a new understanding of today, time and space.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
2641

let us try a slightly different tack…

all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends with it…

let us begin there… all knowledge of reality…

so, our theories of realty as given by scientist, philosophers start
with, begin with experience…I might say, I don’t believe in
god because I haven’t experience god…my experiences define my
theories of reality, my definition of reality comes from my experiences…

so far, so good… but we already hit a problem…

my experiences, my reality is different from yours because of random
things in my life… I have a hearing loss, that is experience but that also
means I experience reality differently then you do because of my hearing loss…

and you experience reality differently then I do because you have
your hearing, but perhaps, perhaps, you eyesight is less then mine…
because of this random event, you experience reality differently then I do…
our own physical natures force us to experience reality differently and thus
we understand or explain reality from experience differently…

if I take out my hearing aid, the universe is a very quiet universe…

my experience of hearing loss tells me the universe is a quiet one…
but you can hear and you hear a very loud and noisy universe…

so who is right? is the world/reality a quiet one like mine or is it
a loud, noise world/reality?

we both are right…….

because of our being different physical beings, we experience the universe differently because
we are different people…

we can stretch this out to a wealthy person will experience a different
universe then a poor person solely because of their wealth or lack thereof…

if our experiences are the place where we derive our understanding of the universe,
then as we have different experiences, we have different understanding, a different
reality then other people…….

that is why Iam and I cannot reach a consensus of what is reality, of
what is the experience the universe shows us…because his experience
is different then mine, his reality, his understanding of the universe is
different………we might not even agree that love for example
is all we need, as the beatles think, no, he might thing because of
his experiences with love, that love stinks and we should instead engage
in some other basic factor to believe in…like hate or greed or happiness
or honor or……….

Hobbes was the first to admit that his entire existence was an existence
of fear… his mother was pregnant with him during the Spanish Armada of
1588 and he has felt fear ever since…his entire philosophy is derived from
the fear he felt his entire life………and we are no different…
we experience things and they color our perceptions of reality…

now we must also admit that we have experience the probabilities
and randomness of life…this must influence our interpretations
of what reality is… we have ambiguity because we can
give to every single experience in our lives, a valid and different
interpretation…

I am who I a am because I was born a man or as white or
from an Anglo-Saxon family or my father was Irish and my mother
was English…or I grew up with 4 other siblings, mostly sisters…

my experiences have defined who I am and how I view reality…
but my experiences of having a large family isn’t your reality, isn’t
your experience, so you have a different reality because your family
wasn’t as large as mine…

given all of this, I don’t see how we can create, define
a reality that includes all of us… our experiences are different so
our understanding of reality is different… the great
system builders like Kant or Hegel or Marx… they failed because
of the fact that everyone has a different reality that doesn’t include
the aspects of the system that they put into place…

for example, I fervently disagree with both Marx and Smith that human beings
are Homo Economicus…. economic man… that we are the sum of our economic
activity…… my experiences, my reality has been different…so I believe differently…
just as I disagree with man being Homo Religiosus, man is a religious being…

it is not in my experience… but others, other might believe that
man is a religious being because of their experiences……

so, how do we come to a consensus if we experience reality differently?

I don’t think we can… or it will be so broad as to be very basic…

so, what does this mean to philosophy or to science or to history?

that is an interesting question…

as our experiences define our reality…

how has your experiences defined your reality…

Kropotkin

2642

Yes, but the ubermen are basically in the same boat that we are: “thrown” fortuitously at birth out into a particular world historically, culturally and experientially. Then having particular value judgments shoved into their heads as children. Only to go out into a world as adults and come into contact with others who have been indoctrinated to embody conflicting values.

What I’ll need when they relate the manner in which they have separated themselves from the herd is an account of how they make this distinction in particular contexts. Why the focus on “I” rather then “we”? What constitutes “the right thing to do” given a No God world? A world in which their own values can only reflect “I” as an existential contraption out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view? Isn’t that always my point with the objectivists?

And are not many Nietzscheans themselves objectivists with regard to the “will to power”? But: Whose will in defense of using power to effectuate what moral and political prejudices?

So, you are basically agreeing with me that both liberal and conservative value judgments are derived from this inherently ambiguous shades of gray world? Predicated largely on the actual trajectory of experiences any individual might have?

That what you have thought yourself into believing that you need to do is just the liberal rendition of what the conservatives have thought themselves into believing that they need to do. Your “I” here is in turn fractured and fragmented, down in a hole morally and politically that revolves around this frame of mind:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

But, here again, we would need to bring this very “general description” intellectual contraption itself out into the world and discuss a particular policy in a particular context that liberals and conservatives are at odds regarding.

But you live in a particular society at a particular historical and cultural juncture, and, having had a particular set of experiences, have come to be predisposed to the liberal narrative.

Or are you arguing that, in being rational, liberal values will necessarily follow — ideologically? naturally? deontologically?

This is far too abstract for me to respond to.

Over and over and over again, I can only ask: rational or irrational in regard to what particular set of behaviors that liberals and conservatives are at odds regarding? I’m less interested in a “technical” discussion of rationalism here, and more interested in taking whatever technical argument is arrived at out into the world of actual conflicting goods. Ever and always at the existential intersection of dasein, value judgments and political economy.

The question I ask is “how are these choices and possibilities and goals” not embodied in “I” as an existential contraption derived from the manner in which I construe human interactions in my signature threads? How is the “I” of others construed differently in regard to reacting to a particular context that most of us here are likely to be familiar with.

Okay, but from my frame of mind, if the reevaluation is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein and conflicting goods, nothing really changes other than the very real consequences of very real behaviors. And it is precisely my being unable to feel comforted and consoled in convincing myself that the “real me” is in sync with “the right thing to do” that sustains my own fragmented and fractured “I” here.

As always, in my view, you take questions like this up into the clouds of abstraction. As though both the liberals and the conservatives can’t give you the answers you want and still insist that to truly be rational and virtuous you must share their own values. As though once you jettison your childhood indoctrination you can come to a set of true values.

2643

I am not going to give a point by point discussion of your interesting post…

nope, that gets rather boring and tiresome…

no, I shall try to hit the high spots as it were…

I think the bottom line question for both of us is this,
how does experience change, define, understand
what it means to be human?

as a white man, I cannot under any circumstances know or understand
what it means to be black or to be a women…… I simply cannot know…

my philosophy, as it were, is based upon my experiences in life…
but my experiences are by their very existence, limited, I cannot
experience what it means to be black or what it means to be a women…

thus by definition, my philosophy is going to be limited to me being white or
me being a man or me being average height and weight… or my having a hearing
loss… our “philosophy” cannot go past or beyond what our experiences are…

implicit within my “philosophy” is my being white… it isn’t stated,
and it isn’t even mentioned, but it is there……….the fact of being
a person of color or a women changes the very experiences we are trying
to understand and/or evaluate…………

I can make the universal statement “all people seek love”
but as a universal statement it fails because clearly, and it has
been in my experience, that some people aren’t driven by the need of love…
they have other needs that they are trying to meet…

what is the only universal statements I can make about human beings…

one: we are born…
two: that we live, however short or long,
three: we die……

those are the three, truly universal statements I can make about human beings
and their experiences…birth, life, death… that’s it…

and we try to create philosophies and templates and systems
and understanding of life, from these three basic universal statements…

Marx said “life is”…
Adam Smith said, “Life is”…
Hume said, “life is”…
Socrates said, “life is”…
Nietzsche said, “life is”……

and they are all right, because life for them is what their experiences
have shown them what life is…but for a German pastors son, life is
far different then a Greek stone mason and that difference is their
experiences…

and Kropotkin says, “life is”… and all he is saying is that life
is what his particular experiences have been… nothing more…
his experiences have created his realty…

nothing more…

there is no “true” understanding of what reality is…

we act as if there is, but there isn’t……

it is all about our own experiences and what we make of them…

my own experience might be, don’t trust blond hair… blue eye people…

and yet, the Nazi’s made an entire philosophy about the greatness of blond hair
blue eye people…….

who do we believe?

and most importantly, why?

so how do we navigate the road from individual experience
to having a universal philosophy?

what is necessary for us to make the transition from owning our own
experiences to having a universal understanding of experiences even
though we ourselves can only have specific individual experiences?

what I have done is really restate IAM questions……

how do we turn individual, personal experiences into a general, universal
understanding of the reality we exist in?

when given that each individual, personal experience is very different
and experienced by the one person… only a few people will every
experience my particular hearing loss, and only those people will
understand my life and struggles… so how would I be able to translate
my personal experiences of hearing loss into a wide, universal understanding
of what it means to be hearing impaired?

that is the struggle right now… how do we translate personal,
individual experiences into a universal understanding of what it means
to be human?

Kropotkin

2644

let us try this:

a rather famous document will be reevaluated based on our new understanding
of experiences…

“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation.”

Let us start here…when in the course of human events? ummmm,
I don’t have that experience… I only have my experience… I cannot
speak for "human events because which human events am I speaking for?

“it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands”

one people… what the hell is he talking about…in my experience I
don’t know anything about this “one people” he is talking about…for in my
experience is I don’t see “one people”, I see thousands of people. I cannot
somehow leap from those thousands of people I see to “ONE people”

this entire first paragraph is about assumptions and guesses that I personally
cannot see or experience…

“when the laws of nature” I have never seen the laws of nature… I couldn’t even
tell you what the laws of nature are? which laws of nature is he talking about?
gravity? evolution? entropy? or are they some mysterious laws I know nothing about
and have never even experienced?

if we put the entire first paragraph up to an examination of experience, it
fails the test of experience…

so let us examine the second paragraph:

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness- that to secure
these rights, government are instituted among men, deriving their just power
from the consent of the governed”

ok, let us examine this under the lens of experience…

" we hold these truths to be self evident"

whoa, whoa nelly…which we are we talking about… and truths?
truths are discovered by their being in synch with our experiences
but each of us have far different experiences and so the truth cannot
be a we thing because we don’t have the same experiences…
our experiences create our reality… that is a basic fundamental fact
so the truth/reality cannot be the same for each of us as we don’t have
the same experiences, hence we cannot have the same reality…and thus
being self evident, being self evident to whom? certainly not to me,
based upon their various, different experiences, others might not agree either…

and for me, this second line is the most questionable…

“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness”

are you fucking kidding me? if there is one fact we can agree upon based
upon experience, is that men aren’t created equal… and that very argument
has been made time and again here in ILP…to say that men are created
equal means you are reaching beyond experience to make that statement…
for our collective experience cannot ever admit such a foolish statement
that all men are created equal when some men run slow and some men
run fast and some men think fast and some men think slow and
some men are funny and some aren’t… based upon experience, that there
is no possibility that “all men are created equal”… if there is one statement
we can make is that all men are vastly different in their abilities and their
possibilities…to make this statement is to once again, go beyond
what we have experienced… to make such a grand statement that
ignores what we experienced every single day is foolish in every single way…

let us continue, creator? umm, in my experience there is no creator and
that statement is reaching far beyond our experience…
and that isn’t even talking about “certain unalienable rights” what the
hell, that implies something that my experience has no experience with,
“certain unalienable rights” sounds like metaphysical gibberish…that
has no place in a reality that values experience more then anything else…

“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”

to suggest that all men only pursue “life, liberty and happiness”
simply flies in the face of certainly my experience and it flies
in the face of what we know, know that people pursue…

for some, for many in fact, experience has shown us that they fly
away from life, and millions are right now, as this very moment, dam
and determined to turn over our “liberty” to Putin and his lap dog,
IQ45… and happiness, what the fuck… we have had many, many
different ideals for which we pursued, Aristotle suggest that man pursues
knowledge, many have said including the Buddha, that we should pursue
a negation of desires which will lead us to enlightenment, which is a pursuit,
and some have said, the pursuit of god is the only valuable pursuit worth engaging
with, and some have said, hedonism and some have said, renounce life itself…

among these possibilities, which is conducive to our experience?

given our experiences, which of these possibilities are possibilities which
we want to explore?

and it depends upon our experiences that decides upon which
of these many possibilities we might engage with………

that there is no universal possibility based upon our experiences
cannot be denied… we don’t have universal experiences, we have
individual experiences, so what individual experiences can
we use to understand such universal understanding as
the pursuit of happiness when many people don’t engage
with the pursuit of happiness as their means of expression
of human values…….personally, I don’t engage with the
pursuit of happiness, I engage with the pursuit of wisdom,
but that is personal preference based upon my own
individual values and experiences……

so how do I make the leap from individual experiences to
universal values like “all men are created equal” or
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?

this becomes the question…

Kropotkin

2645

if we cannot, cannot believe that we can use our individual experiences
to be able to create a universal philosophy, then what method can we
use to create a universal philosophy such as created by Kant or Hegel
or Marx or even such mainstream philosophers such as Nietzsche or
Hume or Heidegger?

at best we can say, that their own individual philosophies arose
from their own experiences and that those personal experiences
from which they derived their philosophy from, isn’t our experiences
and we cannot, cannot reach out of our own experiences to accept
someone else experiences as being more valid then our experiences…

each person’s experiences are by definition, they own experiences
and I have nothing to compare their experiences with my own…
I didn’t live in the 1870’s like Nietzsche nor was I a son of a German
Pastor nor was I educated at the university of Bonn or Leipzig university…

and Nietzsche wasn’t a checker in a grocery store as I am, we have
vastly different experiences and thus we cannot, based upon experiences,
create a shared philosophy that will unite the two of us into some understanding…
again to be clear, based upon our experiences which are vastly different…
now we might share a philosophy but that isn’t based upon experiences…
for we share none…

so how do we, Nietzsche and I connect with a shared philosophy if we
don’t have a shared experiences?

we might oppose the same things, but that opposition isn’t based upon
experiences, it is based upon something outside of and beyond
experiences…

I use Nietzsche because at one time, I was a fervent believer in Nietzsche
and his philosophy… today, not so much…

but upon what do I now understand his philosophy if I can’t
use experience to make that connection/or understanding??

there might be a way…

think about it…

Kropotkin

2646

several days of work and I’m finally back……

when last seen, I was offering a challenge…

how is it possible for us to have a universal philosophy from
our distinct and separate and individual experiences…………

John Locke offered us one theory of experiences that the
mind is a blank slate, “Tabula rasa”, or what he literally said was,
“white paper” and experiences write themselves on this “white paper”,
on the mind………

and on the other hand we have those like Kant or Plato, who
in Plato was the theory of the eternal forms… we don’t create anything
new, we simply rediscover what the eternal forms are and we recreate them…
the circle is simply a rediscovery of the eternal form of the circle which
exists… somewhere…and Kant tried to escape from Locke and Hume,
by positing categories…we have within our minds, certain categories upon
which we can understand experiences… for example, in our mind, we have
the category of modality… which is possibility, existence… and we judge
experiences by these categories… which is basically a variation off of Plato…
but instead of the eternal forms, we have categories from which to understand
the universe…

this has been one of the basic, fundamental discussions within philosophy over
the last 2500 years… how do we understand experiences?
what is the relationship between experiences and philosophy?
or what is the relationship between experiences and history or
economics or sociology or mathematics?

Marx saw from the rise of the Industrial revolution the need for human
beings to obey the “laws” of dialectical materialism, which is communism…

or said another way, human beings have needs and those needs because
of the class system currently in place, cannot be met because
people who don’t own the means of production have no way/means to
achieve their needs… whereas those who own the means of production,
do have a way of meeting their needs… and the clash is between those
who have and those who don’t…

and from the exact rise of the Industrial revolution, Adam Smith saw
that human beings must obey the “laws” of the invisible hand of god…
which is capitalism

and Adam Smith created the myth that all that was needed to fulfill one’s needs
was to work hard, keep one’s nose to the grindstone and thus being able to
fulfill one’s needs…….a myth that perpetuated even today…… whereas
by experience, we can easily see that this myth has no reality in it…

so by these examples, we can see how we engage in our understanding
with experiences, use them going forward…

the root word of experience also is the root word of experiment…

and that is something that Nietzsche picked up on…life is an experiment,
life is experience… this, for Nietzsche was the exact same sentence…

so, now what?

Kropotkin

2647

Yes, that is well put. I merely expand upon this here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

There is the part of “I” that, demographically or otherwise, is awash in actual objective facts. Facts able to be demonstrated to others. And then there’s the part of “I” that reacts to what can be determined to be facts, in order to form considerably more subjective/subjunctive moral and political judgments.

Mary either can or cannot demonstrate to others that she is pregnant, who impregnated her and what the circumstances surrunding the pregnancy are. She can then demonstate that she wants to abort the pregnancy. She can tell us why.

But how can others reacting to these facts demonstrate in turn whether aborting the unborn baby/clump of cells is or is not moral?

At best they can point to the objective legal consequences of aborting a pregnancy in a particular jurisdiction.

And, in regard to two, the objective fact that there are things that we all need to live: access to food, water, clothing shelter, defense.

And this fact can become vital when the discussion shifts to, say, “natural rights” or the role of government in providing for the basic needs of all citizens.

Still, from my perspective, it is not what these men said or believe or claim to know. It is instead ever and always what they can demonstrate to others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

And not just in a general description intellectual contraptions but in regard to an an actual context in which value judgments are in conflict. Whether the issue is capitalism vs. socialism or abortion or immigration laws…or jaywalking, littering and public nudity.

Yes, that is basically what iambiguous says in turn. But, in the is/ought world, he now says it down in his “hole”; and by way of a “fractured and fragmented” “I”. He was once convinced that the liberals were right and the conservatives were wrong as a moral and political objectivist himself. Now he recognizes the extent to which his “I” here is an existential contraption embedded problematically in dasein. That he has no way of predicting whether new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas will or will not change his mind.

My argument here is that there may well be a frame of mind able to demonstrate that the Nazis were inherently/necessarily acting in an immoral manner. But “here and now” that makes sense to me only to the extent that an omniscient/omnipotent God does in fact exiist able to demonstrate it/resolve it Himself.

In the interim, “I” here remains but an existential contraption to me. There are facts able to be demonstrated about fascism. But our reaction to those facts is unable to establish universally how all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to react to it.

Anymore then there is a necessary frame of mind that all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace in regard to Trump.

Yet I am more then willing to concede that there is in fact such an argument. All I can do is to note that in fact “here and now” this argument has yet to be demonstrated to me.

Here my reaction is to suggest that the truly hardcore objectivists among have long since abandoned this as a “struggle”. Instead, in my view, in one or another rendition of this…

[i]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/i]

…they have opted for the psychological comfort and consolation that their own objectivist narrative now allows them. They can anchor “I” not in a certainty that they are to demonstrate to others regarding their values, but that they are in fact certain their own moral narrative and political agenda reflects the optimal or the only rational way in which to think about conflicting goods.

Unless of course I’m wrong. And I don’t mean that here in a facetious manner. I simply have no way in which to demonstrate myself that I am right.

Which is simply to note that I can’t exclude myself from my own argument.

2648

I am a big fan of jazz… I listen to a lot of jazz, (although of late,
I have been engaged with classical far more then Jazz)…
anyway, I don’t listen to recent jazz… I listen to Miles Davis basically,
and one of my favorite albums is “Kind of Blue”…and for many, many
people, this is the greatest Jazz album of all time…and the best selling
jazz album of all time… critics and many people believe that Davis is the
greatest Jazz musician of all time… but, not everyone agrees…
there are some who will list John Coltrane as the best jazz musician of
all time and that the best album is Coltrane’s “A love Supreme”……

and there are some who say its it Dave Brubeck and the best album is
“Time out” and the song, “Take five” as the best Jazz song ever…

now how are we to best judge which music is the best, really is the best jazz
music?

how do we quantify which Jazz musician or the best album or the best jazz song?

what criteria should we use to judge what Jazz music or musician is the best?

Now comes the interesting part, I say that jazz is the greatest type of music
ever created, and some might agree and some, many won’t agree…
and some will say, classical or rock or progressive rock or alternative rock
or country western… yuck…… is the best music ever created…

how do we choose?

because the act of listening to music is subjective… there simply isn’t
any way for us to quantify the best music, genre or album or song or
musician… so how do we make this judgement personally?

it isn’t done on the logical, rational level… music appeals to the
irrational, emotional side of us…… and we judge our music
on irrational, emotional aspects… if it moves us, it is great…
and if it doesn’t move us, it isn’t………

music appeals to that which is inside the soul… when I was young,
I listen to loud rock and roll… that no longer appeals to my soul…
I am an old man… and the music that appeals to me, that moves my soul
is softer, gentler, quieter music…….although I still listen to “the Who”
and other 70’s rock and I still listen to alternative music… but again, these
days, I mostly listen to new age music, classical and jazz music…

but that decision isn’t based upon logic or rationalism…
my decision is based purely upon irrationalism and emotion…

now, I would suggest that much of our decision making process
is done exactly the same way as we choose our music…

when I favor freedom over security/safety… I am making that decision based
upon what feels most comfortable to me, exactly like how I choose
my music upon… my decisions are done irrationally and emotionally…
freedom appeals to my soul much more then security/safety…

and I would suggest that is how people make such decisions…
that it becomes more then just need based, it comes from
what we feel is right, not by logic or rationalism…

people become democrats and cheer for the SF giants baseball team
and march the streets for Row vs wade… not because they are making
logical, rational choices, but because those causes are causes people
desire by irrationalism and emotionalism…

when I fight IQ45… it isn’t done by being rational or logical…
I fight IQ45 because I am against him, emotionally, irrationally…

and people who fight for the village idiot also fight because they
are making their decisions based upon emotions and irrationalism…

now we cannot, cannot escape us making many such decisions
emotionally or irrationally… we are human beings and we
make decisions emotionally and irrationally… that is the
instinctual, evolutionary aspect of being human…

we still operate in decision making with instincts and
emotions developed over the last million years…

but as I have noted before, as the society become more complex
and developed… we can no longer be so dependent upon our
instincts, our emotions to sway us into making our decisions for us…

at what point does the switch need to be make where we begin to
make our decision from irrationally to rationally, from instinct/emotionally
to logical?

I say with the fate of the planet earth hanging in the balance,
perhaps now would be a good time to make our decisions logically,
rationally………

instead of basing our decisions upon our own personal needs and desires,
we begin to base our decision upon what is best for the continued survival
of the earth and the continued survival of the species called human beings…

that we are dependent upon the other living creature that also exists
on planet earth cannot be denied, so we must also take into account
the continued existence of animals/plants/ tree’s… if we are to continue
our own existence…….

we think of existence in terms of the future, not in terms of the past or present…

we make decisions based upon how it effects the future, not how it affects
the present or the past…we can no longer afford to think like conservatives
and think solely of the past or the present……

it is taking into account the future that will allow us to make less irrational
or emotional decisions…

a good rule of the thumb is “we leave the earth in better shape then we found it”

and of course, the question arises, what is better?

better is simply, we leave more possibilities and opportunities to our children
and grandchildren… we leave them with more choices and possibilities then we had…

so if we no longer drive animals or habitats into extinction, that allows our children
greater possibilities, greater opportunities… when we use up resources or
cause the extinction of animals, we reduce choices/possibilities…
if you can’t use something because it is gone, it no longer becomes
a possibility… if I run out of gas in my car, I have lost the opportunity
to go somewhere… I must refill my car with gas before I
can create new possibilities/opportunities…….

the greater the choices, the greater the possibilities…

and to become human, fully human we must understand
how important choices and possibilities are for human beings…

so we no longer drive for the pursuit of happiness or of material
possessions or of greed or lust or anger or hate… those
drives, those passion, those desires don’t improve
the choices or possibilities we human have…

what is the role of human beings?

to engage with our choices and possibilities……
and that is the pursuit we must follow…

not knowledge or wealth or titles or happiness or renunciation of desires…
or even achieving desires…

no, it is the creation of choices and possibilities that become
what it means to be human…………

Kropotkin

2649

let us put this idea of choices and possibilities into some
historical context because to really understand something
it needs to be put into some context…….

during the middle ages, medieval times,
the choices, the possibilities for people were
rather limited…

some have said this that there were three classes of people
in the middle ages…

those who prayed
those who worked
and those who fought…

these were really the only possibilities for someone in the middle ages…
and the vast majority of people were in the “those who worked” category…
the vast majority of human beings since around 10,000 BC have worked
in farming, agriculture…in 2008, the UN predicted that half the world’s
population would live in urban areas, not rural agricultural area’s……

thus from roughly 10,0000 to 2008, the world lived mostly
in rural agricultural area’s farming or having something to do
with farming…those who worked…

and farming is farming and has been farming for over 10,000 years…
in farming, you have an engagement with the land, with the weather
with the seasons and the sun… there is a time to plant and a time
to water and a time to harvest…… as a urban person, I find
rain to be a pest, a nuisance, a annoyance, a problem to my day to day
existence……whereas to a farmer, rain is a vital and essential aspect
of farming… without rain, you don’t have crops… it is that simple…

although the technology of farming has increased since 10,000 years ago,
the principles are still the same… a farmer from 10,000 years ago would
understand what a farmer does today……

this continuity of working, of being in a system that has gone on
for 10,000 years, means we had a system of engagement from
the farmers from past to present…farming is farming is farming…
regardless of the technology being used……

and the vast number of human beings engaged in farming, was pretty much
for centuries, was over 90% of all human beings alive… if you lived,
you basically farmed… and that is continuity that cannot be underestimated…

the other two branches of the middle ages were those who prayed and
those who fought… and they were a small fraction of the population during
any given time…while millions lived on the land farming, hundreds of thousands
lived in the cities or prayed or fought…….

think of the possibilities today… the majority of Americans don’t farm,
they live in urban area’s…people don’t have just three possibilities for them…
to work the land isn’t much of a possibility any more and the number who pray
is small and growing smaller… and given we have a population of over 330 million
people, the number who are soldiers are less then 2 million people including
reserve forces…so less then one percent of our population is those who fight…
and if we include the number of policemen in our country, the number increase
to another 120,000… that is still less then one percent of our entire population…

the single largest number of people working today is in the service industry or
retail……

in other words, we have far greater possibilities then the average person
did in the middle ages… and we have choices unimagined by the average
person in the middle ages…

the average person in the middle ages had only one book available to them
and they couldn’t even read it, the bible… personally, I own over
5000 books and I have read the majority of them…my own reading possibilities
of the number of books I can read is so much larger then what was possible during
the middle ages… the number of books that say, Thomas Jefferson owned was
roughly between 9 and 10 thousand books, in his entire lifetime…
that is the increase of possibilities that I am referring to…
the number of books published each year is roughly around 2.2 million
books…….that is a lot of possibilities…the number of books the U.S
publishes is over 300,000 a year… I suspect that number will increase
over the years…with each book is another choice, another possibility…

think about what all this means…

Kropotkin

2650

so, what does all this mean?

well, the beginning of the exodus from rural, agriculture area’s, from
farming, began with the Industrial revolution or perhaps the French
revolution… they were happening at the same time…the beginning
of the modern age is when the west began to go from rural, agriculture
to the urban modern world……

and what else happened? why the increase in the atomization of human
beings and the increase in alienation of human beings and the disconnect
we have from society and each other and ourselves………

we can draw a straight map that leads from the alienation of
human beings from the reduction of rural/agriculture aspect of our lives…

we lost the continuity of human existence with the rise of the modern,
industrial world…… where we have little or no contact with what
farmers had for 10,000 years with the land and the seasons and weather
and the sun………we lost that…….

hence the rise of our disconnected lives… can we return the genie into
the bottle?.. no, no we cannot……

as profound as the change was from the hunter/gatherer mode of
existence, comes the next phase of human existence… from
the agricultural existence we have had for 10,000 years to our modern existence,
comes the next phase of existence……. the change from agriculture to?

and this is the question that we must engage with…

we have had our first phase of existence, hunter/gatherer to the second phase,
rural agriculture to the third phase of… of whatever we are working toward
now………

and that is the problem…we aren’t engaged with the next phase of our existence…
we are simply walking blindly into the future, hoping that it will all work out…

we must be actively engage with the next phase of human existence,
whatever it will be……whatever we desire it to be……

existence is about making choices and finding our possibilities…

so what our are choices, possibilities going into the future?

and which one shall we choose?

it is not a single, individual choice, it is a collective
and communal decision that we must make about our collective future…

it is no longer about “what am I to do” but “what are we to do”
and it is no longer about, “what should I believe in” but the question
becomes, “what should we believe in” and the question is no longer
about “what values should I hold” but the question must change into
“what values should we hold to”…….

that is the next step… to engage collectively, not just individually…

Kropotkin

2651

now given everything I just wrote…
let us return to this question of experience……

how are we to understand experience given what I just wrote?

each of us experience reality differently because we experience
differently… we have far different experiences because
we have far greater possibilities today…and those possibilities
are what create our modern ambiguities today…….

as a white, male born in 1959 in Minnesota in an
upper class family… my experiences were defined by the who, what,
when, where, how and why of my birth and life…

so my reality is my experiences… and your reality is your experiences…
which is different then my reality…so how are we able to create
a shared reality given the differences in our experiences?

by agreeing to a common future… a future where we both
agree that we should try to engage in and seek out…

it is not the past or present that creates our commonality, but
an agreement to a shared future…I believe in inclusion of
human beings into a shared future… whereas others believe in
exclusion in a single and unshared future…….

but we are existing in a shared reality…

by that I mean, we are not separated by
existing alone, apart from each other…

we have a common future because I cannot
exist without you and you cannot exist without me……

the political and economic and social existence includes
you and includes me… we do not exist separately…
we are dependent upon each other because of the
modern world dependent upon our shared work that allows
the modern world to function…at my work,
in the grocery store, I deal with food that is brought in
from Asia and South America… think of the number of people
it takes to bring in cherries from South America, from Chile specifically…

if the chain collapses somewhere along the line, we do not and cannot
get cherries from Chile… for the system to function, must have every
aspect functioning…that is not opinion but fact… if an airline strike
occurs, the ramifications goes beyond just people being unable to move
about, but food and goods can no longer travel around the world……

the system is very complex and we know from personal experience
that the more complex a system is, the greater the possibility
of a system failure… the greater the complexity, the greater the
possibility of failure… that is the nature of systems……

for a system to operate, to maintain itself, the system requires more and more
energy to maintain itself…not to grow but to simply hold serve requires
an ever greater increase in energy… that too is the nature of systems…

our understanding of experience means we understand that we
are fully involved in a wide variety of systems… we must understand
human existence, both personal and collectively, as being part
of widely different sizes of systems… we can no longer
think ourselves as being alone, apart from, isolated from
systems……

we must begin to make our choices and think about our possibilities
within an engagement with the various systems we are part of ……

every choice I make must be in regard to the system I am part of…

as a father and husband, every single choice I make, must be in regards
to the system I belong to, which is the family system…

the next phase of human existence is about our choices
and possibilities of being within a multiple number of systems…

and as the number of human beings increase, so does the number
of systems increase and the number of people within any given
system increases…….that is a fact of existence……

these are realities that we share and must come to terms with together…

this is another point of our shared existence…… the experience
of being in the shared reality of the many systems we both exist within…

we might not have been born with the same experiences but we do share what
it means to be in the American system and we share a connection being in
the capitalist system and we share being in the same existence of the modern
media and the share existence of our modern society…we might interpret
it differently, but we still share it…

this shared existence within the many systems might help us create
a shared philosophy out of our different experiences……

I have a crappy job and if you do to, we share something in common,
that is an experience we share together…and we can create a
common philosophy due to our sharing a common experience…

it is by our sharing our experiences within the many shared
systems that we can build a shared philosophy…

from the different experiences, we can create a shared
philosophy if we acknowledge that we have the systems in common…

Kropotkin

2652

if we agree to a shared possibility or choice, we
have created a share philosophy……

from individual experiences to a shared agreement…
to a shared possibility…

that is how we go from our own individual experiences to
a shared philosophy…

Kropotkin

2653

ok, so let better understand what it means to
accept or share a common goal or philosophy……

we have a baseball team, we have 25 people with a
wide and varying individual and separate backgrounds or
different experiences…….this team of variously
different people with a various experiences…

what can create a common philosophy or goal?

let us understand that by agreeing to a common goal or
philosophy, that is to win a championship…is to overcome
their individual and separate experiences…

they don’t unite over their widely diverse and separate
backgrounds or experiences, they unite over a goal to
be achieved, a common united theme/philosophy of
achieving a championship…

this overcoming diverse and different backgrounds and experiences
can be achieved by agreeing to a common goal or philosophy…

so if you and I agree to focus upon peace as a goal or philosophy,
we overcome our different backgrounds and different experiences…

if we agree that freedom is the goal to achieve, then we overcome
our diverse and different background and experiences to unite over
a common goal or philosophy……

this is the means by which we overcome our different and diverse
backgrounds and experiences…

Kropotkin

2654

in reading book, I came across this quote from John Dewey:

“The problem of restoring integration and cooperation
between man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives and his
beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his
conduct is the deepest problem of modern life”

another quote from Dewey, same book:

not a important concern…“a theory of values, but a theory of
criticism, a method of discriminating among goods on the basis of their
appearance and of their consequences”

and with this last thought, I am sure that IAM would agree with this…

BTW: the book where I got the quotes is: “Philosophy and the modern world”
by Albert William Levi…the chapter on John Dewey…

Ok, the first quote about the integration and cooperation between
man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives AND the beliefs and the
values and purposes that should direct his life

so for me, it looks like Dewey is saying we have two distinct and
different beliefs and we need to integrate them…we have first of all,
man’s beliefs about the world and the second part is his beliefs
about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct in his life……

so I have beliefs about the world in which I live in…

secondly, I have beliefs about the values and purposes that should
direct my conduct in my life……………

I have stared at these two questions for about 20 minutes and still I
have no real answer, an answer as to if Dewey is right or if the two are
already integrated?

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Kropotkin

2655

Bro. Dewey was the first philosopher I ever heard of. Back in elementary school we were taught how to use the Dewey decimal system in the library. Rememba that? So I always thought it was ‘dooey’ or something… just part of the decimal name or whatever. One day I was like ‘what’s a dooey’, and Mrs. Carter said ‘it’s ‘dewey’, and he was a philosopher.’ and there you have it; the first philosopher discovered by little promethean. An American pragmatist, no less.

Sigh

2656

Wait wtf. That’s not the same Dewey. It was some dude named melvil Dewey. Jesus Christ Mrs.Carter. and she was even a social studies teacher.

2657

K: I feel for you Pro75… I too have been lead to some “fact” that I took
as gospel and felt…betrayed… when I discovered the truth…

but let us think about this… does the “fact” that it was Melvil and not John
really changed anything… you have lived since grade school thinking it was
John Dewey who created the Dewey decimal system… and once you
discovered the “truth”… what changed? a fact like this isn’t the path to
any sort of wisdom that is needed for us to make judgements upon…
it is simply a fact… and the fact changed and it meant nothing…

we are hung up on facts/knowledge… but at end of the day, do these
facts really mean anything? is your life really complete, now that you know
it was Melvil and not John Dewey who created the decimal system?

I can’t think of any way that the changing of facts, from Mevil to John
can make any difference in your life… and this is the point…
to hold onto facts as some possible guide to what it means to be human
is not much different then the fact it was Mevil and not John Dewey…

and the fact that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun means what
exactly?..it is a changeable fact which doesn’t get us anywhere…
we don’t actually circle the sun at 93 million miles because the earth’s orbit
is an elliptical orbit, not a direct circle… thus we average 92.96 million miles
from the sun and the important word is average… sometime we are closer and
sometimes we are further away…… now tell me this? how does any of this “knowledge”
benefit you in becoming a “better” person or a “wiser” person or how does this
knowledge help you in your quest to understand your place as an individual
in a complex systems that we all live in? what does the knowledge that the earth has
an elliptical orbit tell us about how we stand in relationship as individuals to
society?

we go to school and learn all kinds of “facts” but we don’t learn anything
about what it means to be an individual within a society or what it means to be
an individual and what is the individual’s relationship to society?

the really important questions of existence aren’t answered in school
nor are these important questions even pointed out as being questions or problems…

How does knowing it was Mevil dewey help you to discover your relationship
to society?

I don’t see it and I am guessing you don’t either…

Kropotkin

2658

Politicians like to say they have solutions to the problems of today…
Bernie talks about his promise to end burden of debt on collage students…

ok, let us take him at his word… he is a politician and we should never
take politicians at their word… but let us take him at his word…

let us take Bob… Bob graduated 5 years ago from a university and
has massive collage debt…how do we help Bob?

first of all, we must decide if it is even a problem that Bob has such
a massive debt…for his debt helps keep the credit cards and mortgage
companies in business… to remove his debt means to deprive them of
business and thus they will lose jobs… and we must at all cost maintain
the number of jobs… for that is a fact that we keep on thinking is somehow
important… is it?

but let us think about this in a different way…… we have one person in
financial debt from collage…one individual, hell we can do a million
things to take care of Bob’s debt if we are talking about one person…
Bob…but a problem, any problem grows in complexity with every person
we add to the problem…so, instead of just Bob being in debt, we have
a hundred people in debt in school loans… that number of 100 changes the
equation of what we can do to solve a problem… let us now say that the number
of people that are suffering from school loans are in the millions… the very number
of people in an equation changes the equation…

what we can do for just one person, Bob, we cannot do for a hundred
or a million people…so when some politician says, let us end poverty…
the solution becomes dramatically different with the sheer number of people
who live in poverty who are part of the “problem”.

we can solve Bob school debt problem with one person simply giving
Bob the money to end his debt… or giving him a better paying job,
or to reduce the amount of debt… when the number of people in the problem
is small, the amount of work to create a solution is fairly small…….

but when the number of people involved in the problem is large,
the solution involves more and more and more people until it
involves the entire society… to solve poverty in America will require
the input or the work of the entire society…… to solve poverty
will require the entire society to act if we are to end poverty…

it requires the will and consent of the entire society/population
if we are to solve such major issues as poverty……

and how do we gather such consent?

the only solution is to reevaluate what it means to be as society…
as a society is our goal the capitalistic vision of seeking out
money and property and material goods as we can gather?

is the goal of capitalism really the goal of a society at large?

don’t think of capitalism as a private, individual device,
think of capitalism as an entire societal effort to
achieve some goal…

is the pursuit of wealth and material goods really what a society/state
should be attempting to achieve? if you have read me at all, you already know
my answer…does the fact that America have the highest GDP in the world, a fact,
really all that important?

does this high GDP mean that we are the “best” society in the world?
do we have honest, just, good citizens because we have we have
the highest GDP?

in fact, an argument can be made that by holding to the GDP as
an goal, we actually lower ourselves from being fully human to being
animal/human… we reach down when we make the GDP as a societal
goal instead of trying to make our society just or freer or have more liberty…

the goal we attempt to achieve as a society also tells us what kind
of society we have… if we have a “every man for himself”
society, what does that say about us?

let us take as an example… the Christian society… we hold ourselves
to be Christian so we attempt to create a Christian society…
so, we don’t hold to the GDP as being the objective of society…
we hold to meeting the goals that god has set before us…
we must not break the ten commandments…

thou shall not lie,
thou shall not steal,
thou shall not kill…

let us imagine a society where we keep to the Christian goals…
we no longer hold to the goals of capitalism
which is the pursuit of wealth and material goods…

in other words, we can change the goals and what we are to
pursue by our choices of what our goals is suppose to be…

we don’t have to commit to a society where we attempt to
the goals of capitalism… we can commit to the goals of
achieving a Christian society in which we would make
the end of poverty as a Christian goal…

as we are now a Christian society, we hold to Christian ideals
and beliefs and so in light of these goals and ideals, we change
the point and purpose of society from the pursuit of wealth/material goods
to the pursuit of the Christian goals… which is to find favor in gods eyes…

we can change the very nature of our society by our accepting or rejecting
basic goals… what goals we decide to purse changes the nature and our
understanding of our position and place within a society……

we can just as easily decide to pursue Christian values as we can
decide to pursue capitalistic values or we can change our values to
other values like the pursuit of justice or the pursuit of freedom……

for some reason, we think we are lock into some goals/values that
we cannot for any reason change or remove… we can change our values,
we can change our reasons/purpose to meet whatever challenges or
problems or issues we like to meet…

it isn’t a question of if we can change, it becomes an issue of, do we have
the will to change?

what kind of society do you want to see? which really means, what kind of
values or goals do you want society to pursue or achieve?

and we don’t have to think of society in terms of it being capitalistic
or Christian? we can think of society in terms of achieving other goals like
ending poverty or being just or trying to achieve freedom… which really means
for people to be able to freely choose their religion or their political construct or
for people to freely pursue knowledge or happiness or the renouncing their worldly
desires as the Buddha suggests to achieve enlightenment…

freedom to become who we are… without the society forcing us to
accept the capitalism and the pursuit of wealth as the ONLY possible
choice for us…in other words, we should be free to pursue that which is important
to us… which then suggest that we do give people some basic monetary living
expenses or a basic wage to survive even if they don’t work… this means we would
reduce the national GDP but that comes from a choice we make and not because
of changes we are forced to make……

the basic point is this… we can choose what our role in society is
and we can choose our relationship to society if we decide to make that
decision…… it is about the choices we make… society isn’t set in stone
and unable to change under any circumstances…no, society can and must
change under the influences of our choices we make as individuals…

what kind of society do you want?

decide and then work to make that happen…

it is as simple as that……

Kropotkin

2659

That we come into the world inherently, biologically equipped to feel and to express emotions is an objective fact of evolution. It seems clearly rational rather than irrational to point that out.

But the objective fact that some feel and express particular emotions about the Giants or abortion or Trump, while others feel and express conflicting emotions, is still seen by me to be a manifestation of “I” as an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein.

In other words, if you do in fact root for the Giants, embrace the right to choose an abortion and condemn the Trump administration, that is no more necessarily rational than those who root for the Yankees, embrace the right of the unborn to be brought into the world, and support the Trump administration.

From my frame of mind, using the tools of philosophy, there does not appear to be a way to determine if value judgments of this sort are either rational or irrational. Thus there does not appear to be a way to determine how one ought to either think or feel about conflicting goods of this nature.

Instead, the actual lived lives of particular men and women predispose them existentially to choose where they come down on the baseball and the moral and the political spectrum.

2660

one might even be able to reduce my philosophy to
the choices we make, as individuals and as a collective…

what choices should we make in light of what values we believe in…

if I hold to freedom as the primary values of myself individually and
as a society, then I having to make all my decisions in light of
my choice of freedom as being my value… every decision is
made with the idea of freedom being behind it…….

should we ban porn? that depends upon the choices we make
as individuals and as a society as to what will help us achieve our goals…

if, if we make freedom as our goal to be achieved, then we cannot
ban porn… because it restricts freedom… if we are going to make
a Christian society, then we might, might consider banning porn…

that is what I mean by the goals to be reached, must be reached
by the values we individually and collectively decide upon…

now one might argue that our society is too fracture, so atomized
as to not be able to collectively ever to decide upon a course of action…
as this point we are barely able to get 50% of people to decide upon a
course of action, little less a society to decide upon a course of action…

but I would point out that because it doesn’t seem possible that it means
we don’t attempt something……. I personally, like fighting impossible odds
and causes… I would rather fail battling the universe then succeed battling
some small cause like getting to work on time…….

if, if I had two hero’s, it would be Daedalus and Icarus…
to fail by trying to fly too high… I don’t see that as failure at all…
and after Icarus fell into the sea, Daedalus didn’t give up… he flew on
to Sicily and began the next phase of his life………

it is not enough to just be able to achieve some basic small goals…
we must dream big to achieve our possibilities…….an exploration of
what is possible for human beings will see some failure and that is ok…

it is ok to fail… what are truly important values to you?

it isn’t enough to dream about achieving such values…
we must attempt to achieve those values regardless
if we achieve or fail at reaching those goals or values…

success or failure is less important then our trying to reach the goal
of us achieving our values…

it is not enough to say, I believe in justice… one must
become and act upon justice at all times…every action taken
or not taken, comes from having the value of justice as your guiding
value… if you act, you act upon the value of justice as your guiding principle…

how must I act in this situation? in every situation, with justice in mind…
so, we treat people with justice, and justice means equally,
and so every action is taken by treating people equally…

that is what I mean by acting upon your values…take that value
and judge every single word and action you take and base it upon that value…

and make that judgement be your guiding light even if it is against
the values/goals of your society/state…take your values and judge
the society/state against your values……

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN…

Kropotkin