a new understanding of today, time and space.

love… one of the basic emotions of life and for
many, one of the reasons to remain alive… love is the
reason for existence……………

so how would you describe love?

would you use scientific terms? would you use
philosophical terms? No, I don’t see that working out well…

so how would one describe love…

"How do I love thee? let me count the way.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

for the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
most quiet need, by sun and candlelight

I love thee freely, as men strive for right…

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
in my old griefs, and with my
childhood’s faith…

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
smiles, tears, all my life; and, if god choose,
I shall love thee better after death…….

Elizabeth Barret Browning………

you cannot clearly and distinctly describe love with science or philosophy
or math or history… you need the right words to describe love and
poetry and songs do have the right words to describe a personal event
like love…….but you cannot describe philosophy with words of love…
and you cannot describe history with mathematical formula’s……

what we need is to understand that to describe something, we need the
right words to be able to describe that something…and we cannot use
science to describe love or love to describe science…………………

much of our current failure arises because we are using the wrong words
to describe events and feelings and our life……….

but more of interest is this, why don’t we have a current theory of
“aesthetics”? what is art and what is it meaning for us? what is beauty
and what does beauty mean to us? the problem of “aesthetics”
is one that we need to sort out…………. but we don’t know or care
what is beauty or what it means to us……. ask yourself, why?

for over 200 years “aesthetics” was a major problem in philosophy and
today, we have even forgotten what “aesthetics” is… why?

find a poem, read it, think about it……… try to understand what it means
and what it says to you………………… most people would consider that a waste
of time… there is no reason for us to ever think about or understand poems
or literature or great art… but why? understanding art was
one of the Greek’s great pleasure… they created great art in response to
what they saw or felt within their reality…………… why don’t we create
art in response to our reality, to what we see in the universe?

perhaps the failure of modernity lies in it forgetting how important
art is and pursuit of beauty is to us…………

we lost something very important when we gave up our engagement with
art and beauty and began to pursue money/profits/ upwardly success…….

we lost part of our soul……… and this is reflected in the emptiness of
our time……………… what is art to you?

and begin to understand the emptiness of your soul because you have forgotten
what it means to pursue beauty instead of money……….

Kropotkin

You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.

K: it is not the world/universe/nature that is imperfect but the way we
we look at the world that is the problem… fix how we look at the world
and the “imperfection” that is, is no more………………. the problem is us,
not the world………the imperfection is us, not the world"

I: You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.
[/quote]
K: it is always a pleasure to hear from you…there is much misunderstanding
about my “method” and I shall take a moment to clarify…….

there are, so far, two ways to understand things, one is the universal to
the particulars and the other way is to go from the particular to the universal…
the misunderstanding in my case is although I do have a certain “political”
viewpoint and that I go from the universal to the particular there, this
is philosophy and I go from the particular to the universal in philosophy……

now one method people use is to begin with a universal, I am a “Hindu”,
to use one of your examples, and argue from the universal, “Hindu”
to the particulars to promote or to encourage people to understand
what it means to be 'Hindu" or to even encourage people to become “Hindu”,
the universal to the particulars…but my “philosophical works” do not go
from the universal to the particular because I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint to engage from…I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint…….whereas I do have a political or religious
universal standpoint………I don’t argue philosophical that my position
is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same
because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from…………

don’t mistake my political or religious viewpoints as a means to influence
my philosophical viewpoints… they don’t……….

what I am doing is simply trying to take some particulars and then
use those particulars to create a philosophical position…
go from the particular to the universal……………

to call me an “objectivist” from a political or religious standpoint,
may or may not be correct, but I have no set philosophical standpoint
from which to call me an “objectivist”………….

I am simply trying to gather the evidence to make some sort of
judgement about the human condition… to try to discover
what is the human problem and how do we solve this
problem of existence……………and I am now leaning toward
some sort of embrace with art as a means toward our understanding
the problem of human existence……………but I could easily be wrong…….
or not…………………

my positions are simply just questions attempting to create some meaning
in my life and perhaps, perhaps in yours or someone else life… I simply report
my finding about the human condition… I state the problem of existence
and I try to understand the solution, if any, to this vexing problem……….

it has been my experience, that quite often in searching for answers to
problems that having a fixed, set position prevents any hope to find
answers to the questions……………perhaps the solution to the question of
existence is found in being “Hindu” or “liberal” or “fascist” but I doubt it…

I am, in the worn out cliché, attempting to “think outside of the box”………

I may succeed or I may fail………. but I don’t believe that taking a set
philosophical position will allow me to solve the question of human existence……

but in any case, I shall continue to search and ask questions about
what I see as the fundamental problem of our age,
“the problem of human existence” ……………………………………………

Kropotkin

in the question of human existence,
we have Kant’s three question…

"All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical combine
in three questions,

  1. What can I know?
  2. What ought I to do
  3. what may I hope?

Critique of Pure Reason…

in which Kant tries to understand the first question, What can I know?

but what is missed is the fact although Kant phrases this as personal questions,
they can really also exists as sociality questions…

  1. What can we know?
  2. What ought we to do?
  3. what may we hope?

and the questions still make perfect sense
and thus we begin…

we are not solitary creatures… we are social creatures,
we exists within a group, social context…

“for no man is an island”

no matter how hard he tries…

I need you and you need me… simple as that…

what can we know? we can know certain facts, but facts being facts
are not fixed in stone for all time, facts change… are there really 8 million
people living in New York city, no, but that “fact” gives us a sense of the number
of people living in NY, not the actual true number because we can never actually know
how many people really do live in NY because of the incoming/outgoing movement
and births and deaths………………facts are temporary “truths” that are changeable……
we can know “laws” like the “law of gravity” this “Law” is firmer then the idea of
“facts” given above……. you can trust the “law of gravity” in a way you can’t trust
“facts”…….but the “Laws” rules of our natural world are not absolute’s…….
the idea that Laws of nature are completely fixed is shown to be wrong
by the one “fixed” law of nature, the speed of light…………

the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second… and upon that “law”
Einstein based his theories upon but we know that a black hole gravity is so
strong that not even light can escape it…light is trapped by gravity and thus
unable to move at 186,000 miles per second…………thus the absolute “law” is
not absolute, it is a variable… and that is important to know…
because there may be a situation where gravity itself may not be
what we think it is and gravity is changed by some other force of nature……

it is not the certainty of the universe we can build upon but
the uncertainty of the universe……… we cannot be absolutely certain
about anything, we can we know? Perhaps nothing, perhaps all our knowledge
is really of a transitory nature……. now granted some of that knowledge
may change in billions of years, but it is changeable, it just doesn’t change
very fast……….

our knowledge is not from an innate form as Plato or Kant thought…
out knowledge comes from experience…….
now one might say, our knowledge of black holes certainly isn’t from experience…
no, our knowledge of black holes isn’t from experience but we have so little
“knowledge” of black holes, our knowledge is so limited as to be almost guesswork…………….

what can we know?

I may not know much and you may not know much but combined, we know more
then either of us individually might know……. and so, we come to the real truth of
knowledge… that collectively, we can know more then individually…….
what can I know? not much, but with your knowledge, I can know more…
and that is the real secret of knowledge… it must be shared to be of use…….

individual knowledge is ok, but knowledge shared is better, far better…….

what can we know? a lot… if we share it…….

next, what can I/we ought to do?

Kropotkin

Okay, let’s bring this out into the world that we live in.

With America on the verge of sending abortion legislation back to the states [or straight back to the back alleys coast to coast] how is a universal/particular frame of mind applicable here?

Folks can “think up” – define, deduce – a universal morality into existence “in their heads”. They then cram all of the particular pregnant women into it; or they can note the particular contexts that pregnant women might find themselves in and then reason from that to a universal moral law.

Either way though from my frame of mind, dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don’t go away.

I still construe both the “universal” assumptions and the assessments embedded in particular contexts as largely “existential contraptions”.

I’m still unclear then as to how this is applicable with respect to your own personal views on abortion rights.

When you note that…

“I don’t argue philosophical[ly] that my position is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from.”

…my own reaction revolves around wanting to grasp the “position” from which you do come to embrace one set of political prejudices rather than another.

How do you not see your values here as just political prejudices [as “I” do] rooted in the manner in which I construe the nature of “self”/“identity” out in the is/ought world.

That’s the part I am always most curious about. What goes on inside the head of those who are not down in the hole that I’m in when confronting conflicting goods in social, political and economic interactions.

Then I am still completely baffled as to how you make this distinction. From my frame of mind an objectivist is someone who argues [either from a philosophical, religious or political perspective] that their value judgments regarding an issue like abortion reflect the most reasonable and virtuous frame of mind; and that in the best of all possible worlds “right makes might” would prevail.

And even to the extent they accept moderation, negotiation and compromise as the best of all possible worlds, they are still of the opinion that the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”.

Yet any number of the objectivists above make the same claim. Except for the part where they might possibly be wrong.

And [from my frame of mind] once you go down this path you are basically embracing the idea that “we’re right from our side and they’re right from theirs”.

But only as a particular political prejudice that “here and now” you are most comfortable with.

In other words, even though you think that your value judgments relating to an issue like abortion are probably the right ones, you admit that they may not be. And it is this assumption that makes is easier for you to accept that, with regard to democracy and the rule of law, “one of theirs” is acceptable. For now.

Someone like Trump becomes the problem here only to the extent that his followers are convinced that his own value judgments [re an issue like abortion] are objectivist [like theirs]. And not just part of the political game that he plays to stay in power.

As I see it though, a frame of mind like this may well be more in search of a psychological foundation upon which to anchor “I”. Political values here then become more in sync with a psychological defense mechanism disguised as a moral or political commitment.

But I readily acknowledge that these relationships are [existentially] profoundly complex. I would never presume to suggest that “I” understand “you” here better than “you” understand “me”. I just appear to be considerably more “fractured and fragmented”. As I was with folks like karpel tunnel, phyllo, von rivers, gib, moreno, zinnat…

Again, from my frame of mind, inside or outside the box, the search for solutions to “the problem of human existence” remains “for all practical purposes” an existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least until someone is able to convince me that it doesn’t have to be.

Peter Kropotkin:
there are, so far, two ways to understand things, one is the universal to
the particulars and the other way is to go from the particular to the universal…
the misunderstanding in my case is although I do have a certain “political”
viewpoint and that I go from the universal to the particular there, this
is philosophy and I go from the particular to the universal in philosophy……

I: Okay, let’s bring this out into the world that we live in.
With America on the verge of sending abortion legislation back to the states [or straight back to the back alleys coast to coast] how is a universal/particular frame of mind applicable here?

K: ok…

I: Folks can “think up” – define, deduce – a universal morality into existence “in their heads”. They then cram all of the particular pregnant women into it; or they can note the particular contexts that pregnant women might find themselves in and then reason from that to a universal moral law.
Either way though from my frame of mind, dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don’t go away.

K: Ok, here we have a distinction between you and me………………as a well known liberal,
I have well known idea’s about Abortion……… I see the matter of Abortion as being a
political or/a religious matter, but and this is important, not as a philosophical matter…….
as a political/religious matter we do run into dasein, conflicting goods and
political ecomony….but as a philosophical matter, we don’t…….
I have never actually done a philosophical “study” of abortion…I don’t
think it is possible because of the inherent conflict inside of the political/religious
mess in America……….but I don’t necessarily think that abortion for example,
must be done in a strict universal to particular or a particular to universal set…….
because of its nature, we simple take political/or religious understanding to
abortion………and you can run your usual arguments through the political/religious
context in regards to abortion… but not philosophical arguments…

I: I still construe both the “universal” assumptions and the assessments embedded in particular contexts as largely “existential contraptions”.

K: now lies the problem… at one time, you were an objectivist, you admit as much…
and you assume that people are “objectivist” because they don’t see the world as you do…
but that is really is the result of how you view people, as you see them, not
necessarily as they see themselves… if you start off thinking that everyone in
the world has sinned, then you will see everyone in the world sinning, but that
is not necessarily the truth, it is just you………your understanding of people dictates
your viewpoint of people…

Peter Kropotkin: now one method people use is to begin with a universal, I am a “Hindu”,
to use one of your examples, and argue from the universal, “Hindu”
to the particulars to promote or to encourage people to understand
what it means to be 'Hindu" or to even encourage people to become “Hindu”,
the universal to the particulars…but my “philosophical works” do not go
from the universal to the particular because I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint to engage from…I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint…….whereas I do have a political or religious
universal standpoint………I don’t argue philosophical that my position
is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same
because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from…

I: I’m still unclear then as to how this is applicable with respect to your own personal views on abortion rights.

K: once again, I don’t view abortion philosophical, I view it politically/religiously……
I classify abortion by my political/religious views…… so I don’t attempt philosophy
in regards to abortion……………………
you have to understand this or the rest doesn’t matter…

I: When you note that…

K: “I don’t argue philosophical[ly] that my position is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from.”

I: …my own reaction revolves around wanting to grasp the “position” from which you do come to embrace one set of political prejudices rather than another.
How do you not see your values here as just political prejudices [as “I” do] rooted in the manner in which I construe the nature of “self”/“identity” out in the is/ought world.
That’s the part I am always most curious about. What goes on inside the head of those who are not down in the hole that I’m in when confronting conflicting goods in social, political and economic interactions.

K: that idea conflicting goods in social, political and economics is not in my head,
it is your head… and it will help you understand things better if you can separate
out your thoughts from my thoughts… I don’t think like you do… I care little
about those competing goods or “existential contraptions”… it might work for
you, but it really doesn’t work for me… I work off of different idea’s and different
thoughts…… try to remember that……. to be honest, I think the whole
conflicting goods and “existential contraptions” is really much, too much work.
I like to keep things simple…… my motto is “keep it simple stupid” or known
as the “Kiss” theory…….

Peter Kropotkin: to call me an “objectivist” from a political or religious standpoint,
may or may not be correct, but I have no set philosophical standpoint
from which to call me an “objectivist”………….

I: Then I am still completely baffled as to how you make this distinction. From my frame of mind an objectivist is someone who argues [either from a philosophical, religious or political perspective] that their value judgments regarding an issue like abortion reflect the most reasonable and virtuous frame of mind; and that in the best of all possible worlds “right makes might” would prevail.

K: at the point of sounding repetitive, I think the problem lies with your thought
about “objectivist”, it is a label and labels are rarely ever completely accurate or honest…
a label is really nothing more then a prejudice or a habit to put upon people…….
remove the label, “objectivist” and try to see people another way…… but Kropotkin,
that is easier said then done…… yep………

I: And even to the extent they accept moderation, negotiation and compromise as the best of all possible worlds, they are still of the opinion that the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”.

K: as a political/religious thought, yes, but not as a philosophical thought…….
and even as a political/religious thought, it is not very accurate… who today believes
in moderation/negotiation, compromise? might as well be Diogenes………

Peter Kropotkin: I am simply trying to gather the evidence to make some sort of
judgement about the human condition… to try to discover
what is the human problem and how do we solve this
problem of existence……………and I am now leaning toward
some sort of embrace with art as a means toward our understanding
the problem of human existence……………but I could easily be wrong…….
or not…………………

I: Yet any number of the objectivists above make the same claim. Except for the part where they might possibly be wrong.
And [from my frame of mind] once you go down this path you are basically embracing the idea that “we’re right from our side and they’re right from theirs”.

K: and once again to be boring, the problem lies with your thought about objectivists…
I am talking about the matter philosophical, not politically or religious… the problem of
existence is not a political or a religious matter, but a human matter… I don’t care what
your political or religious thoughts are in regards to the question of the human problem,
that of human existence… it doesn’t matter what your political or religious feelings
are… the question/problem of human existence is not a day to day matter of politics
or religion, but of existence…it is a metaphysical matter which I am investigating
right now and will be posting once I get a handle on it…….

I: But only as a particular political prejudice that “here and now” you are most comfortable with.
In other words, even though you think that your value judgments relating to an issue like abortion are probably the right ones, you admit that they may not be. And it is this assumption that makes is easier for you to accept that, with regard to democracy and the rule of law, “one of theirs” is acceptable. For now.

K: ok…

I: Someone like Trump becomes the problem here only to the extent that his followers are convinced that his own value judgments [re an issue like abortion] are objectivist [like theirs]. And not just part of the political game that he plays to stay in power.

K: I object to IQ45 on political/ religious idea’s, not necessarily philosophical ones…
I could object to him based on values, but I really think he is a danger to America
based on facts……… as far as I can tell, he is completely wrong about every single
issue and wrong being from my understanding of competing goods, existential contraption,
political economy… the whole nine yards… he is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…
but that is from a political/religious standpoint………like an good “objectivist”

Peter Kropotkin: my positions are simply just questions attempting to create some meaning
in my life and perhaps, perhaps in yours or someone else life… I simply report
my finding about the human condition… I state the problem of existence
and I try to understand the solution, if any, to this vexing problem……….
[/quote]
I: As I see it though, a frame of mind like this may well be more in search of a psychological foundation upon which to anchor “I”. Political values here then become more in sync with a psychological defense mechanism disguised as a moral or political commitment.
But I readily acknowledge that these relationships are [existentially] profoundly complex. I would never presume to suggest that “I” understand “you” here better than “you” understand “me”. I just appear to be considerably more “fractured and fragmented”. As I was with folks like karpel tunnel, phyllo, von rivers, gib, moreno, zinnat…

K: I am not a fan of trying to turn political/religious/ philosophical thought into psychological
thought…it just isn’t a very good fit…….

Peter Kropotkin: I am, in the worn out cliché, attempting to “think outside of the box”………
I may succeed or I may fail………. but I don’t believe that taking a set
philosophical position will allow me to solve the question of human existence……

I: Again, from my frame of mind, inside or outside the box, the search for solutions to “the problem of human existence” remains “for all practical purposes” an existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least until someone is able to convince me that it doesn’t have to be.

K: and that is where we part company, because I don’t believe the search for the problem
of human existence must travel through dasein or conflicting goods or political economy…
there are other journeys to be made that don’t require those “traits”
and to think that “for all practical purposes” the search for the solution to the human problem
must travel through those issues is to be as much an “objectivist” as anyone…

we travel the path we travel, but we don’t need to bring along the crap…
we can travel light and I like to travel light… so I try not to bring along
the crap of myths, habits, prejudices and superstitions that we either
are indoctrinated with or we create along the way… sometimes I fail…

I believe your path of finding the truth through dasein, conflicting goods or political economy
or “existential contraption” is your way, your method of being an “objectivist”…
and from where I sit, I really, really, really don’t care… its your way, not mine…
I believe that many of the problem I find are really creations of my issues…
and I believe that finding the truth through these values of dasein, conflicting goods,
political economy and existential contraption is just not traveling light…
but hay, what do I know? I am just muddling through this human existence…

Kropotkin

a general note… I am wading deep, waist high in metaphysics…….
I have pages of handwriten notes about my readings in metaphyics…

now after my readings and thinking about those readings, I shall try
to connect metaphysics with Kant’s thoughts, his three questions…
I am guessing that this is a reinventing the wheel type of exercise,
as philosophy classes most likely do this as standard procedure, but
hay, what the hell…I have time…

anyway, Kant’s three questions
1; what can we/I know?
2; what should we/I do?
3; what may we/I hope?

so how does the question of metaphysics involve in these three questions…
and of course, the issue becomes, what is metaphysics? and that is what I am
looking at…what is metaphysics?

the original thought about metaphysics is Aristotle,
and they revolve around three questions, there is that three again…

One: what is the nature of being
two: what is the first cause of things
three: things that do not change

those are the traditional metaphysics questions…
but Kant, for example adding in some questions like
his well know thought about

“god, freedom and immortality”

so how does metaphysics give us an answer to the questions of
“god” freedom" “immortality” I would guess under the guise
of “things that do not change” from above…

so in other words, I have waded into some very, very deep waters…….

but its ok, I can swim :sunglasses: ……

Kropotkin

This would seem to suggest then that ethicists and political philosophers [among others] have nothing to say about abortion.

And yet others would seem to suggest otherwise:

iep.utm.edu/abortion/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph … ion_debate
philosophynow.org/issues/36/Lib … d_Abortion

My frame of mind here, however, revolves more around the extent to which even this is rooted in dasein. That, in other words, there does not appear to be a way in which to resolve this once and for all. That, instead, each individual had a unique set of experiences at the intersection of philosophy and abortion and based on that particular confluence of existential variables was predisposed to think one thing rather than another.

Not sure how your point here really addresses mine.

However we might see ourselves or others, we are still faced with the task of confronting conflicting goods such that certain behaviors [within any particular community] are either prescribed [rewarded] or proscribed [punished]. Some argue that this revolves around universal moral laws applicable to everyone. Others suggest that an objective morality revolves instead around an objective understanding of each particular contrext. What I argue however is that individual value judgments are rooted existentially at/in/around the historical, cultural and experiential intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

What interests me then are those who argue that their own value judgments are derived from something other than that: religion, political ideology [reason], assessments of nature etc.

I’m simply unclear as to how “for all practical purposes” your political/religious narrative [sans philosophy] actually “works” for you when confronting those who have views on issues like abortion at odds with your own.

Thus…

Lots of people think it’s “too much work”. But most of them are objectivists. They “keep it simple” by the dividing the world neatly into “one of us” and “one of them”. They genuinely come to believe that, out in the is/ought world, “I” is in sync with the “real me” in sync with either the optimal way in which to behave when confronted with an issue like abortion, or, in fact, the only rational manner in which virtuous people are obligated to behave.

So, I am still rather puzzled here as to what you do “care about” when confronting those who wish to prescribe and proscribe behaviors completely at odds with your own relating to political conflicts like abortion.

Do you have any examples of this of late [from your own life] that you can use to illustrate your text?

As of now this seems basically where we are “stuck”.

As I see it, one either believes that their own value judgments reflect that which the legal and political superstructure ought to be predicated on [right makes might], or one acknowledges that “you’re right from your side, I’m right from mine” makes greater sense and thus moderation negotiation and compromise is more the political order of the day.

Or, as with many who own and operate the global economy today, right and wrong behaviors revolve mostly around “what’s in it for me?” One or another rendition of might makes right.

My problem with this is [once again] that I gain no real sense of how “for all practical purposes” this enables you to confront others who don’t share your own moral and political values.

Clearly one of the biggest “problems of existence” revolves around the question “how ought one to live?”. And most folks intertwine one or another combination of philosophical, political and religious narratives into a practical assessment such that this propels their interactions with others. Here I’m down in the hole I describe above. But I really don’t understand how you are not down in it.

Okay, let’s zero in on a particular policy of his. Say, for example, the wall on the southern border with Mexico. His immigration policy. How would you separate a political/religous assessment of his views here from that which an ethicist or political philosopher might speculate about using the tools of philosophy?

And then there is the gap between the language he might use and the extent to which a logician may or may not consture it as rational…as logical thinking.

And then the gap between what he claims to know about the issue of immigration and that which an epistemolosgist may or may not claim actually can be known.

You insist that he is wrong about every single issue. But how is that not just you insisting that being wrong here revolves around not sharing your own value judgments? And how are your own value judgments here not just manifestations of dasein?

Note the political/religious values embraced by men and women down through the ages. How are they not just “existential contraptions” embedded historically, culturally and experientially? Unless in fact someone [either using the political/religious path or the philosophical/scientific path] is able to concoct a set of values able to be demonstarated as that which all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to embody.

Then shifting gears [on my part] to the psychological parameters of all this:

But how on earth can they be separated realistically? It’s not like we live on a planet of Vulcans who are able to somehow reduce everything relating to an issue like abortion down to “logical”, “not logical”. Instead, our own species is programmed genetically to react to the world around us both cognitively and emotionally/psychologically. And that’s before be get to the id and instinct and libido. Not to mention the part played by the subconscious and the unconscious mind.

And then finally, the imponderables embedded in things like determinism, sim worlds, demonic dreams, correlation vs. cause and effect, the ontological/teleological understanding of Existence itself.

You think this. But I have no clear or substantive understanding as to how thinking like this makes dasein, conflicting goods and political economy go away.

And until you are able to describe to me more substantially how these components are not factored into your own conflicted interactions with others, I doubt I will ever grasp how the components of your own political agenda “work” for you out in the world that we are all familiar with here and now.

Yes, I get this all the time. Only my “objectivism” does not allow for the sort of soothing comfort and consolation that the moral objectivists on both side of issues like abortion are able to take with them to the grave. Indeed, for some, even beyond the grave.

True enough. But then that is basically the psychological foundation that all folks able to think themselves into believing the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”, are able to sink down into.

Here [re an issue like abortion] it’s mostly the liberals and the conservatives. But there are hundreds of other moral and political and religious and philosophical perspectives out there.

All of them able to insist that “from where I sit, I really, really, really don’t care… its your way, not mine.”

And, if we’re lucky, they are of the sort that are tolerant of other points of view. And, if we’re not lucky, we have to deal with those objectivists who insist that we either embrace their own perspectives or there is a price to be paid.

I am not ignoring you, iambiguous, I just have other fish
to fry today…

I am attempting to discover this thing called life…
with the tools at hand… we have logic and reason
and myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions,
but, I feel like I am writing a symphony with only one instrument…
a badly tuned instrument at that…….

the tools I have available to me aren’t enough for me to
fully engage in any meaningful discussion of “what is life”

it would be like describing football/soccer to someone who
never seen the game and you have no resources to explain the game…
no blackboard or diagram to make your point…… you just have words
to explain what football/soccer is and words are woefully inadequate for
the task at hand…

is life the suffering that the Buddha described, yes……… and no…
is life the pain that we feel, yes…………. and no……
is life the joy and happiness we feel on occasion, yes…………. and no……

it is the contradictions that make life so difficult to understand and explain…….

T.S. Elliot was a philosophy major at one time…… and he thought that
existence wasn’t a problem…the creation of problem of existence came
when you actually thought about existence… it isn’t a problem until
you make it one………and he thought that by thinking about our dwelling
on the problem of existence, that you actually create the problem……

it isn’t a problem until you make it one………and that is what philosophers did
he thought, created problem where there weren’t problems to begin with…

and he has a point………

but like the genie in the bottle, once the problem is discovered,
you can’t put the problem back into the bottle…………

so we are left with what seems to be unsolvable problems in existence
and being…………

How do we deal with this?

the question of being, of existence has been debated and discussed for
over 2500 years and still, there is not a conclusion to be found…
or even a road map to some conclusion………….

the complexity of existence, (I almost wrote mystery instead of complexity) the complexity
of existence demands some resolution to our problem………. for one may argue,
that our confusion and ignorance and bafflement of existence, is the reason
for our current dilemma……….

we hate and fight and bicker and have anger toward not because we hold
those lower level instincts, but because we haven’t replaced them with something
better…our world is so fractional and dysfunctional is because we haven’t
created an overarching ideal upon which we can build the next stage of society/
culture…………

personally, I am not sure of the path we need to take to discover the next
stage of human development……………

Kropotkin

You mean to tell me that virtually nobody has ever found a conclusion about this?

K: nope, there has been no conclusion in over 2500 years about the question of
being, of existence and, and to those who say, yes, there has been a conclusion,
I kindly ask them to tell me what that conclusion was, so I can note it in my
diary………

Kropotkin

OK, Iambigous, I am ready to tackle this issue

let us try this abortion issue…… from top to bottom, as best as I can…

you can create a list for the pro and cons of abortion…
for example, you can, medically save some women who need to have an abortion to
save their lives… and con is baby fetuses die…but a list of this sort
still has all the emotional baggage that we bring to the table…
no matter how much we try to be “rational”…

we can point out the religious arguments as a con
and we can point out the right of women to make their own choices involving
their bodies…as a pro…

but the bottom line becomes this, no matter where we lay the arguments,
they still are arguments of emotions and of biases and of habits and prejudices,
in other words, arguments based from a certain point of view and there is no
point of view where we can have some “higher” viewpoint that trumps any other
viewpoints…

so the question becomes, upon what means do we “judge” the entire abortion
from… what criteria should we use to “judge” this matter?

What arbitary and objectivist viewpoint should we use to “judge”
the case of abortion?

because no matter where we plant the flag of “this is the right viewpoint”
then we run into trouble, because how do we “know” that this viewpoint is the
right one? throught which “lens” or which ism or ideology shall we base our
view upon that is the “right” viewpoint…

Here we run into one of Kant’s old questions, how do I know?
the very means upon which we judge such things as abortion
or anything else is subjective………… it is not possible for me to ask
“objective” questions that even get me close to an answer about abortion
because the very questions we use to understand the matter are laced with
subjectivity…….so above when I said, let us create a list of pro and cons,
the very list itself is a biased, subjective list……. there is no way I can reach
an unbiased list about abortion because of the very bias that I have, that I
have had since childhood…………

on a personal note, my entire existence is based on the abortion issue……
when my mom was pregnant with me, she got German measles and
when a pregnant women gets German measles, whatever is developing
in the fetus gets affected… she was 4 months pregnant with me,
so the doctors, fearing the worse, suggested she get a “procedure” which
is a nice way of saying abortion……. she, for some reason,
said no and when I was born, I had all my body parts in the right places
and the doctors felt that was a major, major victory… everyone was expecting
me to come out severely damaged… just having a hearing loss was considered
to be a major victory…so my own personal story is where I was personally
affected by abortion or not, in my case………… and this is why I support abortion…
because my mom and family would have had to care and support me to the end of my
days had I been born damaged…… as it was with a hearing loss, it was quite
a grind during my childhood for which I still have a sister who is angry
about the attention devoted to me because of my constant round of doctors
and hearing tests all through my childhood… she still holds a grudge about it,
over 55 year ago…it is what it is…………………. I am a witness to the entire
abortion debate and my story influences my understanding, my subjectivity
to the abortion debate…………I cannot sort out my past with my beliefs about
abortion………I cannot, no matter how hard I try, try to be objective about
abortion… I just can’t be objective…………

and we all are witnesses to our past and that past influences our understanding
of matters like abortion…………………. so when you speak of dasein or competing
goods or political economy, it doesn’t matter to me because my story is different
and has nothing to do with dasein or competing goods… my story, my relationship
to abortions is too personal to compare to dasein or competing goods which to my
mind is to impersonal for something that has directly influenced my life…………

I don’t pretend to be a impartial or objective observer to abortions…
I am not…………

but my sole saving grace is this, I am aware of my bias toward abortions
so, when I make some statement about abortions, my past is always on
my mind and influences my judgement………….no matter how impartial or
objective I try to be………

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
OK, Iambigous, I am ready to tackle this issue

let us try this abortion issue…… from top to bottom, as best as I can…

you can create a list for the pro and cons of abortion…
for example, you can, medically save some women who need to have an abortion to
save their lives… and con is baby fetuses die…but a list of this sort
still has all the emotional baggage that we bring to the table…
no matter how much we try to be “rational”…

we can point out the religious arguments as a con
and we can point out the right of women to make their own choices involving
their bodies…as a pro…

but the bottom line becomes this, no matter where we lay the arguments,
they still are arguments of emotions and of biases and of habits and prejudices,
in other words, arguments based from a certain point of view and there is no
point of view where we can have some “higher” viewpoint that trumps any other
viewpoints…

so the question becomes, upon what means do we “judge” the entire abortion
from… what criteria should we use to “judge” this matter?

What arbitary and objectivist viewpoint should we use to “judge”
the case of abortion?

because no matter where we plant the flag of “this is the right viewpoint”
then we run into trouble, because how do we “know” that this viewpoint is the
right one? throught which “lens” or which ism or ideology shall we base our
view upon that is the “right” viewpoint…

Here we run into one of Kant’s old questions, how do I know?
the very means upon which we judge such things as abortion
or anything else is subjective………… it is not possible for me to ask
“objective” questions that even get me close to an answer about abortion
because the very questions we use to understand the matter are laced with
subjectivity…….so above when I said, let us create a list of pro and cons,
the very list itself is a biased, subjective list……. there is no way I can reach
an unbiased list about abortion because of the very bias that I have, that I
have had since childhood…………

on a personal note, my entire existence is based on the abortion issue……
when my mom was pregnant with me, she got German measles and
when a pregnant women gets German measles, whatever is developing
in the fetus gets affected… she was 4 months pregnant with me,
so the doctors, fearing the worse, suggested she get a “procedure” which
is a nice way of saying abortion……. she, for some reason,
said no and when I was born, I had all my body parts in the right places
and the doctors felt that was a major, major victory… everyone was expecting
me to come out severely damaged… just having a hearing loss was considered
to be a major victory…so my own personal story is where I was personally
affected by abortion or not, in my case………… and this is why I support abortion…
because my mom and family would have had to care and support me to the end of my
days had I been born damaged…… as it was with a hearing loss, it was quite
a grind during my childhood for which I still have a sister who is angry
about the attention devoted to me because of my constant round of doctors
and hearing tests all through my childhood… she still holds a grudge about it,
over 55 year ago…it is what it is…………………. I am a witness to the entire
abortion debate and my story influences my understanding, my subjectivity
to the abortion debate…………I cannot sort out my past with my beliefs about
abortion………I cannot, no matter how hard I try, try to be objective about
abortion… I just can’t be objective…………

and we all are witnesses to our past and that past influences our understanding
of matters like abortion…………………. so when you speak of dasein or competing
goods or political economy, it doesn’t matter to me because my story is different
and has nothing to do with dasein or competing goods… my story, my relationship
to abortions is too personal to compare to dasein or competing goods which to my
mind is to impersonal for something that has directly influenced my life…………

I don’t pretend to be a impartial or objective observer to abortions…
I am not…………

but my sole saving grace is this, I am aware of my bias toward abortions
so, when I make some statement about abortions, my past is always on
my mind and influences my judgement………….no matter how impartial or
objective I try to be………"

K: ok, have spent the last day trying to understand my last post in terms
of how we understand things…I have been personally influenced by
the issue of abortion and no matter how hard I try, I cannot be impartial
or objective to that issue… my entire life is haunted by this issue…

but to try to force that into some arbitary and fixed examples like
dasein, competing goods or political ecoonomy seems to be rather foolish…
One can of course try to see life in terms of dasein, competing goods or
political economy, but frankly given my emotional context (context is just another
word for experience) given my context to abortion, I just don’t see
abortion in terms of such limiting words like dasein or competing goods or
political econonomy…those words fit when the context is a shallow one,
but when the connection is a deep one, then they don’t fit the situation at all…

ok, now let us expand our thinking… what if most people, most, people
have an emotional context to such words like abortion, as I do…
then trying to explore abortion via such limited means as dasein or
competing goods or political economy seems to me anyway, rather
a shallow attempt to understand abortion given the emotional
reaction to the word that we have…………

in other words, we react to the word abortion with an emotional context
and there is very little that will prevent us from doing so…… we cannot
be so rational and logical that we can suspend our emotional context to
the word abortion long enough to make rational, logical choices…

the emotional reaction to the word abortion overrides any attempt to
be rational/logical about abortion… we cannot see the idea of dasein
and competing goods or political economy as being a useful way to
understand abortion when we are full of the emotional context
that we have lived……………the attempt to view life via dasein,
or competing goods or political economy is doomed when faced with
such an emotional feelings that abortion brings up……………

I hope I have made sense on some level…I am not even sure
I understand it…….

although upon reflection, I can see how this explains the conservative
attitude toward rational, logical matters……… their emotions
override any rational/logical understanding of life or matters pertaining to
life…….their emotionalism overrides any rationalism or logical thought about
what is life………….ummmmm, more food for thought…….

Kropotkin

currently, I am fighting a bad shoulder, one that hurts even just being…
and typing is painful, so hang with me as I’ve taken a muscle relaxer to
tame this really bad pain………….

so, I’ve declared myself as a materialist… which is to say, I don’t
believe in god or any metaphysical notion that goes with the concept of god…

I’ve declared myself in opposition to millions, nay, say billions who declare
that we live in a metaphysical world…that we have a god among other
metaphysical notions…… but I think perhaps we should really understand
what metaphysical actually means…….

according to the “Metaphysical” article on the “Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy”, which I have read over 30 times in the last two weeks,
metaphysical means certain things…………that there is a classical definition
to metaphysical and a more modern one………

the classical definition to “metaphysical” is

  1. the nature of being.
  2. the first cause of things.
  3. things that do not change…….

now Kant added some stuff to this definition,
he added his famous phrase, “God, freedom, and immortality”
to also mean metaphysical…………
so the idea of metaphysics had expanded in modern times……
you can have free will and determinism, the question
of universals and particulars, substance: the topic of Spinoza,
“true propositions”, space/time, parts and wholes, causation,
the mental and the physical and the question of, is the world the
one we see or do we have mental representation of the world that
is radically different then the world actually is?

so, one can see that metaphysics as a topic, has grown substantially…
from those three little questions of Aristotle or Plato………….

now let us imagine that any question even denying metaphysics
is now considered a metaphysical question………
and that is in fact the state of metaphysical study, these days
denying god is considered a metaphysical question… even if one doesn’t
believe in metaphysical questions, raising the question of god or universals
or freedom is considered a metaphysical question… personally, I
don’t think so, but apparently I am in the very small minority…….

again, so we have questions of metaphysics, the nature of being,
or as certain people around here call it, Dasein, in German…
so to engage in the pursuit of Dasein is to pursue a metaphysical
question… the pursuit of being or existence………

now I have denied metaphysical questions such as god and immortality,
as I don’t need them in my pursuit of philosophy………

the question of freedom is a very important question,
but considered metaphysical…………

so let return to the classic definition of metaphysics,
the nature of being, first cause of things and things that do not change……

so, what is being? what is existence? people have been arguing over that since
humans can argue over that…… a long, long time and still there is no answer to
the question of being, to the question of existence…….

the second understanding of metaphysics, the first cause of things,
which is another way of saying god……. but I stand with the scientist
that first cause of things is the Big Bang theory………
and from those forces/laws comes the universe and the stars and the
planets and then life and then after a long while, us……………
you can plausibly create a story of the first cause of things without
engaging in god…… it is not hard…………

and the third understanding of metaphysics, things that do not change………
but the problem is everything changes, everything… even god…
read the old testament against the new testament and you will see a
far different god in the new testament vs the old testament…….
look about the world we live in, it is the very definition of change…
stars change and the planets change and the very universe seems to change…
it was born, created by the big bang and it will someday end, to have history, is to have
a beginning or ending and that is change………

so we cannot defend traditional metaphysics as constituted,
we do not understand being/existence and there is a logical/rational explanation
for the first cause and everything changes, you just have to give it enough time…

so perhaps in these modern metaphysical questions we can find some
grounds to linger and think about them…….

Kropotkin

so we have the three problems of metaphysics since Aristotle,
the nature of being, the first cause of things and things that do not change………

the first cause of things was assumed to be god, then the next question was
the nature of being and what was god’s being, and part of that creation
was also the soul, which is the traditional idea of things that do not
change……. so the entire question of metaphysics revolved around god
and his being and how he created something that did not change, our soul…

and if you understand philosophy from the time of Aristotle right down
to Descartes, you will see how these three questions are asked and resolved,
the question of god, his being and our soul… that could be the list of medieval
philosophy…

but I say, they are the wrong questions… but in saying so, it becomes a metaphysical
question or so they tell me… so no matter what I say, it become a metaphysical
question… rather deterministic of them, isn’t it?

so to return to the question, the question of the nature of being, the first
cause of things and things that do not change…

I believe we know of the first cause of things and everything changes and so we
don’t need to concern ourselves with that metaphysical proposition,
but this question of the nature of being, of existence…
we have turned this question from the nature of god’s being/existence
to the nature of man’s being/existence… who are we and what are our
possibilities, is a metaphysical qeustions and in all of our human existence,
we still haven’t been able to answer the question of our being, of our existence…
that suggest to me that that question might be the wrong question if we are unable
to answer a question that has existed since time began for man…

what would be the right question? how does my existence influence
the greater whole existence? perhaps, or perhaps a question might be,
to what end does my existence need to go?

or perhaps, what can I/we know? what ought I/we to do? what may I/we hope for?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: so we have the three problems of metaphysics since Aristotle,
the nature of being, the first cause of things and things that do not change………

the first cause of things was assumed to be god, then the next question was
the nature of being and what was god’s being, and part of that creation
was also the soul, which is the traditional idea of things that do not
change……. so the entire question of metaphysics revolved around god
and his being and how he created something that did not change, our soul…

and if you understand philosophy from the time of Aristotle right down
to Descartes, you will see how these three questions are asked and resolved,
the question of god, his being and our soul… that could be the list of medieval
philosophy…

but I say, they are the wrong questions… but in saying so, it becomes a metaphysical
question or so they tell me… so no matter what I say, it become a metaphysical
question… rather deterministic of them, isn’t it?

so to return to the question, the question of the nature of being, the first
cause of things and things that do not change…

I believe we know of the first cause of things and everything changes and so we
don’t need to concern ourselves with that metaphysical proposition,
but this question of the nature of being, of existence…
we have turned this question from the nature of god’s being/existence
to the nature of man’s being/existence… who are we and what are our
possibilities, is a metaphysical qeustions and in all of our human existence,
we still haven’t been able to answer the question of our being, of our existence…
that suggest to me that that question might be the wrong question if we are unable
to answer a question that has existed since time began for man…

what would be the right question? how does my existence influence
the greater whole existence? perhaps, or perhaps a question might be,
to what end does my existence need to go?

or perhaps, what can I/we know? what ought I/we to do? what may I/we hope for?

K: so we have our three points of metaphysics, the nature of being, the first cause
of things and things that do not change…

so let us run it against Kant’s three questions… if we have the points of
metaphysics being the first cause of things being god and the nature of being
being god’s being and the things that do not change being our soul… then
the question of what can I/we know? becomes what can we know in light of
there being a god……. he knows everything and we can only know what he
has allowed us to know…

and the nature of being becomes what is god’s being and so we somehow
come to understand that… and in things that do not change, we must somehow
understand our soul……

but let us rephrase this, in a metaphysical world, what we know and what we do
and what we hope for, are all about this question of god…what is god and what
does he want us to do and what can I hope for, heaven………

it is pretty straight forward when you include a god into Kant’s questions,
but and this is important, Kant didn’t take the old school route of metaphysics…
he felt for reasons of his own, he was raised in a very religious background, pietist,
he felt that there was a god, and he didn’t put god in the category of things that we
know, because for him, we couldn’t know god, recall your Hume, but he put
god into the category of things we can hope for……and that is where god exists for
Kant…….in things I/we hope for…………

let us revisit Kant’s questions, what can I/we know?
we can know whatever our sense can tell us…
but Kropotkin, by way of Einstein’s theories, we can know
by pure reason, not experience, we can know the theory of relativity
and about black holes and how space/time are the same things,
and how matter and energy are the same thing, recall your formula
of E=mc2…… energy = matter……. and all of this from Einstein’s
formula gotten by pure reason…do you recall that Einstein did
thought experiments and via these thought experiments was he able
to work out the problems he had…… thought experiments………
thought experiments that need to conducted by experiences…….
one thought experiment was a man in a elevator… that wasn’t
pure reason, that was a man in an elevator… Einstein used practical
experience to discover his truths…………….and mathematics is not
pure reason, it is experienced carried to a degree…… even geometry,
which was used very early in history for the use of dealing with
length, area and volume…………

so we return to the next question, what are we to do?
if there is a god, then we must devote our time to what does
god need us to do… but if there is no god, then the question
of “what are we to do” changes…

are we to find happiness? are we to find the truth? are we meant
to discover the means to release suffering? then all sorts of questions
come front and center………….is it power and fame and money, is that
what we are to do?

remove god from the equation of “what we are to do”, and that changes into
possibilities…….we have all sorts of possibilities for “what are we to do”?

but “who are we” can answer the question of “what we are to do?”

for example, we are social creatures, we must exist with each other…
so part of the answer to “what are we to do” must involve others,
we must engage with others…and so we have narrowed it down a bit,
“what are we to do” must means, we must engage with others on some level.

and so if we have an understanding of who we are, we can then come closer to
answering the question, “what are we to do?”

so, what are we to do?

Kropotkin

so the last Kantian question is “what ought I hope for?”

so let us take this via the old metaphysics which was, I could
hope for god and heaven……… but let us remove god from this picture,
and now, “what can we hope for”? without the presence of god…….

for many years my goal/my hope, was to die without drooling…
it is the little things in life, I tell you…………

now, I have little hope…….and what there is, is basically to die in my sleep……
I have no hope for the future…but “what ought I hope for?”

I don’t know, I am old and the old know that the future is a series of
finding out the limitations of old age…

much of what I had hope for is gone, vanished because of “time” limiting
what I can anymore…….but a young person, they can hope for a lot more then I
can, because of the limits that old age has………….

Kropotkin

I also had my blacker then black period and I am at the stage discovering that the answer to this matter with the limitation of time hinges on hidden variables. And unless You want to sink into the vestiges of time via. metaphysical and quasi mystical byways; a persistent attitude toward change may help to clarify.

In particular two aspects of change which enter into such an inquiry may lay in two conceptual fixations, the basis of ideation(Valery)

The first and foremost is the deontological concern of ‘I’ the beginning of which is the age old question of who that ‘I’ is. The two thousand year hiatus between the posing of be True to Yourself’ through knowing Yourself, and the post facto attempt to connect that with the idea of.what time really is, would , in my opinion roughly trace this hidden connection

Kropotkin, do You feel that such an attempt., could elucidate and extend the limits within the concept of death?

Yes, each individual has his or her own list. But my point is that these lists are the embodiment of dasein more so than a frame of mind that can be defended [morally, politically, theologically, scientifically, naturally and/or philosophically] as the most reasonable and virtuous point of view.

And to be human is always to intertwine both cognition and emotion [embedded in the primitive components of our brain] in our reactions to conflicting goods. The point [mine] being that the arguments of both sides are reasonable given a set of assumptions that the other side is not able to make go away. At least not completely.

For example:

Others however point to religious arguments as a pro. Why? Because they genuinely believe that a God, the God, my God does exist. And in aborting their unborn baby many insist the women are choosing for a brand new life as well.

Again, different sets of assumptions.

Still, there is if you believe that God exists. And, if you don’t, there still may be. Rooted instead in one or another deontological intellectual contraption [philosophically], or ideology [politically] or genetically [in nature].

Yes, but then, in turn, I add this: how is the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here relevant when we focus in on any one particular individual’s judgment.

That’s the ironic part. Moral and political judgments are deemed by me to be subjective/subjunctive existential contraptions. But those who embrace them as though the world really could be divided up between “one of us” [the good guys] and “one of them” [the bad guys] often act as though their own judgments are not arbitrary at all. They come to espouse their own narratives/agendas as objectivists.

And that’s when I suggest that they are intent here on embodying a psychological contraption that allows them to sustain some measure of comfort and consolation by embedding “I” in the “real me” in sync with the “right thing to do”.

One or another rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

Only I admit right from the start that this can be no more than my own intellectual contaption. Something that seems reasonable to me “in my head” here and now…but something that may well reconfigure into something else given new experiences, relationships and access to new information and knowledge.

I just speculate in turn that this may well be true for everyone else.

Still, there are facts embedded in each context in which abortion becomes an issue. Biological facts about the devolopment of the unborn in the uterus. Empirical facts regarding the circumstances of the unwanted pregnancy. Consequential facts that can be ascertained if in choosing abortion others [including the legal system] react in an actual manner.

There are many things that we can know objectively. But can any particular individual know for certain how to judge abortion as a moral and political issue?

Everyone has their own “personal story” in regard to the circumstances surrounding their own birth. But that’s my point.

I don’t think that is true for the individaul. Not if he or she chooses to interact with others socially, politically and economically.

If [when] they stumble into a context in which the issue of abortion is front and center, their reaction [in my view] will be embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here. That they insist it will not be doesn’t make the actual life that they have lived go away. The sequence of experiences, relationships and ideas they came to embody existentially did in fact predispose them toward one rather than another set of moral and political prejudices.

And if they find themselves on one side of the pregnancy rather than another, the other side’s arguments just don’t vanish into thin air. And eventually what will count is the extent to which one side has the power to enforce one set of behaviors rather than another.

How is this not the case with you?

But [from my point of view] what your “I” here wishes to sustain is the conviction [or what I deem to be the rationalization] that your frame of mind regarding abortion is still somehow more reflective of “the right thing to do” when the issue precipitates conflict.

Otherwise you have to admit that had your life been very different you might well have been predisposed to argue for just the opposite political narrative/agenda.

And your current arguments don’t make the points that the other side raise go away.

You just somehow manage to crumple all of it up into a political conviction that allows you to sustain more rather than less psychological comfort and consolation than someone like me. Just as I have managed to think myself down into the hole I’m in, you have managed to think your way up out of it.

And that may well be as far as we will be able to go here. Unless one of us has a “breakthrough” moment and manages to nudge the other more in his own direction.

Fair enough.

But then there’s the future. You can’t know [anymore than I can] what new experiences, relationships, ideas etc., might come along and reconfigure “I” in another direction.

“I” [mine yours theirs] remains this “existential contraption” from the cradle to the grave.

Unless, of course, there is a God.

Or: Unless, of course, someone comes along able to convince us [re philosophy, ideology, science or nature] that there is in fact a frame of mind regarding issues like abortion that all rational and virtuous men and women are in fact obligated to share.

Then it becomes the extent to which this is actually able to be demonstrated.

Peter Kropotkin: so the last Kantian question is “what ought I hope for?”

so let us take this via the old metaphysics which was, I could
hope for god and heaven……… but let us remove god from this picture,
and now, “what can we hope for”? without the presence of god…….

for many years my goal/my hope, was to die without drooling…
it is the little things in life, I tell you…………

now, I have little hope…….and what there is, is basically to die in my sleep……
I have no hope for the future…but “what ought I hope for?”

I don’t know, I am old and the old know that the future is a series of
finding out the limitations of old age…

much of what I had hope for is gone, vanished because of “time” limiting
what I can anymore…….but a young person, they can hope for a lot more then I
can, because of the limits that old age has…………."

Meno: I also had my blacker then black period and I am at the stage discovering that the answer to this matter with the limitation of time hinges on hidden variables. And unless You want to sink into the vestiges of time via. metaphysical and quasi mystical byways; a persistent attitude toward change may help to clarify.

K: that is the problem, among others, is there are no more “hidden variables”…once you hit a certain
age everything is pretty much cut and dried…I suppose in one way, I am mourning the
loss of youth and even in my case, middle age……….as Alexander once said, “I have no
more worlds to conquer”… I have no desire to travel down some metaphysical or
mystic road to find some lost innocence… it is gone, along with most of my hair……

M: In particular two aspects of change which enter into such an inquiry may lay in two conceptual fixations, the basis of ideation(Valery)
The first and foremost is the deontological concern of ‘I’ the beginning of which is the age old question of who that ‘I’ is. The two thousand year hiatus between the posing of be True to Yourself’ through knowing Yourself, and the post facto attempt to connect that with the idea of.what time really is, would , in my opinion roughly trace this hidden connection

K: to be “true to oneself” really ask two questions, first, what is “truth”?
and what is “oneself”?.. I don’t know the answer to either…………
time is a lot like pornography, we can’t describe it, but we know it when
we see it…having lived inside of time (and space) for 59 years, I still
can’t tell you what space/time is or isn’t or was or will be………to tell you the
truth, it was a lot easier when I was young because I had certainty that I
“knew” the truth… I knew what time/space was because I had the certainty
of youth… I no longer have that luxury…it is another thing about being old,
you are wrong so often that it becomes a pleasant surprise when you are right…
and being wrong so often, makes one, rather gunshy……a cautious old person
is simply someone who has learned that lesson too many times…….

M: Kropotkin, do You feel that such an attempt., could elucidate and extend the
limits within the concept of death?

K: even death has its baggage… the Christians praise it and glorify it and
devotely wish for it… that is one of the problems with christianty, it makes
death the goal, not life… for the point to the christian is to reach god and the
only way that happens is by death…and so the sooner, the better thinks the
christian…today, death is an ism, an ideology, a prejudice…instead of what
it really is, just another step along the path of life…like puberty or menopause…
I cannot stop death anymore then I can stop puberty or menopause or growing old…
the person I am today, is in part, a reaction to the events or experiences
of my life…I must, in some fashion, respond to the event we call old age
and the event we call death…

my response is the response of the old, we say, fuck it…

we aren’t afraid of it and we don’t look forward to it, we simply wait
for our final stop on the train of life… for we have no choice in the matter…
and that day will come far sooner for me then it will for you…

and I am hoping my final words will be this, “lets get this shit over with”

Kropotkin