a new understanding of today, time and space.

For the Greeks, the philosophical problem was being.

For the Medieval thinkers, the problem was metaphysics.

In the first half of modern philosophy, the problem was one of
knowledge, from Descartes to Kant…

And after Kant, the problem was systems, political, economic,
social and cultural.

and today we as we are still in the wake of the systems problems,
we have yet to discover what is the nature of our problems…

But perhaps the problem to be faced is the question of morality
or perhaps the question of becoming or maybe the question is
how do we not only philosophize but how do we then act upon
that philosophy. How do we turn philosophy into action?

Perhaps a return to ancient philosophy, both Greek and Roman philosophy
was how am I to live this philosophy I have chosen. Philosophy was not
a intellectual discourse but a way to live. You studied the Stoics because
you wanted to live your life by Stoic philosophy. You followed Plato
and then you live your life by the basis of what you learned from Plato.
It wasn’t just an intellectual activity. It was meant to be lived. The engagement
with philosophy wasn’t abstract but physical and immediate. You felt it because
you lived it.

Perhaps that is the question of our times?

Kropotkin

What is this?

The sun moved through the sky with its ongoing yellow glow…

Is this science, poetry, prose, philosophy, art, history, economics,
or perhaps something else.

or perhaps try this…

/

What is that?
is it science, literture, poetry, philosophy, art, math?

0

What is this? How would you classify this?
it could be science for science does use the 0 for many things
and it could be math for math uses the 0 for many things
or it could be art or philosophy or history?

How would we know?

by creating a story about the object in question.

a story or perhaps creating a category for the 0…

how would you understand 0 or /
or the sentence, the sun moved through the sky with its ongoing yellow glow.

How would you go about understanding those things.

Kropotkin

Dubiumology……

A rather strange word. What does it mean?

It is what philosophy should have been called.

The word Dubium means doubt in Latin.

Philosophy means the love of wisdom but
wisdom isn’t about love, the pursuit of wisdom is
really the pursuit of doubt. The Greeks believed that
the start of philosophy was in wonder. I disagree. What we
call philosophy is not about wonder or love but about doubt.

All science, all philosophy, all history, all social studies begin
in asking, I doubt that the “common sense” vision of our society is
right and I doubt the conventional wisdom. The philosopher
must stand in opposition to their times. The great philosophers
were prosecuted and attacked and censored not because they
working within the conventions of the time, no, oh no, they
were prosecuted because they were against the conventional wisdom
of the times………

Think of Socrates who was jail and executed and Aristotle who
fled Athens saying, “I will not Athenians to sin twice against
philosophy”. St. Thomas Aquinas who was censored by the church
for his writings. Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake in Rome
by the Roman Inquisition and Tommaso Campanella who was confined for
his heretical views in opposition to the authority of Aristotle and spent
27 years imprisoned in a castle and of course Spinoza who was
excommunicated from the nation of Israel for his views on god.
and a wide variety of philosophers have been attacked for
having opinions contrary to the society at large and this includes
everyone from Descartes to Nietzsche.

It is not from certainty that leads us to wisdom, for one with certainty
already think they have wisdom and knowledge even if they don’t.

Doubt, a philosophers friend.

Kropotkin

Religion and philosophy match each other in that
they deal with values. But they also match each other in
other ways. Both religion and philosophy has a problem.
You have two kinds of religion and two kinds of philosophy.

One kind of Religion is the easy comfortable, no risk religion
and one kind of Religion is the hard, dangerous, risk religion.
And the same goes for Philosophy.

But what does this mean? Most people believe in god but they
don’t live that belief. For most people, the belief in god
doesn’t entail any great effort, risk or challenge. For most people,
they are more passionate about fast food chains then they
are about god or are more challenged in their belief in their
favorite football team then in god. For most people, their belief in
god is simply a formula just spoken without commitment or any attempt
to actually understand or even live in their commitment to god.

I think mustard is the condiment of choice
I favor baseball over football
I prefer summer over winter
I believe in god
the weather is nice today.
I like The Who over the Rolling Stones.
I like Wendy’s burgers over Burger King

All of these statements have the exact same value to most people.
The belief in god ranks no higher then what is your favorite musical
band. The two statements, I believe in god and what is your favorite
musical band, have the same value and passion and commitment
and the same easy, comfortable, no risk belief in.

When most people say they believe in god, they could be talking
about anything they have a belief in… I prefer dogs over cats
and I believe in god is at the same level of passion and commitment.

And the same goes true for philosophy, I believe that Nietzsche is
correct about ancient Greek philosophy, much more so then
Heidegger. This statement is said with no more enthusiasm
then ordering a hamburger and with no more enthusiasm then
one says, I believe in god…

We have no engagement with either religion or with philosophy.
Religion and philosophy are simply idea’s, beliefs, simple mindless
recitations of formula’s that have no power or effect in our lives.

We hold both religion and philosophy as sterile words that
mean nothing in our lives. This is what Kierkegaard was fighting
against. Our engagement with religion and philosophy is just
skin deep and has the same intensity as one ordering fries in a
fast food place.

It seems to me that if we engage in either religion or philosophy,
we should have a deeper engagement with our subject matter
then just passively speaking about them. I prefer Locke over Hume.
I rather have curly fries over French fries. The discussion over curly
fries may get more intense and have much more passion and commitment
then any discussion about Sartre or Locke or Hume or more passion then
any discussion about the nature of god or why I believe in god.

If we are serious about either religion or philosophy, then
we must be ready to engage, I mean really engage with
religion or philosophy. The value of religion or philosophy
comes from the engagement we have with them. The engagement
I am talking about is not just reciting words that have no
resonance with us. I am talking about hold a religion or
philosophy and engaging with it with all your heart and head.
We must begin to engage with religion and philosophy
as a way of life. I hold certain philosophical beliefs
and I must engage with those beliefs as a way of life.
I belief in non violence. I must act in accordance
with my philosophical beliefs. I must not engage
with violence. Religion and philosophy are
ways of life. We not only hold these idea’s but we live them.
We act upon our philosophical and religion beliefs as
our guidelines in our actions. For most people,
they have beliefs and they have actions, but the
two shall never meet. We act and our beliefs are
separate from those actions. the two don’t impact each other,
the two, action and beliefs, don’t engage with each other,
the two don’t interact with each other… They are two distinct
and separate entities……. But they should engage with each other
and interact with each other and inform each other. But they
don’t… we hold actions as one complete and distinct entity
and we have beliefs as another completely different entity
and the two don’t engage with each other.

Religions and philosophy should be ways of life and instead they
are formulas we recite but have no engagement with.

Why won’t you engage with your beliefs as deeply as
you engage with your favorite food or you favorite sports team?

and engagement requires, demands your full and complete effort
to live your live as your beliefs demand you to live your life.

We are lacking in this engagement with religions and with our
philosophies. they are simple words to udder and they have
no connection to who we are… so either engage or
release those mindless formula’s that you hold.

to become who you are requires you to commit
and engage with your values regardless of the cost.

So what values are you willing to commit to and to
abide by and to live within and engage with?

Kropotkin

As I watch my fellow citizens, I don’t see the struggle of soul that
I went through for years, the wrestling with my soul to discover
who I was and what was my place in the universe and that I
engage with even today.

We take our schooling, jobs and our career and our families as some excuse to
escape our engagement with our souls. We don’t engage with those questions
that should drive our engagement with ourselves. The average person doesn’t
ask themselves if about who they are and what are their possibilities or
what is the meaning of life or what does it mean to be human?

The truth is the answer these questions drive our other actions.
for example, is being human about the capitalistic vision of life
where the point of life is the materialism that America is known for.

To answer this, we must understand what is really important.
We must engage with who we are to discover that
materialism as an ideology is a failure. It is unsustainable as
as a way of life. We cannot maintain our American way of life.
It is as simple as that… but that leaves us the question of what is the
next step and no one is thinking about that.
As we understand history, we humans simply move from
one situation to another without any thought as to the
consequences of one situation to the next. What is needed
is the human engagement with our future. In other words,
we must work toward our future as a choice. We must decide
what is our future path and then work toward that. The future is
no longer just an accident of random forces, but the future becomes
a choice. We decide what kind of future we want and we work toward it.
It is not an individual choice but an collective choice. We don’t need
to have an unanimous decision as to what our future is going to be,
we can move on with a majority decision. For that is the essence
of a democracy, decision are not unanimous, but majority based.
should we deemphasize our dependence on the GNP and the materialism
our society is based upon. Yes, but we should have a choice as to what
direction our society takes. The decision as to what direction takes ought
to be a bottom up decision, not a top down decision. And we can no
longer allow minorities like the 1% decide what our choices and decisions are.

We decide as we are the majority. Let us take our political system at its
word and begin to act upon it as a majority. In other words, if the majority
decide to allow guns and the NRA to dominate our lives, so be it, but if
the majority decides to remove guns and the NRA, then we must abide by it.

But who thinks this way? who thinks about the future that should be created, not
only individually but collectively, together. The answer lies not only in our
individual choice but in what we choose collectively as to what future we shall have.

And that is the point, we are linked and we cannot to continue thinking
individually, but we must begin to think in terms of our actions within
a society, within a collective. Will my action help or harm the society
I live in. That becomes the new norm of how we think about our actions.
It is not enough to engage individually, but we must begin to engage collectively,
as a society, together. How will my actions affect you and how will your actions
affect me. We begin to rewrite what it means to be a human being in
our modern society. We become responsible for each other as a choice,
not as it is now, whenever we think about it our responsibility. We must
hold human beings to a higher standard as we live in a society that is as complicated
as our society has become. It is not enough to be responsible for just me,
I am also responsible for my place in society and that means we all become
responsible for society and its actions. We cannot allow the state to speak
and act for us without holding the state and ourselves responsible.
If the state, as our nation has done, bombed innocent civilians,
then the state and us, must be held accountable. If the state takes
it upon itself to act in our name, then the state must held responsible
and we must be held responsible. The war in Iraq which has cost
millions of lives is our responsibility as we are the citizens in whose
name the war was fought for.

If we as private individual are accountable for our actions, then
the leaders of the state must be held accountable. The notion of
the modern world that we must engage with is responsibility.
Being held responsible for our actions individually and, AND collectively
is the modern understanding of our engagement with our society/state.

But who ask themselves these questions?

The modern tyranny of the economic has taken away
our modern rights and this must end. If we want to become
who we are, we must end this economic tyranny that exists.
but who thinks of such things?

do you struggle with your soul as to who you are and
what is your place within society? do you engage with
what our society is and what it ought to be? do you engage
with your soul?

Kropotkin

As I work in the grocery business, the week before
Thanksgiving is hell week. I work long, ugly hours with
mean, rude customers. This year, I also work on Thanksgiving day,
all day. Now, advertisers and the media make claims about
this week as to how this is the most “wonderful” time of the year,
but the reality is it is “wonderful” depending upon your particular
situation. Your situation might allow you to think how “wonderful”
this week is, with family and food and football. But for millions,
every week and every week is a challenge to families with limited resources.
As millions are living from paycheck to paycheck and one incident could
cause a family to go into debt or suffer to the point of being unable to
put food on the table. The idea that families are to blame for their
situations is simply not true given we are involved in systems, all of us
are in vast number of systems, and sometimes one part of they system
causes massive disruptions in our lives. If we are part of any number of
systems, then we are involved together within the systems. A failure in
one part of the system affects all of us in that system, but not only
that system, but in other systems. So if the economic system is
failing, that affects a vast number of other systems. And that is
part of the problem here, we have an economic system which is failing
a vast majority of those who exists within that economic system.
In other words, the capitalistic system only rewards those at
the top of the system and damages the other 99% of us.

How can a system be considered successful if it damages most
of its participant in that system? The numbers are quite clear,
the 1% has appropriated all of the wealth created over the last
30 years and has left nothing for the rest of us.

Unless we have a fair and equitable system, we run the risk of
so damaging the vast number of people within the system and
by doing so, collapse the system. A system, any system cannot
function if the vast majority of the system is punished or
unable to be rewarded in a system. Our system, the capitalistic
system is designed to reward only those at the top and leave
the rest in chaos and poverty and that means people will
not engage in or be part of a system that doesn’t reward them
for their work. We have a vast number of people who have
no interest in being part of our current system because it
doesn’t offer them anything or offer any incentive to be part
of the system. These people have been left behind and that
causes a drag on the system. We must engage them enough to
rejoin active participation into the system.

Because there is no point to engage in our current economic system
because there is no benefit to do so. You are working yourself
to death and suffering from alienation and for what? the right
to sink into poverty and living from paycheck to paycheck.

The answer is justice which is another word for equality.
to be just means we treat everyone equally. And our
economic AND political system do not treat people equally,
which means our economic and political system is unjust.
why work in a system that is so evidently and clearly unjust?
I don’t see the point and you shouldn’t see the point.

so what are we to do? We must create a system which is just
and equal. As the capitalistic system isn’t just or it isn’t equal,
so it must end. simple as that. Our engagement must be with justice
and equality and our current system fails to do that.

So this becomes a question of values. What values should an
economic and/or political system have?

I say justice and equality must be part of the major values
any economic and/or political system. Without those values in
any economic or political system, there is no point in being part
of that system.

So what values should an economic or political system have?

Kropotkin

today is the busiest day of the year in the grocery business,
and I have 8 hours of work today and tomorrow and I am already
exhausted from the days that has gone before.

I have been trying to think of topics and subjects I could write about
here but I have been so tired that even thinking is exhausting. And perhaps
that is the point. Work has been so hard that I can’t even begin to
work out something to write here. The modern world and it obsession with
work has also so exhausted its workers so that they are unable to get enough
strength to even think about how detrimental the modern world is to their
mental and physical health. Millions of people are so exhausted from just
trying to make ends meet that they are too tired to think about a economic
and political system that wears them out and that is the point of our current
economic and political system that hides itself behind the sheer
exhaustion of its workers. What better way to maintain control then to
have your workers too tired to even think about what a shitty system we have,
little less thinking about how to change the current system.

We cannot begin to change the system unless we begin to think
about how the system wears us out and exhaust us into compliance.

The current economic system is designed to force compliance by
destroying our health, physical and mental health. This is just
another way that the system promotes nihilism by destroying our
health in favor of profits/money. If the system succeeds in getting us
to focus on our exhaustion instead of changing the system that allows or
creates such exhaustion, then the system has won. But if we spend our
focus on the system itself and how it dominates us, then we have a chance
to change it… change it before it destroys us, one day at a time,
mentally, physically, emotionally… just like it is to me. How are
you going to fight back and recover your life from a system determined
to destroy you in the name of profits/money?

this is the true meaning of salvation. How to save ourselves
from a system that is determined to destroy us in the name of profits?

Kropotkin

all late night funny men agree: orange man bad

K: ummmm, limited use of words, no imagination, can barely communicate,
lack of education, low IQ……………must be an IQ45 follower or perhaps,
perhaps… Donald, is that you? Does the orange monkey actually grace our
little site? Inquiring minds want to know? Upon second thought, naw,
IQ45 only goes to websites with lots of pictures… easier to “read”
as he has along with his followers, very limited reading capabilities.

Kropotkin

So yesterday was hell, 8 hours of hell.
And I heard lots of stories about how people were rushing
around trying to get this item or that item for Thanksgiving
and at no point, did I hear anybody actually make a comment
about giving thanks. It was about finding a certain type of stuffing
or why we didn’t have a certain item and they would have to go
to another store to get that item and where they were going to
eat and who was coming.

Our holidays are simply excuses for more materialism buying
crap for our real religion, consumption. We simple exist to
consume food or drink or we buy crap like big screen TV’S
hoping for a low price, a “doorbuster”. ’

In all this running around and our rampant materialism,
we have forgotten us. We don’t think about who we are
as human beings or who we are as a species.
Our holidays are specifically built to prevent us from
any sort of contemplation of our selves and our souls.
Not that people need an excuse to avoid thinking about
who they are… for the most part people go out of their
way to avoid thinking about who they are and what are
their possibilities. We go out of our way to avoid thinking
about the nature of who we are and most people are quite
ok with that………

but ask yourself this? are you happy or satisfied or at peace
with yourself? Or are you agitated or slightly dissatisfied or
feeling alienated from society or yourself? I would suggest if
people actually thought about it, took the time to engage
in honest thinking about themselves or as the man said,
“taking stock”… I wonder how most people would react if they
actually had any sense of how dissociated they really are from
who they are what are our their possibilities. We actively engage
in avoided any sort of understanding of our selves. We engage in
mindless actions that help us avoid any real understanding of who
we are…………

think about it this way, think of how we eat junk food. Junk food
is mindless, empty calories, that doesn’t sustain us and has no nutritional
value of any kind. It is as healthy to eat the carboard box as it to eat
the junk food we consume inside the box. Most people given a choice
will eat junk food instead of taking the time to consume real food,
nutritional food. In our thinking we do the exact same thing,
we think about, in a sense, junk food instead of thinking about
nutritional thoughts which are thoughts about who we are
and what are our possibilities. Our thinking corresponds
to our eating habits. we eat junk and we think junk…
instead of eating healthy or thinking healthy…….

We understand the computer belief that says,
Garbage in… Garbage out… and so we go even further
back and think about what we read or our movies we watch or
what magazines we read… if we put garbage into our heads,
all that come out is garbage. If we engage in an honest understanding
of the world instead of engaging in our bad faith or false understanding
of the world, we would be putting into our minds… good things instead
of garbage. things that nurture our souls, things that feed our souls,
things of value… and now we understand why people read such
enlightening and food for thought books like philosophy books
and fiction that feeds our soul like Tolstoy and Goethe
and Dostoevsky and poetry like Whitman and Dante……
Our reading habits feed our souls with nutritional thinking
and not crap…….

Your soul demands to be feed just like the body and we can either
feed the soul junk food like the junk food of our modern wasteland
of crap on TV or ever recycled movies like superhero’s movies.
Or, or you can begin to feed the soul real food, real nutritional
value for your soul by reading poetry or great literature or
philosophers like Nietzsche that force us to reexamine
our values and the fact that we are not a fixed, set beings,
that we are always, always in the process of becoming,
going to something and our readings, our healthy food for the soul,
gives us a sense of what we can become, what are our possibilities?
Art is food for our soul and letting us know what possibilities we can
achieve because we are always in the state of becoming, the question is,
what are we becoming, are we becoming more human? given rise to
the higher values that we human can aspire to or going down to
the lower values that are possible for human beings?
and by our “eating” nutritional value matter that engages
our mind, our soul, we can better begin to see who we are
and what is possible for us…… the battle as always is
to become more human, to overcome and to know ourselves
and become who we are. And the books and literature
and movies we read and watch, give us our understanding
of who we are… garbage in…………. garbage out…

Kropotkin

Garbage in, Garbage out… this thought can drive much
of how we view the world…….

in this idea of thought as food, we can also use behavior
as food we offer up to people…I am a parent and the way
I “feed” my child is very much part of the Garbage in garbage out,
viewpoint. If I offer up to my child garbage, behavior or words or
actions that is garbage, I demean or attack her in some way, or
if I am intolerant or ignorant or show her bigotry, that is in some
fashion idea’s as food for her, garbage in and as that is the only food
she knows, we get her to do garbage out… think of our behavior
and actions and words, as food for other people, and if we give them
garbage then its garbage in and we can only expect garbage out from them.
This is why we practice tolerance and attack bigotry and hate and anger,
for these hateful idea’s are food being offered up to people. Hate
and anger and greed and lust and bigotry and intolerance is food offered
up to people and if all we show them is these lower animal instincts,
then we have garbage in and people can only offer up garbage out.

Our actions and words, and behavior are a type of food and
we can offer up junk food in such actions and words and behavior
as greed and anger and lust and hate… these are junk foods of idea’s…
we must offer to people real food, real nutritional “food” and that we can
do by offering up to people with our thoughts as food. If we offer up
tolerance and openness and kindness and love, think of those as thoughts
as food and those “foods” are like healthy food, nutritional food for people
to engage with. If we offer up junk food like hate and anger and fear
and greed, we offer people junk food that has no nutritional value.

Garbage in, garbage out……… if we treat people badly that is garbage
food we send to people… but we treat people well and with love and kindness.
that is food we send to people, nutritional food…

That is why we must reject IQ45 and his followers food of hate and
violence and greed and lust and anger… it is garbage food that doesn’t offer
us anything of nutritional value and our souls, our inner needs must be feed
with nutritional values of love, hope, peace, kindness…… garbage in…….

and if are souls are feed with nutritional food of kindness and love and peace,
and our souls will grow up to be healthy and alert and be full of love…
and that is the state our souls should be in. But we cannot have healthy souls
if we only allow crap like hate and anger and lust to be our only food for
our souls. That is the value of literature and art and philosophy…
they are food for the soul and they are nutritional food and they
allow us to grow up to be big and strong, healthy individuals.
Just like heathy food like fruits and vegetables help us grow
strong and healthy bodies. The principle is exactly the same…
the food we put inside of us determines our later health
and we must receive healthy food, both for our soul and our bodies.

We can change the food we offer up to people…both in actions
and in thoughts and in behavior… garbage in… garbage out…
and in our offering up healthy “food” for our souls as well as our
bodies, we are engaging in striving for strong, healthy bodies,
in ourselves and, AND in others……. our actions, our behavior is
just food for thought.

Kropotkin

Garbage in… Garbage out… in regards to nihilism.

We have to understand the flowing nature of GI. GO… Garbage in… GI
Garbage out… GO…….

GI… GO… and we sow the seed of GI and GO as it flows from
human to human. We put out Garbage… hate and anger and greed
and lust and that becomes the Garbage in that people get…
and then they release their Garbage out which flows to someone else
and they take in GI and then they release GO. This flow is what makes
our actions and words so important. Our words and actions don’t just stop
when we put them out as GO and then those same words and actions become
GI for someone who then passes it on as GI… GO…

Now we understand the next step of our equation which is nihilism.
If we pass on our current nihilism that becomes GI… GO…
for example, we know that business, corporations and the business
community strives for and try’s to gain profits/money… it is the cost
they are willing to occur that is damaging to people… If those
business and corporations practice as they must practice, nihilism, which is
the negation of human beings and their values… That nihilism is another form
of GI… GO… We see that nihilism as GI… GO… and we are affected by it and
if our basic dogma and ism’s and habits and prejudices and superstitions
also are the practice of nihilism, then we get as GI nihilism and that is
supported by the inherited values of our childhood indoctrinations…
this becomes an eco chamber where our childhood taught indoctrinations
of nihilism are reflected back at us by the GI…GO of the economic
and political systems of our day which also practices nihilism.

We see reflections of our childhood indoctrinations in our adulthood
which looks like conformation of our values but in reality is nothing more
then the GI…GO of nihilism as practiced by our economic and political system.

GI…GO of the type practiced by our modern corporations and media and
official state policy and the culture leads one to the nihilism as practice
by our modern corporations and media and state policy and the culture.
As the GI… GO circulates about from person to person to group to group
and at every stop the GI…GO may or may not confirm a person’s
already formed indoctrinations which may have or may not have
been overcome and begins the process of becoming who you are………

I would suggest that the process of GI… GO begins in our
childhood indoctrinations which is the garbage we hear as children
that passes as knowledge of the “reality” of our universe and our
place in that universe……….

The ever flowing GI… GO is one of the “certainties” of life…
we ever have GI at which point we decide if it is worth anything,
then we may or not pass that garbage out to others…….this becomes
the value of education… it can help us decide if some garbage is really
garbage or is it valuable information which can help us become better
people in our society…….

so what is the point is we can decide what we put out into the universe,
be it useful or be it garbage and by making intelligent, smart choices,
we can put out solid, important, valuable information instead of garbage
for the use of people and most likely those people will be friends or family
or co-workers… people we interact with everyday. we must become aware
of what GI… and GO we spread every single day. For our GI…GO will
flow a long ways in its journey as it passes from person to person…
and depending on the person GI… GO passes to, it might help people
or it might hurt people… if we pass as GI…GO the nihilism
of our age, we will be hurting people as we pass on the nihilism
of our age which is the negation of human beings and their values…….

Kropotkin

as mentioned last time, GI. GO flows from generation
to generation as the myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions
of our childhood indoctrinations. I am wondering about
one aspect of it. We have a word for the negative aspect
of GI. GO. and garbage is really an excellent word for the
negative crap that we use in in GI… GO…

But I note that I don’t have a positive word… In other words,
I can use garbage as a negative term for the message we pass
from one person to another person, from parent to child, from
the media to a person, from the state to individuals, any time
we negate another with a negative message, garbage is an excellent
word but I have no word for a positive message one gives another.

Not GI… GO but what word does one use to describe a good message
to another? Not garbage because that is the negative, but what word
would one use to describe a positive message?

In that very point lies our very failure. We don’t even have a word for
a positive uplifting message outside of a religious context… gospel…

I like the word gospel… let us strip it of its religious context and
make the word gospel be the positive message we offer up instead
of the negative words, the garbage, we offer up to people…

I offer up a message of the gospel of a positive message of mankind.
We shouldn’t engage in the message of nihilism, of GI… GO…
but we should engage in the message of the positive…….

the gospel as it were…

Kropotkin

As noted before, life is a series of equations,
Life = death………… is one example.
so in life = death… we cannot have too much on
either side of the equation. to much life on the one
side or too much death on the other side is bad.
the equation must roughly match……. Now is life itself
an equation and not just the process within life being
an equation, I don’ know……

The amount of rationality within life must match the
illogical aspect of life…so if one side of the equation
becomes too much, it throws the entire equation off.

r = irr rationality = illogical

the problems in society are when the equation is thrown off by
too much of something on one side of the equation…

In other words, the moderation within society creates
a better balance within the equations of life… to extreme
on any one side creates an inbalance and that threatens the equation…

Even our process of childhood indoctrinations has a balance…
the garbage we are feed as children must be balance with
our growth as human beings which is a process of
becoming who we are by becoming aware of those childhood
indoctrinations…and overcoming them… this is an equation…

the garbage we are taught is balanced by our learning experiences
which balance out the childhood nonsense…………

Once we overcome our childhood indoctrinations, we create
a new balance, a new equation… and that is what being
an adult is… just creating new balances or new equations………

The balance in our lives or the equation means we cannot go to one
extreme or another………we cannot upset the balance of our lives
with extremism of drugs or booze or actions or even thought……
to create a balance with these extremes is hard because the balance
must come from become more extreme on the other side of the equation……

booze = sobriety……… notice the spacing between them……
the equation to be equal must be spaced equally…….
the extremism of one side forces extremism of the other side
to balance the equation……………

if liberals = conservatives here……… to balance the equation,
liberals must move further away from the equation sign…
so liberals must become more extreme to balance the equation…
Liberals = conservatives…
instead of where the equation should really be…
Liberals = conservatives………. both in the middle, nothing on
the extreme edges…

right now it is the conservatives that are on the extreme, throwing
the equation off balance…………

Kropotkin

What is morality?
What are ethics?
How are we suppose to act/behave with our fellow human being?

One notion is the notion that the law is what we are suppose to follow…
Whatever is the law is the correct way to act/behave……

But that Truism means that if slavery is the law, then slavery is the correct
way to behave/act. Then if the law is the final criteria, then all sorts
of acts/behavior is allowed… for in the history of human beings,
all sorts of behavior was legal and justified… The concentration camps
of Hitler was legal, the forced sterilization of human beings with “defects”
was legal, the banning of marriage between white’s and black’s was legal
and in fact, was legal until 1967 in Virginia… during my lifetime…
the Jim Crow laws of the deep south was also legal in my lifetime…

You cannot justify the legality of the law with morality or ethics because
the law quite often is used to enforce unethical and immoral actions.

For example, today the laws are used to justify the murder of citizens
of this country by police officers. Murder is allowed by the law, our law.

You cannot use the law as some basis for a morality, for an ethics……

This is an example of GI. GO… we give lip service to the idea of
morality, justice with an example of how the law is the basis of
morals or ethics, when in fact, we cannot use the law as an basis
of morality or ethics.

So upon what basis should we use to have morality/ethics?

Religion? We have many who claim that America is a “Christian”
country and yet, and yet, we have many who don’t even offer up
lip service to “Christian ideals” anymore……… We had an fox news
type, her name was Tomi Lahren, saying her that watching
migrants getting hit by tear gas was the “highlight” of her
Thanksgiving weekend… and I am sure Mrs. Lehren considers
herself a “Christian” and yet, her views, not by any standard
given in the bible, can be considered to be a “Christian”.

This double standard, this dichotomy, this contradiction between
one’s stated views and one’s action are the result of what I have
called… GI… GO……

The garbage in, is the myths, superstitions, biases, prejudices
of family, state, church, media of childhood indoctrinations…
and without any attempt to overcome that GI, leaves us with the GO
the garbage out of believing on thanksgiving weekend that
tear gassing innocent women and children can “make” a weekend.

Mrs. Lerhren is just another example, of which one can create
“ad nauseam” from conservatives. In fact, if ask for a definition
of a conservative, one could, with ample justification,
simple say this, “A conservative is one who practices a double standard”.

and the basis of their double standard is GI, GO.
They haven’t been able to or are unable to free themselves
of the garbage that was their childhood indoctrinations.

As to the answer to the question, what is the basis of morality if
it isn’t the laws, can never be answered by an conservative because
they are too tied into their unacknowledged and unexamined
belief system. They hold to their GI, GO without any doubt or
understanding of what it means to hold onto the unexamined
GI. GO.

The conservative lacks the courage for an attack upon their
belief system, no, they pride themselves upon their courage of
their beliefs and therein lies their failure.

So upon what basis should our morality, our ethics be based on,
if not religion or, or the law?

Kropotkin

If we are to “correctly” understand ethics/morality,
we should better understand what that means.

What is ethics/morality?

Ethics: the moral principles that govern a person’s
behavior or the conducting of an activity.

  1. the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.

Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong
or good behavior and bad behavior.

  1. a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially
    one held by a specified person or society.

So, what is the basic principles of the U.S?
What are the morals, principles, of the U.S?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”…

Think of the declaration of Independence as a mission statement
for America. How far have we fallen from our basic mission statement
is quite clear upon even a basic examination of what is happening
today in America. That America has attack people, men, women
and children without any regard to the understanding that “all men
are created equal” that means just that “all men are equal” even
if they are not citizens of this country……… For the fact is, that
to discriminate because one is not a citizen of this country flies
in the face of the mission statement of our founding fathers.

But one might argue that the founding fathers by using the words,
“all men” have discriminated against women and minorties and
I agree with that… we have expanded the definition of “all men”
to mean “all human beings” for we cannot in good conscience,
or without being conservative, having a double standard,
exclude those like women or minorities or those of color.

If we exclude people based on nationality, then we are not
following the declaration of independence, for we are not
following the part that says, “all men are created equal”.

It doesn’t say, “all men are created equal as long as they are
citizens of this country” no, it says, “all men are created equal”
and we have expanded that to include “all human beings”

To practice, as the conservative practices a “double standard”,
is not a very useful method of ethics/morality or law.
For it cannot be made universal, this selective use of
a “double standard”. For it can be used to justify anything,
and that is a “relative” standard. Something conservatives
abhor and yet, they cling to it like drowning men cling
to a lift preserver.

If we are to engage in situational ethics, as the conservative
practices it, but refuses to acknowledge, then we must
understand what it means to practice situational ethics.

It is quite simple, the situation dictates the ethics.
but does that mean that there is no method or means
to ground ethics or morality as a “universal” or “sociality”
standard of behavior?

Does it mean we have an “individual” ethics but not
a society ethics? Can a society have “universal” ethics, morality?
Because situational ethics would suggest that a “universal”
or “societal” ethics is not possible.

Perhaps I am looking at this the wrong way…

Let us return to the idea of the equation.
we have an equation that must
equal on both sides of the equation. I have used
this as an example, life = death……… this equation
must equal. if we have too much life on one side, then
life must suffer because we cannot, we do not enough
resources to be able to give individuals the “right to life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. If death becomes
too much on the equation then we threaten society with extinction.

the equation should be roughly even for it to work.

if our equation is this… Justice/ equality = a society worth living in……
then we must make justice/equality as our goal…
so we must make our laws, our justice as being equal for everyone.
The further away from justice/equality our society gets, the less
a society is worth living in.

So ethics/morality is really the attempt to create justice/equality, not
only in legal form but in all aspects of society. So ethics/morality is
just another means of pursuing equality in all aspects of our life,
be it individually or collectively.

this is just one means of attempting to bring ethics/morality beyond
simple situational ethics. Ethics is the attempt to have justice/equality
in all aspects of our lives.

So to return to our definition of ethics/morality.

Ethics: Moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting
of an activity" two: the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles.

Morality: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong
or good behavior and bad behavior. Two: a particular system of values
and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or
society.

We can use justice/equality as a means to bring a system of values
or principles of conduct in regards to our behavior.

The answer to the question of ethics/morality is, is this just/equal
to all persons involved? The question of ethics is the question of
being just/equal to all persons involved.

So, a policeman who kills an innocent person, is that policeperson
being just/equal, to that person killed? No, quite clearly not.
For the person being killed is not being treated equally and for justice
to be justice, it must be equal. Equal treatment for everyone is justice.
so discrimination is not justice for it is unequal in its treatment,
and intolerance is not justice for it is unequal in its treatment
and bigotry is not justice for it is unequal in its treatment.

We can now see what our ethics and morality should be……
it must be equal in its treatment of both individuals and
and any group of people within a society. Unequal treatment is
injustice for it is unequal in its treatment of people and justice
is the equality of treatment of people.

We have a system of ethics/morality……

what is your system of ethics/morality?

Kropotkin

If we accept the idea of Justice being equality,
and we then must practice justice as equality,
the practice of justice must be applied equally
to all aspects of society including the economic.

The inequality of capitalism is clear to anyone who
has thought about capitalism from the original and
best critic of capitalism who is Karl Marx to today.

we must practice justice/equality in all area’s of our life
and the economic is just another area of our life which
demands justice/equality.

Now many defend capitalism as a economic system because
it is “blind” in its operation. But capitalism is about choices
and no one, absolutely no one “chooses” to be poor.
It is not a choice that millions of American’s live week to week,
from paycheck to paycheck. But to blame the “system” is
also a failed tactic because the choices made for capitalism
is strictly about profits/money… which is the process of
negation of human beings and their values.

The pursuit of capitalism is the pursuit of nihilism of
human beings and their values. Nihilism is the negation of
humans and their values. The executive make “choices”
which are nihilistic because they negate human beings and their values
in favor of profits/money.

To practice economic justice requires that people are treated
equally economically, and to do as executives do and
favor profits over people is nihilistic and not, not justice for
the favoritism of profits is the act of someone who is
using the system to economically favor themselves over
others. The executive/CEO is acting in their own best interest,
trying to accumulate profits/money at the expense of the workers
is not only nihilistic but unjust, unequal. It is treating people
differently to maintain one’s own profit margin. Economic injustice
is no different then political injustice and for the same reasons.
and social injustice is no different then political or economic
injustice.

Justice is equality regardless of the system that is in question and
anyone who favors their own situation over others is practicing
being unjust.

the real question is not about what is justice, but
the real question is about how far we intend to
engage in justice. Should we just practice justice only
in regards to the political or should we engage in justice/equality
in ALL aspects of our life. Just how far should we carry this
concept of justice? Should we practice justice/equality in
every area of our live or should we limit justice to the
political? and not to the economic and social and from
the individual to the collective?

How far are you willing to carry justice?

Kropotkin

one word I have avoided and the one subject I have
avoided is ambiguity.

Ambiguity: the quality of being open to more then
one interpretation; inexactness.

Is there more then one meaning to words like
nihlism and justice? Of course, that is the point
of discussing such words because they are ambigious
in their meaning. Justice can have more then one meaning just
as nihilism can have more then one meaning. Must my interpretation
of these words like justice and nihilism be the correct one?
The answer is obviously no, there can be many different
versions of these words as well as other words we use commonly.

But the garbage in, garbage out theory suggests,
that the garbage in that we get in our childhood indoctrinations
influence, perhaps even dictate our understanding of words like
justice and nihilism. The different understanding of words like
justice and nihilism come from the garbage in that we have received
instead of our reevaluation of what justice means to us or what
nihilism might mean to us as we overcome those childhood indoctrinations.

Then by our overcoming, we can see, perhaps, that my understanding of
the word, justice and the word, nihilism, might be right? maybe?

But until we experience the overcoming, the Zen of our existence,
we cannot be sure what the word justice or nihilism may or may not
mean in our current time frame………for as we grow and evolve
from baby to toddler to child to young adult to adult to middle age
to senior citizen, our understanding of words also changes. What seems
to be radical, changes as we age. What seems to be radical at 40 is not
radical at 18 or 21 and might seem incredible radical at age 59…….
the exact same idea or notion changes as we age… suggesting that
it is not the idea or the notion that changes, but us…………

so what is justice at age 20 maybe or may not be justice at
age 40 or justice at 60. This evolution of our understanding
of the ideas that we have in our life is a natural changing of our
understanding of idea’s like justice or nihilism, this is another
reason that we have such a tough time trying to pin down
idea’s like justice or nihilism. Those idea’s change as we age.

But Kropotkin, you are not making anything certain……
your concepts change with the wind… yep, and that
is an answer right there. there is no certainty and any
attempt to gain certainty is doomed to failure.

But if we cannot gain certainty, then what are we trying to do?
exactly, what are we trying to do?

Kropotkin

Part of the “modern” failure has come about because
we haven’t given any thought to what we want to accomplish
or what ought we accomplish or what should we accomplish,
not just as individuals, but as a society or a state.

What is our goal? Simple enough question, what is our
overall human goal? What kind of people are we now and
what kind of people do we want to be or should be in the future?

This failure to project our possibilities is not just a political
failure, but an economic failure and a social failure.

Yesterday we were…
today we are…
tomorrow we will be…

Simple enough and yet few if any give any thought to what happens after today.

Now individually we might have goals like being able to retire at age 60,
( I fucking wish I could retire at 60, but alas, I shall be working until I’m 90)
But what goals should we accomplish as a people? Should we work toward
abolishing poverty? Should we work toward colonizing the stars? Should we
work toward world peace? I say yes. We can and we ought to work on all three
goals. So what is stopping us? a failure to truly understand what human beings
are and what we could be…

As I have stated before, I think the Buddha is wrong in making suffering
the primary instinct or primary value in the world…
for the Buddha, Life is suffering…

and the Buddha thought that suffering was caused by our attachments. We are attached
to people, things like money, feelings/emotions… and the Buddha thought
that by ending our attachments, we can gain freedom. If we stop our desires and
cravings, we can become enlighten and end the cycle of suffering that is otherwise
inherent in life. This philosophy is one where we can see where we are now
and where we need to be in the future. How do we become enlightened is the goal.
So all our actions and thoughts are in this future event of becoming enlightened.

And this is what we need both individually and collectively, a goal in which
we can see the past, of what we were, and the present, of what we are,
and the future, of what we will be and how do we achieve our future goal
of what will be…….

the means to achieve our future goal is in the political and economic
and social realm. We achieve our goals by using our political, economic
and social structures, institutions, organizations as our means of creating
the space needed for us to achieve our goals. We achieve our goals because
the political, economic and social institutions and organizations we have,
have freed us from enough burdens to allows us to achieve our goals…
for example, because the state takes care of the roads, individually we don’t have to,
and that create for us, time to engage in our own needs. Because the state
educates our children, we don’t have to and thus we have time to accomplish other
tasks. Our political, economic and social institutions give us time and space to achieve
our own goals. We do not serve the institutions or organizations, they exists
to serve us and this is important to note… they serve us and we and they ought
to remember that. Institutions like the police departments and the educational
system are there to serve us, not us to serve them and the same for the political,
economic and social institutions of our modern era, they exist to serve us.

governments fulfill a basic and essential function of keeping the system running,
so we can accomplish other task. so when we decide upon a goal, that goal is
about us accomplishing other task with the assistance of the institutions and
bureaucracy of the government… note I said with the assistance of, not
as below the institutions but in command of the institutions/bureaucracies.

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

We the people, and we the people are in charge and we are in charge
of the government and we are in charge of the institutions and bureaucracies
of the government. The government and the institutions and bureaucracies work
for us… simple as that.

So what goal should “we the people” engage with that will benefit us
and improve us going into the future?

We can begin with education……. we have a failed educational system
and that failure lies with the fact, that education today is about
job training. Our entire educational system is about training workers,
about turning children and young adults into workers. It is about
marketplace values when education should be about the questions
of the nature of the human being. We should not train people to become
workers, we should educate people to become human beings. The goal is
not to work for 40 years to make someone else wealthy inside a rigged
system, no, the goal should be to help people to learn how to doubt
and to begin the process of understanding who we are.

Our educational system is misguided at best and dangerous at worse,
because our educational system exists to train people in job skills, whereas
we should be educating people in how to become human. Jobs skills
shouldn’t even be taught. the question of life is not, what job should I have
and what skills do I need to do that job, but the question of life is
who are we and what is our goals, as human beings.

You want to make a change, make that simple change.
Don’t learn a job skill, instead learn to think and wonder
and doubt and discover who you are. Train to become a human
being, not a worker. and once we have become human, we
can then focus on the goal we need to create that we can
individually and collectively, reach for.

You have been miseducated, you were taught job skills and not
how to be human, what are you going to do about it?

Kropotkin

In my last post, I laid out an shocking
admission, that we, you have been miseducated,
and I laid out the blame on the fact that you have
been educated with job skills instead of how to become human
or even more basic, what does it mean to be human?

How have we been miseducated?

Recall, I have on occasion, mentioned the childhood indoctrinations
of biases, prejudices, myths, superstitions, habits……….
well those childhood indoctrinations are the early attempts
at education. The prejudices and biases we teach children
is education and now we begin to understand why it is so
important to have an reevaluation of values, of discovering
what values we were taught and then begin to overcome them,
with the end result of us becoming who we are with values
that truly represent who we are, becoming who we are………

We are overcoming our early education by our overcoming values/
indoctrinations that we were taught as children.
I haven’t called it education, I called it childhood indoctrinations but
they are the same thing. When “educated” one is told that America/Americans
hold certain values and we are told that America is about “life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness” or that America is about “truth, justice and
the American way of life” Those are values that we are suppose to embrace
and follow… but what if, what if those values are false values or that
we have a contradiction between what we preach and what we act upon…
the “true Christian” today says, don’t follow my actions, follow my words…
for my actions of violence against immigrants and religions and hatred
against my fellow man is contrary, contrary to the word of Jesus but mark
my preaching, because I have declared myself a Christian without
actually acting like a Christian…….Those who practice a double standard
are legion in this country and they hate to be called out for their
contradictions but, but I call them out……

The ones who practice contradictions are also miseducated but
they have never overcome their early indoctrinations and thus
they still believe in their childhood indoctrinations. They
haven’t become who they are because they haven’t evolved
into the values they truly are and thus become who they are…

You have been miseducated because you have been trained, educated
to be a worker………not educated to be a human being and thus
you are miseducated. What is the path to becoming human?
Certainly not through the economic system that is the epitome of
nihilism where you are negated, devalued in the pursuit of profits/money.
How can the road of nihilism educate you in becoming human?
Only through a positive path, not a negative path can we begin
to understand what it means to be human.

Our education to becoming human begins with our positive
values of love, peace, hope, charity, honesty……….
We learn what it means to be human via positive values,
the higher instincts………

Oh my friend, you have miseducated and only by a reevaluation of
values can you redeem yourself, only by becoming who you are, can
you be saved from being a worker all your life. The highest value in life
is not to be a worker, but to become the values that reflect our higher values.
I have committed the highest crime in America today, I have committed
disobedience to the values of America today. We cannot consume our way
to becoming human and we cannot work ourselves to death to become human,
no, the only path to becoming human is to take the long path of reeducation
and becoming. To know thyself, to overcome, then to become who you are…
this is the road to real wisdom, the road to understanding………

you might say, I doubt you… and that doubt begins the road to wisdom……

Kropotkin