a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

I have a TV basically for sports… I really don’t watch the news or watch
any TV shows, there is one TV show I watch and that the “Orville”…

in watching sports, they are always selling things, cars, especially cars
during sporting events, one also gets fast food commercials and occasionally
hardware stores and the like…
everyone is trying to sell something…and we can include other things
people try to sell… for example, religion is trying to sell a viewpoint,
buy our product and get the one true religion which is no different then
selling cars or deodorant… pick our product because you will be sexy or
cool or well liked… religion sells other intangibles, pick our true religion
and you will have eternal life and the blessing
of god…now I am not in the market for a religion because I don’t want
what they are selling… I think eternal life is a nightmare and I am not
interesting in glorifying a inept and incompetent god…you can’t frighten
me with eternal damnation because I work in retail, nothing scares you in retail
because you have been damned already…

so if I am not interesting in what religion is selling, what I am I interested in
buying? understanding and truth are concepts I am buying…and those
concepts are found in bits and pieces in history and economics and poli-sci
and philosophy…

truths I have bought… because we humans are constructed the same way,
we have many of the same responses…we experience things in roughly the
same way and as we experience… we understand…

if we were cats, we would experience matter differently because cats
are constructed a different way then human beings… they have
different type of eyes and hearing and touch and smell and so they
experience matter differently then we do and so they have the roughly
same reaction to matter as cats… as we humans have roughly the same reaction
to matter because we are constructed the same way…the placement of
our eyes and the quality of our eyes allows, gives us a certain reaction to
matter because of where are our eyes sit on our body…and we are all within
a certain height range which allows/ gives us a certain range for us to react to
matter…

to understand, we must experience… without experience we cannot hope
to understand who we are and what are we to do…

we are not fixed in our understanding of the universe…
we can change what our understanding of the universe is…
in other words, we can rewire or reprogram ourselves…

we are presently confused as to what we are to do because
we don’t have a goal or a destination in mind, once we have a goal
or destination, we shall no longer be restless or confused or have this malaise
that is ever present in today’s society…

in other words, once we decide on what we are doing with our energy,
we shall be one again, be in flow, not be alienated from who we are and what
is our purpose… a goal creates purpose and a certain flow to who we are…
we become ourselves again once we have decided what is our goal/destination…

we can shape our own destinies once we have decided on who we are and
what we do with our energies…

we are, each of us, part of many different types of systems
and if we want to better be able to understand what our function in
life is, the more we need to be able to understand systems and how
they work…I exist within several dozens systems as do you,
but the systems wont’ work without the individual parts to make it work…
so we need the systems and the systems needs us, as individuals…
we must work together, the systems and us if we are, both, to succeed…

what else have you learned?

Kropotkin

Just had long talk with my mom…
it is extremely rare that I get to talk to someone about
philosophical matter…and it was a nice change of pace of talking
philosophy instead of writing like I always do…

I realized that I have pieces of very large puzzle in my mind
and I am trying to fit that puzzle together…part of that puzzle is
this question of who we are…as I have laid out part of my understanding/experience
of who we are in my understanding of people as being wired/programmed by
genetics/DNA, by society/the family, church, the state, schools, media…
part of that programming is education… are we educating people to be “better”
people or are we “educating” people to become better workers and consumers?
part of our education is to train people to become workers, to have a skill in which
to earn a living… that is programming, rewiring of people…to indoctrinate
people into thinking that their choices are limited to what cereal they can choose
or what car we can buy, not to what kind of human being we can be…
“the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is not about economic choices,
but about our choices as human beings…the word “liberty” is an older word which
also means freedom…liberty and freedom mean the same thing…but in the older
sense of the word in which we can choose to be more then just economic beings…
and how does this understanding of human beings lead us to an understanding
of what are we to do?

how does the question of what are we to do, means to the idea of ethics and morality?
what are we to do as to why, why must we act ethically or morally?
and what ethics or morality must we choose based on our understanding of
who we are? how we treat people is directly based upon our understanding
of who we are… are we the selfish, greedy people of conservatism or are we
we the “liberal” understanding of who human beings are? the more I explore
and understand who human beings are, the more I see that the conservative
understanding of who we are is wrong… just plain and simple, wrong…

we are social creatures who need other human beings… and what
does this mean to our understanding of ethics and morality?

we exist within systems, what does this mean to our understanding of
ethics and morality?

and these pieces of the puzzle and no clear way to connect the various
dots of this very large puzzle…

I see the various aspects of the puzzle, entropy and systems and our
pursuit of happiness and ethics and morality and our understanding of
who are and what are we to do and I cannot for the life of me, find
something to connect the dots…but I follow the path of Icarus, in which
I am for something very high and out of reach and risk failure and crashing
and burning… and I don’t care… let me crash and burn for it is better to fail
reaching the stars then achieve some easy goal like making money or following
the tired path of being a “good consumer” I write for the future for
because no one knows or care what I write today… for people are too
engaged in their nihilism of the pursuit of profit and money… for we
are a nihilist society that places the pursuit of profit over human values
like knowledge of what makes a better person or how shall we find the truth?
values like love and justice and charity and kindness are destroyed in the
name of profit for profit… for pursuit of profit doesn’t care about indeed
doesn’t want justice or love or happiness or kindness because it interferes with
the pursuit of profit… there is no profit in justice or kindness or love or charity…

this is just another piece of the puzzle I and engaged in…if we are
creatures that can rewrite or reprogram ourselves, then what kind
of society, political or economic should we have then? if we are to be moral,
ethically involved people, then what kind of society should we have?

if biology determines that we are a certain sort of people, then how
should we organize society, politically and economically?

many pieces of the puzzle and very little knowledge of how to
create a unified, coherent understanding of all it all works together…

I shall keep plugging away, not for the present, because no one
knows or cares if I live or die, but I write for the future…

Kropotkin

now one may accuse me of being, out of touch or unrealistic or not
in tune with modern “sensibilities”… but I am and let us take a concrete
example…

the opioid crisis: many say that we are in a crisis because many people
are addicted to and die from opioids and we should limit this crisis
by removing opioid from use or keeping people away from opioids…
but that is the wrong way to go about it… that focuses on the symptoms of
the opioid crisis, not the cause of the crisis…

what is the cause? why do people take opioids? to take away pain, to feel nothing…
why would one do that? now I personally have taken opioids because of
multiple surgeries, spinal surgery, surgery to take out part of my colon,
ongoing back pain, I have taken opioids for such pains and yet, I didn’t
become addicted… I took them for present pain, not to take away
the pain of existence which is what this current opioid crises is about…
if we give people meaningful, purposeful lives, the opioid crises would
be over tomorrow… the people who take opioids wouldn’t have a reason
to try to cover up their alienation, their pain from modern existence…
and why would people want to cover up their alienation, their pain from modern
existence… what would cause the alienation, pain, existential pain, not physical
but pain from existence? people are alienated from modern society, alienated
because they have no voice in society, no voice in government, no voice in
economics, they have no justice within society, within the American system
we no longer have justice because justice is about equality, justice is about
every one being treated the same regardless of wealthy or status or position,
but that is no longer true, the wealthy and powerful can buy justice, they
are not treated the same because their wealth exempts them from being treated
equally… if I committed a crime and Oprah, for example, committed the exact
same crime, we would not be treated equally… she can buy justice for herself,
fancy lawyers and access to judges and DA’s will allows her to escape justice
that I because I don’t have wealth or power or position or privilege and I am
not treated equal as Oprah, I am not given justice that she can buy…
we are not equal in the eyes of the laws, justice bought is justice denied…
we no longer have an equal society, no longer have a just society,
no longer have an equality needed to make our society work anymore…
this failure to have a just equality means people disconnect, become alienated
from our system of government, become alienated from society… that is the cause
of our opioid crises… we no longer have a government, a society that notes or cares
to note what we want, or need… our government is no longer a government of the people,
for the people, by the people… our government is of the wealthy, for the wealthy,
by the wealthy… we live in an oligarchy, government of the wealthy but our
theory is we live in a government of the people, for the people, by the people…
we have a disconnect between the theory and the reality and that is causing
with people… and that disconnect is the reason people are taking opioids,
drugs, sex and rock and roll are means to escape from that disconnect, that
alienation… our love of knowing what the “stars” like tom cruise and
beyonce are doing is another way of dealing with the disconnect, the alienation…
why bother with knowing or caring what the government is doing or is society being
just because frankly it won’t affect me because I am not going to be treated equally
in any case… so why bother… so I take opioids because it really doesn’t matter if
do or not… I am not connected with society or the government or the culture in any
case… that disconnect is what is causing people to take drugs or drop out or drink
or what ever they do… get people back into the system, get people to reconnect
with society, with justice, with their culture and people will become connected
with and start engaging with society, justice, culture and they will stop
the drugs, drinking, sex and rock and roll…reconnect people with society
and many of the ills we complain about go away…this is the value of
what I am doing… attempting to find ways to reconnect people with values,
and with society by analysis of who we are and what are we to do…

we live in a nihilist society and I am trying to find a way to combat that…
our nihilism exists because we pursue money, profit over values like justice,
love, charity and hope… and that nihilism is also in part why people take drugs,
and drink and sex etc, etc…to recover who we are, we must first
understand that our modern society is a nihilistic one and what we can do
to remove or change that…we have a large, a very large task and
sometimes I think I am the only one who see’s this… oh, well…
the future begins…with a thought…

Kropotkin

after a very long day at work, I am attempting to philosophize…
we will see how this works…

it has been said that man pursues things… among the things that man/human beings
have pursued is knowledge… the first line in one of Aristotle books is just that…
Man pursues knowledge… so what is the list of things we can pursue?
if we are creatures that pursue things, then what do we pursue…
we can pursue such things that are material or idea’s or values among other things…

The Greeks for example, pursued arête, which is excellence… they pursued
excellence in everything they did… the word arête actually comes from military
excellence, the soldier being an excellent soldier was arête and then after the years passed
the word expanded to any activity where excellence could be found, like creating
drama’s and poetry, which during festivals had contest featuring drama and poetry…

Medieval man pursued god, or said another way, they pursued faith…

but humans aren’t limited to arête or faith as objects of pursuit…

humans can pursue a great many things like a material thing like cars or money
or TV’s… a human can pursue a non-material thing like fame or status…
a human can also pursue something like “vices” which would be drugs, sex, gambling,
as some common “vices”

but we also have “traditional” pursuits likes the pursuit of happiness, love or knowledge

and then you have different pursuits like the pursuit of experiences and the pursuit
of being first or the thrill of victory…

we have many different motivations that drive people and that is what complicates
the idea of, what is the meaning of life? because the meaning of life can be what motivates
one into action and gives meaning to that action…

we can pursue such things as justice, love, truth, values like this can also be
pursued… this is important to understand that we can pursue values like hope,
honor, charity, justice, love, but we only pursue the higher values… for there
is no point to pursue lower values like anger, hate, despair, violence… they
are pointless, empty values that offer us nothing… but the higher values…
they can create meaning, give our life purpose in pursuing those higher values…
like justice, and truth and love… they can create a vision of who we are and what
we need to do…

personally, I am not driven by fame or money or status… I pursue the truth…
finding knowledge, understanding is what is what drives me… I want to know…

so what drives you?

what creates meaning for you?

Kropotkin

Do you have any evidence for this claim Peter?

“Babies have three instinctive fears, of snakes, of the dark and of falling.”

I find the snake part especially to be questionable because I remember liking and getting excited about snakes as a child.

I think you have a misunderstanding of what “we” are. We are not made of atoms but of consciousness. Consciousness, as far as we know, requires atoms to exist, but consciousness itself is not atoms, and your consciousness is you, not your body nor your make up. If your consciousness could hypothetically exist as energy, and external from your body, would you say that you no longer exist?

Again, the atoms have nothing to do with you except for the fact that you require them to be conscious. Atoms have no history because history has to be recorded.

From the Ayn Rand Lexicon:
“Existence exists—and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists.”

You seem to be claiming that atoms exist outside of consciousness. They don’t. They can’t exist unless someone is perceiving them, and nobody has perceived and recorded the life of the atoms of JFK, Plato, or Julius Caesar so they literally have no history. We can make conjecture or supposition of their history, but nobody can actually perceive it which is why such history does not exist.

You sound like me when I used to frequent this forum in my early 20’s lol. I am still a holist, so I want to like what you are saying here, especially in the OP which I would have considered posting on my facebook wall and quoting you, with your permission, but you advocated voting, which I am against. You also make all kinds of unfounded claims about God and the need for a prime mover and assume that the big bang theory is correct. There is no need for a prime mover. Things move independently of that. For example, atoms vibrate. That has nothing to do with the big bang even if it does exist which is in question. You probably shouldn’t say anything in a philosophy forum that you can’t prove using either reasoning or evidence or preferably, both.

the motivations that drive us are diverse and exist within
both the environment and within us…

as a child, you are deprived of food, then, maybe, as a adult
you are driven to seek out food… become a foodie perhaps…

that which we seek, be it knowledge or love or justice or sensory
experiences are the foundations of the things we do and the things we
seek…I have no desire to have money and that doesn’t drive me
and others the drive for money is ALL they think about… it doesn’t make us,
either of us wrong, just different…

there is no way that I can tell, to say one drive is better or worse, then
any other drive… but these drives complicate our understanding
of the human being… we have a rough idea of who, what, when, where, why
and how of the human being… but that understanding takes a beating when
we try to include aspects of the human nature, emotions for example and
that which drives us to action…or what we search for…

the motivations of the human being is as individual as we are
and as hard to understand as we are…

I don’t believe we can ever really, truly grasp the human being until
we begin to understand the motivations and drives of human beings…

so what drives you?

Kropotkin

Then you have significantly more to “know” about you.

K: actually, I am atheist and don’t believe in god or the need for a prime mover…
unless you have a better idea, the big bang still fits the bill as the best answer as
to what began the universe…and yes, atoms vibrate… AND…there is nothing
to add to this… the atoms vibrate and…it doesn’t change anything if they vibrate…

now as far as the last part goes, I am not attempting to “prove” anything either by reasoning
or evidence… I am simply attempting to understand human beings and the human experience…

you have to understand before you can prove…

Kropotkin

K: we are made of atoms… consciousness is another different mess I have yet to explore…
the problem you have is, what is consciousness? how do you define consciousness?
point out where exactly in the human body does consciousness exists? if you say the mind,
I have seen human brains, where exactly in the brain does consciousness exist?
to makes existence “consciousness” has it owns problems and if you have studied
the problem, you would know what they are… so…

Kropotkin

I don’t have a better idea than the big bang, but I do have one that is equally as good. Perhaps the universe, rather than exploding, was inflated like a balloon. Perhaps matter and energy were created and the force of doing such inflated space time beyond the point of a singularity. There is also the possibility that the universe has always existed. To me, the big bang and God are both attempts to try to get around our incapability to grasp infinity. There is no logical reason why the universe has to have been created, so there is no logical reason to attempt to explain its creation. Also, the big bang is not science because it is not falsifiable.

That consciousness exists is an axiom. The fact that you are typing here proves that you are assuming that it does.

"When a savage who has not learned to speak declares that existence must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of non-existence—when he declares that your consciousness must be proved, he is asking you to prove it by means of unconsciousness—he is asking you to step into a void outside of existence and consciousness to give him proof of both—he is asking you to become a zero gaining knowledge about a zero.

When he declares that an axiom is a matter of arbitrary choice and he doesn’t choose to accept the axiom that he exists, he blanks out the fact that he has accepted it by uttering that sentence, that the only way to reject it is to shut one’s mouth, expound no theories and die." -Ayn Rand from “The New Intellectuals”

Not to interrupt, but briefly, if not created, then how did it get here?

Remember,

:sunglasses:

K: I didn’t ask if consciousness existed, I asked what it was and where do you find it?
which body part had it? if I dissect you, where would I find consciousness?

Kropotkin

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There is an actual answer to that (not to get too deep into it). But one could ask, “Exactly where in your PC is the application program?” And one could say, “It is in the computer’s memory”. And that would be true, but where in the memory? - different places at different times and in different pieces. If not stored on disc, where does it go when the computer is turned off?

To someone who had no idea of how computers worked, those might be mysterious questions. The same is true for those who have no idea how their brain works. If you don’t know enough about a computer, no answer will be very revealing and is always questionable. The same is true when you don’t know enough about your brain: “Your consciousness exists in your memory”, but what did that really tell you and how could you know the truth of it either way?

K: personally, I have no idea where the computer memory is, but, but many
people do know where the memory is and they build computers knowing this
fact… (I am researching building my own computer, so this is rather relevant)
but no one, not doctors or scientist or philosophers knows where consciousness exists…
do the research and you will read, “it is believed that consciousness exists in…”
does consciousness exists in your memory? no one knows… that is the point…
no one knows…ask your local neighborhood doctor and they have no idea…
so, I am still waiting for an answer… where does consciousness exist?

Kropotkin