a new understanding of today, time and space.

I spent most of yesterday going over this thread and rereading
my posts in it and I find in this thread, I have covered most of
traditional philosophy…I hope to continue this…

there are two schools of thought… one says we have innate idea’s,
the other says we get all knowledge from the senses. Plato believes in
innate idea’s with his eternal forms and Hobbes and Locke and Hume believe
in empiricism which is we gain knowledge from our senses…

one idea is Tabula rasa… the mind is a blank slate without rules for processing data,
and that date is added and rules for processing are formed solely by sensory experiences…

so far so good, nothing new here…we react to events from the sensory knowledge
we have gained… this sensory knowledge can be from any source that is within
our sensory perception, seeing, hearing, taste, smell, touch… we learn from those
sensory experiences…but what if we have a feedback loop of sorts…

we have our sensory perceptions we have built up over the years and through
them we have some sense of the world… this theory is a inside out looking at
the universe…we gain knowledge from our senses and then we look at the world…
but what if we react to events outside of ourselves which creates the sensory
perception’s… for example, it is the events outside of us that creates the
sensory perception’s…for example, I walk into a table… by walking into the
table I learn that the table is hard and will hurt if I walk into it… the event of
walking into the table “teaches” me a sensory perception…sensory perception is
active, not passive… watch a young child, maybe one or two years old…
they will grab everything… that is how they “understand” outside events,
by experiencing them… the event of grabbing something, say a ball for example,
is a learning experience… they learn about round or color or textures when grabbing
a ball, grabbing a tennis ball is a different event then grabbing a baseball and is a different
event then grabbing a golf ball, the experience itself will become new sensory experiences
for the baby…from a child’s standpoint, there is no real difference between
a golf ball and a grape… they can’t tell the difference until either being told
or they experience it for themselves…the physical act of grabbing the golf ball
creates new sensory information… thus it takes two to tangle… you need both
the event AND the sensory knowledge…if there are no outside events, there
is nothing to get sensory knowledge about…there is an interaction going on
between outside events and sensory knowledge…a dance as it were…
one needs the other…as there is not innate understanding of the world,
we gain knowledge of the world through our senses and then we use that
limited sensory knowledge to gain more knowledge of the world through
interactions with events which increases our sensory knowledge which allows
us further understanding of outside events which increases our sensory knowledge
and that dance back and forth between outside events and our senses creates
our knowledge of the universe…a limitation of senses limits our understanding
of events which limits our knowledge of the universe… I can’t hear high pitch
noises like Violins and flutes and certain telephones and some women’s voices…
as I cannot experience those noises, those outside events, I have limited knowledge
about them… to increase my knowledge/understanding of those high pitch noises,
I wear a hearing aid which increases my sense of hearing… I can experience
the event of high pitch noises with my hearing aid but without it, I cannot…
I couldn’t even imagine what high pitch noises sounded like until I wore a hearing aid
because I can’t experienced it without a hearing aid… the event creates
new knowledge, new understanding of the universe… as long as I can experience
it in some fashion through my senses…quite often when checking at the store,
I will vaguely hear something but because I can’t place it because of my hearing,
I don’t know/understand what that noise could be… it might be a phone or a balloon
popping or coins going into the coinstar machine…until I am able to
create some understanding or to say it another way, a connection between
that noise and what is the cause of that noise. I cannot understand or
grasp that noise until I understand the event that created the noise…

it is not enough to sensory experience an event, one must
connect in some fashion with the event to be able to have
knowledge about it…it is about creating a relationship between
the noise and the event that allows me to understand or experience
the event… it is an active process between the event and the sensory
understanding of the event…an event occurs and I must use my senses
to be able to have knowledge about or understand that event…
and my past sensory knowledge aids me in my understanding
of current or even future events…if someone is about to pop
a balloon, I have experience that in the past and so I know what
that will sound like and I can react accordingly…my previous
sensory experiences helps me to understand current events like
a balloon popping or about to be popped…this back and forth
between events and our senses is what helps create
us as human beings because we are, in part, not much more then
the accumulation of prior or past events…those events help create
the person we are today and our senses however limited they are,
help shape who we are by the information we receive from our senses…

Kropotkin

in light of the previous post, we understand such concepts
as justice and equality in terms of our sensory experiences…
I have experience injustice and inequality and so I have experienced it
through my senses… I have also read about injustice and inequality
so, I can compare my experiences of injustice and inequality with others…
this comparison allows me to further understand injustice and inequality…
then I can compare other events of injustice and inequality in terms
of my event and thus I can better understand such concepts…this is
the rational, active understanding of the universe… by understanding
experiences, mine and others, I can gain a better understanding of
the universe…

so we have added comparison to sensory experiences that helps us
to better understand the world we live in…

if I compare events that are considered unjust, I can get a better
understanding of what is injustice…

once again, it is through outside events that we gain an understanding
of our universe… the role of the rational mind is in comparing
those events…but the mind isn’t passive, it is active…
from these events of injustice, I can make a judgment about
the nature of injustice…so some combination of sensory
events and active rational comparison, for example, we can
gain understanding of the universe… there are other tools
with which we can understanding of the universe beyond
comparison, such as logic and math and geometry and science which
also use examples from which we use our senses to gather knowledge
of the universe…

we have a sensory perception such as hearing something and we
can use our tools of comparison or logic or math or science
to gain knowledge of that event…we have a large variety
of tools in which to understand sensory knowledge…
we see the sun rising and setting… what tool would you use
to gather information about the sun rising or setting?

Science would be the best tool as science has created a
well documented and well understood theory of why the
sun seems to rise and set…we have a sensory experience
and we must use our rational thought to best understand
that experience and we must use our rational thought to
find/seek the best tool we need to understand that sensory
experience…

it is as we grow more experience with experiences, we
discover that the number of tools we have to understand those
experiences grow…once again, the dance between events/ experiences
and our sensory tools, sight and so on, continues…

Kropotkin

let us take an example of some event…

we are sitting in a car somewhere and out of the corner of my
eye, I see a moving yellow shadow… now my experiences
might suggest that the moving yellow shadow is a lion…
but and this is important… we might react to the shadow
in a fight or flight reaction… we flee but we don’t know
exactly what we are fleeing from… we react from instinct,
not from any knowledge or experience of that yellow shadow…
we are animals and like all animals, we are instilled with a billion
years of instinct… not rational, not experienced reaction to events…

now many people/philosophers believe we go toward pleasure and avoid
pain… but doesn’t this idea of pleasure and pain come from instinct…
for example, sex and wanting sex is not a rational thought, but an instinctual
reaction…billions of years of nature programed the sexual urge into animals,
of which we are one such branch… pleasure of sex is from instinct and not
any rational thought… we don’t need to think about or have a rational
thought about sex to want sex… we simply desire it… we want that pleasure
even though intellectual it might not be the best idea… pleasure and pain
are instinctual events… the rationalist or philosopher believe we should
be rational about sex and we should engaged in rational thinking about sex…
but sex itself is instinct, that pleasure is instinct and it is only with a great
deal of thought or self control that we control our sexual instinct…

the drive toward pleasure or away from pain is driven by instinct…
we reach out and grab something… it might be a pillow or it might
be a nail, if it is a pillow, we might continue to grab it, pleasure,
but if it is a nail, we instinctually move away from it… rational thought
has nothing to do with this…

this idea of instinct is missing from thinkers such as Hobbes,
Locke, Hume… they take pleasure and pain as rational experiences,
whereas pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences…
the trick we must learn is to turn instinctual experiences into
rational experiences… we must overcome our instincts…
thus turning an instinctual experience into a rational experience…
and this is the call of philosophers since Socrates…without
using the words instincts…this is what they are saying…
pleasure and pain are simply instincts at work and
philosophy and society and the law and religion all
say that we must rationalize our instincts, instead of
reacting instinctually, we must use rational thought
for our behavior instead of instinct and we must
use rational thought in pursuit of pleasure and pain instead
of instinct…this is how we overcome instinct… with
rational thought… we overcome and this is in part what
Nietzsche means when he refers to overcoming…
becoming who you are…

pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences which we must
overcome by rational thought…

Kropotkin

the way we understand the universe is by experience…
and not by innate idea’s…

let us try this:

a spaceship lands and we see an alien being walk out of it…
we can visually see the alien being having two legs… we
have experience with that, so we can understand that,
the alien has two arms, once again we have experience that…
but to understand the other aspects of the alien,
we would have to dissect him/her/it, test the blood of the alien,
see if they have lungs, spleen, heart, liver, we would have to experience
the alien to understand who, what, when, where, how and why about the alien…
what if the alien was zinc based, not copper based, we have no experience with
that, we wouldn’t know how that worked until we experimented with that sort
of thing, until we experienced that zinc in their bodies… the scientific process by
its very nature, forces us to experience nature to understand it…we cannot fully understand
something if which we cannot experience something… we can guess and speculate,
but we cannot know… like death, we can say a great deal about death, but until
we personally experience it, we cannot know it or truly understand it…
we must experience something to know it or to understand it…

recall that we are made of the same stuff that stars are, we can
understand a great deal because we are made of the same stuff as
the universe and this fact alone, gives us some understanding of
the universe, because we have experienced within ourselves or
within matter easily within reach…

so, does this also mean we can know/understand time and space, yes…
because we are part of the universe and time and space exist within
the universe, and time and space exists within us and around us, we
can, by our experience of it, know and understand time and space…

we can know and understand concepts that exist in the universe because
we in some fashion, are part of those concepts because we both exist in
and experience space and matter…

thus we can explain how we know/understand concepts like justice
and math and geometry… in some fashion, they exist in
the universe around us and as we too, exist in the universe around us,
they are as we are, part of the universe…experience explains
how we can know matters that seem to be outside the range of experience…

if we share the same matter, star stuff for example,
because our matter is the same we share something with everything
that is made up of star matter, even if that something is billions of light years away,
we still share the experience of having the same material within our bodies…

we can potentially know/understand everything if we can experience
it on some level…

Kropotkin

In a bar waiting for the World Series to
start.

The value of my discussion of experience and
there not being innate values is this, from this
we can eliminate god as there is no evidence
For god and we remove the possibility of
an innate god…

This can be a starting point for a philosophy.
As we have to begin somewhere…

We only include what we can experience
in regards to some philosophy we have.
We cannot in good conscience include any
metaphysical notions as they exist outside
of experience… must we banish all metaphysical
Notions? As many as we can…

Enlightenment… I finally finished reading the biography of Hobbes and
I’m ready to begin looking into the Enlightenment…

The Enlightenment… the beginning of the modern world… here, we finally
see the where the modern world began… we see our notion of progress and
of government and of the statement… “the of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”
the declaration of Independence is a Enlightenment document…
Written by men who have studied and participated in all facets
of the Enlightenment… Franklin and Jefferson for example…

Our political structure was created with Enlightenment ideals…

and you cannot understand those who followed without some
understanding of Enlightenment idea’s like Marx and Hegel, these are
children of the Enlightenment…

the enlightenment was a struggle against what they saw as the
tyranny of authority… to be free of the figures of authority
was part of their goal… and authority included the church…

this has been called the “Age of Reason” and that meant,
you followed reason instead of authority…

the enlightenment was not an event but was a process…
it was about method, not the goal… and it not only included
its proponents but those who argued against certain, certain
enlightenment ideals and idea’s… The most famous was of course,
Rousseau…who opposed certain aspects of the enlightenment but
was a child of other aspects of enlightenment…Rousseau
basic complaint against the enlightenment was that, to follow the
enlightenment meant you followed artificial and became
artificial… apart from and away from “Nature” or “Natural”

his goal was to turn man back to being part of or be himself, of nature…
which suggest that Rousseau felt that aspects of the enlightenment
turn people away from his natural self… the goal is to be human
and Rousseau felt that aspects of the enlightenment turned, separated
people from their natural or human aspects…

it is not enough to study who is for something, you must study
those who is against something to really understand an age, an
ideal or aspect of who we are… this idea of returning to our
authentic self returns in the 20th century with Existentialism…

I expect to spend the next several months on the Enlightenment
and I hope to better understand who we are by knowing where we have
been…

PS, a late edit, the constitution of the U.S is also an Enlightenment
document… and perhaps this is why we are no longer comfortable
with either documents is because they, as enlightenment documents,
no longer fit in our new age…for who can accept the enlightenment ideals
of say, progress, after the 20th century of World wars and internment camps
and 9/11… the events of the last 100 years may have, MAY HAVE,
made many of the beliefs of the enlightenment very hard to accept in
or believe in…we are facing a new environment and we must create
a belief system that enables us to comprehend this new environment
and be able to have actions in this new environment…

Kropotkin

as I am going to jump the gun here and go to the end
of the enlightenment thinkers which is Kant…

As is well known, is that Kant tried to “save” philosophy
from Hume radical empiricism… Kant himself is an
empiricist, he does believe that we gain information
from experience but that the information gained
from experience is not grounded in experience but
grounded in something else… which he calls
in “a priori” a precondition to, or prior to experience…

for example, he creates categories, which he refers to them,
as “pure” categories because they are Pure, not given in experience,
before experience…one example is the category of Quantity,
in which he says has three parts, unity, plurality, totality…
he says, the category and the three parts are “a priori” a precondition
to or prior to experience…but Kant is WRONG…

in fact, unity and plurality and totality are part of experience…
take unity, one, we can experience one…children experience one
all the time, take one stick… unity…now children may not know
what a stick is and we adults patiently explain what a stick is,
one is a product of experience, not a idea of being a precondition,
we cannot know in advance or prior to experience, what one stick is…

take plurality, many sticks, I take one stick and put on the ground
and say to a child, one stick, I then take many sticks and put them on
the ground and say, many sticks…once again, prior to experience
a child cannot know what many sticks are… it is a product of
experience that allows a child to know what “many” sticks are…

now take totality, all, it is said we cannot know totality or infinite
number of sticks… but we can know from experience…

I can as experience has been shown to me, to count sticks,
one stick, two sticks, three sticks…1 + 1= 2 which is a short
hand method of one stick and one stick equals two sticks…

but infinity? how do we get to infinity by experience?

take this progression, 5, 10, 15, what would be the next number?
I count my toes to 5, I count my other toes to 10, I count my
left hand to 15, I count my right hand to…20… I can figure
out what is the next step in that progression without any recourse to
an “a prior” or any precondition steps…and what of infinity…
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10… after counting a while, I realize that
I will never reach the end of counting, my experience has shown
me that there is not an end to the numbers, I call that infinity, or in Kant’s
language, totality…I can reach the idea of infinity without recourse to
any thought of “a prior” or any precondition steps…

experience has shown me that I cannot reach the end of finite steps,
I create a word showing that idea of not being able to reach the end
of finite steps with the word, infinite…

Kant believes that space and time are not experienced, but
are “a prior” or a precondition to our experience, but we
exist within and part of time and space… we experience time
and space every single day of our lives and we are taught
what time and space means as an experience…
this is not “a prior” or an precondition, but essential
to our understanding of the universe…as an experience,

a child experiences time and space, but has to be taught
what that means, they don’t intuitively know or understand what
time and space mean, we learn from experience what time and space
means and from what people tell us about time and space…

the entire notion of their being categories that are “a prior”
to or a precondition to experience fails in the light of the fact,
that the categories themselves are only understandable in
terms of experiences…we can only know these categories
in light of experiences, not before the experiences or prior
to experiences… the categories that Kant listed are
categories of quantity, quality, modality and relation…
and each of these can only be understood in terms
of experiences and not as “a prior” or as a precondition
to experiences…

I shall have plenty to say as I experience, which is to say
be able to explain the Enlightenment…

Kropotkin

and comes the $64,000 dollar question…

what do my questions of, who are we and
what are we to do, how are we to live,
have to do with philosophical technical questions like,
how does Hume’s critique of innate idea’s have baring
on Kant’s idea “a priori”?

It is technical questions like Kant’s “a priori” that leaves
us lost in the tree’s, being unable to see the larger picture,
the forest…

for philosophy to be successful, means we have to avoid
getting lost in the underbrush of technical questions of philosophy,
like Kant’s “a priori”…and the deconstruction of sentences
and paragraphs and books…

we have to remain true to the idea of philosophy…
and that idea is simple, how are we to understand life,
the universe and all that jazz, because with understanding
comes a knowledge, a philosophical underpinning of how
we are to act and to be…

Knowledge without action is impotent
and action without knowledge is blind…

don’t be a blind, dickless man…

Kropotkin

the question is asked, who are we?

and the answer is?..

listen to Kant and we are beings who experience and have
internal categories which tell us what the experience means…

listen to Hume and we are beings who experience but and this is important,
our facilities for understanding those experiences are so flawed that
we cannot correctly understand those experiences…

listen to Kropotkin and we are beings who experience and our facilities
for understanding those experiences are flawed but, but our own intellect
and our understanding of not only our experiences but other human beings
experiences allow us to understand our experiences…

if I have a mystical experience, I can look into history and see others
who have had mystical experiences and by their accounts and understanding,
of their mystical experience, I can better understand my own mystical experience…

we learn from each other…and this learning often covers the areas that
is uncovered by our shortcomings in our experiences…

now one of the next failure we have is a cause and effect one…
congress and the IQ45 is all over this “opioid crisis”
but the problem is the “opioid crisis” is not the cause of,
but the symptom…what is causing the “opioid crisis”?

it is not the availability of opioids that is the problem but
what is causing people to seek the opioids that is the problem…
the drugs themselves are not the cause of the problem, but
the symptoms of the problems…

we have a cause and effect problem, we have lost the ability or understanding
of what is cause and what is effect…

I suspect and may not be able to prove, but I think that Kant
has a cause and effect misunderstanding, I could be very wrong,
but I intend to pursue this …

Kropotkin

Who are we?

Humans beings who experience…

now the question becomes, how do we
understand those experiences…

are those experiences mediated through categories in the mind or
do we understand experiences in terms of other experiences?

what is the role of reason in regards to sorting out or understanding
experiences?

the question of being human is simple,
how do we understand experiences?

what technique would we use to understand or sort
our experiences?

our experiences can be active, such as the child reaching out and grabbing something,
or our experiences can be passive, things/experiences that happen to us, like
the dog attacking us and biting us… we did nothing but the experience happened
to us…

some experiences we have to really go out of our way for, such
as our experience of looking through a telescope to see/experience
our galaxy or other galaxies…the experiences don’t have to be active
but we can use our senses which is how we gather information about experiences,
we can use our senses to seek out new experiences…the active or passive part lies
sometimes within us and sometimes outside of us…

we spend our entire lives engaged in understanding our experiences
and what those experiences mean to us personally, socially, culturally,
societally…

being human is about experiences and understanding what they mean…
there is really nothing more about being human then understanding
what experiences are…

that is in a nutshell is all there is to being a human being…
asking ourselves what experiences mean to us…

Kropotkin

part of the “techniques” for understanding experiences,
both collective and individual experiences, are
science and philosophy and religion and economics
and poli sci and all the other academic field of studies…

they are simply means to understand experiences…

Kropotkin

K: or said another way, what is the central question of philosophy?
how do I understand this experience?
and the central question of science is, how do I understand this experience?
and the central question of physics is, how do I understand this experience?

and we put those “experiences” we are trying to understand into
categories that can be understood as philosophy or science or religion…
depending on how we categorize something, it could be philosophy or
science or religion…

we are trying to make sense of sensory experiences of life
by understanding them as philosophy or science or religion…

the experience happens first and then we try to make sense of it,
in some fashion…

Kropotkin

we understand via experience, not the mental…

someone says, Hay Kropotkin, have you tried the new
roller coaster ride at the park yet?

Kropotkin: Why no, I have not yet tried (experienced) it yet…
I imagine it is like the big dipper over at Santa Cruz…

someone: no, this new ride has far sharper turns and goes up and down
several times…it is not really like the big dipper at all… you can’t imagine
what a sharp ride this is…

and Kropotkin can’t imagine what a sharp ride it is because it must
be experience for Kropotkin to understand the ride…our mental
representations of events like rides don’t really give us a true picture of
what the ride is like… it can give one a broad sense of a similar
experience but not the specific experience of that ride…

the mental representation of events are pale imitations of the actual
experience of events…it is only by riding the roller coaster, can I
get a real, true experience of riding that roller coaster…no matter
how hard I try, I cannot get a real or true idea or representation of
the ride of the roller coaster via mental acts… only by actually riding
the roller coaster can I get this true idea…

first you experience, then you understand…

but this leads us to an interesting idea…

you cannot experience god… for god is supposed to
be Omni… Omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and
we humans are not Omni anything…we cannot experience god
in the flesh…how can spiritual events, which are
non-material, touch our material bodies…first we experience then
we understand… but we cannot experience it first, and if we cannot
experience it, how are we suppose to understand it? we could guess,
but that mental representation is a weak, pale image of any reality…
we can imagine god, but without any physical experience, we are
left with guessing about the nature of god…Metaphysics, beyond the physical,
and we cannot guess at the metaphysical because it exists outside of
our physical experience, we cannot experience it physically and thus
we can’t know or understand it…

understanding something requires us experiencing it…

Kropotkin

I don’t pretend to know God stuff all that much,
but as far as i know, God has a physical aspect to it.
These forces took billions of years to create and grow what we have.
They are slow moving. If god was all-mightly, infinitely, then it wouldn’t
take time to create the universe. Instead, we see a slow, difficult universe,
which took so long to make, which breaks down at times, and is not finished.

Omni-ultimate stuff is a christian idea.
They don’t like the idea of a god that has limitations and needs time to get things done.

after several ugly days at work, finally have a day off…

First you experience then you understand…

this is my formula…

now this is true for all of us…

so what about our big questions…

Who are we?
how are we to live?
What is the right thing to do?

we are social creatures as noted before…

so our response must be, we are social creatures that experience…
and by experiences, we begin to understand…

as we are social creatures who live in families and exist
within several other systems beside the family…

our experiences teach us that we get back what we sow…
if we offer kindness, we get back kindness and if we offer
love, we get back love…

and if we offer up violence, we get violence back and if we offer
up hate, we get hate back…

so those who claim that the world is a cold, tough, unloving,
selfish by their acting upon these idea’s create the very
world they claim the world is…

in another words, they act as if the world were as they claim, and in doing
so, they do create that world… it is a self fulfilling prophecy…
their very actions create the world that they claim exists…
if they acted differently, they would create a different world…

we are the creators of the world… the very behavior of humans create
the world in which we live in… if we all drive for money and live by a
“me first” understanding, that is the world we create…

Nature… the sea and land and sky and air and animals…
and the planets and sun and galaxies… they don’t know about or
care about us…the only thing that changes is our behavior and our
experiences about those behaviors…

one of the things about life… one of the criteria for life is
that there is a feedback loop… and we not only have a personal, built in
feedback loop but every system has a feedback loop… every single family
and every single system we exist in has a feedback loop…
and our behavior toward others creates a feedback loop back to
ourselves…if you behave badly toward others…what will be
the feedback? others will behave badly toward you… it is our experience that
when people behave badly toward us, we react in kind…

in other words, our experiences creates the world and how we behave
toward others, creates how the world will react to us…

humans react to kindness with kindness and hate with hate
and love with love and meanness with meanness and so on…

that is what our experiences have shown us…

you know how to act and behave and be toward others because
you know how you would act, behave or experience, if others acted
or behave in certain ways toward you…

our experiences, both collective and individually, create feedback loops
toward others and back toward ourselves…

so the question becomes… what feedback loop do you want toward you?
and what feedback loop do you want to send out to others?

so we must become more aware of our actions and be mindful of
our ideals that we act upon… is the world kind? that is true if we act
that way…and is the world love? that is true if we act that way…
and is the world mean? that is true if we act that way…
and is the world a harsh place? that is true if we act that way…

Kropotkin

K: the way the universe itself works, it is as you say slow and imperfect
and not very efficient, that the universe is so badly created would suggest
that either there is a very inept, incompetent god or no god at all…
and this very question of how god interacts with matter… leaves much to
be desired…just as Descartes had trouble with his idea that all
we are is mind but that leaves the problem of how does the mind interact
with the physical… if god is spirit, how does spirit interact with matter?
this very question leaves us in a quandary…how does spirit interact with matter?
I just don’t know…and gives up pause for the existence of god…

Kropotkin

let us be clear… when we talk about a world that is harsh or mean or
tough or unforgiving… we are not, NOT, talking about the world…
we are not talking about planet earth or the sea or the sky or the land
or polar bears or the sun or the many galaxies around us…
the earth and all its many parts don’t give a rats ass about us humans…

no, we are talking about human interaction with other humans…
we are talking about a society that’s for human beings, of human beings
by human beings…and our actions and interactions with society and other
other human beings is what is harsh or tough or mean or unforgiving…

it is us that create the harsh and mean and unforgiving world…

but we don’t have to create a harsh or mean or unforgiving world…
we can create another world, a kinder, gentler more forgiving world…
we have created, human beings who lived in the past, have
created our current situation… but we don’t have to live
that way… we aren’t committed in stone to live our lives
as our ancestors did… we can change the basic nature of society
and we can change the basic nature of who we are…

by answering the call of our higher nature, not our lower nature…
we can teach our children that we humans are about love and trust and
hope and yes, even faith… but we are also capable of terrible deeds
and those deeds are the result of us answering the call of our lower nature…
hate, anger, mistrust, violence, are some examples of our lower nature…

we know from experiences that our lower nature leads us to commits
terrible actions against our fellow human beings… we have seen it time and
time again…but this time, we say in a loud and clear voice, we
are of the higher nature, not the lower nature… we, by our experiences,
know that we create a harsh and mean and unforgiving world, when we
act from our lower nature…we decide what kinda world we live in…
if we act from our lower nature, we get a mean, harsh, violent world…
if we act from our higher nature, we get love, peace,

the answer to how do we get peace is simple, we no longer accept
the idea that we are about, me first, we no longer follow
the precept that life is about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
for it is this pursuit of happiness that has created this mean, harsh world…
when we follow this self egotism of pursing what is in MY best interest,
that we follow that which is the lower nature of the human soul…
for the higher ideals are about us, and the lower ideals are about me…
and that has made all the difference in the world…

you want to create a better world, follow your higher nature, your higher
instincts which is about us… if you want the same crappy world with
its “harsh, mean, unforgiving” world… follow those lower instincts,
your lower nature of pursing your happiness, your own best interests…
and you will get harsh and mean and nasty… for that is the lower instincts,
the lower nature of who we are… mean, harsh, nasty, unforgiving, hate, anger,
violent…and that is the world you are creating when you follow your lower
instincts, your lower nature…

we create our own reality, but we must create with others…
it is in those interactions with others that answer the question,
what kind of world do we live in?

Kropotkin

in light of my prior post, I was thinking about the question
of good and evil…

good and evil are not questions or answers outside of us, but
exist within us… we are the bearers of good and evil and
we are the executors of good and evil…nature, that which is
floods and storms and tornados and rocks falling from the sky,
they are indifferent to us humans, they don’t care or know about
human beings… we might call them good or evil but they
don’t give a rats ass about us…

good and evil are actions of a human being toward other human beings…

when we listen to our higher self and love and hope and reward justice,
we are good and when we listen to our lower self, where we hate,
and have anger and are violent… that is evil…

we have no need for a god or a devil, when we have human actions
against other human beings…

when we treat a fellow human being as a end to a goal, such as
when we use human beings to increase profits, that is evil…
we create evil by our own actions to our fellow man…
when we put humans in prisons or torture or have violence,
we are practicing evil against our fellow man…

when we practice hope and charity and love and peace toward
our fellow human beings, we are practicing good…

we ourselves are the carrier of good and evil…

you want to eliminate evil, begin with your choice of following
either your higher self or your lower self…
that is all it takes…follow your higher self, your choice is good
and if you follow your lower self, that is evil… simple enough…

decide to follow good or evil, that choice is yours and the choices
you make will decide if your little bit of the world is good or evil…

decide and become an agent of good or decide to become an agent of evil…

the choice is yours…

Kropotkin

the origins of evil:

the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain…

Kropotkin

men look at the “laws” of capitalism with favor…
it is said that capitalism creates winners and losers
and that is said with approval by men of faith, faith in money…

but it is said that the laws of communism is wrong
to treat men with equality is wrong and “evil”…

one law is met with approval and the other law with
disapproval…

very selective about which “laws” we approve of and disapprove of…
whereas I don’t see the difference between the two laws…

Kropotkin