a new understanding of today, time and space.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
2701

so let us think about the law and morality that we have
seen over the course of human history…
for example, Greek law is different then Roman law
which is different then ancient Chinese law…
and Greek Morality is different then Roman morality
which is different then Chinese morality……
but why?

we can’t we have law or morality which is uniform
and appropriate to each and every civilization?

because each civilization’s laws and morality is based upon
a different set of assumptions and because each civilization assumption
is different, we have vastly different laws and morality…

thus we cannot, at this point, have a uniform across the board law
and morality because each civilization/country has a different set of assumptions…

but could we have a set of uniform and set series of laws and “morality” if
we remove our assumptions?

possibly? but how do we achieve such a goal?

might I suggest here is where we use rationality and logic…
but even rationality and logic is still based upon a set of assumptions…

but what about certain aspects of our basic understanding of such
“ideals” such as socialism and capitalism and democracy and taxes
and the “welfare state”?

yep, each idea is based upon some sort of set assumptions…
such as the “welfare state”… we make certain assumptions
and then we follow it out in laws that either increase or limit the
“welfare state”…

how are we to know what is right?

perhaps by some agreement with what is the goal, purpose
of society/civil society… what is the point of having a society/state?

your answer will tell us your set of assumptions about what it means to
be a human being……

so what is the point, the purpose of the human existence?

we have so many and wildly different answers because, perhaps,
we operate on so many wildly and different assumptions…

we certainly have a “sticky” wicket here…

Kropotkin

2702

and what does any of this have to do with the price of tea in China?

everything………. look about our current society…we are a polarized
society, very, very polarized… and why?

because we are operating under a different set of assumptions…

the “blue” states have one set of assumptions
and the “red” states have another set of assumptions…

and what is the solution?

starting over with our assumptions…

begin with the assumptions that each side begins with…

do you believe that people are inherently “good” or do
you believe that people are inherently “evil”?

that question alone should clear some of the grounds of
polarization that exists between the two sides…

“do you hold these truths to be “self-evident”, 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”

within that paragraph lies several different assumptions…
that the point of life is life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness?

I for one, would disagree with the idea that the point of life
is the pursuit of happiness……

and the divide between “blue” states and “red” states can be said
to divide upon the very lines written in the declaration…

that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the point of, the purpose
of our existence…the liberals, who for the most part live in “blue” states
might make the pursuit of justice as important, if not the most important aspect
of life whereas the conservative might say, it is safety/security to be the most
important aspect, the point of, the purpose of life…

to say, we can agree to disagree is to avoid this basic and fundamental
set of assumptions that divide our country into “blue” and “red” states…

for the good of the country, we must and soon, agree to a certain set of assumptions or
we risk going to civil war…….and then the winners will impose their set of assumptions
on the losers……. I would rather we collectively agree upon a set of assumptions,
but we don’t always get what we want…

the divide in this country is one of which assumptions are we going to abide
by? the fundamental question of our time is simple,
which set of assumptions are we going to work with and abide by?

Kropotkin

2703

let us approach this a little deeper…

let us take our assumptions and look at them…

for example, conservatives, generally, believe in god
and they believe in hierarchy…and they don’t believe
in equality……

let us take conservative press as the conservative belief system…

for example, we know that conservatives are against the equal rights for
women and gays and other “oppressed” people…but why?

why not equality for everyone? the usual argument lies around the fact/assumption
that everyone is already equal? but we know that not to be true…….
for if everyone was equal, then we would have women who were paid equally
as men…and that isn’t true… but then conservatives would argue that
for “some reason” that women don’t need to be or shouldn’t be paid equally
as men… that is an assumption…liberals argue that women should be
paid equal as men…again an assumption… but what is the value of one
over the other? we have the argument that women should be denied, negated
for reasons… by conservatives and we have an argument that women should
be treated equal with men…

the liberal argument is not a negative one…the conservative argument…
which is based upon denial, negation of women…that they don’t deserve
to be treated equally…is a negative argument… it is based upon a negative
assumption…

conservatives base their argument upon the existence of god and yet,
they cannot show us the existence of god… their argument although based
on a “positive” argument, the existence of god, cannot be defended…
because it isn’t true……… their is no proof of the existence of god as their
is no proof of the inequality of human beings that is presupposed in the conservative
argument… for example, many conservatives rail against Jews, the “elites”,
the “deep state” without any proof or examples of such inequality of such idea’s…
for example the “Jews”… conservatives rail against the Jews as being “somehow”
negative against society or the conservatives interest… but they never have
the “proof” that their examples actually exists…that the “Jews”
hold or dominate the world’s economy… show us how that is true?
and the conservative will launch into right wing conspiracy theories
until the cows come home and at no point will they actually reach a
fact that can be proven……… it is all about emotions and feelings…

my daughter is a conspiracy nut… she believes in the chemtrails
and the right wing conspiracies that dominate their lives…
she believe in alex Jones and other foolish souls…
why? because she believes that she is above the others sheep, like me,
and she has “researched” it… but she hasn’t researched anything…
she has simply look at things that reinforce her already held beliefs…
like a good conservative she is…she won’t reach out beyond those
conspiracy beliefs to examine other types of research because of
her already held conspiracy theories which says, anything from the government
is already compromised and therefore untrue… she truly believe this
and this is why she can’t move past any set held of assumptions…
she cannot challenge her assumptions because to do so would mean
she would have to challenge beliefs by which she identifies herself…

her beliefs and her identity are one and the same…….that is conservative
thinking…the traditional charge against liberals has been we don’t

hold to principles, that we are simply picking up views that are current
at the moment…which puts us against conservatives who hold values
and principles to the death…the conservative holds to values that
are traditional because if they have held over time, they are values
worth holding…that is an emotional response…

liberals have been accused of holding rational views over
irrational views like the believe in god or the inequality of human beings……

but the liberal argument is that the changes in environment makes
changes in one’s viewpoint, in one’s principles, a must… we must
change with the times, says the liberal…nonsense, says the conservative…

again, a different set of assumptions…….

but we can use being rational as a guide to suggest to us that
we must change our principles, our viewpoints if we are to continue into
the future…

we cannot deny that changes in the environment requires, demands
that we change how we operate… if we must change to met changing times,
then we should change to meet changing times…says the liberal…

no, no, says the conservative… we must stick to our principles with values
that carried our fathers and their fathers through difficult times…

but if the times demand we change, for example, with climate change,
then we must change or we are faced with the possibility of severe
trouble in the future……

but one might say, Kropotkin, seriously, you haven’t said anything at all…

just clichés and crap……… it all depends upon your set of assumptions,
now doesn’t it…

Kropotkin

2704

but what if, what if one of my assumptions if shown to be wrong…
that is the basic difference between liberals and conservatives…

where I am wrong and it doesn’t damage or change my understanding of
who I am… if a conservative is wrong, it damages and undermines
their understanding of who they are… their beliefs are tied up
into their understanding of who they are… my beliefs are not…

if I am wrong, so be it… it doesn’t change my understanding
of who I am……… that is the basic difference between a liberal
and a conservative…my beliefs system doesn’t define who I am…
whereas a conservative belief system does define who they are……

look at how hard conservatives will go to defend their basic assumptions
of life… look at how hard IQ45 will go to defend his basic position…
he lies as often as he breathes and why? because his understanding
of who he is, is defined by what he believes in…he cannot separate
the two… if I am proven wrong, it isn’t the tragedy in life that it is
for a conservative……. the field I play on may change, but it doesn’t
affect me whereas for the conservative, the field of play changes how
they feel about themselves…

now one may say, Kropotkin, you are wrong… perhaps…
but it is my set of assumptions that is wrong, I am not my set of
assumptions…… I am separate, apart, different from my set of assumptions…

I am a human being… with a set of assumptions…

the idea that I am a human being doesn’t change with a different
set of assumptions…the way I might play the game might change with
a different set of assumptions, but I still begin in the same place…

I am human…with needs and wants and desires……. that won’t change
regardless of the assumptions I may make about the needs, wants, desires I have…

it won’t rock my world if my assumptions are wrong…
but it will rock the conservatives world…

Kropotkin

2705

a paper you might like pete: pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ag … atism.html

2706

K: very interesting, thank you for that piece…

Kropotkin

2707

what I am about to write will be three and distinct topics, but
ask yourself if they are three distinct and separate topics?

ask yourself, what is my relationship with these “three distinct”
and different topics……

ask yourself, what do I know or think about these three topics?

engage with yourself about these three topics and see if you can
discover what they “mean” to you…

PAST

PAST: 1: gone by or elapsed in time… 2. of, having existed in or having
occurred during a time previous to the present… bygone…
3. gone by, just before the present time, just passed…

things, events, people, institutions all exist in time, and they
exist within the past… they have existed but sometimes, no longer exists…
the Roman senate at one time existed, but no longer exists… Martin Luther at one
time existed but he no longer exists, the America civil war once existed but it
no longer exists… stone age houses once existed but no longer exists…
we have examples of things, events, people and institutions that once
existed but no longer exists… this list by no means can be exhausted
in our description of no longer existing things, events, people or institutions…

How could we think of the past? we might use an analogy of the moving
sidewalk we see in airports…the moving sidewalk takes us from one part
of an airport to another side… let us think of the moving sidewalk as
going from past to present to future…at one point in time, I was born…
I was placed on the moving sidewalk…at the time of my moving onto
the moving sidewalk, it was, for me, the present…I was born in time…
at a particular place and time, to a particular family with a father and mother
and sister…later in time, that family would dramatically change… it would
no longer have a father but it would gain additional members… in several births
after me…in time, I would have 3 sisters and one brother… but all that is in the
“future” for me…when I was born, I was born into a particular situation…onto
a moving sidewalk as it were…going from past to present to future…
the “present” I was born into had certain people, things, events, institutions
that existed at that particular place and time…but I was just born…
I had no knowledge of those people, events, time, things, institutions…
I was on the moving sidewalk with everyone else but because of the time
of my particular birth, I had no knowledge of past, present or future…

I had no say or voice in the events, people, things or institutions of that time
and place… things just happened… I had no knowledge of the who, what, when,
where, why or how of anything…I didn’t even know I was on a moving sidewalk we
call time…movement/distance is time… a basic point of Einstein…
as we move, we travel not only distance, but in time…but as I now know,
if everyone is moving at the same speed, then it looks like we are not moving
or we are moving at one constant speed which means standing still…
but that is not true……

as we “grow” up, we change and the world around us changes…
distance equals time…but sometimes it looks like there is change…
for example, during World War 2… some people didn’t change in any,
way, shape or form…their lives remained the exact same from before the war,
during the war and after the war… but millions of people were impacted
directly by World war 2…but I wasn’t born yet, and yet because of my mother
direct impact by World War 2, I was indirectly impacted… I was born 14 years
after World War 2… December 7 was a day to remember during my youth…
it was felt by everyone because it was a day that occurred 18 years earlier…
millions of people who were alive in 1959 were adults and they had lived through
the events of Pearl Harbor…my mom was a child in 1941… and she distinctly remembers
that day…

the movement of us as individuals, and the movement of us
collectively, as members of the state/society/culture does not
coincide… events that occur like Pearl harbor may or may not impact
me individually… me specifically because I did not exist during Pearl Harbor,
it was past for me…and the society/state/the culture that did exist during
the event of Pearl Harbor…the society/state/culture and me, we
travel at different speeds… just as we individually move at different
speeds, we collectively move at different speeds and recall, speed/distance
is time… we cannot separate out speed/distance and time…

we can think of this difference in speed between the individual and
the society/state/culture as being the idea of alienation, of disconnect,
of discontentment between the individual and society/state/culture…

so if we travel at different speeds due to our current situation, then
we experience time and events and people differently…
I experience events and people and situations differently then
you do because we are at different points in our life, we are traveling
at different speeds… I am old and old people just don’t travel/move that
fast…whereas the young, they move and travel very fast or not, they have
a possibility that I do not have… I cannot choose to travel very fast anymore…
I just can’t do that… at one time, I could run a mile in 5 minutes… past…
but in the present, it is no longer possible… I don’t even think I could run
a mile anymore and if I could, it certainly wouldn’t be 5 minutes, maybe
20 minutes at best…if I’m lucky…so time passes differently for each of us…
depending upon our age… which is a measurement of time… which is another
word for distance… I have travel a certain amount of distance to get
to my age…so I cannot travel as fast as the young people… my distance
has slowed me down and as I age/distance, I shall become ever slower…
until one day, I shall stop moving… my time will end and I shall be no more…

Present …

Kropotkin

2708

“very interesting, thank you for that piece…”

nods

and you notice he more or less called Marx obsolete? This is evidence that the signature ideas here do not belong to anyone… that they did not begin with Marx nor will they end with Marx. The concept of democracy leads necessaily to socialist models of material economy, and there are countless ways to arrive at this conclusion. Why Marx gets the award is because of those who saw it coming, he was the one to lay it all out in philosophical and scientific terms. Most thoroughly, anyway.

Now if you’re interested in a different way of seeing philosophy… more specifically the role it has played in stalling this inevitable conclusion and/or its development (this began as early as Mesopotamia and Egypt… but really took hold in ancient Greece), check out the work of Rosa Lichtenstein; a wittgensteinian approach to philosophy with a focus on its ruling class origins. If not, just take the red pill and you won’t ever know what happened.

2709

once again, not ignoring you… just other fish to fry,
namely our inquiry into

Present.

Present: 1. in a particular place. existing or occurring in a place or thing.
fully focused on or involved on what one is doing or experiencing…

  1. existing or occurring now… now being considered or discussed…

the right here and the right now… I am 60 years old, right here and right now…
you may be 20 or 30 or 40… As each of us came into that moving walkway we call
history, we came at different times and at different places… all in the past…

we have different experiences due to our being within different times
and places… and we experience differently due to differences in our senses
and our education…

I am not a child of 9/11. I was an adult, a middle age adult of 42… with a long
history before 9/11 which means I have a different experience of 9/11 then
those of you who are younger…

yet, at the same time, 9/11 could be considered past, present and future…
depending on how we view 9/11 it could be past, present or future…

I can by imagination, think about 9/11 from before 9/11… I can think of 9/11
as future, before it occurred…I can think about 9/11 as past… I can by
memory and imagination, recall what I was thinking and feeling while
watching the planes hit the buildings…I can tell you how I felt 18 years after
9/11 by memory and imagination… which means we use memory and imagination
to fill in the blanks of our lives, of our memories, of our thoughts and feelings…
you can date America by pre-9/11 and post-9/11…I might not exactly remember
what I was thinking at any given time or place or at what event, but by memory
and imagination I can recollect my memories and feelings…

I can also extend my imagination and memory to the future…
about how I might feel about a certain event or person or thing in the
future…from my past experiences of existing, I can remember how I felt
at certain moments and extrapolate into the future to think about how I might
feel or think about certain people or events or things…

the future does not yet exists, but with help from my
memory and imagination, I can understand where I stand in the future…

I can use my memory and imagination to think and feel about how
I would feel/think if IQ45 would get reelected… I can use past experiences
to understand how I would think about that terrible day in American history…
and by using memory and imagination, I can feel the elation if he is
thrown out of office via impeachment… now is memory and imagination
gonna feel the same way as the moment when either of those events occur…
which is then the present…remember, I am extrapolating about possible future
events… I am using memory and experiences and imagination to think and feel
about something in the future…

the present can look backwards or it can look forward…
by both memory and imagination, I can try to understand my
own thinking and feelings about a future event…

the present is always moving forward, it is a means of measuring time…
movement is time, speed is time, distance is time…

this brings up an important point, we are not bound to the present…
we can with equal ease, recall and remember the past and use our
memories and imagination to think about the future…we can choose
to live in the past or we can choose to live in the future… we have those
possibilities…time is not a fixed, set idea, it can shift or bend or flow
as we wish by using memories and imagination…

I can rewrite the past and make me the hero of the past… my past…
with memory and imagination, the past can be rewritten to make me the hero
or the villain or not even there…time is flexible because it can be
rewritten in our memories…with memories and imagination…

next: the future…

Kropotkin

2710

next: the future… Spooky! :slight_smile:

The rest was brilliant and funny and insightful! I would be interested in the views of MagsJ - the paper Prom 75 included. It was long, I read for 40 minutes - had enough after a while. I was minded of the foreword to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Otherwise, I wish you well. PK!

2711

K: why thank you Sir… any words from you are very welcomed…

as for the content of my post being brilliant, funny and insightful…
I cannot say, it is hard to see how powerful the storm is when inside
the storm…I write what I see and feel and think…… truth be known,
I have no sense of what impact my words have, good or bad… I just
don’t get enough input to know what value my words have…

so I operate in the dark, writing but not knowing what the value of
the words I write have…if my words are “brilliant” or “funny”
or “insightful” that is news to me…and much appreciated words…

so, Mr. Derley, I hope you are well this day…and thank you…

Kropotkin

2712

and as promised,

Future…

Future: 1. the time or a period of time following the moment of
speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come…

I can think about the future using memory and imagination…

I work on Halloween this year, in 5 days…but I can imagine what
will happen by using memory and imagination…

Halloween is on a Thursday this year and I work from 8:15 to 5:15…
a pretty good shift for a Halloween… I don’t plan on dressing up,
but if I did, I would simply wear a SF Giants shirt and hat……nothing
complicated…by having worked prior Halloween’s I can guess that
customers will come in, in costumes… I can use prior memory of
what customers wore to guess at to what they will wear this year…
I can use imagination to think of other possibilities that customers might
wear this year…I can create a reasonable understanding of what might
happen this year on Halloween, in 5 days from now…but as the future
is unknown, I could be very wrong about what will happen on Halloween…
something may happen outside the realm of imagination and experience/memory…
that I haven’t considered… it is possible that I might even be dead by that day
and so, I won’t be there on Halloween, it is a question of possibilities that
may or may not happen that day or before that day…….

each possibility has a chance but some possibilities are more possible then
other possibilities…an alien invasion from outer space is a possibility,
just not a very likely one and an earthquake that destroys my section of
California is also possible… a more likely possibility then an alien invasion…
but not that much more likely… it becomes a question of odds… what are the
odds of a certain event happening by a certain day…the future is about
possibilities and probabilities…which is different and outside of memory/experience
and imagination…

the future of October 31, 2019… 5 days from now…
when I look at that day, I can only guess at what might happen…
nothing or everything… I just can’t know…we could see great
changes that day, small changes that day or no changes that day…
we just don’t know…and that uncertainty is different then the
uncertainty of the past or the present…when I think about the past,
there are no possibilities… when I look at the present, I see
some possibilities and when I look at the future, I see an almost
infinite number of possibilities…and my memory/experience
and my imagination cannot cover all the possibilities of the future…
I cannot anticipate or guess as to what the future will bring…

we react to the future and its uncertainty with possibilities of
fear, and hate and desire and despair and anger…we cannot know
our possibilities…

I worked with a women who recently suffered two strokes… the first one,
she did recover and came back to work, the second, she was found after
2 days of laying on her kitchen floor… she had surgeries on her brain to
remove blood clots and she is now in a home, paralyzed and unable to
speak…… she will never recover…she has no possibilities left to her…
all that is left for her is death… she is only a year older then me…
and all she can do is exist, not living, that possibility no longer exists for
her, but she can only exists until she dies…she has no possibilities…
whereas I have some possibilities, not as many as I did when I was younger, but
some possibilities… and those of you who are younger, much younger,
you have a even greater possibilities then I do…the future can be understood
by the number of possibilities we have to us…

on October 31, 2019, in five days, the future…
when it is that day, Halloween, it will become the present,
and then on Nov 1, 2019… Halloween will become the past…I won’t need
to fill in the gaps about that day because I can use my memory to inform me
of what happened that day…….this process of past to present to future goes on
all our lives but it has become so common that we don’t even see it anymore…

that moving sidewalk of past to present to future is such a smooth
journey that we don’t even notice the passing of time…while I write,
I am aware of the fact that in a couple of hours, I must go to work…
the present, my writing, is taking notice of the future, my going to work…
and I also think of my wife who left yesterday to babysit our nephew, so I
didn’t see my wife last night and I won’t see her today and I won’t see her until
much later tomorrow night…past, present and future all seamlessly woven
into one tapestry……

I am writing these words in my present… but you will be reading them in my future,
but it will be your present… our lives is immersed in past, present and future
and we don’t even notice…when you read these words, I will most likely be
at work… your present… my future…

we live our lives at different times… we exist in different time frames…
we are apart by distance… and distance is time…when I go to bed in California,
Mr. Derley in the UK, might be waking up… my night begins and his day begins…
I sleep and dream while he is active and living and playing snookers…

what is past and present and future when our lives exists within different time
frames? my past is Mr. Derley present and his future is my present…

I can only work with my past, my present and my future……
I cannot exists within his past, present or future…
we are not only separated by distance but we are separated by time…

time is not just a scientific fact to be understood, but a biological
question that must be answered…am I a biological being going through
time or am I time going through matter and space? for we are not only
matter and energy, but we are time… and we exist within matter such
as rooms and chairs and tables and walls… and the mirror that has existed in
my bathroom has noted the passing of time in my face and loss of hair… while
the mirror itself hasn’t changed… I am growing old… and with it comes the
loss of possibilities that once existed for me in the past…the present, my
current present offers me some possibilities and my future will offer me,
fewer and fewer possibilities until the only possibility left for me is death…
and that is my future… and some day it will be your present and then after that,
it will be your past…and life goes on…that are no guarantee’s in life…
just possibilities and memory and imagination…….

Kropotkin

2713

Poem by Walt Whitman…“By Blue Ontario’s Shore”

"To hold men together by paper and seal or by compulsion is no account,
That only holds men together which aggregates all in living principle,
as the limbs of the body or the fibres of plants.

Of all races and eras these States with veins full of poetical stuff most
need poets, and are to have the greatest, and use them the greatest,
Their Presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their
poets shall.

(soul of love and tongue of fire!
Eye to pierce the deepest deeps and sweep the world!
Ah, Mother, prolific and full of all besides, yet how long barren,
barren?)"

to hold men to account by such things as laws and papers
and seals and compulsion is no big deal

we Americans are a country of laws… it says so right in the constitution
and it says so in the Declaration of independence… recall the very facts
that lead us to rebel against Great Britain… the tyranny of one man and
his fickle use of laws being whatever he says, when ever he says… thus
one man, the King, can arbitrarily decide upon law based on his whim
that day and just as arbitrarily change it based, once again, solely based
upon whim…

but we are not held together as a country because of our compulsion to
obey the law…upon what do we hold this country together?

that is Whitman’s point. it is not enough to have laws to hold
us together as a people… we must be united by something other then
just words on paper…laws… and we cannot believe such words
that the “President is above the law” for those words negate, deny the
entire point of the declaration and the constitution…a country of laws
must be held accountable by every man, women and child in this
country, regardless of rank or title or wealth or fame… because
if one person is above the law, then the law means nothing…it is
an everyone or a no one proposition………

if we are a country of laws and one is allowed to break the law because
of position/title, then we are no longer a country of laws…
then what is the thing that holds our country together?

What unifying principle becomes THE unifying principle that
holds America together as one people?

Ask yourself, what is my tie, as an American to other American’s, if the tie isn’t
the law and the universal application of the law?

What unifying principle holds American’s together if not the law?

We speak English, but so does millions of non-American’s…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

if we are bound to be Americans because of a belief in the above statement,
then we cannot hold that women or minorities or people who love differently,
are not created equally… if we hold that we are above any class of human beings,
then we no longer hold these truths to be self-evident, and then what principle
holds this country together? If we hold that blacks are “niggers” and all that implies,
then we are not holding to the principle “that all men are created equal”
if we hold the point that gays or lesbians are not created equal, then
we are not holding to the principle that “all men are created equal”

Once again, it is an all or nothing proposition…

either we hold everyone to be equal or we cannot hold that anyone is equal…
thus negating the basic and fundamental principle of America……

Thus the question becomes, once again, upon what principles are
we to declare ourselves to be American’s?

do we declare that all that are born in America is, in principle,
to be American’s? So we hold as our deepest principle, the accidental
birth of people to be THE defining principle of being an American?

think about what it means to be an “American”

(and if you are not an American, what does it mean to be
a citizen in your country, what is the defining principle of being your
nationality?)

so ask yourself, what does it mean to be an American if we don’t hold
to the principle of laws or that we don’t hold to the principle that
“all men are created equal”?

Kropotkin

2714

the above post is one possibility of the Kantian
questions… “what should I believe in”? Should we hold to the
unifying principle of America… (whatever that might be)

What unifying principle tie’s me or binds me to my fellow American
citizens? The religious are bound to or tied together by the unifying
principle of god… the Christian by the unifying principles of
Christianity and the Hindu’s are bound together by the unifying
principles of the Hindu religion…as is the Muslim and the Jews
and Jains and the………

think of the unifying principle of countries, of patriotism in
terms of the unifying principle that govern the religious…

we can think of several ties or binding principles that
tie or bind people together…political, social, economic,
historical, philosophical, personal, cultural……

the principle or themes that can bind or tie people together
are numerous, maybe too numerous to list…

let us take American’s… we are tied together by the bounds of
economic and historical and social and culturally…

we share these principles that have bound American’s together for centuries…

for example the institutions of America… the Presidency, the senate,
the house, the court system including the Supreme court…

we are influenced and impacted by these institutions every day of our lives…
from the roads I drive on to the quality of air I breath to the water running
into my house to the electricity that allows me to type this into my computer…

of late, beginning with one of the worst president in American history,
Ronald Raygun, they have attacked and tried to destroy our belief
in our institutions…that which is part of our political and historical
heritage of being American’s… part of what we believe in that
is one of the fundamental beliefs that hold as a unifying principle…

in other words, this attack upon government as “part of the problem”
is an attack upon one of the historical unifying principles that
tie or bind Americans together…

recall: “we the people, in order to form a more perfect union”

“We the people” “We the people”

who is the people, if not us…

“government of the people, for the people, by the people”

an attack upon the government is an attack upon the people…
for the government is us… as clearly stated by the Declaration
and the Constitution…

if we the people is not the government, then we are not a government of
the people, then we are not America anymore… for that is one of the
basis of our binds that tie all American’s together…

“government of the people, for the people, by the people”

from the very beginning of our American republic, from the very first
day, the idea was that “we the people” is the foundation, the bedrock,
the unifying principle that united, that tied and bound us Americans
together…

if we are no longer a government of “we the people” then we have no
basis for a unifying principle that ties us together…

for as IQ45 is demonstrating every single day, respect for the rule of law,
has gone by the wayside…so if that is gone and we no longer think
of government as government of the people, then what is the unifying principle that
ties us together?

if IQ45 was sent to Washington to “drain the swamp” then let us drain the
swamp, but don’t dismantle the very foundations of what makes American’s
American’s… that is by dismantling the very ties that makes us American’s
which is the beliefs have held sway over what it means to be American…

the idea of government is…

“we the people”…………

the idea that government is

“of the people, for the people, by the people”

and the idea, the very idea that conservatives are driving into politics,
is the idea of the “imperial presidency”…

which is odd considering that they consider government as being the enemy…
recall Mr. Raygun….

“Government is not the solution to our problem,
Government is the problem”

and within that quote lies the very attack upon the unifying ideals that
have defined Americans since our beginning…

“we the people in order to form a more perfect union”

and:

“Government is of the people, for the people and by the people”

so, if government is the problem, then the problem is the “people”

and this is this very basis upon which the right wing has attack government…
as an attack upon the very ideals, the very principles of our founding fathers,
which is government is of the people… and that is the danger to the GOP…

the very attack upon government shows us the very disdain and hatred
of the people by the GOP and the right wing…the very guiding principles
that have defined America since the start begins with “We the people”…

If you agree with the statement that “government is the problem”
then you agree that the problem is the “people”… you attack the
very foundations of the basis of the unifying principles that tie
and bind Americans together…

“we the people in order to form a more perfect union”

if you think that our government that is form upon the basis
of “government of the people, for the people, by the people”
then upon what basis do you believe that we should now form
our country upon?

You have rejected the core principles of our founding fathers by
rejecting the ideal of “government of the people”…so fine,
what is your proposal?

that we should adapt a monarchy?

no, no, no… the answer you propose is quite clear…

you want an imperial president… you have said that much when
you declare “the president is above the law”

only in a dictatorship or a monarchy is the president above the law…

and so your drive to make IQ45 above the law is a clear sign
that you have rejected, rejected the very foundation that has
driven America since the beginning… “we the people”…
“government of the people, for the people, by the people”

so the conservative agenda is to destroy the very foundation of
what the founding fathers created… government of the people…

if we destroy the tie, that bind that hold Americans together,
then what is left for American’s to hold unto as foundational
beliefs in what it means to be an American?

if we do not hold to the unifying principle that
“government is of the people, by the people, for people”

then what is left to believe in as American’s?

Kropotkin

2715

now one might say: Kropotkin, poor deluded Kropotkin…

don’t you know that America is held by a small faction of
people who run America and run the world…
these people (depending upon the person, they may list
groups as diverse as) the Jews, the Trilateral commission,
the illuminati, the New world order, the Rothschild’s, the Bilderberg group,
some sort of secret cabal that is nameless, aliens from space, and any
series of random secret groups that they might name…

and perhaps, they are right, perhaps…but we cannot define who we
are by belief in some random conspiracy theories…

we must hold to what we can see and we can only see our government
in action as it practices ethical theories in real time…

the budget of America is a moral document and as such, we
can judge it that way… and given that the budget, supported
by the very numbers it gives, to the military and the entitlement
sector and the sciences and academia, we see what we morally
believe in…we don’t practice morality in private or in isolation…
morality is practice by us collectively… and is exhibited/displayed by
such moral documents as our budget…

so what is the foundational principles we hold to be present
as American’s in our yearly budget?

Do we hold to the truth that “all men are equal”
as a principle to be followed in our federal or state budgets?

NO, no I say…we don’t follow that guiding principle in our
creation of federal or state budgets… the old saying is “follow the money”
and in following the money, we can see what our priorities are…

and it certainly isn’t in the guiding ideal that “all men are created equal”
for if we give massive tax breaks to the wealthy or to corporations, then
we are not being guided by the principle of “all men are created equal”

for corporations are not people, despite the often quoted lie to that effect…

for who owns the corporation? why stockholders and if they are not held responsible
for the corporation actions, then why should we individuals be held accountable
for our actions? what we have here is a double standard… individuals owning
a corporation cannot be held liable for actions done by the corporations in their name,
every action a corporation does, does in the name of it stockholders, read the mission
statement of every single corporation and the pursuit of profits is often listed first…
and who does the pursuit of profits benefit? why those who own the corporation,
the stockholders…and so they must be held accountable for the actions of
the corporations that they own… just as I must be held accountable for what I
own… if my steps to my condo lead to someone getting hurt, I am held responsible,
and as well I should be, but a person who owns stock is somehow exempt from
any accountability or responsibility for the actions of the corporation that they
own is the denial of the very point of accountability of people for what they own…

so you want to hold these so called secret groups accountable, then begin
by hold them responsible for actions committed by what they own…
the corporations and the businesses…………

holding people and corporation and wealthy individuals and presidents
and congressmen accountable is the start of reforming our government…
and our lives………

you want to undermine the so called secret cabals that run our lives,
then begin by making them accountable and responsible for their actions…

But Kropotkin… they won’t be held responsible… now you are just using
excuses to avoid actually trying to hold them accountable, responsible…
until you try, actually try to hold them accountable, then you have
no basis upon which to complain or grip about them…if you won’t do
anything, then you cannot voice your opinion… action must occur
before we can complain about something…… otherwise we are not,
in good faith, attempting to change anything… and it is in the attempt
to make changes that define us as human beings…it is not in our beliefs
that make us human, but in our actions…so, believe in secret conspiracies?
great, then do something about it…make the changes you think is needed…

for it is in change that defines us as human beings… think of the human beings
that we build statues of… and it is in the changes that they fought for,
that we believe in, that is the reason we build statues… for those who
created changes in what they believe in…

make the changes and perhaps, one day… we will build a statue to you…

Kropotkin

2716

those conspiracy theorist lead us to a problem…
that of image vs reality…
the question of bad faith that dominates the
existentialist… we have reality which is our actions,
and we have the image which is our words…

if there are secret conspiracies that run the world, then
our reality is much different then the writings on the wall,

“we the people in order to form a more perfect union”

and

“government of the people, for the people, by the people”

how are we to reconcile the differences between the reality
and our words? how are we to reconcile the “bad faith” that
exists within our world?

to hold to conspiracy theories is to hold that we are victims of
a vast conspiracy that denies us the words, “all men are created equal”
and we cannot act upon words that are denied…

no, it is better that we deny that the world is run by
a nameless and faceless secret conspiracy…

we must hold to the truths that we can see…
and we can see that we are really held hostage by
our ism’s and ideologies such as capitalism and communism
and Catholicism…….

those isms and ideologies hold to the reality that human beings
are in the grasp of forces larger and greater then they are…
and in the name of those forces, we are negated and sacrificed…

communism and capitalism is known for the sacrifice of it workers
and the members of its society…

we can count the victims of communism in the millions
and we can count the victims of capitalism with every job report
that lists the loss of jobs in America… if we were to judge America
on the very values it proclaims, in the GDP and the wealth of the nation,
we would miss the very foundation of what it means to be a human being…
for human beings are not “Homo Economicus”… we are greater then the sum
of our wealth, of our possessions…

for one cannot put a value on what makes a human being a human being…
for it is those values which we cannot place an economic price upon
that we give priority to… values such as love… can you name the
economic price, or economic value of love?

we define ourselves publicly has having certain values and we define
ourselves privately with other values…

what is the reality of our values? what is the words/image of our values?

in other words, we hold to certain values, are they just words for show or
do they actually mean something?

we must engage with this question of reality vs image…

what is the reality of our lives and what is the image we hold in our heads?

are they the same? are they different? and what is the difference?

as the existentialist believe, we engage in “bad faith” when the words/image
we hold is different then the actions we engage in…

secret societies that run our lives… is that the reality or is that
the image/words we hold to?

do we hold the words that “all men is created equal” as just words/images
but do we act upon idea of an imperial presidency and tax breaks for the wealthy?

is “government of the people, for the people, by the people?”

do we just believe in those words, or, or do we actually act upon that
as a reality…

are the words, “government of the people, for the people, by the people”,
reality or is it just an image?

reality vs image… might be the question that we face, not only as
American’s but as individuals…….

what say you?

what is your understanding of who you are in regards to,
and about the reality as you understand it and the image/words
you hold?

what is the disconnect between the two?

and there is a disconnect… I can guarantee it…

how can I be so sure?

because we are “modern” human beings…
and that disconnect, that alienation of being “modern”
has driven and will continue to drive our actions until we
begin to understand that we have a disconnect between
the words we speak and the actions we take…

Kropotkin

2717

there is a strong, perhaps, the greatest need of being human
and that need to create a story, to create a narrative about
who we are and what it means to be human…

Philosophy is simply another narrative about what it means to be human…
and stories like the Odyssey of Homer and Ulysses by James Joyce have the
same story line…and yet are completely different stories…Narratives
about what it means to be human…

In the beginning, there was Socrates and he said, know thyself,
and he saw it was good… and that was the beginning of philosophy…

and it is the beginning of philosophy… to know thyself…
which is a another narrative… a story about oneself…

and we have all kinds of narratives of what it means to be human…
historical narratives and economic narratives and social narratives
and biological narratives… all of these are simply stories about what
it means to be human…

what is the human story? what is the human narrative?

we are born into an already functional and historical world
that has been in operation for 4 billion years… the specific human story
is over a million years old and is found in the long pre-history of human beings…

modern man, human beings that we would identify as human beings only existed
within the last 30,000 or 40,000 years…the end of the hunter-gatherer existence
was roughly 10,000 years ago…the process of keeping records by writing is
only 5000 years old…so between the rise of the cities and the beginning of writing
was 5000 years…… that means stories were verbal, stories to be told over
a stove or a campfire……….

we didn’t write down stories, we simply created or repeated stories that we had
heard in public… within a group… never alone as we do today when we read a book
individually…

the creation of a story, of a narrative was for almost the entire existence
of human beings, has been the art of storytelling for the group of other human beings…

in some sense we still do that when we gather together to watch a play or
we gather together to see a band play or we go out to the movies…

human beings are collectively wired to tell our stories in a public forum…

for almost a million years, we human beings heard stories told around a campfire
and from that comes our need to tell stories…

Socrates said, Know thyself… and thus philosophy was born…

but this question of knowing thyself is really about telling ourselves a story
about who we are… to ourselves…

I am Kropotkin… I was born with a hearing loss… and everything in my life
flows from that basic story, narrative about myself……

Kropotkin is Kropotkin because of his hearing loss… some personal stories aren’t
that simple but mine is…and because of my hearing loss, I had and still have
several social issues that come about from a hearing loss… I have no social skills
because the heart of social skills is communication and I cannot communicate very well…

so my stories, my narratives are not verbal narratives but written narratives…

and my lack of social skill have left me without recourse to a common
human necessity which is we connect with each other, as human beings,
by communication… I have a hard time connecting to people on a personal
level…to most people, they can put themselves within a story about love or life,
by connecting themselves with the story protagonist who is quite often the hero…

I cannot connect with the protagonist…I can connect with the emotions being
expressed but I cannot connect, become one with the protagonist… and I suspect
that failure comes from my lack of social skills… I cannot communicate with people
and that failure leads me to a failure to be able to connect with people in some
sort of social connection… perhaps that is why it is so important for me to
write about or create a social connection that people may feel which is part
of being in a democracy or some other political system…

it has been written that philosophy is really an act of confession…

perhaps… perhaps…

so what are you confessing to when you philosophize?

my confession is to the lack of social skills that prevent me
from making connections that most people might automatically make…and the
source for the lack of social skills come from my hearing loss…

and my philosophy comes from this lack of social skills and
my failure to connect with people in ways that people automatically make…

I philosophize from a lack of social skills…from my hearing loss…

I know myself… what is the basis of your philosophy?

Kropotkin

2718

the original question in philosophy as defined by Socrates is
simple, “Know thyself” and that is our first philosophical
question… to know thyself…

the root word of question is quest… a journey to some destination…
now that journey needn’t be a physical journey of traveling someplace,
although it could be, no, a quest can be mental, emotional, psychological,
religious…

a journey to what it means to be human… for us individually and collectively ……

my journey was, in part, to overcome my handicap, plus part of my journey
was to overcome my lack of formal education… I didn’t go to collage…

my journey was to gain social skills which allowed me to communicate with
others… my journey was also a journey to become self educated…

our quest rarely ever has one destination…no, we often journey to find, to
overcome our humanness…which has many houses…and the battle is often fought
in those many houses… history being one house and politics is another and economics
is another house…

but it isn’t enough for me to overcome my lack of social skills or my lack of
education… I must continue to move past that and learn more…so, I
began my quest to discover philosophy by learning philosophy since the
beginning… my education began as it should, in the beginning which
is Greek philosophy and then onto Roman philosophy… that took a year,
then I spend a year on Medieval philosophy and the Renaissance…

I have spend the two plus years studying “Modern” philosophy beginning
with Descartes… I haven’t even gotten to the 20th century yet and I am
on year 4 of my studies…….I have discovered why philosophy is in its
current cul-de-sac… it has lost sight of what is important about philosophy
which is its place in understanding what it means to be human… current philosophy
is lost in it mindless games in its philosophical schools…

what does logical positivism have to do with our moral choices we must make…
what does analytic philosophy have to do with any of the Kantian questions,
“What are we to do?” or “What should we hope for?”
how does phenomenology or poststructuralism help us become better human
beings? only Existentialism seemed to offer any real possibilities as to
how we are to live our lives as human beings…what we need is to
have a “positive” version of Existentialism… one that negates the
nihilistic isms and ideologies that have dominated our society since
1789 or the start of the French Revolution… the so called “modern” age…

we must overcome the various nihilistic ism’s like communism
and capitalism and Catholicism and even Buddhism in which
those ism’s and ideologies that deny man/human beings as
being something more then just pawns in the great movement
of historical necessity which is communism and Catholicism which
makes us pawns in Gods great game to create the final solution
which is heaven on earth… but man is quite often the sacrificial
lamb which is helping bringing about this "heaven on earth…
any ism or ideology that is willing to negate human beings
and their values is not an ism or ideology that we can abide by…

and so we must overcome every single ism and ideology that
meets with the “modern” approval because those modern ism’s
and ideologies are more then willing to sacrifice individuals in the name
of further progress of the ism’ or ideology………

capitalism has no problem whatsoever to sacrifice
individuals who exists within the capitalistic system for
the sake of money…… this nihilism which is readily apparent
in every single business and corporation in America and the world…is
simply is a sign of the nihilism that commands the world’s leading economic
system… if individuals are destroyed to increase profits is a clear and present
sign of the nihilism of capitalism…

so, we must now find our way to a new and inclusive ism’s and ideologies
that no longer find it necessary to negate the individuals within that ism…

we are the shock troops in the new creation of ism and ideologies
that will hold the allegiance of the coming generations of human beings…

from our battles and engagements will come the new ism’s and ideologies…

the new “religions” of man…

as I have said before, I am only John the Baptist… not the messiah…

I have come to proclaim the upcoming kingdom, not to create it…

it is my question and, and my quest…

Kropotkin

2719

i’d like to propose something a little different, pete. i think before we begin an investigation into what can be known about ourselves, we first ought to examine what it is that would make that possible… or else we might fall victim to mistakes of judgement about ourselves, yes?

the first thing we want to know is what knowing is, because we need to be sure the things about ourselves we come to know aren’t just beliefs, confusions, or senseless ideas. we want to be sure we can’t be mistaken or driven by intellectual flights of fancy when we draw our conclusions from our thinking.

well then what is the medium through which we acquire knowledge. i don’t mean ‘perception’, here. i mean the things that knowledge is originated in and through… or rather the form it takes when it is being obtained. we aren’t asking about the raw data of sense perception because this has no knowledgeable content without the two key features we are looking for here; logic and language.

if you can give me an example of something you claim to ‘know’ without that knowing involving language and the logic that structures it, i shall cease and desist my inquiry at this juncture. if you cannot, then let us leave the ‘knowing thyself’ to the amateur philosophy clubs and those who lack the rigor for such a critically important investigation.

that is, of course, unless you don’t want to know thyself. in that case, you are quite permitted to believe you are a chicken, and a trammel not shall i be to your endeavor.

2720

a couple of thoughts before I go to bed…

first, what you are asking for is epistemology: the theory of
knowledge especially with regards to its methods, validity, and scope.
Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified
belief from opinion…

the age of epistemology or the age of knowledge lasted from
Descartes to Kant…One of Kant’s question which I have mentioned
over and again, begins with: “What can we know?”
but notice, I rarely if ever engage in questions of knowledge,
of epistemology… I don’t believe such questions are very important…
the age of knowledge of philosophy, which lasted almost 200 years,
didn’t come to any sort of agreement to the nature, or scope or validity
of knowledge…… At this time, knowledge/epistemology, has transfer
into science as we see science undertake its investigation into
the realm of knowledge…“What is knowledge and what is it scope?”
is now a scientific question, not a philosophical question…another part of the
answer is that I don’t think epistemology leads us to the questions of what
it means to be human or “what should we do as human beings?”
the age of knowledge is over and I for one, am pretty glad about it…

the second part of my answer is fairly simple…
I don’t believe that the end all, be all, of philosophy lies in
logic or language… neither logic or language can solve the critical problems
of who we are and what is our purpose in life…logic and language game
theories of the last century have proven to be sterile and empty…
they lead nowhere…I don’t need logic or language to understand
who I am… I can sense without logic or language who Kropotkin is…
I put it into words to help others understand… for example, when
I am sad… I don’t use either logic or language to help me understand
that I am sad… I just feel sad… and neither logic or language will
clarify my sadness anymore then that… to explain to you that I am sad,
quite often we don’t even need logic or language to other people for them
to know that I am sad… people can sense my sadness even if I try to hide
it from them… people are very sensitive that way…so are dogs and cats…
you cannot hide emotions from animals, perhaps people but not animals…

But Kropotkin, how can you “know” you’re sad without logic or language?

I think that question answers itself…

we depend far to much on logic and language to explain the basic questions
of who we are and what is possible for us…

logic doesn’t tell us anything and language lies…
the very nature of language quite often leads one to ambiguity and deceit, both
in oneself and to others…

but Kropotkin, how can we understand the process of “knowing thyself”
without logic or language? we can simply look into our actions and our beliefs
and we see if they are in synch or if they are two distinct and separate
things… if they are two distinct and separate thing, then we are alienated
and disconnected for ourselves… we have bigger problems then
any understanding of knowledge that we may or may not have…
if our words don’t match our actions, we are alienated from ourselves…

and at what point does logic or language enter into this self analysis of
knowing ourselves?

if you wish to use logic and language to engage in the process of knowing
thyself, please feel free, but don’t be surprised if that effort fails…

Kropotkin