Arquivo de Notes | Page 250 of 269

Luiz Felipe Pondé and the Genomic Problem

In the essay Da ciência e do medo, arranged in his Do pensamento no deserto, Luiz Felipe Pondé makes an interesting reflection about what we can call the “genomic problem”.

He says that once, “walking through the campus of one of the largest and richest universities in the so-called first world,” he talked about genomics and the risks of genetic engineering with a group of technicians in genetics and molecular biology. Here is what happened:

One of the techniques stated that she did not understand the paraphernalia that philosophy and ethics invented about science in general, more specifically criticizing the blah blah blah about the possible social developments of the concrete and daily activity of the genomic laboratory.

So Pondé proceeds in the essay as if he were responding to the esteemed proletarian of science, undermining all the impacts that a robust genomic industry would bring in ethical, social and moral terms. It is a scary scenario.

We are talking about genetic engineering, artificial insemination, gestation through artificial wombs, —who knows? — incubators and everything that cannot be imagined of the evolution of this gait applied on large-scale.

Pondé shows us how inevitable the process is and how it will attack the human being in its most intimate dimension, destroying inwardly important meaning-forming fulcrums, all driven by an unstoppable desire for emancipation. With morality buried by the gains of the technique, there will finally be the vacuum, exposed and inconsolable.

But what to do? How to avoid disaster? There is nothing to do. Science will serve as a support to the process, depending on its many wonders.

Here is how Pondé ingeniously presumes the advancement of the genomic industry:

The trend, as in the case of our genomic social agent, will be bureaucratic mediation operated by competent institutions. On the psychopragmatic and sociopragmatic level, what will be at stake is the continuity of the emancipatory process —and here we should take into account more seriously the advertising pragmatics: “Give your child the best of you!”, or “Are you not worrying about the future of your family?” “Social security is the keyword.” A tendency to social reorganization on a bionomic basis is irreversible. (…) A broad front of normalization will be put into practice: normalization of security insurance (inclusion of genomic goods in health insurance policies), legal normalization (definition of genomic rights), pedagogical normalization (definition of the pedagogical goal as the production of individuals horizontally psycho-bio-socio-happy), psychological normalization (definition of integrated personality as the right to guiltless biohappiness), social normalization (combating the privatization of genomic goods), political normalization (campaign against biofundamentalist prejudices — platonic root naturalistic dogmatism at the service of fear and guilt — and against genism, understood as discrimination based on the lower genomic capital of individuals excluded from preventive practice).

We are left, as always, with the resignation and the cynical smile to stamp on our faces…

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The Basis of Literature

Charles Bally, Swiss linguist, makes a very virtuous reflection in his Traité de stylistique française. He is extolling the importance of the spoken language, with all its subjective burden, for literary language: he says the literary language feeds and rejuvenates the spoken language. He then says the aesthetic pleasure derived from the literary form is directly related to the spoken language, since such pleasure is nothing but the capture of a “sublime deformation” operated by the artist, which is only perceived through comparison. Bally reinforces that emotion, the quality of ideas or its organization were never enough to consecrate a literary work, not allowing us to quote a single masterpiece that obtained its consecration by abstaining from the form. Charles Bally then concludes, in other words, that the day when there is no form, and there is no contrast between the spoken language and the literary language, there will be no more literary language, and literature will be dead. Excellent, excellent! Now let us analyze the progression of poetry and prose over the centuries and draw our conclusions…

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Simplicity and Action

Guy de Maupassant, this great French writer, tells about his artistic conceptions in the essay Le roman, available as a preface to his Pierre et Jean. This essay is very interesting: Maupassant outlines his vision of the varied literary movements of the nineteenth century, says some of his influences and addresses some particularities of the literary creation process.

Let’s look at two interesting points from the essay.

Saying about what he thinks is the role of an artist, says Maupassant (in my translation):

To move us he must reproduce it (life) before our eyes with a scrupulous resemblance. He will, therefore, have to compose his work in such a skillful way, so hidden and of so simple appearance that it will be impossible to see and indicate his plan, to discover his intentions.

This carries some of Flaubert, incidentally, whom Maupassant considered his master. Accuracy, here is the summary. No flourishing, bluntness or excess: the artist must paint life exactly as it is.

This principle goes through the whole essay and influences different aspects of the creative process. At one point, Maupassant says about excessive explanations, about having the artist to be justifying the action of his characters, as if painting his psychological profile to substantiate his actions. Says the author:

Therefore, instead of explaining in detail the state of mind of a character, objective writers seek the action or gesture that this state of mind should fatally induce this man into a given situation. And they make him behave in such a way, from one end of the work to the other, that all his actions, all his movements are the reflection of his intimate nature, of all his thoughts, of all his desires or of all his hesitations.

Let the acts speak; action…

I like very much Maupassant’s style, as well as that of Stendhal, another French writer associated with realism. I do not think the artist should extend into explanations, treat the reader like an idiot. Letting the characters speak — or rather, act — is an effective technique for building a thought-provoking, moving, and real narrative.

We will continue in these notes on another occasion. For now, the message is this: when a teacher teaches, we do well listening to him.

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Literature as a Foundation of Personality

The distinction of someone with a literary culture is conspicuous. In addition to all the pleasures and all the intellectual elevation from reading, we can say this: literature forms, develops, structures personalities. Literature is able to broaden the reader’s knowledge, providing him with experiences he would never have in his life. It teaches how to deal with the most varied situations, makes one feels the most disparate and extreme emotions, throws one under different skins, different geniuses, educating for life. Thus, the good reader finds himself prepared for all kinds of situations, because his knowledge gathers an invaluable arsenal of examples. He finds himself immune to countless weaknesses, countless mistakes made by characters who have taught him a lesson. In addition, the good reader understands infinitely better other people, the world around: he is accustomed to putting himself under different situations. It cries out to the eyes that literature, in a personality, slows down, strengthens, teaches, aggrandizes — thus leaving indelible marks on the temperament and character of the reader.

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