitimate killing of civilians and even within the parameters of international agreements on war, they are exceeded.
Any narrative that exists hides hatred and revenge against opponents, anger and violence as a foundation, using discourses of virility, ideologies of single thinking and even humanistic appeals that are outdated after the first battle.
The critical analysis is that is there will be no setbacks, in a recent speech Putin declared that there is no possibility of defeat in Ukraine, that is, he would use catastrophic nuclear weapons or resources close to this, but mitigates this by saying that there is no interest in Poland and Latvia.
Despite having elections coming up, the only Russian opponent that Putin respects, others are already in prison or disappear in prison or dead, there is no possibility of any change in power.
In Israel, President Netanyahu threatens to send troops to Rafah, a refugee camp on the border with Egypt, which has had a peace treaty with Israel for 45 years. American President Biden also asked that no troops be sent there, but the proximity of the Israeli elections demands a nod to the more radical right in Israel.
UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russel said civilians in Rafah must be protected as they have nowhere to go: “Some 1.3 million civilians are trapped, living on the streets or in shelters. They need to be protected. They have no safe place to go,” he said according to the international press.
The logic of war is that it favors dictators and does not allow any more humane and democratic principle to be respected, it is the absence of serenity and tolerance towards opponents.
Healing minds and hearts
09
Feb
It is increasingly common to appeal to material
goods, as we close in on ourselves and have a false idea about what happiness is, wounded souls and hearts that seek happiness where it is not found, it may be a temporary consolation, but it is not happiness, happiness balanced.
Another book by Seneca that is quite fundamental to his thinking is about the tranquility of the soul, modern man lives in exteriority, mistakenly called objectivity or materiality, because things (beings) are part of ontological aspects and must be thought of and cultivated appropriately in interiority. , which is not subjectivity, but soul.
Said the Roman philosopher, who we posted yesterday about Wrath, now about the soul:
“If man had the opportunity to look inside himself, how he would torture himself, he would confess the truth and say: “Everything I have done up to now, I would prefer if it had not been done; When I think about everything I said, I envy the dumb; everything I desired, the curse of my enemies; everything I feared. O righteous gods! Better not to have wanted to. I made many enemies, and hatred replaced friendship (if there is friendship between evil people), and I’m not even friends with myself.
Although written at the beginning of the Christian era, the author Of the tranquility of the soul, reflects the difficulty it is for the common man and also for the wise man to maintain his serenity, faced with a spectacle of injustice and baseness (see how old this is), which he witnesses every day, is precisely the counterpoint to Anger, hatred and confrontation.
The text begins with an imaginary letter written by Sereno (of course the name is on purpose): “I will tell you what is happening to me, and you will find a name for this illness”, and at the end he states: “Sometimes, my soul rises with the magnitude of thought, becomes greedy for words and aspires to heights. So the speech is no longer mine [emphasis added]. Forgetting about the norms and rigorous criteria, I stand up and speak with a mouth that is no longer mine.”
From then on, he will reflect on how to overcome obstacles that prevent peace.
Although the discourse is moralistic and ethical, and it is no less important for this reason, the elevation that Seneca sought cannot find any other place than in a spiritual asceticism, it is also found in other cultures, Buddhism is an elevation on the path of virtues, Ghandi used the peace as a political exercise to lead India, and in the case of Christianity it is the “cures” of Jesus.
The Biblical text says, when they see the healing of a deaf-mute (Mc 7,37): “He does all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak”, and he also cured “unclean” lepers.
Sêneca. (2009) Da Tranquilidade da Alma (wordpress.com) (portuguese). transl. Lucia Sá Rebello e Ellen Itanajara Neves Vranas. Brazil, Porto Alegre: LP&M Pocket.
Hypocrisy and power
06
Feb
In the analysis of political and ideological currents,
the notion and problem of hypocrisy is neglected, so it is possible to defend democracy by defending autocratic attitudes, by combating corruption, to justify elements of active and passive corruption, in fact, the active one which is the fact of offering illegal compensation (and it is not said what is illegal) and passive is when a public official receives undue compensation (when possible) from third parties.
The term hypocrisy in ancient Greek (hypocritás) is similar to the current one, it is when a social actor intentionally acts in a simulated way, in acts or words, that hide how he thinks or how he actually acts, the rule today is to say the opposite to confuse public opinion.
As a term used by contemporary authors, I remember Machiavelli, as critics of political reason, and Foucault, who sees it as a central element of power relations, although his analysis moves to the psychological field.
Byung Chul-Han’s psychopolitics moves to the media field, the author believes that the power of digital media facilitates this type of relationship, although he does not directly call it hypocrisy, but gives an interesting recipe in his book “What is power”, “The modern loss of faith, which does not only concern God and the beyond, but reality itself, makes human life radically transitory”, so there is nothing perennial, since everything changes.
The basis of modern hypocrisy is to induce man to believe in a life of ease, what Byung Chul-Han calls an excess of positivity, pain and sacrifice have been abolished, “We forget that pain purifies. The culture of enjoyment lacks the possibility of catharsis. Thus, we suffocate it with the residues [Schlacken] of positivity, which accumulate beneath the surface of the tanning culture.”
This makes man happier, the answer is the opposite of what society promises, depression, bipolarity and boredom are contemporary diseases, “Depression is the illness of a society that suffers under an excess of positivity”.
Men and women, freed from this society of performance, exercise, and despiritualized asceticism, without suspicious and persecutory attitudes, become more affable: “Ordinary men and women, given the opportunity for a happy life, will become more gentle and less persecutory and inclined to view others with suspicion.”
It is possible to reestablish mutual trust, healthy relationships, empathy and fraternity, making society healthier and less conflictual.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2018) What is power?. NY; Wiley.
Hopes for peace
05
Feb
The Russian elections take place on March 15th
and 17th, but Putin’s likely political opponent, former deputy Boris Nadejdin, had his candidacy rejected this Friday, February 2nd by the vice-president of the electoral commission Nikolai Bulaiev, who said reasons for irregularity and which will point out other technical problems.
This procedure is routine in Russian elections, and sometimes opponents disappear or are arrested for some reason or minor infraction, dictators control the state machine to forge a democracy that does not exist in practice and nationalist governments also grow.
One of the reasons is that some people on the list were considered dead, Nadejdin joked:
“You and I are the most alive of the living. If anyone imagines that they see dead souls on my subscription lists, that’s not a question for me, maybe they should look for the church, or an exorcist”, according to news on Telegram, a fair election could change the outlook for the war in Ukraine.
Peace in the Middle East is also possible, Israel wants the release of all hostages and Hamas wants an end to the war, reiterating this Saturday (03/02) that the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip are prerequisites for hostage release agreement.
New attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen were carried out by the United States and the United Kingdom this weekend, and the organization, a group of multiple militias, is believed to be armed and financed by Iran, which denies the accusations.
According to the American Department of Defense, there are several militias financed by Iran, including Hezbollah and the Houthis, after two Americans were killed in the interception of a boat carrying weapons to rebels in Yemen, the American Department of Defense released a photo (above) .
There are always circumstances and situations that can end a war, it is necessary no limit condemning the power of tyrants and warmongering governments so that the world moves towards peace.
Resistance or catastrophe
30
Jan
So says the article by the century-old thinker and
educator Edgar Morin, in the article for the Italian newspaper La Reppublica, we are “heading towards probable catastrophes”.
And he asks: Is this catastrophism? This word exorcises evil and gives an illusory serenity. The polycrisis that we are experiencing across the planet is an anthropological crisis: it is the crisis of humanity that cannot become Humanity, the word polycrisis has already been used by the author in other contexts: that of thought, the ecological and social crisis, now he adds one anthropological, other authors say the age crisis of the anthropocene.
He, like other authors, pointed to this crisis, but believed that a change of direction was possible, now it seems too late, “we don’t know if the world situation is desperate or really desperate”, it doesn’t mean with or without hope, like or without despair , we have to move on to a Resistance, and now different from that of the 2nd. war in which France was occupied by the Nazis (photo), now the world is occupied by polarization and hatred.
The facts and situations drag us into an unprecedented war, “we are condemned to suffer the struggle between two imperialist giants with the possible warlike intervention of a third”, as the author says, “the first resistance is that of the spirit, which must be capable of resisting the intimidation of all the lies spread as truth and the contagion of all collective drunkenness”, calls for a spirit of sobriety and of those who believe, of faith and hope.
Today we must know how to resist hatred and contempt, “it requires the effort to understand the complexity of problems without ever giving in to a partial or unilateral vision. It requires research, verification of information and acceptance of uncertainties” wrote Morin.
This “resistance also implies the coordination of associations that are dedicated to solidarity and the rejection of hate. Resistance would thus prepare young generations to think and act through the forces of union, fraternity, life and love.”
It’s not about finding justice in some kind of hate, but hating the hate itself, it’s not about cheering for this or that side of the war, but making war on war itself.
The resistance that Morin calls for must involve all people of good will and solidarity among those who truly know the consequences of such a war, beyond speech.
The resistance of the spirit of humanity
29
Jan
Victor Serge wrote “Midnight of the Century” in
1939, in the middle of the 2nd. world war, now in an article published in La Reppublica, on 24-01-2024, the French sociologist Edgar Morin published an article: “The resistance of the spirit” about the crisis of current wars.
The war in Ukraine mobilized economic aid from much of the world, while on the Russian side, economically weakened by the sanctions imposed by Western nations, it strengthened both technical-scientific development and the bloc formed with China.
Serge, an anarchist by origin, who supported the Russian Revolution, saw it bureaucratize and persecute all real and imaginary enemies in the Stalinist period, described in “The Great Terror” (1934-38), years before describing the horror to midnight, and whatever you say about today.
A new focus emerged after a massacre of civilians by Hamas on October 7, 2023, followed by deadly Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip.
In Morin’s analysis, which has been developed for some time, the progress of knowledge occurred by creating barriers in disciplines that are increasingly closed in their object, which leads to a new type of almost blind thinking, linked to the dominance of calculation in a technocratic world, the progress of knowledge does not consider the complexity of reality and becomes blind.
The result of a lack of clarity and understanding of human life exposed by the ease of access to all life on the planet, without its understanding, has led to dogmatism and fanaticism, and a crisis of morals while hatred and idolatries spread.
Recalling the years of Nazi occupation in France (photo Carentan France, June 1944 From the LIFE Magazine Archives), in which Morin himself was a member of the French Resistance, he now evokes a resistance of spirit that avoids almost desperate or truly desperate action, and maintains hope through Resistance.
This resistance implies safeguarding or creating an oasis of communities endowed with a say in relative autonomy (agroecological) and social and solidarity economy networks.
This action also implies associations that are dedicated to solidarity and rejection of hate.
War in Balochistan
22
Jan
I believe that most people ignore the
existence of this region, which makes up 44% of Pakistan’s territory, it was bombed by Iran last week (16/01), in response Pakistan bombed Iran, starting a conflict that could escalate between the countries, in the same week that it bombed targets in Syria and Iraq.
According to Pakistan, the missiles on Thursday (18/1) targeted “terrorist hideouts” and killed 9 people, all of this means that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps army has taken action, as tensions between the Houthis and the US grow. in the red sea.
Something little publicized, but which is strategic in the world economy, is the economic route that starts in Gwadar in Balochistan to Kashgar (China), China has invested in land routes.
The region of Baluchistan (map) has more than 12 million inhabitants, is rich in gold ore and is considered a kind of “lawless land”, but more than economic interest, what the war awakens there is the alert and the readiness of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that signals against Israel in tension in the Gaza Strip.
The war in Ukraine also worsens tensions, the harsh rhetoric of Macron’s French government, which stated that “Russia cannot win the war” hardens NATO tensions with harsh attacks on several Ukrainian cities causing chaos in the country.
The narratives seek to justify to the right or to the left what is obvious: the civilian population suffers, on a larger scale the world population if a recession comes, relations from economic to social worsen and peace becomes increasingly distant.
There are no justifications for a “just war”, if in the past rigid territorial divisions and the “wealth of nations” (a classic by Adam Smith, which Marx read to write Capital) were a reality, today only the justification of power and of greed justify neocolonialism.
One breaks with the truth, with common sense and even with reason, in order to justify a logic of power, as Plato said in antiquity: “If a city of good men were to arise, it is likely that people would fight to escape. of power, as we now struggle to obtain it, and it would become evident that, in truth, the authentic ruler must not aim at his own interest, but at that of the governed” (Plato, The Republic).
