a new understanding of today, time and space.

okay, I’m not that self-absorbed. A lot of things conspire to make it seem that way, but that’s not the truth of me, not what I choose to be. And, if it seems paranoid and crazy to think that things conspire against me on that level, keep in mind the heavy and deep impacts I make knowingly with each step I take, metaphorically, figuratively and literally. I know that not because I’m self-absorbed or narcissistic, but because I’m self-analytical, and when that fails, I’m aware of other things being analytical of me and I pay attention to what they say and see if it’s true about me or not. I remove the protective filter of bias and prejudice from myself to see clearly to see if what they say is true or not and if I need to work on it or fix it or correct it in myself. And, for someone who wants to do good, it is important to know the impacts I make and to know them precisely. You may remember being this young and see it in me, but I guarantee your life experiences up to the age I am were entirely different and you can not trust yourself to see clearly because of your own biases and prejudices, not just against me but against your own younger self that you were and to some extent still are.

You’re right, you’re no longer as vain as you appear, but you’ve been at it so long that the mask has become a part of every day life for you. It’s an act while you struggle to come to confidence behind the face-value of it.

You say “truth” in quotations, but you don’t say what truth you were looking for or thought you saw. I have to take on faith that the truth you sought is the same as the truths that I found. In truth, with truth, the truths you thought you saw or were in pursuit of may not have been what I or others may have pursued or perceived. And, obviously, when truths are portrayed as they’re portrayed in society, of course they’re going to be exposed as falsities with more falsities surrounding them. I can not go further in explanation of the truths of what you searched for in depth because of these things. To know where you left off, where you failed, where you stumbled; I do not have that. I don’t know. I do know, that like everybody else, you came to see what you thought was there, with perhaps the unspoken statement if not spoken, ‘I see how it is.’

What truth are you in search of that you are no closer to finding today than 40 years ago? Is your pride going to get in the way of answering that simple question or trying because this younger man than you might actually be able to help you and you can’t stand the thought of someone of a younger generation actually being better or greater than you even though you wanted such to be true of you and your generation which followed a generation of utmost tragic demise where your parents were responsible for a large portion of the messes I am now cleaning up across the societal and cultural landscape, where they knew more than we did and packaged it all away for 50+ years.

When you say that I am certain that I hold ‘the’ “truth”, I am not sure what truth you are speaking about. I have many truths that I am certain about and I have gone above and beyond to assure myself not just in vain and insecure fashions that the evidence is there in spades to back it up and support it beyond just circumstantial. If I were to ever tell you that I knew truth every second of every day in every matter, that would most surely be a lie and I’d be the first to say so in any situation. Do I sound political, like some politician just speaking things to speak them and sound good? Why do I sound that way when I back it up every second of every day and, in fact, every time you or others see me or engage in interaction with me?

I must just be doing and saying this to look good even though I have definitely crossed lines, redefined being controversial and have looked very bad in a lot of things I have done without once apologizing or backing down. I have looked very bad for the slander and libel and lies that get spread about me, the misperceptions, the skewing, etc. of mass-deception.

I will call my shots ahead of time and I will see them through to the point where they come true, though you and others will misperceive and misconstrue what is meant until it comes true and then you might even have trouble seeing it for what it is because of the fog of the mind and whatever else you may be involved in. It could be years, centuries, eons, before it sinks in properly, but here are the shots I’m calling for the future: You will break yourself against me, no matter how safely you play things, you called me to you, not me approaching you out of the blue; you have already learned from me and I have already boosted you past where you were; you are a pathological liar, like so many others and almost every word out of your mouth is a lie and a deception and your works confess it better than you ever could. You are not the 58 you claimed to be, you are younger than that by a decent margin, but you’ll play the hand you picked up and decided to play, so I responded to that hand on face-value, knowing better inherently and deep-down but going with the flow to have us arguing along certain lines for the spirits we each have channeled, you for your deceptions and me for the shredding of them.

When this plays out, you will be stripped of everything you are, whoever you claimed to be; your hand will be laid bare when the final call comes and all betting is done; and for all the calls that all bets are off, all bets are still on save the one I won’t make again: my eternal soul and everything else. I’ll bet a lot of other things, including piecemealing out the everything else, but as a whole, that parcel is off the betting table regardless of bets you make in private or imagine to make with me, not saying that you personally have made such bets, but a betting man I bet you are and if you care to take that bet against me, I prove you to be a betting man and if you refuse, I could call you a coward, but at the very least you’d be smart not to take the bet knowing that you are a betting man. You already tossed aside your eternal soul, passed it off; made a deal with the devil as did so many others in life and still disbelieve in both God and the Devil, though you still turn to both for help.

No matter how insane you think the other person is, you have to at least believe to be true what they believe to be true to meet them where they are if you want to help them, so for all your claims of wanting to help others that you have made in your life and I believe that you have meant that at times, just the same as I believe the devil to help others far more than people realize, but for not knowing how to help them or for fear of being lost yourself, you went down paths that you would have walked differently had you known what you were doing.

If a person were to come to me and tell me that they were hounded by a spirit and I felt inclined to help, had a clean spot in my itinerary and felt up to par, I’d give it the honest go to believe in what they believe in and then see how it affects their psychology. I don’t just discount things as not existing or try to cover it up with lies nor do I prescribe medication to people as anything other than crutches that are only meant to assist until you heal again. And, I don’t find it very hard to believe what others believe because I know a lot of it is true.

And the entire problem of this is that you are no longer the person that wants to help others and who can blame you? When my own give a fuck is largely busted in various degrees here and there in different manners on different days, I find that I still care a lot about the greater good and I’m constantly doing things for it, but I don’t always feel the desire to help others. And, for people who went down other paths, I see it still in them as they try to help others the only way they know how even through their lies and deceits and believing that they just don’t care. I see you and where you are as I do with so many others and see the paths you were pushed down, that you chose to go down even when not pushed and what you’re dealing with and I’m saying the truth of it is that everybody is wrong and right in varying degrees and morality isn’t what it’s defined as, that what we know of as right and wrong is wrong and needs to be redefined but the necessity of that is going to largely get shoved into the mud puddle full of feces and piss as things reach to grasp for their power and control over others.

You are a fool and a simpleton for thinking the pursuit of power is wrong or immoral. Even the most benevolent of beings accumulate power whether they will it or not; even the most benevolent, when their give a fuck is busted, can do great ‘evil’ in lashing out when they just can’t force their own mask not to slip. I’ll be the first to admit that if you cross me on a bad day I will cut you down quicker than any other and for that, my company is eschewed for the company of those who lie and flatter even though the long-term of that is worse than the long-term of what I bring.

I just somehow don’t think that you, like so many others, can claim to know enough about me to make any assumption that isn’t just fielding for responses because you don’t know how to phrase what you really mean; you have never met or seen or heard of anyone like me. And, that isn’t ego or boasting on my part. I have not seen any like myself. I have yet to see anyone match me step for step or even go round for round toe-to-toe against me. They all fall down, all come up short and that’s just simple analysis and seeing what is.

I am exactly who I say I am… I have no
need or reason for pretense or lies…
I don’t know who you are and I DON’T CARE…
I have read enough of you to know… you have nothing to teach me…
that is not to say what you think or believe is wrong… just what you
have to say, has no interest to me… it is a phase of youth I suffered through
all those many years ago…you may have your “truths” and I say, more power to you…
I spend my days either working or I am writing, like now, or I am reading… that’s it…
I don’t do anything else… I have no interest in anything else…ok, maybe baseball
and basketball, but that is it…oh, I play my computer chess and read books about
getting better at chess, oh, and eating, I love to eat and oh…in
you little piece, you mentioned I am a “pathological liar”… you are right…
I am really a dull housewife who lives in Paramus New Jersey with 4 kids…
you found me out…or not… it doesn’t really matter…the search for the truth
is all that matters… anything else is just accidental garbage…

Kropotkin

in my readings of history, this question of leadership often
comes to my attention…for example, Rome and the
Roman Emperors… we have plenty examples of both “good”
and “bad” emperors… now by what example did the Roman
Emperors lead… for example, an emperor like Augustus…
he would be called a “good” emperor… he ran the Roman empire for
over 20 year and was known to be a “moralist”… for example, he
spent much of his time, trying to get proper marriages and then
out of those marriages, children… he was a big fan of populating
Rome with Romans…he led by example in this… now my question is
how does this leadership by example, setting proper examples actually
“pass” down to the lower classes… or said another way… how much of
the lower classes follow the lead, behaviors of the upper class or even the
leader of the society… so how much did the lower classes follow Augustus?
said badly, but you get the point…it is my proposition that the morals
of any given leader will help… note help, in the actions of the lower classes,
middle and working poor…would the middle class follow the actions of
their leader if they could but afford it… meaning if the leader was a lying,
cheating, both in monetary and marriage, would the lower classes… the middle
class and working poor follow that leader into lying and cheating and whoring?

the thing about moralists is simple, they almost always say, do as I say, not as I do…
for moralist are quite often the ones who are the ones who lie and cheat and steal
and whore the most…you find this true in TV evangelists for example, the list
of TV evangelists who sinned is a long one… Jim Baker is just one example…
I am just too lazy to look it up the whole list… so, we have had two presidents
who have lived up to the high standards, Obama and as much as I hate, just hate,
bush Jr. he was at least a moral person… of course, outside of his homosexual trysts
in the WH, but hay, he was relatively moral person…I suspect that after the years
of dropping birth rates in teens, that the rate will go up and I suspect it will continue
to rise as long as there is a GOP member in the WH…and when the dem’s return,
it will go down again and I believe this is due to the influence of acting moral in the
WH… now we get to Clinton and he clearly wasn’t that moral, as least in regards to
his marriage… and I think that had a negative effect on how people acted…
the leader sets the pace, sets the example and if he/she sets a negative example,
this impacts the nation as a whole… however, I also foresee a very negative
economic situation about to occur and I believe this will impact “morality” greatly…
just how I am not sure… so my thesis is that because 45 is a immoral person,
this will lead to greater immorality within the population… my problem is
being able to prove this thesis, given I have no real way to prove it…

it is an interesting question…

Kropotkin

That’s fine, but this is still more of a blog than any type or brand of cohesive philosophy.

K: and that has been one of the arguments against Nietzsche… he didn’t create a “cohesive”
system and yet, in the end, who do we read more… Nietzsche or Hegel?

you have fallen into the trap into thinking that for philosophy to be “PHILOSOPHY” it must
follow a certain form or have certain idea’s or must talk about certain things…
thus to be philosophy to be philosophy, it must talk about the “how do we know what we know”
or be about metaphysics or be about a theory of beauty and yes, they are philosophy but
philosophy encompasses all that is around us…science says, that life can grow anywhere
but philosophy asks, why and what is its meaning? philosophy doesn’t even have to be
written down like we are doing today… it can be musically, it can be done in dance,
it can be done even be done in silence… because if it, whatever it is, expresses
or communicates the nature of life or human nature, it is philosophy…
life is sad and that can be communicated without language and thus it
becomes philosophy… or said a completely different way… philosophy is
what we decide it is, regardless of its nature or form…
if it says something about the human experience or the experience of life…it
is philosophy,

now I choose this format because of my work schedule which is
all over the map… I can work from any time from 6 am to midnight and any
number of hours in between… so for me… this type of philosophizing works…
because my time is quite often short… this week I am on vacation and so, I am
actually spending my time in reading in history and philosophy during the Renaissance
and shortly after… I am preparing for my start in modern history on my journey to
review philosophy to find our where philosophy went wrong and how to bring
philosophy back to the “common” man… this historical review has so far taken
me two years and I suspect will take another two years to reach now… but
I have taken great steps in my journey and expect to take many more in the
next couple of years…

Kropotkin

I read what comes out of my own mouth and through my own fingers and worry not about others. I’m concerned about myself getting it right, not others.

K: good, you are learning…

Kropotkin

Not really, it’s how I’ve always been. But, it’s cute to have you misread me.

I have reached the part of my research where I must
begin my scientific aspect of my research into philosophy
because from the Renaissance to now, science drives
philosophy… scientific knowledge drives the philosophical
search… what is the meaning of reality in philosophy is driven
by what science tells us is reality…

let us look at science… I pick up a rock and wonder, what kind of rock
is this? I can examine the rock, weigh the rock, measure the rock in all kinds
of different ways… by research, I might even be able to find out where the rock came
from and what type of rock it is… but by myself without any resources, how do I
discover the “'facts” about this rock, how do I discover the “truth” about this rock…
as I said, I have done all the measuring I can with this rock… but unless I get some
outside information, I cannot discover the “facts” about this rock…
now let us say, I go to place that has rocks and in looking at the rock in this,
call it a rock show for identification purposes… I go to this show and find another
rock similar to my rock… I then find out the rock in question is a certain type of
rock from Italy… I can now compare my rock with the rock from Italy and see
what I can learn from it…I can compare and contrast my rock with the rock from
Italy and see what is the same and what is different…it is this comparing and
contrasting that allows me to better understand this rock and know the difference
between this rock and other rocks…as I couldn’t compare the rock to anything the
first time, because I had nothing to compare it to, I can now begin to compare my rock
with all kinds of rocks…especially with rocks from Italy…I find a different
rock from Italy and compare it to my rock and I discover that this second rock is
a different type of rock from my first Italian rock…and I can measure this rock in
all the possible ways and because I have knowledge gained from my first rock,
I can make some guesses about the second rock…the more rocks I can compare
and contrast, the more understanding about rocks I gain…the knowledge
I gain from these rocks come from comparing and contrasting them…after a while,
I can see a rock on the ground and know how that it is the same or different from the rocks
from Italy and how it is different…science to a great extent, is simply
comparing and contrasting things… you don’t know what an item is
in science until you can compare or contrast it to something, something similar
or something different…can you do a similar thing with philosophy?
I don’t know, let us compare and contrast and find out…

I declare that the purpose of human existence is happiness…

this is just like my first rock… I don’t have anything to compare or contrast with
it… I am not even sure I can measure it… how does one measure happiness?
so I find a second rock, a second idea… the declaration of independence in
which it is declared that the point is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”…
well that second opinion is certainly certain… but as I compare and contrast,
I discover that some disagree with the notion that the “purpose of human existence
is happiness”… religious types for example, believe that the purpose of life is
finding salvation and redemption and then going to heaven…ummmmmmmmm…
I am now lead into another path as to the “purpose of human existence” so I
compare and contrast the two opposing opinions, is life about happiness or is
life about finding salvation…the religious types might argue that the two idea’s,
happiness and finding salvation are the exact same thing… another brick in the wall…
I compare and contrast the many different ways people find happiness and I compare
and contrast the many different ways people find salvation and redemption…
after much research and thinking, I reject both arguments… but I must now
present my alternative theory which means I must compare and contrast
other theories about the “purpose of human existence”… perhaps the purpose
of human existence is to eat cake and watch TV all day… after researching
that possibility, I see the flaws in just eating cake and watching TV all day…
I see I will grow obese and become sick, so I cannot honestly make that choice.
but it is only in comparing and contrasting these idea’s that I can make a
honest appraisal of my choices… so for philosophy to work, it must on
some level, engage in comparison and contrasting… you have the
prior work of philosophers and current works of philosophy and so you begin
to compare what philosophy you have with what has already been written
and by comparing and contrasting the two, you can better understand
philosophy and as with science, the more comparison and the more contrasting
with more philosophies and philosophers you have, the better understanding
you have of philosophy…so we have step one and what is step two?

Kropotkin

we have in science, a thought that the pathway to knowledge in the universe
is by mathematics… science operates via math…now we know that math is
is the tool we mentioned earlier which by measuring something we
can learn things… this measuring is done by math…
and by comparing and contrasting the various things we have measured, we can
get some idea about the thing we are curious about…
we have measured dogs and by our various math skills have concluded
that certain dogs only grow to a certain height and other dogs can grow
another height, but we know that there are of course, exceptions to every rule
we create… we say, that the German Shepard can grow up to 4 feet tall but
we know of German Shepard’s that are taller because out of all our rules,
there are always exceptions… we say the average man is 5 foot 7 inches tall…
BTW, I am 5’7 tall… but that is the average height… I am much taller then
my brother and my stepfather was much taller then me… a good deal of
science is really just saying things are roughly this dimension and this dimension,
in some form of measurement…Stars are this big and the average star in the
universe seems to be a brown dwarf, so we have a range of dimensions in everything
from galaxies to ants… everything has not a set in stone size, but a rough average size…

now can we take any of this and apply it to philosophy?
we can say, the average philosopher seems to have written
about knowledge and we can measure the amount of words a
philosopher has written about knowledge and compare and contrast
it to other philosophers… clearly some philosophers are much more concerned
about knowledge then other philosophers…and by measured the amount
of times they write about knowledge, we can get a sense of how concerned or
not concerned about knowledge they were…we know for example, Descartes
was very concerned about knowledge and wrote a great deal about knowledge
and someone like Camus was not that concerned about knowledge and we can
measured the differences between the two by how much they wrote about
knowledge… but can we discover a means to discern not how much about
knowledge they wrote but about their understanding about knowledge?
how do we judge Descartes understanding about knowledge?
how do we measure Descartes understanding about knowledge?
Does his understanding of knowledge have any value? is it worth reading
and how would you judge or know that? you would have to take the word
of someone else… for example, your philosophy professor says that, Descartes
is the greatest philosopher of all time… and you must read him to understand
philosophy…and I will quiz you on your understanding of Descartes understanding
of knowledge…so, to get a good grade, you “study” Descartes… but
would you use the scientific method of measuring him or would you use
the philosophical method? Wait a minute, there is a philosophical method?
you didn’t say that… so what is the philosophical method? and what is the
scientific method?

Kropotkin

I have a thought… human beings purpose is happiness…
is that a philosophy? No, it is an opinion, but certainly not
a philosophy… what does it need to become a philosophy?
just as I had my lone, single rock, I have this lone, single thought…
To make sense of it, I must compare and contrast it to similar thoughts.

So I spend my days, looking through dense pages of other philosophy and
other writings to compare and contrast my thought…I spend my days
seeing what other writers thought about the purpose of humans is
in being happy… as I read, I see it depends on whether the writer
in question is religious or not… the religious ones tend to disagree with
the basic premise that human existence is about happiness…ummmmm,
premise… isn’t that kinda like a hypotheses… a scientific hypotheses…
so, when I offer up a philosophical premise, it is kinda like a scientific hypotheses…
now, a scientific person would then try to test this theory…
how would you test this theory that the purpose of human existence is happiness?
and therein lies the philosophical problem… a philosophical person wouldn’t
try to test this theory that the purpose of human existence is happiness…
a philosophical person would try to reason it out… create arguments and counter
arguments (the philosophical method) to attempt to solve this issue of whether
the purpose of human existence is happiness…the idea is the philosophical method
is about rational arguments for or against a particular position… the scientific method
would go about and create an experiment to prove or disprove the theory/theses/premise…
so let us take out our scientific hat and think about a way to create a experiment to
prove or disprove our theses that the purpose of human beings is happiness…
now we reach Nietzsche… Nietzsche, you say… Nietzsche wasn’t a scientist…
nope, he wasn’t… what the hell does Nietzsche have to do with this? if you read
Nietzsche and I have… he often points out that life is an experiment…
What if, what if we conduct our experiment, our scientific experiment
on the question if the human being purpose is happiness, on ourselves…
this is what Nietzsche did in fact… he conducted his life as an experiment…
so instead of logical reasoning attempting to discover if the purpose of human beings
is happiness, we engage in that experiment ourselves… in your personal experience,
is the purpose of human beings to find happiness?

we engage in our lives to discover philosophical truths… we use our lives
as experiments in understanding what is the fundamental “truths” of our human
existence…the experiment we conduct is upon ourselves and the answers we
find we report to the world… this however means no more sleepwalking
through our lives as we have been… we are scientists engage in a experiment
and we must devote our time and energy trying to understand how our experiment
is going… that is how we convert a philosophical method into a scientific method…
we use our lives as the experiment…instead of just reasoning our way into a truth,
we live our way into the truth…a radical difference…

Kropotkin

What if human beings existence is to be the entertainment of reality. The cosmic butt of every joke. By rights, we should be exterminated like the plague we are; by rights, things would be fully in every right to wipe every single human from the face of existence; but what would they do then? They’d be bored as hell watching ants crawl and sand blow in the wind. Where are the idiot tool makers so trumped and hyped up on false egos and prides and ideas of rising to a destiny that reality never actually gave them, but was born and created by the very humans that refused the truth of reality and the same ones that did so many things in the name of God because they could get away with it, that we were meant to for so much greatness in eternity, when we are the cause of every evil, every idiocy, the most hated bastards in all of time and space. The bumbling clowns that where one or two throughout our species existence might get it right enough to grudgingly earn respect for themselves while killed and sacrificed by the rest of their ridiculous race of clowns and assholes.

Descartes has what is felt to be the “correct” philosophical method…
He reasoned and used logic in his attempt to create certainty in
our knowledge… he create a mind experiment… what if I
can’t trust my sense and I can’t trust outside matter and what if god
is evil and making me sense or see things that lead me to have
a wrong account of the universe… what is certain?
the certainty is Cogito ego sum… I think therefore I am…
I exist because there is a I to think… therefore I exist… as a brain,
not as a physical object, but as a thinking object…
now note, at no point does this become anything more then
a mental exercise… mental masturbation if you will…there
was no real world attempt or nothing attempting to connect
his thinking with the real world, the physical world…
now I don’t object to the use of a mind experiment because
Einstein for example, used them to help create his theory of relativity
and Newton for his physics, but they still were able to connect these
mind experiments with the real world and they were able to confirm the results
of these mind experiments with real world experiments and real world results…
but Descartes does neither… his mind experiment is just that and only that…
how can we trust a mind experiment that hasn’t been at least, tested in
the real world? the philosophical method to be of value must
have some real world testing or applications…philosophy to have
value must be grounded in the real world, so how do we ground philosophy
in the real world? I have mentioned one way, which is to use our own
lives as the experiment…I did this for years when I was an anarchist…
I didn’t just have a mental argument for anarchism, I lived the life…
I lived off the grid for years… no bank accounts, no car, no paychecks,
no fixed place to stay…off the grid as best as I could… and in the
day to day of being an anarchist, I learned what it meant to be anarchist
and that in part, is why I am not an anarchist today…
I took a theory and lived it in the real world and although the
theory had promise, the time wasn’t right for anarchism and I learned
that from my years being an anarchist…if we are to better understand
a theory, we must live out that theory in our day to day lives… those who
advocate for conservatism, live your days as that and you will see the failure of
conservatism because it fails on a community, state and federal level…
you cannot have everyone live as conservatives because society will fail
and collapse… you can have everyone live as liberals because the
state/society will be fine even though the individuals within it may have
issues IE, not get everything they think they deserve like happiness and salvation…
or blow jobs…if you look at real world applications of political theory,
then you have a better sense of what is political theory we can actually exist in
and live in…if you follow current events and the drive to destroy all our institutions,
the problem with that is once you succeed, now what? By destroying our institutions,
you have destroy the means of society to carry out its wishes… in other words,
it is a return to the solitary and brutish man of Hobbes? or was it Locke? Can’t remember…
and we created society and civilization and government to avoid all that…
so we must connect theory with reality and only then can we avoid some of the
issues we are going to hit very shortly…

Kropotkin

after a hellish week at work, I’m back…

as I work in a grocery store, we sell a lot of stuff and
of late, we have been selling a lot of Jewish Passover
material… as I am not Jewish, I don’t really know what
the various items are for… for example, challah bread and
Gefilte fish and Matzo… so I was thinking about this…
this Jewish, (and the Jews by no means are the only ones who do this,
they are just an example, I could have picked any number of groups for this example)
Jewish tradition is just one example of people who have traditions that reach
far into the past and give the present a sense of continuity… a link to the past
that make people feel safe and secure…this linkage from past to present then
with the young ones, also links the past to the future…traditional ceremonies
that link us firmly with our forefathers is a very human trait… it is almost a
safety net…and yet the problem becomes, as with any safety net,
it becomes a crutch… one depends on the past far too much and
it that prevents one from looking forward… this is the position of
the conservative… far too much dependence on the past and not enough
looking forward… the conservative would argue the opposite, that the
liberal spends too much time in the future and not enough time in the
past… but the past is the past and that means done and over with…
however with traditions like Passover and Christmas… we firmly
hold with the past, to the past and the question becomes simply this…
as we should hold to the past but we must commit to the future…
what guide should we use to know when we must use the past as
a guide or as a link and when should we look forward to the future…
it becomes a question of knowing when to look back and when to
look forward… the answer to whether to look past or forward
comes from the simple answer of having a flexible and adaptable
vision of who and what we are… in other words… when the situation
calls for it, we look back and when the situation calls for it, we look
forward and this requires us to have flexible and adaptable
ism’s and ideologies… in other words, we can’t have rigid and
inflexible ideologies… we can’t say, this is reality and
this is how we deal with this reality… as if one fixed viewpoint
of reality fits all reality… there is no absolute standard and
we must adapt to changing situations with a changing and adaptable
viewpoints of the universe… we get locked into thinking there
is but one way and one way only to approach how we are to live
our lives and there is not one way and one way only… there is a
multitudes of ways we can approach how to live and multitude
of ways to becoming more human… the idea there is but
one road becomes a trap because the one road has only
one way to go into the future whereas we must be able to travel
many different roads to reach the desired destination…
this is real strength… being able to find a new road when
finding a new road is called for… and when it is called for,
sticking on the old road may be the best path…
but one must be adaptable to understand this… the path
to god doesn’t need to be with traditional ceremonies like
Sabbath and Passover… the path to god may be another road…
and the path to becoming more human may requires us to
change paths in mid course and we must be adaptable enough
to see this… we get too locked in sometimes and think the
road has only one path into the future and from the past has
only one road leading to the present… but many roads are possible
and we have to become flexible enough to see this…
but becoming flexible and adaptable means we must rethink
what it means to be human and we need to rethink what it
means into the future …

Kropotkin

if the answer is relevance…
then what is the question?

The question is: what doesn’t philosophy have?

Philosophy doesn’t have any relevance for the average person
on the street… Philosophy doesn’t talk about anything that
has relevance for the average person…the last time philosophy
has had any relevance for the average person was when
existentialism was current and that was over 60 years ago…
Philosophy now is about deconstruction and language
and game theory… nothing the average person knows or cares about…

who am I? what is my purpose? what is my relationship to the state/ society/ civilization…
is there a god and what does that mean to me?
these are questions that the thinking person wonders about and philosophy
doesn’t answer…

so how is philosophy suppose to become “relevant”?

by understanding its purpose…
philosophers think about the “big” questions because the
average person either doesn’t have the time, the energy, the
ability or the desire to think about these questions…
We think about these big questions for those who cannot…
and we must provide honest answers because if we don’t, who will?

we cannot rely on dogmatic answers or answers from authority…
we must create new understanding of what is important for people AND
be able to explain what that understanding is and why it is important…

and why is this? because we live in a different world then say, even Nietzsche did
and we must explain the differences in terms of our changing world?

for example, we live in an age of tremendous income inequality,
so what is this and why is it important for us to have income equality…
in this, we touch not only philosophy but economics and political theory…
people might hear about the fact that 9 people have as much wealth
as half the population of planet earth but they don’t know what this means
and why it is important? Philosophers must be able to explain this income
inequality and why it is a hazard and a danger to everyone on planet earth…

we must search for answers even if no one listens to us…
because even they don’t understand why it is important, we know
why it is important and we must explain and understand the world in
such a way that the world can understand it… which means without
the jargon and technical language that makes philosophy incomprehensible to
everyone who is not academically trained…( which is why I keep my language
simple and understandable… the form of what we say is as important as what we say)

so what answers do you want?
and how would you find those answers?
and what format would you use to ask those questions
and answer those questions?

Kropotkin

a big picture look at where we are right now…

The question for the Greeks was about the good life:
what was the good life and how do we achieve it…

The question for the Medieval man was about salvation:
what was salvation and how do we achieve it…

the quest for the Modern man was answering the Greek question:
the good life is a theology called consumerism and we are all consumers
and that creates the good life…

but this consumerism creates many difficult problems as does
the associate problem of science…

if you look at modern ideologies from the last 500 years…
several things become clear… one: none of the modern ideologies
are concerned with the “individual”… all modern ideologies
are about collectivism of some sort and none of them are
concerned or deal with the individual… thus consumerism
and communism and socialism and democracy are all about the many,
not the one…what is MY place in the universe is answered by
you are one of the many who contribute the health of society by
your materialism… you are one of many… and that in a nutshell
is the ideologies of the last 500 years…you are one of many…
man is supplanted by humanity…science is about the classification
of the many… the one doesn’t enter into science because the one
cannot be the measurement and weighting and comparison and contrasting…
you need many for measuring and weighting and comparison and contrasting…
to build your model of the universe… you cannot do so on just one
representative… you need thousands, indeed the more things you weigh and
measure and test and contrast… the better the model of the universe you get…
which cannot happen with one…I… the one doesn’t enter into
consideration about the universe… I stand alone because as a single person
I am not considered… only as a group or a unit within many units or as
a consumer which is one of many or a democracy which is one of many or
as a comrade which is one of many or as a scientific measurement of
which I am one of many… but not me… Kropotkin, I am not thought about
or considered or brought into conscience… and that was the argument
those like Nietzsche or Ibsen or Kierkegaard…the one matters just
as much as the collectivism of the modern ideologies which include
both the economic and political theories of the modern age…
indeed those named above might argue that the one is more important
then the many of society…indeed one might write a history of
the world in terms of the ongoing battle between the one, the individual
and collectivism/the many…

the middle ages fell on the side of the one…
and the modern world falls on the side of the many…
but why cannot we answer both… that may be the question of
the modern age… how can we do justice to BOTH sides of
the equation… the individual and society…

faith/religion stands clearly on the side of the one…
and indeed aspects of the modern ideologies stand with
the ancient religion… communism does so when the adherents
of communism resort to appeal to revelation such as happens when
they resort to saying… what did Marx say? or the scientist when
he resorts to appealing to the “divine” authority of Darwin or Einstein…
but if they create an argument without appeal to authority, they
are not in religious mode… any appeal to authority is faith/religion
is religion and any argument that doesn’t appeal to
revealed religion is something else…
so which is why James is both right AND wrong about science…
if the argument that doesn’t resort to appeal of the authority is not
a religion and is science…so a appeal to the original founding fathers
as to the “correctness” of interpretation of the constitution is about
a religious appeal to authority…so any argument about what the founding
fathers meant is an religious argument. appeal to authority…
appeal to divine revelation which in this case is the founding fathers…

so we have in modern society a strong case to be made in which we are still
attached to “religious” appeals for our arguments…which is why
we still haven’t made any progress toward a solution for the problems
facing society… we are still invoking the name of divine revelation
in our arguments instead of creating new arguments which is not religion…

More in a bit…

Kropotkin

the medieval question was “how do we find salvation”
and the modern man answers… “through ideologies like consumerism
and communism”

finding salvation is an individual question, “How do I find salvation”
whereas it has becomes an collective question, “how do WE find salvation”
whereas that answer is… democracy and communism and consumerism…
we can find both an individual answer, I found salvation through…
AND a collective answer… WE found salvation through…
everything is an equation upon which we MUST create equality on
both sides of the equation or we have an unbalanced or unstable
equation and that leads to both a wrong answer in the equation
and an wrong answer in life, both individually and collectively…
the equation must balance out… be equal on both sides
so the modern ideologies have created unequal and unbalanced
equations whereas the scale is tipped on the side of collectivism
and not enough on the side of individualism… on the side of the “I”…

to rephrase the entire question…what is the meaning of life?

the individual or the collective?

the equation demands that both sides are equal and we don’t have
that right now…

“What is the truth”?

our equations must be equal on both sides or we will have failure…

more later…

Kropotkin

we have to create a balance in our equations…

how do we create a balance?

do we create a system such as Spinoza and Descartes
and Hegel and Kant?

or do we answer this question of balanced like Nietzsche and
Wittgenstein?

this question of format is an important one…

our modern science tells us that any system is
going to be incomplete because it cannot enter all
the necessary facts into such a system…ALL systems
are going to be incomplete… it is this incompleteness
that devotees of the religious, attack… Darwin/ evolution is
a system and by definition, incomplete as is gravity
as is any scientific theory…and this is the wedge that
opponents of science attack, the incompleteness of science…

as we cannot create a system that is complete and answers
all questions, so we cannot depend upon such systems as
democracies and communism and consumerism… as they
are themselves, incomplete…

how do we resolve our need for completeness of our systems
when they cannot be completed?

we return to the fact that the universe we live in is random,
chaotic, incomplete, unpredictable… so we live in a
random and incomplete and unpredictable universe and
we cannot compose or create a system to solve this
basic problem of randomness or incompleteness…

so we answer the question about creating a system by
not creating a system…we focused on particular problems
without resort to any overall system…like Nietzsche did…

we must balanced the scales without resort to a system…

a tough road but not an impossible one…

science is a means to measure, weigh, time objects in
the universe and philosophy is a means to interpret the
results of that weighing and measuring…

so we use philosophy to interpret the “answers” of science…
so science is not opposed to or opposite of philosophy,
science is just another aspect of the equation…
whereas science is on one side of the equation and
philosophy is the other side of the equation…

equality of equations is our goal, not necessarily
solving the equations, but balancing the equation
is the goal of philosophers…

Kropotkin

you have the idea of the equation…
A + B = C…1 + 1 = 2…

and you have individualism one side of the equation
collectivism, the other side of the equation…
like good is one side of the equation and
evil is the other side of the equation…
but as we have seen good vs evil is not
two distinct and opposite thoughts, but
as we view them from a long viewpoint, they
become two sides of the same coin and then
they become one…

individualism and collectivism are two
sides of the scale and then they become two
sides of the same coin and then they become one…
and they are no longer competitors but one and the same…

is this the mission of philosophy?

to take two distinct and opposing answers and
make them into one and the same…

Kropotkin

Have you ever had the feeling like nothing you say at all except one thing or two here and there has any value to it whatsoever?

It’s like, a working clock changes to suit the time, and they’re right a lot, but broken clocks are broken, still tell time accurately twice a day, reliable for that consistency at the least, but not much more.

You’re a broken clock, Krop. Just another broken clock.