the philosophy of the future…
in the beginning… was… it existed billions of years ago…
and in time came, the earth and the sun and all the planets…
then came the sea and sky and land, then came life…
and even life itself ebbed and flowed… from days of prosperity
to lean days and back again… life itself was threaten with
extinction multiple times but it bounced back…
and after billions of years, from a large pool of life came us…
we humans, so proud and yet we must admit we are latecomers
to this parade of life…
we came from apes and lizards and frogs and multi-cell creatures of all types…
our family history is a long and complicated one…we are related to fly’s and
cats and cows and dogs and all types of life…
our very existence is about one change to another to another to another…
billions of years of evolution has brought us to today…
we are part of all those animals that we came from…
so the second fact about us, us human beings is we are of and from animals…
we are the product of billions of years of evolution…
but we are the first to be able to ask,
what are we going to be tomorrow?
animals have a wide variety of survival skills… some run fast and some
are strong and some have sharp teeth and some have sharp claws…
but what are the survival skills of the human creature?
language and reason and imagination… those are the skill set of human beings
that has allow us to survive for a couple of million of years…
we are a problem solving species…and language and reason and imagination
allow us to solve problems…
we have evolved as a species and that evolution is marked in our
ever larger and ever changing social structure by the ever growing infrastructure
we humans have… we have gone from the small family structure to a world wide
network of connections and interconnections that tie us together as human beings…
the human race has grown from a few thousand to billions and the infrastructure
needed to manage that number has grown as well…that marks our evolution…
the ever larger and ever changing infrastructure needed for us…an infrastructure
that allows human beings to go on and prosper…
we cannot be tied down or fixed into an ism or ideology that doesn’t change
and adapt with the ever changing conditions of human life…
politics and economics and history and social studies all change and adapt
to ever changing conditions of humans… so why must philosophy be fixed
and tied down to a set philosophy?..
just as because of changing human conditions, we have changed economic systems,
from hunter/gatherer to barter systems to communism to socialism to capitalism,
are just some of the economic systems we have had in our million year existence…
and we have changed political systems to adapt to ever changing conditions, from
monarchy to dictatorship to democracy to oligarchy and beyond… we
have had many different types of political systems to adapt to the ever changing
human conditions…
and yet philosophy is suppose to be a fixed, one size fits all proposition…
it cannot be…it to must change and adapt to the ever changing conditions
of the human being…
an open ended philosophy… one that doesn’t limit us to one or even two
choices, but is open to every choice…because at one time or another,
every choice is possible for a human being… for freedom is choice…
to be free means we are free to choose and we have choices available to us…
I cannot choose to be a mother for biology prevents me… I am, in that way,
determined, but I can choose to be a father and in doing so, I validate
that possibility…
so the question of free will vs determinism is really one about what is
possible for me… biology and other such factors prevent me from making
certain choices… I cannot choose to fly by flapping my arms… but I can
choose to fly an airplane… biology determines, limits certain choices,
but we can make other choices which is free will…so we are determined
and we have free will…and we have lived with that for a million years
and as long as human beings exists, we shall continue to live with it…
among human beings choices is the higher choices and the lower choices…
we can choose our animal nature of lower instincts like anger and hate
and violence or we can choose our higher human nature which is love and
peace and charity and kindness… biology doesn’t prevent us from making
these choices, they are free will choices…and which choice will you make?
the higher or lower choices?
nowhere in the philosophy of the future is talk of meaning or purpose or
the will of anyone…those things have no right to exist in the future…
for meaning and purpose is found every single day with the choices we make…
it is in our free will that we find our meaning, our purpose…
more to come…
Kropotkin