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Arquivo para May, 2022

Its possible a third World War

31 May

The limits for the 3rd. World War there is true.

For more than a month, data on deaths have not dropped and are again above 100 deaths per day in the moving average, while the moving average of known cases has already risen significantly in Brazil (see graph), although worldwide there is already a drop sensitive.

In 2011 Russia installed Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, former Russian exclave Konigsberg before the 2nd. War and then Stalingrad, this was part of their response to the American anti-missile shield. It is believed without concrete data that both sides have already strengthened each other.

At the other end of a possible war is China, which carries out exercises in the sea of ​​Taiwan and in the last hours of yesterday it carried out air exercises as a show of force in response to the provocations of the Biden government, Taiwan reported 30 aircraft in the Air Defense Zone.

Japan, a probable American ally, has disputes with Russia over the Kuril Islands, taken in the second world war, and Japan, having lost the war, signed an agreement against its will.

Outside this conflict zone are Moldova, which has a region fighting for independence and an ally of the Russians, Transnisdria, while Sweden and Finland have already applied to join NATO, and there is a third piece of the war chess piece that is Turkey, which has an agreement with the Russians and does not want these countries to join NATO.

Yesterday the Netherlands stopped receiving Russian gas.

The war in Ukraine has the Severodonesk region as its bloodiest battlefront, an important road connecting Karkhiv is at stake and Zelensky was in the region, it is strategic to isolate Ukrainian troops, to the south there are battles near Odessa, the port of Ukraine after Mariupol was taken.

A 3rd. War would be a horror for the entire planet and it is questionable whether there will be winners.

 

 

Covid 19 data is ignored

30 May

For more than a month, data on deaths have not dropped and are again above 100 deaths per day in the moving average, while the moving average of known cases has already risen significantly in Brazil (see graph), although worldwide there is already a drop sensitive.

The monkeypox with still small numbers frightens by the rapid expansion worldwide.

The problem is that if there is no fight against the circulation of the virus, which is less lethal, it is possible that the disease will remain, similar to what happens with smallpox in overalls where the fact that there was no effective policy to combat it while it was in regions of Africa.

The health policy problem is that if there is a surprise of a new variant, we run the risk of going back to square one in the fight against the pandemic, it is clear that this is not on the horizon, but several experts have already pointed out the mutating capacity of the virus.

It is a consensus among the most responsible experts that only the WHO can decree the end of the Pandemic and the concern of the world body is still to keep the alert, although it sees the numbers fall and proves the information with the numbers that the World Organization has.

We are learning to live with this data, but care is getting less and less, for example, the use of masks seems to be too much exaggeration, there are people who stop and question those who use them, another important thing is closed environments and necessary coexistence places such as markets.

Maybe we should also be careful with allergies and colds that we’ve never been very careful about, but public education and clarification can be important.

It is a fact that we must incorporate new habits and care into our daily lives.

 

 

The human and divine ascension

27 May

There are many exercises and forms that promise asceticism, ways of maintaining physical and mental energies are useful and important, but the spiritual ascent, which is the source of true asceticism, requires moral, ethical, personal and collective training that puts us in a virtuous circle.

When criticizing modern society, as a society of fatigue, Byung Chul Han reminds us that active life must be complemented with a contemplative life, which does not mean looking at infinity or the sky, it is meditation and the collective exercise of including the Another is knowing how to listen from an inner emptiness, or, as philosophy thinks, a phenomenological epoché.

He introduces contemplation as: “If sleep is the high point of physical rest, deep boredom is the high point of spiritual rest. Pure restlessness generates nothing new” (Han, 2015) and then defines it as: “Modern Cartesian doubt dissolves astonishment. The contemplative capacity is not necessarily linked to being imperishable. Precisely the oscillating, the inapparent or the elusive are only open to a deep, contemplative attention” (idem), therefore it is not a tactical exercise but a “astonishment”.

We say that it is phenomenological because of what follows the definition: “In the contemplative state, in a way, we go out of ourselves, diving into things”, this reminds Husserl “returns to the things themselves” without pre-definitions or pre-concepts, a true epoché .

After the astonishment, rest: “Without this contemplative recollection, the gaze wanders restlessly from here to there and brings nothing to manifest. But art is an “expressive action” (Ibid.), and without it our civilization, he says, quoting Nietzsche: “For lack of rest, our civilization is heading towards a new barbarism. At no other time were the active, that is, the restless, worth so much.”

This restlessness proves the wars, the most atrocious political disputes, mockery instead of dialogue and the careful analysis of social proposals and needs, there is no “rest” for this to be done.

The divine ascension, after the Christian asceticism that comes to passion and death, our civilization seems to go through this as a whole, angels appear who ask the disciples who are looking to heaven (Acts 1, 10-11): “… heaven as Jesus ascended. Then two men dressed in white appeared, who said to them, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking up at the sky? This Jesus who was taken to heaven for you will come in the same way as you saw him leave for heaven”, they stopped a moment before “amazement” and “rest”.

The barbarism of the pandemic, the war and a food shortage that is announced demands “astonishment”, accept that the mystery exists and that the universe had an origin.

HAN, B.-C. (2015) A Sociedade do Cansaço. Brazil, Petrópolis: Vozes. (pdf)

 

Spirituality and Asceticism

26 May

Not coincidentally, Peter Sloterdijk apprehends modernity as a form of secularization and collectivization of the life of the exercise, displacing the asceticism transmitted since antiquity from their respective spiritual contexts and dissolving them in the frothy fluid of the current biopolitical (or psycopolytics) communities dedicated to the training and entrepreneurship of the subjectivity.
It is not by chance that a current philosopher sees modernity as a way of secularizing and collecting exercise life, displacing the asceticism transmitted from antiquity, in different cultures, to the current contexts is dedicated to training and marketing from the daily practice of exercises through memes, rhetoric and a collective training of ideas (of the idealism).
Based on his ascetology, it is possible to perceive how education from childhood to adults is in a historical chain of training through selective immunological and anthropotechnical procedures, which announced by Sloterdijk a long time ago became wide open with the Pandemic, aimed at ripping the subject out. of your community.
In this way, “state athletes” or “domestic companies” are created in the direction of these exercises, what he calls spherological drama, and where childhood has to pay a price for the absence of protesting layers, that is, when the magic circles, the soap bubbles blown by the children’s ecstatic eyes, what he (Sloterdijk) writes in the Sphere I: Bubbles.
This kind of asceticism has nothing of spirituality or a true ascension (where the ascetic root comes from) so soap bubbles are the metaphor of this ephemeral universe, whose exercise reinforces habitus, but does not build a true spiritual asceticism.
The author does not develop it, he only denounces it as a de-spiritualized asceticism, as he himself does not believe in a higher reality, of true ascension, as described in Byung Chul Han’s book in his “Society of Bournot”, where he sees the active life and the contemplative life as two poles of Being, and he turns to the monk St. Gregory.
His term spirituality comes from Foucault’s analysis of the radical forms of dominant governments of “childhood government” which he interposes: “interposes between experience and the language that constitutes history and forms the spirit”, it is thus only a subjectivity.
Byung Chul Han, probably due to his oriental influence, takes another path of an effective contemplative life, which is more clearly expressed in his work: “The branch of time” ( ), where he states: “The greatest happiness comes from contemplative lingering in beauty, formerly called theoria. Its temporal meaning is duration. It concerns itself with eternal and immutable things, which rest in themselves. Neither virtue nor wisdom, only contemplative surrender to truth brings man closer to the gods” (HAN , 2016).
In Chul Han’s work it is possible to understand a spiritualized asceticism in a divine ascension.

HAN, B.-C. (2016) The scent of time. A philosophical essay on the art of delay (in portuguese, Lisbon: ed. Relógio d´água).

 

Asceticism and Exercises

25 May

The most prominent German philosopher of our time, Peter Sloterdijk in his work: “You have to change your life” has a brilliant and original insight, it is not the mode of production or even the culture that produces life, but the exercises, for they perform our “ascesis”.

What an exercise means for him, he says in his work: “As an exercise I define any operation that preserves or improves the actor’s qualification to perform the same operation the next time, whether declared as an exercise or not” (Sloterdijk, 2009, p. 14).

He will develop more often the concept of “habitus” that takes up the medieval concept of Aquinas and ancien (hexis) of Aristotle, and from there his anthropological concept:

“[…] they describe an apparently mechanical process under the aspects of inertia and overcoming to explain the incarnation of the spiritual. They identify man as that animal that can do what he must, if anyone has cared in time for his abilities. At the same time, they perceive how the provisions reached continue to grow towards new overcomings” (Idem, p. 289).

And so his theory of habitus points to any custom or ability in the direction of overcoming its current state, from the perspective of a vertical tension it is possible to formulate an art tension of the Good, because even what is already good can be improved, so it begins for this asceticism to elaborate its main concept: the anthropo-technique, written here on purpose with a hyphen.

In Sloterdijk’s interpretation there is a rupture, which he calls secession, between those who leave to choose a life of exercise and the everyday world, which resembles a river in which there are unquestioned accommodations, and for him this is beyond the religious spectrum, culture is merged.

He calls the internal process of this asceticism endorhetoric, which consists of prayers, ritual recitations, monologues and other silent speeches, usually practiced repeatedly, reaching true internal dialogues (they are not hallucinations), but are solitary practices without the Other.

“All exercises, whether of a yoga, athletic, philosophical or musical nature, can only take place if supported by endorhetorical processes, in which acts of self-exhortation, self-examination and self-assessment, under the criteria of the specific school tradition and under continuous appointment in the direction of masters who have already reached the goal, have a decisive role” (Sloterdijk, 2009, p. 369).

There is a going beyond normality and asceticism that leads to another ascension, the encounter with Being.

Sloterdijk, P. (2009) Du musst Dein Leben ändern. Über Antropotechnik Frankfurt, Suhrkamp. (You have to change your life, Portuguese edition 2018, ed. Relógio d´água)

 

 

Peace in information stage

24 May

Russia announces conquests in Mariupol and attack on training barracks in Northern Ukraine, Zelensky speaks in Davos and is applauded, but the war is getting farther and farther from the end.

A novelty even on the path to peace is a new path taken by Germany and much criticized because it is not so hard on Russia, far from showing any sign of adhesion, Germany seeks a way of negotiation where peace can be thought of, speaking to a channel At the World Forum in Davos, Robert Habeck, Vice Chancellor of Germany, insisted that “nothing is inevitable, we are human beings and we can change the course of history”, seeing that a world war could break out.

In the opposite direction, China threatens to invade Taiwan, which has one of the largest armies per capita in the world, with state-of-the-art submarines and military robots, an army of more than 300,000 men and an air base of 600 fighters, including 141 F- 16V Block 70 at Chiayi Base.

It is small considering the strength and continental dimension of China in the event of a war, but last week the United States declared an unconditional defense of Taiwan in the event of war with China, finally adding more fuel to the fire in the tense world environment.

China has an active military personnel exceeding 2 million, with more than 3 thousand aircraft, including 120 Xian X-6, Tupolev Tu-16 version and 388 Chengdu J-7 MIG-21 version.

But the main fighter is the Chinese version of the SU-27, 450 Shenyang J-11, in addition to the Russian Sukhoi.

So a war with China would make Russia’s war seem small by the proportion and forces involved, but the threats with military training and exercises have intensified.

The world seems to be on the verge of generalized and terrible chaos, but as the German Chancellor said: “we are human and we can change the course of history”, starting from the defense of peace.

 

 

Covid in global fall and new disease

23 May

The WHO announced a worldwide drop of 21% in world infections, in Brazil it remains at a slight increase and is already worrying, but the biggest health concern is the emergence of monkeypox.

In the case of Covid 19 in Brazil, hygienic care and disease protocols are still needed.

The endemic started in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2016, there were also cases in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Central African Republic and Nigeria, which suffered the biggest recent outbreak, data indicate that a recent increase in incidence was the interruption of vaccination against the disease. smallpox in 1980, and now cases have appeared in Europe, with local infections and the first cases in the US.

A 26-year-old Brazilian who passed through Portugal and Spain, countries that already have several cases of infections, was diagnosed in Germany, is isolated in a clinic and has mild symptoms.

Clinical differentiation between monkeypox and smallpox and chickenpox (a hepervirus and not a pox virus) is difficult as medical reports, PCR (polymerase chain reaction) examination or electron microscopy are necessary to detect the infection, there is no safe treatment , however, the disease is not lethal, its rapid expansion in Europe is already a global health concern.

The treatment indicated is that of simian smallpox, supportive, data from cases in Africa indicate that the smallpox vaccine is effective in 85% of cases as the disease is linked to the smallpox virus.

The image posted above is courtesy of the Public Health Image Library of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (PHIL), American Prevention Center Image Library.

 

 

Serenity and true peace

19 May

We have already posted a history of peace: Romans Pax, peace of Westphalia agreement between Catholics and Lutherans on the secularity of the state and the perpetual peace of Kant, each one who thinks of structures and peace agreements that have not shown by the ineffectiveness of being able to establish peace.

We enter into ontological aspects with the question of Serenity proposed by Heidegger, which includes aspects of origin and territoriality of peoples, these are almost always the factors that are decisive for peoples to go to war, but little thought in peace agreements.

If we almost always live under some tension, it is important to understand if a peace is possible beyond human issues, which of course must be resolved, as they need men who are truly peaceful and have ontologically resolved this issue internally and help humanity in the ways that lead to lasting peace.

Heidegger’s philosophy develops how much man has advanced in reason, technique and science, but it has lost its own foundation of Being reduced to the Being (the thing without a soul), it loses its originality (differentiation from originality only because it deals more with original peoples of the Americas), he thus begins his own essence (he sees it only as subjectivity) and loses the power of re-presentation that comes from it, he loses an essence that is not secondary, but primordial.

In his conclusion to Serenity, Heidegger contrasts the immediacy and lack of meditation that we have today: “There are, therefore, two types of thinking, both in their own way, respectively, legitimate and necessary: ​​the thinking that calculates and the reflection (of the Nachdenken) who meditates. […] a thought that meditates arises as little spontaneously as the thought that calculates. Thought that meditates sometimes requires great effort. It requires a long workout. It needs even more delicate care than any other true craft. However, like the farmer, he also has to know how to wait for the seed to emerge and mature” (HEIDEGGER, 1955, p. 13-14).

Serenity, meditation on the need for it to understand the originality of each Being, of its presence in a certain Region, requires more than a momentary exercise, it must be lasting and aim at eternity.

In the biblical reading we find the deepest lesson of Jesus to his disciples about peace (Jn 14: 27): “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you; but I do not give it as the world does. Do not let your heart be troubled or intimidated”, is a lesson also for the peaceful and for those who love peace.

 

HEIDEGGER, Martin. Serenity. Translation by Maria Madalena Andrade and Olga Santos. Lisbon: Instituto Piaget, original version is from 1955.

 

 

Serenity, originality and peace

19 May

Serenity refers to the idea of ​​a super quality of Being, it comes from the Latin serenus, which is different from patience which comes from patientia, “resistance and submission” and is rather confused with serene.

Three qualities of the Self can be directly linked to serenity: peaceful, which means solving problems with peace, calm, which means keeping your inner peace at peace, and clear, which means expressing and communicating peace with clarity.

Heideger wrote a booklet on Serenity, at the initial chapter end it with a sentence that expresses in philosophy a synthesis of serenity: “when serenity towards things and openness to mystery awaken in us, we should reach a path that leads to a new ground. On this soil the creation of immortal works could put down new roots” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 27).

We are lacking in the conception of Being and that Heidegger highlights in his idea about the originary the idea of ​​Region, as it was translated from German, but a nation could be the locus of belonging as Being in its true originary identity, Heidegger wrote:

“We are not and never are outside the Region, since as thinking beings […] we remain on the horizon […] The horizon is, however, the side of the Region facing our power of representation (Vor -stellen). The region surrounds us and shows itself to us as a horizon” (HEIDEGGER, 1959, p. 48).

Here it is necessary to return to a dilemma in Heidegger’s thinking, considering that being in the midst of the Region is to remain on the horizon: to be, but not to be, on this original path, means that it is a revelation of the Region, which becomes visible to the being, in it his Being is.

The philosopher states that serenity presupposes being free (Gelassensein) and the Region itself (Ge-eignet) and entrusts to the serene entity (gelassen) the guard of serenity. Now, if waiting is fundamental and decisive, what we are talking about is the appropriation to which “we belong to what we wait for” (Heidegger, 1959, p. 50)

The author does not ignore the absence of this concept in the West, a historical lack of knowledge: “the essence of thought cannot be determined from thought, that is, from waiting as such, but from the other of oneself (Anderer seiner selbst), that is, from the Region, which is insofar as it is religionalized” (Heidegger, 1959, P. 51).

This is where contemporary wars are based, without forgetting that many of them had their origin in the dispute over the territories of native peoples where their Being was completely ignored.

 

HEIDEGGER, M. (1959) Serenidade (Serenity). Lisboa: Instituto Piaget.

 

 

The Mapuche, ontology and peace

18 May

One of the most resilient native peoples of the colonization of the Americas is the Mapuche people, there are more than a million people who study in the south of Chile and Argentina, and find themselves once again betrayed by governments that promise freedom to live as a nation and be respected.

But the truest interpretation, which refers to a kind of original ontology, is Mapúmche, which means all beings that inhabit the cosmos: living beings, trees, stones, water, wind, etc. it is likely that the arrival of the Spaniards reduced the word to Mapuche, which simply means peoples of the land.

I read with sadness that the new Boric government, which promised in a campaign to suspend restrictive measures in the region that receives the colonized name of “La Araucanía” (name given by the Spanish colonizers) has returned to be militarized because of claims to indigenous lands.

The Minister of the Interior, Izkia Siches, said when sending soldiers to the region: “We decided to make use of all the tools to provide security” to the region and the long saga of the Mapuche continues.

The Mapuche have always known that language unifies them, Western ontology says that language is the abode of being, and they rejected the name Araucanos, which resembles the Araucaria and transforms them into aboriginal peoples, also the exotic idea that Mapuche would be derived from the Greek, of a historian Kilapan Lonko, who wrote “El origen greco de los Araucanos”, a falsification of history.

Many Mapuche words entered the Chilean language, choclo (corn), huacho (illegitimate child), laucha (small mouse), quiltro (dog), ruca (house), etc. and a popular interpretation of mapuche is mapu (land), che (people in the sense of people), thus several places and cities in chile have the prefix hue: Carahue, Colhue, Pencahue and others.

The extract from the documentary “Los Araucanos”, entitled “Mapuches: idioma o mirror da alma” from 1978, which mistakenly calls them Araucanian peoples, shows the importance of the language that the Mapuche have always had, which refers to the ontology of the native peoples.

The historian and professor at the University of Chile, the Mapuche Rodrigo Huenchún, also explains that culture has been increasingly appropriated as a political manifestation since the Pinochet dictatorship. Elisa Loncon and many others.

The recognition of the culture of peoples, if its original roots are at the root of true peace, this is the drama of modern man, of forgetting being, his experiences and his roots.