Arquivo para a ‘Noosfera’ Categoria
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.
About Wrath and Hope
08
Feb
The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca 
(4 BC – 65 AD) wrote a beautiful essay On Wrath which, although it is in three books, can be divided into two parts, it is addressed to his older brother Gallio, the first part deals with a theoretical issue ( I-II.17) and talks about the horrors of Wrath and its definitions, the second part gives tips on how to calm people, both children and adults, using real cases as examples.
Although the texts are very interesting and intelligent, there is an essential gap that cannot be achieved through spiritual asceticism, the hope that the context will be changed by actions that go beyond the personal, social or group level, raising the level of spiritual health of a person. group.
According to the philosopher, a great man should never become angry and, when it is not possible to avoid anger, he should try to calm down as soon as possible, his famous phrase is:
“No man becomes more courageous through anger, except one who, without anger, would not have been courageous: anger, therefore, does not come to help courage, but to take its place” (I.13).
However, in social life there are situations in which good and fair men are subject to the power of authoritarian, presumptuous and arrogant men who humiliate, exploit and mistreat humble people.
To this the Stoic responds with another sentence; “Let nothing be allowed to you while you are angry. For what reason? Because he will want everything to be allowed.” (III.12), said in a modern way, if we lose our calm when pointing out a mistake, we can lose our reason in reacting to the error.
Hope is fundamental when an entire social, political or even religious situation becomes difficult and points to a path that seems to be without that of destruction, error and fear, it is not about being in conformity, we wrote in the previous post about the disposition which precedes the intention, but the intention to calm propagate peace and avoid anger becomes both hope and the possibility of viable course correction, anger does not, initiates or expands the confrontation.
It is necessary to believe that the union of forces that desire positive change has a light that is superior to the set of human forces, because they can improve the “disposition”, the climate in favor of sensible and constructive attitudes and raise the moral standard in a virtuous circle .
Change of route and power
25
Jan
Today is the day of the city of São Paulo, and the day
of the apostle Paul is also celebrated by most Christians, not a coincidence as the name of the city was given after the apostle, during the time of Portuguese colonization in Brazil.
His name was Saul of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia where he was born in 5 AD and was a highly educated Jew who fought Christianity as a Christian sect, being one of those responsible for the death of Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
It happened that on the way to Damascus, through a horse falling, a figure used to this day to indicate people who change their mentality and route, he had a mystical revelation and became blind, and in this vision he was instructed to go to meet Ananias, and his view has been restored.
From then on, he is called Paul and from then on he will be responsible for taking the apostolate to the Gentiles, as those who were not Jews were called, since these were the people chosen by God, so Christianity leaves its Jewish limits and arrives even Greeks, Romans and other people who lived in the Roman Empire.
His elaboration of thought will then go beyond the limits of Jewish customs, although with some controversies such as the need for circumcision, he will be the first and important theologian of Christianity, having influenced thinkers such as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, important for Christianity, but also for philosophy.
Paul will understand that this is not a fight for human power nor a fight against the domains of temporal power, but rather the fight against the earthly mentality that does not reach values beyond power, wealth and human passions.
Without Paul, Christianity probably would not have left the Jewish domains, nor would it have reached Greece, Rome and the entire Roman Empire and then the entire world, despite the persecution of local powers it expanded in the world of people and took root within cultures.
The civilizing and human route cannot aim only at taking power and submitting to the values of this power, without a solid human base, with timeless values, power is confined to the dimension of weapons and oppression.
Peace, harmony between peoples, respect for cultural diversity cannot be subjected to the power of weapons and oppression, the lack of freedom and the absence of dialogue and respect.
The time of the clearing
19
Jan
If we are in times unsuitable for thought and
intelligence, unsuitable for human and moral values, it means that it is also a time of clearing, it is a time that many consciences and men will be able to awaken and see and find the clearing.
For this, a metanoia is necessary in philosophical, political, everyday and even religious thinking, remember that the prophets were killed and ignored precisely by “religious” people.
The threshold of an unlimited civilizing and humanitarian crisis is close, but if we look at everyday culture, we talked about this so much from the very Brazilian Ariano Suassuna to the Englishman Anthony Daniels in previous posts, politics and thought also seem polarized between two extremes that in many values are confused, and one of them is war and the desire for power.
Even those who invoke peace hide interests of power, of greed for greater wealth and oppression of those they believe to protect, it is a sad scenario of little light and where men of good will who desire a less dark look at the future should have.
Looking at the etymology of the word clearing in Heidegger’s philosophy, it comes from the German word Lichtung, whose meaning, in addition to clearing in the forest (he himself lived for some years in the black forest of Germany), its root Licht is the word for light, which will mean hidden things, or entities whose truth must come to light, as some translators use as unveiling.
What a propitious time this is, and why we are approaching it, because whenever the prophetic words of thinkers and mystics who ask for a change of course in humanity have not been heard, this time of darkness approaches followed by a great clearing.
In the biblical passage of Mark 1:1-19, Jesus clarifies that the death of John the Baptist is this sign of the clearing, that Herod asked for the head on a platter for his wife after his daughter Herodias danced for the king, the death of the last and greatest prophet begins a new era.
The reading says (Mc 1,15): “Time has already come to an end and the Kingdom of God is near. Convert yourselves and believe in the Gospel”, and for those who believe in the biblical clearing, it is the time of change.
Time to recover and live true humanitarian values, even if they are not Christian, the desire for peace, to look at Others with the dignity that each one has and to live justice
Globalism or Universalism, a new period
05
Jan
The current crisis clearly points to a civilizational
crisis, Eurocentric and Enlightenment visions already showed their exhaustion in previous periods, by thinkers such as Nietzsche and Shopenhauer who sought elements in Western philosophy, but quantum physics and studies on an era called “anthropocene ” such as the transdisciplinary studies of Anna Tsing, founder of AURA (Arhus University Research on the Anthropocene) and one of the editors of the Feral Atlas (feralatlas.org) published by Stanford University Press.
Thus, the theories of globalism and NWO (New World Order) are nothing more than conspiracy theories, although the political forces at play may also have influences from various political organizations that desire new forms of imperialism and population control.
Simply looking at an increasingly complex universe in which old Copernican and Newtonian paradigms, of great influence on Western thought, die, show a much more complex reality, such as string theory pointed out by Michio Kaku as one of the few alternatives to explain the universe as we now see it through megatelescopes.
Even Einstein’s idea of understanding the mind of God is very far from what a theory of Everything and the Whole really means, where it is almost impossible not to think of a Being with an unimaginable intelligence who created everything, a simple energy or chance is simplistic Too many and even theoretical physicists such as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku have admitted this hypothesis.
However, it is difficult to imagine a mega-intelligent consciousness in the face of such primary reasoning that involves the majority of Christian thinkers, figures such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scottus and Boethius, these last two are considered saints by Catholics, seem to be overshadowed by a fundamentalist primarism that ignores the complex universe we live in and which still reveals itself to be incomprehensible within human limits.
For serious religious people, it would be enough to examine the visit of the wise (see youtube) men (people from other beliefs and cultures) who came to worship the newborn in Bethlehem to become aware that God is universal and is not limited to human dictates and customs, but there is a lot of false prophecy.
The limit of a true Christianity should be as Augustine of Hippo said: “the limit of Love is to love without limits”, this should be essential to a true God of Love.
The 3 Wise kings – Documentary Discovery Civilization l Dublado l – YouTube
Physics and the mind of God
03
Jan
The basic original question of man is language,
but when searching for information man was forced to look at the universe and try to understand its enigmas, geocentrism (the earth as the center of everything), heliocentrism (the sun as the center of everything) dominated human language and thought for millennia, throughout this time anthropocentrism dominated human conception and with this the attempt to dominate all of nature grew.
However, nature is indomitable, modernity was an attempt to dominate the forces of nature and assert anthropocentrism over it, but it has its own logic, and when looking more deeply the universe that had a mythological explanation moved to a more focused focus. clear of eschatological inquiry: where did we come from and where are we going.
The book by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku: “The God equation” takes a deep dive into this issue from contemporary physics and cosmology, the physicist is the great theorist of string physics (Hyperspace is one of his books), professor at Harvard and host of programs on Discovery Channel.
In his book he explains the quest of physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein to try to explain all the forces of the cosmos, what is called the theory of everything, and which in its current formulation is called the Standard Physics Theory, the discovery of quantum forces of particles, including the Higgs boson, the vision of the photon with a particle of zero mass, the particles of terrestrial magnetism helped this unification, but that’s not all.
Many physicists have failed, the quantum explanation breaks with the idea of “thing” that some dualist authors continue to have, the “quantum” is something beyond it has a third state, called in physics the “third included” where a particle is between the Being and Non-Being and is not dual.
If this state of quantum physics is already a reality, what the particles actually are is still a mystery, and the “most promising candidate (and, in my opinion, the only candidate) is string theory, which says that the universe it is not made of point particles, but rather of tiny vibrating strings, where each mode of vibration corresponds to a subatomic particle” (Kaku, 2022).
We would need a microscope powerful enough to see electrons, quarks, neutrinos, etc. they are nothing more than vibrations of tiny loops, similar to rubber bands. If we put these elastic bands to vibrate countless times and in different ways, we will eventually be able to create all the subatomic particles in the universe, and this means that the laws of physics are summarized in these modes of vibration of the small strings.
Kaku says in the introduction to his book: “chemistry is a set of melodies that we can play with them. The universe is a symphony. The mind of God, which Einstein eloquently referred to, is a cosmic music that spreads across space-time” (Kaku, 2022).
Kaku, Michio. 2022. A equação de Deus (The God equation). Trans. Alexandre Cherman, Brazil, R.J.: ed. Record, 2022.
Happy 2024 and blog line
31
Dec
It is difficult to make a positive assessment of 2023,
we expected some positive reaction from humanity in the post-pandemic where many died as a result of the worsening of collateral diseases caused by the coronavirus, we expected more solidarity and respect for human life.
Ukraine will start the year with a day of mourning due to the massive attack carried out by Russia that killed 39 people and injured 159 others, most of them civilians, the UN declared the attack “unacceptable” and the United States admits direct intervention in war through its troops, this would in practice represent the beginning of a 3rd. World War.
In addition to this crisis, there is the scourge of war in the Gaza strip and tension between Venezuela and Guyana.
The year is not yet over and this month the blog broke its record number of hits with more than 32 thousand and the new line where we delve deeper into the issue of the noosphere, based on Teilhard Chardin who coined the term, also the crisis of thought (we see that the philosophy is also experiencing a crisis) and which is the origin of the current civilizational crisis and Cyberculture, with ethical and social aspects that are deepened in readings of both the emergence of new technologies (ChatGPT, Bard, Azure, etc.) that enter the Era of Generative AI, in the LLM (Large Language Model) model.
The complex scenario requires reading a few authors who detect the golden thread of the current crisis, the idealistic model that comes from the dualism of Ancient Greece (being is and non-being is not), the centralizing and monopolizing state model (even the liberal model that grows in some countries continues to dictate centralized theories and models) and whose crisis affects the social body, culture and even religion where there is no shortage of false prophets, soothsayers and apocalypticists, this appeal grows depending on the severity of the time.
We leave a breath of hope, of certainty that it is possible to emerge from a crisis with balance, responsibility and a dispassionate look at problems, passion for life yes, but not that of fanatics and saviors of the country who contribute little or nothing to humanitarian and responsible for the human future.
Chardin’s universal vision
28
Dec
For a certain time, Chardin’s vision of a universe
formed from a divine intention, its evolution within a geosphere, then a biosphere and finally the current stage that is a noosphere (noon – spirit) was considered heretical, but at the time few were changing, many philosophers and theologians began to study him, his works were being published and acceptance by the church was being considered, to the point of even thinking about his beatification.
One can think in the current controversies, without serious doctrinal meaning in my opinion, that this is due to a certain heretical “modernization” of the church, but the most diverse theological thoughts within the church reflect on the validity of this vision that updates Christian thinking and gives a great opening to what modern man has discovered and continues to discover about human life on earth and the cosmos.
In a homily by Pope Benedict XVI, on July 24, 2009, in a homily in Aosta, Benedict XVI quotes Teilhard de Chardin, as a positive illumination: «The function of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it becomes a living host, so that the world becomes liturgy: that liturgy does not pass by the reality of the world, but that the world itself becomes a living host, becomes liturgy. This is the great vision that was later also that of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end, we will have a true cosmic liturgy in which the cosmos becomes a living host.”
And this is not a new doctrine, although Chardin brought it closer to Science, the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes (nº 5), in fact, declares: «In short, the human race passes from a basically static notion of the order of things to a more dynamic and evolutionary conception: this gives rise to a huge new problem that requires new analyzes and new syntheses.”
And in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 310), we read: «God freely wanted to create a world “in a state of progress” towards its ultimate perfection and Jesus will come in his glory, after wars, pestilences and other civilizational difficulties, to save him, says eschatology.
Thus, not only does original sin, the expulsion from paradise and the human future open up to a new perspective consistent with the doctrine, but it also clarifies controversial points historically, we would say due to the Copernican revolution, man and the world are neither geocentric nor heliocentric, at the center of the galaxy is a black hole, so we could say that it is noocentric,
GRONCHI, Priest Maurizio. In the thoughts of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. « J’étudie la matière et je trouve l’esprit. », L’Osservatore Romano, 29 December 2013.
Original sin for Chardin
27
Dec
It was not the fact that Chardin reconciles the
creationist view of the origin of the universe with the evolutionary view of the Big Bang, although also controversial, it was the original sin that gave rise to a view of distrust regarding Teilhard Chardin’s view of the noosphere.
In an article published on 06/05/2018 by Edward W. Schmidt, S.J., in America magazine, he wrote: “The discovery and publication of Teilhard’s work filled a gap with valuable documentation in the history of the scholar”, and spoke of the question of original sin.
His work caught the attention of the Jesuit Curia and the Holy Office (predecessor of the current Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) and there he had to sign six declarations on points of his thought that the Holy Office understood as conflicting with the traditional teaching of the Church, since From the Council of Trent to the First Vatican Council, the declaration that Chardin signed said that “the entire human race has its origins from a proto-parent, Adam”, with difficulty he signed, but with the addendum “with faith alone”.
The Six Propositions were lost until 2007, when they were discovered by Jesuits in Rome who had access with authorization from Pope Benedict XVI. They also found a letter from Teilhard to the Superior General of the time, Wlodimir Ledochowski, in which the French Jesuit explained what he defended. on original sin, in Portuguese: “Note on some possible historical concepts of original sin”.
When the “monitum” (a kind of correction) was revoked in 2017, the Italian historian Alberto Melloni, professor at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia and director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna wrote: “Today the Pontifical Council for Culture asks that the monitum on Chardin be revoked: a fair and easy request. On the contrary, it was less easy to revoke a mentality that deluded itself into exorcising with condemnations the risk of connecting and disconnecting faith and cultures, offering the gift of hope.”
Without going into the merits of Chardin’s propositions, there is a reference by Pope Benedict XVI, on the occasion of the feast of the Holy Trinity, to Chardin’s concepts: “In everything that exists, the “name” is printed, in a certain sense. of the Holy Trinity, since all being, down to the last particles, is being in relationship and in this way, Creative Love ultimately transpires” and further on it says that “the human being has in his own “genome”; a profound seal of the Trinity, of God-Love”.
The divine medium and the mass of the world
26
Dec
Complete 100 years since the Mass on the
World by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), he was a philosopher, paleontologist, Jesuit priest and French mystic, among his outstanding works are “The place of man in nature”, “The divine environment” and days celebrated 100 years of the Mass of the World.
In the scientific world, after graduating in Paleontology, at the Natural History Museum in Paris, he wrote his doctoral thesis: “The mammals of the French lower Eocene and their sites”, he was professor of geology at the Catholic Institute of Paris in 1920 during the period of his doctorate at the Sorbonne.
For Chardin, after the emergence of life in the period of cosmogenesis and geogenesis (formation of the universe), the biosphere is formed. ).
On one occasion when he was in the Ordos desert, in Mongolia, and had neither bread nor wine, he said that without being able to celebrate mass, he instead composed the Mass About the World, a mystical account in certain parts, but not far from the doctrine Christian, where he refers to the “Omega Point” and the “Cosmic Christ”, essential aspects of his thought.
There are excerpts from Laudato Si that recall this “mass”: “At the height of the mystery of the Incarnation, the Lord wants to reach our innermost being through a piece of matter. He does not do it from above, but from within, so that we can encounter Him in our own world. In the Eucharist, fullness is already achieved, being the vital center of the universe, a center overflowing with love and endless life. United with the incarnate Son, present in the Eucharist, the entire cosmos gives thanks to God. Indeed, the Eucharist is, in itself, an act of cosmic love’ (Laudato Si’, 236)
