Posts Tagged ‘peace’
Identity and the human family
22
Oct
We have regional identities and cultures, linked
to nations. The fact that nationalities exist should not be contrary to the existence and vision of a human family, not just because of our genetic and animal identity, but mainly because of our common life and relationships.
Edgar Morin, in his book Terra-Pátria (Editora Sulina, 2003) traces the origins of a vision of man linked to nature (and consequently to the Cosmos), which will unfold in the visions of Bacon, Descartes, Buffon and Marx (Morin, 2003, p. 54) who made man “an almost supernatural being who progressively assumes the empty place of God” (idem), but this triggered an arrogant and authoritarian vision before the Cosmos and the Other.
As a result, we have regressed in our planetary vision: “The identity of man, that is, his complex unity/diversity, has been concealed and betrayed, at the very heart of the planetary era, by the specialized/compartmentalized development of the sciences” (p. 61), a xenophobic vision of nationalism and identity now explodes, inhibiting a vision of the human family.
Morin writes: “Nation and ideology have built new barriers, aroused new hatreds. The Islamist, the capitalist, the communist, the fascist are no longer human. “ (p. 60), note that this was written in 1993 (the original first edition in French).
Our vision of man has narrowed, Morin points out: “Philosophy, locked in its higher abstractions, has only been able to communicate with the human in experiences and existential tensions such as those of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, without, however, ever being able to link the experience of subjectivity to anthropological knowledge” (idem, p. 61), the vision of these authors seems ethereal.
This has also happened in the humanities: “Anthropology, a multi-dimensional science (articulating within it the biological, the sociological, the economic, the historical, the psychological) that would reveal the complex unity/diversity of man, cannot really be built unless it is correlated with the meeting of disciplines … “ (pg. 62), and so the human fragment is translated into fragmented thought.
It is this fragmentation translated into war and hatred that demands an unveiling of Being, called for by Heidegger and thinkers who followed him (Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and others), and which is also thought of by Morin: “Hence the primordial need to unveil, to reveal, in and through its diversity, the unity of the species, human identity, anthropological universals” (p. 60), to unveil (rather than re-veil, which is to veil again) as modern ontology says.
The human family can be unveiled in its common interests: ecology, economic balance and, above all, peace.
Morin, Edgar Morin & Kern, Anne-Brigitte. (2003) Terra-Patria. Transl. Paulo Azevedo Neves da Silva. Brazil, Porto Alegre : Sulina.
Dilemmas about peace in Europe and the Middle East
21
Oct
The first major dilemma, although quite
obvious, has no support in the mainstream international press: there is a lack of forces that want peace in a way that is equidistant from the countries in conflict.
The UN could once play this role, but with infighting between the major powers, this power is limited to speeches and attempts to sensitize the warring parties.
The second major dilemma stems from a serious misconception that is common among warmongers: if you want peace, prepare for war, but the opposite is true: if you want peace, fight for it.
In Eastern Europe, for example, it was reported in the German press that Estonia, which has only 6,500 active military personnel and a population of 1.3 million, had recently simulated an evacuation plan to withdraw the population, although 60% of the citizens say they are willing to defend the country, they have no military preparation for this.
A curious defense structure has been set up on the border of many Baltic countries (photo from the German newspaper DW – Deutsche Welle). It’s not known how effective it will be, but it’s for war, and the proximity of Ukraine and Russia is making several Baltic countries prepare for the worst.
In the midst of Israeli attacks and little public aid, activist forces in Lebanon are taking action, albeit politicized and insufficient for the people in need, according to the same DW newspaper, the Syrian military and opposition forces charge exorbitant amounts for the transport of refugees fleeing the war.
This leads to a third serious dilemma: the red cross and the red crescent (the Arabic version of the red cross) do not accept the religious controversy, but it is this that divides aid forces.
The fourth dilemma is to resolve the ideological and cultural-religious background to the conflicts. During the Cold War (USA vs. Soviet Union), the sociologist Raymond Aron uttered a well-known phrase: “The Cold War was a period in which war was improbable and peace impossible.” The dilemma is now reversed: “Peace is improbable and war is possible.” The imperialist forces at play will not easily give up their disputed interests.
How to think about peace seems like an arid and impractical path, but great thinkers have called for it: “the resistance of the spirit” and as a consequence “the resistance of hope”, Edgar Morin among others point to this path, perhaps the only one to change the mentality of power, to think about solidarity and serving all of humanity, not one group of interest.
The danger of an all-out war is growing
07
Oct
Iran’s response to the death of Hezbollah’s leader
with attacks of almost 200 missiles last Tuesday (01/10) could escalate the confrontation between the two Middle Eastern powers, amid attacks during the week on the terrorist group’s bases in southern Lebanon.
France has taken a tough stance against Israel’s response, which it is speculated could even attack Iran’s nuclear bases, which don’t have the bomb (it is believed) but do have a plant and laboratories where they could be preparing the bomb.
Unlike the other powers, which announce that they have the bomb to intimidate their enemies, Israel and Iran prefer to hide it, and Iran has suffered numerous sanctions by and visits from the UN so that it doesn’t have the bomb, but its allies, including China and Russia, may have helped it to do so, and an attack by Israel would be aimed at these targets, it is speculated.
In Ukraine, some of its “strongholds” in the east of the country (near Kharkiv) have fallen into Russian hands, and Russia’s threatening tone has already gone beyond the borders of the war, with open threats to Poland and other countries that could help Poland.
There, too, the tone of threats and diplomatic crises is growing with alignments and world powers positioning themselves. On the economic front, the expansion of the BRICS (initially Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa, expanded to include Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Ethiopia) could favor dangerous alliances for NATO and Israel.
That’s why there’s no shortage of dialogues to force Israel not to strike back at Iran, its traditional allies, such as France, which is radically against it, and the United States, which although involved in protecting Israel, also doesn’t want this dangerous escalation that threatens world peace.
It is to be hoped that there will be a greater commitment to peace due to the seriousness of these threats, and that there will be a difficult reversal of the escalation that is heading towards an absurd civilizational crisis in which everyone will suffer.
Totalitarianism and innocent lives
04
Oct
In war the first victim is the truth, a phrase
attributed to Aeschylus of ancient Greece, but the tragic thing is the proportion of innocent victims, pure and elevated souls that war consumes because of the dread that totalitarian leaders have of freedom, free people and true humanism.
There are countless cases, from hospitals and schools being bombed to cases of torture and cruelty to people who would bear great fruit for an elevated humanity, and that’s exactly why sick minds fight them.
I discovered among these various names, through a student, a Jewish woman named Etty (Esther) Hillesum, a Dutch daughter of Dutch father Louis Hillesum and Russian mother Rebecca Bernstein (Riva), a professor of ancient languages, from whom the interest in languages was probably born, but she goes to study Slavic languages, perhaps inspired by her mother, and then takes a master’s degree in law.
Her diaries and letters were written during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, and among the first books I came across were “Une vie bouleversée” (A Life Turned Upside Down) and 15 Days of Prayer with Etty Hillesum (published in Portuguese by Paulinas).
One of her phrases “inside me there is a deep well”, where inside there is sand and stones that prevent you from reaching something clearer, reveals a mystical path and the search within her to reach a deeper interiority, it is a refuge, I would say a spiritual resistance to Nazism and the climate that was generated around her.
Her relationship with psychiatrist Julius Spier (who was influenced by Karl Yung), initially for treatment and then for personal involvement, awakened her intellectuality, and in March 1941 she began to write her first of eight diaries.
In June and July 1942, he deepened his mystical dialog, writing: “God has become an interlocutor…” and it is in this context that we can talk about his writings on prayer.
He wrote in “15 Days of Prayer with Etty Hillesum”: “He took me by the hand, so to speak, and said to me: ‘That’s how you have to live’.” On the first day, he said of the second: “An hour of peace, you have to learn … I’m going to turn inward … half an hour of gymnastics and half a prayer of meditation”, the third day: ‘Hineinhorchen: listening inwardly’, listening to oneself, to others and to God.
This is how Etty’s itinerary goes: day four: “forgive my parents and their limits”, day five: “surrender to yourself and to your own guardianship”, in short, of a pure and innocent soul who indicates not just a path of repetitive and meaningless prayers, but an interior path.
One of the millions of innocent souls who died in concentration camps, she met her death in the Auschwitz camp at the young age of 29. Her writings are pure and profound, reminiscent of the purity of children and of people who live a human humanity.
Ferrière, P., Meeûs-Michiels, I. (2016) 15 dias de oração com Etty Hillesum (15 days of prays with the Etty Hillesum). Brazil, São Paulo: Paulinas editions.
Totalitarianism and political ontology
03
Oct
Wars always revolve around totalitarian governments, because they have a unilateral worldview, which despises the cultures and views of other peoples and thus wants to subject their peoples, who generally accept different cultures, to a single worldview.
Hannah Arendt faced up to these regimes in her 1951 book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. She was convinced that after the end of the Second World War, the problem didn’t end there; she spoke of hell, nightmares, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, onions and even the ugliness of an omelette, among many other things, when the stories of Auschwitz came into her hands.
In trying to describe the totalitarian experience, Arendt was faced with the dilemma of how this experience could not be explained, not by political philosophy or traditional concepts, not just by the culmination of a process of developing something from a past, but in what Heidegger called the “forgetting of being”.
I’m reminded of a striking phrase by Lygia Fagundes Telles, who died on April 16, 2022, on her 99th birthday: “There is no coherence to mystery or logic to absurdity.” Dictators and their narratives only have logic in systematic propaganda, and in a claque of other fanatics who support them and identify with them, in short, a partial narrative of reality.
This form of narrative that Arendt wrote was opposed by a contemporary like Voegelin, about whom she responded to her analysis: “I have not written a history of totalitarianism, but an analysis in historical terms of the elements that crystallized in totalitarianism” (ARENDT, 2007, p. 403).
He also wrote in “The Crisis of the Republic” that the first fundamental difference between totalitarianism and the other categories present in history lies in the fact that totalitarian terror “turns not only against its enemies, but also against its friends and defenders”; a second difference would be its radicalism, which makes it capable of eliminating not only the freedom of action of individuals, as tyrannies did through political isolation, eliminating not only opponents but also unreliable allies, there is a clear parallel in today’s war.
In her note number 81, Arendt wrote: “The total number of Russians killed during the four years of war is estimated at between 12 and 21 million. In a single year, Stalin exterminated some 8 million people in Ukraine alone (see Communism in action, U. S. Government, Washington, 1946, House Document no. 754, pp. 140-1).” Again, the similarity with the current war is no coincidence, and after Butcha then Mariupol had a similar drama to Gaza (photo), but there are only ideological partial narratives.
The last topic of Arendt’s book is: “Ideology and terror: a new form of government”. If you’re interested in avoiding totalitarianism, just read it. It’s likely that we’ll become aware of this terror and stop feeding it in our day-to-day lives.
Arendt, H. (2007) Origens do Totalitarismo. Trad. Roberto Raposo. Brazil, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras..
Believe in divine protection and do good
02
Oct
Despite the climate of war, we must wish for peace.
We warned in yesterday’s post that an escalation was imminent and it has happened, the climate and hate speech on both sides in the current global polarization is advancing and only those who continue to do good will be at peace.
It seems heroic, innocent or even childish to continue to wish for and do good, but this is the only way not to fall into the trivialization of evil, polarization and inhuman discourse.
Yesterday, on Monday night in Brazil and early Tuesday morning in Israel, more than 180 missiles from Iran were launched at Israel, hypersonic missiles that traveled in 12 minutes until they hit Jewish soil; the number of victims and targets hit were not disclosed.
The involvement of the Arab world, Turkey, Lebanon and Syria have already declared their support for the attack, which had Palestinian celebrations in Gaza, takes the confrontation to a global scale, in the United States, Biden asked the forces in the area to defend Israel, which promises retaliation to Iran.
The possibility of the closure of the Gulf of Oman will affect the price of oil worldwide and, with it, the cost of products that depend on transportation and global logistics.
Only by adhering to goodness, peace and your daily life can we remain emotionally balanced and serene, even in the face of adverse circumstances, where everyone gives in to panic, hatred and the trivialization of evil.
For the philosopher Hannah Arendt, the banality of evil is the phenomenon of our character’s refusal to reflect and the tendency not to assume the consequences of actions that do not assume the consequences of evil, and thus prevent us from adhering to the good.
We only have protection in our spirit and soul when we resist the temptation to evil, what the philosopher and educator Edgar Morin also calls “resistance of the spirit” in the midst of polarization, hatred and war; by doing good actions we attract peace around us and divine protection.
Latent war and imminent danger
30
Sep
There is hardly any sector that has a strong enough
voice for the idea of peace other than the surrender of one of the sides, neither in Israel’s war against the extremist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, nor in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said at the UN last Saturday (28/09) that it is a danger to try to “fight for victory against a nuclear power”, in other words, that if necessary they will use nuclear weapons, while Israel’s prime minister said that “the work is not yet finished” and “challenging days lie ahead”, these are hate speeches.
In Israel, the army has sent two brigades to the north of Israel and is deploying three reserve battalions, which seems to indicate a ground incursion into Lebanon, while Russia continues to call for more soldiers, including people from other countries who will be paid, to further expand the country’s military contingent, which all indications are that it’s not just for Ukraine.
The death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in fighting in southern Lebanon (photo), while Netanyahu and Joe Biden say he was responsible for the murder of a large number of Israelis and Americans, but in Iran, Yemen and Palestine he was seen as a “martyr”.
Also, the proposal by Brazil and China, which was initially supported by Russia, has been given the caveat by the Russian authorities that a Russian withdrawal from the occupied territories does not lead to peace because Russian citizens living in that region feel threatened.
In short, both in rhetoric and in actions, the imminent danger of an even greater escalation of wars does not seem to be giving way on any essential point, and this weakens the UN and the nations that want a greater balance in international relations between regimes and cultures that are different, but that can always coexist from the point of view of ordinary citizens.
The economic interests behind these wars, and those of their allies on both sides, are blatant, albeit hidden, so in this field too we need to rethink economic relations, without this implying the surrender of one of the parties.
The continuity of the discourse and the escalation of wars in these most sensitive areas is visible and not addressing these aspects hides the real possible ways out and does not favor peace.
Real danger, decisive week for peace
23
Sep
The death of Ibrahim Akil, one of the heads
of Hezbollah’s military operations, led the organization to declare “indefinite war” against Israel.
This Sunday they exchanged heavy fire, with Israeli warplanes carrying out the most intense bombardment in almost a year of conflict in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah for its part firing rockets towards northern Israel.
The peace talks are thus at a standstill, although US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin exchanged six phone calls in the week with his Israeli counterpart, showing serious concern about the escalation of the conflict and calling for a diplomatic solution.
In Ukraine, the peace talks are also polarized in this respect: Brazil and China are trying to talk to Putin, while European countries and the United States are trying to reach a dialogue that is more favorable to Ukraine’s claims for peace.
What’s most frightening are the nuclear threats, which Russia always brings up and now Ukraine is saying that the Russians are also planning attacks on nuclear power plants, the effects of which would be terrifying, just think of Chernobyl, of course in this case it was an accident, but the effects should never be repeated by these two countries that came to that moment.
On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, then a Soviet republic linked to Moscow, suffered a catastrophic meltdown that caused the government to evacuate 30 km around the plant, the area of which is uninhabitable to this day. C, 4 times higher than volcanic lava.
Sources indicate that between 2 and 50 people died in the explosion, dozens of others contracted serious illnesses caused by the radiation, some of whom died later. Between 50 and 185 million curies (unit of radiation activity) of radionuclides (radioactive forms of chemical elements) escaped into the atmosphere – several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan (pictured is a monument to the workers who fought the Chernobyl fire).
Modern reactors incorporate more safety devices to prevent a disaster like Chernobyl, but in the event of a war “accident” control can be difficult.
The fact that there are countries committed, albeit polarized, is an encouragement and also those who see the civilizational crisis that they would unleash can serve to allow minds inflamed by hatred to cool their anger.
Towards a political ontology
20
Sep
Various authors talk about what power is,
from the classic contractualists (Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau), through the modern readings of Marx, Weber, Tocqueville, Bobbio and Norbert Elias, to Byung-Chul Han (psychopolitics) and Foucault (biopolitics), but Hannah Arendt went further by envisioning political ontology and completely escapes Hegelian thinking.
In her book from the late 1960s (and therefore Arendt’s Arendt’s maturity), she criticizes the “new left” which thought of Fighting a world threatened by nuclear destruction and dominated by large state, administrations and they would be responsible for violence and ultimately the essence of all power, she writes.
If we turn to discussions of the phenomenon of power, we quickly realize that there is a consensus among political theorists, from left to right, that violence is simply the most flagrant manifestation of power. ‘All politics is a struggle for power; the basic form of power is violence,’ said C. Wright Mills, echoing Max Weber’s definition of the state as ‘domination of man by man based on the means of legitimate violence, that is to say, supposedly legitimate violence. Wright Mills, echoing, as it were, Max Weber’s definition of the state as the ‘domination of man by man based on the means of legitimate, that is, supposedly legitimate, violence’”. (Arendt, 2001, p. 31)
For the author, following the Greco-Roman tradition, this concept bases power on consent and not violence, thus on a relationship of command and obedience.
The author notes that this concept is “a sad reflection of the current state of political science” (p. 36) and a natural identification of the traditional view of power and violence, since “power, vigor, force, authority and violence would be simple words to indicate the means by which man dominates man; they are taken synonymously because they have the same function” (idem) and this “virility” is often observed from Greece to the present day.
For the author, “power corresponds to the human ability not only to act, but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only to the extent that the group remains united. When we say that someone is ‘in power’, we are really referring to the fact that they have been empowered by a certain number of people to act on their behalf” (p.36).
For the author it is necessary to review these concepts: power, vigor, force, authority and violence, since “violence would not identify any coercive act, but only that which operates, in the case of social relations, on the physical body of the opponent, killing him, violating him, in short, it seems to describe only the effective use of implements” (p. 37) and thus war.
Arendt speaks of “isonomy” where Chul Han speaks of “symmetry”, similar concepts, and so power is indeed that which “emerges wherever people unite and act in concert, but its legitimacy derives more from the initial being together than from any action that might then follow” (p. 41, with emphasis in my text).
What is needed is an action of “unity”, of “service” and, at best, as the one who serves the community and not the one who serves himself, and for this he will always need violence.
This requires an action of “unity”, of “service” and, at best, as a the best case scenario, as the one who serves the community and not the one who serves and for this you will always need violence.
ARENDT, H. (2001). Poder e violência. Brazil: Rio de Janeiro, ed. Relume Dumará.
Maximum tension between NATO and Russia
16
Sep
credits Avpics/Alamy Stock Photo
Accusations of direct aggression between the West and Russia have reached a dangerous limit.
The tensions surrounding the war in Eastern Europe have reached an all-time high. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden are reportedly talking about allowing Kiev to use American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow long-range missiles on internal Russian targets.
On the other hand, China and Russia have held joint military exercises called “Joint SEa-2024”, which Japan and Eastern countries view with suspicion, as well as Taiwan and the islands that are conflicts between Japan and Russia (Sakhalin and Kuril Islands) and China and the Philippines (Spratlye Islands and Scarborough Atoll), but the main conflict is markets with the West.
Russia has used drones from Iran in the confrontation with Ukraine, and this strengthens the link with the Muslim world, while support for Israel from France and the US strengthens the NATO alliance.
Brazil and China had proposed a peace proposal that would “freeze the current borders” in a ceasefire, but this referred to May, now the advance of the Ukrainians into Russian territory changes this scenario, and it is not clear what the proposal actually is, but Ukrainian President Zelensky had already rejected the proposal, saying he was not consulted.
The scenario is serious because a simple attack on Russian territory with long-range missiles will be considered a NATO aggression, since Western countries have offered weapons and given a go-ahead, while NATO forces are preparing a possible retaliation.
On the Middle East front, as I explained with almost the same allies and enemies, the climate is also one of hostility and an agreement seems to be further and further away.
A senior Hamas commander, Oussama Hamdane, in an interview with AFP accused the United States of not exerting enough pressure on Israel to seek a ceasefire agreement, and claims that on the contrary “it is trying to justify the Israeli side’s evasion of any compromise”, and American political strength would be able to lead the Middle East to a hope of peace in a conflict that has gone beyond humanitarian limits.
There are still hopes, voices calling for serenity and common sense, various organizations and entities that are honestly seeking a reasonable and lasting peace.
