a new understanding of today, time and space.

perhaps I am going about this the wrong way…

Einstein showed us that oftentimes, it was not about
the answers but about what the question was…

so let us change the question…

does meaning/purpose give us an understanding of experiences?

this is the path of religion… we have the answer and through that
answer, we have an understanding of our experiences…

but that would suggest that we have the right
answer and given our experiences, we don’t have the right answers…

so, our already given meaning/purposes can inform us about experiences
but it is nothing more then observational bias… we expect certain
results based on already given meaning/purpose and that
is really not a true search for the meaning/purpose of our
experiences… that simply confirms what we already know…

perhaps, it is a feedback loop between meaning/purpose and
experiences… we have an experiences and it is confirmed or denied
by our already given meaning/purpose and so we use that knowledge
to readjust that meaning/purpose and which we test against further
experiences… the one, experiences and the other, meaning/purpose…
use each other to gain further knowledge of the universe and how it works
and what is the point of experiences…they are not enemies, but collaborators…
using each other to gain further knowledge of the universe… of experiences
and what to make of each experience we have…

we use an hypothesis, meaning/purpose, and then we have
an experience and we then test the hypothesis, meaning/purpose,
against that experience…with the aid of that experience, we can
fine tune our meaning/purpose to a greater detail…

perhaps, perhaps that is the path?

Kropotkin

let further work out experience…

last night I finally got a new computer…
a dell… for about half of what it usually costs…
and it was fairly highly rated…

so, I was up until 1:00 trying to get it going…
I had forgotten how many updates they make you go through, to
get it set up…now all that time, about 2 or 2:30 hours, spent
trying to get this thing ready for use… that is experience…

was there any meaning or purpose in all that waiting… that experience?

I certainly can’t see it…it was just boring, waiting for updates to work
themselves out…

making sure the computer protection was working and getting ITunes online…

necessary stuff but there was no meaning or purpose except to get the computer
going… nothing big… but perhaps that is the point… how much of our experience
is really going to “big stuff”…How much that happens really means anything?

I go to work and stand around for 8 hours and that is experience, but most of it
is just killing time until I can go home… the trick to is to discover what
experiences are really something to understand and which are just crap…

the vast majority of life is simply crap… wasted time… waiting for something
or someone… standing in some god awful line yet again…

how much of much of my life has been something significant?
very little…I can probably count on one hand the moments that
were meaningful or had some life purpose meaning to it…

perhaps, that is the meaning or purpose of life…
to have more of those meaningful or significant moments?

some moments are joyful and some are so horrible that they drop
us to our knees in pain…how many moment of those have you had?

perhaps the question is, how do we bring back meaning or significance
into our lives… is it moment to moment or do we need to
see the full sweep of our lives to finally understand its meaning or significance?

can we hang our hat on the significance of our lives on one or two moments?

what events or experiences can we say actually gave our lives some meaning or
purpose?

look at this from an individual standpoint AND a communal, community,
social aspect…

is our lives meaning best found in individual moments/experiences or
is it best found, shared with one or more people?

the Greeks thought that we discover who we are in a community,
not individually… the making of a human being is best done in
a society, a community…now in your life, which has been true…
did you discovered yourself individually or did you discover yourself
socially, in a group, in a community?

for most of us, we learned who we are in groups socially or
in a community… I believe the Greeks are right…
which is why I believe the GOP attack on community is wrong…

it is in our response to other humans that we find out who we are and
what is our meaning/purpose…

can Robinson Crusoe find his meaning/purpose all alone on that island?
No, he cannot…he needs and we need people, community to discover
what is our meaning/purpose… it is through our response to
events/experiences in regards to other people that we learn who we are…

life is a communal event/experience…

so in our experiences can we find meaning/purpose?
or do we have meaning/purpose giving us the results of our
experiences?

which comes first, meaning/purpose or events/experiences?

Kropotkin

let us try this…

we know that people have perceived notions…
notions that some, SOME, people take as an absolute…
now some of those notions include this idea of god…
these people will concede almost every other notion but
this one… that there is a god in heaven…
it doesn’t matter what evidence that is presented before them…
they will not budge from their idea that there is a god…
now one who holds this opinion is certainly allowed to hold this
opinion… but these people approach events and experiences with
this notion of there being a god…every event and experience they
have doesn’t begin with the event or experiences, it begin with the
notion that there is a god… and they bring that notion into experiences
and events… they see experiences and events through the
belief of there being a god… they place meaning/purpose
first, then they see the event/experiences…they filter
events and experiences with the pre-knowledge of god…

in other words, any possible gain in knowledge from those
events/experiences are lost because one has already determined
that god is already existing in that event…

you reached the conclusion before the event/experience…

if the person has reached the conclusions before the event, any lessons
that might be learned is lost… if you have determined a conclusion…
then the event/experience doesn’t really matter because you will already have the
conclusion…

this observation bias, as science calls it, is a major problem in how we
understand things… to truly understand something, we must not
have preconceived notions…but this leads us to an interesting place…
we are becoming aware…and this is a very good thing… this is one means
of becoming aware is by thinking about our biases… what am I bias about?

yes, I hate young republicans…they are always so smug… but what other biases
do I have? what biases do you have? this is one means of becoming aware…

so how do we approach events/experiences? another question?

are we ourselves, an event/experience? and if so, how do we approach
ourselves? occasionally I must admit, I am surprised by something I did or
didn’t do… how do I understand that experience? are we still in philosophy or
are we in psychology? and is there a difference? if experience is the key aspect
of our lives, then understanding how we experience, experiences,
doesn’t that include how we experience ourselves? if that sounds confusing,
join the club…we certainly do seem to have a blind eye to ourselves in
our reaction to events/experiences…maybe this is why women will
talk endlessly, fucking endlessly about an event/experience…perhaps,
this is some means to gather evidence about how ones approaches
an event/experience, perhaps…

I have noticed, in myself for example, I cannot experience myself within an
environment… I am typing right now… I look about the room… what I am
aware of is me, looking out at the world, not being in the world but being separate from,
apart from the world… I can imagine myself looking at myself because I know what I
look like… I can see me watching myself type at the computer at my kitchen table…
but each new vision is just another perspective… I note in looking up perspective,
I see, just before it in the dictionary, various definitions of personal, personality,
personnel, perhaps the root word of perspective is person… we each have a perspective,
a point of view, my viewpoint of looking at the world…perhaps a perspective is
literally, a point of view from a person’s eyes…and our point of view
does make a difference on how we view an event/experience…

literally, our point of view of what our eyes see, makes a difference on
our perception of an event/experience… instead of writing experience,
I wrote evidence… of an event/evidence…interesting freudian slip…

our perception of an event/experience is about evidence…
what evidence does this event/experience bring us to our knowledge
of the world or our understanding of the world or our biases of the world…

we use evidence of events/experience to bare on our understanding of
how the world works…if the evidence confirms our understanding of
the world, we say yah… I am right… and if the evidence denies our
understanding of the world… we say, that evidence is wrong…
we would do almost anything to maintain our observational bias in our
seeing the world…it is far easier to say the evidence is wrong,
then to admit that we might be wrong…and then we might have to do
something about us being wrong…god forbid we admit we are wrong…

so our experiences of the world is rooted in our own prior understanding of
the world, our observation biases…we take our observation bias into
every event/experience we face… and therein lies our modern problems…

we have failed to learn the lessons of events/ experience because we have
put our observation bias ahead of, before the events/experience…
and so we miss any lessons we might learn from event/experiences…
because we are looking at the event/experience, we are looking at the
observation bias and not at the event/experience…this is why
people will often not learn pretty obvious lessons from events/experiences…
they are fixed on their observation bias instead of seeing what they could learn
from the event/experience…

we can use this to explain some behavior… we see people quite often
vote against their own interest…voting for the GOP is downright stupid
if you are middle class or below… but people still do it, why? I think
reading comments on websites is instructive… people will say, they are glad
that IQ45 is causing liberals to cry in their sleep… anything to vex liberals is
the goal which means it doesn’t matter what IQ45 does as long as it vexes liberals
and that includes treason and crimes against the American people… hay, it vexes
liberals, so it must be alright…the event/experiences of IQ45 is less important
then the perception of people against liberalism… whatever vexes liberals is
the important thing, not the crimes against America or the destruction of America…
those are unimportant because of the fixed hatred of liberals which causes
people to think it doesn’t matter what IQ45 does as long as it vexes liberals…
ever if it means the destruction of America… that is the observational bias
that people carry into this whole matter of IQ45 and the vexing of liberals…
and look at the damage it has created already… and his only win in passing
legislation is a bill that will turn the US into Kansas which is a hellhole…
a bill meant to destroy the middle and working class of America…

this is concrete evidence of what happens when people put their observational
bias ahead of the lessons to be learned from events/experiences…

Kropotkin

it was asked earlier, how do we experience ourselves?

I have taken a couple days of reflection on this…

I believe it is art is how we experience ourselves…

look at art and imagine…

there lies past, present and future…

it is in art that we see how we were and how we are
and how we might be…

art gives us possibilities of becoming human…

and art is the higher functions of being human,

not the lower…

but art also connects the emotions and passion
with reason…

for we feel and then we use reason to organize that passion and emotion
and pain into art…

for we have music created by Mozart and Shubert and ART created by Da Vinci
and Michelangelo and writers like Shakespeare and Tolstoy

and we also have the Holocaust and the genocide of the American Indians
and mass murderers and torture being practiced on people every day…

so which is the real us? are we the creators of beauty and love and art
or are we the ones who butcher millions and tortures and hate with such
ferocity…YES…

to become human, truly human we must find a way to become something
better… we don’t need to reject our brutal side, we just need to say,
not today, today I create beauty…today, I create art…
and we take all that brutality and hate and anger and we turn it into art…

we have some mistaken belief that competition and warfare
create better human beings…no, the real battle, the real warfare
and competition is inside of us…

in becoming human… the real competition is in the mastery of the
lower side of us, the animal side of us… and rising toward the higher angels
of our nature…

who wins, the lower side of us, the brutality and anger and hate
or the higher side of love, peace and art? and this struggle
between the higher side and the lower side is all the struggle,
all the competition and warfare we need…

and the winning side, the higher or lower determines if we human beings,
survive and go on or we parish as a species…the stakes are high
the very survival of the human species is at stake…

and art, art can lead the way for us to discover our higher side…
for art can turn brutality and anger and hate into light and art and
beauty…

perhaps to save humanity, we must turn all our people into artist,
not scholars or warriors or haters, but artist and in art, we can
discover how to become human, fully human…

Perhaps…

Kropotkin

Nietzsche higher man, the Ubermensch,
does that higher man follow the higher instincts, the higher values
that we have? I have called for us to follow our higher self, the values
of love, peace, hope… instead of the lower values of hate,
anger, violence…

when we follow the higher self of who we are, then are
we not the Ubermensch? Nietzsche call for an Ubermensch is really
a call for us to follow what is higher in us, values that represent
what human being is, not what an animal is…

so my call and Nietzsche call are the same… and once
again whatever road I take, he has already taken…

Kropotkin

as one explores the Enlightenment, one discovers that
they were mostly against stuff…
the church they were against, and intolerance and superstition
and authority…

the only area that they were for stuff was in the political and there
they were for toleration and democracy and reason and science…

it is interesting the change between the enlightenment and today…

think about it…

Kropotkin

Meaning and values and experience…

so when people ask me what I do on my off days, I say, I study
philosophy… after they are done looking at me like I’m crazy…
they always, ALWAYS ask, what is the meaning of life?

It would take a whole another post to wonder why people ask
that particular question, but anyway, my answer depends on
how much I really want to engage… most of the time, I don’t…
and so I will give a generic answer like, the meaning of life is whatever
you make of it… and I run, because I really don’t want to engage anymore…
occasionally, if the person seems like they are asking a honest question,
I will go into further depth and say…if you look at animals and we are
an animal, it seems that from an evolutionary standpoint, there is no other
meaning outside of the continuation and perpetuation of the species…
now this is a species meaning, individually, we create our own meaning
outside of this continuation of the species… we have no great individual
meaning outside of our perpetuating the species…so we have a two track
meaning… species wide to continue the species and individually, whatever
we want…traveling or studying or making rugs whatever…

but if you think about it… what is the meaning of life?

we have experiences and we draw “meaning” from those experiences…
but what really happens? the enlightenment period point was
“How are we suppose to live” both individually and collectively
as a cultural and a society… we are suppose to be tolerant and
not superstitious, wary of authority, open minded, reasonable…
your basic “liberal” idea’s…how we are suppose to live as individuals
and as a society…

we have experiences and how do we draw meaning from them?
we have an experience and we give that experience some value…
then we compare the value we learn from that experience to other
experiences and we then either change or modify or keep the value…

for example, I have experience people who lie… I have learned
from my experience with people that the value I like is honesty…
it is a value that has value both individually and as a society…
and the older I get, the more I value honesty… with each experience
I learn the value of honesty… for me, the honesty of experiences
with people give me the meaning… I gain meaning from the
interaction I have with people who are honest… honesty creates
meaning… value creates meaning of experiences…so I experience,
then I create some value to that experience then I understand the
meaning…so the path to meaning lies first with some experience,
then I attach some value to that experience and then I gain some meaning
from that experience…with each experience… we can then test the
value in question… for example, with each experience, I can see the value
of honesty and that gives each experience more meaning…

from values we reach meaning… and value are tested every day
in our experiences… what values work in what experiences and
we then refine each value in light of our experiences and from that
refinement, we reach meaning or ever new meaning…

we see from our experiences that love is of more meaning then
hate if we react from hate with each experience, then the experience
will not end well, but if we use the value of love with each experience,
then the matter will end much better… that is how we can
and understanding of experiences and values and meaning…
they each support each other… we have experiences, then we
give some value to that experience and then by repeated experiences,
we see the value of that value and then we also see the meaning of that
value…

experiences, values and meaning…

Kropotkin

I continue on my understanding of experience…

experience and values…

we have experiences of something…
and then we give it a value… for example,
that was an transformational experience…
the word transformational is a value…
we use value words to describe something…
that was a hopeful event, that was a lovely experience…
that was an angry meeting…with hopeful, lovely and angry being
value words…but how do we come up with those value words?

by experiences… what I may consider a lovely event/experience
another person may say “boring” as our ages and experiences are different,
we have a different understanding of experiences based on experience…
when we say someone is old is just another way of saying they have a lot
of experience behind them…a single event may have different interpretations
because of different experiences of people who viewed the event…

one might say, that was a transformational experience and I might say,
hay, I learned that lesson 40 years ago and so it wasn’t a transformational
event for me…our experiences create context for us and it is in context
that we use value words…to put something into context just means
to view something in light of prior experience…

how we use experience to understand experiences…
and it is in our experience that understands how value words
are used…the task of philosophy is to understand value words
and put them into context… experience…

now as I have mentioned, the enlightenment used values like
tolerance and not being superstitious to describe both the human being
and the society… the typical human being should be tolerant and not superstitious
and not dependent on authority and wary of the religious and they thought that society
should be the same way… they created the modern ideal of liberalism…

those who argue against the liberal vision of the modern world don’t offer
up an alternative vision of the human being… they criticize for sure,
“Liberalism is a proven mental illness” is certainly one example,
but the thread offers us no alternative vision… just ignorant
babbling…superstition as it were…and just as the right has
no vision of the human being, it has no vision of society…
how do we know? Look at the values that the right offers us…
greed, hate, violence, anger, intolerance… now we can use experience
to know that we cannot build any stable or functional society based
on those values… but we can build lives and a society based on positive
values… and it is philosophy job to discover those values and
promote them… to create stable people and a stable society…
and we use experience to understand those values…
because that is how we understand values, through experience…
look at your family experience… if you felt loved, you were more stable
then someone who didn’t feel love from their family…
positive values create stability in both individuals and in a society…
and it is philosophy job to find and promote those positive values
that make for a stable individual and society…
so why is the 20th century so different from the prior centuries
before it? because it embraced different values… not that that is bad,
but we still haven’t come to terms with the new values…
why? because we use experience to come to terms with values
and we have no experience to compare and contrast to the actions of the 20th century…
two world wars, the holocaust, the cold war, the rise of technology…
experience is how we understand experiences, that is how we compare and
contrast experiences, by experience…how do we compare or contrast
the new sciences of quantum physics. Which other experiences can we compare
or contrast the new science? we have no experiences with quantum physics or
the theory of relativity or any of the other new sciences and that is part of
our malaise of the 20th and 21 century… we cannot use experience to understand
the new sciences…we cannot use value words on the new sciences because
we don’t know the experience of say, quantum physics… which value word
would you use on quantum physics? I don’t have one either…because I
don’t have enough experiences to compare or contrast the new sciences…
and you don’t either…

so experience creates the value words we use in our world,
lovely or transformational or honorable or boldness or beauty,
or creativity or faith or fun or justice or loyalty…
we probably have hundreds of value words we use to
to describe events/experiences… and we must use that experience
to create those value words, to give those experiences some
meaningful understanding…and the crisis of our age is from
the nihilism of the state and of corporate America which denies
those value words and instead pursues profit over those value words…
when profit comes before justice or profits comes before love…
and indeed, profit crushes those values because they don’t create
profit… that is nihilism…you want to save America?
you want to be saved? find values before profits…
and which values? that is the point of philosophy…
and of experiences that help us decide which values are worth
keeping and maintaining…create and promote positive values
and not nihilistic values like profit, anger, hate, violence, …

Kropotkin

one might think, “ok, Kropotkin, what the fuck does this have to do with
anything” and that is a reasonable question…

and it has everything to do with… everything?

Ok, when last seen, I was using experiences to
understand experiences and by experiences,
we can then apply value words to explain or understand those
experiences…

I posited that value words can be positive and by extension,
they can also be negative… but upon what do we base our
understanding of positive or negative words?

by experience…we compare and or contrast value words with
our experiences and can based on our experiences decides which
values are positive values and which values are negative ones…

take hate for example…it is in my experience that hate is a negative
value… it doesn’t lead to stability or lead to understanding or lead to peace…
hate arises from the lower, animal values but it doesn’t create anything…
hate destroys… it doesn’t build and it doesn’t lead to anything useful…

take intolerance… it is a negative value because it too doesn’t build or
doesn’t create stability or it doesn’t create anything, but it does destroy…

and in our collective experiences, what do we need? values that build up,
values that are positive, values that create…and tolerance does that,
whereas intolerance doesn’t create or build up…it is negative…it adds a negative
value to our lives…

so why the dissent to IQ45? because the values he promotes are of hate, anger, violence,
intolerance which are not values that promote stability or peace or create…
those values of IQ45 are negative values because they destroy or create imbalance,
they lead to instability, both personally and collectively… and we are a system
in the midst of many different systems and systems to survive must have stability
and cohesion and values that promote stability and cohesion are useful, necessary,
positive values…this is why love is a much stronger value then hate…
love promotes cohesion, stability, creation both individually and collectively…
values that help keep a system functional…and that is what we want…
we want values that create stability and cohesion and growth… so we want
positive values like love, peace, tolerance… IQ 45 only values negative values,
values that negatively impact our many diverse systems…

this is how we judge values… by how it impacts us, individually and collectively
and how we judge is by experience, we compare and contrast our individual
and collective experiences, to make a judgement… which is why
IQ45 polls are negative… he has a 36% approval rating… because in our
collective experience, we feel he has a negative impact on our lives…
his values are not our values because his values are negative and do not
promote our systems positively… IQ45 values are of hate, anger, intolerance,
greed…and those values negatively impacts our systems, individually
and collectively…

Kropotkin

we see in the modern world the success that the values
of the enlightenment brought us…and yet we also see failure…
why? we look at the success of the modern system with liberal values
as encompassing more and more people into the political system…
and we see the how of enlightenment value of justice (which is equality)
has changed the modern world… so we know that enlightenment values
have changed the world for good and then, once again, why the failure?

Let us look at the economic system…one could make the argument that
the boom during the last two centuries was the result of using enlightenment
values in work… the 5 day work week, the breaks both for lunch
and 10 minute breaks… the safety improvements of the workplace,
the disability act, all of these help drive the boom of the last two centuries…
and yet the bottom line premise of business hasn’t changed, the pursuit of
profit regardless of the human cost and the cost to the planet itself…

this pursuit of profit isn’t and can’t be part of the enlightenment
agenda… and this is where we are going wrong… we haven’t
taken the enlightenment values into all our systems…

in other words, we have to carried enlightenment values of tolerance,
moderation, wariness of authority, of equality and of justice into all
areas of our lives… we haven’t taken liberal values to all area’s of our lives
and therein lies the key to our failure… the economic system is still too
based on greed, remember Gordon Gekko, Greed is good… and greed
is a lower base instinct and not part of enlightenment values which preaches
we are better off as one working together instead of two fighting each other
over who gets a larger share of the profits…

we need to take liberal values into all area’s of our lives and we shall be far
more successful then we are now… we haven’t carried liberal values
far enough and until we do, we shall be spinning our wheels going nowhere…

you can’t have part of your system based on one set of values and then another
part of your system based on another set of values…the entire
system must be based on one set of values, and experience tells us that
liberal values are the values that work the best… we can build and maintain
the system better with liberal values then with non-liberal, (conservative)
values… love, peace, hope, justice are far better values at building
and maintaining a system then conservative values of hate, greed, anger,
lust… once again, our experience shows us this… from the family to
work groups to even larger groups such as country and a society…

and what is the first step? just by becoming aware… become
aware of who we are and where we must go and how experience
and values and meaning all come from each other…

and the second step…

it is not enough to understand the world,
we must change it…Karl Marx…

Kropotkin

one of the persistent lies of our time is that
we thrive via warfare and competition…

think of your own existence and your own experiences and
does this lie have any truth? has warfare and competition
really driven your life for the better? I can look over my live
and answer no… Now, recall I was an athlete for most of my life,
I competed but I learned something… I must admit I learned
this after I was not longer to compete due to a bad back and frankly
old age…I learned it is not the competition to be number one that
matters… that is ego, no the competition is to improve oneself…
to get your 440 time to improve… to go from 59.9 to 59…that is
the true competition to improve oneself… now as I have mentioned
more then once… the true battle we face is becoming human…
it is not the external battles we face that are the ones that matter,
it is the internal battles we face that are the ones that matter…
it is inside of us becoming more human that must occupy our time…
rising above the instincts and the lower level animal side of us that
is our battle… becoming human means becoming more human instead
of becoming more animal… and that means rising above the lower level
instincts of greed and hate and anger and lust… that is the true human battle…
the true competition we must face…

I would rather try to improve my 440 time then having to face
my internal weakness because that is terrifying… look into your soul and
what do you see? that is the human battle we should be fighting…

it is easier to face the wildest animals or climb the highest mountain
or outrun bears then try to face who we are… who we truly are…
it is that fear of who we are that keeps us from exploring who we are and
what we might be… it is about being, the right now and becoming, what might be…
who are we and what might we become… that is the battle…
how to become more human…are you strong enough, brave enough,
have courage enough to face who you are and what you might become?

few are…think of one who did just this…

Kropotkin

Metaphysics
Epistemology
Aesthetics
political theory
Ethics
logic

these are the main branches of philosophy…

what is philosophy? not love of wisdom but philosophy is actually
a body of knowledge…and what should we have knowledge of?

today, December 29, 2017… we have more knowledge about our
neighboring stars then we have knowledge about who we are
and what is possible for human beings…that which is closes to us
is the greatest mystery to us…let no here say, I am to young or too old
or too set in my ways or pox on both houses… to understand who they are
and what is possible for them…

as I have grown older, the doors of life have silently closed…
I can no longer run like I used to or rock climb like I used to
or even stay up as long as I used to or drink beer the way I used to…
I am getting older and my physical possibilities are growing smaller…
the doors are closing…

but I can still discover who I am and what is possible for me…
I can engage in discovery about the real nature of Kropotkin
and who that foolish man is all about…I can learn who I am…
the greatest journey of all… and the hardest journey…

because I too have delusions about who I am… I am in denial about
who is the real Kropotkin…I have a glorified and false understanding
about who I am…we all think we are smarter then we are and we all
think we are nicer and kinder and so much better a human being then
the next guy… but what is the truth?

am I a better human being then you? ego says yes and reality says no…
I must no longer listen to ego and I must find out who is this human being name
Kropotkin really is…and reality is just experience understood correctly…

this is the only journey worth taking… the only battle worth fighting,
the only competition worth having and the only battle we must fight to
our dying day… who are we and what are our possibilities?

Kropotkin

For social change, often, a valued idea gets hijacked.

What you call nihilism, in this case, is editing values. Not pure and true nihilism, but yes, nihilistic.

The value of money sometimes becomes higher than the value of life.

It’s sad but i think it is happening as we speak.

K: yes, it is sad that money/profit is valued higher then human life…
when politicians say, we must protect the taxpayer at all cost, they really
mean, we must protect money over human life…thus negation of life
comes at a cost…and the cost is coming due… we cannot maintain our
current capitalistic course because resources are limited and our current
course assumes that resources are unlimited and they are not…
but once again greed plays a role in this… greed doesn’t matter if there
is enough resources to maintain its greed… greed is all about greed…
and nothing else…the pursuit of money/profit is an empty pursuit because
it is empty goal… much like soda and popcorn is empty calories…
it is there but it isn’t worth anything… and in fact is harmful but it does
fill one up, for the moment and because it is empty calories, you are in need
of more empty calories… you can never get really full on empty calories
and you can never get full on the empty promise of money/profit…

you always need more and more and more…and no matter how much you get,
it is never enough… that is the empty promise of money and profit…
and we are foolish enough to put that empty promise over people…

it is sad…

Kropotkin

And greed will save us all:

youtu.be/VVxYOQS6ggk

K: I do not look at youtube video’s posted here because I think that
is the height of lazyness…if you have an argument, tell me about it…
I quite often will give another person’s argument but I will not be lazy
about it and post a video…not to mention the fact, I am so technology
inept, I can’t post it here… so tell me the argument made in your own words…

Kropotkin

’

Allow me, Kropotkin. It is a video of Michael Douglas portraying a character called Gordon Gekko. He is addressing a crowd of people. He first tells the assembled gathering that his last seven deals have netted a pre-tax profit of 12 billion dollars for 2.5 million shareholders. Gekko is espousing the virtues of greed, “for want of a better word”. The character suggests that greed is good - right- works - clarifies and cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed in all it’s forms, greed for life, for money, for love - knowledge…

Greed will save The USA

I’m not convinced greed is the answer. I question whether it is the essence of the evolutionary spirit?

I wonder what Pandora had in mind when she posted her video?

K: why thank you sir…I thank your for your kindness in watching that video and
your explanation… greed is a lower instinct and cannot be the answer because
to make it a basis of human existence is to create a system that will fail… because
greed is not a way for systems to work, be it a family or a economic system or a
political system…Greed turned into a universal value is a path to failure,
both in the short term and in the long term…for greed puts our own needs ahead
of everyone else and we know that, from our experience of being children
and being parents, that to practice greed as a family and as parents is a path
to failure… our experience shows us this… a parent cannot be about personal
greed for that leads to putting the parent first and not the children… and as a
parent, I know you don’t put yourself first, you put your children and spouse first…
not yourself…to put yourself first is to fail your children, fail your family…
this is the lesson of experience and the lesson of the family…
Greed fails on every level… and on every system…
it cannot be the answer if it fails on a system wide basis…

Kropotkin

the human experience… is one of pain, suffering and anguish…
and the human experience is one of joy and life and happiness…
and the human experience is one of boredom and monotony and much wasted time…
and the human experience is one of good and evil…

so which human experience is the “right” one?

all of them… but how do we reconcile these opposites?
how do we fit god into these opposites?

God is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and is the ultimate good…
how could the ultimate good create evil? the believer in saving god,
blames the human being for the creation of evil… but, but if god
is omnipotent, he cannot be blameless in the creation of evil…

if evil is out of god’s hand, then god is not omnipotent…
either god is omnipotent or he isn’t… either god is
responsible for evil or he isn’t god as we know it…

but how does the believer answer this? by then changing the Goal line…
by saying that it is all part of god’s plan and that plan is beyond man’s
understanding… but that means that god has created evil and is responsible
for evil, but evil serves some unknown reason of god…and we are unable to
understand god’s plan… but evil then does exist and god created it…

the two concepts clash… either man creates evil and god is no longer
omnipotent or god creates evil and is all part of god’s plan for man…

but the problem for today’s believer is simple… how to believe in the
face of the 20th century history… how to believe in the fact of two world wars
and the Holocaust and the death of millions in disease and warfare…
if god is omnipotent, then god is responsible for the deaths of millions,
we just don’t understand why or god isn’t responsible and man is responsible
and god isn’t omnipotent… the solution for today’s believer is simple,
pretend that the events of the 20th century didn’t occur…and this
alone allows the believer to believe in a omnipotent god…
the world wars and the Holocaust simple didn’t occur…
and we can then hold our beliefs intact…

those who try to have it both ways, by saying god is omnipotent
and yet man is responsible for evil is simply avoiding the issue.
by pretending that god is omnipotent and man creates evil…
but to make god omnipotent means god is responsible for evil…

and so they flee to the second choice which is, evil is beyond man’s
comprehension…there is a limit to man’s understanding about god…

I suggest that there is a much easier way to understand the world…
take out the belief in god… and now the universe makes much more sense…

but, but it then requires some understanding of the world without
support of some belief system in divinity…

how are we to understand pain, suffering and anguish…
how are we to understand joy, life and happiness…
how are we to understand boredom and monotony and the wasted time…
and how are we to understand good and evil?

the Buddha believes that suffering is the problem of human existence
and if we find a way to remove suffering, we find a way out of the problem
of human existence…

Jesus believes that the finding salvation is the problem of human existence
and if we find a way to find salvation, we find a way out of the problem
of human existence…

but they are both wrong for they only account for part of the problem,
not the whole problem…
we can remove some suffering by our actions, but not all suffering…
we do grow old and we do die, no matter how hard we try to avoid them…
but by accepting what is to be regardless of what we do, we come to grips with it…

I shall grow old and I shall die… it doesn’t matter what I do, I cannot change that…
so I accept it… and that is the solution… by accepting what is unchangeable,
that of growing old and of dying…I have seen friends and family die… it is
suffering, but I cannot change it… I cannot do anything else but accept it…

I shall continue to see friends and family die… I cannot do anything about it
and I shall suffer from it… but I cannot change it…I can only understand that
aspect of life and accept it… I can do no other…

it is a fatalism of sorts, but only of a sorts…
for I can change other aspects of my life…
and this the key… some aspects of my life, I can change…

I can reason and by reason, I can understand what is changeable and what
isn’t…and I can, by emotions, feel suffering and pain and anguish.
and I can by emotions, feel boredom and monotony and wasted time,
and by emotions, I can understand good and evil…

but then how do I understand the “evils” of the twentieth century?
how do I understand the two world wars and the holocaust
and the deaths of millions?

at this junction lies Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and existentialism…
instead of reason, we turn to emotions… we use art as explanation
for the understanding of “evil”…

for how can we rationally explain two world wars and the holocaust and
the deaths of millions?

for art is the experience of turning explanation into some form…
be it pictures or statues or movies or literature…
we can explain actions that are otherwise unexplainable into the explainable…
by art, we can make sense of the world which is otherwise without sense…
how do you explain the actions of the twentieth century…
the two world wars, the holocaust, the deaths of millions?

do you like the Christian simply pretends it didn’t happen or
do you blame god or do you simply say, it is beyond our understanding?

simple copouts like this is to be expected because people won’t
challenge themselves to actually understand and/or explain
the actions of the twentieth century…

we cannot advance as a people until we come up with an
understanding of the actions of the twentieth century…
and we cannot understand who we are until we also
put into context the science of the twentieth century…

context is just another word for experience…
how do we put into context the science of the twentieth century?

how do we make sense of quantum physics into our lives?
how do we understand gravity into our lives?

perhaps the answer lies in some other area?

perhaps instead of the material world, the tree’s and the stars and
the earth, we find answers in the changes of the world…

perhaps we can find answers in the processes of the world
and not in the material aspects of the world…

perhaps?

Kropotkin

the question has been asked and it is our time to answer…

How is it possible to be a Christian in light of the events/ atrocities
of the 20th century?

we need a new Kierkegaard to explain how we can be Christians
after the 20th century…

is it finally time to depart the faith because faith cannot understand
or explain how we can have faith after the events/atrocities of the 20th century…

Kropotkin