Arquivo para February, 2021
Wanting to heal to a new normal
12
Feb
Carnival would start today in Brazil, there are those who regr
et this impossibility even thinking about a pandemic that shows no signs of weakening, even countries that are advancing with the vaccine, as in the case of Portugal, England and the United States the signs that the virus circulates are still strong.
Morin’s book alerts us to lessons that the pandemic should have taught us, but it is not what is actually observed, so not only do we need other “cures” like human fragility itself in the face of the virus and other pathologies, including social ones, can remain.
It is necessary to want to heal and we discover that this cure is collective and codependent, we need everyone to be healthy and a society that does not look at the most fragile or that despises them and condemns the life of loneliness and death has not yet achieved a lasting cure that point to lasting solidarity.
We learned the harshness of isolation and loneliness, even if in family, but how many people live like this in the so-called normality, that the new normal brings a greater human aggregation to all, that traces what Edgar Morin calls a new humanity more humane.
May the vaccine immunize us, but let us learn co-immunity as Peter Sloterdijk advocated even before the epidemic, and it did not refer to the immunity of the disease, but in a broader sense that immunity that makes us a humanity capable of defending itself against tyrannies and social diseases.
The biblical passage in which a leper approaches Jesus and asks on his knees: “If you want, you have the power to heal yourself”, Jesus, compassionately reached out, touched him and said: “I want you to be healed!” (Mark 1: 40-41).
There are two essential points: the leper’s burning desire with faith to heal and divine compassion for him to be healed, human faith and righteousness attract divine power, those who believe know this.
People today want to change to a new normal or remain frivolous normal life.
It’s time to change of way
11
Feb
It is not my proposal, but the name of the last book by Edgar
Morin (Editor Bertrand do Brasil, 2020), the almost centenary French philosopher shows the lessons of the coronavirus that we resisted in learning, it is also very similar to the name of Peter Sloterdijk’s book : You have to change your life (publisher Relógio d´Água, 2018) this well before the coronavirus.
Before moving on to some of Morin’s lessons, I want to say that we ALL need to change our lives, the planet has run out, words have run out, polarizing politics runs out, and unfortunately sweet words like “fraternity”, “solidarity”, “compassion” ”And so many others seem to be only the will of some that others change, without, however, that each one changes himself first.
The preamble is a historical retrospective from the Spanish flu to May 68 and the current ecological crisis, the lessons from the coronavirus in chapter 1 I comment on at the end.
I begin at the end to affirm that Morin, who also shares values of fraternity, of planetary citizenship, of overcoming inequalities, etc., has in his book a very clear proposal, after demonstrating that the crisis is prior to the coronavirus that only worsened it , on page 4 sentence “… there are two inseparable requirements for political renewal: to leave neoliberalism, to reform the state” (page 46), which will provide the means in chapter 3.
This is actually your second point in the cap. 2 Post-corona challenges, the challenge of the political crisis, of the nine challenges it points to in current crises: the existential challenge, also pointed out in Pope Francis’ Fratelli Tutti Encyclical, the challenges of crises: globalization, democracy, digital, ecological protection, the economic crisis, uncertainties and the danger of a major setback (pages 44 to 53).
The 15 lessons from the coronavirus: about our existence, isolation shows us how those who “did not have access to the superfluous and the frivolous and deserve to reach the stage where we have the superfluous” live (page 23), on the condition recalls the Meadows report, which pointed to the limits of growth, the lesson about the uncertainty of our life, the lesson of our relationship with death, the lesson about our civilization (life turned outward, without inner life, the life of shopping malls and happy hours), the awakening of solidarity, inequality and social isolation, the diversity of situations and the management of the epidemic, the nature of a crisis, the 9 initial lessons.
The lesson about science and medicine, do we understand “that science is not a repertoire of absolute truths (unlike religion” (page 33), the crisis of intelligence, which he wisely divides into “invisible complexities” the way of knowledge “of human realities (growth rate, GDP, opinion polls, etc.” (page 35), point 2. is the ecology of action, it warns that action can “go in the opposite direction to what is expected and return like a boomerang to the head of the one who decided it” (page 35), how many actions and speeches fell in this ditch.
The twelfth lesson is the inefficiency of the state, which, in addition to neoliberal politics, yields “to pressures and interests that paralyze all reforms” (page 38), while polarization deepens.
The thirteenth lesson is national relocation and dependence, and regrets “that the national problem is so poorly formulated and always reduced to the opposition between sovereignty and globalization” (page 39), note the speeches that polarize and do not leave this circle vicious.
The fourteenth lesson is the crisis in Europe, I remember Sloterdijk’s book “If Europe woke up”, and Morin opens the wound: “on the shock of the epidemic, the European Union broke into national fragments” (page 40) .
The fifteenth lesson is the planet in crisis, quotes Prof. Thomas Michiels, biologist and specialists in virus transmission: “There is no doubt that globalization influences epidemics and favors the spread of the virus. When observing the evolution of past epidemics, there are notable examples in which it is noted that epidemics follow railways and human displacements. There is no doubt, the circulation of individuals aggravates the epidemic ”(page 41).
MORIN, E. (2020) É hora de mudarmos de via: lições do coronavírus, transl. Ivone Castilho Benedetti, collaboration Sabah Abouessalam. Rio de Janeiro, BR: Bertrand do Brasil.
Urgent: change thinking and teach to live
10
Feb
When we propose a model that is not that of the world of life, Husserl made a
philosophy of it, his Lebenswelt, Habermas made it a sociology, Heidegger and Gadamer incorporate it in his thoughts, but the end that is life if not learning. But we didn´t learning from the pandemic.
The central problem of seeking a “clearing” is that we create models too far from life, from its defense including nature, dignity and living itself, we are in a Yellow September, whose theme is none other than to say that it is worthwhile. It is worth living.
thought”. We will have a clearing, but it will not last long, and we could start a big change now, then there may not be time.
Clinging to already outdated methods and models, logicists and neopositivists, it is not pointed out “the nature of knowledge, which itself contains the risk of error and illusion” (MORIN, 2015, p. 16).
The great complexity theorist proposes, first of all, a return to philosophy (in the sense of primary thinking) in its Socratic condition of dialogue, Aristotelian (in the sense among others, of the organization of information), Platonic (questioning of appearances), and even pre-Socratic (questioning the world, inserting knowledge in modern cosmology), finally cannot teach life without knowing that it has dilemmas, errors and options.
Morin, who could boast of wisdom by age, by intense intellectual activity, from the pedestal of those full of certainties, no doubt or misconceptions that we see parading through the gyms and public stands of devouring and unquestioning media.
Morin seeks to “conceive the instruments of a thought that is pertinent because it is complex” (Morin, 2015, p. 23), and we see the barbarism of dogma and little elaborated certainties.
Ready-made phrases, self-help manuals, (mainly economic) laissez-faire, rudeness, and ideological hysteria deepen today’s cultural, humanitarian, and social crisis.
It scares me that book readers are so sure with so little thought, in fact criticism of thought grows and the praise of ignorance seems to win any argument.
Morin encourages us and brings us to a still visible and possible future, his lecture at the Frontier of Thought (2016) (Conference in Brazil) is a hope and a deepening that sheds new light.
MORIN, Edgar: Ensinar a viver: manifesto para mudar a educação. Trad. Edgard de Assis Carvalho e Mariza Perassi Bosco. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2015
Existence, repetition and Being
09
Feb
In philosophy you can have form (morphé) and matter (hilé) and all beings have morphé-form and hilé-matter, but in-formation depends on thinking, it depends on the availability to the act of thinking and not just the repetition, here we find this second topic, that repeating does not just mean becoming redundant, the civilizing problem remains if we do not move forward.
In a lecture in 2016, at the UFRGS Hall of Acts (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) Sloterdijk already sentenced: “I think the reality today is similar to how we were in 1915 – he commented, comparing the current panorama with a time in the last century when the First World War had just started and had not happened… ”, this situation only worsened, the pandemic could be a pause, but it was not..
Access to human existence in a new kind of record implies an articulation of meaning for Being and life, the path taken from Husserl to Heidegger, and then with Gadamer is what links hermeneutics to ontology, and in Gadamer the text is explicit. hermeneutic circle method.
It can be thus described by following Gadamer’s reasoning: it must not be degraded to a vicious circle, even if it is tolerated, in it it holds a positive possibility of originating knowledge, which, of course, will only be properly understood when interpretation understands its task first.
This constant first and last task remains that of not receiving beforehand, through a “happy idea” or through popular concepts, neither the previous position nor the previous vision, but in securing the scientific theme in the elaboration of these concepts. from the same thing. (GADAMER, 1998, p. 401).
Considering the method we return to the essential question of Being, which is the forgetting in Western philosophy of this concept from Plato to Nietzsche, and thus we have a metaphysics or its negation, both incompletely because such an essential concept has not been addressed.
It is the forgetting of being, which the philosopher diagnoses throughout the Western philosophical tradition, beginning with Plato and extending to Nietzsche. In his work “What is metaphysical” (written in 1929), Heidegger defines existence as follows: “The word existence means a way of being and, undoubtedly, of the being of that being that is open to the opening of being, in which lies while sustaining it.” (HEIDEGGER,1989, p.59).
Without this essential category discussion and thought are tied to the “being,” which Thomas Aquinas defines it thus: “From which it follows that the essence, by which a thing is called the ‘being,’ is not only form, nor only matter, but both, although in its own way only form is the cause of this being ”(Aquino, 2008, pp 10), in this ontological line there is no separation between Ent and Being, even in English the words can be the same (Being).
Thus we have beyond Being, its aggregate category of being, which is inseparable from it essential concept.
AQUINO, T. O Ente e a Essência, Universidade da Beira Interior. LusoSofia.Press, Covilhã, PT, 2008.
HEIDEGGER, Martin. Que é metafísica? In: HEIDEGGER, Martin. Conferências e escritos filosóficos. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1989.
GADAMER, H.G. Verdade e Método: Traços fundamentais de uma hermenêutica filosófica. Tradução de Flávio Paulo Meurer. 2. ed. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1998.
Vaccines, anticipation and care
08
Feb
Vaccines are undoubtedly the greatest weapon in the
fight against Covid-19, but it is necessary to follow the scientific data worldwide, WHO itself certifies that only two vaccines had the data finalized Pfizer and AstraZeneca, being the stages of evaluation (Status of assesment) and date of anticipated decision, according to the WHO website (photo inside).
The others are promised for the middle of February and beginning of March, note that the decision is written in the WHO table is anticipated so that some side effects are appearing after the start of the vaccination, normally this was verified in the final tests.
It is not, therefore, fake-news like a lot of information circulating in the media, the evaluation process has been accelerated, which is clear on the WHO website itself, it is understandable in a way, but it is necessary to know that the process of falling in the curve of infection will take a long time to fall, official data show that the death toll is growing, and there are countries that are already collapsing.
Thus, care must be redoubled and we all need to be aware of this moment, which is now the peak of the pandemic and vacillations in the control of the pandemic only worsen the current stage.
The case of Portugal is iconic, even though the vaccination process has started and is at an even good pace, the contamination of Covid-19 reached very high levels in the country and demanded harsh government measures, and a certain panic in the health system that asked for help from European neighbors.
We cannot imagine that this is just their case and that we will not reach this chaos, if urgent measures are not taken, we will enter the same collapse that a good part of the country already seems to be going, the difficulties of taking hard measures are due to the the bad climate that politics installs in the country, impossible any kind of agreement or common sense at this level.
In the meantime, the people suffer and we hope for the progress of the vaccination stages, but it is good to observe the stage of the vaccines that are being offered and also to make efforts in the purchase of inputs.
Why an “epoch” is needed
05
Feb
Our whole way of looking at life is filtered by a worldview, a complex
of values, family, social and religious education in a broad sense, that is, we all have some belief, or else we would have the whole explanation of the world about the puzzles nature, man and life. The pandemic could have chaged this worldview.
This “cosmological” view always implies (not nearly) pre-conceptual values, that is, how we classify the world, things and social ways of developing life, this worldview was called by Heidegger Weltanstchauung, the word is important because every translation is inaccurate.
In the ontological aspect that Heidegger drank, there is the phenomenology of Husserl, his teacher, and for him this was “the description of what appears” or “science that has as objective or project that description”, and for him it is itself a concept of method, which Hans Georg Gadamer later developed in “Truth and Method”.
However many drank from Husserl’s phenomenology, each in his own way, Karl Jaspers, Emmauel Levinas, Edith Stein, Jean Paul Sartre, Gabriel Marcel, Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Martin Buber, Nicolai Hartmann, Hans Jonas, and the one who turned it into Hans-Georg Gadamer philosophy.
The open sense of Being in Heidegger extrapolates the socio-political, biological or anthropological fields (for this reason it is ontological, or proper to Being), and the concept of Dasein means to be launched in the world while “ente” are things in different ways, that is, everything we say, feel, understand, behave in the final analysis what we “are”.
If we enter this clearing, the Being is also the one who needs help, healing, listening, a word of acceptance as the Being of the Ent, that is, in his functions as an experience.
Even though biblical exegesis considers all analysis of the sending of Jesus’ disciples to the world closed, go around the world and proclaim the good news and heal the sick, this care for others (in the broad sense of the word “heal”) also means openness, “Epoch” and transcendence.
Go around the world as a new worldview.
A way for three
04
Feb
It is used to say that the one who is with God has everything, or
the one who has a friend has a treasure, or even that the man who found his partner or the partner who found his partner, almost always two by two finds happiness.
Socrates said that the truth is not with men, but among men, that is, there is a third element in the case of logic, but in the onto-logical case there is a third Being.
Who is this, if two people have a true epoch, that is, they are related in a vacuum capable of establishing a connection that produces such a force that a third possibility arises, which can be called mutuality, reciprocity or, more simply: solidarity.
However, this third presence needs a new ontological category, the non-being or what Paul Ricoeur calls in his linguistic discourse “being-like” and that in the logical hypothesis of the included third, the one that exists beyond the A and the Non-A , and that quantum physics establishes as real.
Also the religious discourse would change if the third person that everyone claims could belong not to their own ego, but precisely their denial for the inclusion of the Other, that is why these themes are related, also in the Bible by “love your neighbor” does not mean the of your church, of your group and just the one who passes by your side, but there is something beyond the “how”, that’s how to be “how”.
Being-As establishes Ricoeur in another text (above was a reference to his book Living Metaphor), the text “Le socius et le prochain” (The socius and neighbor in english, without translation into Portuguese), means to overcome the utilitarian barrier of Partner to reach the Next, the book is so important that it deserved a quote in Pope Francis’ Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti”.
Most leaders who do not have the magnetism of a true charisma, apply to any social segment: a company, a religious group, a party or some form of governance, do not look at their followers as “close” (many even want to distance), but as partners, or repeaters of their words and wishes.
Three antidotes are natural for verifying this new type of leadership: his appreciation for the simplest ones that cannot bring great power to “partners”, detachment from the position and the luxuries that power can provide and, above all, an extraordinary capacity to listen.
The missing future, semi-open dialogues
03
Feb
The idea that we are about to change is in the mouth
of many apocalyptics and until some idealist theorists and philosophers, although most claim openness and dialogue, what they think about it is not elaborate, make long speeches and weave unrealistic narratives, but they want only to hear their own voice.
The true dialogue between tradition and change, fortunately in this field many people are doing this properly, must at the same time provide a rereading of the past, a respect and an understanding of why the events happened this way or that.
This is the reading from the pre-Socrates, through the high and low middle ages, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, although criticism can be done throughout, and even it must be well done, it is easy to do critical rereading because this time It has been difficult because the time has come.
Especially difficult for the Enlightenment and modernity, postmodernity or late, or its continuity, is still difficult to read because the transition has not taken place and the problem is the difficulty of overcoming it, almost everyone will agree that the Modernity is already more tradition than any possibility of a new “revolution” within its thinking, although the attempts are many.
Nietzsche called this dilemma “eternal return”, he already realized in his time and some think this is new, and in part was right for the horizon he saw in his time, but when the new is not born traditional thinking suffers from aging. and sameness.
It tries to look ‘new’ or ‘creative’, but there is nothing that really changes reality. Great sociocultural problems of our time, moral and even religious, will not change without a new perspective, although redundant one would say a brand new “new”, and in order not to be pure imagination, one must find elements already living that point to the future.
Three new elements are visible: a globalized planet, it is already possible to see itself as a world although different cultural aspects are not yet respected, an exhaustion of the forces of nature, the domination of nature by man was the great mode of modernity, and the end of hunger and misery on the planet, though with resources available for it, has not been realized.
Of course there are many other factors, but they stem from a lack of dialogue with the future, the centralization of autocratic groups, the absence of a networked politics and culture, although the mechanisms for this exist, are countered as “alienation” and even as responsible for problems that exist long before any thought about new technologies.
Change and boundary cosmology
02
Feb
The changes of our time bring concerns and some setbacks,
however it is dangerous and borderline what can happen in thought, if we think everything is very simple, because it is not, but believe and hope is need.
Looking at what we do not understand suspiciously means how complex change is, the risk of inadequate analysis, and seeing the most essential changes as obstacles, while they are the great drivers of change, the pure and simple reaction to it is what promotes in our day ignorance, its manipulation is bad policy, its manipulation is bad policy and disset, and ignorance grows.
No one has a crystal ball, but the arguments of faith and hope can be used, if well used, to look to the future with generosity and conviction that it will be possible.
Already mentioned in the previous post, the world is one of them, and it is the best example, because it is at the same time simple to have the Earth as Homeland, as Edgar Morin claims, and very complex because it involves cultures, economic interests and social complexity.
A simple hope is that man has always overcome in history the obstacles that arose in classical antiquity the Greco-Persian wars (449-499 BC), the decay of the Roman empire, the Westphalian peace treaty (October 24, 1648) that ended the religious wars between states, and was a landmark of international law, and finally, the two world wars, which made the UN emerge even though its role must be even greater at this time.
It cannot be said that we are heading for a war, perhaps this is the moment when we can deal with the possibility of world conflict in a preventive way, there are many places, and by these we must begin to address the fundamental aspects of our time: good use. natural resources, cooperation between nations, and greater mutualism, the pandemic crisis sould have sparked this.
The aspect of faith is important, because it mobilizes billions of people, it has to be given a cosmological and unifying character, different peoples have different beliefs, and even if it is the same, cultural expression needs to be given to each people. In every cosmology.
There is the consciousness of a greater cosmic essence, a God expressed as Being or as some physical form, but always superior to worldly and immediate impulses, it can be used not as a borderline with our preconceptions and interpretations, but as that Something bigger that brings our distinctions together and shortens the differences.
T he appeal, however, must be to those who have faith, that it is at least the size of a mustard seed, as the Christian reference states, and that all serve God, the passage from the apostle Luke who speaks of the tiny faith that believers should have, says (Lk 17,6): “If you had faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Pull yourself from here and plant yourself in the sea,’ and she would obey you.”
But the biblical text didactically afterwards explains that this CAN ONLY be done by superior force and not by skill, human appeal, or manipulation of faith for misuse, says the following passage (Lk 17: 8): “Prepare me the dine, gird yourself and serve me, while I eat and drink; after that can you eat and drink? ”to say that faith serves the Lord, not those who use it, so that the planet and the whole cosmos can have harmony.
It must have true faith and hope in the future human and planet, it cannot serve religious, political or social manipulation, it must serve everyone, especially those who have another kind of belief or culture, respect diversity.
Urgent myanmar!
01
Feb
Myanmar, formerly Burmese, was ruled by military forces until 2011,
when after a long period of protests, in which Suu Kyi returned to the country to resist with the population the authoritarianism of the military government, ended up giving in and making democratic reforms.
The film made about her was made just at the moment when the democratic forces were removing the military from power, The Lady (in Portuguese translated as Beyond Freedom), tells the story of Aung Suu, Kyi daughter of Bogyocke Aung San, a great statesman considered father of the Burmese nation, his recent story was told in the film directed by Luc Besson, the ending was adapted because the country was undergoing a process of redemocratization, after numerous protests and the arrest of Sun Kyi.
After 9 years of redemocratization, which would consolidate with the overwhelming victory in November, of his party the National League for Democracy (NLD in English) and that the military claims to have been “defrauded” without presenting any proof of this and now they have returned to power.
In a letter written before being arrested, Suu Kyi denounced that military actions put the country back under the dictatorship, and asked the people to “protest the coup”, “do not accept it”.
The world that lives under new threats of fascism must protest against yet another blow to democracy and the peaceful coexistence of peoples. Stuck many times, it is a sentence: “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear”
