a new understanding of today, time and space.

yeah … truly was … do remember what day that was.

me too Peter

please don’t think me unduly argumentative …

I don’t believe what the “other” writes … in books, poems, song lyrics and so on … is part of me … part of my consciousness.

Yet I DO believe that what the “other” writes … in books, poems, song lyrics and so on … when confirmed by my personal experience … becomes a marker on my personal metamorphosis of consciousness.

and yes … seems I remember forever these particular ‘markers’.

Let me share 3 examples:

Confessions … by Augustine

Classic of the Dao … by Wang Keping

The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling … by James Hillman

not to ignore tom, but I have different fish to fry today…

I was thinking about this last night… how are we to understand
our modern political and social world?

Upon what do we build our modern world and I got to thinking…

the political and social system we have should mirror our lives…
in other words, we should have a political system that reflect who we are
and we should have a social system that reflects who we are…

and who are we?

we are life and think about the story of life…

what is the progress of life?

life however it began, began small, one cell which turned into two cells
and then 4 and then 8 cells… life is the creation of order…random individual
cells unite and grow… this thing called life began small, individually and
then organized itself into larger and more complex systems…
millions of years pass before life becomes something larger then
a small clump of cells…with each generation, life becomes something that
is slightly larger and more organized…life is about taking disorder and
creating order…from the beginning of the very small and disorganized to
the larger and more organized… with each step, life grew and became more
efficient and more organized…billions of years pass and life becomes swimming
creatures and then land animals and then dinosaurs, with each step,
life is becoming larger and more organized and more efficient…
one thing to note is at times, we have what are called extinction events in which
life becomes more disorderly and less efficient, less organized…but life is
resilient and recovers and becomes more efficient and more organized until
the next extinction event and the cycle occurs all over again…

now let us follow the human story… we think about how human began and
we see that the human being story follows, mirrors the story of life…
we don’t how hominids got their start… but we can believe that they
started small, a few maybe or maybe even just one, we cannot know
how the story of the hominids began…but we closely follow the story
of life… with each generation, we slowly grew larger and more efficient
and more organized…this task from animal to human took millions of years
and we had speed bumps along the way… at times, the human story came very
close to ending…these extinction events almost wiped out human beings…
(don’t think of these extinction events like the meteor that wiped out the
dinosaur, think of them like events like the fall of Rome, whereas we went
from a very organized and efficient organization like Rome, to the middle
ages which wasn’t organized or efficient or larger…we went from
order to increased disordered and that is the best way to think of our
extinction events, going from order to disordered and the Renaissance
began our return to order from disorder)

now like life, we went from a few to some to many to millions…
the trip we took as humans is the same trip as life took…
we followed the template of life in becoming human beings…
the key factor is this idea that we went from a few isolated hominids
to the family, this increase in order help hominids to survive…
the key to survival of humans is the exact same key life used to survive
and that is becoming more organized, more a collective of atoms, a collective
of human beings… they are one and the same…at each stage, life and human
beings grew and became more organized and more efficient…the human being
story is one of greater and greater collectivization… just like life…
we went from one? to a few to many to millions, just like life and at each
step we become more organized and more efficient and more in number…
we humans have a shared history, one where we grew larger and more
efficient and more organized…just like life…the human story is one
where at each step of the way, we organized into larger and larger groups…
the family, to small groups, to larger groups and after hundred of thousands of
years, small villages and then larger cities and then the city/state… at each increase
in population, we found we had to organized ourselves more and more efficiently
to better be able to handle the greater increase of human beings…and at each
step, we became more and more collectivized…we have grown in size and number
in the groups we belong to…so to contrast and compare, the republican idea
of civilization of being small groups or individuals doesn’t match with
the record of life or of the human story…the conservative yearns for
a human story of small villages and individuals whereas the story of human beings
is one of increase collection of human being all growing from disorder to order…
think of the wild west of America gradually becoming civilized… from disorder to order…
with each step in the increased population, the system must grow and increase
and adapt to each person who moved into the west… the wild west no longer
exists because it can’t… the increase in population made the wild west become
organized, from disorder to order… the story of life and the story of the human being…
the conservative champion the individual and the small family but the fact is,
that story is past history…just as life grew beyond the small and few, human
beings grew into larger and larger organizations and we must grow into large
systems and organizations because of our numbers… we cannot keep
our organization or system going on 16 or 17 century governmental
principles, those idea’s were made for a smaller number of people
and worked for a smaller number of people…

the future must be one of socialism and communism because
of the numbers of people who exist…
and because the story of human beings is one of going from
the one to a few to many to billions and at each stage, we
must become more efficient and more organized…
to remain organized, we cannot waste energy on the individual
trying to gain wealth, our energy must be focused on
the group, the collective, the society…the idea of rugged
individualism no longer can exist because we are too large for it…
the myth of the one man controlling his destiny no longer exists
because we are and always have been a collection of beings who
to survive, must unite and combine our resources and energies…
this is the path of life and this is the past of the human being…
we exist together or fail alone…this is the great truth of human
existence, we exist together and in a organized groups that
grow larger and larger as we grow in numbers…

our social and political systems must reflect who we are and
we are a social, a collective species… we exist together because
that is how we have been since the beginning of time…
all for one and one for all… that is the true human saying…
because it reflects the history of the human being…

we shall have a global world organization that is in charge
of everything and that is as certain as the sun will rise tomorrow
because as we grow in numbers, we must increase in organization
and efficiency in order to maintain our current efficiency…
we must always use energy to maintain our current level of
organization because the name of the game is to increase order…
failure to increase order means we become more disordered…
order to disorder or disordered to order is the only thing
that matters in existence…or said another way…
we have a system and that system takes energy and the larger
the system, the more energy it takes to maintain that system,
so no system can remain the same, it either grows and becomes
more ordered or it becomes smaller and becomes disordered…
…

this a lot to take in and explains many, many things about human existence
that didn’t make sense before, but the bottom line is simple,
in order to survive as human beings, we must increase our energy
and we must increase in our level of order or we shall have disorder
and this increase of disorder is what destroyed civilizations like Rome…

this overall idea explains why we cannot resort to the GOP idea of
smaller is better because smaller increases the amount of disorder
in human existence because the number of human shall increase and
with every increase, we must use greater amount of energy to just
maintain the current level of order in society… we cannot allow
the government to drown in the bathtub as suggested by some
because that will increase the disorder in society to such a point,
that we shall shortly have an extinction event for America and
become just as disordered as Rome and fall… we have only one
way out and that is to increase our energy and increase our level
of order or we fall as a society…

all of this explains why the democrats have the answer for the future
and the GOP doesn’t… because we can only survive by the idea’s that
increase our order and the only party that does that is the democratic party…

Kropotkin

existence requires two and only two choices…
either you increase your order or you increase you disorder…

there are no other options…

let us think about this…

we have a car and a car takes resources to operate…
gas, oil, water, among other resources to maintain the car…
if you have one person, you don’t need a big car, you can get
by with a small car… you don’t many resources to keep a small car
going…3 gallons fill up and you are good to go for the month…

let us say, you get a wife… now the small car is a little less
useful because with two people, you need more room…
but you can manage with a small car with two people…

let us say, you become a dad of three… a small car becomes
impractical, you can’t fit 5 into a small car, you need a bigger car…

so you get a midsize car or a minivan…the problem becomes a larger
car requires more resources, you can’t fill up a larger car with 3 gallons
and hope to get anywhere, so now you need 15 gallons of gas to fill
up your car and an increase in oil and water, a larger car requires more
resources…

let us say, you have 8 people to move around… a small car is really
out of the question and a minivan is no longer an option, so you get
a larger van, one that holds 8 people and once again, you have increase
resources usage…you really can’t fill up with the 3 gallons you once did
and even 15 gallons no longer makes it… you have to fill up with 30 gallons
now and an even greater amount of oil and water and so on…

with the larger number of people, the larger car you must get and
the greater amount of resources you use to just maintain that car…

now think of government as that car… the larger number of people
the larger the car, the larger the government…

the greater number of people, the greater the size of government…
you are either going to increase order or you are going to increase disorder…
those are your only choices…so to increase order, you must
increase the size of government…to increase disorder, you
can just maintain the size of government and you will by
having a increase population, greater increase of disorder…
so the GOP idea to decrease the size of government will fail
because of the increase number of people which requires
an increase size of government…so the GOP call for
less taxes is really just a call to disorder and enough disorder
and we collapse just like the Roman empire…so the GOP
call for less taxes is really a call for the dissolution of AMERICA…

we either grow for increase order or we go small and a greater increase
of disorder because of the number of people we have… the only
path forward is to increase order and that is only possible
with this idea of greater and greater use of government and
greater collectivism… that is the only path into the future…
any other path that leads to greater disorder and that is bad…

Kropotkin

in regards to my last few post, am I understood?

somehow I don’t think so… well, it is certainly not my loss…
I have thrown a bomb into the mix and no one noticed it going off…

Kropotkin

I understand you very well. You are a man born into unfortunate circumstances, discontent at the world but not wanting to be labelled a monster, looked for a civilized means to vent your aggressions, taken advantage of by the Liberal and Democratic predators who see you as easy pickings to use and to manipulate as a soldier for their agenda.

as I continue my study of philosophy and am now
onto Descartes… one of the focus points of Descartes is his
reliance on Method and methodology…his pursuit of philosophy
lies in his methods for understanding philosophy… indeed within
some titles of his books include the word method for example.
“Discourse on method, optics, Geometry and Meteorology”
his goal is to create a scientific method for the understanding of
the world…his method and he calls it such, involves getting to
a point in which “I may assume as a general rule, that all things we conceive
clearly and distinctly are true” the problem with “method” is that by the very
fact of having a “method” you are committed into a certain method of searching
for the truth…you are forced into searching for the truth in one way…
and one way only…whereas the truth can be found in any number of ways…
I conduct thought experiments and in doing so, I discover aspects of
whatever I am thinking about… but that is not my only method of searching
for the truth and I think this is important… as the truth is wide and varied,
we must search for the truth in a wide and varied way… this reliance on method
can only cover certain parts of the “truth”… some truths are found outside of
method and we must understand that…

so what is your method for finding the truth?

Kropotkin

one interpretation of philosophy is that the questions of philosophy are actually
meaningless… it doesn’t matter or is unimportant what is
the meaning of life… those questions that keep us up at night,
are meaningless questions that have no answers and are pointless to ask…

that is one point of view…that philosophy has no relevance in the world…
science tells us that the sun is 93 million miles away from earth
philosophy tells us WHY that is important…science tells us how,
philosophy tells why and that is the value of philosophy…

because all question of humanity are covered by these little words,
who, what, when, where, how and why…

is philosophy meaningless?

I believe that the most important questions in life are about the “Why”
and not about the who, what, when, where and how…

a child asking his dad, “why is the sky blue” is a philosopher
and a child asking her dad, “where do babies come from” is a philosopher…

they want to know not only how, but they want to know why…

and we spend years stopping children from asking these inconvenient
questions because we hate to admit we don’t know, why…

Why do people die? a child’s question and yet, so important…

the big question are important because they provide us with reference…

for example… we have facts such as the earth is 93 million miles from earth
and the earth distance from the mars is 206 million miles and the distance from
the earth to Venus is 27 million miles and then we add mercury and that is 100 million miles
(right now)… and from these facts with the knowledge that we revolve around the sun
and you can create a map of the inner solar system from this knowledge, from these facts…
and still you can’t answer the question of, why?

but these questions provide us with a reference point, we can grasp where we are
in the universe and that oftentimes is the point of these questions, to gain an
understanding of where we are in the universe… and we do this in terms of
our place in human society… I am middle class America and that identifies me
into a certain place in society… much of our knowledge is simple to identify
our place in society and our place on earth and our place in the universe …

our knowledge is simple a marker for where we are in the universe…
I am a philosopher and that is a marker for my place in the universe…
it identifies my place within society for me and for others…

and in some respects this answers the questions of why philosophy
is important and why the so called “meaningless” questions of philosophy
are actually meaningful… because the “why” answers to our questions also
marks our place in the universe…who, what, when, where, how and why, are
simply questions that identifies the location of people, time, events and the how…
those simple questions are a means of locating things… locations that are
identify by space, time, people, relationships and the reason of their existence…

this idea of knowing our relationship to the universe is very important to people…
we need to know where exactly we exist in the universe and thus
questions deemed to be “meaningless” actually have a great deal of meaning because
they are used to place us in context of the universe…“why” questions are just
another means of creating context for human beings…“why do we exist”
that is just another question that creates context for us… it is important to
know our context in the universe … thus there are no such things as “meaningless”
questions… every question asked creates context for us and creates a spot
in the universe for us…

Kropotkin

so this idea of method is just a way to create context for us in the universe…
we can by a method, better understand what our context in the universe is…
we can be “more” assured of our place, it doesn’t definitely answer the question
of where our place in the universe is but it is surer method of finding our place
in the universe… the search for method is simply a means to find a more secure
place of asking where we fit into the universe… we are slightly less likely to go
wrong with a method then if we have no method… a method is no guarantee
of being able to find our place in the universe but is a slightly better means of
finding our place in the universe…

Kropotkin

imagine a room with 20 people standing in it…
you have no sense of context with just that information…
ok, I name those 20 people, Robin, Joe, Vaile, Gayla,
Caroline, Tim, Calle, Joey, Marline, and so on and so forth…
you still have no context, you can’t picture why those 20 people
are in a room… are they related, not related, are they just random
people or do they have some connection of some sort… until you have
more information you can’t actually make sense of those 20 people…
what is their context to each other if any context to each other…
how do we make sense of those 20 people being in the same room together…
how do we understand their place in the universe given this information?

I say, they are family and then you can begin to identify why they
are in the same room together. You can begin to create context
and understanding of their roles and relationships together…
you can create purpose and a why if you have enough information
about those 20 people…asking questions is one method of discovering
what is these 20 people relationship to each other… finding out
that Caroline is the mother… that information can suddenly
create even greater context, an understanding of their place
in the universe… you now have an understanding of their
context… perhaps a birthday party, a farewell, a funeral,
a party of some nature…and now you have a pretty good
understanding of their place and their context of those 20 people…
just knowing that there are 20 people standing in a room creates
no understanding, no context, no point or purpose of those 20 people…
but as you get information about those 20 people, you get the
context and point and meaning of those 20 people…you
create a meaningful point in the universe for those people…
you know their place in the universe and thus you also
know your context to those 20 people, perhaps you are related,
perhaps not…it still allows you to know your relationship to those
20 people…you know your place in the universe in regards to those
20 people…

thus it goes for science and philosophy and religion… it allows
you to know your context and place in the universe… each
discipline allows you context and understanding of where
you stand and where you stand in regard to the question at hand…
it create identity and context to ask questions…
and thus is not meaningless to ask such questions…

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
imagine a room with 20 people standing in it…
you have no sense of context with just that information…
ok, I name those 20 people, Robin, Joe, Vaile, Gayla,
Caroline, Tim, Calle, Joey, Marline, and so on and so forth…
you still have no context, you can’t picture why those 20 people
are in a room… are they related, not related, are they just random
people or do they have some connection of some sort… until you have
more information you can’t actually make sense of those 20 people…
what is their context to each other if any context to each other…
how do we make sense of those 20 people being in the same room together…
how do we understand their place in the universe given this information?

I say, they are family and then you can begin to identify why they
are in the same room together. You can begin to create context
and understanding of their roles and relationships together…
you can create purpose and a why if you have enough information
about those 20 people…asking questions is one method of discovering
what is these 20 people relationship to each other… finding out
that Caroline is the mother… that information can suddenly
create even greater context, an understanding of their place
in the universe… you now have an understanding of their
context… perhaps a birthday party, a farewell, a funeral,
a party of some nature…and now you have a pretty good
understanding of their place and their context of those 20 people…
just knowing that there are 20 people standing in a room creates
no understanding, no context, no point or purpose of those 20 people…
but as you get information about those 20 people, you get the
context and point and meaning of those 20 people…you
create a meaningful point in the universe for those people…
you know their place in the universe and thus you also
know your context to those 20 people, perhaps you are related,
perhaps not…it still allows you to know your relationship to those
20 people…you know your place in the universe in regards to those
20 people…

thus it goes for science and philosophy and religion… it allows
you to know your context and place in the universe… each
discipline allows you context and understanding of where
you stand and where you stand in regard to the question at hand…
it create identity and context to ask questions…
and thus is not meaningless to ask such questions…

K: as we have created a scenario where we have 20 people
standing in a room… and thus we have a fact of some sort,
and how would you go about trying to understand the who, what,
when, where, how and why of that situation? you can randomly
ask question or you can by means of a method, go about
engaging in this question about the 20 people in the room…
thus the value of method… it is just a means of getting to the
bottom of this question of those 20 people in the room…
a method is just a logical method of trying to understand
the relationship of those 20 people in the room…
it is a tool to better figure out what those 20 people are
doing in the room…and as a tool, it is meant to
find out the answer in a comprehensive and complete
way, so you don’t make mistakes in your identification of
those 20 people… method is just a way of being
sure of your answer as to who are those 20 people…

Kropotkin

after several days of work/hell, I finally have a day off…

I have been thinking about this for several days…

in regards to philosophy and Alien life… what if they don’t eat
the same way we do… they have found or developed a way to eat that
doesn’t involved eating animals the way we do… let us say, that they get
their nutrition from pills or the air around them feeds them, so they don’t eat
the same way… let us compare this to every human being on earth…
we all eat with our mouths and we eat grown things, be it veggies or be
it animals… if these Aliens came to earth, they wouldn’t understand so much
about our very existence just because we eat the way we do…

the idea about “survival of the fittest” is basically about food…
the competition for food and the “fittest” is the one who gets the food…
in no other sense does “survival of the fittest” works
so we are in competition about food…

ok, so what would this alien civilization think about us?
we have competition because we are in competition for food
but these Aliens aren’t in competition for food…
they have used other means like cooperation to survive…
competition would be beyond their understanding because
they wouldn’t even under the concept of competition the way we
do…

think of the saying, its a dog eat dog world, this makes perfect sense
to us because of the survival of the fittest idea that we have had since
the beginning of time… you eat, you survive, but these Aliens might
not have this…

their very existence is predicated on a very different idea then what we have…

now if we think about this, perhaps the reason human beings haven’t
advance as far as they should have is because of this idea of competition,
of survival of the fittest idea… we need to make the next step in evolution which
is cooperation of the fittest… we survive because we cooperated instead of competing
against each other for food… because at this point in our stage of evolution, we don’t
have to compete for food… the idea of the survival of the fittest no longer applies
to where we are at in our current stage of civilization…the need to compete for our food…
we are at a different stage and we need to begin to adapt to that new stage…
the idea is no longer the survival of the fittest, but how do we advance the civilization best…
cooperation between people, cultures, states… that is the new paradigm… not survival
of the fittest, but cooperation between us…

thinking like aliens have lead me to this… what would thinking like an alien lead you to?

Kropotkin

I was thinking about Plato the other day and I recall that above
the doors of his academy is this saying: let no one ignorant of geometry enter these doors…

it got me to thinking…why Geometry? is this really the proper way to enter
philosophy? a mathematical skill? I would argue that instead of
a mathematical skill, one should actually be versed in other things…
among them is poetry and fiction and living life…

philosophy is about life and life is not about a mathematical skill…
but life is about living…so I ask again, why Geometry? it is suppose to
aid in the development of being able to reason… but is life really about
cold logic and reasoning? so much about life is as far away from reasoning
as one could get and such schools as existentialism and writers such as Nietzsche
and Kierkegaard and Sartre approach philosophy, not from a cold logic and reasoning
standpoint of thinking about life, not from a mathematical standpoint which is
Plato’s idea but they approached philosophy from a understanding that life is
not logical and about reasoning, but life is about the act of living, a life is about
faith and love and hope as Kierkegaard noted… and faith and love and hope is not
logical and not about reasoning and not mathematical…

our day to day existence is not mathematical or logical… it is about
surviving this day any way we can and logic and math isn’t going to help
us survive this day, but hope and love and faith are far better tools for
surviving our days then math and logic and reasoning…

and that is what this is really all about, the tools one needs to survive
the day and at the end of the day, whatever tools are needed to make it to
another day are good tools…

logic and math and reasoning are like hope and faith and love… in the end,
they are just tools we use to make it to another day…
today, to survive I might need logic and tomorrow I might need love
and the next day, I might need math and reasoning and the next day,
faith and hope… the events dictate what tools I need to survive the day…

life is about situational tools… what tool or tools, do I need today to get through the day…

so what is the answer here?.. depends on the question or questions you ask…

Kropotkin

in my readings, I came across the “fact” that every single major western
philosopher from Descartes to Leibniz accepted the idea of god and
used god to justify or support their conclusions…

After Descartes reduced certainty to his mind, to his thinking, he
then went to proof that god existed and that god was the reason we
have knowledge of matter… every single philosopher from Descartes
to Leibniz used god in some manner or fashion like this to support
the conclusions drawn and yet, not one of these philosophers
doubted the assumption that god existed… you have Descartes, Spinoza,
Leibniz, Locke and Berkeley… all of whom, used the idea of god in some
fashion to buttressed their conclusions… to prove their conclusions without
ever questioning the basic assumption of god… and this is their failure…
they didn’t question their most basic assumption which was the existence
of god… so what basic assumptions don’t you question?

and the answer to that question is, you don’t know because you have
never actually questioned your basic assumptions…

you don’t know what you don’t know because you have never
asked yourself what you don’t know…

what is your blindness? what is your automatic assumptions?

Kropotkin

I want to find the answers, but answers to what?

some like Descartes believe that philosophy is about finding
certainty and if I follow Descartes in searching for certainty, I miss
the other stuff that is just as important as the search for certainty like
searching for meaning and if I am searching for certainty and searching
for meaning, I miss other stuff that is just as important which is how am I
to live my life, ethics,

in other words, if I search for the parts, I miss the whole and if
I search for the whole, I miss the parts…I can never
satisfactorily approach either the parts of philosophy or
approach the whole of philosophy…

by necessity, I must narrow my search in such a way, that I
get the answers I am looking for but, and this is a big but,
I will never be able to understand or comprehend either the whole
or the parts… I will understand small slices of philosophy but
I will never reach either a big understanding or a number of small understandings
of philosophy…

so, how do I solve this problem?

I don’t because I can’t…

I must on some level accept or know or understand that
I will never find all the answers I am looking for…

as it were, I must leave some truths on the table and walk away…

I cannot ever learn all the truths I want to learn…

and that is a shame… the best I can ever do is connects some small dots
on a very large puzzle and hope someone later uses that connection to
connect even more dots and someone after that builds upon our work
and connects even more dots…and in time, more and more of the puzzle we
call life will become clearer and clearer… larger and larger aspects of the puzzle
will become understandable and someday, far into the future, it will become clear
to someone who will finally connects all the dots and this puzzle of life will become
understandable…

what is your contribution to the solution of the puzzle of life?

Kropotkin

K: so in the above, I note that I can’t ever learn the answers…

but if I put it another way, it might make more sense…

I can learn some “truths” but I can never learn the “TRUTH”…
because the idea that one person can learn the “TRUTH” is false…

we each have our own small, private “truths” that is applicable to
ourselves, but to no one else… so what small “truth” of yours is
worth sharing with the world?

Kropotkin

The day has arrived I have dreaded… with my arrival at “modern” philosophy and
Descartes, I must now tackle that most problematic of issues… Science…

What is Science? What is its relationship with philosophy?
how is Science different and how is science similar to philosophy?
what is an scientific issue and what is an philosophical issue?

There are many who believe that science has driven philosophy for the
last 500 years and so without any knowledge of science, the study of philosophy
becomes impossible…

I am not as concerned with such specific issues as evolution or how does gravity work,
as much as how does science itself interact and change philosophy and how much does
philosophy itself interact and change science…

at one time, what we call science was called natural philosophy and was considered
a part of philosophy… science wasn’t a separate field of study as it is today,
to study science was to study philosophy and to study philosophy was to study
science…they were one and the same…

the question of science was/is a study in method… the scientific method…
what is that and how do we use the scientific method to discover the world around
us… how does the scientific method create knowledge of our world…

many, many philosophers have tried to make philosophy into science…
Spinoza and Hegel and Marx for example have tried to turn philosophy
into a science…their failure is quite evident but is their failure because
you can’t turn philosophy into science or is their failure because of the
method/technique used by them caused their failure? if they had a better
method, would they have succeeded in turning philosophy into science?

I don’t know that…

Science can tell us how breathing works or how the solar system
works, but can philosophy give us the why? science cannot give
us any why’s…it can only tell us how something works for example,
the solar system stays in place because of gravity and science lays
out some scientific “laws” that tell us how the solar system stays in place…

but science cannot tell us “WHY”… why does the solar system stay in place…
does that fact tell us anything about the meaning or purpose of the universe?

Religion would say that “god” put the solar system in place and that is in part,
part of our existence… science says, ahhhh no, god didn’t put the solar system in
place… philosophy exists somewhere between science and religion…
religion can give us a why the solar system exists and science cannot tell
us why, but philosophy can/maybe tell us why… philosophy can give us a
why…

I have studied evolution and I have studied physics but that doesn’t mean I have
studied science…so how does the small study of individual branches of science
give us information about the entire tree of science… and how does that relate
to philosophy and the why? the why of existence is really philosophy’s reason for
existence… we want to know the “why” we have existence and what is existence for, without
recourse to religion or god…the problem is really that religion and science and philosophy,
all have many, many different moving parts and keeping those separate parts in mind
is quite difficult…finding relationships between all those moving parts can drive
a person crazy…but it is not impossible, just very difficult…

is there a method I can use to finding those relationships between science and religion
and philosophy? a method like one used for science? but many believe that
science doesn’t actually have a method, like Popper and Feyerabend, for
example… if science doesn’t actually have a method, then trying to create
a method for philosophy sounds impossible…science is concerned with
measurements… how big, how fast, how small, how heavy, how slow, how, how, how…
there are no measurements for philosophy… you cannot measure why…
just as you cannot measure god…so how do we create method when you don’t
have measurements?

all very difficult questions… but that is the point… there is no point on
attacking very easy questions… it is only in attacking big, indeed impossible
questions that has value…and we approach one aspect in this question of
science and philosophy and religion in the question of “value vs facts”…

science deals with facts and philosophy and religion deals with values…

that is just one question we face during this pursuit…

so what aspect of these questions draws your interest and why?

Kropotkin

In many ways I believe philosophy should have remained “the love of wisdom” - values can certainly be developed in philosophy and most people now believe that all philosophy is there for is to teach or help us to know how to act.

Religion is about worship - worship of what seems to be philosophy’s biggest question regarding religion. Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of a deity. It seems philosophy has a much better chance of proving the existence of things we can not see . . .

Science to me a just a tool - much like a hammer - or a shovel. Science has no real idea on how we should live or what values are.

Spirituality which can easily be separated from Religion concerns itself with the human spirit or soul as opposed to the material or physical things in life.

The aspect that draws me to your latest post as opposed to the questions is the comment about science driving philosophy - I think this is possible in mainstream academia which in many respects should not even hold the title academia. As far as I am concerned however I plan to break away from the bounded thought modern life has instilled in me and create something new - something that is unified based on things as close to reality and truth as possible with the exception of art whose domain is creativity that is involved with imagination.

So at this moment in time the following represent the list of things that I value:

1. Spirituality - not Religion.
2. Philosophy - not just the academia kind either. Ethics being the most important to me.
3. Art - I especially like story telling.
4. Science - real science not watered down statistical garbage.

Regarding science - there should not be one method but rather an arsenal of good methods and I think in many ways there are. We will definitely have a few new methods on offer in the future.

If I were to create a new knowledge as mentioned above I would be tempted to give the branches of knowledge different names to distinguish them from some of the modern day labels we use - but it is what it is - it seems we can only but pick and choose from the limited methods, labels and choices available.

Occam’s razor - look at the empirical - see if something is just a trick or real. Oh wait that is how we do it. Seriously though that is where the more than ten types of logic come in useful.

But in saying what I have said I actually find your post interesting - I just do not think that science should be driving anything but itself and institutionalized religion seems to be losing its value in modern life. I would hate to see us lose philosophy and replace it with some “automatonic” existence. Rules as they say are made to be broken - this statement is useful when breaking a false rule to replace it with a true rule. I do get the feeling however that life only has substance when we include the many forms of art alongside the logical knowledge that we aquire.

as I have been very busy of late… I write when I can…

the “Truth” can only lie in two places… inside of us or outside of us…
when someone says, the truth lies with god, that is outside of us…

when I was searching for god for 40 years, I was searching outside of me…
now many believe that the truth is found inside of us…

The Buddha for example…

so we have either the truth lying inside or lying outside of us…

but if I am right and everything is one and connected, then the truth can
exist in us and outside of us… a search outside of us should at some point lead
us back to ourselves and a search within ourselves will lead us back to the outside…

perhaps that is why the most appropriate symbol of life is the Ying/yang…

I would post this symbol but my incompetence in technical matters prevents me…

now one might argue I have gone “mystical”, but I haven’t… just because I
insist that life is best understood as experience and not in a metaphysical sense,
that doesn’t preclude stretching experience as far as it will go…

take an action… for example, throwing a rock… I throw the rock…
then, I mentally put that experience into some sort of context…
I could by the way, do it the other way around, mentally put that experience
into context and then throw the rock…I am throwing the rock to show my arm strength,
or to chase off bears or to impress a girl, many reasons exist for me to throw that rock…

the question becomes, how are we to understand that event?..

there are many such events in life… some past, some present and some future…
history is a study of events in the past, we hear about an event, say, the battle
of Waterloo… we then try to make some sense of that event, mentally…
we categorize those events, put them into some context… we mentally try to
to understand that “truth”… that “truth” of Waterloo which is an physical event
and we try to make sense of it mentally… the truth lies both inside of us and outside
of us…

a search for a truth either inside of us or outside of us, will lead us to the other…
we are mental and physical and our truths lie in both the mental and physical…

now is this like the famous mind/body problem? how does the mind influence the body
and how does the body influence the mind? No, this is something different…
this is an understanding that the “truth” whatever that may be, lies both inside
of us and outside of us, as they are the same thing…

but one might say, we are two distinct and separate things, inside and out,
mind and body… over the course of this thread, many times we have come
across two distinct and separate things and we have come to understand that
two distinct and separate things when understood, become two sides of the same
coin and then they become the same thing… good and evil for example…

to slightly change directions, we have a viewpoint and that viewpoint is
society driven, culturally driven… X, Y and Z are right and A, B, and C are
wrong, this is culturally and society driven… Truth, justice and the American way,
I have heard this all my life and it is culturally driven… we hear a truth and
as enough people belief in this truth, we accept it as our own… American is
the greatest country on earth… this “truth” is society and culturally driven…
this “truth” lies outside of us… but even a cursory look at it shows us that
America is not the greatest country on earth… so how do we understand this…
we have a culturally driven truth that America is the greatest country on earth
and we have a understanding that America is clearly not the greatest country on earth?
how do we reconcile this anomaly? we have two truths, clearly one is wrong,
but how do we understand this as one truth is society and culturally driven and
we certainly don’t want to be wrong in regards to our culture and out society…

how do we find the answer to this quandary?

Kropotkin

now to answer the question, is America the greatest country on earth?

you might resort to such answer such as we are the most powerful country
on earth, but you have to explain what is meant by powerful…

you might say, we are the greatest economic power on earth and we can
resort to facts to prove such a thing… but facts are changeable…
to say for example, there are 8 million people in NY is to put a fix number
on a number that is changing by the day… yes, there might be 8 million people
in NY today, but yesterday with births, deaths and people moving in and out,
there were 8,100,000 people in NY and tomorrow there might be more or less,
depending on how many people die, how many are born and how many move in
and move out… that number of 8 million as a fact is really more of a, around
this number of people live in NY and not as a definite number of people who live
in NY…so we have the US having a economic number of say, 1 trillion dollars
of economic activity, but the actual number can change by billions in a short period
of time…so we are using facts to decide that America is the greatest country on
earth and facts are subject to change, but more importantly, one didn’t
claim America is the greatest country on earth by values… because we
cannot claim to be the greatest country on earth given we have values that
include allowing torture and waterboarding… you cannot make a value claim
that America is the greatest country on earth because you cannot show us
that is true and as facts are subject to change depending on how they are used…
you cannot prove your assertions that America is the greatest country on earth…

you have facts and you have values… what other issues that can be
addressed by facts and what other issues that can be addressed by values?

Kropotkin