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Arquivo para September, 2022

Wisdom from above, civilization malaise

30 Sep

The Tiredness Society is also a society that led adults, young people and adolescents to psychiatrists and alternative methods, those with few resources led to closed groups and dubious social conscience.

It is not by chance that Freud wrote at the beginning of the last century about this “Civilization Discontents” (Freud, 1930) the author will not discuss the psychiatrist question itself, but the distance between instinctual impulses and civilization, that is, contemporary culture. which leads man to his opposite as much as nature does to his well-being.

Intolerance to errors, even scientific misunderstanding, the demand for effectiveness in all fields, the lack of empathy and love in everyday life and, in particular, of values ​​that are natural and lead to a true human asceticism, leads to emotional and society to dangerous limits.

In detecting this evil, Freud himself, the founder of psychiatry, did not take humanity to the couch, and I feel he pointed out that there are cultural evils and these must be remedied first, this is not what was done, in this sense Sloterdijk is right, it is not possible to “ human domestication.

Even if religions themselves live on this civilizational evil, the true asceticism that is to climb the mountain of wisdom with values ​​that support this asceticism on your feet is necessary to reach a true stage of civilization, it is necessary to “love in absence” it is necessary to intend the true values ​​that lead to wholeness and to the true and unique comfort, empathy and love.

When we remove this from society, it begins to move towards isolation, hatred and conflicts and “discontent” are just the consequences of the absence of this “natural” state, but a plant only evolves if cared for in its natural conditions: fertilizer , adequate water and sun.

When the disciples go to ask Jesus that they want to believe more and do a true asceticism, he remembers the mustard seed, a tiny seed that grows into a leafy tree (Lk, 1,6): “if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, pull yourself out of here and plant yourself in the sea: and it would obey you”, like love in absence, faith is believing without seeing and walking towards a true asceticism.

FREUD, S. O mal-estar na civilização (1930 [1929]). In: ______. O futuro de uma ilusão, o mal-estar na civilização e outros trabalhos (1927-1931). Direção geral da tradução: Jayme Salomão. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1974. p. 73-171. (Edição standard brasileira das obras psicológicas completas de Sigmund Freud, 21) 

 

Wisdom and Love

29 Sep

*The previous text is wrong, because I had some security problem with my blog.

Perhaps the greatest of paradigms and thus the most susceptible to human errors is Love, one can speak of the Greek classification: eros, philia and agape, but I want to link it here to wisdom in the sense of full happiness, not the one that produces utilitarian but spiritual fruits.

There is a book “The shadow of love, on the concept of love in Heidegger” and another that was Hannah Arendt’s thesis, they do not seem to be but are linked, because it was during the thesis period that Heidegger and Arendt had a romance and so she began to be mentored by Karl Jaspers.

The great scientific theory of our time, both for Karl Popper and for Thomas Kuhn, two great philosophers of science, is the possibility that there will always be a course correction in scientific methods and theories so that man knows more about himself and nature that surrounds it.

Heidegger’s text, which is a compilation of letters, only exists in French, so let’s return to the German concept of “Dasein” now to re-signify it and give it a connotation linked to Love:

“In the usual meaning, however, it means, for example: the chair ‘is there’; the uncle “is there”, he arrived and is present; hence: presence” (Heidegger, 1994b, p. 300).

It may seem like a simple literary maneuver, but it is not, other authors (Fernandes, 2011) also make this allusion and even compare it with “parousia” and “adventus”, which acquire a more religious connotation, here it is not necessary.

Thus, it is a presence of an absence, but love also passes through language and thinking, so “thinking is, therefore, to found, in the human, the “medium” to give oneself to the truth of being. It is, therefore, to co-found the human as presence: to be the there-in-being. In this sense, the fundamental ontology is a rush towards the passage, to pack itself for the leap, a first movement in favor of the foundation of the truth of being in the human as presence. This entails a transformation of the human from the lord of beings into the shepherd of Being”.

And this is Sloterdijk’s main contestation in Heidegger, the failure of this human domestication, or what in Heidegger is “care” and that modernity has not been able to resolve.

Heidegger’s main idea about Love is its presence in an Absence, to which we can add what we developed in previous topics: working with uncertainty and errors, that is, knowing how to live and work in the face of the natural difficulties of life.

Quantum physics, for example, has its beginnings in the enunciation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which stated that it was not possible to know exactly what the position of the particles of an atom was with exactitude, Planck who did not agree, it is his statement “I do not agree may God play dice”, went to the laboratory to prove this principle.

NASA (in the photo the crash of the spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos) has just made a scientific feat which is to hit a satellite of a small meteor, which does not pose any danger of collision with Earth, just to prove that it is possible to change course some celestial body, and with that, in case of danger to Earth, change its route.

The DART project is a test for a possible future mission to deflect an asteroid from colliding with Earth, for cosmic dimensions Dimorphos is small (160 m) and orbits another larger asteroid (780 m) called Didymos and form a binary system, the spacecraft that hit it was traveling at 22.015 km/h and the image seen from a telescope in Hawaii on Monday night (26/09) shows that the impact produced many fragments, the deviation from the route, however, is small.

Changing route is wise, when you admit the mistake, but it requires two steps: admitting the mistake and then having the humility to change route.

Reference:

HEIDEGGER, M. (1994). Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann   

Fernandes, M. (2011) A. O cuidado como amor em Heidegger. Rev. Abordagem Gestalt. Vol. 1, n. 2, Brazil, Goiânia.

 

 

 

Wisdom and Human Mistakes

28 Sep

Wisdom is not what makes man never err, but what makes it possible to correct the route, change course and continue the process of true and human asceticism as a result of errors.

The great scientific theory of our time, both for Karl Popper and for Thomas Kuhn, two great philosophers of science, is the possibility that there will always be a course correction in scientific methods and theories so that man knows more about himself and nature that surrounds it.

Quantum physics, for example, has its beginnings in the enunciation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which stated that it was not possible to know exactly what the position of the particles of an atom was with exactitude, Planck who did not agree, it is his statement “I do not agree may God play dice”, went to the laboratory to prove this principle.

NASA (in the photo the crash of the spacecraft colliding with Dimorphos) has just made a scientific feat which is to hit a satellite of a small meteor, which does not pose any danger of collision with Earth, just to prove that it is possible to change course some celestial body, and with that, in case of danger to Earth, change its route.

The DART project is a test for a possible future mission to deflect an asteroid from colliding with Earth, for cosmic dimensions Dimorphos is small (160 m) and orbits another larger asteroid (780 m) called Didymos and form a binary system, the spacecraft that hit it was traveling at 22.015 km/h and the image seen from a telescope in Hawaii on Monday night (26/09, see below) shows that the impact produced many fragments, the deviation from the route, however, is small.

Changing route is wise, when you admit the mistake, but it requires two steps: admitting the mistake and then having the humility to change route.

Image of telescope in Havaii of Project Atlas:

 

 

Wisdom and training

27 Sep

The most beautiful image that Plato made of Socrates about philosophy was not the ordering of knowledge, the epitheme that is also necessary, through which the sophists were fought, but the image that exists in his book Symposium, the one with which we have access to philosophy and knowledge of the Supreme Good and in it “the” wisdom.

The one that says that a philosopher is not moved only by a “know-how” as the utilitarian world wants, the presence of Socrates by the “testimony” of Alcibiades, with an appearance without any compatibility with the Beauty of classical Greece, and which imposed to whom he was questioned a change of attitude, not a passive receiver of ideas.

Questions and interrogation are no less important than putting oneself actively in front of oneself and the world, there is a desire to take the lead and to respond to really important questions.

As we read in Theaetetus, Socrates is defined as atopos, with “no-place”, or even “weird”, as one who creates aporias, that is, he does not solve things, he only raises questions, he does not then help the harmony of the “polis”. ” or the cosmos.

What kind of wisdom is this then, “not knowing” is very significant for Socrates, he is a scathing critique of the pretension of the known, after all their knowledge is not the result of conversation, of dialogue, it is not aware of the contradictory questions of the your knowing.

Every Socratic-Platonic-Aristotelian edifice did not resist the brute force of the Roman empire, and falls into ruin before the mighty Roman army, as war won Greek wisdom, acquiring it and making it serve its purposes, the Roman gods were no other. but those corresponding to the Greek gods, but philosophy has decayed.

This is the possible current parallel, there is an almost general feeling that regret is no longer useful or reasonable, and philosophy would be nothing more than mere speculation, says Sloterdijk “it is not a favorable time for thought”, or we go for pragmatism of action or for the deleterious.

There is little room for the birth of the new, for Paidéia with its effect of education and training, everything goes towards the immediate and the market.

Even in environments where culture is present, it seems that the ideals of wisdom are under suspicion and vulgarity is promoted even with a certain ‘status/’, the way out is to call men to conscience and common sense.

 

Plato. The Banquet of Plato. CHICAGOWAY AND WILLIAMS, 1895. (pdf).

 

Scalation of war

26 Sep

We warned last week that the risk of a Ukrainian advance would provoke Russian anger and this is indeed what is happening, the government has called up 300,000 reservists, and the UN OVD body reported that there have been protests in 38 cities and 1,400 people were detained (source RTP Portugal).

The war in eastern Ukraine begins to reverse the trend, on the eve of a plebiscite held by the Russian government, Ukrainian troops advance in the Donetsk region, strategic because it has roads and railways to reach the regions to the east, including Mariupol and Kherton.

What the next steps will be will depend on the severity of the Ukrainian advance, at first these young people and parents of families who are being called up will go to the front so the idea of ​​waiting for the winter and trying to contain the advance of Ukrainian troops seems like a first strategy, but provocations of the use of nuclear weapons continue and US media outlets report that the Biden administration had made a private call to the Russian government.

Putin has so far kept protests and opposition to the war under control, at the cost of arrests and a certain restriction of press freedoms, most regions are also ruled by pro-Kremlin authorities, but it is possible that the internal situation will worsen (protests in photo).

An aggravation that is uncomfortable for the Russian government are the border disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and also Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and Russia itself has a territorial dispute with Georgia, in addition to the various border conflicts (Finland, Moldova, etc. ), in practice, Russia would like to return to being the great Soviet federation, but the scenario is already different, and the Chinese government called this weekend for there to be no “overflow” from the war.

The Russian issue is that NATO takes advantage of these conflicts to have new allies, in addition to the post-war territorial expansion, which is the main reason alleged for the war with Ukraine.

The siege of Leningrad, today Saint Petersburg, was to prevent Russian trains from reaching the city and there was a food ration card, when a person died the first thing they did was steal the card, also if someone was transporting food. in the city was robbed, the city had about 3 million inhabitants and the only passage to Russia was Lake Ladoga.

 Winter came and the lake became frozen and possible to be used as a route, while the situation of the German army was that it faced difficulties in supply and conditions to withstand the cold.

The current situation in Ukraine is that there is all autumn for winter to accompany the Dombass regions, and avoid the Dombass ones, while the Russians want to stifle the resumption, first through a referendum that guarantees support for the Russian and then with the sending of more troops.

Further Russian defeats could exacerbate the nuclear issue and Ukraine itself could suffer from the cold if forced to shut down its Zaporijia plant.

Meanwhile the Europe of gas spend the winter, has already returned to using fuel fuel to avoid the use of gas in nuclear agreements, strategically wait for the winter to avoid the use of nuclear energy, strategically wait for the winter for their investigations .

There are possibilities for a peace agreement, but they lack a reasonable agenda, a polarization mines as possibilities.

 

 

The gap between rich and poor

23 Sep

The most varied studies, we commented on some in this week’s posts, point to a practically stable separation between rich and poor when not growing in some countries, this model can never guarantee sustainable social human development, wars and pandemics increase this gap even more.

The most serious problem that is extreme poverty, we have already analyzed and published in February this year an analysis of global poverty, and also, in another post, the social problem after covid 19.

The sustainability of human economic and social development depends not only on increasing wealth and social production, it is necessary to find a balance where both social mobility of classes and ethnic mobility provide sustainability and overcome inequalities.

The problem of sustainability is not secondary, many models distribute wealth but impoverish the country as a whole, this is because the investment aspects and safer strategies of economic models are only thought of around income distribution, the opposite where there is only an increase without distribution is less sustainable.

For this model, the biblical parable of Lazarus and the Rich man, the poor man who lived on the margins and when the rich see himself condemned, here the parable is valid both personally and socially, asks that he be allowed to warn his relatives of this risk, but says the biblical prophets already said and you didn’t listen, how many people and political actions have already denounced the serious social gap.

For those who don’t know, the biblical parable says (Lk 16:19-24): “At that time, Jesus said to the Pharisees: 19 “There was a rich man, who dressed in fine and elegant clothes and held splendid parties every day. A poor man named Lazarus, full of wounds, was on the ground, at the rich man’s door. He wanted to satisfy his hunger with the leftovers that fell from the rich man’s table. And besides, the dogs came to lick their wounds. When the poor man died, the angels took him to Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In the region of the dead, in the midst of torments, the rich man lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham from afar, with Lazarus by his side. Then he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me! Tell Lazarus to wet the tip of his finger to cool my tongue, because I suffer a lot in these flames”. 

The rich man also asked to warn the living relatives, and he was reminded that they had (and have) the prophets.

 

For a sustainable social democracy

22 Sep

The Brazilian magazine Exame brought an interesting interview with Argentine Pablo Acosta, Human Development leader at the World Bank in Brazil and Brazilian Ildo Lautharte Junior Economist of Global Education Practice, although the focus is on “human capital”, the data presented and the discussion around income growth and distribution is important.

The analysis is optimistic about the country, but looking at the data on unshared prosperity, and the data must be validated and checked for an analysis, it shows what is on the agenda in the social discussion, the social inclusion of blacks and indigenous people.

Acosta did not fail to point out regional disparities and stated that “in particular, I would say that the differences by racial groups are quite noticeable, not only at current levels, but in progress over the last decade”, as shown in the chart above.

The graph indicates the HCI (Human Capital Index) and the interviews see the underutilization of human social development potential, seen only from the economic perspective, which only values ​​the aspect of this “human capital”, with the only economic focus being notorious.

In terms of democratic sustainability, not only economic and social development is important, but also the overcoming of inequalities and prejudices, they are vectors that prevent greater mobility and concentrate wealth and, consequently, power in the hands of a few.

The aspect of social vulnerability of layers below the poverty line is not touched either, these indices not only prevent these layers from any social progress, but also compromise future generations in terms of human development, or as economists want, the “human capital”. ”.

The report also brings the strong impact of the Pandemic on the economy, called by the Brazilian Lautharte the lost decade, he highlights: “The main objective of the report is to put people at the center of the debate. Bringing the child to the center of the development process, in an idea of recomposing the impacts of the pandemic”.

Affirmative post-pandemic policies that point to a little or nothing resumption are being discussed, on the eve of an election in the country, it is necessary to understand these lost years.

Reference:

Banco Mundial: por que o Brasil desperdiça 40% de seus talentos — e o que fazer para mudar o cenário | Exame

 

Democracy and the poor

21 Sep

The serious democratic crisis that affects almost all Western and some Eastern countries has a clear and decisive aspect: the forgetfulness of the most unprotected sections of the population.

Governments were not able to effectively solve the problem of income distribution and where hopes were greater, economic errors and misguided allies among the powerful contributed to a greater distrust of the population.

Politics is driven by money, even spending limits find ways to be circumvented and for this, allies are needed among the rich, most of the time the most dishonest and according to corruption and the use of public money, one enters in a vicious circle.

With the wider dissemination in social media (“networks”), ideologically directed information does not work and amidst fake news, there are those news that everyone knows: the allies among the powerful that feed corruption and misuse of public resources.

The gigantism of the state helps this, it controls capital flows, of course when well managed and when it doesn’t, it throws nations into pits of misery and lack of investment, many countries are on this path.

What is left for politics is not to do well-crafted social justice, without demagoguery and with sustainable long-term planning, on a social populism that the people themselves distrust, and often leads to the option of authoritarian governments and even worse, or else leads to social populism: it promises what it doesn’t deliver.

It is necessary to reflect for a conscious vote, without a fair and balanced society, a sustainable and healthy democracy is not possible, we are taken to dangerous extremes and an uncertain future.

It is necessary to rethink the democratic society in social parameters sustainable.

 

The winter and the war

20 Sep

Ukraine has announced a counter-offensive in the Oskil region where they have won important points and begins a counter-offensive in Kherson promising to reach even the occupied region of Crimea.

How will Russia react and what is the importance of this resumption of Ukraine? Before any analysis, it is necessary to recognize that the collapse of Russian forces on the Kharkiv front is a serious defeat and it is unlikely that Putin will not react, the problem is what the reaction is.

News from various sources is that Ukrainian troops have made major incursions on the Kharkiv front, for example the US-based Institute for War, where around 2,500 square kilometers have been recovered from Russian forces.

Ukrainian forces pushed the front line from Kharkiv some 70 km east to the Oskil River, capturing several key strategic points, particularly in the Izyum region, where bodies were in common speech with marks of torture and on the west bank. from Kupyansk.

Winter is coming, and Russia in addition to controlling energy sources, also the nuclear plants that are under its control, can cut off the gas and suffocate not only Ukraine, but much of Europe.

But what is more worrying is Russia’s reaction if the defeats are prolonged, the use of strategic nuclear weapons could trigger a NATO chain reaction and a difficult scenario could be drawn.

We will enter the autumn of Europe, which corresponds to our winter in the southern hemisphere, and tensions tend to escalate.

It is necessary for peacekeeping forces to mobilize and prevent a crisis that could lead to drastic actions and even greater horror.

 

 

End of the pandemic in sight

19 Sep

This was the statement of WHO´s Director General Tedros Adhanom on September 14, last Wednesday, but then he asked that the pandemic continue to be monitored.

Consultant Sylvia Lemos from the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases also told CNN: “It is something that encourages the prospect that something may be ending the end of the pandemic, but it does not mean that the world is free of surprises”, and she also asks for caution. stating that “more sustainable data is still needed”.

The protocols are that in general the use of masks is optional, but hygiene and ventilation care are not expendable, also environments where the use of mask is imperative, as there are still sanitary environments such as hospitals and places of greater danger. .

According to the infectologist, in addition to the fact that every viral infection is cyclic, the last strain must also have lost strength and not have new stronger variants, and it is obvious that vaccination helped.

The country has the lowest rates since 2020, and the downward trend in deaths and cases remains.

It is necessary to understand how the infectious disease specialist reminds us that the action of the virus “does not end” and that science will dictate the new measures to be taken from now on, such as whether there will be annual vaccinations and the prevention of risk groups.

Unless new facts occur, our weekly monitoring of the pandemic will be more sporadic.