Arquivo para 2021
History, the great clearing and parousia
03
Dec
Christmas is near and the birth of Jesus is a historical fact because
the Census ordered by the emperor of Rome Caesar Augustus, regarding the date there is controversy for it would be between 4-5 BC, when Quininus was Governor of Syria as described in the Bible (Lc 2.2), but it is certain that the census was carried out and this was precisely the reason why Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem, where the prophecy said that from there the savior would be born, and thus he “was numbered among men”.
History is also punctuated by divine interventions, in the decadence of Rome the monasteries were born, where the culinary culture, the first guilds and offices and also an earlier stage of printed writing is carried out, through the copyists, the first schools and later the first universities, with a strong theological influence as it could not be otherwise, but this is all history, also in the renaissance art and culture had a strong influence (theological).
We enter modernity, the work that we read punctually in this week’s posts “all in the same boat” by Sloterdijk, mentions an important fact, in addition to citing the classic work of the Decamerão by Boccaccio as “small community in the midst of the big disaster” ( Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 75), makes an analysis of the Black Death (which happened in the 130’s) and which devastated Europe with more than 100 million people dead when the population was much smaller than today, and its political influence.
In a footnote he cites the work of Henrik Siewierki (translated by Estação Liberdade in 2001) “A mass for the city of Arras” where he analyzes the psychological and political consequences of the plague, also the psychologist Franz Renggli, in his book Self-destruction by abandonment , developed the hypothesis of the influence on modernity of the plague, and also of the degradation of the mother-child relationship that would have caused a kind of immunological, collective and psychosomatic weakness that favored the virus of that plague.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our community, that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than the one we’ve already encountered.
All this analysis is interesting in the midst of the Pandemic’s return to Europe, while it is undoubtedly a scourge, it can fuel a new clearing on our coimmunity (category of Sloterdijk), that is, the idea of a mutual and solidary defense in view of a catastrophe even greater than we have already encountered.
It serves to “make the paths smooth”, as the biblical reading says when John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, announced in the desert using the words of the prophet Isaiah: “this is the voice of the one who cries out in the desert: ‘prepare the way of the Lord , make your paths straight’” (Lk 3,4) and it seems favorable to our time of scourge and desert.
It is important to remember that the first two weeks of Christmas celebrate not the coming of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the Parusia, that is, the preparation for his second coming.
Cultural diversity and hopes
02
Dec
In his book “In the same boat: essays on hyperpolitics” Peter Sloterdijk
points out that: “historical appearance teaches every observer that human groups in pioneer regions, during the last three or four thousand years, must have been able to sail on their old rafts of such that groupings of rafts could emerge in great style” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 73), which means that old cultural habits resist time, even though I consider “mentally poor and yet significant the term ‘culture’” . (idem).
It emphasizes that the decay of superstructures “reveals that they have almost nothing to give to individuals in their efforts to continue life” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 74), and more than that, it can be recognized that “as soon as the opus decays commune, people can only regenerate as smaller units” (idem).
Thus, it is in these smaller units that a new opus commune can be regenerated and elaborated, taking up the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio where there is the survival of the small community in the face of the “large disaster”, recalling the period of the plague that can be a parallel with the In the current pandemic, there the Fiorentinos “no longer know whether to fear contamination or looting or hunger any longer, they fall into a disorientation equivalent to paralysis” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 75), the first version of “in the same boat ” is from 1993.
In a period that followed the Babylonian, Egyptian, Syrian and Persian empires, it was in the small Greek communities that the idea of city-state polis was born and that reached the modern republic, it was the Fiorentine Renaissance that an artistic-cultural revolution was born that led the human spirit the first great navigations and the expansion of mercantilism, and it was from Franco-German rationalism that the bourgeois liberal revolution was born and today where are these small groups capable of rescuing civilization?
There are new cosmovisions that are reborn (they seek their first cultural forms) in Africa such as the philosopher Achiles Mbembé and his necropolitics, a reaction to the power to dictate who can live and who can die, in Latin America the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano, the philosopher, psychiatrist and essayist Frantz Fanon, born in the French Antilles.
The central problem of these thoughts is decoloniality, that is, the idea that modernity and its political project made use of colonization and there will be no significant changes in the superstructures of power if this way of thinking is not subjected to criticism and the unmasking of its objectives .
That’s where hopes can be born, a reconfiguration of the globe where peoples have the right to their freedom, their cultural and social expression, with a dignified life.
Emptiness and hyperpolitics
01
Dec
The subject that should interest theologians first interests philosophers
and writers like Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending), which won the Man Booker award, wrote: “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him” while skeptical Peter Sloterdijk wrote: “In a monotheistically conditioned culture, declaring that God is dead implies shaking all references and announcing a new form of world” (Slotertijk, 1999, p. 59) and implies abandoning the project of planetary unity.
In an opposite line, English literature professor and writer Terry Eagleton wrote “Culture and Death of God”, identifies the Enlightenment substitutes for this death beyond reason and his most finished work: the Modern State, some ways of rationalizing this “death” in addition to the State itself: science, humanity, Being, Society, the Other, desire, life force and personal relationships, calling them “forms of displaced divinity”.
As substitutes, Sloterdijk elaborates in “in the same boat: essays on hyperpolitics” (1999): “a literary wave begins that speaks of nothing but the State, life in society, human formation” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 58), says Sloterdijk reflecting Nietzsche that the Theological Code is part: “that which inspires our time with hope and horror; something is dead and can only fall apart faster or slower, but somehow life and civilization advance and crystallize into ununderstood novelties” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 60) and this is not just about the new strain of the coronavirus that scares, but of novelties that advance in polarized and radical discourses.
He recalls that it is not just the speeches of some political adventurer from countries with political upheavals, but: “You can see the political cast parading through the media and we are reminded of the premeditated inappetence of municipal tournaments” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 64) , you know that there are here and there: “convincing megalopaths of the old guard” (idem), but a “global disproportion between the forces in need and the existing weaknesses” (ibid.), or to put it another way, statesmen capable of dealing with contemporary crises .
He calls some of these characters that appear here or there “globality state athletics”, but emphasizes that it has not yet been written highlighting the “required consciences” that it should not have for a “profession: political”, a residence with opacity, a program with which it is difficult to belong, in the Moral aspect of small works, no passion: an absence of relationship, evolution towards self-recruitment based on knowledge and they should be athletes of a “synchronous world” (p. 65).
Sloterdijk’s hyperpolitics sentence is drastic: “the theme of the ‘conservative revolution’, experienced two or three generations ago” (p. 67) in which he predicted a certain kind of new fundamentalist wave, predicted some contemporary politicians like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson they show not only that it was no accident, but that they continue to be on the lookout for a new policy that emerges in the aftermath of the “Krause syndrome” (German politician involved in corruption scandals), showing that it is not the work of chance, it is not just the absence from Geist (spirit) or from the lack of subjectivity and acceptance of planetary cultural diversity, “politics appears as the equivalent of a collective-chronic near-accident on a road covered by fog” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 69). The book was written well before the rise of the conservative wave.
In his final sentence Sloterdijk calls for “hyperpolitics to become the continuation of paleopolitics by other means” (p. 92).
Sloterdijk, P. in the same boat: essay on hyperpolitics. Trans. Claudia Cavalcanti. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 1999.
The desert without inner life
30
Nov
Living only on the outside, projected onto the world, led to a
special kind of anguish, anguish is an aspect of philosophy, one that is linked to the concept of emptiness, a certain type of philosophy and some forms of the concept “God is dead”, yes because there is another one, one of them is men try in vain to kill Him as if it were possible, as if it were possible to deny some intentionality in the creation of the universe, yes it can be multiverse, but also for it there must be an intentionality.
The philosophical movement that gave voice to the feeling of “alienation and despair” came precisely from “man’s recognition of his fundamental loneliness in an indifferent universe”, the highlighted sentences are by Anthony Downs, an American political economist, who died in October of this year .
The reason why we must know the origin and development of certain concepts that seem just straw and without substance (because they are not observed in depth), is that they come to dominate a large part of contemporary life, such as the idealism that almost dominated all the isms of our time, including socialism and a certain type of Christianity (in picture the work of de Albert György).
The isms of our time are nothing but the rationalization of some form of idealism present in Descartes’ Western culture, passing through Kant to Hegel, his rejection based on the existentialism of Kierkegaard who insisted on the irreducibility of the subjective and personal dimension of human life, the existentialism took several forms, but it is the return to the question of Being and ontology that I consider an essential part of rediscovering the golden thread of the human spirit, or of the personal and subjective dimension as thought by Kierkegaard, part of an essential question that is “ because there is everything and not nothing”, and the nothing is clear is emptiness.
However, Kierkegaard also worked on the issue of anguish, which can be associated with emptiness or with the modern feeling of a form of alienation, his concept is different, it is the vertigo of freedom, advocated by modern man, it is through it that man feels repulsion and attraction, you can do anything, but not everything is convenient.
In “The concept of anguish”, Kierkegaard writes: “”a determination of the dreaming spirit (…) is the reality of freedom as pure as possible” (KIERKEGAARD, 1968, p. 45).
Soren Kierkegaard was born in Denmark in 1813 and had a life full of personal and family problems, in a space of twenty years he saw the death of two brothers and three sisters and then his mother, the disappointment in love with his fiancee Regina Olsen culminates in his own life what it expressed in philosophy.
The concept of anxiety became central in the development of existentialist philosophy, it is present in Heidegger, Jaspers and Sartre, but it has not been left out in previous philosophies such as Husserl’s phenomenology and rather in Franz-Brentano’s social psychology.
It is Heidegger who makes the issue of anguish a problem of everyday life, writes: “The being-to-death is, essentially, anguish. This is undoubtedly witnessed, although “only” indirectly, by the already-characterized para-to-death being, at the moment when anguish becomes a cowardly fear and, overcoming it, denounces the cowardice of anguish. (HEIDEGGER, 1998, p. 50).
Therefore, for Heidegger, anguish is an existential determinant and it manifests itself in the daily life of being-in-the-world, in the words of Hanna Arendt, it is a “human condition”.
The issue comes up again because of the pathological form it took in the Pandemic, precisely the deprivation of freedom, see that Kierkegaard’s concept makes sense.
Heidegger, M. The Origin of the Work of Art. In: Forest paths (Holzwege). Lisbon: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1998 (in portuguese).
Kierkegaard, Soren. The Concept of Anguish. Lisbon: Hemus editora, 1968 (in portuguese).
New variant and concern in Europe
29
Nov
The new variant of the covid-19 virus, called omicron by the
WHO, is already present on three continents and the trend is to reach everyone in Brazil, both the director-president of the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa, Brazil), Antonio Barra Torres, and the director of the Butantan Institute state that it is inevitable that it will arrive in the country.
The variant is the B.1.1.529 strain and was identified for the first time in South Africa on November 9, according to WHO information, where 100 cases of the variant were identified, especially in the populous province of Gauteng, but it has already spread. by Botswana, eSwatini (former Swaziland), Lesotho, Namibia and Zimbabwe, countries that Brazil closed the border.
In Brazil, a passenger on a flight that passed through South Africa tested positive last Saturday 11/27 and disembarked in Guarulhos (SP), the other passengers are also being monitored, it is still not possible to identify whether the contagion was due to the new strain.
What is known for now is that the variant can affect contagion and lethality rates, but the genetic sequencing may still take a few more days to complete, director Tulio de Oliveira of the Center for Epidemic Responses and Innovations at the University of KwaZulu -Natal, stated that this variant is “an unusual constellation of mutations”, while the delta variant had only two mutations, for example, in relation to the original coronavirus strain.
Meanwhile, the number of deaths is growing again in Europe (see graph), the average of deaths reached the highest level since February 2021, when the continent started to recover, for every million inhabitants the rate is 5.2 daily deaths on average from the new coronavirus in the last 7 days.
With the new strain and variants it is necessary to resume care, wait for studies on the strain and the effectiveness of vaccines, Pfizer has already announced that it must have changes to ensure immunity.
We reached 70% of the complete vaccination in Brazil, but with the new strain it is not possible to assert total immunity.
Note: Today (29/11) Australia has suspended the reopening and Japan has closed its borders.
Time to change and rethink
26
Nov
The Pandemic did not cause changes in our behavior, most want to go
back to the old normal: rushing, a nervous and complex day to day, ambitions that are mixed up with healthy and possible goals, in short, what the philosopher Sloterdijk called “frivolities”, however the crisis did not pass and a 4th one is already admitted. wave.
Of every 100 new infections reported in the world, 62 are in Europe, according to the news agency Reuters, the region registers 1 million infections every two days.
The wisdom that involves an entire universe of human life, from health to politics, the true well-being that includes justice and empathy, even with a pinch of nature was not enough, the result is a crisis that approaches and swells, look at the infinity of the universe and its mysteries should become humility, but arrogance is everywhere from unbelievers to skeptics, from low culture to bookish and encyclopedic cult, a real change of thought, as Morin wants, has not happened.
All this that should have inspired greater feelings of love, solidarity and peace did not happen, the Pandemic did not give a truce of hostilities and radicalizations, the result cannot be other than a catastrophe, regardless of elected governments and trends, since the polarization always leads to two extremes and does not let up.
There is anything in the air, the human spirit knows when things are out of place, they do not always know exactly where they are due to lack of harmony and spiritual evolution, material human development is not enough, it is important if it is sustainable, it is necessary that the human soul follows this evolution and it is not what you see, you see “frivolities”.
Several European countries are thinking of lockdown, an energy crisis is also in the sights of many European countries, dependent on external suppliers, according to data from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, the increase in gas has caused inflation to rise in 19 countries of the euro zone, and it impacts everything but mainly energy since 90% of the gas comes from Russia, and a fifth of the electricity is produced using gas.
Remember that it is winter in Europe and this consumption tends to grow for heated environments and longer stay indoors.
In the Christian liturgy, Advent begins on the weekend, it is not just the celebration of Christmas, the first week is the waiting for a new coming of Jesus, called Parusia, and it is not just the end of the world, but also the great crises God is not indifferent, of course to those who believe, his intervention is always possible in an unexpected way.
Hope is thus an engine of our lives, but we need to be attentive as the liturgy of this period says (Lk 21:34): “Take care that your hearts do not become insensitive because of gluttony, drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day do not suddenly fall upon you, for that day will fall like a trap on all the inhabitants of our land”.
Universe mysteries and universal forces
25
Nov
When Einstein formulated the Theory of General Relativity, two
big “holes” remained in his theory, one he recognized as wormholes, paths in a space-time dimension in which there could be spaces, from a mathematical point of view, of immense gravity in which everything “disappeared” and another unrecognized one was the formulation of quanta as a dimension between time and space where there is a third hypothesis between matter and non-matter, the “quanta”.
According to physicist Jim Al-Khalili “He devised a new theory about the entire Universe, in which he also said that when stars collapse they form black holes”, and that at that time he believed they were just mathematical hypotheses, necessary to close the account, but “that they didn’t exist, that they were just products of mathematics”, but it was something that bothered him said Al-Khalili in the BBC interview.
The quantum issue was a state called entanglement, today called quantum entanglement, a state of the particle where there was a collapse of the wave function, and thus, the actual existence of the particle was in an “adjacent” reality which is precisely the entanglement, Einstein, Poldoski and Rosen wrote an article that by their names was called EPR in which they said that the particle was always present and rejected the hypothesis of a “third state”, which was later proved.
Black holes not only exist, but pictures have already been taken (a famous one was published in April 2019), which are actually made by algorithms that map the magnetic effects around it, and thus build an image, it is now known that they are numerous and even some exist within our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Universal forces are increasingly arousing curiosity and also fear, a large comet was recently discovered and was named after the Brazilian Bernardinelli who were doing a doctorate in cosmology in the US, called Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014-UN271) 150 km in diameter and can be seen in 2031, but they are the meteors that populate the imagination of the apocalyptic on duty, they are numerous and unpredictable, some are discovered moments before passing close to our planet.
NASA started a test mission in an attempt to redirect asteroids, the project called Dart (Double Asteroid Redirect Test) will try to send a small spacecraft to collide against Dimorphos, “moon” of the asteroid Didymos, in an attempt to change its route, does not represent danger to the planet, so this is just a test.
The universe is mysterious, we still know little about it, 68% is made of dark energy (picture), and this energy does not dilute as the universe expands (the entropy principle), and if this expansion is faster and faster, as Einstein supposed, this can lead to some curious conclusions, such as the fact that this strange “energy” arises in this expansion.
Look at the Universe and its mysteries should restore us to the humility of how little we know, how admirable is the mystery of life and our destiny as a person and as a planet.
Volcanoes and Possibilities of Earthquakes
24
Nov
In addition to the civilizing crisis, the forces of nature 
seem to be more awake than usual, the volcano on the islands of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, a territory of Spain, arouses great interest in the volume of lava that I expect to arrive close in two months and without give signs of truce.
The earthquakes, the number of mouths opened by the volcano (there are now 5), the seriousness of the situation on the island which, despite being confined, has not been carried out any large-volume evacuation, have sparked debates even in the scientific world, the last one is about an earthquake of depth 3.4 or 34 km that happened these days, because the smaller depth would indicate new lava mouths and a greater risk for some abrupt change in the structure of the island which is composed of faults in its interior and large cliffs. depressions towards the sea.
There are several active earthquakes, some are of the Strambolian type, they are volcanoes with explosive eruptions such as emission of essentially effusive lava, and ejection of ash and gases such as sulfur, in incandescent lavas, also launching volcanic rock bombs that are launched from tens to hundreds of meters high, the Cumbre Vieja de La Palma volcano is of this type, in addition to attracting more attention, it is actually more dangerous, due to the terrain where lava can reach, the gases and, in some cases, the deformation of the terrain.
They are linked to the earthquakes that are a result of the Earth’s plate movements, and the biggest concern is not this island located in the Atlantic Ocean, but because it may be a small-scale representation of what can happen on a larger scale in the Pacific Ocean where there is a great circle of fire, name given to a large planetary junction of regions of volcanoes and quite frequent earthquakes and where the possibility of a Big One, a large earthquake from the San Andres fault on the American plate, is speculated.
The real possibility in La Palma is a small tsunami near the island, the consequences would no doubt be devastating, would it be large earthquakes in the circle of fire, or the eruption of large volcanoes like the Yellowstone Volcanic Chair, the Hawaiian Kilauea volcano on which they exist. just sensational speculations.
The consequences in La Palma are still unknown, but the volcano is still active and rather than calming down, these days were one of big explosions and strong earthquakes.
The Civilization Crisis
23
Nov
It is not just an idea of the apocalyptic, the pessimistic and the tragedies, dark spirits who do not really reflect on reality, it is those who think humanism, who look to a polarized, fragile and powerless life in the face of a pandemic (see Europa in the previous post) is the crisis of fragility that does not see itself as fragile.
Arrogants, pseudo-sages, and pseudo-prophets are on call, but even an optimist like Edgar Morin bends over when he sees a system that cannot deal with its fundamental problems, it disintegrates, thus began his recent lecture on the metamorphosis of humanity, he told the event : “he becomes even more barbaric”, but remember that this is not the first and probably not the last metamorphosis of humanity, we were at the origin (he said for over 100,000 years) hunters and gatherers.
There was no army, no state or classes, but little by little some groups wanted to dominate others, this happened in India, China and the Middle East, in the Andes where an Inca Empire was organized and in Mexico (where he gave the lecture).
These societies have metamorphosed for better or worse, he has not made a statement about this, but he thinks that a metamorphosis over our nation-states is possible.
It states that it is necessary to have hope, but hope is not certainty, the hope that in the past was a belief now, but if hope exists it is the necessary leaven for great transformations, and it is understood that this is the moment we are living this reality, in a postmodern or post-postmodern world, there is a transformation.
It remains for us to know which one leads us to destruction, and which one is truly the bearer of hope, it doesn’t give great tips, but let’s do an exercise.
The first great destruction is war, with the arsenal of ultra powerful weapons, even interplanetary, there are several objects around the planet, it is necessary to defend peace with the same force that we defend justice, a war would now be a catastrophe.
The second major destruction is social imbalance, insecurity and the lack of a sustainable plan for the use of natural resources, the large meetings only discuss the issue of pollution and deforestation in some regions of the planet, when they should discuss the planet as a All in all, nature shows signs of exhaustion and a greater imbalance in natural forces, of planetary proportions, is expected.
As Edgar Morin says, it is necessary to have hope, we have already gone through other stages of the civilizing process through similar situations, of course the proportion is now planetary.
Edgar Morin – Do esgotamento à metamorfose dos sistemas – YouTube
Covid alert and Christmas parties
22
Nov
Europe is once again concerned about Covid’s infection rates,
when everything seemed to be moving towards a happy end-of-the-year outcome, the arrival of winter, little vaccination and doubts about vaccines even by health professionals, made the indexes grow again.
Last Thursday, Germany registered a daily record of 50,000 new infections in 24 hours, in Russia 40,000 cases, Eastern European nations: Slovenia, Croatia, Georgia, Slovakia and Lithuania have the highest rates of new cases of the disease, too in France and the United Kingdom the number of cases is growing (picture).
Portugal, which has the highest vaccination rate, close to 90%, will resume preventive measures such as the use of masks, in Austria and the Netherlands there are lockdown measures, the protests against this new restriction measure provoked a confrontation with the police in the weekend.
In an interview given to the BBC, Hans Kluge, WHO regional director said there could be 500,000 new deaths in Europe by March if measures are not taken.
We are in a hot climate, the moving average of cases and deaths in Brazil is decreasing, but the parties and a certain relaxation in preventive measures are worrying, there are no measures in any part of the country concerned with a possible new one, where it seems distant, but remember the 2019 carnival when there were some signs and we didn’t worry, the consequences came in March of that year.
Measures in shopping malls, supermarkets, concerts and sports squares are totally relaxed and we will only know the consequences at the beginning of 2022, even if only preventive, these measures can help prevent a new outbreak that would leave the country even more in despair, what we observe is a concern only with liberation, the election year is approaching and no one wants to take unpopular measures, but health should come first, even in relation to the economy already in crisis.
If we’re going to pay to see it, the cost could be high.
