ok, the name of the movie was Mindwalk with Sam Waterson, 1990 very good film…
edit: Harold and Maude is a very good philosophical film…
Kropotkin
watching people act, you get the sense that they have no
idea that they exist in time and space…
for example, watching Herr Trumpf assaulting American
values, he has no sense of how actions flow through space and time…
history seems to be flat for us, without a flow of time…
for example, I was born just 14 years after the end of World War Two…
that is less time then from 9/11 to today…I think we forget our
actions flow through time and affect future generations…
the GOP is always trying to force people to accept personal
responsibility (they refuse it themselves but love making others responsible for their actions)
what instead of becoming personal responsible, we become responsible to the future…
as every action we take influences the future, we should carry the weight of the future
on our shoulders…how does that action benefit the future…that should be our mantra…
how does that action help those who come after us? that is the question we should be
asking ourselves, not how does this benefit us, but how does this benefit the future…
does this action make the future more livable or less livable? does this action help create
the means for the children of tomorrow to better live their lives? responsible parents
act this way… when they move, they look for houses in cities with better school districts…
just one way they act in a fashion that help their children…my mom would always
move to a house that was within walking distance of a park… so we children had a park
close by to play in… she took actions that didn’t benefit her, her actions were to benefit
us…that is how we need to approach our actions, does this action benefit us or does this action
benefit the future? I would always accept any action that benefits future generations instead
of our generation because that is what responsible parents do…we look to the future well being,
not ours… and that is missing in todays world… for example, to deny climate change to
improve our current situation and fail to improve our future is wrong…we must act in regard
to climate change with our children in mind, not us… so we conduct our actions as if the future
depends on it… because the future does depend on us to think of them and not ourselves…
to give massive tax breaks to the wealthy at the cost of the middle class and working poor
doesn’t help the future, in fact it damages the future and makes our children lives much harder…
income inequality threatens the well being of America and threatens the stability and future
of America and we must act now to end income inequality or face dire consequences soon…
we act in the name of the future instead of our personal benefit… we must think of the future
or we threaten the future in ways, we can’t even imagine right now…
Kropotkin
what trait above all does the conservative value?
conformity… to be alike, to think alike, to dress alike
to look alike, to pray alike and to in all things to be alike…
Kropotkin
Thought that was the trait of the national socialist, which is the hipster and shitlib and safespace warrior.
I am a conservative. All I ask is that they stop cutting down the rainforest. All I ask is that they stop making rules and regs invading my very mind thought and consciousness invading every nook and cranny of space. All I ask is that culture and opulence be returned to its former glory. All I ask is that I am allowed to be transexual, like the Native Americans of olde. All I ask is not for cubicles, nunnery, and cuckery to be enforced upon society. All I ask is is for the good name of liberals to be no longer tainted by the ghost of the shitlib. All I ask is that cuckservatives, like CuckNews, stop dominating their news feed with censorship and all I ask is for a world no longer ran by Jews and shitlibs. All I ask, is for the world and society to admit they are racist, because they always keep me down from saying true facts about race and society, because I am half-black. The tyranny is unbearable when the racists do not allow you to make statements about race, yet they themselves say they are anti-racists when they are the prime racists always keeping me down. The shitlibs keep me down yet claim they are my advocate! This tyranny is too much to bear! The Jews and the Christians are the prime barbarians and instigators of violence and tyranny, yet claim they are peace-lovers. The incongruency is too much to bear. All I ask is a society free from their scheming and censoring of truth. All I ask is that black people music not taint the purity of white films, but that blacks be free to do what they want in black films as long as they don’t taint films which have the white purity.
Is that too much to ask for?
and moving right along…
Let us conduct this thought experiment…let
us think of our days as not of 8 plus hour days but
of 5 or 6 hour days…but how do we achieve this reduction of
hours of working… by eliminating the concentration of wealth…
I read the other day, that 8, EIGHT, men hold as much wealth as
half the world…if we eliminate this concentration of wealth we
can achieve something that is important…but once again,
why would we try to work only 5 or 6 hours a day?
instead of thinking as we do in terms of GNP (Gross National Product)
we begin to think in terms of quality of life…now some may argue that
the GNP and the quality of life is the same but it isn’t…the GNP is about
manufacturing and the buying and selling of goods and trade… but notice
it doesn’t say anything about whether this business actually improves people’s lives,
it is about the consumption and distribution of goods, not about our quality of life…
I maintain that the entire capitalism system reduces our quality of life…
Yes, my ass is more comfortable on my new leather couch, but does that
improve my quality of life? People who talk about the GNP never talk about
the quality of life issue because they can’t… it doesn’t arise because it is
ASSUMED that with a growing GNP we have a better quality of life…
it is an assumption that is not challenged…of course defenders of capitalism
(who around here disappear whenever challenged to either defend or attack
capitalism… they are very afraid to either defend or challenge capitalism, I
often wonder why… probably because they realize that capitalism as a system
cannot be defended and so they say silent) defenders of capitalism just
assume that capitalism is the best system without ever actually saying why?
the question of our time can be called a question of quality of life issue…
is our life better or worse with the modern capitalism? the answer is clear,
worse, much worse…we have a terrible quality of life in the modern world…
(now some will demand proof, but hay they won’t even defend their system, so
I see no reason to offer up to proof to people who won’t even defend their system)
I for one have stuff, I have a car and a couch and a TV and a oven
a DVD player and my books, all 5000 books, a computer and a printer is some
of the stuff I own and capitalism is good for getting stuff, but does any
of that stuff improve my quality of life? the only one that improves my quality
of life is books… I see capitalism as a quality of life issue… the negatives
of capitalism doesn’t make capitalism worth it… capitalism makes my
quality of life worse and capitalism makes your quality of life worse…
we are destroying life at a rapid rate and we are destroying the very things
that make life worth living…in the capitalist world, one’s happiness
is tied up in the buying and production of things, of stuff… that is not happiness…
that is materialism at its worse… we find our heroes in idiots like Herr Trumpf
because he is wealthy… but not in those who explore better ways of
improving our quality of life…we engage in a massive destruction
of our planets and the reduction of resources by our wasteful consumption
of those resources…we must engage in a dialogue as to what is the
best route to create a better quality of life for us… for that route is
certainly not capitalism with its wasteful and inefficient use of resources…
so how do we define quality of life and
how do we improve it?
Kropotkin
as I think about it, this idea of quality of life
should be a better criteria for people then the
pursuit of happiness…now some think that our
quality of life is improved with capitalism…
as we look about capitalist societies like ours,
we see a great deal of unhappiness and that is
evident by the nation’s drug use and alcohol use…
we are numbing ourselves to our current reality…
also this ongoing search for peace of mind by searching
within various religions and sects…
now recall that capitalism is an economic system
and not the political system, and the political system
is now under fire in several ways…
so you have a three fer… you
an economic system that allows no real choice
and measures, times, study, analyzes, weighs us for our
spending habits… not for us, our spending patterns
(another example of the Nihilism of our modern capitalism system)
and you have a political system that is bought and paid for by
those who have the money to buy and sell political influence
and then you have a judicial system that is also bought
and paid for by those who can afford it…
and where in all this buying and selling does the common man fit?
one of the basis for a quality of life comes from the fact that
our quality of life has us being in control of our lives…
and it is quite clear that we are not in control of our lives
either economically, politically or judicially…
to change this means we have to begin with the idea that
freedom is more important then security… because
our quality of life is determined by how much freedom we have…
and not the false freedom offer by capitalism, the choice of
buying new material comforts, but a real choice of being free
to become who we are…we are faced with a society that
is bound and determined to force us into certain situations
and that is not freedom… women must be allowed to have abortions
because having a child is a 20 year commitment and we even allow
people who buy TV sets or new cars a chance to change their mind…
if we force women to have children and then as the GOP is doing now
take away programs that allow those women to take care of all those children…
then we condemn those women AND children to a life of poverty and no chance
of being able to better oneself, you cannot become who you are when
you are so poverty stricken that you can only fight the poverty and not
even have the chance to become something more… if all your time
is spent trying to just survive… at one point in time, my mom was a
single mom with 4 children, I have been here and if it wasn’t for
school lunch programs, we might not have gotten either breakfast or lunch…
my mom worked 3 jobs trying to survive, so she was hardly living off of welfare…
but that is the situation we face… if we force women to work trying to feed their
children, their children are deprived of a family life… many children faced with
this turn to drugs or crime or gangs… so we increase societal problems with
this whole idea of forcing people to have children and not giving the parents
help by programs that will allow parents to feed and clothe children…
so how does forcing people into deeper poverty give them a better
quality of life? it doesn’t… and by giving those people a chance we
improve the quality of life within society and that in turns, improves
the quality of life of the individual… it is all connected…
to improve our individual quality of life, we must improve society
quality of life and that means we must improve, with our tax dollars,
other peoples lives, improve their quality of life and by doing so, we
improve our quality of life… either we rise together or we fall
together…if you properly understand what it means to have a quality
of life, then you are about improving the quality of life of ALL life…
if everything connected, then we must improve all aspects of our world, to
improve our quality of life…we don’t live in isolation of the world,
we are of the world, part of the world and we must conduct our actions
in terms of our interconnectedness of the world… so if you want to
improve your quality of life, you can begin by understanding you, YES YOU,
are part of the world and you must begin to improve the quality of life
of everyone on planet earth and, and improve our quality of life,
by the understanding that we only exist as long as we take care of our
planet… our quality of life is aided by our planet earth and by the
resources and animals and trees and by damaging the earth or resources or animals
or trees, we are damaging ourselves… reducing our quality of life…
we must being to look at things as a whole, not just in isolation,
what does it matter to me if birds go extinct or families go without basic resources…
… it matters because we live in a connected universe and our quality of life
is tied directly into the quality of life of others, all others, all life…
Kropotkin
the modern world, the capitalistic world, leaves us a faceless sea
of numbers, I have my numbers and you have yours… a world where I am
catalogued and measured and weighed and researched for my buying habits…
the dystopian world of 1984 is here, in our loss of freedom on the economic side
of our life… some say we are the freest country on earth and yet, we are only free
to buy, to purchase material goods…freedom is not about how many different cars
we can buy…because we can only buy our cars from 5 different car companies and
we can only buy our cereals from 4 different cereal companies… there is very little choice
between the small number of companies that make the goods that we purchase…
we only buy mass produced goods… my TV is one of millions produced and my computer
that I am writing on is one of millions that has been produced… we have quantity of
the same items, but we don’t have quality… because quality takes time and effort
and money… to have a quality of life takes time and effort and money…
it is impossible in this modern world to have quality because everything is mass produced…
our society is about this mass production, quantity and not quality…look about your room
from where I am sitting I can see two rooms, the living room and the kitchen and I see
mass produced goods in both rooms… my books and the couch and this table I am sitting at
and the chairs and the oven and stove… all mass produced…
and how does our mass produced society treat us any different then it does
the goods it produces? we are labeled goods just like our couch and TV and chairs
and we are treated just the same… we are numbered and counted and organized
into our respected functions…how can we act as if life is special if we are treated
by society like the goods within society… society doesn’t treat it humans any different
then it treats its material possessions and we wonder why people treat life so cheap…
it is cheap when it is treated no different then the couch that is for sale…
in fact, we treat life worse then material possessions… we value money over life
when we say, we won’t pay taxes to feed the poor, we are valuing our money over
life…we are not pro-life, we are pro-money… what does a life cost?
ask yourself, how much does a life cost? and realize that life is so cheap because
we don’t value it as much as we value our material goods… our couch has more
value then a human life…
and that is the legacy of the modern age… we know the price of everything and
the value of nothing…
Kropotkin
as I wasn’t feeling very good last night, got maybe 3 hours sleep,
I was up a lot and got to thinking…you have in traditional
Christian theology, you have matter which is you, me, the ground,
the stars, the earth, tree’s and all that matter is mortal, temporary,
and you are suppose to have a soul which is immortal and you have god
who is immortal… rather arbitrary don’t you think?
if there are two things that are immortal, why not three or four or five…
and if there are just two things that are supposed to be immortal, just two things,
how do we know that they are in fact immortal? why do we just assume that
of all the matter in the universe, only two things are immortal?
to make just two things immortal, is to use a lawyer sentence,
assuming facts that are not in the evidence… we have no evidence that
anything is immortal but we do have great deal of evidence that matter is
mortal…so what does this mean for the mind… not the brain, but the thinking part
of us…is this matter and thus mortal or is this like the soul and god, immortal?
are my thoughts mortal or immortal? as I am old, I quite often have a thought
and then forget it, but aren’t thoughts suppose to be immortal? if we
decide that thoughts are really just a combination between sensory perception
and brain chemicals then they are really mortal and then we can rightly conclude
that the soul is nothing more then sensory perception and chemicals and thus also
mortal…as we can never actually ever find out if the soul/mind is mortal or
immortal, we can simply assume that for our purposes, everything in the universe
is matter including the soul and god and thus mortal… this simplifies our
thinking and allows us to base our thinking and actions on that
the universe is matter and thus mortal… we need not devote any more time
and effort to this question… by answering this question in this way,
we are ready to tackle real questions that haunt us…
we are material being living in a material universe… we can now
work out what that means for us…
Kropotkin
So I am at work yesterday and because of a price check, I am
doing nothing, just waiting for the curtesy clerk to return with the
correct price of some item, I have a few moments to kill, waiting in line
was a couple with a baby… now this baby is young and they are holding out
a toy or something for the baby to grab… and as I watch, I realize that
one of the first things a baby must learn is spatial relationships…
I have heard that babies for proper development must learn proper spatial
relationships which is one of the reasons learning to crawl is so important…
it helps a baby learn spatial relationships… so one of the first lessons
we learn is about the relationship of objects in the space around us…
one of the first lessons we learn is space and by extension time…
(as space and time are one and the same as Einstein said)…
now this tells us that the understanding of space is not, is not,
innate or within us, but learned…it is from sensory perception that
we learn about space…and this process is learned from the reaching of
toys and learning to crawl, not big motions, but very little motions from a child’s
hand to the toy or to the ground…
Now we have been told that the understanding of god must be innate in us…
one of the arguments for god has been that god must exist because we have
an understanding of the perfect but we don’t have perfect in our lives upon which to
understand god, so god must exist because we can envision something perfect that doesn’t
anywhere else in life…
so in our understanding of space goes from the very little baby, to a little bigger,
toddler, to a little bigger child, to a little bigger teen and at each step, we
are able to have a greater and greater understanding about space and time…
we can envision infinity, not because of the fact we can’t see infinity but
because at each step we can expand our understanding of space from the very
small, baby to adulthood which means we don’t need to have an innate idea of
infinity in our heads, we can simple take the journey of life and by our gradual
understanding of space go from the very small to the infinite…
and this is true of our understanding of god… we go from the very small to the large…
all babies are about themselves… they don’t have a separate sense of “the other”…
which technically is dasein… anyway, babies don’t have that sense of separation
from themselves and other people in the universe including their parents…they have
to learn that as another part of the increase understanding of spatial relationships…
so we go from a infants understanding of the universe which at first is just one…
the baby… then the baby learns about the other, the fact that there are others beside
the baby, mom/dad…this differentiation between me and others is crucial and so
we learns that there are others beside us… we soon learn about others including
sisters and brothers and grandparents but we don’t know exactly what is there
relationship to us is…we just know they are happy to see us but we don’t know why…
grandma is a complex idea because it means we begin to learn about time… grandma
gave birth to my mom and my mom gave birth to me… that is a fairly complex
system for a child to understand…but it is a relationship… and we begin to
learn about relationships and how things are connected… and that begins with
personal relationships… my brother and sisters all came from mom, I am one
of many… that comes at a shock to some because we are beginning to understand
our relationship to the world…for a child, size is hierarchy… the bigger the person
the more power they have over us… whereas when we are a baby, we are small and
everyone has power over us but as we grow, we become in the middle and sometimes
we are bigger then others and we have power over them…as we grow, we
learn that sometimes the bigger person doesn’t have the power and that is another
complex lesson… but what about god? we always picture god as being bigger
then us… this is our lesson from childhood, the bigger the person the more power
they have…and we see god as this immense person…but how do we form this
idea of god? do we need an innate idea of god, for us to imagine god? not at all…
the idea of god can come from an extension of ideas already familiar to us
we see dad as being a big, powerful figure… is this not the idea of god and we
call god, father…the idea of god comes from an extension of ideas as we grow up…
god from the increased sensory perception we have from being a baby to being a grown up…
we can understand more and more about the space we exist in as we grow up and
we begin to understand the complex nature of relationships between humans…
so we can imagine a creature being more complex and more bigger then humans
and that imagining is god… it doesn’t need an innate idea or mystical
understanding of the universe… it just needs us to carry out logical idea’s
from childhood… now I have this idea of my dad… now my idea may be right
or maybe wrong but the fact is, he wasn’t really around for my childhood…
I barely remember him from my childhood… he may have been a good person or
a bad person, I have no idea… I do know he was extremely smart… a lot of people
have told me he was the smartest person they ever knew… but I personally don’t
know that…so with this lack of evidence, I created this person in my head…
now is he the person I imagine, I have no idea… as he died over 30 years ago…
so as I grow up, I have this evidence of the hierarchy of people who are bigger
then me and have more power then me… so why not take it one step further
and imagine a person who has the ultimate power and is the ultimate good,
I can imagine my father being good, so I take it just one step further and imagine
someone who is even more good, the ultimate good and that one step further is
god…it doesn’t take an extreme vision of the universe to reach god,
we can reach god just from sensory perceptions going back to childhood…
we can create god just from going from being a baby to adulthood…
just growing up is enough to create the image of god…
all we have to do is simply take it just one step further from
our baby concept of someone being bigger and more powerful to
god… it is not a large step, just the next step… and that is all we
need to create god… simple take the next step past our parents…
Kropotkin
I began to think about education in reference to
Phyllo demand I defend the department of education
and the more I thought about it, the farther my
thinking reached, so instead of the devoss thread, I
shall be putting my thoughts here and then later
I shall put something together about devoss and the
department of education…
my understanding of education comes from my own past…
I grew up in a very wealthy suburb of Chicago and my
education up until the mid 4 grade was advance as this was a
very wealthy town… then we moved to Fla and the school systems
we dwelt with there were a major step down from my education
in Illinois… I was ahead of my classmates in 4 grade, we were
even in 5 and 6 grade… however by Illinois standards, I was now behind
because schools where I was, were nowhere near the standards of Illinois…
we then moved to Minnesota to a very wealthy city, (lived in the basement
of my uncle because we had no money and my mom was a single mom of 3)
so I quickly discovered because Fla standards are far behind Minnesota
standards, I was behind by quite a bit… so I was far behind in 7 grade
from where the average student was suppose to be…I was behind educationally and
no way to make it up… recall, I am hearing impaired, handicap and there were
no programs to help me get caught up in those days…so I was so far behind in the
work and (my mom was working 3 jobs to support the family my uncle’s support never
included money as far as I know, so if we wanted to eat, she had to work)
so there was no family help… so I spend most of 7 grade hiding in the school library
reading books…thus falling even further behind… the next year 8 grade, I went
to two separate junior high, which meant, I didn’t get any stability there and because
these schools were also ahead of Fla standards, they were doing 8 grade work
and I was barely doing 7 grade work and I wasn’t catching up…
the next year, we moved to California and a new school, my 8th school in 5 years over
4 states…this school was average at best in those days… now it is one of the better ranked
schools in the area…I was actually able to spend all 4 years in my high school and
was able to make up some ground because of the stability but my math and English
skills were below others because of all the moves and differences in the schools…
to this day, I am weak in math and English… I am far better in subjects that
I can read to learn… such as history and philosophy…
my history tells me that school districts and even schools within that school district
are wildly different and those differences make all the difference in the world…
by having a set, stable schooling standards, children are far more likely to have
the educational skills needed to move on the next step…
now we come to the second part of this and that is what is the point of education?
what does it mean to be educated? is education meant as in the US, to train
us for jobs or is education suppose to be a much broader and wider goal…
my education didn’t train me for a job and it certainly didn’t “educate” me…
to this day, I still couldn’t tell you the difference between a verb and an adverb…
and I can barely add and subtract, multiply or divide and I have never even gotten
into a Algebra class because I don’t have the math skills…
so am I educated? Yes, because I have studied the wider and broader
idea’s of education… I can discuss history and philosophy and economics
and art history and sociology and physics with no problems…
but can I get a job with my skill set? well at 57, I am a checker in
a grocery store so the answer apparently is no…and that is what is
important in education, creating a skill set, but that doesn’t mean
education in the classical sense of being able to reason and to
have a wide general education in a lot of different matters, not
just to create job skills…in fact, I would argue creating job skills
is not being educated… being educated means being able to
at least have some knowledge in a wide array of area’s…
not just being able to code for example…
now come the tricky part… why is it important in
education, not to just train people for jobs, but to
“educate” them? make them aware of the larger world of
human endeavors… make people aware of art and literature
and science and history, for example, not just for the “skills” but
because I believe being educated makes people be better people…
I believe someone is a better person for being educated in a wide
area instead of training in a small and local field, for example,
I think that people who study a wide array of subjects are better
people then those who specialize in say, Business management…
that famous MBA, both village idiots, bush Jr and 45 have…
(now of course someone is going to yep about what makes someone
a “better” person… but for the course of this discussion, I believe
that a person who is more aware of the human possibilities like
art and philosophy and science are better people then those who
have trained to have one defined skill set because the person who
has become more aware, more alive to what is possible is a better person,
(once again leaving aside the exact definition of the word “better” because
once you start arguing about the exact definition of the word “better” you
are lost in the maze and muck of language and never get anywhere
or said another way, your idea of better is different then my idea and who is to
say, I am right or you are right? )
upon reflection, I believe the word “better” refers to the meaning I have
referred to in earlier post, which is the higher, human aspects of being human,
not the lower aspects and the lower aspects are the instinctive, emotional
part of being human… if you are unable to control your anger, you are not
in control and thus not in possession of your facilities… your lower, instinctive
part of being human is in control and you are not, not a better HUMAN being
when you are control by your lower facilities like anger and hate and jealousy…
being educated helps one be in better control of your lower instincts and
by doing so, be a better human being… the goal is always being a better HUMAN
being and education helps one become a better human being, with emphasis
on human…thus better refers to becoming more human…
like Nietzsche ubermensh where the ubermensh is a better type of human being
and I believe that is done through education and not job training…
Kropotkin
I was daydreaming the other day about my trip to Europe last year…
and having some time, I looked up the photos I took in Europe…
and I look at photos of our time in the Louvre museum in Paris and
I was looking at the Venus de Milo and the Wing victory at Samothrace
and on another day, in Rome, we went to the Vatican and there saw the
Laocoon group and the Pieta of Michelangelo, all of these are Statues …
and it got me to thinking, I recalled a modern statues like “The Thinker”
by Rodin and the Statue of Liberty… then I got to thinking about
pictures like the ones I saw in various museums in Europe like
The Mona Lisa and Liberty leading the people…
and then I got to thinking about all the painting that have been done and
all the statues that have been done and why do we honor these works of art?
in other words, what about this art that makes us prize them and other art
we just put into smaller museums or ignore…
so what criteria do we use to judge art…
what makes us think the Mona Lisa is the greatest painting in the
world and other paintings not so good? there is of course a whole
area of philosophy which talks about this, Aesthetics…
do we value the Mona Lisa for example because it was done by Da Vinci or
do we value it because it is “great” art? I suspect a great deal of the time,
we “value” certain pieces of art because who did it as oppose to what the art is…
if you think about it, I hang a Thomas grant on my wall and no one knows or cares,
I hang a Da Vinci on my wall, and I have everyone’s attention…
so under those terms, it is not the art that is exciting, but the name,
Da Vinci, that gets people excited… You have a Da Vinci? wow…
and no wondering about the art piece, just you have a Da Vinci?
I can’t help but wonder that because our age is the age that values
quantity over quality, we forget or we don’t care about quality in art…
the art may be excellent but do we notice? Or do we just say, that is a Da Vinci
and that answers all questions… I have been to many, many museums over the
years, I like going to museums… I find them peaceful… they give me
much to think about…I try to relate the painting to the time period it was done
in… you look at a painting and try to understand not only what was painted but why?
what is the context of this painting? we see how strong painting was until 1900 and then
painting as an art went from thinking about the color and lines to looking at the name
and can we put it on a wall somewhere… the modern age changed the way we look
at art… once again, I suspect because we do value quantity over quality…
is great art possible today? not literature and not music, but painting and sculpture and
statues and buildings? can we have great art in this modern age where we measure
things in our GNP and who did it and how many we can produce…
not art but production is valued, quantity, not quality…
Kropotkin
Way I see it is ancient art is overrated, but modern art is very, very, very, extremely overrated.
K: based on what criteria? what method would you use to judge such a matter?
Kropotkin
I have 5 minutes before I have to leave for work…
What if we achieve what I have ask for… which is everyone only works
4 or 5 hours a day and we have an equal society in which no one has
billions of dollars and everyone has roughly the same standard of living…
so, you only work say 5 hours a day and you then have the day free…
what would you do? would you spend your time on the couch watching TV
or would you work out or would you spend your time enriching your mind
and soul? I would spend my free time reading and studying and writing…
I would be improving my mind and in doing so, I would be improving who I am…
so what would you be doing in this ideal world where all your physical needs are met
and all you have to do is…
Kropotkin
so yesterday, I posted about what would you do if your physical needs are met…
so would you study or read or exercise more? what would you do?
Now my reason for bringing this up is simple… what would you do to
become more human? Now once again, becoming human is about
pursuing your higher human aspects, not your lower or instinctual level…
So in making yourself a better human being, you are making yourself a
more learned human being or more kinder human being or a more tolerant
human being, a more loving human being… these are your higher human aspects…
the lower aspects are anger and hate and meanness…
the base emotions…so if your needs are met, then what will you do
to become who you are?
Socrates said… Know thyself
Nietzsche said… become who you are…
what if they are one and the same?
Kropotkin said…the quest is to become more human…
Kropotkin
What if you are a brutish thug?
What if you want more stuff than other people have?
Then you can’t be who you are because that’s not allowed in PK’s ideal world. PK likes certain things and he values certain things and so those things are what a human ought to want.
And in that sense, he does become a brutish thug for all his claims to be civilized, much like I’ve been pointing out about the world for years. And, he does want more stuff than other people have, which is why he’s pushing for it and I’m the same which is why I’ve been pushing for better, too.
What have you said, Phyllo, that isn’t a positive truth? I want more reasons to be optimistic and hopeful, I want to see this world where dreams become nightmares change those nightmares back into beautiful dreams. This is far more than most have. I would become a brutish thug and a bully in the pursuit of dragging people towards this goal against their will. Would I be wrong to do so? Is PK wrong to do what he does?
standards of beauty
It seems that you don’t actually want people to be themselves. You want to impose your ideas of what they ought to be, onto them.
You’re rationalizing it as “the ends justify the means”, although even “the ends” are you own and not necessarily what others want.
One ought to be free to pursue one’s own ends, with the limitation that one can’t excessively harm or impede others in the process. That’s a balance to strive for.