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Who of us, users of the internet and electronic devices more and more interactive,
would dare to deny the existence of a virtual world existing in parallel with our real world?
Even though there may seem to be a contradiction in terms, virtual reality becomes increasingly concrete in our daily lives.
A presence that helps to shorten distances, accelerate processes, facilitate contacts and disseminate information and knowledge in an immediate way in human history.
For some with everything, as well as in the matrix trilogy, the virtual world would also be a reason for enormous concerns.
It must be defined much less by what reveals than by what hides from our senses.
In this case, our world would be a mere simulacrum, while the real reality would remain hidden.
A reality in fringes, walking at long distances to dissolve everything that foundationates our own humanity.
But ultimately, the virtual world is a positive or negative thing. What are the main impacts caused by these new dimensions of the existential and human experience that seem to be articulated outside the traditional concepts of time and space?
At the end of the first half of the 20th century and at the beginning of the second century, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote a phenomenology of perception.
Against philosophical subjectivism and scientific objectivism, Merleau-Ponty wrote, we are not a pure cognitive consciousness. We are a consciousness incarnated in a body.
Our body is not an object as described by science, but is a human body. This is inhabited and animated by a consciousness.
We are not a pure thought, because we are a body, but we are not a thing, because we are a consciousness.
The world is not a set of things and facts studied by science, according to causal and functional relationships.
In addition to the world as a rational set of scientific facts, there is the world as a place where we live, where we live with others surrounded by things.
A qualitative world of colors, sounds, smells, textures, figures, physiognoms, obstacles, paths, memories, an affective world, a world with others.
A world of conflict, of struggle, of hope, of peace.
We are, let's say Merleau-Ponty, temporary beings.
That is, we are born and have the consciousness of birth and death.
That is, we have the memory of the past, the hope of the future.
We are beings that make history, suffer from the effects of history.
We are time. Time exists because we exist.
We are spatial beings.
For us, the world is made of places, close, far, the path, the forest, the city, the field, the sea, the mountain, the sky, the earth.
This spatial world is made of dimensions, the big, the small, the bigger, the smaller.
And it is made of qualities.
My body is not a thing, it is not a machine, it is not a sheet of bones, muscles and blood, no network of causes and effects.
It is not a receptacle for a soul or for a consciousness.
My body is a sensitive, which is sensitive to itself.
My body is my fundamental way of being in the world.
It is this, to be spatial and to be temporary.
You can already imagine what happens when we do not have the reference of space and time as the center of our experience.
Because I think that is what happens with the experience of the internet, of the computer, of the virtual world.
It is no longer this.
It is another experience, but this is no longer.
What happens when the spatiality and temporality of our body and our experience are lost in the utopia,
that is, in the absence of space and in the acrony, in the absence of time.
There are two ausences, the utopia and the acrony, which characterize the virtual world.
This is what the virtual world is, a world without space and without time.
David Harvey, in a book called The Postmodern Condition,
points out, as a consequence of the new form assumed by capitalism, the so-called globalization,
as a transformation without precedents in our experience of space and time, which is designated by him as the compression of temporal space.
In fact, for us to understand what is going on, Harvey makes a very important distinction between the way the economic production organization was organized
and the time when the so-called globalization began, and what happens with it in the so-called globalization.
So, in the period preceding the so-called globalization, what predominates is known as the Fordist Organization of Work.
In general, we identify the Fordism with the idea of assembly line, but the Fordism is more than that.
The Fordism is an economy in which a company stops and controls the production from the initial point,
which is the raw material, to the final point, which is the distribution and consumption of the product.
It is a small planet. We go through our global situation, the end of the great industrial plant.
There is one or the other here, but it is a dinosaur, there is no more.
The production is entirely fragmented.
Just take into account what it is to produce a CD, the CD object.
One piece is made in China, another piece is made in Finland, another piece is made in Iceland,
another piece is made in Manaus, the other in Cumbica and so on, and everything is together, and the object is there.
That is, no more object is produced in a plant that goes from raw material to the final distribution.
The product is produced on a planetary scale by a total fragmentation of the production process.
As we know, during the first and second industrial revolution, the human body spread in space.
First, like the telescope, the microscope, the steam machine, the electrical machines, the telegraph, the telephone, the radio, the cinema and the television.
Now, however, with the satellites and the computer, it is our brain or our nervous system that expands without limits,
decreasing spatial distances and temporal intervals until the space and time are abolished.
In fact, the universe is online for 24 hours, without distances and geographical differences, social differences, political differences,
or with the distinction between day and night, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Everything is happening here and now, as you can see in the so-called chat rooms,
in which it is possible to talk to people from the other extreme of the planet and whose presence is instantaneous.
Or, as you can see in the great financial operations made in a piscar of oil between companies and banks located in the confines of the Earth.
So, many of the idealizers and defenders of cyberspace refer to them significantly as unincorporated and spiritual space.
Possibilities, according to some, of us being able to transform ourselves into beings of pure light,
free of brutality and chaos of our own bodies, free of space, free of time,
new angels of a new Earth paradise, in which there will obviously be no death,
because we can make the download of our minds to computers and, transcending the materiality, space and time, live eternally in the digital space.
It is interesting to observe the opposition between two predominant attitudes in the contemporary world.
In fact, while the culture of cyberspace proposes the dematerialization of man,
its transformation into a being of pure light, free of space and time,
at the same time, the genetic, molecular, biochemical, neurobiology, take the opposite direction,
because it proposes the pure materiality of the spirit, that is, the indistinction between brain and soul, brain and consciousness.
These two attitudes are present when we use expressions such as artificial intelligence, intelligent weapons, intelligent fabrics,
intelligent remedies and intelligent medicines, intelligent buildings, intelligent semaphores,
without realizing what the word intelligence means for technical objects.
In other words, we start to consider them as things inhabited by consciousness or souls.
We fall into an animistic conception, but on the other hand, on the side of cyberspace,
we become pure angelic souls, without body, while on the side of science, we become pure bodies, without soul.
From here on, in the philosophical café, what is the new human being that is emerging?
Yes, it's over. How will it be what will come? See you soon.
In the Communist Manifesto, the famous phrase,
everything that is solid is dismantled in the air, refers to the radical transformations that marked the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries.
It is interesting how this same phrase seems to re-update and gain new meaning when applied to the 21st century,
in a world that seems to be dismantled in front of us and processed in digital data clouds.
But in this new virtual world, globalized, de-territorialized and instantaneous, what would be the place of our desire?
You started showing the loss of the world's objectivity because it is a loss or a dissolution of the conscious capacity of the subject.
So, the relation between me and the world, de-territorializing and attributing intelligence to what is matter and material to what is intelligence,
is dismantling the frame of our understanding of the world.
So, I keep thinking about the following, to use the categories of beauty.
How is the subject today, if that neurotic subject, founded in prohibition, in the limit of the law, in the complex of edifice, in conflict,
was replaced by research, that is, it is a flow of intensities and fluids,
a subject adapted to any kind of work, at any time, at any place, and therefore, it is a verifiable identity.
What is the impact of this in terms of social coexistence?
It is always known that, from Weber, that the Protestant ethics were inseparable from capitalism,
because it brought to capitalism what was essential for the exploration of work,
the idea that work is the supreme virtue and preaches the supreme sin.
So, and to achieve that all the energies of the individuals and all the energies of the workers
were exclusively aimed at work,
if there was sexual repression led to a level few times known in history.
It is not by chance that, from the period of the Victorian moral,
that you also have the birth of psychoanalysis,
because you operate with the repression of desire as a condition for the exercise of work.
Well, everyone says that we have changed the record,
because our society is no longer the society of mass work,
it is the society of mass consumption.
And that, in order to see the success of mass consumption,
it is necessary to repress desire,
to release desire and, above all, to release the search for pleasure.
Well, we know that any liberation made under the capitalist mode of production
does not release anything.
So, what is this supposed liberation of desire, this supposed right to pleasure?
It is, in fact, the way in which you control your own desire,
not through the ethics of work, but through the ethics of mass consumption.
It is linked, therefore, to the idea of the successful individual,
of the competitive individual, of success at any price,
eternally young, eternally beautiful,
which leads women to anorexia and bulimia of models,
boys to the madness of tennis and Ferrari,
all this mess, all this crap that we see incessantly in this universe,
of consumption as if it were the liberated desire.
So, there is a new way of repression, which is the repression of desire,
by his control and by the determination of which are the valid objects of desire.
Well, the result of this process is much worse than the previous one, I would say,
because in the previous process there was a huge effort to pass from this repression to a symbolization.
I think it is not by chance that the Paranoia takes further than the schizophrenia,
because the paranoia goes towards the search for a way out,
which you do not have in the schizophrenia.
Well, this process of symbolization we no longer see in our society.
What happened?
My interpretation is that everything that belonged to the symbolic universe
fell to the dimension of the sign, it became the sign,
that is why it became a spectacle, it became the sign,
and how the sign is what you point and what you appropriate,
and as it does not have, therefore, symbolic mediation,
what it has is a deadly fight for the posse of these signs, these signs,
which are signs of success, youth, power, wealth, all these signs,
and this engender a absolutely colossal violence.
So, my question is, when we go to this acronym,
to this utopia, to this disassembly of our body as being sensitive and as being symbolic,
and we reduce ourselves to signs, virtual, out of space and time,
what is the new human being that is emerging?
Because the one who was, which I am a remaining race in extinction,
this is over. How will it be what will come?
Because it will be born from a field without symbolization,
only of signification, without space, without time and without body, all virtual.
How will these new human beings be?
And what new phenomenology of perception?
You will need to write to realize that.
So, what I want to say, I do not have a condemnatory attitude,
I have an attitude of incomprehension.
This new world, this admirable new world is an incomprehensible world for me.
Because the elements with which I am able to think the world
and interact with the world are the ones that are in extinction.
In the next vocal?
There was a single power in the religious tradition that was able to create reality,
create the same world, it was in the gods.
So it is not any power that hides under the notion of the virtual world.
Café Filosof, Volta Jove.
They tell us that we live in a new society called the Society of Knowledge.
With this expression, Society of Knowledge, it is intended to indicate that society and contemporary economy
are based on science and information thanks to the competitive use of knowledge,
technological innovation and information in productive and financial processes,
as well as in services such as education, health and leisure.
The whole question is to know who has the management of all this mass of information,
who has the collector and distributor of this gigantic mass of information,
and therefore the question is who has the power.
There is a text by Walter Benjamin that tells me a lot,
because there was a whole discussion that cinema would destroy theater,
that the impression of works of art would destroy the aura,
and Benjamin talks about democratization brought, for example, by cinema,
and what he said is, but let's not be naive to not take into account
what happens with this democratic potential of the press and television
in the hands of the capitalist company.
So all the time we have to think that this happens
and capitalism is also doing this.
How do we deal with it? How do we stay in the middle of it?
And how do we fight it?
So that this is a achievement for the human beings.
In every part it is supposed that information produces an accelerated circulation of sense,
a more value of sense or homologous, the most economic value that comes from the accelerated rotation of capital.
Information is given as a communication creator.
We are all accomplices of this myth.
Well, where do we think that information produces sense?
It is the opposite that is verified.
Thus, the means of communication are producers, not of socialization,
but on the contrary, of the inclusion of social in masses.
If you take into account the way in which the means of communication
constructs reality and proposes this construction as being the reality itself,
this gives you a measure of the power that the means of communication have to propose to you a reality that is not.
And of which you are completely convinced.
There is no freshness, darkness, nothing that can make you assume that this world that comes,
above all through television or through the internet, is not the real one.
So you already have the power to exercise it.
The case of the virtual, in my understanding, is even greater.
Because in the case of the virtual, you create a reality.
There it is.
It is not that you, as in the current means, they invent another reality that hides the existing reality.
You have a simulacrum, you believe in the simulacrum and the reality itself is hidden and you do not see it.
This is what makes today the means of communication.
But this is not what cyber culture and cyber space propose.
Because as they eliminate space and time and propose that all things exist,
in the simultaneity of space and time, and that all this exists and can be updated uninterruptedly by each one of us at any time,
this means that a world was created.
It is not that our world was replaced, was hidden by a world of images.
No, no.
Another world, I do not know if parallel or substitute of ours, was created.
And this is what all religions have always reserved for a power.
There was a single power in the religious tradition that was capable of creating reality,
creating the same world.
It was the gods.
So it is not any power that hides itself under the notion of the virtual world.
Because it seems like a simple, simple thing.
For example, one of the texts I read about the virtual world is the following.
All the words of a language are virtual.
They do not exist in a space and in a certain time.
They exist, they are part of the language, they are there in the dictionary,
and each one of us, when speaking, updates.
So the world of language is a virtual world that each one of us updates.
It is not that.
Who gave you this idea that things exist, available,
and that our action is an act of updates, only.
The virtual world is a world.
It is almost the opposite of our world, because it is without space,
without time, without body, and it is a gigantic power,
which is the power of creation.
I see democracy as a counter power,
a force that is capable of oppressing the banalization
and the vulgarization that we run with the idea of the cyberspace
as this quiet, angelic and light world.
None of the issues put by the cyber culture or by the virtual world
are issues that refer to what actually interests a democratic society.
The society of thought-consuming consumption as an operation
within the unconscious about desire is totalitarian.
This is what is totalitarian.
This is the admirable new world.
It occurs, however, that uninterruptedly
issues and obstacles and conflicts arise,
which reopen the problem.
This does not come quietly.
Why?
Because one of the elements, let's say,
if we were to define democracy and not think of democracy
as a political regime of law and order
that operates with political parties and the overthrow of power,
but if we think of democracy as a democratic society
and the democratic society as a society that creates rights
and institutes new rights and secures new rights,
do you think of this society as a society that is open temporarily?
Because if not, it would not create new rights.
It would not even realize the need to create rights,
as much as new rights.
If I think of democracy as this vice,
it is possible to perfectly see the moments in which
the supposed manipulation of the satisfaction of desire and pleasure
meets empirical obstacles, meets real obstacles,
meets forms of conflict between groups,
between people, between classes, in the interior of the same individual
that opens the gap and makes it wonder if this,
if these desires and these pleasures,
if these contents that are given to me correspond
to what we are and to what we have right.
I would say that I am not capable of imagining
forms of struggle and combat and opposition,
but I am capable of imagining the limits imposed
by your own object to the idea of liberation,
of freedom of desire and pleasure through consumption.
I would say the following.
Reality is always more contradictory than expected.
It is clear.
You will bend the corner and hit it with your nose.
That is why I think that when I say that I like,
for example, the Matrix trilogy,
there would be no less chance to get out of here.
Between utopia and dystopia, my tendency is for utopia.
We live in a world where dystopia prevails.
You have the planetary catastrophe,
we are prepared for the end of the planet,
and the catastrophe of all types,
biological, energy, all of them.
Dystopia operates with the universe of the catastrophe and fear.
Utopia operates with the perception of the possibility
of the catastrophe of fear and what to do against it.
And I think that democracy is in this place
that makes us stand apart from reality,
not virtually, but sometimes even more unexpected.
The fact is that another day I said to a friend of mine,
living in a world where the Mandela was possible,
Obama was possible, others are possible,
but it is not much in a generation.
I am satisfied to live in this time,
which I think is over,
but I think there is a lot in the real world,
which is more powerful than the virtual world of the angelic world.
We are going to have to invent a path as teachers,
because for now it is difficult to convince our students
that thought is a work.
Ateja.
We saw that the changes imposed by the revolution of the virtual world
created new ways to relate to life,
be it in the social sphere, work, economic or cultural.
It is the so-called Society of Knowledge,
which gives all of us a virtually unlimited access to information.
But how to ensure that this quantity can generate quality?
What is the place of education in this new scenario?
In Goiânia, Tete, she identifies as Tete here in the chat,
she says the following, she is a teacher,
she says she is afraid of her students,
because they use an iPhone to check if she speaks correctly or not.
She says that the school where she works is of the kind of guy,
she puts entre aspas,
the wireless in the whole school, the virtual ones,
and the fantastic style.
Sabrina Salvador, she is also a teacher,
she says that the students today go to the house
to be more comfortable and easy, copy and paste.
Unfortunately, my students, at least,
do not feel pleasure in discovering,
in learning, in rationing and transforming,
in analyzing and questioning.
They do not want to build knowledge anymore
and talk about their ideas.
This issue of education was put here by these two people,
and several people talked about it.
They want to know about you,
how will education be as a virtual world
every day present in schools?
The elements brought by electronics,
by computer, by cybernetics
are incredible,
because they offer you
a wide perception,
in terms of extension,
of cultural production,
from artistic production,
literary production,
scientific production,
and that can help the teacher,
can help teachers and students
to have a wider and more extensive vision
of their study objects.
So, I would say that, on the one hand,
it is beneficial,
beneficial to the contribution of these devices.
The whole problem is what happens
with the work of thought,
which I think is the issue
that my colleagues are putting to me.
Because the work of thought,
at least as I think,
has some important characteristics.
The first of them is that it is slow.
It is a work of slowness and patience.
That is the first thing.
Then, it is a work of sales,
of realizing that you didn't know
and of learning and adding what you already knew.
It is also a work of disappointment
and disappointment, which is to support
the instant of ignorance,
the instant of not knowing
and of not discovering an answer,
or a solution.
So, all of this is the work of thought.
I have doubts if, at the moment,
with the instant solution,
you press the button to take the mouse
and the answer appears
and you simply reproduce
what happens with the work of thought.
Either the work of thought
will be realized in other things
that are no longer at school,
or during a long period,
until contradictions are broken
during a good period,
we will not have work of thought.
And it will not be easy to be a teacher.
It will not be easy to be a teacher.
Because the teacher is the one
who works with this game
between the desire to know
and the risk of disappointment
and the disappointment of ignorance
that will obliterate the desire to know
from the students.
That is why we work
with this awakening of the desire to know.
And as the knowledge appears,
as it is already entirely ready,
fully stored,
and you click and it comes,
what will happen with us in the classroom?
I do not know.
Now, I trust that contradictions
are strong enough
to make each teacher discover
in the work with his class
the contradictory breach in which he can enter.
Sometimes they will be very unexpected things.
We will have to, as teachers,
invent ways, you see?
Because, for now,
it is difficult to convince our students
that thought is a work.
And that they demand patience,
dedication, perseverance,
sweat and blood.
Even if we make an apocalyptic description
of our present,
because it is a moment of mutation
and drastic, profound mutation,
perhaps comparable to the passage
of the Middle Age to the modern age,
which is a world change.
So,
my intention is,
on the one hand,
not to have a retrograde and conservative attitude
in the field of knowledge
and invalidate
incredible, important discoveries,
but do not do that.
But on the other hand,
always take into account
that historical circumstances,
very determined,
in which very precise conditions
of capitalism,
these discoveries and these knowledge
are given.
And what happens when this economic power
appropriates itself to all this
and transforms all this into the opposite.
So, that is why I said
we cannot open the hands of democracy,
because it is the only element
that can give us a clue
of how to learn
all this new
that the world of knowledge
and art and techniques brings
and the horror of the way
of appropriation by the system.
You need a counter-power
that sees this and democracy does this.
I think we are in a first instant
of fascination,
so people are fascinated
with the virtual,
with the speed of information,
with the space and time
not being obstacles.
You can cross the space and time
without having obstacles.
So, all of this are conquests
and fascinating.
But to contextualize it too.
Our program will end here.
See you next time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
