a new understanding of today, time and space.

if you look at history… you can see a flow to it…
it just takes time and study to see it…

if the medieval man wanted answers, he referred to authority, be it the bible or
one of the Saints, like Augustine or the church itself or the pope…
the starting point of searching for answers began with some authority
and then seeing what authority said about something…

this cycle of looking for answers in authority was over a thousand years old…

then came Luther…he only wanted to reform the church… he had not intention of
of tearing the church apart, he just wanted the church to become more
responsive to the needs of the people…

one of the points of this theology revolution was that people could find the
truth, the theology truth of religion and god by themselves… they didn’t need
authority to discover the truth… all they needed was the bible and this was one of
Luther main idea’s… which is to make the bible accessible to everyone… which means
having the bible in the language of the people and not in Latin…because Latin was
the language of the elite and not the common people…

this idea that human beings can find the truth by themselves began
in religion… theology…

the first people to expand this thought beyond religion, theology was
the scientist…now Luther lived from 1483-1546 with his 95 thesis
being posted in 1517…the scientist who began to expand Luther idea
was Copernicus who live from 1473-1543… he started this idea of the scientist
not looking toward authority for answers… in science that meant not looking
toward Aristotle…Copernicus then came Kepler 1571-1630 and
then Galileo 1564-1642… each of them didn’t look to authority like
the medieval man, but they looked at nature itself… and they began to
reason out what the universe was and didn’t depend on authority to tell them…
the first philosopher who tried this was Descartes… 1596-1650…
although Hobbes was born first, 1588-1679… he didn’t begin writing
philosophy until his 40’s, thus he came after Descartes…now philosophers
begin to think for themselves and not go to authority for answers…
so you have this trend first beginning in religion, then science, then philosophy…
the trend of not depending on authority for your answers but looking for them
with your own eyes, with your own reason… Luther began this…

with each passing generation, this trend of not looking to authority for answers
became more pronounced, with the rise of the enlightenment, this trend
became dominant…it was one of the bywords of the enlightenment,
don’t trust authority, but look for yourself to see your answers…
find the experience and then make your own judgments about that experience…

the modern history of philosophy is nothing more then this… instead of looking toward
authority for answers, look for yourself and make your own Judgment…

philosophy and science for that matter followed the path of looking for yourself
to see your answers…

but there came a time when there was a problem, 1900…
Einstein created answers that were outside of the realm of
experiences…you can’t experiences the speed of light,
you can’t experience the movement he described…

more and more as the 20th century progressed came experiences
that we couldn’t experience for ourselves… World War One,
then came World War Two and the equal experience of the Holocaust…

Science equally created knowledge that we couldn’t experience…
and it is still creating experiences that we cannot ourselves experience…
Relativity to Heisenberg Uncertainty principle to quantum theory to
the superstring theory to a holographic universe…we cannot experience these
things for ourselves…we must take the scientist word that these things exist…

the common man can no longer follow the scientist and the philosopher
and experience these things…

the enlightenment basic point was to understand the universe through
our own experiences and our own reason… but we cannot do that any
longer, for we cannot experience our universe the same way anymore…
and we cannot reason about it the same way anymore…

we have become estranged from our enlightenment past…
but the enlightenment has done its work in the fact, we cannot
return to the medieval way of resorting to authority as our
guide for answers… so we cannot use authority and we cannot
use experience…

this is the crisis of the modern man… we cannot use authority and
we cannot understand experiences… first we must experience and then
we can understand… that is the human way…

now what?

Kropotkin

first we must experience and then we understand…

this is my formula for life…

but some experiences cannot be understood in terms of reason,
rationality and thought…

a friend dies… how are we to understand that with reason…
or your mother dies… how, how can reason understand that…

we react with emotion because reason isn’t enough sometimes,
rationality cannot explain the death of one’s mother…
it can only be felt…

in moments of great sadness, how can words, mere words explain
the depth of one’s emotions…

how in moments of great joy or excitement or terror,
can mere words explain those experiences…

I felt terror at watching the movie “Halloween”…

this simple sentence fails on so many levels to explain the terror
of watching the movie “Halloween”… the emotion of terror is beyond
words and beyond… mere description of the simple word, terror…

terror is not described, it is felt, deeply and down to the bone…

that is why we have emotions and feelings because some experiences are
beyond mere words and description of those experiences…

music moves me, I am listening to it right now… how do I describe
the music? it is lovely and soft and carries sadness…
mere wasted words that describe nothing…you must experience
the music to understand the power of the music…

emotions may not explain experiences but emotions and feelings are
a way to react to experiences that exist beyond words and rationality…

I have had experiences that felt like a gut punch, literally felt like a gut punch…
words spoken, sentences completed, nouns and adverbs faithfully followed,
just words…and it was all I could do to keep myself standing from the force
of those words…

it’s time we broke up…I have bad news, you father is dead…
I never loved you…I wish you were never born…

words, just mere words silently delivered… words that
hit the mark and experienced…words that hit, like a stomach punch…

there is nothing one can do but experience these words… you can’t put
language to these experiences and you can’t reason with these words…
you can only experience them…

first you experience then you understand… but some experiences
are never understood, just experienced…

Kropotkin

it seems that whatever faith a man professes, it doesn’t
affect his morals or his conduct… we have those who claim to be
Christians and they claim belief in Jesus but they don’t believe
in his words… Jesus wanted Christians to practice love and
charity and peace and what does the latest budget by IQ45 do?
it increases the defense department budget by billions, decreases
the state department by billions, takes away money from the poor
and gives it to the wealthy, takes health care away from children and
families… in fact, the entire budget of the GOP is totally against everything
that Jesus taught and yet, yet the GOP claims it is the party of
Christianity and the party of Jesus but it doesn’t follow Jesus
precepts and the party doesn’t follow Jesus sayings or teachings,
the GOP doesn’t practice love, it doesn’t practice peace, it doesn’t
practice charity… the GOP is the party of hate, anger, violence
and most of all, the GOP is the party of money…and Jesus
had contempt for those who worship money, like the GOP party…

your claims to be moral are disproven by your budgets and
and by your actions

Kropotkin

we exist with a large number of emotions…
emotions that must have had some evolutionary usefulness
or they wouldn’t have survive…hate, anger, love, pity, charity,
joy, happiness, loneliness…in different ways, each of these emotions
drive people to action of some nature…these emotions are part of nature
as we are part of nature… when people say, these are the laws of nature,
they are talking about, in part, emotions…when people ask, what is nature,
part of the answer is emotions, feelings, logic, reason, how humans react to
each other, all of this is nature…when people say, how can nature be so cruel,
it isn’t, it is us that is cruel, as we are part of nature…some emotions are positive
and some are negative, one of the most negative ones is loneliness…
loneliness is proof that we humans are social creatures and must, must
interact with each other…loneliness is one way to tell if you are getting
enough interactions with other human beings…and loneliness fills that
bars and loneliness writes ads asking for companionship…

we have all felt loneliness, sometimes even while in relationships…

loneliness is needs unmet…and sometimes the most alone we feel
is in the midst of large crowds because we are in a crowd, but
not part of a crowd…we must feel a part of something, something
real and something tangible…we must connect… we must connect
to other human beings, this is why solitary confinement is the worse
punishment doled out in a prison…this is why human beings in solitary
confinement go crazy…

the truth is, we must connect with other human beings or we can become
sick, both mentally and physically…

to my mind, loneliness is the saddest of emotions because it is the one
that can be most avoided… all it takes to rid one of loneliness is
a connection to another human being, even here on ILP,
a connection can be made that steers us clear of loneliness…

and this is why we must avoid hate and anger and fear because
these emotions drive people away and increases the chance of
loneliness… why connect with someone who hates or has anger
or is gripped in fear?

the happy and joyful and loving people, they are the ones who
are less, LESS, likely to be lonely because people want to
be with these people, not so much the hateful and angry…
we avoid those types…

human beings are social creatures, we need each other,
we cannot exist without each other, and so we must treat
each other with the understanding that we cannot exist
separately, apart from each other… and that is the beginning of
human morality… we are kind because we need each other
and we give because we need each other, we practice charity
because we need each other, and, and we love because we
need each other…

Kropotkin

Sepere aude…Dare to know…

this is Kant’s formula for the enlightenment, dare to know…

and very few take him up on his offer…

most like Christians, claim to already know the truth from revelation
or some other source of authority…my father told me, my society told me,
god told me, the state told me…each is a source of authority and supposed truth…

authority is authority be it the state or be it Plato or be it the bible or be it god…

the entire mission of the enlightenment was to free man from this authority
and to allow man to think for himself…to find the truth for himself…
to dare to know…and to follow the truth wherever it leads the truth seeker…

I have explored religion and I have explored several different philosophical
systems and I have explored several different political systems and I have
explored several different types of economic systems…I dared to know…

because I learned that my thinking was really just thought that was
taught to me as a child… I learned customs and traditions and
habits and authority from a wide variety of sources…
my family and my school and the TV and the media and friends
and all from birth…children, we are sponges and we want to learn
and we think/believe that the things we learn are true and right…

once I dare to know, I learned that most of what I was taught was crap,
designed to train and indoctrinate and to conform me to a certain mind set…
I was not trained to see or seek the truth but to accept the authority of those who
taught me, family, school, society, media…
I was being programmed to be a good citizen, to be a “useful” member of society,
to earn my keep, to learn a skill to become a good worker…

I wasn’t being taught to think for myself, I wasn’t taught to question authority,
for disobedience is the greatest crime in society as it is in religion…

I wasn’t told to “dare to know” no, I was told to accept what I was being told…
accept authority… to know my place and never, never ever rock the boat…
to be a good team player is to know obedience to the “higher” authority…
for society knows best for me… for authority knows best for me…
who was I to claim a greater understanding, greater knowledge about things,
then society?

indeed who am I to claim greater knowledge then society?

but, but I do claim such a thing… for I have dared to know…

I have as best as I can, for I have done as one has asked…

“it is not enough to have the courage of our convictions,
one must have the courage for an attack upon our convictions”

and those convictions are those things taught to me as a child… customs and habits
and indoctrinations to be a better citizen and programming to be a docile
and happy worker/consumer…

to follow the enlightenment is to break free from all prior indoctrinations
and to dare to know… regardless where the truth leads you…

who here is brave enough to… dare to know… sepere aude…

Kropotkin

upon reflection, myths are also part and parcel of authority…
so I was taught myths as well as customs and traditions
and my indoctrinations into modern society…

Kropotkin

Kant famously wrote how he was awoken from his “dogmatic slumbers”
by the writings of Hume…

but what exactly were Kant’s “dogmatic slumbers”?

I cannot speak for Kant, but I can speak for my “dogmatic slumbers”
one such dogma was the idea of “rugged individualism”…
it was part of the myths, convention, custom, habit, authority
that I was taught as a child…

I had my “dogmatic slumbers” until I began my own “sepere aude”…

it was a long and tortuous journey to find my own truths, away
from the myths and lies my father told me…

we each have our own myths, convention, habits, tradition,
authority from our childhood that was taught to us…
taught to us as truth and to be believed in as firmly as any gospel…

so what “dogmatic slumbers” do you have? what convictions do you have?
and do you have the courage for an attack upon your convictions, your
“dogmatic slumbers”

Kropotkin

I had one of those strange incomprehensible dreams last night…

I dreamt I was a tourist but I was in very, very cold place…
someone in my dream made a point of the day’s weather being rather
warm at 22 degree’s…because it was so cold, the land and sea and sky
all looked different… everything seemed to be frozen…

but I felt mostly like a tourist and upon thinking about it,
I feel like I am a tourist here and now… trying to figure
out the local customs and practices, but not having much success…
I speak the language but I really don’t speak the language…
I seem to miss so much and I don’t know why…

I guess what I think I am saying is, in my life right now,
I feel like a tourist trying to understand the local area I am
visiting…trying to make sense of everything…
I know this is not very clear, but I can’t help that…

how can we be a tourist in our own life?

Kropotkin

in my readings of the enlightenment, I read quite a bit
about the “laws of nature” and how we ought to conform
to the “laws of nature”…(the Chinese are big on this also)
the question becomes, what are the “laws of nature”?

the “laws of nature” are the “laws” or rules that nature follows…
gravity for example, is a “law of nature” as is evolution,
and already, we follow these “laws of nature”…we must, must
conform to evolution and gravity and any other law/rule of nature
we face…in fact, this is the point of a “law of nature” we cannot
escape them…just as human beings cannot escape our animal
nature, we must eat and sleep and drink and fornicate…
we are simply following our already built in rules/laws of actions…
for example, try to stop your breathing… hold your breath…
and all that will happen is you pass out and you start breathing again,
or try to stop your heart from beating, can’t or stop your liver from working,
you just can’t… these are laws/rules we must obey, we have no choice…
so these “laws of nature” exist in us, within us and we have no choice…
we are determined for we have no choice…determinism rules at this level…

but we have free will in other areas…and this is important…
we are free to act in several other area’s…my behavior or actions
toward you or anyone is set by free will, I have a choice…we have freedom
of actions in many areas…

but in both cases of determinism and free will, we are the agents of actions…
in some cases, we have no choice as in certain “laws of nature”, gravity and evolution
and in other cases, we are free to act as we will…

now to revert to my language, determinism is the lower agency of the human
being, we must act or be in a certain way, we have no choice… we must breath
and our heart must beat, we have no choice…freedom of choice however is
the higher functions of the human being…the “law of nature” that determines
us doesn’t determine our higher actions… it is important to understand that
within us lies the “laws of nature” but we have freedom of action in certain cases…

and if we make a choice, we are using our higher function of freedom, we are using
our higher level of being human…so what does this mean?

this is simply pointing out that we can create with our own choices and our
own freedoms, a much better, a much more human earth…Jean-Paul Sartre
once wrote, that “hell is other people” well that doesn’t need to be true…
we can also create paradise without any resort to “utopia”…
we create heaven and hell by our actions toward others…
the boss who is a dick, (I have one of those right now) has made
a choice of being a dick… he doesn’t have to be, he is freely acting…
he is making a choice… and in doing so, making my life very difficult,
but to be clear, he is not being determined to be an asshole, he is making a
choice and he doesn’t need to do that… “hell is other people”
but this doesn’t need to be true… we hold, in our hands,
whither we live in hell or heaven… we choose…

there is a young bagger who is lazy and useless and has lied to my face…
so needless to say, I don’t really care for him…he thinks I am a dick for wanting
him to do his job… a conflict of perception…he is 18 and he does 18 year
old things like not doing his job and thinking a job is fun and games…
and for him, it is just fun and games, he doesn’t need to do this…
whereas I am 40 years older then he is and I take the job seriously,
(even if I truly hate my job like I really hate my job, I still take it seriously)
he has made a choice of working and I made a choice of working and if
you are going to make a choice of working, then you need to work, that is why
it is called work…I expect him and anyone else who is a bagger to actually do
their job as I do my job to the best of my abilities… the conflict that arises is
because of our different understanding of what it is to work…
if he even did the minimal amount of work, I wouldn’t care what he did…
he thinks I am making his life hell, I’ve heard this from other baggers,
“hell is other people”…but because he is so lazy he is making tons more
work for everyone else and that is what I object to… he is creating more
work for everyone…trying to get his to do his job is a losing cause
because that is not important to him, his work ethic is here and my work
ethic is there and thus conflict arises…(I am not the only person with a
problem with this bagger) I cannot create heaven for this kid because that
means he is doing even less then he is doing now, which isn’t really possible,
or I just leave him alone and nothing gets done and my job is even harder then
it already is…if I let him go, I work that much harder… so the choice
is do I let him be and allow him his freedom to do to whatever and let him have
his heaven but make my life hard and difficult, certainly not heaven…

and this choice is typical of choices we have every single day…
we can make people life much easier or much harder but again
context is what makes the difference…mistreating a child because
you were mistreated as a child is making a person life hell for no reason,
as opposed to trying to get someone to do the job there were hired for…

the kid fails to understand what is involved and what happens when he
doesn’t do his job but because he is young, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter
to him if stuff gets done or not whereas for me, it does matter because
it will my job harder or easier depending…lack of understanding,
failure to understand why it is so important to do his job, this is
the failure of this kid…he simply doesn’t understand…
and conflicts arise from this, one understand and one doesn’t,
and conflict arises… and this conflict creates the “hell of other people”

we have different perspective on matter and conflict arises…

Kropotkin

what is the value of philosophy?

is it to understand the world?

is it to change the world?

is it to inform the world?

the correct answer is

yes!

Kropotkin

one of the things philosophers believed in was the limits
of human knowledge… Descartes method was a manifesto
of limits as was Locke and all the enlightenment thinkers…
we cannot know everything… there are limits to our knowledge
because there are limits to our senses and our understanding…

I disagree with this… I believe that there are no limits to
our senses and our understanding… what is missing is
our asking the right questions… find the right questions
and the answers become clearer…

as technology and science grows in ability to see and hear and touch
farther and farther, we can experience more and more and in that
experience, we can begin to understand…

we can see galaxies almost back to the beginning of time and that
experience tells us something about the universe and with each leap
in technology and science, we can experience and understand more and more…

can we know everything? … yes, given enough time, we can
experience everything and thus understand everything…
but it will take time… will our species last long enough?
that remains to be seen… I don’t know…
but if we survive, we will know and that thought alone
should give us encouragement to survive…

Kropotkin

most enlightenment thinkers believed as Hume and
Diderot believed, that the world is orderly and subject
to universal, irreversible laws…

yet, we know that the world is not orderly, how do we
reconcile the two thoughts?

we say the world is an orderly existence at this moment,
and we cannot posit beyond this moment…
we can take as habit, like Hume suggested, that
chances are, tomorrow will be an orderly existence and
subject to universal laws… but we can’t know that,
at best, we can only assume that…

is the world orderly… at this moment, around me, yes, it is…
I can’t speak for anyone else, anywhere else, but here and now, yes,
the world is orderly… subject to the passage of time which is not
orderly and not subjected to universal laws…

Kropotkin

I don’t see how you get morals/morality from the “laws of nature”…
the fact that the earth revolves around the sun or gravity exists,
doesn’t get one a morality…motion does not create a morality…
evolution doesn’t seem to create a morality, although humans are
social creatures… we need social contact or we go insane or even die…
that social contact might give an outline of a morality/morals, but by itself
it doesn’t give a culture morals/morality…

looking at different cultures, one doesn’t see much of a common thread
between the different cultures and different moralities… every culture
seems to have different morality and a different way of looking at things…
and none of it seem to be inspired by the “laws of nature” or science…

I don’t see how one can get morality/morals from the “laws of nature”
or science because they are apples and oranges… they do and are different
things…morality is an human invention with no obvious influence from
the “laws of nature/science”…

one aspect is the fact that earlier societies didn’t know or have “laws of nature”
or science to depend on…morality/morals arise for earlier societies from
god or the rules of god or the priest interpretation of the rules of god, but
not from the “laws of nature”… we must look elsewhere to find what
creates morality/morals because it isn’t from science or the “laws of nature”

Kropotkin

so, yesterday the wife and I go to San Francisco, for my non
American friends, the day after thanksgiving is perhaps the biggest
shopping day of the year and everyone who isn’t working is out
and the wife and I went to Union square which is the heart of
SF shopping and believe me when I say, it was a fucking zoo…
I must admit, I was surprised by the number of cops out, every block
we walked had at least 6 cops there and Union square must had dozens,
on every single side of the square…anyway, there were animal activist
with bull horns on every street crossing around the square and people,
a whole lot of people… you could see the ice skating rink they set up in
Union square itself… every single restaurant in the area was full and some
had waiting lists of an hour…

now the question really becomes, why, why did these idiots, including my wife and me,
go to Union square? on the biggest shopping day of the year?

and that is the point, absolutely no one ask why…

why this behavior?

the reason is complex and many sided with many different answers
with no one reason being the full reason for all us being out on that day…

it was so crowded and chaotic that my wife complained of sensory overload…
it was really too much to take in, with so much action and all the buskers
and immense number of people and sounds of car horns and people and music
and construction being done with cop whistles in the street directing traffic…
it was so chaotic I almost got ran over by a cable car, not the worse way to die…

but once again, we must ask why? what was the point of all this?
people just enjoying the experience? buying things? anything you can buy, you can buy
online but that wasn’t the point, the point was, we are social creatures
and we must be social… and being social creatures, we must have some rules
of behavior that allow us to continue to be social…that is the point of morality, of ethics,
that we have rules that allow us to be social…but ethics/morality change with the
changes in social understanding, with changes in the environment…
we no longer stigmatize homosexuality or the use of drugs in the same
way we used to, this change in morality/ethics is due to changes in our environment,
changes in how we perceive who we are and what are we to do…

these changes show us that we are not fixed in our behavior nor are we fated
to have the same behavior… if morality/ ethics are flexible and changeable,
then those with a fixed understanding of what human beings are, are wrong…

who we are today is the result of a million years of evolution and the rules of
evolution still apply to us and that includes our psychology…
we are the sum results of all that came before even if that before is
2 minutes before… what about so called “innate” idea’s? we shall be
tackling that idea in the days ahead…

Kropotkin

I’m trying to mix and match all these various thoughts going
about my head…I’m trying to get to some answers or solutions to
problems I see or questions I have or get to the truth of …truth… I guess…

its like being lost in a jungle, you can’t see the trail you are on and
you can’t see the starting point or ending point and you have no idea
where you are in the midst of this big jungle…

you are not only dealing with the current jungle, but you are facing
the past and trying to reach the future…for a jungle exists in time,
within time, past, present and future and you have all three to deal with…

the only solution I can see is breaking it down into parts…
don’t get overwhelmed with trying to understand the whole thing…
understand bits and pieces around you and expand out…

try to understand history and economics and poli sci this way and
of course philosophy this way…it is difficult to understand something
anything, if you are in the middle of it… try to gain some distance
from it, try to get higher, above where you are standing… maybe, just
maybe one might be able to grasp where on is and where one has started
and where one might finish… the notion that has me out of sorts
is evolutionary psychology which may explain who we are in context of
where we have been… the long, very long years before the rise of
civilizations, maybe 15 or 12 thousand years ago, so we have humans
that have existed for upward of 2 million years and we must understand
that aspect of our life before we can explore our current situation…

the answer is out there, but it lies in our past, a million years into our past…
and the answer extends into the future, perhaps a million years into our future…

but let us start today, with ourselves and expand that into the past and into the future…

Kropotkin

as I see it, we have three different tracks that has made
us human today… this is expressed nicely by the
“nature vs nurture” argument that has existed for
a very long time…but it seems to me, to actually have three parts…

one, nurture, environment, the environment around us creates, in part,
who we are and the environment includes those around us, family, friends,
church, the state, schools, all in some fashion, influencing us…

two, we are animals and we come from over a billion years of life,
which is in part, one cell amoeba on down to dogs and elephants
and lions and tigers and bears, oh my… we are part of all that and more…
and we are programmed, by DNA from those billions of years…
we have that programming that makes us eat and drink and do
all the same things every single life form on earth does… think
of it like a computer program… and we must follow that program,
we have no choice, and that is instinct

the third rail is new and that is our programming from being human…
that is to say, how much of those millions of years of being human has
created programming in us? humans came out of tree’s say, 2 million years
ago and that was the start of the human branch of the tree of life…
we human adapted the strategy of survival of the apes that we came from
and then because we were on the ground, we had to implement new
strategies to survive…human strategies…and in the million plus years
of human existence, how much of those strategies became programed into
us… became new software that determined our behavior…
things like language and group social behavior and the development
of emotions and reasoning…tools developed to insure our survival…

humans existed in small groups of people, no more then 150 in any given
group for over a million years…living that way for that long has created
its own type of programming inside of us…we have software that was made
for a small group of people and was successful for over a million years…

you could guess that our social structure was created during those million years
and that in turn lead to our need for social acceptance and how we attract mates
and other strategies we need to survive within a small group of people…

but we no longer exist within a small group of people… we exist in very large groups
of people… my work, the grocery store has close to a 100 people working there…
that is probably larger then a lot of groups of people who lived for those millions
of years… and we have even much larger groups of people who exist together…
are the rules that govern us in small groups for a million years still applicable today
when we have groups of not only hundreds but thousands and millions?

so does the morality/rules of those small groups of maybe 150 people still work
today when we have millions? that is the great question of morality and ethics
that we must face today…and how does our programming of those million years
conflict with the programming of the billons of year of life and how does it conflict
with our current situation today? we have much to think about…

Kropotkin

I can imagine someone sitting at home reading my above post and
thinking to themselves, “what in god’s name does this have to do with me?”

and if we recall one of the basic questions we have is “who are we” and
“what are we to do” and this whole idea of nature vs nurture and my
three tracks, two of programming and one of nature… has everything to do
with who you are and what you are to do…

for if we can discover who we are by tracing the whole course of
human evolution including our psychology… this will answer many
questions as to “who are we” and what are we to do…

the question revolves around a rather tricky understanding
and that is the understanding of the word, instinct, and the
understanding of the word, innate…

for what is instinct and what is innate… the problem comes
when people mix and match those two words and that creates issues…
instinct seems to be programming that cannot be overcome and all animals
seem to follow whereas innate seems to suggest idea’s like god and math…
when you are born do you have innate idea’s like god within you…
because we know you have instinct idea’s like fight or flight…
so we have to be clear about those two words to make any headway
in our search for “who we are”…

Kropotkin

at work I keep a little notebook with me,
and yesterday, we were very busy and yet, I still
had idea’s that I wanted to get down, so in between
customers, I would write down idea’s… I have several small
pieces of paper with writings on it that I can barely read… let us see how this
goes…

we on occasion sell very large stuff animals,
and yesterday, across from the checkstands, up very high
on an empty shelf, someone put a very, very large stuffed bear…
cuddly thing, but over 5ft tall…
a lady came into my line, she was an older lady with a walker
and came with a dog, a very large dog… this dog took one look at this
very large bear and wanted nothing to do with it…in fact, this bear scared this
dog so much it refused to even walk near it and the lady had to back up and get out
of the checkstand the way she came because the dog would not go anywhere near this
bear…this is instinct… some very large creature that was clearly bigger then
the dog and the dog wanted absolutely nothing to do with it…this is instinct at work…
the dog could not have overridden this total fear of this bear even if the dog
wanted to…this is in part why animals like dogs have survive because of instincts
like this, stay the hell away from animals much larger then you, because you never know…

babies and toddlers would have also freaked out over this bear because it was so large…
I am not sure at what age a child would have been to overcome this total fear
of some very large animal even a stuffed bear…but that is the age where
a child can reason and be talked into coming near this bear… the child has seen
stuffed animals before and has experienced this, with experience comes understanding…

now to my experienced eyes, this bear was cute if not overly big…
not to mention expensive… anyway, this is one such example of
an animal having instinct… many, many other exists…

now how was this type of instinct created? it seems to me to have been
fashioned over long period of time… dogs for example, the ones that
survived and passed on its genes, were the dogs that had fear when
seeing a large creature of this size… these dogs survive and the instinct
to fear when seeing these large creatures was passed on…now is this
fear in the genes? or has it been imprinted in the dog in some fashion?

how exactly does the dog know to be afraid of this bear? now I have personally
seen smaller dogs go after a larger animal like a bear or deer… so this
instinct can be overridden especially when overridden by the dog’s desire
to protect its human…so we have two conflicting instincts…
but where does the instinct to protect its humans come from?
are dogs born that way? now, but originally, did dogs have this
instinct to protect their human? when human and dogs first met,
at least 30,000 years ago, were dogs this protective? No, I don’t think so…
no gene existed that created the instinct that the dog has that makes
the dog protect its human… the dog over the 30 thousand years has learned
or been imprinted upon it, something, to protect its human…
I would say, that over the last 30 thousand years, the relationship between
dog and human has been imprinted upon both the dog and the human…
this imprint, this instinct has been installed into dogs over the many centuries…
but once again, where does this imprint lie? does it lie in the dogs genes or does
it lie imprinted somewhere else? I would suggest that part of the imprint on
dogs about loyalty to human is imprinted in the brain… isn’t part of the DNA, but
is part of the dog in terms of its standard operating workings in the brain…
but is it innate? only because it was imprinted over the 30,000 years
of dog/human relations… it isn’t part of the DNA but it is from evolution
and the relationship between dogs and humans that has lasted so long…

let us look at another aspect that evolutionary psychology has looked at,
language…a certain gene, I don’t remember it designation, has been identified
as the gene for language…FOXP2 is the gene’s designation and the protein that
is in humans is Forkhead box protein P2… and is required for proper development
of speech and language…now, Chomsky has said that language is innate,
that children learn language because it is coded into the human, pre-programmed
as it were…just like the dog and large teddy bear… it has been pre-programmed
to avoid very large animals and we have been pre-programmed to language…
now it is said, that every human being unless something prevents it,
has both the protein and the gene for language, every single human being alive…
but it is my contention that very, very few if any human beings, creatures classified
as human, one million years ago had this protein or gene…language as a trait
has been passed down from generation to generation… in the beginning,
one person had something resembling language and it proved to be very
convenient and that trait was passed along… but I believe that language is
not passed on in DNA, but like the dog, is passed along in programming in
the brain…it is imprinted on us and over the many centuries we have expanded
our language use…but it is not genetic which means it is not instinct…
it is part of the brains standard operating process because language was
imprinted into our brains over a million years… you can ask did the gene exist
before language or did language exist first? I would say that language
existed before the gene did and the imprinting of language created the gene…
of course this is all idle speculation and many will claim I have no idea of
what I am talking about and that is certainly their right…

now let us turn to an idea like god… I would say that the idea of god
did not exist in prehistoric man… in other words, when human kind first
began, the idea of god did not exist… those million of year ago, when
we climb out of the tree for the first time, the idea of god didn’t exist…
we didn’t have that programming inside of us… we weren’t coded for god
in the beginning… but then how did we become so programmed?

have you ever thought about prayer? what exactly is a prayer?
you are asking for something… that is a prayer… you want something…
a million years ago, human beings were asking for something, please let me
survive this hunt or please get us some food or please let my child live…
after some time, this asking for something became asking some power
to give you something… please sun, give me some food, or the land
to give some game to eat… again after some time, it shifted to
some higher power we would call god… please god, give me something
to hunt… and hundreds of thousands of years later of imprinting that
desire for something has become the imprinting of god into our wiring…
we created the programming of god into our system by our asking for something…
a thousand generations of humans asking for something as created the
imprinting of god into our brain…we rewired ourselves to this belief in god…
it didn’t exist in the beginning of human existence, we created it…

just as the dog has been rewired to defend it human, because a dog didn’t do that
in the beginning of our relationship, but it was reprogrammed into protecting its human…

just like any software program can be rewritten, our program can be rewritten,
our coded software can be rewired to something else…and the idea of god
is simply the rewriting of some human programming we have…
this programming was part of instinct that all animals have…
all animals have been wired in some aspect by evolution…
look at the turtle that automatically goes to the sea after being hatched…
it has no choice in that programming… it is instinct…
there is no difference between this programming and instinct… for instinct
is really just coding or programming of some sort for animals…

the existence of language or the belief of god is part of human
reprogramming of our original programming or instincts…

we rewired ourselves to have language and we rewired ourselves to
believe in god…it just took a million years to do so…

now is this “innate” or “instinct” if we rewired ourselves?

I don’t know…

Kropotkin

now I have suggested that humans are creatures that can rewire themselves…
we can react differently then our original coding wants…we can overcome
that original coding/programming that all animals have… we can overcome
fear for example…we can overcome violence, we can overcome, not succumb
to our basic instincts, our basic coding/programming…

now many subscribe to the view that MAN is set in his ways…
Like Machiavelli, who thought that a man was like a leopard in
behavior in that a man was set in his ways like a leopard had spots,
a leopard could no more change its spots then a man could change his
behavior, good or evil, Machiavelli meant more about a person being
evil not being able to change their ways then good, but the point still stands…

but if we can be reprogrammed, rewired, then it is not true that we
are like the leopard who can’t change our spots…we can change…

can the man who is a coward at heart find the courage to stand one time and be brave,
yes, can the miser relearn, rewire himself to become liberal, to give to charity,
yes, the cowardly lion and scrooge point to this…

this is a very important about who we are… we are not fixed and set in
who we are… we can relearn, reprogram/rewire ourselves to some
other setting… be it to go from being mean to being nice, or the other way…
to go from being a coward to being brave… we know of people who have, for
whatever reason, gone from being conservative to being liberal and that is
a major mental reset or reprogramming… but it happens… it happened to
Ronnie Raygun who went from liberal democrat to right wing conservative
in roughly 20 years…if we are not set in our ways, then why choose to
be conservative, why choose to be mean, why choose to be a hater and feed
into your anger and hate and your lower animal instincts when you can choose
to be liberal, tolerant, open minded, being liberal means having an positive
and uplifting idea of what it means to be human… not to accept Machiavelli
viewpoint about people being fixed in their programming/coding…

this is the very heart of what it means to be human, what it means to be us…
we are social creatures who can change and become something different…
we are not fixed in what it means to be human and we can choose to overcome
our original programming/coding… we can choose to no longer be afraid,
to no longer hold our fellow human beings in contempt and hate them…

if you are conservative, you are scrooge… and he learned to overcome
himself and become something else, something better, something more human…

it is not enough for the courage for our beliefs,
but we must have the courage for an attack upon our beliefs…

some dead white guy said this and if a dead white guy said it,
it must be true, right?

Kropotkin

to return to this argument in another fashion…

Liberal: being liberal toward another… that is one classical
definition of being liberal… open, generous, kind, being liberal is about
giving…

we know that biological, many animals practice altruism toward one another…
we know that humans practice altruism toward each other… this are facts
not in dispute in the scientific community… we are social creatures and
being altruistic does help our social community…those who promote the idea
of being selfish, greed is good, do not practice nor promote this biological
idea of altruism…yet these same people who deny the value of altruism
practice it with kin of theirs… you see in the current white house, many, many
members of certain families working in IQ45 white house… now this may be
altruism or it maybe more of a tit for tat, as the idiot devoss family has given
many millions to both IQ45 and the GOP party… and so was rewarded by getting
the post of education secretary, a cabinet post… is that tit for tat or altruism,
you decide…

but you see family members being rewarded just for being family members,
this is a kin altruism versus a general altruism toward our fellow man…
and this is common even in GOP/conservative world…kin reward or kin altruism…

this idea of altruism makes sense especially in small, groups of people but
it also makes sense of general altruism in such small groups…
we see these people every day, from family to work groups to
political groups, to any group of people we associate with in a regular
basis…but let us think back to the beginning or the origin of the human being…

we lived in groups of no more then 150 people… people we engaged with
every single day…not did we engaged with, but in order to survive, we
must engage with… now individuals die, but the group continued
and it is such a thing that individuals die but have the group go on…
that is really the point because we do die… we often must make
sacrifices within a group for the group to go on…I am a parent
and I have sacrificed to allow my daughter to grow and become
an adult today… and someday, perhaps, she will become a parent
and do the same for her child… for we, as parents, do sacrifice
for our children and we sacrifice for our kin, brothers and sisters
and parents… the group will go on because we have done our part…
made our sacrifices to allow the group to go on and so, we can imagine
in the early days of people sacrifices themselves to allow the group to go on…
and we see this today with policemen and firemen and service personnel…
those who preach that greed is good and that being selfish cannot
appreciate or value the sacrifice made to allow the group to go on…
because those who preach greed and being selfish can only preach
the individual above society, the individual above the group…
even though the group, the society will go on and the individual will die…
we cannot be so selfish and greedy that we cannot put own needs before
the group or before society…

so the question becomes… how far does your idea of kin go?
is kin just family or is kin something beyond just kin…
my argument has been that we are connected to more then just
ourselves or to our immediate family… we are connected to
everyone on planet earth, indeed, we are connected to all life…
and not just peripheral, but I believe we are connected
directly to each other… and we must practice altruism for all
creatures, great and small… and all humans great and small…
for we are connected to another…great and small…

Kropotkin