Arquivo para March, 2021
The civilizing future
31
Mar
For many authors, World War I was already the end of a 
civilization, although the most popular literature at the time was courage and patriotism, the most lucid minds saw the absurdity of the war and among them was Teilhard Chardin who lost two brothers and one close friend Jean Boussac who would be a great name for French geology.
However, Chardin believed in the future, for him there is a “law of complexity and conscience”, which can be thought of in these terms: “Spiritual perfection (or conscious ´centrality´) and material synthesis (or complexity) are nothing more than the two aspects and the two related parts of the same phenomenon ”, so it does not separate our historical and spiritual evolution.
His belief in the future was clearly expressed in an unprecedented interview given to Marcel Brion in January 1952 and published in the French magazine “Les Nouvelles Littéraires”, in which he clarifies the vision that transcends evil and suffering, an accusation that was made to him as a apostasy.
In this interview, stating that it was after he worked as a makeup artist in the trenches of war, that he definitely coined the word Noosphere: “I used that term for the first time in one of my first essays on the Human Phenomenon, more or less in 1927, but, indeed, the idea of a human spiritual community adjacent to the organic had been born in me in the trenches: the idea, I mean, of a kind of special biological “mega unit” that constitutes the thinking envelope of the earth. This is, for me, the noosphere ”.
Far from a belief in technization, says Chardin: “Neither mechanization, therefore, nor identification by fusion and loss of consciousness, but unification through laborious ultra-determination and love” and this can build a sustainable future for humanity.
At the end of the interview, he asks: “Isn’t the birth, around us, of such ´neo-humanism´ (linked, in my religious thought, to the progress of“ charity ”) not precisely one of the distinguishing characteristics of the times that we are going through? ”
Brion, Marcel. Rencontre avec le Père Teilhard de Chardin, “Les Nouvelles Littéraires”, january of 1951,
Criticism of inadequate reason
30
Mar
Western philosophy lives in an inadequate reason, it cannot be
rational to ignore the pain, death and inclement weather of nature and life, life is death and resurrection and without understanding one does not understand the other, in the middle of a pandemic it is observed that not even religious understood this.
In Western philosophy, idealism and its dualistic logic predominate, so pain and happiness complement each other, that is why so much sadism is possible with one’s own body, with human relationships, although now there is a great appeal to empathy, we have already discussed the “third party included ”Of quantum physics and the logic of going beyond me-you.
Epicurus submitted the pain to the tetrapharmakon, the idea that to deny it would be useless so it is to seek the best way to live with it, it is the neurotic terrain of right and wrong, of good and evil, to reach a philosophical plain populated as I would say Espinosa, good and bad encounters.
Epicurus’ first two remedies refer to the intellect, proper to idealism, to undo all the irrational superstitions and fears that cause anguish in men, the death and anger of the gods, that is why the litany God is good, he is , but incompatible with evil and this does not mean the absence of pain, but its transposition to a greater good.
The last two remedies are a hedonistic “ethics”, it deals with the preventive characters of pain and the obtaining of pleasure, they also do not admit pain with a contingency of life, and not everything is inevitable, for example death, and so it remains improper reason.
Camus also addressed the issue, and we had the opportunity to make a post about the Myth of Sisyphus, and his starting point is to find happiness where it is possible in dark times (wars).
If we admit the pain, and go through it, we will find a third go-beyond or think towards the beyond, suggested by Emmanuel Lévinas, which means to move more and more towards the stranger, the mystery and the infinite (another Lévinas theme) and we have already mentioned here the Cosmos and Teilhard de Chardin’s vision of a Christian worldview.
We entered Easter week and with it in the Christian worldview, the sacrifice of Christ replaces the sacrifice of the lamb made by Abraham (in the three great monotheistic religions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity), so the pain enters a new meaning from of which afterlife is possible.
It is serious, but there can be hope
29
Mar
While Europe is experiencing the 3rd. wave, the number of infected
and the severity of the disease makes the pandemic a humanitarian crisis in Brazil, the hope is to increase the rate of vaccination.
In Europe, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen recognizes that the bloc of the 27 member countries “is not where it wanted” with immunization, and said that efforts should accelerate, despite the 2 billion doses contracted, for a population of 450 million, rates are still below 10%, which is very little due to the effort already made.
While Italy, Germany and France vaccination 10.3% outside the block the United Kingdom has already reached 36.5%, in Brazil close to 13% have already received the first dose, the official data is 15,503,373 for the first dose, while 4,699,784 for the second dose, in a total of more than 20 million, but the rate of infection and mortality grows, if we think that 12.5 million have already had covid-19 it can be said that in number there is a small advantage.
However, it is not so, it would be necessary that half of the population already had the first dose, but looking at the most optimistic case, which is the 38% of the United Kingdom, we see that the way to go is great.
The hope comes from the two institutes that develop the vaccine in Brazil, Butantã in São Paulo and FioCruz in Rio de Janeiro, it is believed that people over 60 years of age may be vaccinating in April, this would lead to a rate of just over 20% in the month, not counting the external contracts that can increase this number a lot, reaching an optimistic rate of 35%.
This is because the promise of 57,179,258 doses fell to 47,329,258 doses, among which the number decreased are Pfizer and Oxford, but with the promise of vaccines coming from abroad this rate could reach the goal expected in May for 47 657 058 just below the plan.
The rate will only exceed that planned in the month of August where more than 82 million doses are expected instead of the planned 35 million, so only in September can a drop in infections and deaths be expected, the health system is expected in trouble to get there.
The hope remains the growth of vaccines available on the market.
Love and divine logic
26
Mar
Only those who are able to overcome the limits of pain, hatred and
contempt can approach a divine love, it is necessary to overcome the dualistic logic of the struggle between good and evil, deo-logic is the one that always meets for good, what the Greeks called agathosyne, which comes from Agathon kindness in a high sense of spirit, and which is pursuit.
There is a third party included who walks with us.
Pain is often what hurts the soul the most, but it can also be the one that broadens it, in these moments of evolution of the pandemic crisis in the country, we face the most serious need to seek strength beyond sanitary measures, weak is true, but the The defense of life must continue in those who show solidarity with those affected by the virus.
Only by understanding this deeper sense of pain will we be able to embrace it, to have hope and to look to a future where we will no longer have to run after lost time, but prepare and anticipate ourselves to avoid even worse humanitarian crises, which may come.
There is always a third possibility and just as pain is a transition from one state to another, what can arise after much suffering is an even greater novelty, a leap in quality in what we are as men and as nature, and overcoming current stage.
Edgar Morin wrote in his recent book It is necessary to change the path: lessons from the coronavirus, in this sense as well: “The utopia of the best of all worlds must give way to the hope of a better world. Like every great crisis, like every great collective unhappiness, our planetary crisis awakens hope. ”
It can thus be better understood, both in the theological and philosophical sense, in a central passage of Jesus’ passion when on the cross he shouts (Mark 1,34): “. 34At three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: – “Eloi, Eloi, lamá sabactâni?”, Which means: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, Because it is in this pain that the human and the divine become merge, emerging a new reality of death and resurrection, yes God died say the philosophers, but there is a third included: after he rose, so you can understand the passage from death to life.
All this pain, this “great collective unhappiness” says Morin awakens hope, because it is indeed a passage, perhaps the most painful that humanity has gone through, even though we have had hateful wars, even though we have conflicts of a social, ethnic and religious nature, there is a feeling of pain.
All this pain will only make sense if we find another way of looking at it right there in front.
The civilization crisis and the third excluded
25
Mar
The fact that we are stuck with dualism, now transformed into
political polarization as if in nature and in society there were always only two poles in conflict without a third (or even fourth and fifth options) seems to make no sense with the logical paradox developed by Barsarab Nicolescu and find a parallel only in quantum physics (picture inside).
It is not true, Barsarab’s own text that calls for a Reform of Education and Thought (Barsarab, 1999) indicates that one can see in this change the center of a crisis greater than physical or logical issues, says Barsarab: “One thing it is certain: a great gap between the mentality of the actors and the internal development needs of a type of society invariably accompanies the fall of a civilization ”, or to put it another way, more ontological, between Being and Non-Being there is a Non-Being-being state that penetrates into dualisms and paradoxes.
Barsarab’s letter calling for an education reform, Edgar Morin also asks and others perceived a crisis in modernity as thought and education, the Third Included theorist T, gives a worrying sentence: “The risk is enormous, because the continuous expansion of Western civilization, on a world scale, would make the fall of that civilization equivalent to the fire of the entire planet, in no way comparable to the first two world wars ”.
There is also a linear and monodirectional thinking where the intention is always to polarize and create a “single” and monochromatic path, with the eternal danger of authoritarianism and deviations of power, in order to distend it would be necessary a more open world and where everyone is included. Education must walk and help this context, Barsarab says in his letter: “The harmony between mentalities and knowledge presupposes that such knowledge is intelligible, understandable. But can that understanding still exist, in the era of disciplinary big bang and extreme specialization? ”
The harsh reality of the pandemic shows that we oscillate between true solidarity and a relaxation to face the crisis, and the opportunistic polarization that wants to take advantage of the deaths and deviations from a poorly managed health crisis, in some more countries, but in almost all.
Barsarab’s sentence that seems harsh is not: “Is there anything between and across disciplines and beyond any and all disciplines? From the point of view of classical thought there is nothing, absolutely nothing.
The space in question is empty, completely empty, like the vacuum of “classical physics”, because it is in the void, in the epoché where a true philosophy can flourish, even when it is not (the suspension of judgment, the new horizons beyond the pre- concepts, etc.) is that it is .
The issue of Identity and its topicality
24
Mar
The question is so fundamental that it runs through philosophy since Parmênides, where “the same, because it is both to learn (to think) and also to be” (apud Heidegger) and for him to think and be are thought as the same, that is, identity is part of being, but this has a lot to do with the current moment.
When appealing to questions of identity we separate ourselves from people of different races, creeds or genders, we are trying to strengthen what is a false concept of identity because it both denies Being itself, and attempts to strengthen a certain group under an alleged identity and deny those that have little to do with belonging to that group or race.
This look at “different things” and recognizing some co-pertinence in them (belonging is just another way of giving identity to an isolated group or race), we must manifest differently what should be pointed out as sameness, that is, co-permanence groups with a diverse culture.
The logical sense of thinking about this identity is strong and has a presence in different cultures, both because the groups want to be strengthened through this “identity”, as well as following a binary and dualistic logic where A cannot be B, or they are the same and are the same, or they are different and contradictory, we have already pointed out in other texts the third included by Nicolescu Barsarab, in logic.
But in onto-logic Being is and can be non-Being, where there is a third term T that is both A and non-A, which even in physical reality has already been proven by quantum physics, the problem for dualistic philosophy is that this involves complexity.
There is a second way of seeing the question within the thinking (noein) where it is presented as Being, as was said at the beginning, in it two supposedly different things, they see each other as co-pertinence, which made some possible problematic interpretations in modernity.
Heidegger points to it, first quoting Parmenides and then developing “something absolutely different from what we ordinarily know as the doctrine of metaphysics, in which identity is part of being” (HEIDEGGER, 1973).
What Heidegger does is invert Hegel’s phrase: “identity is part of Being”, for “(…) the unity of identity is a fundamental feature of the being of the being. Everywhere, wherever we have a relationship with any type of being, we are challenged by identity.” (HEIDEGGER, 1973).
What Heidegger does is invert Hegel’s phrase: “identity is part of Being”, for “(…) the unity of identity is a fundamental feature of the being of the being. Everywhere, wherever we have a relationship with any type of being, we are challenged by identity.”(HEIDEGGER, 1973).
Going to the bottom of modern philosophy, where Hegel is a worthy representative, it can be said that there is a shift from Being (sein) to Being-there (Dasein) and perhaps the complexity will find there a point of support for those who want simplistic explanations. , it can be said that there is no displacement
However, it is more complex, as it involves existential aspects such as “worldliness”, “facticity” and “language”, without them we fall into simplistic explanations that only strengthen identity as a factor of difference and exclusion from the Other.
Heidegger, M. (1973) The principle of identity. In.Thinkers Brazilian Collection. Abril ed. Brazil, Rio de Janeiro.
The proximity in Ricoeur and Pope Francis
23
Mar
Paul Ricoeur’s quote in the papal encyclical Fratelli Tutti is of a
philosophical and theological dimension that few still understood, by separating partners from close ones, inspired by Ricoeur’s categories, the pope dialogues with contemporaneity both with philosophy and with theology and opens a new path for concrete fraternalism.
Although the tendency of Utopian content that the word Fraternity (the name of the encyclical is Fratelli, remember) takes on a new dimension when reading Socius et Prochain de Ricoeur.
It can be said that it develops a true culture of proximity, that is, it is not the friends of that group that I am connected with, of those who share a certain “identity”, the encyclical also clarifies these false concepts of identity that isolate us from others.
Ricoeur’s mention deserves note: “charity brings together the two dimensions – the mythical and the institutional – as it implies an effective way of transforming history that requires incorporating everything: institutions, law, technique, experience, professional contributions, analysis scientific, administrative procedures ”(FT §164), and thus incorporates human realities in the mythical.
It can be said that it is a realistic realism of a utopia of a better possible world, which cannot be reduced to an ineffective religious sentimentality that threatens certain conceptions that both mystique and good philosophy contemplate, going against the Other, proximity .
Another essential point of the encyclical is the misuse of the identity category, the Encyclical will say that “when they cling to an identity that separates them from others” and it is in Chapter III that speaks precisely of thinking
And the Encyclical alerts: “There are peripheries that are close to us, in the center of a city or in the family itself”. (FT §97), and again in Paul Ricoeur we find: “the neighbor is the very conduct of being present (…) the neighbor’s science is immediately blocked by a neighbor’s praxis: we do not have a neighbor; I am the next someone’s neighbor “(Ricoeur, 1968).
It is the misunderstanding of this category that leads bad philosophy to not understand what the other means and to give and this can be seen in the whole history of philosophy in the different conceptions of identity, the concept is in Stuart Hall and also Heidegger’s that identity is the degree of understanding that each one has of their own culture, but the topic is controversial and we will return to it.
Ricoeur, Paul “O socius e o próximo”, in História e Verdade, trad. F. A. Ribeiro (Companhia Editora Forense: Rio de Janeiro, 1968),
Pope Francis. (2020) Carta Encíclica Fratelli Tutti (FT), Vatican. Available in:
Fratelli tutti (3 October 2020) | Francis (vatican.va)
Urgent vaccines and lockdown in Brazil
22
Mar
We have entered a critical phase of the pandemic in Brazil, even the most economically advanced state is already showing signs of hospital exhaustion and there is already a threat of an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
Flight arrives 17h30 International Airport in Guarulhos, Brazil.
A slight hope comes from the consortium Covax Facility, led by the WHO, landed in Guarulhos, Greater São Paulo, 1,022,400 doses of immunizers yesterday, and there is a prospect of more than 42 million doses this year, is the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, manufactured by SK Bioscience of South Korea, the same one manufactured by Fiocruz with a definitive registration by Anvisa (the Brazilian Health Surveillance Association).
AstraZeneca´s 8 million that will come from the Serum Institute of India will be delayed (only 2 million arrive).
But the Coronavac from Butatan made available 24.6 million doses of the vaccine for the whole country, the schedule until the end of April foresees 46 million doses, where will the missing ones come from?
Anvisa has already granted the definitive registration for the Pfizer vaccine, which authorizes its importation, but the immunizer is not yet available on Brazilian soil, with the extension of the lockdown extension, Ceará State signed a contract for the direct purchase of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, the state wants to acquire 5.8 million doses of this vaccine.
The União Química laboratory has production rights for Sputnik V in Brazil, but Anvisa charges the delivery of data for emergency use, the data published in the scientific journal The Lancet, indicate that the effectiveness of this vaccine is 91%.
The government has signed a contract to purchase 100 million doses of Pfizer immunizers, and the remaining 38 million from Janssen, which, however, does not yet have a definitive registry.
Several reports and scientific data show that a combination of lockdown with vaccination is necessary, the success of the United Kingdom and Portugal, where the number of hospitalizations has dropped dramatically, while the rest of Europe is facing a 3rd. wave.
Although it is difficult, it is necessary to have hope for vaccination and not to slow down measures of social isolation in Brazil.
The grain of wheat dies to give life
19
Mar
Perhaps the deepest cosmic mystery is the death and appearance
of stars, planets, comets and so many wandering stars in the Universe, and also in microscopic life it is like this, the virus needs a cell to live and there it can cause death or life, this is the cosmic-paschal mystery.
Chardin said about the Universe that on the Cosmos scale: “only the fantastic has the condition to be true”, the nebulae are stars with a simple composition of Helium and Hydrogen (they are the most common elements in the universe), when a gas contracts it heats up and the temperature depends on the density of the gas, the burning of Hydrogen will cause a nuclear fusion and a sun will appear, if it is not enough the so-called brown Dwarfs will appear, they are more planets than stars.
When the star gets colder and the density decreases by 8 times the mass of the sun, it becomes a White Dwarf, however as its nuclear fuel heats the temperature of its center, the stars expand to become the so-called Red Giants, between the white dwarfs and the Red Giants are planetary nebulae that are not really planets.
These are just one of the spectacular puzzles of the Cosmos, there are still neutron stars, black holes, asteroids and comets and now the newly discovered wandering planets that spin outside the circle of their main star and roam the immense universe.
And what to talk about the various theories about black holes, the most accepted theories is that what remains of the star’s death generates the neutron stars while if the mass is greater than 3 times the Sun generates a black hole, but there are other theories .
Death and life expressed in Christian cosmology may seem distant, but for Chardin it was not, since he defined the universe as “Christocentric”, that is, he all lives a paschal mystery.
So the biblical passage, especially in John 12: 22-33, has a text very close to these enigmas when Jesus says that the Son of Man will be glorified (it is interesting because the Son of God has the human dimension in the mouth of Jesus), and he says he is distressed, and that “what shall I say? ‘Dad, deliver me from this hour?’ But it was precisely this hour that I came. ”
And he says he came to glorify the Father, and this when he approaches his death on the cross, and he says when he is lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me, indicating that the path of salvation exists, and the whole universe goes in this direction, thus man and ours. planet will also tend to this, as via Chardin.
In simpler words, Jesus explains: if the grain of wheat does not fall into the soil and die, it produces fruit.
Give a “soul” to the Earth
18
Mar
The idea of giving the man of our time a planetary citizenship, we
live in a time of globalization or globalization, and this implies rights, it will only be sustainable if in return this path also points to an earthly “soul” where everyone sees themselves as codependents among themselves, the pandemic should have sparked this, but not yet.
Says Chardin in the book we are analyzing: “the man of our time will still go through a period of great illusion, imagining that, having reached a better knowledge of himself and the world, he no longer needs Religion” (Chardin, 1958) and this gets worse when we see the night of God hanging over humanity, confused between ideologies and fundamentalisms.
He saw the imperative that “from universal evolution God emerges in our consciences”, and he saw that it was necessary to overcome “religion understood as a simple appeasement of our difficulties, nothing ‘opium’. Its real function is to sustain and stimulate the progress of Life”and note that the systems proposed against it have not been able to prove effective in this direction.
He explains that the religious function is “born of ´hominization´, and linked to it can only be continually with the Man himself”, and he will ask: “Isn´t this what we can verify in our life? When, in the Noosphere, was there a more urgent need to seek, to find a Faith, a Hope to give meaning, a soul to the immense organism that we built?
It implied that this process of hominization, as the highlight of the complexification of the Cosmos, its “more advanced” form is “personalized”, and it raises a double necessary condition for the future: to super-animate the Person (anima-soul and animation has the same etymological origin), but without destroying it, and a universal convergence “must still (eminently) have the quality of a Person”, we purposely invert, due to current events.
Chardin imagined that the person would grow up with this “super-anima” (here in the sense of the animation) but we see that the Person was in the background, or as most current existentialists prefer, the Being and the Being-with-the-Other, that should have evolved along with the super-anima, but it didn’t.
In the 1937 Beijing writings, he speculates about this human energy that drives so many advances and this “being-more” force in a more primitive and more savage form: the War.
He believed that the time will come when “those who triumph over the mysteries of Matter and Life” as opposed to being used for war, armies and fleets, “doubling this other power that the machine will make free, and an irresistible tide of energies available will lead to the most progressive circles in the Noosphere”.
As a first conclusion, the texts will still go ahead, he says: “Love, like thought, is always in full growth in the Noosphere. The excess of their energies in relation to the increasingly restricted needs of human propagation is becoming more flagrant every day”.
Chardin, T. (1958) Construire la Terre. Paris: Editions du Soleil.
