a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

it is said that we are “determined” because we have “laws” like
the speed of light and the “law of gravity” and evolution…
and we cannot escape or circumnavigate these “laws” and
thus we are “determined”

but the free will vs determinism problem is not about
escaping so called “laws of nature” because we cannot
escape or circumnavigate these “laws”…
but so what…

we have free will because we can respond to
our instincts of violence and hate and anger with
other responses like non-violence and peace and love

if we respond with our lower instincts, we are determined,
but if we respond with our higher instincts of peace and non-violence
we are free… that is the measure of the determinism vs free will problem…

how do we respond… with instincts or with rational thought…

Kropotkin

LIFE = experiences…

we are born, that is an experience…
we have things happen to us… those are experiences…
we die, that is an experience… just one we cannot give any sort of
report on…

life is just a series of experiences and then we spend the rest of the time
attempting to understanding those experiences…

I fell in love… what does that experience mean?

I broke a leg… what does that experience mean?

at times we fall into crisis because we are unable to
make sense of our experiences…

what does being human mean?

what is the truth? and does the truth only exists for a human being?
what is the truth of experience?

some day it all get to be so much, we say fuck it and some watch
the “real housewives of Orange county” which is what my wife does…
and I binge watch some Star trek series…DS9 right now…

but no matter how hard I try to escape those questions…

at night in the quiet of the dark…I hear those questions…
like fog blanketing the air…what is truth? what is life? what
is the meaning of experiences and what is the truth of experiences?

I don’t know… I don’t know…I don’t know

and I am as haunted by my failure as much as I am haunted by
the questions that so torment me…

it would be a shame if I don’t get my answers before I leave this life…
and it is becoming clearer by the day, that maybe, maybe I won’t get my
answers before my time is up and that makes me work harder at
studying and thinking and reflecting on what it means to be human…

I resent those times taken away from me…
that prevents me from my work at hand…

the understanding of who we are and what we are
and what are we suppose to do…

I can’t depend on some vague promise of a “next life” to
give me some hope of finding answers…

perhaps the point isn’t to find answers, but to ask the questions…

maybe the point is to make us aware of something beyond just
walking about in our dreams and being fixated in our daily routine…

awake, awake… you have a life to lead…

the life of a dull routine of working a 9 to 5 job or trying to get
that promotion… the working life is meant to anesthetize you to
the real questions… the questions we are meant to ask…

what is the point of being human? what does the experience of being
human actually mean?

walk away from anything that doesn’t lead you to questioning…
question everything… and become aware…

aware of what… one might ask?

ask yourself? become aware of what?

Kropotkin

if you look at the years between 1600 and 1789,
you find that there was a transition from the old way of thinking,
the medieval pattern of thought to the modern way of thinking…

the path was lead by science and science was all about seeing for oneself
and not depending on any sort of traditional or authority basis…
like depending on Aristotle for your understanding of the world or
depending on the authority of reveal revelation of the bible…

the world that the new way of thinking found was different but
still understandable in terms of our experiences… the world was one
of many worlds and circled the sun with other planets… this new thinking
was not about the difficulty of the premise, but about the training
and customs that was one was taught since childhood…we had
to break free of the traditional way of thinking about things, but the
idea’s themselves of circling the sun was not hard…it is just hard to
switch one’s thinking from what was one was taught…

we have the new science which is different then the old science…
today we have quantum mechanics and the superstring theory and
attempts to have a Grand unified theory of everything…

these thoughts are not part of everyday experiences…I just
can’t find a common experiences which allows me to easily understand
superstring theory or quantum mechanics…

and that is part of the problem today…the framework of modern science
is not easily understood and not really part of our everyday experiences…

thus we have a hard time trying to make sense of modern science…
turn it into a philosophical framework like the philosophers of the
17 and 18 century did…we don’t have a Descartes or a Hobbes or a Locke
to turn the current scientific theories into understandable philosophy of life…

from our childhood training and customs taught us from birth, we
have been taught to believe in science but and this is important
we don’t understand current science, so we are left without
some support from modern science… it is hard to believe in something
you don’t understand like modern science… and one of the basis of
modern society is the belief in science…so we have a problem…
how can we believe in science when we don’t actually understand it…

and as modern children, we have lost our respect for religion
so we don’t have that basis for our understanding of the world…
we don’t have science to believe and we don’t have religion to believe in,
so, what exactly are we to believe in?

this is the basis of the modern problem…

we are in a crisis and we don’t even know it…
because our traditional standards of belief are gone…
science and religion are both in disgrace and we have
nothing to replace them with…

this has been the crisis of the last 117 years, since the turn of the 20 century…
we have the world wars and the holocaust and the cold war and terrorism,
all events stemming from our lack of something solid to believe in,
like science or religion…a new way is needed. a new way of seeing
things, of understanding things… Nietzsche saw this back in 1880’s…
the coming age, he said, was an age of Nihilism and what is Nihilism?
the general rejection of customary beliefs…the rejection of
science and the rejection of religion… but what to do?

what can replace science and what can replace religion?

that is our task… the modern man task is to find a new way…
to find a new understanding of the modern world in which
we use experiences to create a new model of belief, a new model
of how we understand the world… using science AND religion together,
to create a new, not necessarily better, but new…understanding
of who we are and what is possible for us human beings…

the question is before us… who is brave enough, bold enough to
stand alone and be a creator of values… values that will
give purpose and understanding to the modern world…

who among us… is that leader?

who indeed…

Kropotkin

what is the great discovery, the great change between
the medieval times and the modern age?

During the enlightenment, the great change was change, time…

during the medieval era, everything was fixed, it didn’t change…
man, animals, the earth, god, there was no change, no time for
the medieval man…

during the enlightenment, we discovered the idea of change, of time passing…
this wasn’t a fixed universe we lived in, but a universe that existed in time and
changed over time…this idea of change and of time passing is often lost
even today…time passes and change occurs… this is true of matter and of us,
and of science and of biology… Darwin theory of evolution was a theory of change,
of time passing…modern science is full of theories of change and of time passing…
yet, we human beings think of time and of change not passing, not changing…

we must adapt our thinking to accommodate this idea of change, of time passing…

we change, time passes for us… and we still have fixed idea’s of thinking like
conservatism that deny change and of time passing…

begin here… time passes and change is the basic and essential
aspect of life… all philosophy and all science must begin here…

time passes and change occurs…begin here…

Kropotkin

here, at this point we understand now…

it is this ide of change, of time passing that frightens modern
man…the conservative love of the medieval times lies here,
in its fixed belief in the universe and of man…

it is not evolution that the conservative fights, but the idea of change
and of time passing…

you, who fights the modern age, fight this idea of change and of time passing…

science and philosophy are about change and time passing…

and you hate it, oh conservative mind…

that accounts for the love of god in these days…
god suggest that change doesn’t happen and time doesn’t change
it is this permanence that conservatives love… not god, but
that the idea that god is permanent and change and time never happen…
which explains why conservatives love Plato and his eternal forms…
fixed and unchanging… that is what conservatives love

but time and change do occur…

and the conservative, in his heart of hearts knows this…
so this is the crisis of the conservative…
they hate change and time passing, but it does change and time does pass…

so conservative… how do you solve this crisis?

Kropotkin

the love of patriotism is really the love of the static, unmoving universe…

to love one country is to love what was, WAS, best in the country
and patriotism is really love of that/those static qualities which
in America is those tired and stale words, Truth, justice and the American way…

but truth and justice and the American all change, they all exist in time
and have changed over time…what was truth for our founding fathers is
no longer truth today and what is justice is no longer justice as thought of
by those same founding fathers and the American way… I defy any to
offer up a valid and coherent MODERN definition of the American way…

no, patriotism is love of a static and unchanging America…
an America that no longer exists because it has change and time
itself is the agent of change… we are no longer who we were because
we have existed within time and the very fact we have gone through time
means we have changed and our society, our culture, our political and
economic structure has change because it has gone through time…

we cannot understand who we are and who is America without understanding
that we have and society has gone through time and has changed…

Kropotkin