a new understanding of today, time and space.

I had one of those strange incomprehensible dreams last night…

I dreamt I was a tourist but I was in very, very cold place…
someone in my dream made a point of the day’s weather being rather
warm at 22 degree’s…because it was so cold, the land and sea and sky
all looked different… everything seemed to be frozen…

but I felt mostly like a tourist and upon thinking about it,
I feel like I am a tourist here and now… trying to figure
out the local customs and practices, but not having much success…
I speak the language but I really don’t speak the language…
I seem to miss so much and I don’t know why…

I guess what I think I am saying is, in my life right now,
I feel like a tourist trying to understand the local area I am
visiting…trying to make sense of everything…
I know this is not very clear, but I can’t help that…

how can we be a tourist in our own life?

Kropotkin

in my readings of the enlightenment, I read quite a bit
about the “laws of nature” and how we ought to conform
to the “laws of nature”…(the Chinese are big on this also)
the question becomes, what are the “laws of nature”?

the “laws of nature” are the “laws” or rules that nature follows…
gravity for example, is a “law of nature” as is evolution,
and already, we follow these “laws of nature”…we must, must
conform to evolution and gravity and any other law/rule of nature
we face…in fact, this is the point of a “law of nature” we cannot
escape them…just as human beings cannot escape our animal
nature, we must eat and sleep and drink and fornicate…
we are simply following our already built in rules/laws of actions…
for example, try to stop your breathing… hold your breath…
and all that will happen is you pass out and you start breathing again,
or try to stop your heart from beating, can’t or stop your liver from working,
you just can’t… these are laws/rules we must obey, we have no choice…
so these “laws of nature” exist in us, within us and we have no choice…
we are determined for we have no choice…determinism rules at this level…

but we have free will in other areas…and this is important…
we are free to act in several other area’s…my behavior or actions
toward you or anyone is set by free will, I have a choice…we have freedom
of actions in many areas…

but in both cases of determinism and free will, we are the agents of actions…
in some cases, we have no choice as in certain “laws of nature”, gravity and evolution
and in other cases, we are free to act as we will…

now to revert to my language, determinism is the lower agency of the human
being, we must act or be in a certain way, we have no choice… we must breath
and our heart must beat, we have no choice…freedom of choice however is
the higher functions of the human being…the “law of nature” that determines
us doesn’t determine our higher actions… it is important to understand that
within us lies the “laws of nature” but we have freedom of action in certain cases…

and if we make a choice, we are using our higher function of freedom, we are using
our higher level of being human…so what does this mean?

this is simply pointing out that we can create with our own choices and our
own freedoms, a much better, a much more human earth…Jean-Paul Sartre
once wrote, that “hell is other people” well that doesn’t need to be true…
we can also create paradise without any resort to “utopia”…
we create heaven and hell by our actions toward others…
the boss who is a dick, (I have one of those right now) has made
a choice of being a dick… he doesn’t have to be, he is freely acting…
he is making a choice… and in doing so, making my life very difficult,
but to be clear, he is not being determined to be an asshole, he is making a
choice and he doesn’t need to do that… “hell is other people”
but this doesn’t need to be true… we hold, in our hands,
whither we live in hell or heaven… we choose…

there is a young bagger who is lazy and useless and has lied to my face…
so needless to say, I don’t really care for him…he thinks I am a dick for wanting
him to do his job… a conflict of perception…he is 18 and he does 18 year
old things like not doing his job and thinking a job is fun and games…
and for him, it is just fun and games, he doesn’t need to do this…
whereas I am 40 years older then he is and I take the job seriously,
(even if I truly hate my job like I really hate my job, I still take it seriously)
he has made a choice of working and I made a choice of working and if
you are going to make a choice of working, then you need to work, that is why
it is called work…I expect him and anyone else who is a bagger to actually do
their job as I do my job to the best of my abilities… the conflict that arises is
because of our different understanding of what it is to work…
if he even did the minimal amount of work, I wouldn’t care what he did…
he thinks I am making his life hell, I’ve heard this from other baggers,
“hell is other people”…but because he is so lazy he is making tons more
work for everyone else and that is what I object to… he is creating more
work for everyone…trying to get his to do his job is a losing cause
because that is not important to him, his work ethic is here and my work
ethic is there and thus conflict arises…(I am not the only person with a
problem with this bagger) I cannot create heaven for this kid because that
means he is doing even less then he is doing now, which isn’t really possible,
or I just leave him alone and nothing gets done and my job is even harder then
it already is…if I let him go, I work that much harder… so the choice
is do I let him be and allow him his freedom to do to whatever and let him have
his heaven but make my life hard and difficult, certainly not heaven…

and this choice is typical of choices we have every single day…
we can make people life much easier or much harder but again
context is what makes the difference…mistreating a child because
you were mistreated as a child is making a person life hell for no reason,
as opposed to trying to get someone to do the job there were hired for…

the kid fails to understand what is involved and what happens when he
doesn’t do his job but because he is young, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter
to him if stuff gets done or not whereas for me, it does matter because
it will my job harder or easier depending…lack of understanding,
failure to understand why it is so important to do his job, this is
the failure of this kid…he simply doesn’t understand…
and conflicts arise from this, one understand and one doesn’t,
and conflict arises… and this conflict creates the “hell of other people”

we have different perspective on matter and conflict arises…

Kropotkin

what is the value of philosophy?

is it to understand the world?

is it to change the world?

is it to inform the world?

the correct answer is

yes!

Kropotkin

one of the things philosophers believed in was the limits
of human knowledge… Descartes method was a manifesto
of limits as was Locke and all the enlightenment thinkers…
we cannot know everything… there are limits to our knowledge
because there are limits to our senses and our understanding…

I disagree with this… I believe that there are no limits to
our senses and our understanding… what is missing is
our asking the right questions… find the right questions
and the answers become clearer…

as technology and science grows in ability to see and hear and touch
farther and farther, we can experience more and more and in that
experience, we can begin to understand…

we can see galaxies almost back to the beginning of time and that
experience tells us something about the universe and with each leap
in technology and science, we can experience and understand more and more…

can we know everything? … yes, given enough time, we can
experience everything and thus understand everything…
but it will take time… will our species last long enough?
that remains to be seen… I don’t know…
but if we survive, we will know and that thought alone
should give us encouragement to survive…

Kropotkin

most enlightenment thinkers believed as Hume and
Diderot believed, that the world is orderly and subject
to universal, irreversible laws…

yet, we know that the world is not orderly, how do we
reconcile the two thoughts?

we say the world is an orderly existence at this moment,
and we cannot posit beyond this moment…
we can take as habit, like Hume suggested, that
chances are, tomorrow will be an orderly existence and
subject to universal laws… but we can’t know that,
at best, we can only assume that…

is the world orderly… at this moment, around me, yes, it is…
I can’t speak for anyone else, anywhere else, but here and now, yes,
the world is orderly… subject to the passage of time which is not
orderly and not subjected to universal laws…

Kropotkin

I don’t see how you get morals/morality from the “laws of nature”…
the fact that the earth revolves around the sun or gravity exists,
doesn’t get one a morality…motion does not create a morality…
evolution doesn’t seem to create a morality, although humans are
social creatures… we need social contact or we go insane or even die…
that social contact might give an outline of a morality/morals, but by itself
it doesn’t give a culture morals/morality…

looking at different cultures, one doesn’t see much of a common thread
between the different cultures and different moralities… every culture
seems to have different morality and a different way of looking at things…
and none of it seem to be inspired by the “laws of nature” or science…

I don’t see how one can get morality/morals from the “laws of nature”
or science because they are apples and oranges… they do and are different
things…morality is an human invention with no obvious influence from
the “laws of nature/science”…

one aspect is the fact that earlier societies didn’t know or have “laws of nature”
or science to depend on…morality/morals arise for earlier societies from
god or the rules of god or the priest interpretation of the rules of god, but
not from the “laws of nature”… we must look elsewhere to find what
creates morality/morals because it isn’t from science or the “laws of nature”

Kropotkin

so, yesterday the wife and I go to San Francisco, for my non
American friends, the day after thanksgiving is perhaps the biggest
shopping day of the year and everyone who isn’t working is out
and the wife and I went to Union square which is the heart of
SF shopping and believe me when I say, it was a fucking zoo…
I must admit, I was surprised by the number of cops out, every block
we walked had at least 6 cops there and Union square must had dozens,
on every single side of the square…anyway, there were animal activist
with bull horns on every street crossing around the square and people,
a whole lot of people… you could see the ice skating rink they set up in
Union square itself… every single restaurant in the area was full and some
had waiting lists of an hour…

now the question really becomes, why, why did these idiots, including my wife and me,
go to Union square? on the biggest shopping day of the year?

and that is the point, absolutely no one ask why…

why this behavior?

the reason is complex and many sided with many different answers
with no one reason being the full reason for all us being out on that day…

it was so crowded and chaotic that my wife complained of sensory overload…
it was really too much to take in, with so much action and all the buskers
and immense number of people and sounds of car horns and people and music
and construction being done with cop whistles in the street directing traffic…
it was so chaotic I almost got ran over by a cable car, not the worse way to die…

but once again, we must ask why? what was the point of all this?
people just enjoying the experience? buying things? anything you can buy, you can buy
online but that wasn’t the point, the point was, we are social creatures
and we must be social… and being social creatures, we must have some rules
of behavior that allow us to continue to be social…that is the point of morality, of ethics,
that we have rules that allow us to be social…but ethics/morality change with the
changes in social understanding, with changes in the environment…
we no longer stigmatize homosexuality or the use of drugs in the same
way we used to, this change in morality/ethics is due to changes in our environment,
changes in how we perceive who we are and what are we to do…

these changes show us that we are not fixed in our behavior nor are we fated
to have the same behavior… if morality/ ethics are flexible and changeable,
then those with a fixed understanding of what human beings are, are wrong…

who we are today is the result of a million years of evolution and the rules of
evolution still apply to us and that includes our psychology…
we are the sum results of all that came before even if that before is
2 minutes before… what about so called “innate” idea’s? we shall be
tackling that idea in the days ahead…

Kropotkin

I’m trying to mix and match all these various thoughts going
about my head…I’m trying to get to some answers or solutions to
problems I see or questions I have or get to the truth of …truth… I guess…

its like being lost in a jungle, you can’t see the trail you are on and
you can’t see the starting point or ending point and you have no idea
where you are in the midst of this big jungle…

you are not only dealing with the current jungle, but you are facing
the past and trying to reach the future…for a jungle exists in time,
within time, past, present and future and you have all three to deal with…

the only solution I can see is breaking it down into parts…
don’t get overwhelmed with trying to understand the whole thing…
understand bits and pieces around you and expand out…

try to understand history and economics and poli sci this way and
of course philosophy this way…it is difficult to understand something
anything, if you are in the middle of it… try to gain some distance
from it, try to get higher, above where you are standing… maybe, just
maybe one might be able to grasp where on is and where one has started
and where one might finish… the notion that has me out of sorts
is evolutionary psychology which may explain who we are in context of
where we have been… the long, very long years before the rise of
civilizations, maybe 15 or 12 thousand years ago, so we have humans
that have existed for upward of 2 million years and we must understand
that aspect of our life before we can explore our current situation…

the answer is out there, but it lies in our past, a million years into our past…
and the answer extends into the future, perhaps a million years into our future…

but let us start today, with ourselves and expand that into the past and into the future…

Kropotkin

as I see it, we have three different tracks that has made
us human today… this is expressed nicely by the
“nature vs nurture” argument that has existed for
a very long time…but it seems to me, to actually have three parts…

one, nurture, environment, the environment around us creates, in part,
who we are and the environment includes those around us, family, friends,
church, the state, schools, all in some fashion, influencing us…

two, we are animals and we come from over a billion years of life,
which is in part, one cell amoeba on down to dogs and elephants
and lions and tigers and bears, oh my… we are part of all that and more…
and we are programmed, by DNA from those billions of years…
we have that programming that makes us eat and drink and do
all the same things every single life form on earth does… think
of it like a computer program… and we must follow that program,
we have no choice, and that is instinct

the third rail is new and that is our programming from being human…
that is to say, how much of those millions of years of being human has
created programming in us? humans came out of tree’s say, 2 million years
ago and that was the start of the human branch of the tree of life…
we human adapted the strategy of survival of the apes that we came from
and then because we were on the ground, we had to implement new
strategies to survive…human strategies…and in the million plus years
of human existence, how much of those strategies became programed into
us… became new software that determined our behavior…
things like language and group social behavior and the development
of emotions and reasoning…tools developed to insure our survival…

humans existed in small groups of people, no more then 150 in any given
group for over a million years…living that way for that long has created
its own type of programming inside of us…we have software that was made
for a small group of people and was successful for over a million years…

you could guess that our social structure was created during those million years
and that in turn lead to our need for social acceptance and how we attract mates
and other strategies we need to survive within a small group of people…

but we no longer exist within a small group of people… we exist in very large groups
of people… my work, the grocery store has close to a 100 people working there…
that is probably larger then a lot of groups of people who lived for those millions
of years… and we have even much larger groups of people who exist together…
are the rules that govern us in small groups for a million years still applicable today
when we have groups of not only hundreds but thousands and millions?

so does the morality/rules of those small groups of maybe 150 people still work
today when we have millions? that is the great question of morality and ethics
that we must face today…and how does our programming of those million years
conflict with the programming of the billons of year of life and how does it conflict
with our current situation today? we have much to think about…

Kropotkin

I can imagine someone sitting at home reading my above post and
thinking to themselves, “what in god’s name does this have to do with me?”

and if we recall one of the basic questions we have is “who are we” and
“what are we to do” and this whole idea of nature vs nurture and my
three tracks, two of programming and one of nature… has everything to do
with who you are and what you are to do…

for if we can discover who we are by tracing the whole course of
human evolution including our psychology… this will answer many
questions as to “who are we” and what are we to do…

the question revolves around a rather tricky understanding
and that is the understanding of the word, instinct, and the
understanding of the word, innate…

for what is instinct and what is innate… the problem comes
when people mix and match those two words and that creates issues…
instinct seems to be programming that cannot be overcome and all animals
seem to follow whereas innate seems to suggest idea’s like god and math…
when you are born do you have innate idea’s like god within you…
because we know you have instinct idea’s like fight or flight…
so we have to be clear about those two words to make any headway
in our search for “who we are”…

Kropotkin

at work I keep a little notebook with me,
and yesterday, we were very busy and yet, I still
had idea’s that I wanted to get down, so in between
customers, I would write down idea’s… I have several small
pieces of paper with writings on it that I can barely read… let us see how this
goes…

we on occasion sell very large stuff animals,
and yesterday, across from the checkstands, up very high
on an empty shelf, someone put a very, very large stuffed bear…
cuddly thing, but over 5ft tall…
a lady came into my line, she was an older lady with a walker
and came with a dog, a very large dog… this dog took one look at this
very large bear and wanted nothing to do with it…in fact, this bear scared this
dog so much it refused to even walk near it and the lady had to back up and get out
of the checkstand the way she came because the dog would not go anywhere near this
bear…this is instinct… some very large creature that was clearly bigger then
the dog and the dog wanted absolutely nothing to do with it…this is instinct at work…
the dog could not have overridden this total fear of this bear even if the dog
wanted to…this is in part why animals like dogs have survive because of instincts
like this, stay the hell away from animals much larger then you, because you never know…

babies and toddlers would have also freaked out over this bear because it was so large…
I am not sure at what age a child would have been to overcome this total fear
of some very large animal even a stuffed bear…but that is the age where
a child can reason and be talked into coming near this bear… the child has seen
stuffed animals before and has experienced this, with experience comes understanding…

now to my experienced eyes, this bear was cute if not overly big…
not to mention expensive… anyway, this is one such example of
an animal having instinct… many, many other exists…

now how was this type of instinct created? it seems to me to have been
fashioned over long period of time… dogs for example, the ones that
survived and passed on its genes, were the dogs that had fear when
seeing a large creature of this size… these dogs survive and the instinct
to fear when seeing these large creatures was passed on…now is this
fear in the genes? or has it been imprinted in the dog in some fashion?

how exactly does the dog know to be afraid of this bear? now I have personally
seen smaller dogs go after a larger animal like a bear or deer… so this
instinct can be overridden especially when overridden by the dog’s desire
to protect its human…so we have two conflicting instincts…
but where does the instinct to protect its humans come from?
are dogs born that way? now, but originally, did dogs have this
instinct to protect their human? when human and dogs first met,
at least 30,000 years ago, were dogs this protective? No, I don’t think so…
no gene existed that created the instinct that the dog has that makes
the dog protect its human… the dog over the 30 thousand years has learned
or been imprinted upon it, something, to protect its human…
I would say, that over the last 30 thousand years, the relationship between
dog and human has been imprinted upon both the dog and the human…
this imprint, this instinct has been installed into dogs over the many centuries…
but once again, where does this imprint lie? does it lie in the dogs genes or does
it lie imprinted somewhere else? I would suggest that part of the imprint on
dogs about loyalty to human is imprinted in the brain… isn’t part of the DNA, but
is part of the dog in terms of its standard operating workings in the brain…
but is it innate? only because it was imprinted over the 30,000 years
of dog/human relations… it isn’t part of the DNA but it is from evolution
and the relationship between dogs and humans that has lasted so long…

let us look at another aspect that evolutionary psychology has looked at,
language…a certain gene, I don’t remember it designation, has been identified
as the gene for language…FOXP2 is the gene’s designation and the protein that
is in humans is Forkhead box protein P2… and is required for proper development
of speech and language…now, Chomsky has said that language is innate,
that children learn language because it is coded into the human, pre-programmed
as it were…just like the dog and large teddy bear… it has been pre-programmed
to avoid very large animals and we have been pre-programmed to language…
now it is said, that every human being unless something prevents it,
has both the protein and the gene for language, every single human being alive…
but it is my contention that very, very few if any human beings, creatures classified
as human, one million years ago had this protein or gene…language as a trait
has been passed down from generation to generation… in the beginning,
one person had something resembling language and it proved to be very
convenient and that trait was passed along… but I believe that language is
not passed on in DNA, but like the dog, is passed along in programming in
the brain…it is imprinted on us and over the many centuries we have expanded
our language use…but it is not genetic which means it is not instinct…
it is part of the brains standard operating process because language was
imprinted into our brains over a million years… you can ask did the gene exist
before language or did language exist first? I would say that language
existed before the gene did and the imprinting of language created the gene…
of course this is all idle speculation and many will claim I have no idea of
what I am talking about and that is certainly their right…

now let us turn to an idea like god… I would say that the idea of god
did not exist in prehistoric man… in other words, when human kind first
began, the idea of god did not exist… those million of year ago, when
we climb out of the tree for the first time, the idea of god didn’t exist…
we didn’t have that programming inside of us… we weren’t coded for god
in the beginning… but then how did we become so programmed?

have you ever thought about prayer? what exactly is a prayer?
you are asking for something… that is a prayer… you want something…
a million years ago, human beings were asking for something, please let me
survive this hunt or please get us some food or please let my child live…
after some time, this asking for something became asking some power
to give you something… please sun, give me some food, or the land
to give some game to eat… again after some time, it shifted to
some higher power we would call god… please god, give me something
to hunt… and hundreds of thousands of years later of imprinting that
desire for something has become the imprinting of god into our wiring…
we created the programming of god into our system by our asking for something…
a thousand generations of humans asking for something as created the
imprinting of god into our brain…we rewired ourselves to this belief in god…
it didn’t exist in the beginning of human existence, we created it…

just as the dog has been rewired to defend it human, because a dog didn’t do that
in the beginning of our relationship, but it was reprogrammed into protecting its human…

just like any software program can be rewritten, our program can be rewritten,
our coded software can be rewired to something else…and the idea of god
is simply the rewriting of some human programming we have…
this programming was part of instinct that all animals have…
all animals have been wired in some aspect by evolution…
look at the turtle that automatically goes to the sea after being hatched…
it has no choice in that programming… it is instinct…
there is no difference between this programming and instinct… for instinct
is really just coding or programming of some sort for animals…

the existence of language or the belief of god is part of human
reprogramming of our original programming or instincts…

we rewired ourselves to have language and we rewired ourselves to
believe in god…it just took a million years to do so…

now is this “innate” or “instinct” if we rewired ourselves?

I don’t know…

Kropotkin

now I have suggested that humans are creatures that can rewire themselves…
we can react differently then our original coding wants…we can overcome
that original coding/programming that all animals have… we can overcome
fear for example…we can overcome violence, we can overcome, not succumb
to our basic instincts, our basic coding/programming…

now many subscribe to the view that MAN is set in his ways…
Like Machiavelli, who thought that a man was like a leopard in
behavior in that a man was set in his ways like a leopard had spots,
a leopard could no more change its spots then a man could change his
behavior, good or evil, Machiavelli meant more about a person being
evil not being able to change their ways then good, but the point still stands…

but if we can be reprogrammed, rewired, then it is not true that we
are like the leopard who can’t change our spots…we can change…

can the man who is a coward at heart find the courage to stand one time and be brave,
yes, can the miser relearn, rewire himself to become liberal, to give to charity,
yes, the cowardly lion and scrooge point to this…

this is a very important about who we are… we are not fixed and set in
who we are… we can relearn, reprogram/rewire ourselves to some
other setting… be it to go from being mean to being nice, or the other way…
to go from being a coward to being brave… we know of people who have, for
whatever reason, gone from being conservative to being liberal and that is
a major mental reset or reprogramming… but it happens… it happened to
Ronnie Raygun who went from liberal democrat to right wing conservative
in roughly 20 years…if we are not set in our ways, then why choose to
be conservative, why choose to be mean, why choose to be a hater and feed
into your anger and hate and your lower animal instincts when you can choose
to be liberal, tolerant, open minded, being liberal means having an positive
and uplifting idea of what it means to be human… not to accept Machiavelli
viewpoint about people being fixed in their programming/coding…

this is the very heart of what it means to be human, what it means to be us…
we are social creatures who can change and become something different…
we are not fixed in what it means to be human and we can choose to overcome
our original programming/coding… we can choose to no longer be afraid,
to no longer hold our fellow human beings in contempt and hate them…

if you are conservative, you are scrooge… and he learned to overcome
himself and become something else, something better, something more human…

it is not enough for the courage for our beliefs,
but we must have the courage for an attack upon our beliefs…

some dead white guy said this and if a dead white guy said it,
it must be true, right?

Kropotkin

to return to this argument in another fashion…

Liberal: being liberal toward another… that is one classical
definition of being liberal… open, generous, kind, being liberal is about
giving…

we know that biological, many animals practice altruism toward one another…
we know that humans practice altruism toward each other… this are facts
not in dispute in the scientific community… we are social creatures and
being altruistic does help our social community…those who promote the idea
of being selfish, greed is good, do not practice nor promote this biological
idea of altruism…yet these same people who deny the value of altruism
practice it with kin of theirs… you see in the current white house, many, many
members of certain families working in IQ45 white house… now this may be
altruism or it maybe more of a tit for tat, as the idiot devoss family has given
many millions to both IQ45 and the GOP party… and so was rewarded by getting
the post of education secretary, a cabinet post… is that tit for tat or altruism,
you decide…

but you see family members being rewarded just for being family members,
this is a kin altruism versus a general altruism toward our fellow man…
and this is common even in GOP/conservative world…kin reward or kin altruism…

this idea of altruism makes sense especially in small, groups of people but
it also makes sense of general altruism in such small groups…
we see these people every day, from family to work groups to
political groups, to any group of people we associate with in a regular
basis…but let us think back to the beginning or the origin of the human being…

we lived in groups of no more then 150 people… people we engaged with
every single day…not did we engaged with, but in order to survive, we
must engage with… now individuals die, but the group continued
and it is such a thing that individuals die but have the group go on…
that is really the point because we do die… we often must make
sacrifices within a group for the group to go on…I am a parent
and I have sacrificed to allow my daughter to grow and become
an adult today… and someday, perhaps, she will become a parent
and do the same for her child… for we, as parents, do sacrifice
for our children and we sacrifice for our kin, brothers and sisters
and parents… the group will go on because we have done our part…
made our sacrifices to allow the group to go on and so, we can imagine
in the early days of people sacrifices themselves to allow the group to go on…
and we see this today with policemen and firemen and service personnel…
those who preach that greed is good and that being selfish cannot
appreciate or value the sacrifice made to allow the group to go on…
because those who preach greed and being selfish can only preach
the individual above society, the individual above the group…
even though the group, the society will go on and the individual will die…
we cannot be so selfish and greedy that we cannot put own needs before
the group or before society…

so the question becomes… how far does your idea of kin go?
is kin just family or is kin something beyond just kin…
my argument has been that we are connected to more then just
ourselves or to our immediate family… we are connected to
everyone on planet earth, indeed, we are connected to all life…
and not just peripheral, but I believe we are connected
directly to each other… and we must practice altruism for all
creatures, great and small… and all humans great and small…
for we are connected to another…great and small…

Kropotkin

I have a TV basically for sports… I really don’t watch the news or watch
any TV shows, there is one TV show I watch and that the “Orville”…

in watching sports, they are always selling things, cars, especially cars
during sporting events, one also gets fast food commercials and occasionally
hardware stores and the like…
everyone is trying to sell something…and we can include other things
people try to sell… for example, religion is trying to sell a viewpoint,
buy our product and get the one true religion which is no different then
selling cars or deodorant… pick our product because you will be sexy or
cool or well liked… religion sells other intangibles, pick our true religion
and you will have eternal life and the blessing
of god…now I am not in the market for a religion because I don’t want
what they are selling… I think eternal life is a nightmare and I am not
interesting in glorifying a inept and incompetent god…you can’t frighten
me with eternal damnation because I work in retail, nothing scares you in retail
because you have been damned already…

so if I am not interesting in what religion is selling, what I am I interested in
buying? understanding and truth are concepts I am buying…and those
concepts are found in bits and pieces in history and economics and poli-sci
and philosophy…

truths I have bought… because we humans are constructed the same way,
we have many of the same responses…we experience things in roughly the
same way and as we experience… we understand…

if we were cats, we would experience matter differently because cats
are constructed a different way then human beings… they have
different type of eyes and hearing and touch and smell and so they
experience matter differently then we do and so they have the roughly
same reaction to matter as cats… as we humans have roughly the same reaction
to matter because we are constructed the same way…the placement of
our eyes and the quality of our eyes allows, gives us a certain reaction to
matter because of where are our eyes sit on our body…and we are all within
a certain height range which allows/ gives us a certain range for us to react to
matter…

to understand, we must experience… without experience we cannot hope
to understand who we are and what are we to do…

we are not fixed in our understanding of the universe…
we can change what our understanding of the universe is…
in other words, we can rewire or reprogram ourselves…

we are presently confused as to what we are to do because
we don’t have a goal or a destination in mind, once we have a goal
or destination, we shall no longer be restless or confused or have this malaise
that is ever present in today’s society…

in other words, once we decide on what we are doing with our energy,
we shall be one again, be in flow, not be alienated from who we are and what
is our purpose… a goal creates purpose and a certain flow to who we are…
we become ourselves again once we have decided what is our goal/destination…

we can shape our own destinies once we have decided on who we are and
what we do with our energies…

we are, each of us, part of many different types of systems
and if we want to better be able to understand what our function in
life is, the more we need to be able to understand systems and how
they work…I exist within several dozens systems as do you,
but the systems wont’ work without the individual parts to make it work…
so we need the systems and the systems needs us, as individuals…
we must work together, the systems and us if we are, both, to succeed…

what else have you learned?

Kropotkin

Just had long talk with my mom…
it is extremely rare that I get to talk to someone about
philosophical matter…and it was a nice change of pace of talking
philosophy instead of writing like I always do…

I realized that I have pieces of very large puzzle in my mind
and I am trying to fit that puzzle together…part of that puzzle is
this question of who we are…as I have laid out part of my understanding/experience
of who we are in my understanding of people as being wired/programmed by
genetics/DNA, by society/the family, church, the state, schools, media…
part of that programming is education… are we educating people to be “better”
people or are we “educating” people to become better workers and consumers?
part of our education is to train people to become workers, to have a skill in which
to earn a living… that is programming, rewiring of people…to indoctrinate
people into thinking that their choices are limited to what cereal they can choose
or what car we can buy, not to what kind of human being we can be…
“the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is not about economic choices,
but about our choices as human beings…the word “liberty” is an older word which
also means freedom…liberty and freedom mean the same thing…but in the older
sense of the word in which we can choose to be more then just economic beings…
and how does this understanding of human beings lead us to an understanding
of what are we to do?

how does the question of what are we to do, means to the idea of ethics and morality?
what are we to do as to why, why must we act ethically or morally?
and what ethics or morality must we choose based on our understanding of
who we are? how we treat people is directly based upon our understanding
of who we are… are we the selfish, greedy people of conservatism or are we
we the “liberal” understanding of who human beings are? the more I explore
and understand who human beings are, the more I see that the conservative
understanding of who we are is wrong… just plain and simple, wrong…

we are social creatures who need other human beings… and what
does this mean to our understanding of ethics and morality?

we exist within systems, what does this mean to our understanding of
ethics and morality?

and these pieces of the puzzle and no clear way to connect the various
dots of this very large puzzle…

I see the various aspects of the puzzle, entropy and systems and our
pursuit of happiness and ethics and morality and our understanding of
who are and what are we to do and I cannot for the life of me, find
something to connect the dots…but I follow the path of Icarus, in which
I am for something very high and out of reach and risk failure and crashing
and burning… and I don’t care… let me crash and burn for it is better to fail
reaching the stars then achieve some easy goal like making money or following
the tired path of being a “good consumer” I write for the future for
because no one knows or care what I write today… for people are too
engaged in their nihilism of the pursuit of profit and money… for we
are a nihilist society that places the pursuit of profit over human values
like knowledge of what makes a better person or how shall we find the truth?
values like love and justice and charity and kindness are destroyed in the
name of profit for profit… for pursuit of profit doesn’t care about indeed
doesn’t want justice or love or happiness or kindness because it interferes with
the pursuit of profit… there is no profit in justice or kindness or love or charity…

this is just another piece of the puzzle I and engaged in…if we are
creatures that can rewrite or reprogram ourselves, then what kind
of society, political or economic should we have then? if we are to be moral,
ethically involved people, then what kind of society should we have?

if biology determines that we are a certain sort of people, then how
should we organize society, politically and economically?

many pieces of the puzzle and very little knowledge of how to
create a unified, coherent understanding of all it all works together…

I shall keep plugging away, not for the present, because no one
knows or cares if I live or die, but I write for the future…

Kropotkin

now one may accuse me of being, out of touch or unrealistic or not
in tune with modern “sensibilities”… but I am and let us take a concrete
example…

the opioid crisis: many say that we are in a crisis because many people
are addicted to and die from opioids and we should limit this crisis
by removing opioid from use or keeping people away from opioids…
but that is the wrong way to go about it… that focuses on the symptoms of
the opioid crisis, not the cause of the crisis…

what is the cause? why do people take opioids? to take away pain, to feel nothing…
why would one do that? now I personally have taken opioids because of
multiple surgeries, spinal surgery, surgery to take out part of my colon,
ongoing back pain, I have taken opioids for such pains and yet, I didn’t
become addicted… I took them for present pain, not to take away
the pain of existence which is what this current opioid crises is about…
if we give people meaningful, purposeful lives, the opioid crises would
be over tomorrow… the people who take opioids wouldn’t have a reason
to try to cover up their alienation, their pain from modern existence…
and why would people want to cover up their alienation, their pain from modern
existence… what would cause the alienation, pain, existential pain, not physical
but pain from existence? people are alienated from modern society, alienated
because they have no voice in society, no voice in government, no voice in
economics, they have no justice within society, within the American system
we no longer have justice because justice is about equality, justice is about
every one being treated the same regardless of wealthy or status or position,
but that is no longer true, the wealthy and powerful can buy justice, they
are not treated the same because their wealth exempts them from being treated
equally… if I committed a crime and Oprah, for example, committed the exact
same crime, we would not be treated equally… she can buy justice for herself,
fancy lawyers and access to judges and DA’s will allows her to escape justice
that I because I don’t have wealth or power or position or privilege and I am
not treated equal as Oprah, I am not given justice that she can buy…
we are not equal in the eyes of the laws, justice bought is justice denied…
we no longer have an equal society, no longer have a just society,
no longer have an equality needed to make our society work anymore…
this failure to have a just equality means people disconnect, become alienated
from our system of government, become alienated from society… that is the cause
of our opioid crises… we no longer have a government, a society that notes or cares
to note what we want, or need… our government is no longer a government of the people,
for the people, by the people… our government is of the wealthy, for the wealthy,
by the wealthy… we live in an oligarchy, government of the wealthy but our
theory is we live in a government of the people, for the people, by the people…
we have a disconnect between the theory and the reality and that is causing
with people… and that disconnect is the reason people are taking opioids,
drugs, sex and rock and roll are means to escape from that disconnect, that
alienation… our love of knowing what the “stars” like tom cruise and
beyonce are doing is another way of dealing with the disconnect, the alienation…
why bother with knowing or caring what the government is doing or is society being
just because frankly it won’t affect me because I am not going to be treated equally
in any case… so why bother… so I take opioids because it really doesn’t matter if
do or not… I am not connected with society or the government or the culture in any
case… that disconnect is what is causing people to take drugs or drop out or drink
or what ever they do… get people back into the system, get people to reconnect
with society, with justice, with their culture and people will become connected
with and start engaging with society, justice, culture and they will stop
the drugs, drinking, sex and rock and roll…reconnect people with society
and many of the ills we complain about go away…this is the value of
what I am doing… attempting to find ways to reconnect people with values,
and with society by analysis of who we are and what are we to do…

we live in a nihilist society and I am trying to find a way to combat that…
our nihilism exists because we pursue money, profit over values like justice,
love, charity and hope… and that nihilism is also in part why people take drugs,
and drink and sex etc, etc…to recover who we are, we must first
understand that our modern society is a nihilistic one and what we can do
to remove or change that…we have a large, a very large task and
sometimes I think I am the only one who see’s this… oh, well…
the future begins…with a thought…

Kropotkin

after a very long day at work, I am attempting to philosophize…
we will see how this works…

it has been said that man pursues things… among the things that man/human beings
have pursued is knowledge… the first line in one of Aristotle books is just that…
Man pursues knowledge… so what is the list of things we can pursue?
if we are creatures that pursue things, then what do we pursue…
we can pursue such things that are material or idea’s or values among other things…

The Greeks for example, pursued arête, which is excellence… they pursued
excellence in everything they did… the word arête actually comes from military
excellence, the soldier being an excellent soldier was arête and then after the years passed
the word expanded to any activity where excellence could be found, like creating
drama’s and poetry, which during festivals had contest featuring drama and poetry…

Medieval man pursued god, or said another way, they pursued faith…

but humans aren’t limited to arête or faith as objects of pursuit…

humans can pursue a great many things like a material thing like cars or money
or TV’s… a human can pursue a non-material thing like fame or status…
a human can also pursue something like “vices” which would be drugs, sex, gambling,
as some common “vices”

but we also have “traditional” pursuits likes the pursuit of happiness, love or knowledge

and then you have different pursuits like the pursuit of experiences and the pursuit
of being first or the thrill of victory…

we have many different motivations that drive people and that is what complicates
the idea of, what is the meaning of life? because the meaning of life can be what motivates
one into action and gives meaning to that action…

we can pursue such things as justice, love, truth, values like this can also be
pursued… this is important to understand that we can pursue values like hope,
honor, charity, justice, love, but we only pursue the higher values… for there
is no point to pursue lower values like anger, hate, despair, violence… they
are pointless, empty values that offer us nothing… but the higher values…
they can create meaning, give our life purpose in pursuing those higher values…
like justice, and truth and love… they can create a vision of who we are and what
we need to do…

personally, I am not driven by fame or money or status… I pursue the truth…
finding knowledge, understanding is what is what drives me… I want to know…

so what drives you?

what creates meaning for you?

Kropotkin

Do you have any evidence for this claim Peter?

“Babies have three instinctive fears, of snakes, of the dark and of falling.”

I find the snake part especially to be questionable because I remember liking and getting excited about snakes as a child.

I think you have a misunderstanding of what “we” are. We are not made of atoms but of consciousness. Consciousness, as far as we know, requires atoms to exist, but consciousness itself is not atoms, and your consciousness is you, not your body nor your make up. If your consciousness could hypothetically exist as energy, and external from your body, would you say that you no longer exist?

Again, the atoms have nothing to do with you except for the fact that you require them to be conscious. Atoms have no history because history has to be recorded.

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon:
“Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.”

You seem to be claiming that atoms exist outside of consciousness. They don’t. They can’t exist unless someone is perceiving them, and nobody has perceived and recorded the life of the atoms of JFK, Plato, or Julius Caesar so they literally have no history. We can make conjecture or supposition of their history, but nobody can actually perceive it which is why such history does not exist.