a new understanding of today, time and space.

if as I have explained that desire for property isn’t innate or we are born with…
then what explains our desire for private property?

just as we created the need for god over the millions years of our existence as
a need for some sort of protection from the forces which threaten to harm us,
we have the need for property as a need to protect us from forces that threaten
to harm us…and as we discover other factors which allows us to justify property…
the need for property justify our political and economic status…capitalism is justified
for its example of gaining property and for no other reason…certainly not for any
supposed improvement of the human condition…
the owning of property might also create some sort of immunity from the daily threats of nature
and man and government but it doesn’t…
in other words, the creation of private property is simply a solution to a problem and as
private property no longer solves that problem, private property is no longer a viable solution…

in fact, I would suggest that private property at this stage of our development creates more
problems then it solves and that is the key… we must change and adapt to our stage of
development and that means we must no longer fixate on old solutions for new problems…
we must adapt and change to the changing environment… which today means
we have billions of people more then the earth can support and we have an economic system
that accelerates that idea that we have more people then resources… we have pollution
and global warming along with a unsustainable population growth… the answer is not
private property given the issues facing us and indeed private property increases our
current problems and thus is not a viable solution…
we must think in terms of sustainable growth and sustainable understanding of the
world… we can no longer afford private property in this day and age…

we must find new solutions to new problems and that means
we no longer find reliance on old ideas like god and private property…
we must solve new problems with new idea’s…

and what new idea’s do you offer?

Kropotkin

Morality: quite a concept that has occupied thinkers and philosophers
and theologians for centuries and I for one will not even begin to
explore this idea with one post, so I won’t pretend I have even
begun to understand morality after thousands of years of
thinking and trying to understanding the concept…

I just offer this one bit as an idea but nothing more…

the key for me is to put morality in larger terms then is generally done…
you have to place morality in terms of society and in terms of time and space,
not just in terms of individual actions…

you have a fictional character like Gordon Gekko who brought into focus this
idea that “Greed is good”. We tend to isolate morality into individual components, individual acts
or actions, whereas morality is extended into society, into space and time…

the entire theory of “Greed is good” is based on the old theory that we think of as
Adam Smith but the theory was actually in play 50 or 75 years before Smith wrote his book…
Bernard de Mandeville for example… the theory goes like this…
private vices creates public good… that is Gordon Gekko’s point in that greed is good,
private vices creates a public good… but they never explain why or the mechanism behind
the reason “private vices creates public good” they leave that part unsaid, but Adam Smith,
in his book, the Wealth of Nations" states that the “invisible hand of god” creates this public good…
BTW, smith only used the term the “invisible hand of god” 5 times in his rather larger book…
and Smith never explains HOW the “invisible hand of god” creates this public good out of private vices…
so let us explore this question of how private vices creates public good…

I steal money… how does this private vice create a public good?
I assault an old women… so how does this private vice create a public good?
I rape a child and how does this private vice create a public good?
all these private vices create is disorder and chaos within a society, not
public good…
so Gekko is referring to a very specific type of greed… monetary greed…
and monetary greed usable only in a economic sense… I pursue money and you pursue
money and somehow that is suppose to create a public good?
think of a family…and each family member pursued their private vices
and what would happen in that family? disorder and chaos and instability would
be the result of each family member pursuing their own private vices…
what if we allowed our private vices to dictate our actions… this path leads
to chaos and disorder…

I take an action such as assaulting an old woman… private vices…
that action does not exist in isolation and separate from other actions…
it exist in time and space… that action however private exists within
the time and then extends into time and in space and extends into space…
so I assault an old woman… she lives on and is damaged in my assault
that damaged is carried into time… it takes time to heal…
that damaged extends into space as that action physically happens in space…
we carry that damage about us into the future and because that old woman
doesn’t exist in isolation, her damage is noted by others and that damage is carried
further into time and space… like a rock in a pond, the ripples extend far outside of ’
the actual place of the stone dropping into the water…and the assault of the old woman
extends far outside of the place and time of the assault…I can’t see an argument to be made
that would justify or allow for that old woman to be assaulted without damaging the public good…

we allow private vices to somehow create public good in the economic sphere but
we expressly forbid that in the public actions of individuals… but the economic and
the political are tied together, they are married in America today… but how can you
have private vices create public good in the economic but not in the political?
there is no argument made today by anybody that private vices will somehow create
a public good in the day to day actions of people in life outside of the economic…
individual morals extend into the public world in both time and space…
an individual action, like that rock dropped into a pond, extends into space and time…
we don’t act individually, apart from everyone else, separate from time and space…
we exist in society, we exist in both time and space and our actions affect many others
individually and within a societal sense…

capitalism as defined today, does not bring about stability, it does not bring about
public good, there is no “invisible hand of god” that somehow brings about public
good while committing private vices…capitalism is not sustainable…and we
have to tie capitalism into a moral sense because each and every single part of our life,
individually and collectively, is connected together and if we must act morally politically,
we must act morally economically because they are connected, the political and the economic…

morals must touch and act in all parts of our life or it doesn’t matter in any part of our life…
morality is an all or nothing type of action…either it influences every part or it doesn’t
influence any part of it…

Kropotkin

ok, in my two last post, I wrote about private property and about morality…
is there a connection between the two?

Kropotkin

Imagine yourself in a immensely large room… a room that is hundreds of miles long
and wide and high… this is a puzzle… what is the room and why are you there in this room?
imagine that there are objects in this room… so how do you work out this puzzle
of why you are in this room and what do the objects in this room have to do with you,
if these object have anything to do at all with you…you just don’t know…

so what are these objects? you see what we would call tree’s and plants and grass…
what is your relationship to these tree’s and plants and grass? you don’t know but how would
you go about finding out? what method would you use to discover what are the objects in this
room and what you are doing in this room?

this case of being in a room is exactly our situation… we are in an immensely
room, planet earth, and we have to understand what is in the room and what
we are doing in this room…we are trying to understand our place and the room
we live in… we also know that things exist outside of our room, how do we go about
trying to understand those things? we are living in a puzzle… what is our place in the room
and what are the objects in this room and do the objects in the room have anything to do with us
or are they separate, different from us and that leads us to the question about us… what do we
mean us, what is this object called us… life is a problem searching for an answer…
the problem is understanding the puzzle we live in…can you answer the problem that
exists before us while living inside of the problem? we are part of the puzzle, part of the
problem that lies before us, who are we? this is our challenge… and how do we solve this
challenge?

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
ok, in my two last post, I wrote about private property and about morality…
is there a connection between the two?

K: so what problem does private property solve and what problem does morality solve?
that is the basic point of idea’s, ideologies, methods… they are means to solving problems…

we can connect private property and morality because they each are a solution to
a problem… in fact, they might be different solutions to the same problem… or maybe
not…we don’t know…solving problems, that is the human quest…

Kropotkin

Most evils are the kind of thing where someone simply needs to stop forcing the world around them to supply things to their egocentric hungers.

“stop being an idiot and a shit head”.
(not you)

Some simple thing like that is enough.
Many life-forms are parasitic.
They exist at the loss of others.
The higher up the food chain you go,
the more is stolen with giving less back.

You see, evil is a habit.
An ancient habit.

It wont go away because humans try to fight it with more humanity.
Humanity has an evil element to it.
They fight fire with fire, hate with hate, etc.

K: we fight fire with fire, an eye for an eye and how exactly have we
ended evil? Evil cannot be fought as an fire with fire, hate with hate and
an eye for an eye, because all that does is to continue the evil, the hate,
the path to end evil, to end hate is not with more evil, not with more hate,
not under the guise of an eye for an eye for all that does is leave people
blind…true humanity is not fighting evil with evil or hate with hate,
true humanity is fight those things with the higher human traits…
love, compassion, charity, truth, not the lower human traits, the ones
we share with animals, traits like hate and anger and evil…
we must rise to our human traits, not lower ourselves to our animal traits, our lower traits…

the path to a better future lies not with evil or hate or anger, but with love, understanding,
compassion… the higher human traits…

Kropotkin

I think you are saying what i would say but in different words.

K: quite possible, quite possible…

Kropotkin

We are trying to solve a problem… that is both a statement and a question for us today…
but what problem are we trying to solve? As philosophy deals with values, what is our
question about values today? what values are important to us and what values do we need today?
What methodology, what methods are we to use to discover the values we need today?
We have some boundaries, some limits forced upon us today… We know that we cannot
create a system because no system can encompass all the facts we need to make a conclusion…
all systems are incomplete by their very nature and so we cannot create a system… that
is a limit we have, that other generations didn’t have…We cannot trust reason to be complete…
we must have other aspects of humanness to help us complete our task of finding
out what values do we today need… the other aspect of humanness we need is our
emotional, irrational, feelings… for we have to listen to both side of our human nature
to be successful… we need reason to control passion and we need passion to inform reason…

perhaps we have failed to understand such values as justice and freedom because
we have only applied reason to them, when a mix of reason and passion/emotional
aspects can truly understand such ideals as justice… we feel justice is an important
value, we feel this emotionally and then we have reason which provides us the reasons for
this… so we understand the value of justice more completely by using more then just reason…
we are reason and passion… we must act with both to become more human…
and one way is to discover what values we must live by and one method we use is
both reason and passion…

the trick is to understand what is the mix of reason and passion we use…
like anytime we use a mix of fluids we mix them in some ration, 60 to 40
or 70 to 30… what is our mix of reason to passion… 50 to 50 or 80 to 20…
different situations require a different mixing… some situation require total passion
and some situations require total reasoning…and some situations require a mix…

so how do we find the values we need?

Kropotkin

We exists in this system…not of our making…
we are as been stated… thrown into this world…
this system exist not because of its excellence but
because of our failure, our laziness to change the system…
we fear the unknown and so we put up with a system that dehumanizes us
and damages us…
we tolerate the known devil in fear of the unknown devil…

so we accept the premise without question, that human beings
agenda is to spend our lives pursing the basic necessities of life…
we pursue money as a means of procuring goods like food and clothing and shelter…
this is our existence… we work and thus gain money, then we use that money
to buy our necessities…
we work 40 years, 5 days a week, at 8 hours a day…
in fact, the vast majority of our lives is spent in working
and we don’t question this…is my point of existence to spend it working?
spending 40 year earning a pittance and the vast majority of my effort goes to
rewarding someone else… the “owners” of the business gets the vast majority
of my effort…is this the point of human existence? to spend a lifetime benefitting
someone else? just so we can get the minimum necessary for maintaining existence?

and when I am no longer relevant, I am simply tossed out like yesterdays garbage…
with no resources to purchase those goods that allow my existence to go on…
do we really think that our existence is about the making of money?
what a sad and lonely existence…one might claim our existence is about
raising families or finding happiness but the need to make money drowns out
all other concerns… like a noise that is so loud it leaves only that noise
existing… nothing else can compete with that noise and that is the search
for money… a noise that drives out all other sounds…

one might claim we have no other choice but a system about choice
like capitalism cannot claim not to have any other choice…but capitalism…
a true system of choice offers us other choices and other options, but
not capitalism… it is the only choice we have and what a terrible choice it is…
spending 40 year of our lives in competition with other trying to gain money…
a competition that serves no one except those who own companies and they make their
money on your effort, your time…

we are a species that solves problems… that is what humans do…
we solve problems… so how do we solve this problem?
of course, so many have been brainwashed as to believe that
capitalism is not the problem that they won’t see capitalism for what it is…
a destroyer of souls… something that crushes us, mentally, physically, psychology,
emotionally…I sometimes think that we in the capitalist system are the
real bearers of the Stockholm syndrome…we are held in bondage, hostage,
and yet, we come to believe in the rightness of the system that holds us
hostage…because we have no other system to offer us a choice…
so solve the problem…

what other possible systems exist that offer us another option to
live out our days… not just in working all our lives… but in
finding out what it means to be human and that means walking away
from capitalism as capitalism damages us humans being in terrible ways…
we must escape and become human beings…

Kropotkin

as I progress with my study of philosophy, I have begun a side trip into
the study of the philosophy of science… this is because so many philosophers
from Descartes to Hume were invested in science and by understanding science
I can better understand their thought… but the interesting thing is as I
study science, I am getting better insight into philosophy… the pursuit of science
mirrors the pursuit of philosophy or the other way around…I see many aspects of philosophy
in the way scientist go about their business… much of the way science does its business is also
the way philosophy does its business… but science has relevance and philosophy doesn’t, why? I am
thinking about Kuhn and what he says about science but what he says has real relevance to
philosophy… in fact, I suspect in his book, you could replace the word science with philosophy and
scientist with philosopher and it wouldn’t change a thing about the book…
the end result would be the same… I find it interesting that by approaching philosophy
from science I am getting very interesting answers to what philosophy is…

Kropotkin

As I study science in an attempt to better understand philosophy…
I come across the notion that science is about facts and philosophy
is about values…

science is descriptive… science tells us is… the sun is 93 million miles from earth…

philosophy is normative… philosophy tells us ought… The failure of the physician to
do a thorough examination of the patient was inexcusable…“was inexcusable” is a value

the problem lies when philosophers try to turn philosophy into a science…
or try to make philosophy more like science… Hegel for example or Hume…

how do I take a concept like justice and make into a fact?

to have true justice in America means we have to treat all people
equally because it is the right thing to do…that is not a statement of fact
because we have added the point that justice is the right thing to do…that
is a value…perhaps justice requires something else, some other value…

when you make a judgement, it becomes a value, thus philosophical…
how do you make a judgment of the fact that the sun is 93 million miles from earth?

now depending on how you ask a question, it can become clear or it can become
quite messy…

philosophers ask value questions but try to hide it as factual questions…

but the real flaw of philosophers lies in the Kant example…
or the Descartes example…

Kant asks: How is synthic a priori knowledge possible?

and Descartes ask from his very warm room: how can we be certain
about our knowledge? what can we do to make knowledge certain?

both used Logical techniques to reach answers but, but
life is not about logic… life is messy and complicated
and about such not logical things like love and death
and alienation and our place in the universe…
we cannot find our answers to messy question with logic…

that is the failure of philosophy… answering messy questions with logical answers
answers discovered in the rocking chair of our warm bedroom without ever going outside…

is the answer to why questions found in questions of fact… the sun is 93 million miles from earth
only tells us that the sun is a certain distance from the earth… it tells us nothing more…

are values found in questions of fact?

are values found in descriptive statements/answers
or in normative statements/answers?

is vs ought…

now Karl Marx once said that it is not enough to understand the world…
one must change the world…to understand the world is… thus is descriptive…
to change the world is normative… ought to change the world

Marx disciples claimed that Marxism is science… thus is… facts about the world…
but Marx actually is trying to change the world, not describe it and thus he is
being normative… values not facts…is Marx correct? yes, but not on
a descriptive level, but on a normative level… it is important to understand
on what level we are talking about…descriptive or normative…

this is one example and other examples do exist

so what do we learn from this and is this knowledge
descriptive or normative?

Kropotkin

To further understand this normative vs descriptive problem…
is it legitimate to use descriptive language/science to answer normative questions…
Descartes used science to answer philosophical questions and is this legitimate?

the sun is 93 million miles from earth…this is descriptive answer or statement depending.
apples as it were…can we use this information to tell us normative/ought to statements/answers?
oranges… can we use apples to inform us of normative statements of oranges? oranges taste good…
a value statement… can we use descriptive statement from apples to make normative statements
about oranges? apples are red and crunchy says the apple but does that apply to oranges?

this point calls into question the entire history of modern philosophy…
we cannot use oranges to describe apples and we cannot use apples to describe
oranges…

so if we cannot legitimately use descriptive language to understand
normative language, then what is the basis of philosophy?

the answer/question to science cannot answer/ question philosophy…
apples to oranges and now what?

to make science, is questions, answer philosophy, ought to, then we
must make our own interpretation… science says that we are alone in the universe…
fact or a descriptive statement… to reach a normative statement or question, we
would have to make a value judgement about the descriptive statement…
values that aren’t supported by the descriptive statements because they
are two different things and only by a leap of faith or logic can we
then connect a descriptive statement with a normative answer…

how does justice exist
by the sun being 93 million miles from earth?

how do you connect the two statements?

this is what philosophy has done for the modern era…
the sun is 93 million miles from earth thus justice is…

so what can we base philosophy on if you take away the descriptive statements?

so this is really the modern question…

Descartes asked, how can we make knowledge certain?

Kant asked, how is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?

Kropotkin asked, if you can’t use science, is statement to answer philosophical questions,
which are value statements, then what can we base philosophy on?

Kropotkin

Don’t have a lot of time today as I have to be at work in an hour…

So last time, I was forced to deny philosophy the ability to use
science as a means of justifying philosophy…
because science is about descriptive statements, the world is…and
philosophy is about normative statements, the world ought to…

what if I am wrong… what shall I do to better understand this situation?

perhaps philosophy is really descriptive?
we can use descriptive words to understand the concept of justice…

Justice in America has several part… we have the judicial system, we have a
police aspect and a punishment aspect… the judicial system works like this…
and all of this is descriptive… its tell us how the justice system is and that is descriptive…
however that is theory, the abstract theory of the American judicial system…
it is very descriptive and completely useless because it doesn’t reach the reality
of the American judicial system… once you make a value judgment about
the American judicial system, you have made a normative statement,
a value judgment …

let us look at the very word philosophy: love of wisdom…
love of wisdom; it is wisdom we are pursuing,…so how do we get wisdom
and what is wisdom?

sometimes in the day to day and little battles we have on ILP, we forget the goal
which is wisdom and what it is and what method do we use to gain wisdom?

and in this we have followed the example of science, we are trying to make
philosophy like science in our attempts to find wisdom… thinking that
science seems to be a fairly rigorous means to gain wisdom… science is not wisdom however,
science is a descriptive method to gain knowledge about the universe and this creature
called a human being…

a descriptive method… this is important to note… science pursues facts, information,
knowledge… but it doesn’t pursues wisdom… what wisdom is, is a value judgment…
he is wise… we have a value judgement here, not a descriptive statement…

so we have plenty of facts about the universe but how do we turn those facts into
wisdom? facts are apples and wisdom are oranges… there is no real way to
use one to inform the other…

so we have to abandon science as a method for philosophy to follow in its pursuit
of wisdom…

method here meaning just that, a method, an example to be followed, a tool,
how does a tool lead us to wisdom? I can gain wisdom by using a tool if I use
a hammer and hit my finger while hammering, and I gain the wisdom of
not ever hammering my finger again… but is that really wisdom?

does that give us real information about wisdom? so
so should philosophy follow such models like history or economics
or anthropology? they to also make value judgements and thus
aren’t really the path for philosophy to follow?

so how do we bring philosophy back to the pursuit of wisdom and what
method would we use to pursue wisdom?

I have an idea but let us first explore this idea better…
however later as I must go to work… a 4 letter word if I have ever heard one…

Kropotkin

So I have in the last post, suggested that the reason Philosophy has lost its
influence is because philosophy has lost its way…
Philosophy is the love of wisdom… wisdom…
what is wisdom and how do we find it and what do we do with it
once we find it… these are the essential questions of philosophy…

for Kant his question was: How are synthetic a priori questions possible?

For Descartes his question was: what can we know for absolutely certain?
what knowledge can we know for certain?

and I ask? how are these two questions leading us to wisdom?..

you may say, that they are wisdom of sorts… perhaps, but wisdom of such
a narrow type as to be almost useless in every day life…

I ask: what is wisdom and how do we find it and what do we do with it once
we find it?

That is the first true philosophical question asked in a very long time…

so what is wisdom? from my handing dandy dictionary:

Wisdom: the quality of being wise; good judgement, Learning; knowledge…

ok, let us look up wise… Wise: having or showing good judgement… informed, none the wiser,
learned… shrewd, cunning…

here even the dictionary makes the same basic mistake philosophers make which is
thinking that knowledge makes on wise…how does the knowledge that the sun is
93 million miles from earth makes one wise?

it is a fact and facts have that tendency be proven wrong and must be changed…

in fact, it is true that the sun isn’t really 93 million miles from earth… as the earth moves
sometimes it is closer then 93 million miles and sometimes due to the earth movement it is
more then 93 million miles from earth and we still haven’t figured out how knowing this
makes us wise…

think of the wisest person you ever met… did that person have the most knowledge?
or did that person know what to do with that knowledge? Wisdom is really the
knowing what to do with knowledge, not necessarily having the most knowledge…

wisdom is really a value knowing what to do with knowledge…
being wise is taking knowledge and putting it to the best possible us to humans…

which knowledge, one might ask? I am inclined to think that true wisdom is not book
wisdom but wisdom gained from knowledge and experience…
the true teacher of wisdom is experience… and how to rightly make the best
use of experience… I am wise now because as I see situations, I know which ones
are going to create problems for me and I avoid those situations… I gained that
knowledge from experience… and that experience knowledge is aided by
book knowledge and more formal learning…

I know that the U.S trying to invade other countries is doomed to failure
and will destroy the U.S is because I know that is exactly what destroyed
Athens… Athens overreached in invading other places and by doing so,
wasted so much money and manpower and energy. Athens had no backup
plan or reserve money, manpower or energy… and so when
it overreached, it fell, Athens had nothing left to give and so it fell to earth…
and lost its status as the leading Greek state… I can see the U.S following this path right
down to its conclusion…and I am wiser then those who advocate invading other countries
for this reason…wisdom is not an absolute understanding of what needs to be done…
but a conditional understanding and thus we cannot make any solid rules about being wise
because wisdom, having wisdom changes with every situation… some are wise in this situation
and not so wise in other situations and with every experience the wisdom needed to solve
that experience, to solve the problem of a given situation changes… and that is the second
aspect of wisdom… the ability to solve problems… so we have wisdom being
an understanding of the situation AND the ability to solve problems in a given situation…
for we humans are a problem solving creature and having wisdom helps us to solve problems
and this is in part the value of having wisdom, to solve problems…

so to properly understand the philosophical situation, we have becomes divorced from
philosophy because we have lost track of what is really important in philosophy which is
an understanding of wisdom and how do we gain wisdom and what do we use our wisdom on
and how do we solve problems with the wisdom we gain?

this is philosophy…

Kropotkin

As I suggest that we cannot use science to base philosophy upon
because science and philosophy discuss different things…
Science says descriptive things and asked, what is?
Philosophy says normative things and asked, what ought?

so then what can we base philosophy upon?

and I offer experience…the universalness of experience…

we are born and we live and we die and go through the human experience
the human story together of birth and life and death…

philosophy discusses the normative aspect of that human story…

take justice for example, we understand justice through stories
of injustice…

we have heard one story of injustice all our lives among many stories
this one story, which we in the west have heard all our lives and
gives us a story that when stripped of its religious aspects is really
a political story… and story about injustice and taints our understanding of
what justice an injustice is, once stripped of its religious content…

once a long time ago, a man lived in his country… his country was occupied
by a foreign country and had that the foreign country occupied this man’s country
in every way…this foreign power imported its religion and political institutions
and the army occupied this man’s country…all actions had to be approved by
the foreign country but the only freedom the country had was in the religious…
but even that was limited…

the man lived in the countryside… he went about the countryside and
told stories…he found followers and crowds of increasing size listened to this man…
during one festival, this man went to the main city of his country and came into conflict
with the authorities…one thing led to another and this man was taken into custody
and then was killed… at no point did this man take any actions… it was all words
and the authority felt him to be a threat to the political and religious establishment…
he gave people hope…and he was killed… he was unjustly killed…
his story is a story of injustice…we see how he was killed and why he was killed
and we see not religious injustice but political injustice…we see a man killed
for offering hope to his countrymen…strip this man story of its religious content
and we see a story of injustice and we learn from a very early age what injustice is…
killing a man for his offering people a choice, a religious choice…that is injustice
and this story is a universal story for we see that man’s story is a story of universal experience…
it is a story we have seen many times and in many places… during the English rule of India,
during the French occupation of Europe during Napoleon, during the American rush to conquer
the west, during the Roman empire conquest of Europe… in each case and in many others,
we have seen many such instances of the occupying force committing many acts of injustice
in order to protect the occupying force in occupying that country…

strip that individual man’s story of its religious content and it becomes a story
of injustice… it is of course the story of Jesus and in reality, it is a story of
political injustice… it is a universal experience and we can understand that story
for its story of injustice because a man gave the people hope and the occupying
force didn’t want people to have hope because it encouraged them to fight
the occupying force…

and we can understand Jesus story as a political story of injustice and
we can make philosophical, normative statements about Jesus’s story…
we can understand it in terms like ought… Rome ought not have killed
Jesus because of his words…we can make value judgments of the
incident and value judgments are philosophical…

this one incident shows us how we can use philosophy…
we can use philosophy to make normative statements about
how we are, what are values are, what general and what specific
universal experiences we have and their value to us…
we can take universal experiences and we can judge them
with ought statements… this is what philosophy does…
we judge universal experiences and makes normative statements about them…
we are born and we live and we die and we make value statements about them…
we make philosophical statements about them, we make normative statements
about universal experiences…

this is the basis of philosophy… making normative statements about universal experiences…
which hopefully leads us to an understanding of wisdom which is what to do with
those universal experiences… we see wisdom as making normative statements about
universal experiences we all have and in making those normative statements,
we better understand how to respond to those universal experiences… for isn’t that
what wisdom really about… how to better respond to our universal experiences…

we take the story of Jesus and reimagine it as a political story, a story of injustice,
a story that we see happening over and over and over again and wisdom tells us
what possible outcomes will happen if we too give people hope…

this is the grounds of philosophy…making sense of universal experiences in
terms of normative statements…this is why existentialism was so powerful…
it spoke of despair and our angst and place them in terms of our universal experience…
and this is also why modern philosophy has failed… because it doesn’t use our universal
experiences as the basis of our understanding of who we are and who we should be…
based on normative values we derive from universal experiences…like Jesus’s story,
a story of injustice…

Kropotkin

this act of wisdom… how do we gain it?

this is was the question the Greeks puzzled over…
this is the entire question of Greek education, how do we gain
wisdom and then how do we teach it?

The Medieval man thought wisdom was the man who was closer
to god was closer to the truth and was the wisest man…

For the Medieval man, wisdom was tied into knowledge of god…
the man who knew the most about god was the wisest…

and we moderns, we associate wisdom with facts but facts
change…as science better measures and weigh’s, it comes
ever closer to “factual” information… how many people live in NYC?
as that number changes every single day, it might be 8 million, it might be
8.2 or 8.5 or even 9 million people live in New York City today, but
that number never stays the same, it always changes…it is “fact”,
but that fact changes every single day…

I think wisdom is really not just knowing facts, because facts do change, but
knowing what to do with those changeable facts that is wisdom…
we have 8.2 million people living in NY and this means…
the understanding enough to do something with those facts is wisdom…
but it is not enough to just “do” something with facts but to do something
that better allow us to either grow as human beings or to better inform us
of our current situation or to better conduct our actions as human beings
by making sense of those facts…

or to make normative statements about universal experiences…

and thus providing us some guide as to how to act in the face
of certain universal situations… facts allow us to make
better normative statements as it provides us with information
about the situation…wisdom is not the facts, but what to do with
the facts…

that there is no evidence, no facts that god exists, tells us that we shouldn’t
base our lives on religious ideals and we should act and believe that there
is no god… thus this information allows us to make judgments about how
we are to live our lives… we then can make normative statements about
universal experiences, given there is no god and our normative statements
will make no mention of god and we act and think and feel that there is no god…
we no longer need forgiveness for our actions for example… we can lead guiltless
lives…and we make normative statements that no longer include god…

we ought to live our live as we choose because there is no god…

that is a normative statement, a judgement about universal experiences…

Kropotkin

Philosophy: the love of wisdom…

and wisdom, in what house do we find wisdom?

Do we find wisdom in the house of religion or do we find wisdom
in the house of science or do we find wisdom in the house of philosophy?

How do we become wise? we have lost sight of this question which was
the primary question of the Greeks…

this question avoids the duel, the battle between religion and science…
because is the search for wisdom about finding god? or is the search for finding
wisdom lay in facts, ever changing facts about our universe?

The man who commands us to seek Jesus as our savior… is he a wise man?
is he someone who really understands the nature of things?
I doubt it… for the man who commands us to find Jesus is a man who
believes in faith… as does the man who commands us to follow Mohammed…
he is a man of faith…a man who depends on faith is a man who will be
disappointed because faith rest on the ever changing whims of our souls…
we hold just as much faith in god, Jesus and Mohammed as we do in money…
Man’s pursuit of money is faith in the power of money just as a man’s pursuit
of god is faith in the power of god… no difference…money will take us to the
promised land of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, a two car
garage with two kids, a boy and girl and a dog named spot… that is the modern
version of the promised land… and it is just as empty as any promise of
faith in god… where if you believe you will have a place in heaven and
if you believe in money, you will have a place in the burbs waiting for you
and if you believe in Mohammed, you will have a promised land of gardens
and pools of water and women…all of which stems from the desires
of a man and a people who live in the desert… Heaven looks much like
the people who dream it… a Christian ideal of heaven fits their
vision of heaven and Islam’s vision of heaven matches their lives…
for the people of the desert, we have visions of water and gardens
and virgin women and in the Christian vision of heaven, we see what
they value… but neither vision can truly exist unless we accept
ideas and visions and dreams that lie outside of our experiences, lie
outside of our ever possibly knowing if they are true…
at least with our modern faith of the little house in the burbs,
we can at least see it and know some have achieved this promised land…
but once again the question arises if this promised land of the little house
is really worth the effort? I for one, believe that like religion, our modern
faith is based on wishful thinking… should the house in the burbs
really be our modern goal? I am asking because I think it is time to
reevaluate our entire modern premises… our faith in capitalism, our
faith in religion, our hope of science, our modern system of consumerism…

we need to find the wisdom to reevaluate who we are and what are our core
values…we need a new image of who we are and what is our goal…

I offer up a new goal, a new faith and that is the pursuit of wisdom
in whatever form we find it in…

I don’t want or suggest we expand our energies or space to discover
new pursuits… we need to restrict our search into the basic idea
of wisdom and what is it? that’s it… limit our search into wisdom…
not wealth, not the house in the burbs, not in faith in old and worn out
religions… but wisdom…

how would you find wisdom?

Kropotkin

Its late and I’m tired but I can’t shake certain ideas that
are rattling around my head…

It is understood that we are born into the world…
but it is a world that has a structure… we might call it
a paradigm… an understanding of the world that is passed down
from generation to generation… it is a vision and understanding
of the world offered by ism’s and ideologies and institutions that
each civilization and society has…the paradigm is those
ism’s and ideologies and institutions meant to offer an understanding
of the world and how it works… we are raised inside of that
paradigm and we don’t see anything, can’t see anything outside of that
paradigm because we are inside of those ism and ideologies…
we are raised inside of capitalism as an ism/ideology and so we
are unable to see anything besides that paradigm/ism/ideology…

the defenders of the status quo are defenders because they haven’t
seen any other option, any other ism/ideology… they defend the status
quo because that is the only reality they know, the only paradigm
that they have existed within…if capitalism is the only reality you know,
then it is the only possible option you have and the paradigm you defend…
because you don’t know any better…

we have been told reality is this and this and this and you believe what
you have been told because it is the only reality that you have seen and experienced…
you believe the given paradigm and don’t doubt the given paradigm because
to doubt that paradigm is to doubt everything you have been told and taught
and who among us is strong enough to doubt everything we have been taught
since the day we were born… to doubt thus is to reject the very society
we grew up in and everything that society believed in and taught us…
who is brave enough to do so… very few have the strength or courage to doubt
the very basis of every belief we have been taught since birth…

what beliefs from birth are worth keeping and what ones are not worth
the effort to keep… that is the dilemma of the modern age…

and the philosopher, what is their role?
we judge the ism’s/ideologies as to their value…
we make normative statements about universal experiences…
we judge, make value statements about those universal experiences…
ism’s/ ideologies are part of the universal experiences we judge, make
normative statements about…

it is time we make normative statements about our current ism’s and
ideologies… we must judge them and decide on their worthiness…
we must find the wisdom to properly judge and understand our current
paradigms and ism’s…

and in doing so, effect the change needed to create new models or new
paradigms… we must be changing with the ever changing environment
and have paradigms that reflect the new realities we find ourselves in…

that is the business of philosophy… finding the ought’s of a society model/
paradigm… thus changing that society ism’s and ideologies/paradigms…
thus being able to adapt to the changing conditions an situations that we find
ourselves in… it is being able to adapt and change that is the key to becoming
who we are… thus the business of becoming who we are is really a business of
changing and adapting to new conditions and this begins by understanding
the paradigms and isms/ideologies that we find ourselves in…being born in…
to understand any situation… one must begin by separating themselves from
that situation… we must put our ism’s/ ideologies/paradigms at a distance and
then begin the long and painful task of finding the new ism’s/ideologies/paradigms…

that is where we are now… trying to find the new ism’s/ideologies/paradigms
and we must make normative statements about where we are, to find out
where we need to be…

so where do we need to be to adapt to the changing conditions of our lives
and our world/environment…

Kropotkin