a new understanding of today, time and space.

so anyway, back to actual philosophy…

in this conflict between traditional thoughts and attitudes
and new experiences and new knowledge, what else happened?

some of our responses to the new idea’s and experiences was
democracy and capitalism and communism, nationalism…
and ism’s and ideologies that didn’t survive the new experiences and new
knowledge were religion, monarchy, imperialism… all were destroyed by the new
experiences and idea’s…

this idea of equality is a modern one and comes from our new experiences
and idea’s/knowledge… the thing about the medieval world was its
devotion to inequality, both economic and political…
the modern world’s response has been the rising approval of equality
as an answer to the traditional thoughts and attitudes…equality
both in the political and the economic sense…events that
show us the modern response to the traditional thoughts and attitudes
are the French Revolution, the American revolution, the Russian revolution
the entirety of the 20 century with its wars and concentration camps and
cold war are all response of sorts of the conflict between new experiences
and new ideas and the old traditions and attitudes…the conflict
between the left and right lies in this conflict between the old traditions
and attitudes and the new experiences and new idea’s… the left wants to
follow the path of the new experiences, new idea’s and the right wants
a return to the old traditions and old attitudes…the right is wrong for the
very simple reason that you can’t engage in the modern world with its new
experiences and new idea’s and new technologies with old idea’s and old
ism’s and ideologies and old attitudes… the right is trying to preserve
a way of life that is already gone… lost in this new world of science and
technology… the battle in the schools to prevent trans kids from
using bathrooms is just a symptom of this battle to preserve the old
traditional thoughts and attitudes against the new idea’s and new
experiences…the right will fail because if they cannot overcome
the new experiences and the new knowledge with old and failed
traditional thoughts and attitudes…that don’t cover the new
experiences and new idea’s…we must have new thinking about
what it means to be human in light of the new experiences and the
new ideas/knowledge…the old ways of thinking about human beings
no longer applies anymore…for example, you cannot think about human
beings like the Medieval times thought about human beings… we are not
in the medieval times, we are in a new and modern world that requires
new idea’s in response to the new experiences…to those who defend
the old way, the conservatives for example… you are simply preventing
people from achieving a new equilibrium with the modern age by your
holding the past up as a model for the future… this new equilibrium
is the balance achieved once the new thoughts and new experiences are
processed and understood and placed into the already existing system…
and this is what is really desired, a balance between what is and what is
possible… the road into the future is not a path into the past like
conservatives want, the road into the future requires new experiences
and new knowledge being put into action politically, economically,
socially, scientifically and culturally… the basis of action in the
modern world must be modern thoughts and attitudes, not old
traditional thoughts and attitudes because they are from another age
that had different experiences and different knowledge… we cannot use
their experiences and knowledge to chart our course into the future
because their experiences and knowledge is geared toward their
conflict between new experiences and new knowledge and the old
traditional thoughts and attitudes that was prevalent in their time…
that is their response to the conflict, it cannot be our response because
we have new experiences and new knowledge that only makes sense
in our times and our age… we must respond with the appropriate
ideas that work in our age, not theirs…

Kropotkin

ok, in terms of the new experiences and new knowledge, we
have gone from taking different “moral” positions…
We have gone from gays being criminals to the legal approval
of gay marriage… we have gone from a society that doesn’t
tolerate gays, drugs, whites and blacks marriage to one that does
approve all of these things and this is the result of conclusion
of the conflict between the old traditional thoughts and attitudes to
the new experiences and new knowledge… we have overcome those
ways with a thesis, antithesis and synthesis… the thesis was we
don’t tolerate gays, drugs, interracial marriage, the anti-thesis was
the new ideas and new knowledge that these things aren’t bad
and the synthesis was an acceptance of these new idea’s…
these shifts in morality and culture and idea’s have come from this
conflict between the old and the new… but the difference today is the
speed of the shifts… as our society moves faster due to technology,
our shifts in the acceptance of new idea’s and new experiences also
move faster… what used to take decades, can now take years, even
months… those who try to hang on to the eternal fail because there is
no eternal to hang on to… there is no absolute eternal vision or action one
can hang on to… one must shift with the winds in the new world and that
is how it should be as science has shown us that the universe is chaotic,
random, unpredictable and we must have a philosophy that responds to the
new knowledge and new experiences… and the new idea’s tell us we have
no permanent, fixed place upon which to base our idea’s upon because any
place we may find is chaos, random, unpredictable… we must build our new
foundations upon the new finding of science which shows us the “real”
world, universe we live in…
how do you find philosophy in a random, chaotic, unpredictable world?

Kropotkin

We should only tolerate some gays and some drugs, like some, gay crackheads are fuggin’ annoying.

Delusional man thinks his shitlib philosophy is superior to the philosophy of the Holy Trixie.

This is why I hate humanists.

Show me one humanist who cares about animals.

Not one.


One can be humanist and vegetarian as they are not incompatible

Humans dont care about animals, thus why should I care about evildoers and enemies.

if we take the long view of ism’s and ideologies,
then we understand that the ism’s and ideologies of
say, Napoleon, weren’t all that different from the ism’s
and ideologies of Julius Caesar… in fact, the world of
Napoleon wasn’t all that different from the world of
Julius Caesar… it would have been recognizable to
Caesar… so from 44 B.C, Caesar to 1800 A.D. the world
in western Europe was still basically understandable by both…
for example, in travel, you got around by horse or carriage, in
both… in France in 1794, they removed the monarchy,
that is something very understandable to Caesar… you
had large cities with a large lower class, Paris in one, Rome in
another… no real difference there…technology wasn’t all that
different from one to another… it would still been understandable to
Caesar…the underlying principles of the world of 1800 was Roman…
the law and philosophy and engineering were all principles that the
Romans would have understood easily… it wasn’t that much of a different
world from 44 B.C to 1800 A.D. but the world in the last 217 years has changed
far more then the previous 2000 years put together…new experiences and
new knowledge has changed the world in such a dramatic way, that the world
is a much different place compared to 1800…whereas it would have been
relatively easy for Caesar to understand the Napoleonic world, it would
have been dam near impossible for Caesar or even Napoleon to understand the
modern world with all the changes in the last 217 years…one of the
events that truly changed the world was the Industrial revolution…
That has transformed the world (and not necessarily a good way) to the
world that we see the world today…in fact, you cannot explain the
world today without explaining the Industrial Revolution…and that
is something that would have been foreign to both Caesar and Napoleon…
(England was far ahead of France in the industrial revolution in 1800)
the ism’s and ideologies that would have supported both Caesar and
Napoleon were substantially the same because of the long line of
traditional thoughts and attitudes were, roughly, the same in both…
but the new thoughts and new experiences of the last 217 years
have so changed the landscape in every way, shape and form,
that unlike Caesar and Napoleon who had things in common, we
don’t have any real commonality with either…our world would
not be understandable by either one…this is an example of
how traditional thoughts and attitudes have been changed by
new experiences and new knowledge…this conflict between
the old and new was played out in the 20th century in
the many wars and conflicts that existed in that century…
you could say, that the 20th was the conflict between the old traditional
thoughts and attitudes and the new experiences and new knowledge…
and for better or worse, the two didn’t really settle anything for we still
have that conflict raging today…and I suspect that the reason for
this conflict is that we still haven’t created a philosophy, ism or ideology,
that allows us to place into context the new experiences and new knowledge…
the failure of philosophy to adapt and change to the new experiences and
new knowledge has contributed to the conflict we see today between the old
and the new…until a philosophy can be found/discovered/created that
can account for the new reality we find ourselves in, a reality that is
chaotic and random and unpredictable and we must create a philosophy
that can account for the chaos and randomness and unpredictability, we
know exist from science and from life…a philosophy that accounts for
the new experiences and new knowledge we had have since 1800 or the
last 217 years…

Kropotkin

ok, historically philosophy as been a coherent, logically and internally
consistent…but, but what if that is wrong…what if the traditional idea
of philosophy being a system of logically and internally consistent is wrong
because the world as we known from science is not logical or internally
consistent… what if we need to make our philosophy like the world…
not only not logically inconsistent or internally consistent but without
a system, perhaps this is why Nietzsche didn’t write a consistent, orderly
system of philosophy…if the universe is random, chaotic, unpredictable,
what kind of philosophy must we have to match this idea of the universe…
Well certainly not the type of system we have been trained to do…our explanation
of the universe must match the universe, in both style and substance…
to those who commonly complain, your philosophy is full of contradictions…
I say, the world/universe is full of contradictions… why should my philosophy
be any different then the world? our explanations of the world must match
the world…and being logically consistent and/or internally consistent
and by doing so creating a system is not within this world, this universe…
physical matter such as stars and planets and galaxies and meteors and
the tree’s and grass and us all are part of this universe in which
is filled with chaos and randomness and disorder and we must match
the universe, so we all are random and chaotic and disorder and
unpredictable and our philosophy needs to match us, so our philosophy needs
to match us, which means our philosophy must be random, chaotic,
disordered and unpredictable…to have an orderly, logical, consistent
philosophy is nice but it doesn’t match the universe as we know it…

how can we create ordered philosophy when the universe is not ordered?
how can we create logical philosophy when the universe is not logical?
how can we create predictable philosophy when the universe is not predictable?

this follows the human need to create order out of disorder which is great
but the universe is disorder and what philosophy can we create to match this
disorder?

Kropotkin

we might argue that the world is consistent, see the speed of light, that
is consistent, but, recall that in a black hole, gravity is so strong that
light cannot escape it, which means even this physical event is
full of randomness and chaos and unpredictable… even this one certainty,
isn’t certain…all physical matter is subject to random, chaotic forces
and we must create philosophy to match these random and chaotic forces…
philosophy is not of the eternal because the eternal is subject to random, chaotic
conditions… philosophy is of the moment and when the moment is gone,
so is the conditions of the philosophy, so a new philosophy must be created to
adapt to those new conditions and with every change in conditions, we must
change and adapt our philosophy… this is, in part, why philosophy has failed
because it is created with the eternal in mind instead of the moment… that moment
in which philosophy is true and then when the moment changes, so must the philosophy…

Kropotkin

It’s like life can’t endure chaos therefor they are naturally drawn to order and stability.
This is why logic and reason are sought after, because they are solid and logical.
That means they can be predicted, therefor in them we avoid death and danger.

K: perhaps, perhaps…

Kropotkin

I think it is Apollonian to focus on the best, beautiful and most inspiring images, in the light, and because of the light.
It’s a world view that makes reality look structured, and appealing to the senses of reason and order.
This is a type of pragmatism, sanity before truth. “Sanity” here means that which is good for the mind.

Realism is different, because it sees many things at once, with and then without the light.
Reality doesn’t really care about us personally. It’s actually ugly at times.

I struggle between the Apollonian and the Realistic.
It’s quite the struggle.

I have heard it often said, a man must know his limits…
and how we are a weak species…we are a finite and a limited
species… and yet, I for one have never believed we are weak or limited
or finite… when people look at human beings, they see weakness, whereas
I see possibilities…perhaps because of my hearing loss, whereas I had to overcome
my “weakness” on a daily basis, I never thought of it as a weakness that was so
deep I wasn’t able to overcome it… Man has a moral weakness, I have heard
it said and yet, I have never believed it… …

we are suppose to need god to find salvation and yet, I have never believed that…
we don’t need to saved… we need to understand and we need to learn how
to be a better human, but we don’t need to be saved because we are weak and
helpless and unable to save ourselves… I have never believed that…

we can be as strong as we need to be… all we have to do is understand that…
religions focus on how weak we are and I focus on how to become a better human
being…

I believe limits are to be broken, not to be use to hold us back…
it is said we have a limits and I believe we should find those limits and
then surpass those limits in everything we do… it was said that man can’t fly
and we found those limits and then surpass it… we was said we will never get into
space and that was a limit and we found the limit and we surpassed it…

is man a weak species?.. no, just a species that hasn’t found its limits yet…
and until we stop looking back and move forward, we shall be bound by limits
and I say, limits be dammed, let us push the limits as far as they will be pushed
and then push it some more… break the wall of limits

enough of using our supposed limits to keep us from finding out what
is possible… push the limits of being human and find out what possible…

Kropotkin

K: I have at times thought of it in those terms of Apollonian and realistic…
other times, I haven’t…and I would put truth ahead of sanity… sanity be dammed…
find the truth not matter what’s the cost even at the cost of life itself…
the struggle is to be human and finding out what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

Let’s call one idea life-ism, the other idea progressivism.
Jesus heals on the sabath, some jewz get mad.
Life is more important than rules, according to this story.
Life is more important than truth to some people.
Truthers are interesting people. Some philosophers are like that.
Like what you described.

I will try to tip toe into this OP … I sincerely want to be unnoticed if my comments offend the ILP members who have long participated in this OP.
I only learned of this OP today … read the first few pages and the last few posts … should be enough to get the gist of the discussion. :slight_smile: Peter … I’m taking your recent advice … “great minds float over the details”. :slight_smile:

Peter … IMHO

  1. You spend far too much energy hacking at the “liminal space” … essentially the “in between” … what you label the time between the “old” and the “new”. Your energy would be better spent working the “vanguard” … more about this later.

  2. Your unbridled confidence in ‘philosophy’ is misplaced … your exclusion of spirituality is an oversight.

  3. You ‘hit’ on a crucial piece of information and fail to extrapolate. eg your dissertation on the time intervals between the old and the new … Caesar and Napoleon. As you argued … the time interval between the “old” and the “new” has shrunk substantially in the recent past … more importantly it continues to shrink even more rapidly day by day. There may be a mathematical relationship at work here. I recently learned a line of Persian poetry … from antiquity … “The bird of time has a short way to fly.” If this was true 5,000 years ago … perhaps the “short way to fly” the poet foresaw is much shorter today. In any event, if the time period between the “old” and the “new” continues to shrink humanity better have some intelligent people spending all their energy trying to figure out what the hell is next … and I’m not talking about technology here.

  4. You spend way too much energy attempting to bring “others” along with you. The eagle flies the highest … and … alone! Leave the task of “bringing up the rear” to those people born to do this task.

Enough for a “tip toe” post"

I’ll leave you with two quotes I find relevant:

  1. “Jesus here considered His disciples the “true Israel” (the spiritual Israel) which is already present and beginning life in the kingdom; and He considered the crowds the “Israel” of the future, the Israel that is hoped for, who should repent and follow the king.”

2)“Woe to the man who says that this Tora wishes to relate simple stories.” We must internalize the profound truth hidden herein.
Great events in our national existence cannot be understood and decisions that will shape our people’s future cannot be made in the ‘Yishaq mode.’ In order to perceive the direction and orientation that must be assumed, to come to terms with the steps that must be taken, and to possess the self-assuredness simply to know when something is right, and to be therefore willing to lead the way -for all these, something more than rigid loyalty to tradition is required.
Our Geula, which was prophetically mapped out for us long ago, is the. ‘What.’ We must supply the ‘How.’
Rav David Bar Hayim is the head of the Makhon Ben Yishai Institute for Tora Research in Jerusalem

K: Tom, I appreciate your comments and let me say first of all, you have no
need to tip toe around me…like my writings, don’t like it… I don’t really give a dam…
I am far too old to really give a shit anymore what people think of me or my writings…
I admit I have an agenda when writing this and I have stated this time and time again…
I am working on saving philosophy… philosophy has for a number of reasons, lost
its place in the world and has lost itself…philosophy has gone into a cul de sac
and it cannot escape… so in my effort to save philosophy, I have gone back
and reviewed philosophy… from start to finish… so I spent a year studying ancient
philosophy and then spent the next year studying medieval philosophy and now I
in the midst of Renaissance philosophy and shortly I will hit “modern” philosophy…
I have over the years in this thread listed what I have found out… This is in part,
part of my goal… to report my findings of what I have found in my study of philosophy…
You can go back and read them at your pleasure…

In my time, I have also discovered many different aspects of life and I have reported those
as well… the interconnectedness of life and how Spinoza was right (not to anticipate
too much of what I have found) and science is focused on the how and philosophy is
focused on the why and the why is what I am after…I believe I have made
some major philosophical discoveries as in my connection between Hegel and
Nietzsche for example…and it really doesn’t matter to me if every single person on planet
earth disagrees with me…I know what I have done… so, another aspect of my
agenda is to “wake” people up… I have learned that it is the radicals that shakes up
the world… Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche… all of them
have done some radical, radical thinking and in doing so, have gotten people to
reevaluate, rethink what it means to be human and what is possible philosophical
to learn… it is not enough to learn for one own pleasure… we have to share
our gains with the world, even if the world isn’t listening or cares…
I know no one here understands or even cares what I write and that is fine with me…
My audience is probably not even born yet…and I can live with that…
if I can get even one person to rethink or reevaluate their thinking, I have done
my job…

I argue against spirituality for a specific reason and for philosophy for a specific reason…
spirituality leads people away from themselves and to something outside of them…
Philosophy is about people and what is possible for people… Perhaps, perhaps
I put too much faith in people… but I must… I stand for the here and now…
Not some far off reward and not some imaginary god, but today and for people…
I argue for people and life… I reject spirituality because it rejects people in the name
of some far off emotionalism… if you want something bigger to believe in…
something to live for, something to die for… I offer life…I offer the possible
greatness of people… I offer something more tangible then some pie in the sky…
I offer us a chance to become more human… to become what we need to become…

the first step is to finding a solution to any problem is seeing there is a problem…
and that is another step in my agenda… showing people there is a problem
and then solutions may be found…I have a multiple agenda and have taken a while
to reach this point…

Finally, I have often asked, what is next? What is possible? Are you…?
I have not offered solutions, I have offered questions because I am not,
to phrase it in religious sense, Jesus… I will not be the messiah… but I am
the messenger, I see myself more as John the Baptist… I proclaim the coming,
but I am not the coming…I leave it to those I leave behind to create their own
solutions… the Jews Messiah, Nietzsche overman/Ubermensh… the same thing…
the creator of the new laws… the person who creates the reevaluation of values
is not me, but it will be someone soon… the old ism’s and ideologies have failed
and new ism’s and new ideologies are needed and this is why we need the
messiah, the new ubermensh… to create the values that will lead us into the future…
human values… values that say, life is valuable and is worth saving and here is why…
however that is not my job… I am simply trying to get people to see that there
is a problem… nothing more and that is my only job…

Kropotkin

Peter … many thanks for your thoughtful response … first some general comments that attempt to illustrate my intuitive reaction to your post.

  1. I am almost a decade older than you and I wish I could say I don’t give a damn what people think about me or my writings. In particular, my children and grand children … 14 in total … who all believe I am “nuts” … believe I fell off the wagon … ( metaphor for … shoved off the shores of the crowd) … about 25 years ago and bumped my head kind of nuts. The suffering from this can only be understood by one who has had the identical experience … which of course no one has.

  2. You are a truly gentle person who has embraced a ‘calling’ that requires an emotional outburst from time to time … like the release valve on hot water tanks. The Biblical story of Jesus illustrates the same truth.

  3. Your comments suggest … to me at least … there is no contradiction between philosophy and spirituality. I will try to illustrate later in this post.

  4. My birth circumstances made me RC … I am still RC … yet not in a “parochial” sense. I found when the boundaries defining the RC faith finally came down … a whole new vista opened up. This new vista … global, ecumenical in the broadest sense (all religions) did not demand of me that I abandon my RC faith.

  5. I share the sense of urgency and messenger issues you raised.

Let me now attempt to support the above comments with excerpts from your post …

Replace the word “philosophy” with “spirituality” and I could not write a more eloquent phrase to describe the current state of spirituality … I intend a global reference here.

In your OP “Who Are You” Xunzian offered an interesting thought …

Yesterday I posted this thought in another OP …

The "individuation’ journey is personal … unique to each individual … apparently Buddha said … paraphrasing … don’t hang on to my coat tails … be true to yourself.
Individuals wake up at the appointed time. I’m not suggesting ‘roosters’ don’t have their place in the process.

Strangely enough … I ‘see’ you arguing on behalf of spirituality … especially when we place the above paragraph side by side with the preceding one where you write “My audience is probably not even born yet…and I can live with that”

Your final paragraph … again I could not write a more eloquent summary of myself and my life experiences.
pilgrimtom.weebly.com
thoughtsofamisfit.com

Tom… I am glad some of my “Truths” have spoken to you…
it is the point of searching that we look for “truths” and
the “truths” that quite often speak to us the loudest are the “truths”
of another human existence… I would suggest that what seems to be “truth”
to us is due to our age… I have learned that it is only in ageing that
certain “truths” become available to us…From being a baby to old age,
certain “truths” only become apparent as you age… the Toddler discovers
“truths” that only becomes obvious as they grow from baby to toddler…
and as we age, age appropriate “truth” become obvious to us…
are we “wise”… not sure but we are old and being old gives us “truths”
that is simply not available when we were young…

you seem to equate philosophy with spirituality and that is certainly your right…
I don’t…but, but I have argued multiple times that in the end, everything is connected
and interconnected and I have argued that we have concepts that seem to be opposite
like good vs evil and light vs dark… but if you look at these concepts long enough,
you begin to realize that the concept of good and the concept of evil are two separate
concepts and then you think… hay, they are two sides of the same coin and then later
you see they are the same coin… thesis, antithesis, synthesis, the dualism that is
good and evil become one and the same… so perhaps if I looked at philosophy
and spirituality long enough, the dualism that is them, slowly and surely fades
and they become one, like good and evil becomes one…perhaps…

a human life story often appeals to another human because we share
a human bond, my story is just your story with different scenery…
and so my story and your story are just two versions of the human story,
the human experience…so your “truths” can speak to me and my “truths”
can speak to you…what the racist and bigots and Trumps of the world fail to see
is that we have the same experiences and we have the same story and we are just
two sides of the same story and as we noted with good and evil, two dissimilar
stories can become two sides of the same coin and then become one coin…
the human experiences means we are not divided by our differences but
united by our experiences… and we are far more connected by our
stories then we are divided by our stories…in the end… I am you and you are me…
and we become all the other people as well because the human experience is
about all of us… and so the large truth is simple… the search is to become
more human and that means we become more united because becoming is
about reaching what is best in the human experience and that is love and that
is hope and that is honor and dignity… reaching up for the human experience
and not reaching down which is hate and anger and lust and despair… those
are the animal aspect of human nature and not about reaching up and becoming
more human, those who strive for the lower nature of human existence are
the haters, the bigots, the angry ones, the one who sow defeat and hated…
the ones who elected 45 are reaching down into the animal existence instead
of reaching up like the ones who elected Obama… and voted for Clinton…
we can strive to reach up and become more human or we can go down and
become more animal like… the choice is yours and mine…

my story is your story because we share human existence and human
experience…

perhaps philosophy is just reasoned spirituality…

Kropotkin