a new understanding of today, time and space.

if I were to say, the ideal society is where
we have ended war and poverty and intolerance and hatred
and bigotry and religions…

the ideal society is one where we only work a few hours a day and
we spend the rest of the day, in some aspect of improving ourselves…
learning a new language or climbing a mountain or running a 5 minute mile
or reading a book are all forms of improving ourselves…changing who we
are……….

now many will jump up here and say, it isn’t possible or it won’t work
this utopia of yours or it is a fantasy or it is what it is…

thus affirming the idea that people can only say no,
they cannot say yes and see the possibilities of change…

we can have a society where we only work a few hours a day
and spend the rest of the day doing things of interest to us…
the question becomes, do we spend the effort to try
to get from point A, which is today, to point B, which is our
ideal society… instead of saying, it is impossible or it is a
unreachable fantasy, we could say, how do we go from point
A to point B………… how do we achieve our goal here……

what will it take to get from our current broken society to
a point where we are no longer a nihilistic society/culture?

instead of saying no, it is possible to say, yes, what does it
take to get to our ideal society/culture………….

we are far too use to saying no,
instead of saying yes…it is possible…

what would it take for you to learn to say yes instead
of saying no?

Kropotkin

to properly understand experience and how we understand experience,
let us follow through experience…

we are born…the senses like vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell…
give us information about the world, about experiences……

but at birth, we are unable to make sense of these sensations given
by the senses… in other words, we might hear a voice, but we cannot
understand the voice and we do not even know the voice is a voice…
for us at birth, it is simply a sound that has no meaning for us…
as the year passes, the 1st year, we begin to make some small sense of the world…
we might be able to connect the sound we hear as a voice to come from
a specific human being…but we still don’t know what the words are yet……

in other words, we learn from experience what voices are and what sound is
and what smell is and what is touch…and at the same time as we are experiencing
our senses, we are also being indoctrinated and this indoctrination continues to the
point of when we are finally able to get clear of and escape ourselves from
this indoctrination…usually adulthood…

so we are getting information about the world from our senses
and we are being told what that information means from
our parents, the schools, the media, the state, and that information
is given understanding by the myths and biases and habits and prejudices
we are being taught/indoctrinated with from childbirth…………

the form of the world as we understand it comes from the indoctrinations
that we are taught from childhood……

or to say it another way,
we don’t know anything a priori…

our information of the world comes to us from experience, empirically……
from parents and school and the state and classmates and we
take an experience and understand it from that information
that we were taught about the world from parents and school and the state
and classmates…

let us say, something dropped from the sky…
we would attempt to understand that something
from our experiences…the object is silver…
so we compare other silver objects to this object,
but it doesn’t seem to compare… we then
try to match it with other items that we know of…
but we are stymied because we cannot know or understand
an object without knowing, from experience, what an object is…

can you know a priori what an aspirin tablet is?
no…… simple as that………you cannot know or understand
what aspirin is before you have already experienced it in some
fashion……

the object from the sky… how to you understand something
without an experience of it… the object from the sky is
a tool meant to repair a space ship…would we be able to
understand that without any experience with it… perhaps
if we compare the object from space with tools we already have
and we might, might be able to relate the space object with tools
we already have, but it would mean we can’t “think” our way into
understanding, we would have to measure and compare and give context
to the space object… in other words, we would use experience to
connect the space object to our tools… to our hammer or to our screwdriver
or something like that……….

now one might try to save the a priori concept by relating them
to mathematical concepts…
but once again, we learn math by experience, we are taught
1 + 1 =2…… we don’t have that knowledge instinctively, because
if we did, then why do we go to school to learn it?
I recall in my youth, 50 years ago, of learning my math tables…
I recall spending hours reciting the times tables… 8 times 5 is 40…
9 times 5 is 45, 10 times 5 is 50… we spend a whole lot of time
in our youth reciting such stuff…if it were a priori, then we are
wasting a lot of time in youth learning stuff we already know…

our very childhood learning is argument enought that we learn
via experience, empirically and not by any a priori means…

the practical matters of our educational system is proof enough
that we learn empirically and we understand by experience…
although you have emprirically and experience, those two words
really mean the same thing…

Kropotkin

Human beings are creatures who act and engage with
actions, activity, movement………

we do things every single day…
we wake up and we go to work
and we make love and we run traffic signals…
in fact, we do and engage with hundreds of
actions a day…

what we do is try to create value and meaning in those actions…
for example, when I give my wife flowers… that action has value,
giving flowers “means” I love my wife… the action, flower giving,
has value and meaning to me…

we try to give our actions value and meaning…

let us try a thought experiment…

let us think about work and work in a factory or
a factory light… factory light is a supermarket
where checkers stand all day and scan items or
weigh items…as I have done that for over 10 years,
it is something I am rather familiar with…

the reason why factor work is so dehumanizing and so devoid
of meaning is because of the nature of the work…

what meaning or value can I give or create from
scanning bread or cans of corn or weighing apples all day long……

the very repetition of the work means it has no value or meaning, no point
to it…… I cannot create value or meaning out of scanning bread all day long…

and we humans, that is what we do, try to create value and meaning out
of our actions……….

some actions don’t need that… that are of value just by their doing…

for example, playing a game or watching a game has its own value,
its own meaning… when I played baseball, I enjoyed it and it had
value for its own actions… tonight, I watched the SF Giants played
the LA Dodgers in baseball… that act was its own meaning,
it was its own meaning or value……… play and games don’t need to search
for some value or justification…their have value just by their doing…

that activity of playing or watching baseball has some value already…
we don’t need to search for meaning in baseball or in play…
baseball has value and meaning to me already……

we also have value and meaning in the arts…… we don’t need to
find value in the creation of art…we can just engage in art, whatever
art that maybe or we can look at art and we don’t need to find some
external value or meaning in doing or looking at art… doing so
is its own value, meaning… unlike scanning items all day which has
no value or meaning… it is simply busy work… we cannot find
value or meaning in such work as in scanning items all day…

so we try to discover value and meaning in our actions by such means
as the myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions and biases
of our childhood indoctrinations…

work is suppose to have some higher value, but that is a lie, meant
to give us some reason to work…

in our efforts to find meaning and value in all our actions, we
sometimes lie to ourselves…… and pretend that these actions,
or those actions have some value, have some meaning…
but we find as we grow older… that actions we thought
were of value, actions that did have meaning, don’t have value or meaning…
I find work to be of no value or no meaning……
it is a pointless exercise of futility with no value or no meaning in our lives…

we engage in actions all our live and the point of those actions is to
find some value or meaning within them………

Kropotkin

problem of existence…

how to find meaning in our lives……

we try to find meaning in the actions that we have…
we look for meaning in the flowers we give to someone…
we look for meaning in the music we listen to…
we look for meaning in the books we read………
we try to find our own personal meaning in these actions
and other actions…………

take the Japanese tea ceremony… by the simple creation of
structure in their ceremony, they have created value in it…

we can find value, meaning, purpose in such activity, in such actions
as the Japanese tea ceremony… but separate it out from
day to day life that we take for granted… it cannot become routine
or factory like when we do actions continuously to the point of
boredom or ennue or complete indifference as is the result of modern life…

to infuse our lives with meaning, purpose, we must begin with
infusing our actions, our acts, the events we participate in, with meaning
and purpose…we find meaning in our lives by giving our actions meaning,
purpose…

that is one possible solution to the problem of existence…

Kropotkin

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero,
Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Buddha, Nagarjuna,
Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel,
Marx, Nietzsche, Dewey, Sartre, Heidegger………

each of these people taught a version of reality…
each of them told us the truth…
but each “truth” was just another aspect of the blind
men who went to discover what a object was and
because they each grabbed a different part of the object,
they thought the object was different for each… but it wasn’t…
the blind men all went and grabbed a different part of a elephant…
and because they each grabbed a different part, one grabbed
the trunk and the other the tusks and the other the leg and another
the tail and because of this, they thought they were touching many
different objects… but because they were blind, they couldn’t see
that they were all grabbing the same object……

each thinker listed above all thought they were grabbing different
aspects of reality… but the reality is, they were all grabbing the same
reality…they just didn’t realize it………

should you study Kant or should study Plato or should you study
the Buddha or should you study Sartre… yes, for they all write
about the same thing…… the same reality just different aspects of
that reality…does that mean we have one reality for all human beings?

no………

I exists in our modern time and my “reality” is going to be different because
what I see and hear and taste and touch and smell is different then what
Socrates or Cicero or Hume saw or tasted or touch or smelled or heard…….

we are just describing a very large elephant which is the current reality around me…
and those thinkers are just describing the reality that was current around them……….

you can study each and every single one of them or just one or two and you will
find that you will reach the same place… they are all just a means to reach
the same place…and that place is?

as a means to understand the “reality” you exist within……

and when you describe “reality” it is just another side of the
elephant……….

Kropotkin

have you figured out the “reality” all those thinkers were
trying to understand?

its simple, they are describing different aspects of being human…
one says the legs and another says the arms and another says the ears…
but they are all describing the same thing… what it means to be human……

they each described a different aspect of being human… and one says
being human is to escape suffering and another says being human is
eternal forms and another says, duty to ancestors and another says,
duty to god and another says, everything is simply experiences
and another says…………

they each describe a different aspect of being human…….

and that is the “reality” they each try to understand…

what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

the attempt to find the meaning in our life
via events, experiences, emotions or actions…
is not going to be successful…
mainly because we cannot answer an “inside” question
with an “outside” answer…….

we can only answer an “inside” question with an
“inside” answer……

in other words, to find meaning is to find the “truth”
within us, not outside of us……….

the outside world certainly can show us the path to “truth”
“truth” is just another way of saying, meaning…
but the outside world is only a guide, nothing more…

the path to being human lies inside of us, not outside in
any experience or event or activity…………

those outside experiences, events, activities can help us understand
our path, our “truth”, our meaning……….

the process to becoming human, fully human lies inside of us,
not outside of us…….

Kropotkin

as I continue my study of philosophy,
I am also studying the society at large
and I am studying history…….

as I have read various philosophers, I am now on Kant…
thing I have notice is that they, the philosophers don’t
have any type of historical study in their works…
in other words, when say, Hume works out an idea,
that idea doesn’t exists in history, it is an isolated idea
that exists outside of history…ideas are treated as
separate from or isolated from history…
even Kant doesn’t work out his idea’s historically,
they exist outside of and independent of history…
philosophers before Kant would bring up prior philosophical
idea’s only to refute them, not as historical idea’s in themselves
but as ideas to argue against…………

we modern man has in fact done is take an idea and place
it within history… a writer who doesn’t look at the historical
aspect of an idea is a pretty piss poor writer, in our eyes anyway,
beginning with writers like Goethe and Vico, we begin to understand
ideas in a historical context… we no longer look at ideas as independent
and separate from history… idea’s have an historical context
and that is an modern viewpoint… that is an modern invention…

we begin the modern idea of the creation of context of history within
philosophy with Hegel… and every philosopher thereafter must
put philosophy into historical context………. idea’s do have history
and we must account for idea’s in a historical context……
the birth of this idea of philosophical ideas having a historical context
is a good thing and a modern invention worth celebrating…

I guess I must credit the enlightenment writers also, as they focus a great deal
on history… Voltaire and Hume wrote well respected histories……

context which means experience is everything……
history creates context…

Kropotkin

we have two separate and distinct societies today,
those who believe and those who don’t……
I don’t believe and I have never tried to hide that……

but it has occurred to me that belief in god is a different thing
then non-belief…… and the difference, one of them anyway,
is belief in god negates history… belief in god is belief in
one world, created by god and populated by god with no reference
to any historical context of the world, people or animals…….
and then exists end times, where we exists outside of time forever…
on the right hand of god as it were………

believe is ahistorical, it doesn’t need history to exist…….

whereas non-belief is about historical context…
if you believe in Darwin and I do, then you believe in
the historical context that Darwin places on the world,
man, animals… life……

the history of life is historical… whereas belief is not…

everything is historical when you are a non-believer…
and everything is not historical when you are a believer…

I am born, I live and I die… everything about me exists in history and
must be seen in a historical context… whereas if I am a believer,
I don’t need or want history because god is not about historical context…
that is why it is easy to dismiss global warming or over pollution or overpopulation
warnings because it doesn’t matter in the universe of god… because
all that matters is heaven and getting to heaven and heaven is not
about historical context because you are there forever… and who cares
about earthly concerns when it is about spending time on heaven…
or so says the believer……
and so we have one root cause for the indifference to the major
problems of humanity and existence…….believers don’t care because
they are ahistorical and non-believers are historical and they must
care because they exist within history and is part of history and
a legacy of history and a creator of history……

history is before us and history is during us and history is after us…
we exists in historical context… while history before us could
be considered like the Zen problem… where before Zen, the mountains
are stable and the sea calm and the river stays in its bank…
while during Zen, the mountains dance and the sea rages
and the river overflows it’s banks and after Zen,
the mountain are stable and the sea becomes calm and
the river stays in its banks…

that is us… in the middle of history and in the middle of Zen……
the mountains are dancing and the sea is wild and turbulent
and the river has overflowed it bank’s…

and how do we return to the after Zen and after history…
we don’t… but we don’t allow the during Zen to claim our
understanding of what it means to be human and how to become
more human……. what are our possibilities? to have trust in
history is the only trust we need to have…………
if we trust Darwin to be right, and he is, then we must have some
faith in history……… and simply work out our issues, both individually
and collectively…….

to state you believe in god is to say, you don’t believe in history
and to say you don’t believe says, you do believe in history……

Kropotkin

poetry and truth… that was the name of Goethe’s autobiography…

since the days of the Greeks, Poets were thought to have
a direct connection to the gods…… they were honored and
vilified and given the highest seat and thrown into jail……

Plato wanted to ban the poet because his verse too incendiary for
the common man……….

and this was true until, until the “modern” age…
few poets of the 20 century were even noticed
and those who were noticed are the honored “unread”…great poets
who no one actually reads… but their name gets a place in
in the textbooks as “great” poets of the 20th century…

Rilke is one such name…

but the real question becomes, why have we killed the poets?

who writes poetry and who reads it? you might as well be
making prayers to Ra as so far as writing poetry… for all the good it will do you…

why have we lost the feel, the touch for poems?

what has happened to poetry?

we have our truths, oh, we have so many truths, we need
years, decades to understand and remember them…

the earth is 93 million miles from earth
and New York has 8 million people…
and the dinosaurs died 65 million years ago…

do those truths equal this truth…

Nur im Raum der ruhmung darf die Klage
gehn, die Nymphe des geweinten Quells……

I leave it untranslated on purpose…….

we have cast out poetry because we have cast
out of paradise… emotions, feelings, sentiments……

in our name, IQ45 has separated children including infants from their parents
and most of the country has a collective yawn…

if a Kardashian has a hangnail, the country will hold a telethon to raise money
for such a crisis for humanity……………

in losing the example of poetry, we have lost our understanding of
what is really important…………… we have lost our ability of
discovering what is really important, emotionally, in feelings,
in sentiments……………….

we have clowns like IQ45 who “feel” that important matters are
emotional… they have opinions that they disguise as facts……
and they think that their feelings are a substitute for logic
and facts and “truth” but that is different from what I am talking about…

we cannot overcome our emotions until we understand that they
are a part of us, they are an essential part of us… when
we think we our reasoning, we are really emotionally weighing
out our options, not with logic or rational thought, but with
feeling, with us being emotional……….

we cannot tell the difference between our emotions
and our rational thought……. we think they are the same thing…
they are not…………

and this failure has cost us our poets, our poetry…

why have poets, when we can’t even tell the difference
between emotions and rational thought…………

Kropotkin

why waste the time on poetry one might ask?

Because as everyone knows, poetry is dead…
and has been dead for quite a while…

Killed by its own boring nature…

once upon a time, while poetry was still fashionable,
people thought the search for the truth was really a search
for an Aesthetic theory…

Aesthetic:

1: concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty…
2: set of principles underlying and guiding the work of a
particular artist or movement…

the search for the truth was a search for beauty…
and if we found beauty, we found the truth…

and this was how the truth was perceived for generations…

we moderns, no longer know what is beautiful and so we
no longer know what the truth is… or so goes one such theory…

Poetry is dead…

or said another way, we have lost the Aesthetic……

in my wasted youth, I wrote poetry… laid waste to
many tree’s in search of poetic truth…………

now those poems sit in some box wasting away…
most likely being eaten by rats…
I couldn’t think of a better fate for those poems……………

poetry is dead…

and with it, the ability to wonder and feel ashamed and fall in love…….

in my youth, I read almost all of Blake and Tennison… in fact, all
of the English Romantic poets I read…………

and I was moved… to tears…….

I read them today and they are just words on a page, meaning nothing…

just well written words that no longer move me to tears…………

have the words changed? no, I have changed and in my old age,
I am no longer moved by words bathed in Aesthetics…….

the dance between words and the human soul no longer move me…

I have lost something very important… but I can’t remember what…

does the dance between the words of poetry and the soul, still move you?

I hope so…… it means there is still hope for you…….

I am waiting for the Autopsy on poetry…

was it suicide… was it death by murder… or was it death by indifference…

Aesthetic: the theory that the search for beauty actually matters…….

do we understand that today?

Kropotkin

I went online looking for poems to post here…

to understand why poetry has died

and I found this……

come
home.

that is the entire poem……

let us start small and work our way up…

is this a poem?

and if not, why not?

Kropotkin

recall that poetry is a search for truth or truths not found
any other way… what truth does our little poem convey?

come
home.

Kropotkin

we try to understand our little poem…

what is “home”?

it is a place… I am a home body now… but it didn’t use to be that
way… I would work my shifts then go out to the bar……….
I rarely spent any time at home… then as I got older,
home became more and more important……

Now, I rarely ever leave home unless I have to…
to work and that is about it……………

Home is a value………

and we come to an understanding of poetry…

it is about values…

and what have I said about philosophy?

science is about facts and philosophy is about values………

so poetry is just the other side of philosophy in its
quest for the “truth” about values………

what values are really important?

both philosophy and poetry try to seek out the truth of which
value are really worth living………

and we see the connection between philosophy and poetry…

it becomes a question of values……….

which values are really the values should be seeking?

Kropotkin

poetry is about values and which values should
we obey……

read the “second coming” by Yeats….

or read the “the wasteland” by TS Elliot…

what values are they talking about?

and how is that any different then anything by Nietzsche or
Kierkegaard?

find the values… for within values do we humans find our
reason for existence, find the values and we find out what
we live for and what we die for and what gives life meaning……

and finding the values within poetry is just as valid as finding the
values within philosophy………

Kropotkinkin

Goethe often said that Werther must die so that Goethe can live…

and this is the value of the act of creation…

we vent, so that we may keep on creating…

so that we don’t get stuck in some loop that
ties us into that loop forever…

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
Goethe often said that Werther must die so that Goethe can live…

and this is the value of the act of creation…

we vent, so that we may keep on creating…

so that we don’t get stuck in some loop that
ties us into that loop forever…

K: and what must you kill that allow you to live?

where do you expend that inner energy that must be used
up or it threaten to destroy us…

remember life is an equation…
and every equation has an equal sign to it…
you must equal out every part or the equation
is unbalanced, it threatens “to fall apart”…
every single system must balanced out or it
eventually fails…

our inner lives is unbalanced… and threatens to
derail our entire society… so how do we regain balance
within ouro current society?

we begin by finding balance within us… we find that equation
that needs to be balanced… we find the truth…
be it philosophy or be it poetry or be it science or be
it religion…

we find values that allow us to recover our balance,
equal our equation…

so, what values or equation is needed to find society’s balance,
to find society’s equation?

we are living the wrong values and it shows in how unbalance
society is right now…….and like any equation, if it is unbalanced,
it threatens to fail, to collapse… and we are at that point right now…

so, how do we find the values that allow society to recover its
balance?

Kropotkin

human knowledge, its scope and limits…
not necessarily the book by Russell, but the actual idea
behind the scope and limit of human knowledge……

our limit of knowledge is really that of the senses…
but we can extend our sense via technological means
by telescope and microscope and radio waves and other such
devices that allow us to “see” or “hear” at great distances…

we can then by use of prior experience, by comparing and contrasting
things, by analysis (which is simple comparing and contrasting)
we can make sense of our new “experiences”…………

but my question is not about the scope and limits of knowledge,
but what the knowledge is and what do we do with that knowledge…
how we got that knowledge is of less importance to me then
what the knowledge is……………science if very good at gaining
knowledge, but not very good at making sense of that knowledge…
science understands the how, but not the why of knowledge…….

for to understand that knowledge requires values……
the why of knowledge is a question of values…

the earth is 93 million miles from the sun…
this is a how…but it doesn’t answer the why of the earth
being 93 million miles from sun………

the solar system is a system and for a system to succeed it must
be balanced and stable……. the planets are in a stable orbit
and thus the system is stable… if one of the planets went rogue,
left its orbit, then the entire system would be in danger because
our solar system is a delicate system of checks and balances
between the various masses, which we call the planets with the sun…

by understand the solar system we can see how a system remains
a viable and active system………. it must remain in balance
and in its equation…………………add one number to either side of an
equation and the equation no longer works and that threatens the
stability of the equation……………….the solar system is no different…….
add an aspect to either side of the equation and the system is no longer in balance

but that is part of the scope and limits of human knowledge…

this look at human knowledge and its scope and limits has been a long
standing aspect of philosophy……………… entire forest have
been ripped up and turned into tree’s so that people can
explain in great detail their understanding of the scope and limits
of knowledge…

I am just not sure it belongs in the front lines of philosophy anymore…….

but what should be in the front lines of philosophy?

what should we give emphasis to?

Kropotkin

I have been working on my study of Kant…
Kant seems to have made his base, his starting
point, space and time……
the question of space and time has confused a whole lot of people
since the beginning of time…….

one question that has been asked and is key to Kant is,
is space real? does space have a physical reality to it?
and I believe the answer is yes…….

space is a physical object like my table or myself……

think about a black hole… where gravity is so strong that
nothing can escape it, not even light…… but can space escape it?
I would say no… if I was able to exist right at the opening
of a black hole and there was no other matter coming at me,
would I feel the, for lack of a better word here, the pressure coming
from space itself? now think of an concept like pressure…
we cannot see pressure but if we were to go on another planet
like Jupiter and be able to set foot on the “ground” (yes, knowing it
is most likely that Jupiter doesn’t have a ground as we know it)
but anyway, if I step out, the pressure would crush me…
and yet, I cannot with my senses detect the presence
of pressure outside of that stuff up feeling we get during
weather changes……… we can’t see it or hear it or smell it or taste
or touch it, but it is there……. we cannot reach out our hand and
touch pressure ……… but during an Hurricane, we can feel with our bodies
the changing pressure… but you can’t reach out and touch it…
it presses down upon you and you feel that pressure, but you cannot
move that pressure away from you……… space is like pressure……
it can press down upon you but you cannot reach out and touch it……
space can be move like in a black hole or with the mass of a large star……

it exists……. we just don’t have the tools right now to measure it or
to touch it…… but we touch it every single day… space can bend
and that bending shows us that space does exist in physical form…….
so what is space made up off? it is a special rule object in the
physical universe? if we have multiverses, then do we have
more then one type of space? I would say yes………

just as we have multi dimensions, we can have multi space……
each dimension can be another type of space…………
we can think of dimensions as another form of space……

do I know this by “intuition”? I can know this by simply understanding
that I exist in one type of space and there is the possibility of another
type of space that can exist…take information we gained via
experience and then extrapolate it to the possibility of
other experiences……………….

now some philosophers would suggest that I arrived at the possibility
of different spaces via “intuition” or a priori……….but I simply
used the space I already know by experiences, and asked,
what if there is another space? That I cannot know by experience,
as of now, but within the realm of possibility I can know by experience at
some later date……………….

let us look at something basic… a triangle…
did we begin to discover the triangle by first knowing
that the sum of the measure of the interior angles of a triangle
in Euclidian space is always 180 degree’s
or did we create or find a triangle and then we figured out that
the sum of the triangle was the sum of the measure of the interior
angles in Euclidian space is always 180 degree’s?

I contend that we had the triangle first and then from there
found out the measurements and not the other way around where
we had the measurements and then found out the shape of the
triangle……… we “discovered” what we know about the triangle from
the triangle itself, we had the experience and then, and then discovered
the information about the triangle…

we experienced the triangle and then found out the information we
needed and the same goes for space…… we experienced space and
then we are finding out the information we need as we go along…

Kropotkin

if I could round up the so called leaders of America into one
room… people like Bill Gates, Warren buffet, Cuban, political
leaders like Obama and Schumer and Pelosi and sport like
Lebron James and Tom Brady, all of them into one room…
Here is what I would say to them…

"here we have in one room, the leadership of America…
and I say unto you… You have failed in exercising leadership in this
dark hour in American history. You have stayed silent while the forces
of darkness have systematically destroyed America in ways that can’t even
be understood. You have stayed silent while the forces of darkness has
promoted bigotry and ignorance and intolerence and hatred. You have stayed
silent because of fear or you share this unAmerican views or you simply
don’t care and in any case that disqualifies you from being a leader.
For having the responsibility of leadership comes the responsibility
of doing the right thing, even if it is unpopular and even if it cost
you money, time, efforts, friends and if need be, your life.

For doing the right thing is what leadership is all about.
You may say, well, these forces haven’t done any real damage.
Then travel down Texas or Florida and see the eyes of children
who have been forcible taken from their mothers and fathers.
Tell me no real damage has been done. But Kropotkin,
they aren’t even American’s. Why should we care what
happens to people who aren’t even American’s?

Leadership is about caring to what happens to all people,
not just people who are white or with money or a specific
color, creed, race or nationality. Leadership is about promoting
the best interest of all the people, not just certain people.
And you people in this room have failed in that.

If you claim to be religious or pro-life, you have failed in that.
For the forces of darkness have promoted not only ignorance
and bigotry, but they have promoted Nihilism. They have
put monetary concerns over human lives. They have put profit
and money over human lives and that is nihilism…
and have any of you spoken out about this?

No, you haven’t done so. You have stayed silent.
And that silence has convicted you of a failure of leadership.
You want the perks of leadership. The money, the fame, the glory,
but you don’t want the responsibility of leadership.
Where hard choices exists and you must decide to fight
for human beings.

The principle of equality requires that people have equal rights
and among those rights exists not only the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness, but the right to food and water but also housing
and education and medical care and retirement.

If we prevent people from having any of these rights, then we
are guilty of inequality and injustice. For justice requires, no justice
demands equality. If we fail to treat people equally, regardless of
race, creed, color, nationality, then we are guilty of committing
acts of injustice. How can we call ourselves leaders if we
are guilty of the worst crime of all, that of perpetuating
injustice.

Leadership, real leadership means we aren’t just about
creating profit and loss and who gets promoted and who doesn’t,
but leadership is about applying the values are values
that lead to the betterment of people.

Leadership is about those values of justice and equality
and freedom and tolerance. And we must promote those
values even at the cost of making a profit, even at the
cost of losing our job, and why?

Why? Because those values we live by is what makes life
worth living and worth dying for. Those values are what makes
human beings special. Not accidental traits like being born
white or being born American or male.

No, the values worth living are the value of justice and the value
of equality and the value of love and the value of charity and the hope
those values give people. It is not about the GDP, the gross domestic
product of the products we produce that give us our reason for life,
but the values that we have like love and hope and justice.

And the forces of darkness are opposed to such values like love
and justice and equality. The are not only anti-American but they
are anti-life.

You, the so called leaders have failed in your duties and responsibilities
to stand against policies that are unjust and promoted inequality
and believe in such values as hate and anger and greed.

You have failed and your legacy will be tarnished. For leaders
don’t just wait until the fight reaches them, they act before
the events get out of hand and you, you have not acted or even
said anything and the forces of darkness have been destroying
hope and freedom and charity and justice and tolerance and you have said
nothing, you have done nothing.

Don’t let fear stop you from doing the right thing.

You must act and you must speak out against the darkness that covers
our land with shame and violence and legal inequality.

You have failed. Tell us, what excuses do you offer us for your failure to speak,
for your failure to act.

Kropotkin