a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

To continue my thoughts from my last post…

Science for the last 500 years has been about motion…
the motion or movement of the big bang, Galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets,
people and atoms, among other aspects of motion… and philosophy
followed this idea that physics is about motion and as physics is the
umbrella science that all other sciences follow, we think of motion as
being the main attribute of the universe…
but what if, what if we base our understanding of the universe on something
other than motion…we don’t base our universe on our understanding of motion…
but on something else…

the next science evolution won’t be about motion but about something else…
the basis of science won’t be motion but about something else like gravity or
space, or time or chaos or some other central notion that helps explain
what makes the universe work as it does… just not motion…

the next great science will be about something other then motion…
what will happen is that motion will be reduced into some greater
theory…our idea’s, our understanding of the universe will make motion
a part of some greater theory such as the Grand Unified Theory for example…
right now motion is the aspect that drives all our theories but I suspect that
beyond this idea of motion lies a theory, a greater theory that incorporates
motion as part of that theory…

when this radical new theory strikes, it will be like
those years after Copernicus, we will have many battles over
the correctness of this new theory in which the old way, motion, will
be overthrown by this new theory but will we handle it better then those
who existed 500 years when facing the paradigm shift from Ptolemaic system to
the Copernicus system…that battle lasted from roughly 1550 to 1700 when
Newton finally gave us the Newtonian system… and ended the paradigm
shift from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernicus system… we need another
Copernicus, another Kepler and another Newton to bring about this new
paradigm shift from the current theories about motion to ?

Kropotkin

as I just lost my last post continuing this idea, I am trying again…

our understanding of the universe is based on our understanding of motion…
Einstein theory of relativity and his special theory are both a mathematical
theory of motion…

but let us speculate further and suggest that motion is not a cause but
a symptom of something else… like in medicine… we see the symptoms
of a cold, fever and feeling bad and sneezing headache and general body aches…
but those are symptoms of a deeper cause which is a virus causing those symptoms
we are like the doctor who studies the symptoms but not the causes…

the cause of motion can be several things but I would suggest gravity as the cause…

that motion one day will be subsumed under the general theory of gravity is
my idea… the symptoms will be explained by the cause…

I can see a situation whereas after the big bang, we have unequal pieces of matter
distributed around the universe… the unequal pieces of matter moves other pieces
of matter toward it and thus causing the beginning of the motion in the universe…
and the reason for this movement toward the unequal pieces is gravity and the means
the unequal pieces begin to coalesce is via electromagnetic force…as the pieces grow
larger they begin to move more and more of the cloud that existed after the big bang…
after a time of millions or even billions of years the entire universe is moving, motion,
because of the initial pull of gravity into unequal pieces, ever larger growing pieces
of the universe which cause even more and more of the universe to begin to move…

we can envision a scenario where gravity began this motion which we study so hard
today, where motion is the symptom of gravity just as a cold has fever and chills but
those are just symptoms of a virus…we should study the cause of motion,
not the symptoms of which motion is a symptom and not the cause…

Kropotkin

a slight change of subject today…

after several days of aggravation, work trying to kill me again, computer problems
that has lead to my laptop dying (right now I am working on my daughter’s computer)
ugly heat over the last few days and I don’t do well in heat (its suppose to drop to 84 today)

so all of this aggravation has really taken me away from what I want to do which is
contemplation of the questions that vexes a man, a village, a society, a country and
a species…

and it occurs to me, that one path, one path, of wisdom lies in this very aggravation that
has so bothered me the last few days…we are bothered by such things as work…
at work, they had me close, which is 3:00 pm to 12:00 midnight and then come back
to work at 10:00 the next morning… lovely crap like that… that type of schedule
takes me two days to recover from… I was pretty much unable to function yesterday…

as for my computer dying, that has prevented me from writing as I like to write
in the morning…usually by the afternoon I am too tired to gather my thoughts…

and this heat has keep me from sleeping for days…

this aggravation is keeping me from even reading…

I had to fight through all these distractions and aggravations to get to today and being able
to sit here and type out these words…

it was a question of preserving… of fighting through the aggravations and obstacles
and it occurs to me that most of life is simple just that… fighting through the obstacles
and aggravations that present themselves in life… on a daily basis, we find ourselves
facing challenges and obstacles and how we respond to them is not only a sign of
who we are but a sign of our wisdom…but this is true not only on an individual level
but on a society and national level…

we face trials and tribulations as a country and as a society… we are facing one now
and how we respond tells us much about who we are and how wise we are…

we are facing, as a people and as a country, the greatest crisis we have seen in the last 40 plus years…
perhaps this is our greatest crisis since Watergate and I suspect this will be far worse…

we face this crisis in part because we have lost faith in the ism’s, ideologies and institutions
that have governed a people for generations…

we have allowed the aggravations and distractions of the day to deter us from
what should be our focus which should be on who we are and where do we need to be…

Philosophy is not just a love of wisdom, but philosophy is a path to wisdom…
and we have lost our path… we have lost our way with distractions with
fears about Islamic terrorist and how do protect ourselves when we must
change our focus… let them attack… they cannot hurt us unless we let them…
that is a truth… we can only be affected by change if we allow it…
the terrorist, and the greatest terrorists we face today are domestic,
and even then, they cannot hurt us unless we allow it…
but we allow these insignificant, minor events to dictate our feelings and
our actions…

over 11,000 people died from gunshot wounds last year and no one even pays
attention, so why should a minor fleabite like a terror attack even make the news?

we have lost perspective on what is important and what we should be
paying attention to…

think about it this way… to a strong person, a cold is a very minor detail
and quite often a strong person will work through the cold… but to an old
or physically weak person, a cold could be life threatening…have we become so
weak that we are threaten by such a minor event like a small scale terrorist attack?

weakness is not just physical, but mental and emotional and we have become
mentally and emotional weak… so much so a minor terrorist attack sends
us into a tizzy and we entertain talk of reducing our freedoms and the liberties
of others in some vain attempt to secure our safety…

how weak we have become… that the trials and tribulations and aggravations
of life has made us change what is important to who we are…

the lack of security has been a major issue for most of human existence…
read accounts of being in a city before the 20 century and we see that
violence was so common place as not to be noticed…it has only been in the
last century or so, has being in a city been a relatively safe thing…

but freedom… we have only had freedom in the last 200 year of
our existence and that freedom has created in large part, the modern world,
don’t allow fear to take us away from that which has created the modern world which
is freedom and liberty…

so in my own personal journey, I face times of aggravation and tribulations and
I outlast them and so sit here and do what is important to me…
so outlast the trials and tribulations and do what is important in society
and within the country… don’t lose focus on what is important because
of fear about what may come or what has happened…

focus on freedom and not safety and that change of perspective makes all the difference in
the world

Kropotkin

as I study the seventeenth century, I see a strange mix of science and theology
that sometimes inhabits an age…

we are born into a world which has its ism’s, paradigms, ideologies that give the
world its guidance, (not sure of a better word) in other words, we use those paradigms
and ism’s and use them as a road map to guide us in this life… we are born and
we are trained in the culturally ism’s and paradigms that culture uses…
for example, in America, we have an particular paradigm that drives much of
the debate here and that is this idea of “Rugged Individualism”… the false belief that
a single person like a Rockerfeller or a Ford built a company by themselves…
I built this… Ayn Rand gives life to this ideal in “Atlas Shrugged”…
it is part of the “American paradigm”… it is part of the American ideal, part of the
ism we grew up in… and since we have been inside of this paradigm all our life,
it is hard to escape something that has been part of our existence since birth…

liberals don’t accept this ism… we understand life as a communal and social
affair, not a solitary affair… we have, for whatever reason, grown out of this particular
ism, this paradigm and we celebrate community…not the idea of “Rugged Individualism”…

Now in the Seventeenth century, we see that the bible and religion had a
profound influence in life, thought, beliefs, part of the paradigm that people
were born in was the bible and all that brings forth…Today, we have move
away from that paradigm… in other words, for millions of people, they are no
longer live and breath and die, with the bible and religion…That is no longer
part of the paradigm they grew up and it is easier to step away, to isolate
from that particular paradigm…
which is all well and fine, but the scientific paradigm that has in some part
replaced it, is not very understandable to people, science is hard and most
people don’t want to take the time and understand even the easiest and most
understandable part of science, evolution for example, which is pretty easy
to understand and grasp… but if we no longer have paradigms like the bible,
existing for us since birth and we cannot understand science, what are our
options for us as paradigms? We see it even here at ILP… it is ignorance of
the lowest order… we see it in void for example… he/she is incapable of
a rational argument and instead deals with created list of insults and
name calling… there is one thread where they bash Jews, I think in
the Georgia election thread, nothing there resembles an rational, coherent
argument for or against… it is just anti-Semitism and nothing more…
it is simply a excuse for lazy, vile, incoherent (I can’t say thought, because
there is not thought here) but feelings, it is a paradigm of sorts but nothing
that requires anything more then hate and anger and violence…it is feelings
put into words…a four year old would feel right at home in this thread…
no, I’m not, but what are you? type of thread…

the loss of ism’s and paradigms in American life has a profound effect,
people in search for an easily understood and not very hard to follow
ism and ideology/ paradigm turn to this sort of feelings turned into words
of hate, anger and word violence like the jew bashing of the previously
mentioned thread…it is easier to reach down and access the lower, base
level of human nature and follow the paradigm of hate, anger, lust, violence.
that is easy to do… just follow the example of animals… who operate with
instinct… and we humans can just follow the hardwire aspect of human nature
and simply hate, and have anger and express violence because that is easy for
us…it just means following emotions without any thought given…
but, but there are other paradigms and other ism’s and other ideologies,
we can follow but they require work, they demand we think and they
ask for more of us, then simple follow our instincts…

to think, to rationalize, to study, that is hard work…and that is why people
avoid it… it takes time and effort to think about things and why bother when
you can just be like an animal and use your instinct to hate and have anger?

we are born within certain paradigms and ism’s…we can just follow those
paradigms and ism’s mindlessly or we can be human beings and follow Nietzsche
example and begin to reexamine those values… that is what he means…
not just to accept and follow those childhood paradigms that we are born into,
but to examine them, understand them, reevaluate them… and that is hard work…
but what is the goal of this reevaluation? to lead us to something even greater which
is wisdom and that is the goal of philosophy… not the love of wisdom, but to find
wisdom and what path shall we take, what method shall we use to find this wisdom?
we have suddenly traveled very far from those childhood paradigms and ism’s we grew
up with…and that is a good thing…and the true path to becoming… for we are beings
in whom we are beings that are becoming, we are not is, but we are to be…
and if you understand this one fact, you are on the path to wisdom… we are
beings who are becoming… and what are you becoming? to express oneself
as a being of lower instincts like hate and anger and violence is to say, I am…
and there is not becoming in, I am…because there is no room for growth in, I am,
but there is room for growth when you doubt and when you question and when
you reevaluate…you are then becoming and not is… if you can understand this
difference, you are on the path to wisdom…

Kropotkin

in thinking about the whole of the 17 century, I was thinking of
the history, the events of the century and the people and who lived
during that century and it occurred to me that if you lived from 1600 to 1700,
you could have met some of the greatest thinkers, scientists and philosophers that
have ever lived… for example, in science, if you lived during that century, you could have
met (in no order) Kepler, Brahe, Galileo, Newton, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke,
Halley, William Harvey, Leeuwenhoek, Huygens, Pascal, Fermat, Gassendi,

in Philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnez, Locke, Hobbes, Berkley,

in the arts: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Donne, Dryden, Milton, Pepys, Moliere,
Chris Wren, Caravaggio, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Racine, Ben Johnson,

in other fields, Cardinal Richelieu, Oliver Cromwell, Peter the great, Elizabeth 1,

have we in the last 150 years even had half the number of such people?

and look at the time period… you had the reformation with its wars and divisions,
English civil war, a French civil war, the great war between science and religion which
has lasted until this very day…

it is truly remarkable if you think about it…but why? Why did so many great
thinkers and artist and scientist lived during that time period? It certainly wasn’t because
of the stability of the era because the era was turbulent in different and diverse ways, so
we can’t account for the people by the security the people had…intellectually, the
period had a wide range of new information coming in from the America’s and from
Asia and from science and philosophy…

perhaps it was because of the turbulence of the century that helped create the
remarkable people that we still study and admire…

Kropotkin