a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

to continue on the theme of being saved and a savior…

to be saved or to have a savior implies going from doubt and uncertainty
and chaos to certainty, security, safety…

to say, “I am saved” is to suggest I have certainty about my fate…
yet there is no certainty, no security amidst the chaos and randomness that
is life… and that is what being saved is, being saved from… being saved from
uncertainty and chaos and randomness

one is dancing on the abyss and by believing one is saved, the abyss no longer
becomes a danger… you no longer believe you are in danger by being saved…
the fear of the future is decreased and that fear of falling into the abyss is lessen…

but the whole point of dancing next to the abyss is the possible fate of falling
into the abyss… the uncertainty, the doubt, the fear of dancing next to the abyss
leads one to no longer taking life for granted, to accept the certainty in life along
with the uncertainty of life…it is not longer either/or… it could be both and at
the same moment…

to be certain is to be no longer by challenged by life
to have all doubts removed…to be certain is to be safe and secure
when in fact, we must have doubt and uncertainty to grow and become something
greater then what we are…

doubt is growth, certainty is satisfaction with the statue quo…

Kropotkin

Imagine you’re on a battlefield, in the middle of a phalanx unit, thousands of years ago. You’re surrounded on all sides. Your unit is being slaughtered. The men you’ve grown up with, fought in battles before, known for years, gone to training and boot camp with, are dying left and right. Your brothers in arms are succumbing to horrible fates. There is no hope. Your entire unit is destined to die in a painful and gruesome fashion. Your efforts and resistance are wasted. You barely have the strength to hold up your weapon and shield.

Then the horns cry out across the field. The reinforcing cavalry has arrived, unplanned, surprised. Your saviors have arrived. The lord from the next kingdom over has come to aid your own clan. Forces greater than your own, unknown by you, have plotted to ensure this victory. You knew not of the plans of your Lord. But He has come regardless.

It is moments like these, echoed throughout human history, that people form the concept of a Savior.

It is monumental, unforgettable, tales passed throughout the ages.

Real-world actions and consequences. These form the premises and underlying concepts. That is what it means “to be a Savior”.

Imagine in the mix of that that they died tired, fighting until arms became too heavy, legs and bodies beyond sore until their movements became almost mechanical and as they died around you one by one, what little energy they had left transferred to you and that you were more than on your last legs when the cavalry showed up, still swinging the heavy sword, still lifting that heavy shield. For all your muscles and training, even in stamina and endurance, they did not actually prepare you for the emotional and psychological and spiritual strain of continued combat through the day, hour after hour against an unrelenting enemy, nor did you figure yourself the type to fight to your last breath after all your kinsmen were gone and dead. That it surprised you in the midst of combat to be carried on the swell of becoming limitless and still almost dead, almost wishing for it. That as the Lord of the next kingdom enters in, it’s not being saved that crosses your mind, though that crosses your mind surprisingly fresh. Your thoughts are noted for the weariness in them, the actual faded nature of them from a life time of having been yours. You are the last of your people and as you become fueled by the energies of the ‘cavalry’, your enemy breaks and is slaughtered before you, yourself finding feet numb and weary beneath you, and falling down in seeming gratitude.

If they had not shown, would you have won? Would you have continued on just the one to take down the many or would you have been cut down the same as your kinsmen? You would have almost preferred the latter, though wished for the former just to live it. The ‘cavalry’ robbed you of both and have become leeches to you as they put you beneath them. They are no saviors, only pretending to be. And their praise is marked by the lack of detailed knowledge that their supporters and redeemers have. They rely on bad salesmanship to pitch bullshit and spread it around and push it down the throats of others like it was their verbal cock.

Was that too crude and harsh? Did I shred your concept apart, urwrong? I think I did and I think it wasn’t done crudely or harshly enough.

a hero for out times…

we humans… we have to look for hero’s…

For the children of the sea, it was Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Odysseus…

For the children of the seven hills, Romulus and Caecus and Scipio

For the children of the cross, Jesus and Paul and Augustine

but who are your hero’s?

We have many different types of hero’s…

of the word and of the sword and of the spirit…

our cities have Monuments listing their great deeds…

we have holidays in remembrance

but who are the true hero’s?

today millions go see CGI hero’s…

and we have a self proclaimed orange hero

from his empty tower he preaches to the blind

and what is his sermon?

he preaches devotion to dead presidents…

but who should our hero’s be?

but really, what are hero’s for?

they exists as examples for us all…

they exists as an path for us to follow…

they exists as possibilities for us to emulate…

Hero’s… rare these days…

for they get shot on balcony’s in Memphis

and in Dealey plaza on a Friday…

and walking toward prayers on a day in January…

do hero’s only have value being dead?

but is that really the best way to remember a hero?

as a martyr to the cause?

look around you, right now, today…

and who would you call a hero?

maybe that is what we are missing today?

examples for us to follow…

someone devoted to a higher ideal

even to the point of death…

so, where are our hero’s today?

rise, show yourself, become who you are…

guide us, lead us, show us the way…

so we can do, what we always do to hero’s…

betray you undo death…

and I promise you, your monument shall rise high…

and we will devote days to your memory…

who are your hero’s?

the one you shall betray…

Kropotkin

if you think about it… physics and science is about motion…
you have the motion of the stars and the motion of man and
the motion of the atom…Einstein’s theory of relativity is
simply a theory of motion… and Newton? it too is about motion…
as is all branches of science… science is about how things move…

Philosophy is about values… values don’t have motion…
values are about justice and truth and freedom and love…

which values are the values we should be living by?
that is not a question of motion…

that is why you can’t use science techniques in philosophy…
science tells us how things move…

science tells us that if we move in space, this will happen…
but philosophy tells us why, what is the value of moving in space…
why does it matter that we go into space, what is the value of that?

when science rises up and tells us why we move in space
and when philosophy rises up and tells us how we move in space…
then we have combined the two… science and philosophy become one…

I am interested in the values of life, not in the motion of life…
and thus, I study philosophy but one day, the two, science and philosophy
shall become one…

Kropotkin

But we do face our fates looking them dead in the eyes and heads held high, for what its worth. Looking life and death both square in the eye and never flinching. We may get shot up; we may get made to look like criminals and told that appearances are damning, damned if you do AND if you don’t, called hypocritic, lied about; have our lives torn apart… But we have our courage, our confidence, our unwavering resolve and determination. We have what fuels all of eternity. Take away everything we are and everything we love, rip it to shreds in front of us, break us… and it will always be the worst mistake you ever make. And when it comes down to our ungrateful protected ones as they turn against us and judge us and shed their respect and begin to claim they see what the world is like and dig into us the same as others not even knowing the fight we fought… It further burns the tragedy in deep beyond removal and we overcome even that. As far as I know, no one gets out of life alive and either you stand for something or you’ll fall for anything and everything.

After a while, the heroes just fight for themselves and the other heroes and eventually others they feel like fighting for, for love; because they are warriors.

I expect my enemies to cut corners, to try to make that stick and last based on so much shit that would work if they didn’t try to Tim the Toolman rig it all.

At the point of knowing I’m not able to dissuade them through violence or other means, I store my revenge for other days, other lives. I turn my back on it all. That is what a Hero does without tears, without pity or sympathy, but just a simple decision. That’s what all of a Hero’s battles buys them. A seeming coldness beyond breaking because they’ve already broken too many times along the way if they’d actually been fighting.

You can look around you at all the stories of heroes, but you only see the abridged stories, the happily ever afters. You don’t see the in betweens, you don’t see them all the time. You base in two hours the sum of an entire person, when their entire life might be a lie, pandering to an audience they might not know is there and can not reach except in abstract thought at best if they do. They don’t show Aragorn popping a squat in a field and shitting while trying to not piss on his feet. They don’t show the Heroes’ insecurities behind the scenes when they’re out of the public eye and all alone.

If they did, you would think them depraved, you would think less of them, for them made into mortal men and women that you can touch and relate to.

the new science came about when man discovered this idea of motion…
the new science was formulated from ideas developed by men like
Copernicus and Kepler and Galileo and all of their ideas are based
on the idea of motion…this moved and that moved and the entire
universe moved…and along came philosophers like Descartes and
Spinoza and Leibniz and Hobbes and Locke and all of them made
motion the basis for their philosophy…if the universe moves such,
then man must act this way…at no point were values such
as justice or truth or love involved…

the idea of philosophy is the love of wisdom…
the pursuit of wisdom…

is wisdom found in the motion of things?

now motion can tell us where we fit into the universe…
our sun lies here within this galaxy and here within the
arm of the galaxy and this location within that spiral arm
and that we exist on the third planet from the sun…
the bright blue planet…

but how does having our location give us wisdom?
how does motion give us wisdom and understanding?

this has been the failing of philosophy…
the thinking that the understanding of our location as giving us wisdom…

if I tell you where I am sitting in my house… at the kitchen table,
near the sliding glass doors leading outside… 7 feet from the fridge
in one direction and 15 feet from the TV in the other direction…
does the knowledge of my location make you or me, any wiser?

and if tell you when I move to the bedroom, motion, does that give you any
more wisdom? no…the understanding of motion or location does not
give us any more philosophy, love or pursuit of philosophy…wisdom…

so we must regroup philosophy around another principle…
and it seems to me, that needs to be an understanding of values…

but perhaps, even that is short sided and too narrow…

under what principle shall we begin to understand philosophy?

Kropotkin

if as I have suggest that fields of study such as history, economics,
sociology, philosophy are simply studies of the various values
of human beings… for example, history is a study of what values
are important in that particular time period… if we read about a society
going to war a lot, that value was important to that society…
in other words, history reveals who we were at that time…
economics reveals another aspect of the human nature…
sociology reveals another aspect of the human animal…

but what about such studies as biology and astronomy…
they don’t seem to be human centric but they reveal
how we exist in relation to these area’s of study…
animals biology is this… and we know from prior
study that human biology is this and we can compare
and contrast our differences… also we can see
how we stand in relation to animals in regards to biology…

and in astronomy, we can see our relationship to the universe…
the sun is 93 million of miles from earth… from us…
and we exist in the milky way galaxy… once again giving
reference to where human beings exist…

our fields of study are simply studies of the relationship
of that field of study to human beings…

we still haven’t escape from our need to study and understand
who we are and where we are and where we need to be…

we shall remain a small and insignificant species until we remove
our human centric vision of the universe…

the universe doesn’t revolve around us, we revolve around the universe and are
a part of the universe…we are a small part of the universe…
we need to understand our small and insignificant role in the universe but
also to understand it is small and insignificant …

Kropotkin

Man is thus…

the pronouncement of a person…

Man is violent or man is greed or man is hateful or lustful

we have heard this…

from preachers and politicians and on the nightly news…

the human creature is defined as one thing, be it hate or greed or whatever

the failure of the pronouncement lies in its narrowness

the human creature is greed and lust and hate and love

and all those other values we believe in…

but that too short sided

we human beings are so much more…

yes, we are greed and lust and hate and love

we are all the values you can list…

but we reach so much more then just a list…

we underestimate all the values we encompass

within each of us lies the possibilities of human expression…

each of us feels hate and love and fear and lust and anger

and on any given day we might show those emotions…

or we might show them all in one day or an hour…

the range of human possibilities lies within each of us…

each of us can become another possibility

each of us could be a killer or lover, a scholar, a mechanic, an actor or a teacher…

all we have to do is make a choice…

because all of those choices is possible for us

whatever lies within the human realm is possible for each of us…

we could be creators of sonnets and plays and symphonies and cities

or we could be destroyers of life and liberty and happiness…

all that is possible and more…

we just have to embrace what is possible within each of us…

and everything human is possible…

we just have to choose…

life, death, creation, destruction, hope and despair…

all is possible once you have make your choice…

and decide which human possibility you are today…

Kropotkin