a new understanding of today, time and space.

Philosophy: love of wisdom…

Love is pursued so love of wisdom means we pursue wisdom…
we find wisdom within knowledge, within experience, within facts…
with these things, knowledge, experience, facts, we are attempting to
discover or interpret this knowledge into wisdom…

all humans die… this is wisdom gained from knowledge, experience, facts…
but what does it mean to face death as a human? for example, I don’t believe
in an afterlife… I think when you die, its just like falling asleep but there are no dreams,
just the silence of being dead with no sensory input going into the body, so the
body becomes unaware and silent…but what wisdom do I gain with this knowledge?

I gain the wisdom not to fear death… it will happen regardless of what I think about
it…when I was much younger, I had an crisis of the soul… somewhere in my twenties,
I became aware of death, not as a abstract theory that the young have, but as a real
question of human existence…I was haunted by the thought I was going to die…
one might call it a spiritual crisis…this crisis took a long time to resolve itself…
but the wisdom I gained from this crisis has been crucial to my understanding of
the world… I gained wisdom from knowledge, experience, facts…I gave up the
traditional beliefs in the metaphysics, god… heaven… hell…angels…the
resurrection and became an atheist many years after my initial crisis but that
crisis helped shape who I am and what I believe about the world… I gained
wisdom… I followed the path of philosophy (even though I didn’t know it at the time)
going from experience to wisdom…

now, in terms of Nietzsche, I overcame, I reevaluated the values of the society
with its focus on spiritual matters…

but what about a believer, a true believer…
a true believer believes they already have the truth,
that they already have wisdom…now this truth might
be religious in nature but it may also be political in nature…

there is a god thinks the religious believer…
there is no greater political system then democracy…
there is no greater economic system then capitalism…

these beliefs are core beliefs that constitute part of a belief system…

so for one who believes that they already hold the truth, that they
already holds wisdom… what do they do with new, incoming knowledge,
new experiences or new facts…they already believe they hold the truth,
they hold wisdom already… what they do with these new facts or new knowledge
is to use these to confirm their core belief system…

so stated in another way, they used facts or knowledge to confirm
already held biases, ism’s, ideologies or paradigms…
god exists… so the way the solar system circles and is a
very rational system is proof of god’s existence…
evidence is used to bolster one’s already held biases and ism’s…

ok, so the search for wisdom doesn’t exist for the true believer because
they already believe they have true knowledge, true wisdom, the truth…

the value of facts and evidence for the true believer is to find support for
their particular ism, bias, ideology…

the so called war between science and faith is really not that science can’t deal
with faith, but that faith can’t deal with science… because science can
show us facts, evidence, experiences that contradicts the “wisdom” of the
true believer…if the earth is 13 billion years old, it contradicts the
“knowledge” of the believer and so to maintain their beliefs, the believer
attacks science and its facts and evidence and experiences…
this is the reason for the war against science… the attack on science
in regards to global warming and evolution and physics is because
faith cannot deal with new facts or evidence that might contradict
faith… this is just as true with the true believer of any ism or ideology,
or paradigm be it religious or be it political or be it social…
this is why those of the true believers of capitalism attacks with such vigor
those who argue against capitalism… because the faith of capitalism
is no different then the faith in god and with the same amount of evidence for
either belief system…

the value of facts, knowledge, experiences for the true believer is to
maintain and support of the belief system… but that is not a search
for wisdom… it is not philosophy… it is religion and nothing more then
religion to use wisdom to confirm one’s bias, ism, ideologies…

Kropotkin

I have at some length discuss the fact that we humans are
problem solving creatures… if you look at history, you see that
we have created our institutions like monarchy and armies and
ideologies in response to some problem or another…

everything you see is a response to a problem, be it medicine to
philosophy to radio to computers to roads and schools and books
and glasses to clothes to democracy to communism to swimming pools…

everything is a response to a problem…so we have problems and we seek solutions
to those problems…but, but what about those people who I described in my last
post… those who by faith believe they have the answers to the questions of life…

we know those people are only interested in facts and experiences and knowledge
by how it confirms their biases and ism’s and ideologies… they don’t see solutions
to problems because they believe the object of their faith already gives them a solution…

an example is when faced with a problem, people will often say, Trust in god…
as an solution to a problem…these people of faith don’t want to react or create
solutions to problems because they believe, have faith, in a god that will solve
the problem for them… why search for solutions for a problem when god
will take care of it? that is having faith… there are no problems that can’t be
solved by faith… that is according to those with faith…but a problem like
global warming cannot be solve by prayer or faith in the divine…

and that is the problem with those with faith…they believe any problem can be
solved by faith and prayer…if you want to solve the problem of
overpopulation, faith and prayer are not solutions… they in fact, create
even more problems…at some point, we must act to curtail our growing
population or we face extinction… faith or prayer isn’t going to solve that…
you must act, we must act…

if you believe that you already have the solution to a problem,
if you have faith, then you won’t be able to hear a real solution
to the problem… because you are so tied into your bias and your ism…
that you think the bias will somehow solve the problem… it won’t…

if we have complete faith in such ism and ideologies like capitalism
and democracy and communism that you might miss the problems
that each system creates… you will fail to see the massive problems
that is caused by capitalism, problems that threaten the human species…
but you can’t see that in your devotion to this particular ism…

and this is where we stand… there are those that are so committed
to their biases and ism’s and ideologies, that they can’t see the damage
that the ism is causing the earth and the human species…they
aren’t open to the problems and any possible solutions to that problem…

those people are too engaged, to invested in their ism’s to notice
the problems of that ism, of those ideologies…they don’t even see
a problem and won’t be looking for facts, evidence or experiences that
might present a solution to those problems… because they use facts
and experience and knowledge to justify or to confirm their biases instead
of searching for truth… and in that truth, we see evidence of problems,
if we are honest searchers for the truth

the beginning of wisdom is to begin to doubt and doubt ism’s and ideologies
and paradigms… to discover solutions to our problems, we must begin
without any bias that undermines the truth… we can only find the truth if
we don’t believe we already have the truth in faith in ism’s and ideologies…

there is a public danger by those who insist that they hold the truth
ever certain because they are in possession of wisdom that exists
beyond the need for doubt or uncertainty… those who have faith in god
regardless of facts, evidence or experience and those who have faith in
an ideology regardless of facts, evidence or experience… like those who
have faith in the ideology of America… America, love it or leave it…
America, the greatest country on earth… they proclaim this because they
have faith…

“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness”

and yet, those with faith in the American ideology don’t have
faith to challenge their beliefs as proscribed by Nietzsche…

it is not enough to have the courage of your beliefs…
you must have courage enough to challenge your beliefs…

so this problem and solution issue that we face is render in doubt
by those who are believers and cannot see that a problem exist
because to admit that problems exist might challenge their certainty
in their ism or their ideology… and here we stand today…
the faithful in their determination to keep the faith, threaten
not only America but they threaten the human species because they
won’t even face the fact that there are problems and we must find solutions
to those problems…we must have doubt and uncertainty if we are to
find solutions to our many problems…it is doubt and uncertainty
that allows us to explore the possibilities that exist in finding solutions
to the many problems we have… not faith and certainty…

Kropotkin

As I do my research in philosophy, I noticed that
during the 16 and 17 century, there was much philosophical
investigations of science, the science occurred, then years later
the philosophy began… so you have Kepler and Copernicus
and Galileo first, then you have the philosophers…
so for example, you have Copernicus who lived from
1473 to 1543, a full half century before Descartes, who lived
from 1596 to 1650… you have the scientist who laid the groundwork
and then later you have the philosophers to take the facts and knowledge
and make those facts and knowledge into values…
after Descartes, you have a long list of philosophers who wrote like
Spinoza and Leibniz for an example…

now you compare that with science and philosophy in the 20 and 21st century…

you have a completely new understanding of the universe lead by Einstein but
you don’t have the same philosophical out burst by philosophers trying to turn
these new facts and knowledge into values… which is philosophy…

why didn’t the new scientific breakthrough of the 20 century lead to the
same philosophical outburst that occurred after the scientific revolution
of the 16 and 17 century…

it should have but it didn’t… inquiring minds want to know…

Kropotkin

those who promote the philosophy of hate and anger,
those on the right… don’t have a positive philosophy to offer…
those on the right, disparage such values as toleration and acceptance and
equality…what values they promote is never known because these
philosophers of hate don’t have any values to promote…they just have values
to hate, no values to offer…

the left has values to offer, positive values like tolerance and acceptance
and equality and we can use these values to better improve society and the
individuals within that society…the modern world is based on these
values of tolerance and acceptance and equality, these liberals values
are the values of the modern society…

and they work for modern society… the idea behind tolerance
is basically, we tolerate whatever idea’s you have and whatever you want to be…
that idea is you are free to work out who you are without interference from
society… and you can become who you are in a wide variety of ways, sexually,
intellectually, emotionally…and you then return to society the knowledge of
those experiences you have learned…it is from experience that we learn…
and if we limit those experiences to set ism’s and ideologies, such as limit
sexuality to man and a women with the goal being procreation, we limit our
experiences so much we don’t learn anything new… the experiences of
homosexuality increases the knowledge we have of sexuality…

you can hear someone describe the color red but until you experience
the color red in some fashion, you will never be able to understand what
red means… you can have someone tell you what a concussion is, but
until you experienced a concussion is, you have no real understanding of
a concussion… which I have had, I was unable to function for a month…
or someone explain baseball in exact detail to you but until you try to hit
a round ball with a round bat, you don’t really know what hitting a baseball is…

so the experiences that we allow people to go through by the acts of toleration
and acceptance increases people experiences and that benefits society…

there is no path to becoming who you are without some toleration and
acceptance from the very least your family and from society…

the path to justice also lies here as justice is having people become who they are
and those who attempt to stop people from becoming who they are, are committing
acts of injustice…

we must be free to, not only in theory, but in practice, experience to
engage in acts that explore the human potential even if those acts
are proclaimed… immoral and forbidden by god… the only way we human
can begin to understand what we are and what we can become is by tolerating
and accepting actions that are deemed immoral… animals are limited
by their programming to only act in certain ways… we humans have
much more open programming and that allows us to grow and engage in
behavior and actions that go beyond our programming, our instincts,
and we can only understand who we are and who are we becoming
when we engage in new and quite often unsettling actions and behaviors…

we can only grow when we have the toleration and acceptance of society
that allows us to engage in actions and behaviors…

that is a clear defense of liberalism and it’s engaging in toleration
and acceptance and equality…which allows us to explore our
possibilities and potential…

can those who oppose equality and toleration and acceptance create
a philosophy that promotes their values into an idea of a society?

I doubt it… for the opponents of toleration and acceptance and equality
can only oppose, they cannot create positive values that are useful within
a society… they are the party of no… and have nothing to offer anybody…

Kropotkin

I am eating breakfast, my mass produced breakfast…
I am typing on this computer, this mass produced computer…
on my mass produced kitchen table and chairs…
listening to music on my mass produced Iphone…
I can move over to my mass produced couch
to watch mass produced TV shows…
later the wife and I will drive to the coast
in our mass produced car on mass produced roads…
we will stop at a burger place and
eat mass produced burgers…

tomorrow I will go to work…
as a checker in a grocery store…
I will be one checker in a row of checkers
all of us checking on mass produced scales
using our mass produced bar codes to scan
thousands of mass produced items…

on Thursday, I will get a paycheck
for I am one of over 200,000 people working in this company
and we all want our mass produced paychecks to deposit
in our mass produced banks to pay for our mass produced lives…

what is authentic…
when everything we do and everything we eat
and everything we see is mass produced

my education was part of a mass production line…
my government is part of a mass production line…
my church is part of a mass production line…
my job is part of a mass production line…
my entertainment is a mass production line…

so how am I supposed to be real
and authentic and alive…
when everything in my life is
mass produced…

I am a mass produced person in a mass produced life…

Kropotkin

so yesterday, I spoke of having a mass produced life within
a mass produced world…

and later that day, the wife and I went to a museum in San Francisco,
the Legion of Honor… they had a Degas exhibit she wanted to see…

so, we drove in our mass produced car with a whole lot of other people
to SF and found our way into the museum…

we saw art… not mass produced art or but real one of a kind art…
that wasn’t mass produced or artificial in any way…

it was paintings and statues most glories…

men and women who toiled, sometimes for years to
paint something…create something… build something…
something that wasn’t mass produced and it was the reason we have art…
the need to express something and do it once and then leave it to history to judge…

it was refreshing because it a single human expressing their feelings and thoughts
in a non-modern way… not sometimes the medium is the message and if we see
the same message in the same medium, then we are, in part and parcel, being programmed…

the medium of mass production where we have the same mass produced mediums
of TV and Radio and Movies and advertising and digital… this whether it is meant
or not, to make us conform to a certain message, the conservative has heard that
message… everyone must be the same… wearing the same jeans, smelling the same,
having the same haircut… our own personal message is being programed into us,
by the mediums we listen to and we see and taste… the conformity of
McDonalds is that we are eating a mass produced, same taste, same texture,
hamburger… that is a message sent and received…

art is an attempt to bring us past mass produced things…
art is an attempt to show us something different then our mass produced lives…
art says, there is more to live then a mass produced live, so live it…

so maybe that is the question of our age… how do we live our lives
in a mass produced world without ourselves be caught up in this mass production
world we live in? how do we live non-mass produce lives?
how do we avoid the various mediums telling us the same message everyday,

how do we retain our individuality in a world trying to make us one?

Kropotkin

Everything we do, everything we act upon, every institution
we conceive and every object we create, be it physical or mental,
is a response to a problem… how do we keep food and edibles cold
so they don’t spoil… the fridge… how do we travel to the moon… spaceships
how do we explore the world… science… how do we teach what is and what isn’t… schools…
and how do we pass alone important information about what values we hold… schools…
every thing we see is an answer to a problem…

but and this is important to note… we don’t have to answer every problem…
the history of philosophy is littered with problems that vexed the minds of men…
but we don’t… or I should more correctly state, I don’t consider them to be OUR
problem of our time… for example, the problem of our knowledge in the external world…
that problem vexed philosophers for centuries and Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz
and Hobbes and Locke all worked on this solution…the mind/body problem left to
us by Descartes also was worked on and is still a problem this day…

and yet, personally I don’t consider them “MY PROBLEMS”…
I am working on other issues and so we don’t have to work on other people’s
problem… we can pick and choose what issue of modern life we choose to
work on… one of the questions I do work on is this… what is the relationship
between the individual and the society… the individual and government…
another problem I work on is what does it mean to be an individual…
and what are our possibilities as individual human beings… what is possible
for human beings to understand or to comprehend or to become…
what does it mean to be human? another question of mine is one of perception and
perspective… we humans have different perceptions and perspectives of time, space,
each other, reality, thought…how does our perspective of reality and the relationship
of things, change who we are and what we want to become…this idea of being and
becoming is important… who we are and who do we want to become…
but the important thing to note is this, my questions aren’t necessarily your questions…
my search for what is important to me is part and parcel of who I am… my questions
tell you who I am as surely as if I told you my life story…

I am on the outside looking in as I have been my entire life… outside looking in…
and that reveals my viewpoint of my questions… I stand here and ask these questions…
whereas you might stand there and by standing there, you get different questions and
different answers…our viewpoint decides which questions we ask…
because I am liberal means I ask different questions then a conservative because
my viewpoint is different… where I ask the question determines what questions get
asked…I am male and that changes what questions I ask… I am white and that
changes what questions I ask… I am 5’8 and that changes the questions I ask…
I have a severe hearing loss and that changes the questions I ask…
it is like using radar to spot objects… we use questions to understand locations…
if we use radar in every direction, we can then understand what is our current location…
asking questions does the same thing…we can tell our location for our questions…

so what questions are you asking?

Kropotkin

Socrates big claim to fame is simple, he brought philosophy down to earth…
what we would call science, was philosophy before Socrates… what is the
earth made of and how do we account for change in the universe…
that was philosophy before Socrates…Natural philosophy is what it would
be called for almost 2000 years… we call it science…

Socrates wasn’t about what happened in space or what things were made of…
he was concerned with MAN and how to live our lives… Socrates spends
a great deal of talking about the soul and how to improve the soul and
by doing so, we improve MAN…

after 2000 years, we must renew Socrates vision…
and return philosophy to MAN… we see how philosophy is about
the deconstruction of sentences and language and the logic of things
and how philosopher tried to give human’s meaning with the connection
of the new science and philosophy… Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz
mission of taking the new science of motion and measurement and
to deduce “philosophy” from the new science…

We must recover philosophy from the new science and those like
Descartes and Spinoza who have raised philosophy into the heavens…
and return philosophy to the realm of man… how are we to live…
what is important for us to understand about life… is death really
the source of our angst? is the soul really as important as Socrates claim
it was and if so, should we be concern with improving our souls as Socrates
thought we should be…should human beings be concern about improving ourselves
or should we be concern with the gathering of knowledge led by science…

important questions indeed…

Kropotkin

the math problem… 1 + 1 = 2

is a mathematical certainty…it is true regardless of what else happens
in the world… but is it?

you have one, as I am eating pizza right now I shall use pizza,
one pizza…1 and you have another Pizza, 1…
and you have 2 pizza’s… but and this is important…
you have 1…1…2…

you haven’t actually connected 1…1…2…

you have a plus sign + and you have a equal sign… =
there are artificial signs that connect 1…1…to two…,2…
can you connect 1…1…2… without these artificial signs of + or =…

the act of connecting 1…1…into 2 exists in artificially made way…

for without that plus sign or that equal sign, you cannot connect 1…1…into 2…

the three signs…1…1…2 exist separately and independently of each other until
connected by the plus sign and an equal sign…that connection does not happen in nature,
it can only exists within the mind… a child has to be taught about the plus sign and the
equal sign…but the 1… that a child can see… one pizza, one pencil, one TV… and the child
can see the other object, one pizza, one pencil, one TV…but there are not two unless and until
the child can supply within the mind, the plus and the equal sign…this means
that experience teaches us mathematical concepts… they are not innate…because
we don’t automatically supply the plus sign or the equal sign… we must be taught
the plus sign and the equal sign…what we teach in teaching math for instance is not
the 1…1…2 but the signs + and = and -… we teach the means of connection between
1…1…2…we teach how we connect three separate signs or symbols with
made up or created means… +…=…-

in math we teach connections, not numbers…how these numbers connect to
create new numbers…without connection, there is not math…

Kropotkin

so let us return to this idea that math is not about numbers but
how we connect those numbers…

let us take a triangle… one might claim that the idea of
a triangle is innate… but we can come up with the idea of
a triangle without resorting to some innateness in us…

you have line | and you have another line _______

you can connect the two lines |_______

and then you can connect the up and down line with the bottom of the line
to make a triangle…

I am unable to do so with my keyboard but create a triangle in your head…

now that triangle in your head… have you seen it in nature?
in other words, have you seen a triangle on a beach or in the forest?
I doubt it… a triangle doesn’t exists in nature… we have created
it… now about that idea of a triangle is the sum of angles… some
mix that equals, I think its 180 degrees …anyway… the idea that a triangle must
equal 180 degrees is about a connection between the lines, not the math itself…

a triangle is a mix of numbers but we have made the connection, the mix ourselves
and so a triangle is not innate, but created by experience and the connection of
numbers that must be taught… is not innate…

as I must go to work now, I shall leave this to later…

Kropotkin

so, under a quite of bit of time pressure yesterday, I wrote about
mathematical idea’s… you take 1 add 1 equals 2…

“add” and “equal” what kind of word is “add”? what does it mean?

and “equal” what does that mean? two distinct and separate symbols
are equal? this idea of equality is a hard one to understand…
equal in what way? you can add up anything… you have one dog and one
cat and you have two animals but how does a dog and a cat become equal?
by understanding and including the word animal… you have a dog, animal,
you have a cat, animal… but when you say, one dog plus one cat equals…
the dog and cat being animals is unsaid, implied… until you reach the equal
sign… they, dog and cat, are equally animals… add one table and one chair…
you get two pieces of furniture…you have to know ahead of the actual working
out the equality between the symbols, what the symbols are… you have to know
that a table and a chair are furniture or the equality aspect won’t make sense…

a Tisch plus a stuhl equals mobelstuck… is this math? only if you speak German…

the key word here is mobelstruck… furniture…now you can work out what I said…
a table plus a chair = furniture… but it doesn’t make any sense unless you have the word
furniture…

let us say… an airplane plus an elephant equals a …suddenly it doesn’t really make
sense… you can add it but it has to have something in common…they are really just
two random idea’s that cannot be added because they have nothing in common…

so we see the connection aspect of mathematics… you just can’t add two completely
random items… there has to be some connection between the two items for
there to be math involved…

but what does this have to do with me?

exactly…

Kropotkin

so let us take philosophy: love of wisdom…

and take a word like army…

Two different and separate words…

but what you are looking for is a connection… some point of connection
between the two words…

Army, ummmmmmmmm and philosophy? ummmmmmmmm

what would be a connection between the two?

a philosophy of army? How to organize and prepare and
what is the value of an army…

that is one connection between army and philosophy…

ok, let us try two other words… good… evil…

ok, now we are cooking… it is easy to connect these two words…

good… evil…=…

good + evil =…human being…

good + evil = concepts of behavior…

you can do something with this because they are connected…
unlike airplanes and elephants which is hard to connect…or
1 + 1 = 2… which is easy to connect because you have 1 item
and 1 item and add them and they become 2 items…

chair plus table = furniture…this last word is the connector
of the two, chair and table…equal…

Kropotkin

So, last seen we have 1…1…2

  • =…

Now, we have notice that we can’t add 1 table + one Airplane = because
one table and one airplane aren’t equal… we can only add equal things…
in other words we can only add things that are alike or fall into a certain set…
we can add pieces of furniture because they are alike in some fashion…
and we can add people because they belong to a set… but what about items…
that aren’t alike… we can’t add or do any math with items that aren’t alike
or fall into a certain set… this call into question the idea that math is
the highest value thing in the land because math only works on like items or
certain items that fall within a set… so math is in fact, very limited in what it can do…
it can only handle like items or items that fall within a certain set…
anything outside of that, math is useless…1 apple + 1 table =… you can’t do that…
you must equality between the items otherwise the math doesn’t work…
and if math doesn’t work… where does that leave the world? because the world
is math based…

Kropotkin

the focus in mathematics has always been the numbers, but the numbers
change, 1…1…2 can be written with plenty of different numbers…

so the real thing to study is not the numbers but the + = - -:- and all the other
connecting signs we use…for example equal =… this is a very important aspect
of mathematics… equal, this number and this number equals this number…
this commonality that numbers must have to be equal…
you must have numbers that are equal or have something in common to be able
to add, subtract, divide or multiply… you cannot add one airplane and one elephant
without creating a new class for the equal sign… =… what would equal an airplane
and a elephant? what class or things in common can you say about an airplane and a
elephant? for mathematic to work, things must be alike and/or part of a set…
like furniture…

En Tisch + Ein Stule = 2 pieces of Mobelstuck…

a table + a chair = 2 pieces of furniture…

for mathematics to work, it demands likeness, commonality, a set, similar things…

if we take mathematics as being the pole star of what we should strive for…
then for life to work, it demands likeness, commonality, a set, similar things…

we can add similar things like love and honor and hope and charity because they
all represent values… a commonality or a set…

we can strive to love and hope and charity because they are all positive values,
they are values that are similar…those values are values that lead to our better
angels… we have over 2000 years of human beings proclaiming that these values
of love and hope and charity are higher values, values that lead us to happiness…

and we move to avoid similar values of hate, anger, greed…
similar values of negative values… these values have been preached against
since humans could preach… these values are lower values that lead us to
unhappiness… you cannot add up dissimilar values… for example…
you cannot have love + hate =… because what would love and hate equal?

you must have an equality of values for this to work…
equal values are values like love, charity, hope, honesty…

you can add equal negative values like anger and hate and greed…
because they equal something… anger + hate = conservative

negative values go down to instinctive values… we instinctually have
anger and hate and greed just like animals…for they are the base values
of human existence…

but higher values like love and hope and charity are higher because
they go away from an instinctual understanding of the world…

you might I am so wrong, that I am wrong everyday of the week and twice
on Sundays… and I say, so what…

if as Nietzsche suggest that life is an experiment, then we need new
hypothesis all the time… it doesn’t even matter if I am right or wrong,
if it leads us to new understanding of the world and our place in the world…

what matters is the new understanding of the world, not the hypothesis that
got us the new understanding…

so…

Kropotkin

so in talking to my mom yesterday, she and my sisters have been
interested in those DNA test… my younger sister bought my mom a kit
and my mom sent it out and just received her results…

my mom was 98% northern Europe… 50% from England, Ireland, welsh and
Scotland… 40% was from France/ Germany…what did turn out surprising
was there was native American, less then 1% and two separate African sources…
one was from Western Africa and one was from Sub-Sahara, so we have two separate
African sources… and there was a .1% of east Asian… don’t know where they came from…
and one more very surprising item… 1% of Ashkenazi Jews… WTF…
we have no fracking idea where that came from…now this test besides it
interest value, does have another value… it places us into the world we live in…
we now see where we are from… this has value to us because it tell us who we are…
I am part African… and part Jew and part Swedish and part dutch and part Irish
and part English… I cannot classify myself as solely one thing or another…
I am part of the world as it exists within me, as part of me… I cannot express hated
of jews or Africans or Swedish because I am them… and this is the value of
understanding who we are…and understanding where we came from…

those who hate Jews and blacks and Catholics simply don’t understand that
when they hate, they hate themselves because they are part Jew, blacks,
Catholics…the world doesn’t just exist out there, it exists within us,
as part of us… as part of who we are…we are Jew and we are black
and we are Swede and we are east Asian… all you have to do is
understand that we are part of the world and the world is part of us…

this understanding of who we are is important because it places us within the
world… and we better understand what it means to be human…
we have place ourselves in the world and we are better for it…

Kropotkin

we have a problem…
and that problem is simple…
we have a separation between philosophy and
how we live…
in other words… we have separated our philosophy from
how we live…

when I was an anarchist and I was an anarchist for a decade…
I didn’t just have a anarchist philosophy and I lived a normal
life within society… I lived an anarchist life… I didn’t have a car,
I didn’t file taxes, I didn’t have a bank account… I didn’t even have
a home or an apartment… I was truly off the grid… I lived my
anarchist philosophy…I lived my political philosophy…

but, but who among us lives their philosophy…
you have a philosophy and then you have your life…
the two are separate and distinct…
one doesn’t live their philosophy… they have their philosophy
and they have their life… may the two never meet…

but who among you have the courage of your beliefs to actually
live your philosophy!

who among you have the strength to become your philosophy…
to live your life according to your philosophy…
who is prepared to have your philosophy become a way of life,
and not just a separate and distinct belief system that exist
outside of yourself and is just a series of beliefs not to be lived,
but to be studied…

it is not enough to have a philosophy but to live that philosophy…
to live your life according to your philosophical beliefs…
just as I lived my anarchist political beliefs, one must live
their philosophical beliefs or it is just a theoretical exercise
that means nothing because it doesn’t have real life experience behind
it…philosophy must be lived and not just be an theoretical
exercise… philosophy is a way of life, not just a theoretical, academic
study of beliefs that have no baring on one’s life…
you can’t just study philosophy and then live
your life as if that philosophy is academic…

either you live that philosophical life or it is not much
more then mental masturbation…

what shall it be?

Kropotkin

what does my understanding of 1…1…2 tell us?

it shows that we don’t have any innate idea’s… that what we
learn, we learn from experience… our idea of god and our idea
of good and evil and philosophy is all learned from experience…

this raises an interesting point… if the knowledge we have is innate,
then it really doesn’t matter what kind of experiences we have…
we don’t learn from them, our idea’s our innate and thus not affected
by experiences… but if we do learn from experiences as I suggest,
then it would make sense to think about what kind of experiences we should
use to teach our children…and our selves…I read one time,
that by the time a child reaches 18, he/she has seen over 10,000 violent deaths,
either on the TV or in movies…and we wonder why the young think life is so cheap…
if experiences frame who we are, then we should be more aware of the experiences
in our life and in the life of our children…this learning from experiences last
our entire life…I am old and I am still learning from experiences…

and that is the point of experience… to learn from… to understand who we are
and where we are going… or said another way, going from become to becoming…

the lessons of experiences cannot be underestimated or ignored…

every experience must be looked at with an eye toward this one fact…
what can I learn from this experience… every experience can teach
us something, even if it is a lesson that we have forgotten from the past…

our experience with the understanding of 1 + 1 = 2 shows us even
that which has been in our lives the entire time, can still teach us something…
if we look at it with new eyes and as an example that every single
experience can teach us something, even something so basic as 1 + 1 = 2…

if we look at it from a new standpoint, not the numbers but the signs
of the + plus sign… and the = equal sign…

it is more then a reevaluation of values… but a reevaluation of experiences…
and a reevaluation of certainties from the past… 1 + 1 = 2 is a certainty
but now, what is it? a new understanding of mathematics…

what experiences are truly valuable when given a new look…

I believe we vastly underestimate the strength and value of love in our lives…
and we overestimate the power and efficiency of violence and hate…

renew the search into your life and see what had more power to change your life…
love or hate/violence… I would say that love has change your life far more then
violence or hate… rethink your experiences and come to understand what is really
important in your life…

we are made by the experiences in our life…at least come to an understanding
of those experiences and what they mean…revisit how you came to be today
and rethink what those experiences that made you who you are and
how they made you into you…

1…1…2 is only true if we supply the plus sign and the equal sign…
so supply the signs of your life… + … =…

Kropotkin

What is the point of philosophy if we look at it academically…

Nietzsche believe in the “Ubermensh” and Plato believed in “eternal forms”
and Descartes believed in X and Hegel believed in Z…
this is no different then learning that the Magna Carta was signed in 1215…
it is just a fact and nothing more… part of the failure of philosophy is thinking
that philosophy is just knowing that Nietzsche believed in the “Ubermensh”
or that Plato believed in “eternal forms”… so what… what is the point of knowing
that? what is the value of knowing what Nietzsche believed or what is the point of
knowing what Plato believed…the value of knowing about Nietzsche’s Ubermensh is
what you do with that information… the value is how does the knowledge of
the ubermensh changes or affect you or changes how you view the world…

it is no longer enough to view philosophy academically, we must engage
philosophy personally, emotionally, with a view of how knowledge changes us…
philosophy: love of wisdom… love…love isn’t impartial and love isn’t passive
love isn’t academic…love is engaging with all your heart and soul and passion
into the object of your love… love is not a game for the meek or the passive…
love demands, demands we engage on all levels of our understanding…
intellectually, emotionally, physically and so is the same for philosophy…

knowledge, facts are in fact, boring… the sun is 93 million miles from earth…
a fact that has been known for a rather long time and that fact is boring…
but if we engage in finding that fact with passion… we change how we understand
that fact…we are 93 million miles from the sun and that puts us into the
goldilocks area of where water can maintain itself, not to hot, not to cold…
we exist because we are the right distance from the sun… 93 million miles…
that boring fact becomes something interesting now because it is one of the
reasons we exist… we can approach this fact with passion because we
exist because of this fact…we can engage in philosophy with the same
understanding that we function, in part, using philosophical idea’s and
understanding of the world…science is facts and philosophy is about values…
and we live in a value based world… we inquire into what
values are values we should have and what values are values we should share
with those who come after us… this is philosophy…inquiry into values,
pursuit of values…we quite often reverse the order of our understanding…
we act and then we try to understand the values of that action…
we should first work on our values, what value is right and then act…
for example, we have stated for decades with different presidents of different
parties that we believe in democracy, the shared valued that gives the power
to the people and we have acted upon that value… we understood that value
and then we acted upon that value…understanding comes first then actions…

and this applies to philosophy… we must understand first and then act…
so what understanding first you have that you act upon later?

this is the value of philosophy… understanding before action
but this understanding is done with passion and emotion, so the action
doesn’t need to be done with passion and emotion…

philosophy must engage us, not just on a intellectual level,
but on an emotional, passionate level… what philosophy engages
you on a emotional, passionate level?

Kropotkin

what is the philosophic life?

Kropotkin

Charlottesville Va… right now has a great deal of violence going on…

let us think about this in a philosophic context…

How would you or how do you think about Charlottesville in a philosophical context?

Kropotkin