a new understanding of today, time and space.

Who am I?

I am a Christian…understand here, when you self identify as Christian,
you came from a home where the parents even if they are Cino’s,
(Christians in name only) they at least had Christianity as part of the
family structure in terms of ism’s, ideology and paradigms…
you were born into that family’s collection of ism’s that has been
carried down from generation to generation to generation…
and by self identifying as Christian, even if it is as being a Cino’s,
you are bringing that building, architecture of ism’s and ideologies,
and paradigms that houses human beings and has for generations,
you are mindlessly bringing those ism’s and ideologies and
paradigms into the present…without ever questioning or
asking if those ism’s and paradigms are valid ism’s and paradigms
in this day and age… we are building the present and future with
thousands of years old architecture/ism’s and ideologies…
Would you build a house with wood and metal and sheet rock that
is centuries old? No, so why would you build an internal house,
a mesh of idea’s and ideologies and ism’s and paradigm’s that
are thousands of years old? to move forward, we must adapt new
ism’s and new ideologies and new paradigms that more reflect
our new environment, our new situation…we are reacting to the modern
world with centuries old ism’s and ideologies and paradigms… in other
words, we are in the 21st century and we have 2000 years old ism’s and ideologies
to guide us… no wonder we are lost… we have an outdated map to guide us
in this 21st century… we must update our maps to match our current conditions…
and these new maps are new ism’s and ideologies and paradigms… meant
to better allow us to cope with the new modern realities we are faced with…
so to self identify as Christian, you are using a 2000 year old map to cope with
21st century landscape… it is no wonder millions are lost…

Kropotkin

The 16 and 17 century are centuries that pursued the “Truth”…
the new science was one means and the philosophy that followed the
science meant to defend and create certainty about the new science…
but why was science and philosophy so into this idea of certainty…
What was this need for certainty?

and this flows from one of the lies about science and philosophy
which is that science and philosophy don’t take into account…
aren’t involved with the daily aspects of life… a for example of this
is science and philosophy are supposed to be separate from trials
and tribulations of life… science and philosophy go on regardless of
the state of the world…Greek philosophy was done in such a way that
you had no idea of what was going on in the world while this
philosophy was being done… wars and famine and crisis didn’t affect
the Greek philosophy…it was independent of, outside of whatever was
going on in the world… Read Plato and in dialogues that were given
during the war (the Peloponnesian war) and you couldn’t tell that they were
in the midst of a long and protracted war between Sparta and Athens…

But in the turbulence of the 16 and 17 century, the philosophical search for certainty
was, in part, due to the uncertainty of the times… The information coming
from the new world unsettled Europe and the Reformation that was going on
from roughly 1517 to 1650 caused much chaos and warfare and uncertainty
during those years…and the search for the “TRUTH” was in part due to the
uncertainty going on at the time…in other words, unlike in Greek philosophy,
the science and philosophy of the 16 and 17 century was reacting to the events
of the time…science and philosophy do not operate in a vacuum, the events
going on at the time change, influence and sometimes drive the science
and philosophy of the time…so how does the events and drama of our time,
influence the science and philosophy that is going on…well during the 20 century,
a violent and angry century, you take a philosopher like Quine whose life spanned
the 20th century and he was about logic and set theory and language issues…
you couldn’t tell from his writings that he lived in a violent and turbulent century…
and this is in part, the failure of philosophy… as it didn’t engage in people’s lives…
talk about the important matters that was going on in people’s lives…

so should science and philosophy follow the Greek example and exist outside
of what is going on or should science and philosophy engage in the
concerns of people and their lives?

what is the role of science and philosophy in the lives of average people?

Kropotkin

once again, to change the subject…

very few today deny the fact that we are in need of reform…
45 was elected as a non-politician to reform Washington (he won’t/can’t because
he is a clueless idiot) so we have elected someone to reform Washington…
it is in the spirit of the times… about this need to reform
ourselves politically and culturally, I am reading about the Reformation in which
we see an earlier attempt at reforming the religious and the political…
some attempts failed and some succeeded but what is interesting is the need for
reform was in large part stoked by the failure of the powers to be to met the reformers
half way…so the spirally out of control by reformers was in part caused by the very actions
of the powers to be… had the powers to be attempted real compromise with the reformers,
that would have tempered the reaction of the reformers… the Reformation would not have
be so dramatic, so full of violence…but everyone stuck to their guns and wouldn’t
even think about compromise and not allowing any type of negotiation to occur between
the reformers and the powers to be…this was a world of all or nothing and we must learn
from that…the art of the deal, the real deal is that everyone leaves the negotiation thinking
they had won… in the real deal, everyone comes out with something… it is not a zero sum
game where if one party wins, that means all other parties lose… this idea of reformers
and the powers to be is a long one, going back to the beginning of time…

So today, everyone agrees that we need reform today… the question becomes
one of, what is to be reformed and why? to those who say, only the political, must
understand that we are connected and in this connection we cannot reform part of
the system without reforming the whole… each part of the system is connected to
every other part of the system…this is why reform of say, taxes, has failed in the past
because the reform of taxes is only part of the equation…as taxes
are part of the system…you must reform whole parts of the system as
reforming parts affects the other parts which must then be reform to match
the already done parts and so on and so forth…so we cannot just reform the
political and be done with it, no, we must reform not just the political but the
economic as the two are intertwined… the political system and the economic system
are just two sides of the same coin and if you go deep enough, they become the same…
as I have brought up time and time again… you have two thoughts that are opposed
and then the two thoughts become two sides of the same coin and then they become the
same thing… think of the concepts of good vs evil… they are two opposed systems
and then they become two sides of the same coin and then they become the same thing…

so reformers and the powers to be have two separate idea’ and if they
thought about it long enough, they would be two sides of the same coin
and then at some point, the same thing…

so in light of these thoughts, what needs to be reformed and why?
do you believe that society, culture, the political system need reform?
if so, why?

Kropotkin

I hope to tie together several strands of thought here…

the question I have asked is simple, Who am I?
and the answer tells us everything…

Ask the man from the medieval times and he would have answer
the question of, “Who am I” far differently then we would answer the question
and that is because of the understanding that someone would have answered the
question by… they understood themselves not to be separate individuals but
as part of the whole… they thought of themselves as existing within a hierarchy…
you didn’t exist outside of this hierarchy… you didn’t separate yourself from this
hierarchy…one saw themselves as a piece of the whole… a single brick within
the whole building whereas we see ourselves as the building…recall that
medieval artist rarely if ever signed their art works… it wasn’t about them personally…
a concept that we don’t understand today… we proudly and loudly sign our
name and claim it as ours even if it isn’t whereas in the medieval times, the artist
as well as the average person on the street was simple just a brick in the wall and
nothing more…

so today when we answer the question of “who am I”…
we might say, we are a Christian… for example…
we answer as the medieval man but we mean a far different thing then
a medieval man would when we answer, we are a Christian…

so I answer the question of “who am I” by stating
I am a Christian or I am a grocery clerk…

(many answer the question of who
they are by stating their job or their job title… that is how ingrained this
idea of we are as being what our job is… we self identify by our work and
not by any actual reference to ourselves)

what we really say when we say I am a Christian or I am an American,
is to say we accept certain values and adapt them as our own…
as we our born into our values, recall we are born into an already built
house of values which are called ism’s and ideologies and paradigms…
we are born into a situation where the idea that god exists is already
built into the house we are born… it is part of the values we
live inside of all our lives…it is a value and we are born into that value…
and if we say, I am a Christian as part of the self identification, we
we have simple given a rote answer to who we are…

in other words, to say, I am a Christian is to say, I accept certain values…
to say, I am a Christian is to follow that ism, that ideology you were born into…
you have simply and blindly followed the ism that you were born into and if
you defend capitalism, you are simply defending that value you were born into…

to be a conservative, is to accept the values you were born into without any
any critical examination… you accept the idea that the past that has lead
you to today, we call this tradition, and you accept this tradition…
that is a conservative… you defend tradition as being the best values to
adapt… if you attack liberals, you are saying their values are wrong…
but you do so without any critical understanding of your position…
you have blindly accepted tradition as being best… you have
accepted the idea that the values your were born into are
the values you believe in… the house of your childhood, the
values of your childhood… the already created values that make up
the house of ism’s and ideologies you were born into, are the values
you accept…you have done so without any thought given…
you have simply accepted those values without any evaluation of their
value…or to put it into Nietzsche words, you haven’t reevaluated
your values…if you attack liberals, you have accepted that
conservative values are your values… that the values of the house
you were born into are the values you accept…

a reevaluation of values that Nietzsche calls for isn’t what you done…
for to do so might mean you might call into question those values
you were born into… that house of values you were born into might
be wrong… and so, the conservative doesn’t think about or
wonder about or reevaluate those values…you simple accept them
as a given… as tradition…what exactly those values are and what they
mean are never evaluated because that might cause a shift in those values…
so you blindly follow values, you don’t really understand or know what
they exactly entail…because that is the point of following tradition…
you don’t have to exam those values or understand those values…
they are a given as tradition…values given to us by authority…
the past which has sanctified certain values is another means
of authority… the medieval times followed authority, be it
Aristotle or the church and the authority was never questioned…
it was the authority that matter and this following of the values
of the house your born into is exactly the same thing…
it is the values of authority as dictated by the past…
and any reevaluation of values might challenge the authority of the past…
challenge the idea’s and ism’s an ideologies and paradigms, you were born into…
that is why conservatives don’t reevaluate values… it is a challenge to already given
values that you were born into, values given to you by authority, the past…

who am I? is defined by already given values of the past…
I am a Christian… is simply stating that I accept the values given
to me by the past…you are defined by the values of the society
you were born into because if you have simple accepted those values without
question… you have carried on the values from the past into the present and therefore into
the future without any critical evaluation of those values… without challenging
the authority of the past…

I have often heard conservatives stating that liberals have forsaken thinking
and rational thought and just act on emotion… but they are simple projecting
as conservatives often do… liberals do challenge the values of the past…
that is the defining value or defining understanding of being a liberal…
we don’t accept the past as an authority and we don’t automatically accept
those values given to us by the past…we challenge authority… in this case
the past… that is what being a liberal is defined as…we reject
the past as being an adequate judge of values… we reserve the right
to reevaluate our values in terms of new information and a new environment…
that is why liberals are attacked… we don’t automatically accept the values
of the past like the conservative do…the conservative believes the values
that sustained their father and their grandfather is good enough for them…
the house of values given as authority is good enough for a conservative…but it
isn’t for a liberal…

now conservatives will simple say, you are wrong… that is their standard
operating statement but they will not engage in reevaluating their values…
they will simple state that I am wrong without thought to if I am right,…
I have revaluated my values hence changes in my core values
both politically and philosophical…

a conservative would never do that… their core values are values given
to them by the past and that past being authority is considered untouchable …

to reevaluate one’s values cannot be conducted by a conservative…
because to do so would mean you doubt the authority of the past
and that basic principle cannot be challenged…

so the question of “who am I” is both a personal statement but also
a statement of values given to me by society and my parents…
“who am I” is a question of what values do I accept…
values created by me or given to me by the house of values I was born into…

so this question of “who am I” lies at the heart of the core values we believe in…
past and present and future lies in this question of “who am I” and the values
of ism’s and ideologies and paradigms that I was born into come into play when
I answer the question… “who am I”?

Kropotkin

History is from the Greek, meaning Inquiry, knowledge
acquired by investigation…

Science: science is a systematic search for knowledge whose
validity does not depend on the particular individual but is
open for anyone to check or rediscover…

Philosophy: from the Greek meaning love of wisdom…

three separate and distinct studies and yet, and yet, they are
three aspects of the same search…and quite often they
are the same thing, for example when we look at someone like Newton…
or Einstein… we can use history and science and philosophy to investigate all
three…

inquiry and investigation…does that mean science or history or philosophy?
YES…

the emphasis on each is a slightly different… but if are you studying Newton,
you are involved in history and you are involved in science and because
Newton was a philosopher, you have philosophy…

the pursuit of, the inquiry for truth can lead one into and from history
or science or philosophy…it is a matter of choice which one uses either
history or science or philosophy…

Who am I? I can use science or I can history or I can use philosophy or
I can use any combination of those three to discover “who I am?”

Kropotkin

You could also use the answer: Who I am is very confused about who I am and maybe that’s who I am: confused.

Then you can give yourself a new name: Confused, and move on to other confusions and own them each in turn. Or, try to own them until someone comes along to help you and owns them for you.

In the mean time, here’s something else to think about:

I do promise that it is better to think about than what you’re currently working on.

ok, thinking about history and its uses and then
I was thinking about problem solving and I was thinking about
our problems of today versus the problems of the past…
and I was running through my mind, the various problems
of the past that are present today…environmental concerns
are certainly one of the them… then I thought about income inequality…
I recalled that at several points in history that there were battles and
attempts at revolution centered around income inequality…
Several ancient Greek cities over long periods of time had battles, revolutions
over income equality including Athens…the fighting between the haves and
the have not’s is a common theme in Greek history…Rome was ever conscience
of the potential of the lower class rising and attempting to take over… this in some
part explains the bread and circus idea of Rome… keeping the lower classes occupied
and entertained is part of the secret to keeping the have not’s from civil unrest…
this theme was ever present during the middle ages especially during the later
medieval times, from say 1200 to 1500…in one sense, the Marxist reading of
history in light of economics is certainly one way to go in understanding history…
reading history in terms of those who have and those who do not and the ever present
struggle between the two…
you could read the French revolution as a battle between the haves and the have not’s…
France before the Revolution was an excellent study in income inequality…
the vast majority of people were peasants and were never going to be anything else
but peasants…they had no hope and people without hope have nothing to lose but their
chains…

you could read American history in light of this idea of the have’s and have not’s…
and before the civil war, there was very little income inequality… the vast majority
of people were economically in the same boat…Henry Adams in his book, “The education
of Henry Adams” talks about how his uncle became the first millionaire in America
and that was the 1820’s or 1830’s…this equality helped America become
the land of the free and the home of the brave…the American civil war created
hundreds of millionaires (and the civil war didn’t have any component of
the unrest between the haves and have not’s… it was fought on different grounds)
so today we have a great deal of unrest and I suggest that it, in part, is because
of income inequality… one of the great problems of our age is this income inequality…
and it drives the problems of our age not by jealously but by the thought of justice…
how is it just that one man or family, think of the Walmart’s owners have billions
and that there are American’s who lack basic essentials like food and shelter
and clean water… how is that just? the question of income inequality is a question
of justice… and income inequality is driven by our idea of what it means to be
human… keeping up with the jones is a ism, a paradigm that helps drives
our current system of income inequality…

a new idea of who we are is needed… one that doesn’t make the acquisition of
material goods as the primary function of the human being… for we are not
a species that makes acquisition the primary goal, but as a secondary goal…
think about it… if we work hard and keep out nose to the grindstone, we too
can achieve the American dream… and conservatives object to welfare
and other social programs because it “punishes” those who already have
and rewards those who do not have, thus giving no incentive for those
with no or a limited income to become “productive” members of society…
this whole idea of becoming a “productive” member of society is based
on a paradigm, one that certainly is in need of being reexamined…
for this idea of being a “productive” member of society is based on a very limited
and shortsided idea of what a “productive” member of society looks like…
a “productive” member of society must contribute to the Gross national product
and that is a very limited vision of who we are… and this entire idea of being
productive is a vision of who we are, an paradigm that excludes many people
of great note in the past, but today don’t meet the expectations of being
“productive” for example, we wouldn’t call Socrates as a “productive” member
of society or we wouldn’t call St. Francis as being a “productive” member
of society… because our idea’s of being a “productive” member of society
must fit certain criteria of producing or adding to the “GNP”…
our limited view of who is “productive” and who isn’t fits into our vision
of who human beings are… we are economic beings, just as Karl Marx
said and just as Adam Smith said… and I disagree with this notion…

and this returns us to our original point which is one of the great problems
of western history has been income inequality which is simply seeing
people in terms of their production of goods or in their buying of goods
and we must change that, for myriad of reasons, to making human beings
about what they can achieve, not in terms of production or consumption,
but in terms of art and science and philosophy and whatever they
can achieve… in other words, we need to reexamine what it means to
be human… we are not about the economic but about something else…
and this in turn is a solution to the continuous problem of income inequality
that has plagued human beings since the beginning of time…and threatens
us today…

Kropotkin

So this next look at problems of the modern age and possible
solutions…

it doesn’t take a very hard look at history before one comes across
the damage and death and the toll on people that religion has
and continues to bring to people…

recall that Socrates was executed on religious grounds…
and the death toll from the various religious wars over the centuries is in the millions…
that Islamism and Christianity have been fighting each other for over a thousand years…
and to what end? it is a struggle that will go on into the foreseeable future, decades
and centuries into the future with no end in sight…it has been and will continue to be
a problem going into the future and as a solving problem people, what might be one
solution to this ongoing problem?

more religion has never solved any problem before and I can’t see more religion
solving this problem, so one answer is simple… if you don’t want to be part of the
problem and be part of the solution… end all religious belief you have…

end your belief in god and end your belief in some higher power and in any metaphysical
beliefs you might have… if the problem with religions is religions, then
one solution is to end the religious belief… this can be done, one person at a time,
without any resulting social ramifications caused by actions taken…
if you fail to pay your taxes, this creates social ramifications because
it limits the number of people who do pay and those who don’t pay,
like 45, cause damage to society by narrowing the number of people who pay
taxes… the way to limit the damage taxes do is by increasing the number of
people and corporations paying taxes… increasing, not decreasing… and this leads
us to another point…solutions must be flexible to the problem…
solving one problem requires us to limit or eliminate, the question of
religion and another problem, the question of taxes requires us to increase
the number of people…this shows us the complicated nature of finding
solutions to problems… a flexibility to address a problem without
resort to ism’s and paradigms and ideologies for they are also part of the
problem…for a ism demands that the solution fits into that ism and
ideology even if the reality is different… the solution must fit into an
already given parameters set up by the ism, the ideology or paradigm…
the GOP has for decades given us the exact same answer for any economic
ills that bedevil us and that is tax cuts even though tax cuts has never,
ever under any circumstances, be shown to improve the economy…
and this is the failure of the GOP, holding to a failed policy even in
the light of evidence that it has never worked… this is religious thinking
at work… holding faith in a action even though the action has never be
shown to work… holding faith in god even though god has never been
shown to exist… this is the exact same faith in tax cuts that has been
shown in the existence of god… regardless of the evidence otherwise…
and this is the failure in the religions… holding the faith regardless of
the evidence otherwise and in this, we see the failure of religions and
beliefs…if you want to be part of the solution going into the
future, you need to dismiss god and religion and become free
of destructive beliefs that have so damaged the world…

free of religions like Christianity and Islam and Buddhist
and free of belief in god and a higher power…
free yourself and become part of the solution and not part of the
problem…

Kropotkin

a third problem looking for a solution in these times is one
of perspective…and the question of perspective is a simple one…
how do you view something? by what criteria do you measure what you are
viewing? in other words…how do you make judgments on things you see?
many here and around the country, indeed many in the world, hate and vilify Liberals
and liberalism… and yet, the modern world is a creation of liberalism… from
the American war of independence to the modern idea of freedom to concepts
we take for granted like conservation of the planet earth… and the right to vote…
these are a liberal idea’s…social security and medicare were driven by the left
along with 8 hour days and overtime pay and safety measure to protect the workers…
and yet even after driving all these idea’s which has benefited millions, liberal and
liberalism is hated by people who use these concepts every single day and
benefit from them every single day… and yet they can’t they see the fact
that liberals and liberalism has made their life better in ways they can’t even see…

so from their perspective, liberals and liberalism is some sort of evil and all the
while, they are benefitting from what liberals and liberalism has done for them…

so we can look at it this way… liberals have offered up solutions to
many problems and have been fought by conservatives…
yet, conservatism offers up failed solutions like more market choice
which does nothing… kinda like offering more access to consumers which
means nothing because you have to be able to afford that more access
but it sounds good, to have more access, it just doesn’t mean anything if
you can’t afford it…and the ever present clarion call of tax cuts offered
by conservatives as the answer to everything…

conservatives want more government, they want their benefits,
but they don’t want to pay for it…hence the tax cuts…
and liberals are more then willing to pay for more government…
so who is the government freeloader?

another “solution” offered by conservatives is that people take
“personal responsibility” and yet, conservatives refuse to take personal
responsibility for anything… their “solution” is really one of, “you take
personal responsibility, I don’t have to”…has the president taken responsibility
for actions taken by his administration? he has taken credit for things he
has had nothing to do with like the jobs growth which is just an extension
of Obama policies… (the government runs on the prior administration
budget for the following year after the president has left… the new budget won’t
kick in until Sept. 30, which is the start of the national budget for the next fiscal year)

so what solutions have conservatives offered up for our problems?

feel free to think about solutions offered up by conservatives and
solutions offered up by liberals…

we have global warming, we have pollution, we have a major health care crisis
in this country, (now many here will blame Obamacare, ok, so offer up a solution,
or give a solution given by conservatives… if the conservatives had solutions, we
would have already passed health care “reform” already… but they don’t have anything…
so your challenge is simple, offer up solutions, conservative solutions to our problems…

You won’t be able to because conservatives have no solutions to any problems,
well to be fair, they will always offer up tax cuts to the wealthy… that is pretty much
their answer to everything… economic solutions to problems that aren’t economic
is not a viable solution to problems solving… if conservative thinking is so much
more viable then liberals thinking, then you should be able to come up with
conservative solutions to problems that exist…for that is the point of
ideology and ism’s and paradigms… they exist to solve problems…
if the paradigm or ism doesn’t solve problems, what is the point of the
ism or of the paradigm? if conservatism doesn’t solve problems, what is the
point of conservatism?

Kropotkin

as I contemplate a response to the question posed by
Justice… I have another response…

the demarcation problem…

in the philosophy of science the demarcation problem is a large one and
the problem goes like this… how do we know which sciences are real sciences
and which are pseudoscience? Like is astrology on the same level as astronomy?
or is Astrology a pseudoscience and astronomy a real science? the problem comes
in do you restrict so much that you leave out real sciences or do you relax the
criteria and allow some pseudoscience in with real science?

This demarcation problem is, in part, why Kuhn wrote his famous book,
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”…

so one may ask, why do you care about this problem?

I suspect that philosophy and science and history has a demarcation problem
and the problem goes like this, how do we tell where philosophy begins and science
end and where does philosophy ends and history begins and where are the lines
between philosophy, science and history?

Philosophy has been around 2500 years and science was a part
of philosophy for over 2000 of those years…it has only been in the last
couple of hundred years that philosophy and science has separated…

how does history fit into all this?

we all know that philosophy is the love of wisdom…

History comes from the a Greek word meaning Inquiry, knowledge
acquired by investigation…

Science: what is known, knowledge acquired by study, assurance of knowledge,
this word is from the Latin “Scientia”

so, we see that all three words, science, philosophy and history derive from
the same basic ideas, inquiry, knowledge, investigations…

now we must use each area, science, philosophy and history to explore different
aspects of our world but each is an inquiry, a search for knowledge…

so what else do these words suggest to us?

that each of them, by different means, explore what it means to
be human and each explores the human question…
who are we, what are we, when are we, how are we, where are we,
and why are we? Who, what, when, where, how and why are the 6 questions
we must always ask ourselves… like a good journalist, we must ask
these 6 questions constantly… who, what, when, where, how and why…

I suggest that there is no great difference between science and philosophy
and history… each in their own way, explores what it means to be human,
each explores how it means to be human and each explores the why of being
human…science says, I am a human and the universe around me looks like
this… and history says, we can know what it means to be human by our
past actions…philosophy can say, we are human and it means this…
philosophy tries to give the facts that science and history tell us and philosophy
tells us the values of those facts… science and history are about facts (facts which are
changeable and not ever set in stone) and philosophy tells us what the value
of those facts…philosophy has failed in part because it operates outside of history,
philosophy tries to be isolated from other questions we have about ourselves…
Hegel was the first philosopher who tried to incorporate history into philosophy
and that is his great claim to fame… he centered philosophy in history and
made us aware that history and philosophy have a common theme…
Kant didn’t try to connect history into philosophy… Kant’s philosophy was
separated, isolated from the historical events and happenings of the time…
Just like Plato… you can’t tell what was happening historically at the time
Plato was writing… his philosophy is separate, isolated from not only
history, but from life… think about his idea about the cave and eternal
idea’s…those ideas of Plato exist outside of history…philosophy,
true philosophy cannot be separated, isolated from history, isolated
from the events of the day… for those events tell us who we are and
how we are separated from or the same as the people who went before us…

the question facing all three, science, philosophy and history is simple…
and all three approach that question from different sides, but the questions
for all three is still the same… who is man, what is man, when is man,
where is man, how is man and why is man? what is the human experience?
and how does the past human experience tells us about us today?

You must approach philosophy from a historical, scientific
and philosophical understanding… and all three approaches
from the same way, inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation…

about this living creature we call, a human being…

Kropotkin

Justice: 1. being righteous…2. fairness…3. rightfulness
4.reward or penalty as deserved…
5.the use of authority to uphold what is just…6.the administration of law…
7. do justice to…to treat fairly…

This dry definition doesn’t really cover the word “justice” does it?

People have trying to work out what justice is since Plato…
The Republic is basically working out the concept of justice…
and that was 2500 years ago and we still don’t have a good working
notion of Justice…and I certainly won’t solve this problem in
this thread but I want to look at what seems to be justice and what
isn’t justice… we may not be able to define it, but at least we
can identify it…

I was watching Broadchurch last week and a father who son was
murdered told his ex-wife that he was looking for “justice for Danny”
(danny being his son) and we are familiar with this idea that
crime and injustice needs to be punished…it needs justice…
now justice seems to be for those who have suffered from crime
or injustice… so can we ask for justice for those who
haven’t suffered a crime or injustice? it doesn’t seem so…
so for us to find justice, we need a victim or someone who
has injustice done to them…

now we are trained to think of injustice in terms of the legal or the law…
a crime was committed and we are looking for justice…
now is that crime being committed, about a crime committed
against a single individual or can the crime be committed against
the society?

Now punishments for crimes tend to be define as punishments
for acts committed against a sole person but is socially punished,
the community itself punishes people and the community employs
the police and the judicial system to find and dispense justice in that
community name…so an individual act of one person violence against
another will bring a response to finding justice from the community…
it is considered a crime against the community when one person commits
a crime against another person who belongs in the community…
the act of justice is taken away from a single person…
justice is a community activity and not allowed to be conducted by
an individual…

now we further try to understand justice… let us give a common
example… at my work, some people are being hired at a higher rate
then people who have been there for some time…so is it “just” for
people who have been there for a long time, to be paid less then
people who have been there for about 2 minutes? now we don’t consider
that to be a justice question because it is an economic question conducted
within a business corporation… but if a crime, injustice has been conducted
against an individual in a business, how is that different than an injustice
conducted against an individual who is just walking down the street and has
been attacked? Injustice is injustice is injustice regardless of the nature
of the injustice… but that leaves us with a question?
how do we know, KNOW, when injustice has been committed?
what is our standard for discovering when injustice has been committed?
what criteria do we use to understand when injustice has been committed?

but that means we have to understand what is right and wrong, to be
able to define what is justice and what is injustice…
this is wrong and injustice or this is right and this is justice…

it kinda like the longstanding idea about pornography…
I may not be able to define it, but I know it when I see it…

but that can either miss justice or miss injustice…

so to return to my idea of justice in the workplace which we consider
far less important then justice in the world outside of the workplace…

why are business held to a different standard of justice then a private citizen?

one argument might be the individual can walk away from injustice committed
by a business whereas an individual in the world cannot walk away from
injustice committed by an individual…

so is justice or injustice controlled by this idea that if you have
no say in or any recourse in the action of injustice, it becomes
a matter for the state? is justice for those who do not have any control
over the situation? I know of people who have been victims of injustice
in the workplace and they sued and by suing, they were fired from their
job and then other businesses wouldn’t hire these individuals
because of the lawsuit and so they were punished for suing the corporation…
justice wasn’t served by their attempts to get justice for themselves…

how do we justify this? I have seen this time and time again…
attempts to gain justice in the workplace have in the long run
created far greater injustice for the individual in question…

women who have reported being raped are often the ones
being put on trial by lawyers by character assassinating
that woman in a trial… is that justice?

and that is another little brick in the wall…
justice for one often comes at a price for some or many…
just how far are we to pursue justice?

what is the price for pursuing justice to its logical
conclusion? justice is tied to many other aspects
we consider important… if justice is to be followed,
what other damage are we to accept as a goal for justice…
for example, in the private workplace and the worker
receives a large monetary settlement for injustice committed
against that individual, but that large monetary settlement
damages the business bottom line, it damages the profit
margin of a business which affects a lot of people…

how are we to balance the needs of the one against
the needs of the many in regards to bringing about justice?

Justice does seem to be a zero sum game…

we see injustice done against individuals all the time
and we even see injustice done against a community
by a corporation… Walmart is committing injustice
against its workers by so underpaying them, that the
workers to survive must turn to welfare and other social
net programs… I see that as injustice and others see
that has the cost of a business trying to maximize profits…

so who is right? the bottom line comes down to
what you think is the basic of human standards…
in other words, if you believe that business should pay
its worker enough to support themselves even at
the cost of the bottom line, then you have certain
expectations of being human…

and that plays a role in our understanding of justice…
what ism’s and ideologies and paradigms we have
of society and of people that we bring into our understanding
of what justice is?

I believe that by virtue of being human, we have
“certain inalienable rights among them, life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” …

as part of being human, we have the right to feed ourselves, to clothe
ourselves, to have an education… these are certain inalienable rights we
have as being human… and among those inalienable rights, I believe
that we must have justice along with food, shelter and clothing as
a basic human right…

in a very real way, human society is predicated upon justice being
done within that society, for without justice, the community doesn’t have
the stability needed for the society for the society to grow and prosper…
the very act of there being justice allows that community to be stable.
that very actions of justice allows the community to function better…
for justice is a requirement for a society to remain viable and functional…

so if we permit injustice to stand without punishment, we damage a society’s
ability to remain stable and functional…

so when we don’t have justice for example, when the police can kill
innocent people without justice, it damages the society because
it allows injustice to go unpunished and that hurts the faith that
people have in the system…

for a society to work, it must, must have a certain number
of people who buy into the system, who believe enough in the system
to work within the system and make it work, but if you damage
people’s faith in a system, they no longer will trust in or work
with a system that allows injustice…

that trust, that faith is key to keeping a system working
and if we don’t trust a system to keep justice, then we
opt out of a system and that damages the system…

for a system to work, any system, it must have a certain
number of its parts working at any given time…
if enough parts of any system fails to work, the system
can be damaged enough to stop working…
in other words, if we allow injustice to continue,
people will opt out of the system and if enough
people opt out, the system will fail…
and that is the situation we are facing right now…
less then half the people eligible to vote, actually
voted… this is what I mean by opting out of the system…
people will no longer engage in a system that
allows injustice and if enough people fail to engage,
the system will fail…

this is in part, why liberals search for justice more
then security… we understand that without justice
the society will at some point fail and we are fast approaching
that moment when if enough people opt out of our system, it will
fail…

but that isn’t justice, that is what happens if we don’t
follow justice… but we still haven’t found out what is justice…
or what is injustice for that matter…

more later as we give more thought to this question of justice
or injustice…

Kropotkin

in regards to justice and security…

As I have noted before, a liberal desires justice
and a conservative desires security…

they seem to be two separate and distinct concepts…

security is one concept and justice is another distinct concept…

yet we have worked out before with good and evil, perhaps
the two distinct and separate concepts are really just two sides
of the same coin and then later they are one and the same…

thesis + antithesis… equal synthesis…

thesis: justice… antithesis: security…

synthesis: a combination of the two…

for if you think about it…

you cannot be secure if you are unable to have justice…
for the concept of security to work, you need justice…
for part of security is justice…

and part of justice is security…

one needs the other…

the liberal wants justice and by gaining justice, we gain freedom
the conservative want security and by gaining security, we gain freedom…
but what is the connection between justice, security and freedom?

how we approach this problem is in part by the ism’s and ideologies
and paradigms that we use to approach justice, security and freedom…

we have certain ism’s, ideologies and paradigms and it is through the lens
of those ism’s, ideologies and paradigms that we understand such
concepts like justice and security and freedom…

we are raised with certain ism’s and ideologies and paradigms
and we never really shake those ism’s and ideologies and paradigms
unless we follow Nietzsche and reevaluate values…
for those isms’ and ideologies and paradigms are values taking
form…we are born into a certain value set… given to us by our
parents, our church, our society, the media… all of which spends
its time, parents, church, media, society, in indoctrinating us into
certain values highly held by the parents, church, media and society…

This is the point of education… indoctrinating the children into
values acceptable by the parents, church, media and the society…
and we approach such idea’s like justice and security and freedom
with the values we are indoctrinated with from birth…

to escape this indoctrination, we must reevaluate our values in light
of our experiences as human beings… someone once called a conservative:
a liberal who has been mugged…

we might change our isms, our ideologies, our paradigms
because of experiences we have gone through…or
by experiences we see others going through…

the conservative rails against welfare based on the idea
of the “welfare queen” (an idea that has been discredited BTW)
but the conservative has actually never seen a “welfare queen”
because they don’t exists but the conservative is convinced of the existence
of the “welfare queen” even though they don’t actually exists…

in other words, the conservative is programmed to see “welfare queens”
even if they don’t exists… now this programming might be from
birth, this particular ism and ideology and paradigm from parents, the church,
the media and society…but how do we escape this programming from birth?

we must reevaluate our values…

we must re see our world, we must understand our ism’s and ideologies
and paradigms in light of a new look at those isms’ and ideologies and paradigms…
we must see the world with fresh eyes and without the impact of those
old ism’s, ideologies and paradigms that influence our understanding of the world…

so what if… security and justice and freedom are all sides of the same coin
and then what if… they are the same thing…

just like good and evil becoming the same thing, we now
see that justice and security and freedom are one and the same…

to be secure in the world, we must have justice and to have justice, we
must have security and to have justice and security, we must have freedom…
to attack one is to attack all three for the three, justice, security and freedom
are one and the same…what is the demarcation line between justice and freedom
and security? how do we tell where justice ends and security begins and where
is the line between justice and freedom? or the line between or security and freedom?
this demarcation line that is so important in science is also important in other aspects
of our life… so tell me, where is the line between justice and security?

Kropotkin

I believe that justice is a greater need for people then security…
you can see this in the religious need for people to have justice
done, if not in this life, in the next… and you see this need for
justice in religion…

for it is a principle point of Jesus… he remarks more then once
about how justice is found in the next life… leaving us to wonder
how does justice denied in this life is sufficient for us to live with…
why must we wait for justice in the next life?

the meek shall inherit the earth… this is a form of justice in the
next life…just not in this life…

you don’t see this great need for justice with security or with freedom…

if you don’t have security in this life, you shall have it in the next…
or if you don’t have freedom in this life, you shall have it in the next…

that doesn’t have the same ring, the same feel as “the meek shall inherit the earth”…

thus we can see from a religious context that this search for justice has been with us
since humans have a religious context to their lives and indeed, religion may have
been invented to give us a sense that justice denied in this lifetime will be found
in the next lifetime…

in fact, justice plays a strong role in religions all over the world…
if you are just, you shall be rewarded with heaven…a rather
common refrain of religions…but security or freedom does not
have the same religious context given to them as justice has…

God can be seen as a judge who dispenses justice to human beings…
fail to live to god’s standards and he punishes you, live up to it and he
rewards you… justice is done in terms of your faith or actions in regards to
god and his laws…

in fact, religions can be seen as an attempt to discover the justice that
is not found in our daily life…we turn to religions because we fail
to find justice in our day to day life…that shows us the importance of justice
to us human beings…

but in the 20 century, we cannot fall back on religions to secure for us
the justice we so seek in our lives… as we cannot turn to religions,
what do we turn to in some attempt to have justice, even if that
we turn to don’t exist in real life… we have created a mythology of
superhero’s to dispense justice in our world… we are so in need
of justice we have created superhero’s like batman and superman to
salve our need for justice…

in fact, our need for justice is so strong, we may be
people who seek justice first and foremost… whereas Aristotle
wrote that people seek happiness and theologians wrote that people
seek god, we see now that we actually seek justice…

and the great stresses in our society comes from justice being denied,
both individually and within the society… the winter of our discontentment
comes from us seeing that our modern age is an age of justice being denied…

the Jews of the holocaust…Sacco and Vanzetti…the deaths of millions in our
world wars…we see this in the cultural wars of the last 30 years…

health care is an issue of justice… for we see that people often are denied proper
health care which is an injustice for reasons like preexisting conditions and the cost of
health care… we deny health care to people because they can’t afford it and that
is injustice… thus leading us back to why liberals value justice over security…
justice denied within a society damages the society… it was once believed in America that
it was better to allow 100 guilty people to go free then one person found guilty who was
innocent… we have lost this notion because we want justice and we don’t care how
we achieve it and who we hurt to achieve it…

we have allowed our anger and hate to influence our notion of justice…

when we commit injustice, we damage our souls and when we act justly,
we improve our souls… that is why we must seek out and find justice
and do battle with injustice…it is about saving ourselves… we can
find salvation in finding justice…and this may be the only true way to find
salvation in our searching for justice…

Kropotkin

a reevaluation of values…

What if god is a question and not an answer?

doubt is the way to wisdom, not certainty, for no one ever
gained wisdom through certainty… only doubt…

so what if god is an question?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: a reevaluation of values…

What if god is a question and not an answer?

doubt is the way to wisdom, not certainty, for no one ever
gained wisdom through certainty… only doubt…

so what if god is an question?

K: so as a question of values… what if god is a question?

what does this mean?

it seem that one of the key if not the primary question of humans beings
is this question of justice…what is justice? how do we achieve justice?
what does it mean to have a “just society”?

perhaps the lesson learned from our understanding that one of the key points
of religion is justice… how we find justice not in this lifetime but in the next…
but justice denied is not justice and justice delayed is not justice… justice must
be timely and current for it to be justice…perhaps we can make the equation
that for us, to find salvation means that we must find justice…

so without religion dispensing justice, how are we to reach justice?

so if god is a question, what else does this mean?

it means that we must understand who this human being creature is, in
other terms besides religious… we see people in relation to god as in
the biblical stories of Adam and Abraham and Moses… we see man explained
in these stories… but remove the religious and how do we see man now?

context is everything and in what context do we see man?

that might be a flaw we have today, we don’t have any type of representation
of what man is like in the bible… we have removed the context of man from
our understanding of who we are…

if god is the question, then the question is asking, what is this creature we call man?
it calls into question everything we think about who we are and more importantly,
who we might become…

if god is the question, then what is our understanding of who we are?

Kropotkin

as I have noted, we are born into a house filled with values,
(the house being human society) and within that house exists values
like the American mantra… Truth, justice and the American way…
we are, each of us, born into a house that has values held by the family
and societally…values taught by family, church, the state… schools,
the media, all of them teaching values…

the question becomes as we grow up… do we blindly accept those taught values
or do we question them… Nietzsche entire written works were about this one
fact… he wrote…

“It is not enough to have the courage of our values…
we must have the courage for an attack upon our values”

His entire reevaluation of values is about this very point of, do we accept
our already given values or do we reevaluate them in light of our experiences,
in light of new information, in light of new technologies…

the entire Renaissance was a question of reevaluation of values
of the Medieval period…are the values that the medieval man lived
by, are they values we should accept or should we be the creators of our
own values… that is the entire question of the Renaissance! and that question
was continued by Descartes and Spinoza and Newton and Leibnitz among others…

so the values we have been born into like Capitalism and democracy and
truth and justice and the American way… are we brave enough to
begin our own reevaluation of values…do those values really offer
us the answers we need or do we need to reevaluate them?

I think the answer is obvious… we must, in light of our current place in history,
we must begin a reevaluation of values… the values that have sustained us for
centuries have begun to crumble… those values have no longer kept up with us, with the
our current experiences and our current situation and we must be the creators of new values
that take into account our new experiences, our new technologies, our new way of
thinking…our ideologies, our ism’s, our paradigms have not kept pace with
the new experiences and new technologies… we are living new experiences
and new technologies with old ideologies and old ism’s and old paradigms
and that is, in large part, the problem we face today… we are poring new wine
into old bottles, old wineskins…and the old wineskins are being stretched
beyond their ability to handle the new wine… just as the new ism’s and ideologies
are being pored into old institutions and old way of seeing things and the
result is what we see today… chaos and feeling unsettled and the fear many people
feel today… that fear is ruling the day and allowing us to vote for totally
inept clowns like 45…

reevaluate and pour new wind into new wineskins

Kropotkin

Nietzsche often called for dancing, dancing on the edge of the abyss…

perhaps we should…

most people search for, demand for certainty, for security, for a safe and secure life…

what if, what if that wasn’t the goal… what if the reality is, we should be searching
for doubt and uncertainty and dancing on the edge of the abyss…

There is nothing that is certain…we cannot just accept the proposition that
all of life is searching for something to ground our beliefs on, too create that
which is certain…

we see that in life there is not certainty… we live from moment to moment
in a universe that is full of uncertainty and doubt and chaos…

let us learn to dance to the abyss that has doubt and uncertainty and chaos…

We imagine that we need a safe and secure place to grow… but look outside your
window… we see a whole growth of life in the wild, outside in unsafe and uncertain
world…

all of life has grown in a wild, chaotic, uncertain world… look about nature…
what is certain about nature? nature is chaotic and uncertain and full of doubt…
it has nothing certain about it and yet life thrives there… perhaps our failure has
been to create certainty and safety and security when we should be
dancing within chaos and uncertainty and doubt…

the Greeks were fond of logic and order and symmetry and yet, yet they
had chaotic and disorderly side of dancing to Dionysus… they learned
to integrate their need for order and certainty and symmetry with their
chaotic and uncertainty and doubtful aspect of their lives…

a trick we certainly haven’t mastered…

humans have a chaotic and anarchistic need… sometimes we feed on
anarchism and chaos and uncertainty… we must learn to
incorporate that into who we are…
The “Purge” movies seem to capture that need… (movies I have yet to see)

as I am old, my days of chaos have passed and yet, I believe in doubt and
uncertainty… we can separate out chaos from doubt and uncertainty…

sometimes, sometimes… it thrills the soul to destroy… sometimes
it is fulfilling to knock down a building or create chaos…
but the rational, logical mind rebels against this creation of chaos and uncertainty…
and that is the struggle… finding the balance between this need for chaos and
uncertainty with the need for rational, logical, certain thought and life…

we have yet to find that balance…

the rational, logical mind rebels against chaos and uncertainty because
it know the energy it takes to create something is much harder
the energy to destroy something…

we bounce between this need to build and create and this need to
destroy and create chaos…

finding this middle ground was the work of Nietzsche…
once again, no matter where I go, Nietzsche has already been there…

the young want chaos and uncertainty and doubt and the old want
certainty and safety and security… we can have both if we accept
the fact we need both…

or said another way…the right fights for certainty, security and safety…
the left fights for doubt and chaos and uncertainty…

let us learn to accept that which is doubt and chaotic, uncertain…
all the while building a world where we are safe and secure…

we can have both once we understand the need for both…

learn to dance next to the abyss and you will achieve security and safety
it makes no sense but it is true… for often the truest part of life makes
little rational sense…

Kropotkin

Upon further reflection, I see that the search for god is the
search for certainty and security and safety whereas
the search for the dark side, those who believe and follow the
devil is a search for doubt and uncertainty and chaos…

I don’t mean this search for god and the devil as literally
a search for a god or a devil but what they stand for…
good and evil… for good is certainty and safety and security
whereas evil is doubt and uncertainty and chaos…

we cannot have one without the other…
we must unite or combine the two, good and evil, into
a understanding of life… the meaning of life is… whereas
part of the answer to the meaning of life is this union of
good and evil… the need for chaos must be balance with the need for
certainty… at times, we need and must create chaos and other times,
we must have and need certainty…the trick is knowing when
the time for chaos has come and knowing when certainty is needed…

the dance on the abyss require us to understand the balance between
good and evil… the balance between certainty and doubt…
the balance between chaos and security…

Kropotkin

Order, beauty, certainty chaos, ugliness, uncertainty

deep needs we all have deep needs we all have

truths to be found truths to be found

an understanding of the universe and understanding of the universe

security, safety, certainty hatred, destruction, anger

search for the light search for the dark

how do you hope to become whole, how do you hope to become whole

a nature to be found, a nature to be found

truth to be known, truth to be unknown

thesis, antithesis, antithesis

we search the light for truth,
we search the dark for the truth

we unite everything boxes
we divide everything into boxes

but we must not, we cannot,
look at things divided and separate

to analyze a flower
to dissect a flower

is to kill the flower
and how do we hope to understand that which is dead…

order, chaos, beauty, ugliness, certainty, uncertainty…

we cannot separate them out at the cost of our soul…

Kropotkin

K: ummm, that was an experiment that didn’t quite work out the way I wanted…

Kropotkin