a new understanding of today, time and space.

Meno:

Ok, that makes sense.could we correlate sense with non-sense to good choices and no choices? Then sensing versus not sensing what is right or wrong is the ultimate key to change , as I understand it.

The problem with this is statistical likelihood of being able to sense thus difference , because our minds are often mistaken.

But, looking at the political/psychological/social matrix today, the numbers are not promising about what senses might want to accept or reject. Most want to accept what their minds tell them because they do not trust their senses. They are very easily swayed one way or another.

Can this negative difference be overcome by a majority?

I have grave problems with this. I think Your futurism is commendable but it may not be quite a self fulfilling prophesy. I may be off on the statistics I admit.
[/quote]
K: all I am saying is not about stats or the “social matrix” whatever that is…

no, all I am saying is we have a wide variety of choices in terms of values…
we can pick our values be it love or peace or charity or justice…if we
want to have control over our values…

if we pick values like anger and hate and violence and greed and lust…
we have no control over instinctual values like anger and hate…so on…

make the right choices and choose love or peace or justice or charity
that is all I am saying… nothing more…

Kropotkin

I think Your comments are poignant and ‘make sense’ there is the statistical problem with who among the popular, who can make sensible decisions among the options out there, since they (most) can’t differentiate what appears ’ right’ to them from what in fact is sensible. This difference is tantamount in taking the right path toward the most factual choice.

This is what’s wrong with this whole Trumpism scene, and this is why an ill defined center is developing.

I am reading a book about Hume: an intellectual biography by James Harris…

and one quote just leaped out at me… I think this quote sums up
the entire conservative mantra…

“What matters in government is stability, order and the protection of rights
of property”

that sums up the entire conservative mantra and point about
government… but what if it is wrong…

what if… the point of goverenment is not just about stability or order or
the protection of property… notice that the quote doesn’t mention
values like freedom or justice or equality or hope… no, the entire
point of government is to maintain the order of society even if that
order is wrong… for example, it is 1935 and the legally elected goverment
of Germany is Hitler’s Nazi party… under the conservative mantra, we must,
must obey the governement because it is creating stability and order
and protects property… of course it did this at the expense of the
Jews and other “undesirables” like homosexuals and communist…

creating order by eliminating dissent and “disorder”…
basically anyone who opposes the Nazi’s… you have stability
and order and the protection of the rights of property by
removing anyone who opposes you… this is a method favored
by conservatives today… who have called for “libtards” to be shot
or removed from this country forcibly without any recourse to
legal protection… because personal rights are just not important
compared to the protection of property…

so is government just about stability, order and the protection of
the rights of property or does government have a far greater role…
in the promotion of freedom or of justice for example…or equality…
it is not enough to want a form of government that only has very limited
scope like maintaining stability or order or the protection of the rights of
property… we need, must have a government is engaged in the expansion
of such rights as freedom and justice and equality for all it citizens…
it is not enough to promote stability or order… we must have a government
that promotes values that benefit all its citizens, not just the ones
who want their property protected…

“we the people in order to form a more perfect union”

we the people, not we the people with property who want police
protection and government that only protects my property and maintains
my safety and my security…

once again it is about the values chosen… not just the value
of security or safety… but the values of freedom and justice
and equality and hope and love and peace and charity…
for not just the instinctual values of safety and security…
higher values like love and hope and charity…

this is the question… what values are we going to choose, not
only personally but collectively… together… which values are
the values in which we are going to live our life, individually and collectively…

what choices are we going to make in regards to such issues as the reach
of government and how are we to interact with each other…
do we act and interact with love and peace and justice and
tolerance or are we going to act and interact with hate, anger, greed,
lust, violence… the instinctual values that we cannot control because
they are instincts… the value we inherited with the animals of the earth…
are we really going to act with and become one with the instinct of animals?
I hope not… I want to choose higher, more human values… values that
represent me as a human being… values of…you know …

Kropotkin

K: actually the “center” is quite defined… we have picked values that represent us
as human beings… values like love and charity and justice and equality…
“Trumpism” is about values like hate and anger and violence and lust and
greed… negative values that are lower values… values that bring us closer
to being animals instead of becoming who we are… which is human… and
the values we choose defines who we are… rise to become human… don’t fall
and become animal by letting our lower values define us… values which we cannot
control because they are instincts like anger and greed and hate and violence…

I believe you are overthinking this… it is really simple… if you were to teach
your children values… which values would you teach them? would you teach to hate
or be greedy or to have lust or to be angry? no, you wouldn’t and I am a parent
and I tried to teach my daughter positive values like love and peace and charity
and hope and justice and equality…that is all I am saying… what values would
you teach your children? and then adapt those values for youself…

Kropotkin

let us build this from ground up…

we are life… we are part of life that has existed for over
a billion years…and we have over the billion years evolved
into our current shape and form…genetically, we are related
to cows and dogs and apes and cats and fruit fly’s among other
life…we human beings must do animal things because we
have no choice… we must eat and we must sleep
and we must shit and we must all the things that
life has done for the last billion years because we
came from that life… and after human beings die, life
will go on in some fashion and some other life will take
our place… personally I’m betting on cats… but that is just me…

now, as stated, science deals with facts and philosophy deals
with values…facts such as I am 5 foot 8 and brown hair…
those facts don’t tell us anything about who I am… those facts just
describe me and those facts means I am one of about a billion people
who fit those facts… with each fact, we can narrow down the specific human
being… as I relay facts, with each fact you get closer and closer to
who I am…but once again those facts don’t tell you WHO I am…
am I a nice person or a mean person or a kind person or a smart person or
a “low IQ” person…what really turns me into a human is not facts like
I wear size 8 shoes but the values I accept as values worth following…

so when I mention I study philosophy, I get the question, what is the meaning
of life…and I am never quite sure how to answer that…until today, today I am
ready to answer that…it is not about human facts that I have two legs
and two arms and ten fingers… no, what makes me human are the values
I have… it is the values we have that gives life meaning…

Nietzsche questioned, often, values and made a rather big point
about how we must have a reevaluation of values…
and he also said…

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

beliefs here means values… for an attack upon our values.

I have laid out the idea that we are born into a society which
has myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions…
those myths and habits etc… are often values…
that have been passed down from generation to generation, blindly passed down…
it is believed that holding values that make god the central point of
being human is the “true” path…for example, the boy scout oath…

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to god and my country and to
obey the scout law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself
physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight”

the very first value offered is duty to god… and this oath is passed down
from generation to generation… I said it myself when I was a boy scout…

this myth, habit, prejudice and superstition is in line with what I am saying
about how we promote values often times without even thinking about it…

the question of philosophy is to answer the basic question…
what values should we hold and what values should we discard…
and why? why should we obey this value but not that value…

and it is in values that we find our meaning of life… for values
are what give our life meaning…not the instinctual “values” that
are passed down from generation of life to generation of life on down
to today…instinctual values like hate and greed and lust and anger…
values over which can take over us… recall our man who claimed
temporary insanity because he was struck with an anger so great
he couldn’t control it… a rage so great as to be uncontrollable…
that is instinctual because we cannot control it… just as animals
cannot control their instincts…and we cannot find the meaning of
life in values that we cannot even control…instinctual values cannot
be the meaning of life because we cannot control those instincts…

to have a meaning of life, we must have some control over it…
that eliminates god also… because we have no control over god…
and those believers think that is a good thing…but if we have no
control, then they become like instinctual values… values we react to
but they can cause temporary insanity because they takes us beyond
our control…

we see this all the time… the religious zealots who kill and torture
in the name of god… regardless of the god’s name… it doesn’t matter…
if you are so possessed by a religious feeling that you must act upon
it in without choice, you have an instinctual value problem…

so what myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions should we
hold? none… we should examine every single myth and habit
and prejudice and superstition to see if they hold values that aren’t
instinctual…because if we hold values that are instinctual,
they pose the risk of causing a person to go out of control they
cannot control themselves… they become temporarily insane…
we cannot hold to or commit to values that can cause us
to become temporarily insane…values that are instinctual…

this is another example of Nietzsche’s reevaluation of values… he wrote about…
to examine the myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions we
were raised with and discover what values we still engage with, that
are instinctual values, values from childhood that we still hold onto
and values that can cause us to become temporarily insane…
and in daily living, we can see values that do cause people to become
temporarily insane… hate and anger and greed and lust are among the
values that we have seen cause this temporary insanity…
or said another way, did the man who bombed the café have hate in his
heart or love, which values was he following when he bombed the café
or shot up a musical festival or attacked a school?

this is just one brick in the wall…

we shall see others as we move along…

Kropotkin

ok, so what values should we hold?

we have discussed negative values like anger and hate and greed and lust
as being instinctual values… values that cannot be the meaning of life
because they are negative…

ok, try this… imagine a man… the man has negative values of
hate and anger and greed and lust… you know, like IQ45…
now imagine this man’s actions…he has cheated on his wife, multiple times,
he has threaten and intimidated people who he feels is a danger to him…
he lies and lies and lies… he has ended people’s careers because he
failed to pay them for jobs done and they went out of business…
he has sued and been sued over 2000 times and to avoid his debts,
declared bankruptcy 6 times…these negative actions…
are they values that are negative or positive? the answer to that
is rather easy… his values are negative values and he acts upon those
negative values…creating chaos and destruction and damage all around him…

now, as an ism, capitalism is based upon the simple notion that
by private vices we create public good… that greed in people, somehow
creates a public good…(the exact mechanism is never actually shown but is assumed)
so one man’s private greed creates a public good…really… show me a person
who is greedy… they don’t create a public good, they cause chaos and damage
all around them… or lust, when a man or women for that matter, pursues
lust to the point of infidelity, how does that private good create a public good?
it cause chaos and damages the wife and any children and in general, creates
a negative environment… how is infidelity a public good? it isn’t and how
does pursuing greed create a public good? it doesn’t… so, the basic and fundamental
talking point of capitalism creates chaos and damage to both individuals and
a society when capitalism is practiced…private vices are both private dangers
and public dangers when acted upon…

so negative, instinctual values don’t help or aid or improve a society…
how can they? does someone who promotes hate or greed or anger or lust
improve or aid or help a society? nope…values that are negative… they are values
that Hitler and Stalin and Mao promoted… we cannot survive as individuals
and as a society by promoting negative, instinctual values like hate and
greed and lust and anger… because they cause too much instability
and chaos and disorder within a society…a person who promoted
anger and hate in society creates and promotes chaos and instability
within that society… think of times when someone you knew was about
the hate and anger and lust and greed… bosses who only cared about
their bonus and bosses who were dicks and bosses who only carried about
hate and anger and lust and greed… think about that workplace… it
was and will be a terrible place to work… the boss’s values of hate
and anger and greed and lust creates a terrible work environment…
isn’t that like a person whose values of hate and anger and greed and lust
creates a terrible social environment/ society for everyone…

it is no different… if it is a boss or a parent or a friend or a sibling or
co-worker… if they promote negative values it creates a negative, a
terrible environment to be in… and so why should an ism like
capitalism which promotes negative values like greed and lust and envy
be somehow any different then the environment you see every day,
where people who hold those negative values create a negative,
a terrible environment to be in and work in and live in…

this is why we must understand and promote values that create a
positive environment… be it work, be it home or be it society…
capitalism is a negative, instinctual value system and thus
creates negative and instinctual values that damage and
creates despair and anger within a home or work or a society…

this is why we cannot support capitalism as a value, or as a system of
belief…it is private vices which can never lead to positive values…
private vices which leads to a negative, hateful, angry system,
be it family, work or society at large…

so once again, which values should we hold to?

Kropotkin

I have worked for over 40 years… since I was 17…
I have had many, many bosses and different work environments…

I can recall the work environments that I enjoyed and wanted to work in…
they were far and few in between… but on occasion it happened…

so think about either your work environment or home environment
or school environment… and which one’s did you enjoy and want to
come to? which one’s were productive and positive and worth
coming to? and most importantly, why? I would suggest the
the productive and the enjoyable environments were the ones
with positive values, love and hope and charity and equality and justice
and peace…the leaders in those successful environments were the ones
who didn’t follow negative values like hate and anger and lust and greed
they followed positive values, not instinctual values, but positive values …

and this is not just about small, environments like work or school or the
family, but larger environments like institutions and government
and society at large…if our leaders hold to positive values like Obama
did, the society at large is happier and more successful and more engaged
then when the leaders hold negative, instinctual values like hate and anger
and greed and lust… like someone you may have heard of…

and this search for values that drives political theorist
and philosophers and economist and historians…

we must find the values that create a positive and successful environment

so which values do you think create a positive and successful environment?

which values, both individually and collectively, across society, which values
should we hold?

Kropotkin

think about it this way… the values we hold, individually and collectivly,
create the environment we exists in… if the boss manages to his bonus
and thus follows greed, he creates a negative environment… his values
creates the environment the workers exist in… thus we can have
negative values infecting the workplace, creating a toxic environment,
a terrible place to work and why? because the boss only cares about and only
acts upon his greed… and thus creates a negative environment…

the values he holds creates the working environment… and this is true
in any given environment… be it small, family or the school room or
work… but it is also true in a large environment… the values followed
created the workplace environment or the school environment or
the societal environment…so, if we as a society holds negative,
instinctual values, we create an environment that also
holds to the negative, instinctual values which leads to
a toxic and negative society and workplace and family…

our values creates our environment…so what values do you hold?

Kropotkin

so let us explore enlightenment values…

the enlightenment pursued values of humanism…
like tolerance and freedom from authority, be it the church
or philosophies like Aristotle or St. Augustine…

this pursuit of positive values help creates the environment
that leads us to our modern society and it’s is about positive values…

toleration, equality, freedom, justice, free expression…
these enlightenment values helped create a positive
environment… which has helped create the modern world…

values create environment… so if we hold values that are positive,
we create a positive environment… think of your workplace… the leaders
create the environment by the values they follow… toxic workplace is
toxic values… like hate and anger and greed and lust and envy…

toxic family is about toxic values like…

and a toxic society is about toxic values that are embodied
by such ism’s as capitalism and dictatorships and religion…for example…

Kropotkin

the values you have, drive the actions you take…
and if not, then how can you explain your actions?

Kropotkin

:cry: Never stop learning. Cause the world never stops teaching. This quote or at least mentality help me to succeed in living this far in my life and get through school. hm. I love this Man!

Poets as legislators is I believe is one of the topics
that Nietzsche undertook…
in other words, the creators of values was poets…
honor in the Greek world was found in Homer…
and arête, excellence was found there too…
in other words, the Greek values that we
still know them by, is found in their poetry…
and the reason why Plato wanted to ban
poets in his ideal society…

ancient Rome also had values created by the poets…
Vergil and Ovid for example help create the Roman values
we know them for…

but today, who reads poetry? no one outside of English major’s…
so who creates the values of today if it isn’t the traditional creators
of values, poets?

other points come to mind and I shall address them in the next post…

Kropotkin

so we have values and their society…
for example, we have the famous American example,
of the American values system…

Truth, justice and the American way of life…

Truth…what is the truth? indeed, we have that problem today…
we have a president who is indeed, untethered from the truth…
and can be demonstrated to have lied over 2,500 times since he
has been president…the truth means nothing in our age…
so the first word in our American value system has no value…

justice… justice is bought and sold as a commodity today…
the wealthy buy influence and justice and the poor and middle
class don’t have that luxury… justice is equality and we clearly
don’t have any sort of equality in America today… from economic
justice to political justice to legal justice… in each area, we see
how justice and equality has been subverted by money…
when only 500 people have the same wealth as 3.5 billion people
around the world, we cannot have equality and justice when that
is the current situation in our world today…so we have no justice
and the second word in our American value system no longer exists…

and the third valued offered… the American way of life…
and what exactly is this? where we treat human beings as commodities
and value their existence based on their creation of wealth and profits…

that means people are means to the creation of profits… which makes
profits the priority, not people…people become expendable…
and their values just as expendable because values are
negated because they don’t create profits… love and hope and justice
and peace and honor and charity… these values don’t create profits
and thus are denied and negated… this negation is nihilism…
and we live in a nihilist world because human values are negated
because those values interfere with the pursuit of profit…

now let us look at the third point about values which is a historical
understanding of values…

Kropotkin

now we return to a prior point…
I have identified the creation of modernity
in the historical events of the industrial revolution
and the two world wars and the depression and
the holocaust and Hiroshima…

but what are the VALUES of these historical events?

for example, what values do we see in these historical events?

I have pointed out one in the fact that from the industrial revolution,
we treat human beings and their values as antagonistic to the
goal of the creation of money/profits…the values in the creation
of and coming from the industrial revolution are negative values…

for example, the ism that arose from the industrial revolution was
capitalism… the negative values that comes from capitalism is
greed and avarice and lust and envy… remember… capitalism
is the private vices of people (which from magic) become
public good… that is the reasoning given for the
existence of capitalism as given by its defenders…

now let us look at other historical events… the two world wars,
the depression, the holocaust, Hiroshima…

the cause of and the values coming from each event is negative…
wars are caused by negative values such as greed and lust and hate
and anger and envy and…the depression was caused by
the greed of those who were in wall street at the time…

you cannot look at the holocaust and tell me that had any
positive values created or came from the holocaust…
again, the holocaust came from negative values like
anger and hate and fear and envy… there was no
positive values arising in the holocaust… it was purely
negative values at work which created the holocaust…
and Hiroshima…the bombing that killed hundreds of thousands
of people… how is that anything but negative…
the justification given was that by killing hundreds of thousands
of Japanese people, you prevented the deaths of hundreds of
thousands of American soldiers … once again offering up the
adage that still exists today, that American’s have more value
then other cultures and other people…one American is worth
x-number of people in other cultures… we see this habit, myth,
prejudice still exists today… and voice loudly by the
followers of IQ45…

we see that the modern era was dominated by historical events
that were driven by negative values like anger and hate and fear
that is why the modern era is based on negative values which
still drive the events of today… there is nothing positive about
the values of IQ45 and his followers… for those values are of
hate and anger and greed and lust and envy… nothing positive
about those values…

and that is why the modern era looks and feels so different from
other era’s… it is driven by negative values… if we want to change
the nature of the modern era, we must begin by changing the
values that drive the modern era… instead of negative values,
we look to positive values… love, peace, charity, honor,
hope, dignity… for example…we have a great many values
we can choose from… values that are not negated by
our choice of an economic and/or a political system…

greed for example is the driving force of capitalism…
even defenders admit this… but greed carried out to its
fullest extent, ends up with the final results of
a world without resources and a polluted world
and a world without hope or the possibility of
recovery… greed taken to its final results leaves
the world destroyed and hopeless…

greed is unsustainable

it is really that simple…we cannot sustain greed over
any length of time because it destroys the resources we
need to exist… water, land, air… are all being polluted
by the greed of capitalism… and soon, each will be the
cause of wars because they are the essentials of life
and we must have these essentials to exists… we must
eat and have water and have shelter and clothes
and education…and love…

capitalism in its pursuit of money/profits doesn’t care about
the quality of the earth and its ability to sustain life, human
and other life… in our greed, we have begun another age of
extinction of life all around the globe…and to the defenders of
capitalism, it is a small price to pay for wealth in which to
buy justice and freedom and destroy equality…

so we can state that it is the historical events that are
driven by negative values that has created the modern world…

what are we to do?

begin by replacing those negative values with positive values…
and act upon those positive values… create historical events
with positive values, not negative values… use love
and hope and charity and peace to create historical events…

and that is the true meaning of the post-modern world…
the use of positive values to create historical events…

Kropotkin

think of America and its “values”…

what values are “American” values?

you think of Washington chopping down the cherry tree,
so honesty would be one such value… but how are values created?

how would we American’s create our values?
the ideal in America is that of democratic… equality…
so values are created via all of us… we support those
values that we believe to represent us…

and we hold these truths to be self-evident…

“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”

and we American’s, fought a civil war for values we believed
in…“in that all men are created equal”

yet, what values did we vote for in the last election?

the values of capitalism… nihilist values…where the holding of
power is more important then any values like honesty, truth, justice…

IQ45 holds and promotes values like dishonesty, lying, cheating,
stealing, intimidation… and yet, 40% of the population still support him…

we honestly cannot say that America stand for anything outside of capitalist values,
which is nihilistic and devaluing of human beings and places money/profits over
human beings and their values… and the greatest promoter of these values
is IQ45…

so, tell me, what values does America stand for?

nothing positive… like love, hope, justice, equality,
tolerance, charity…

ask yourself and be honest, what values do you associate with America
and does America hold those values? answer honestly and you must conclude
that America holds and support and promotes negative values like hate and anger,
greed, lust, envy, dishonesty… so why should we support a country whose
values are negative? I ask myself… should I support a country where it we allow
torture and people to starve to death and where we give death threats to teenagers
who were in a school shooting because they want stronger gun control…
and a women who asked in a press conference if IQ45 should resign has received
death threats… what are our values if we hold to actions such as these?

what does America stand for…

and by extension, we must ask, what values do you stand by… what
values do you hold? would your values survive a honest evaluation?
I doubt it… if you support IQ45, then your values must be suspected
of being negative and nihilistic… if you are silent about the values
of IQ45 and his tribe, then your values must be questioned…
because if your values are positive values, then why stay silent
about dishonest men and their dishonest values?

only you can answer these questions, but I already know the answer…
99% here will defend their values because their values are
of habit and of myth and of prejudice and of superstition…

there is no need to make a reevaluation of values if your values
are traditional values because what can be wrong with values
that our forefather held? because those values held by our forefathers
were values that worked in their time and place, it worked in their
environment… but we exist in a different environment with different
circumstances… and we need different values to achieve the goals
we have set… oh yeah, we don’t have any goals to achieve…
we have no such vision as to what or where we want to be in 5 years
or a 100 years… we are blind and valueless… a bad combination …

Kropotkin

I had to look up the boy scout values… I haven’t been a boy
scout in over 40 years and so I have forgotten the values of the
boy scouts…

a scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind,
obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent…

and in thinking about this… it seem to me that is quite
similar to Roman values…the Roman values are refer to
as mos maiorum… which means “ancestral custom”
or the way of the ancestors…

Fides: encompasses several English words like trust/trustworthiness,
good faith/ faithfulness, confidence, reliability…

Pietas: the Roman attitude of dutiful respect towards the gods,
homeland, parents and family which required the maintenance
of relationships in a moral and dutiful manner…

Religio and cultus: related to the latin verb religare, “to bind”
religio was the bond between gods and mortals as carried out
in traditional religious practices…

Disciplina: the military character of the Roman society suggests
the importance of disciplina as related to education, training, discipline,
and self-control…

gravitas and constantia: gravitas was the dignified self-control…
constantia was steadiness or perserverance…

virtus: from the latin word vir (man) virtus constituted
the ideal of the true Roman male… that it is virtue for a man
to know what is good, evil, useless, shameful, or dishonorable…

Dignitas and Auctoritas were the end results of displaying
the values of the ideal Roman and in the service of the state,
in the forms of priesthood, military positions and magistracies…
Dignitas was the reputation worth, honour, and esteem…

and we see these as Roman values but and this is important…
but these values are Republic values, not the values of the Empire…

look at the values and actions of everyone in leadership after Caesar… few if any
held these Roman values in high regard…they might give these values
lip service but that was all… and in the many years to come, these
Roman values were discarded and abandon…

the only value that was understood to have any value
after say, 200 A.D was the value of power… all other values
had dismissed into nothingness…

power was the only value of the Roman empire and it was THE value
of the last 200 years of the empire… all the other values were gone…
in other words, Rome stood for nothing outside of power for its last
200 years…it had no values for which it was fighting for or dying for…
which is why native citizens refused to fight anymore and why
Rome had to increasingly turn to troops outside of the Roman empire…
the citizens had no values to fight for, so why fight?

and here we can see why, in part, why Rome fell…
it had no value upon which to give its citizens
any reason or right or hope to engage with the empire…
human beings need values to exist and the Roman empire didn’t
give the human beings of the Roman empire any values in which
they needed to use to defend or protect or stand with the empire…

it is easy to disengage with someone or something if it or they
don’t stand for anything outside of some negative value like power…

and so we see we American’s HAD values like honesty and trust
and loyalty but today, what values do you see that wants to make
you engage with America today? what values do you see that makes
you want to defend or protect or stand with America?

Kropotkin

now I am not going to deal with this tonight, but to
ask the question and then think about it…

one may ask, values, who gives a shit about values…
no one give a fuck about values… they are pointless and meaningless…
much ado about nothing…

so the question is simple, do values matter?
does it matter if we, individually or collectively, have
values?

think about it…

Kropotkin

1: Value: the regard that something is held to deserve;
the importance, worth, or usefulness of something…

2: a person’s principles or standards of behavior:
one’s judgement of what is important in life…

so, one might ask why is this important…
it tells us that values are important…

values are what? a limited list of values;

authenticity, achievement, authority, balance, beauty,
boldness, compassion, community, competency, creativity,
curiosity, fairness, faith, fame, happiness, honesty, humor,
influence, inner harmony, justice, kindness, knowledge,
love, loyalty, openness, optimism, peace, poise, recognition,
respect, responsibility, security, service, spirituality, stability, success,
status, trustworthiness, wealth, wisdom… again, basically listed
in alphabetical order…and by no means a comprehensive list…

so what are values? Values gives or creates context to experience…

we have an experience and by the use of values, we can understand
the role and function and the why of a given experience…

I marry a women… that is an action… but the action needs some
context and that context is a value… love…I love my wife, so I married
her to create a bond, a new system with marriage being stability
of the relationship/system… in other words, marriage acts like
gravity to keep and hold a system together, like the sun holds the
planets with gravity… a marriage holds the couple together and what
is that value or context of marriage? love is the value or context of the marriage…

every action taken, must have a context and values creates that context…
every experience… experienced, must have a context and values creates that context…

if we act without values, then our actions are random and meaningless…
we are isolated from any context that our actions may have…

if we make actions without context/values… we are being inauthentic
in a way that makes us alienated from society and ourselves…
an action without values means that we are acting as an completely
isolated matter outside of any given system… that randomness
threatens the system… we cannot have that type of randomness
in our social systems, ism’s and ideologies, we cannot have that randomness
in our biological systems, life and human beings and dogs and…
we cannot have that type of randomness in our natural systems like the
solar system and workings of the galaxies…

values given context to our actions… to our experiences…

without values, our actions will not make any sense or
neither will our actions or experiences have any meaning…
it is only in the context of values, do our actions/experiences
have any meaning…that is why you should give a shit about values…
it gives your life some context, some meaning… for our actions and experiences
can only have context and meaning through values…

so you want your life to have meaning? give it the context of
value or values…to create context, you must have values to make
sense of actions or experiences…

Kropotkin

so anybody who has read Nietzsche has been struck by his
“reevaluation of values” so what does that exactly mean?

we have values…Nietzsche wrote during the 1870’s and 1880’s…
so the values he saw he felt needed to be reevaluated, but why?
what was the problem with them?

once again, one must think in a historical context…
we have a series of 19th century writers who wrote about society and
culture and what it meant to be human… they wrote
from 1800, Goethe whose entire second act of Faust is a
commentary on modern man, to Kierkegaard to Marx to
Baudelaire, to Henrik Ibsen to of course Nietzsche…

Now the question becomes what historical actions were
going on at the junction of history? Why, of course the industrial revolution…
so the question now becomes, did the values of the 18th century man
create the industrial revolution or did the industrial revolution create
the values that the above writers railed against… so what came first,
the values or the action? I could be wrong, but I am guessing the action
came first and the values were created as a reaction to the historical event
of the industrial revolution…

and if this is true, then Nietzsche wanted a reevaluation of the new
values created by the industrial revolution…

the historical event, the industrial revolution created the
nihilistic and inauthentic values that infected man…

so we have the creation of new values that in turn created new
historical events, the two world wars, the holocaust, the dropping of the
bomb… all of these flow from the historical event called the industrial
revolution and the industrial revolution created values that writers
like Marx and Nietzsche fought against… and Nietzsche called for a
reevaluation of values in response to this creation of new values…

Now Nietzsche wrote about the values created by Christianity and those
those values created to weaken man, but those values had been around for over
1500 years by the time Nietzsche wrote, so why did those values suddenly become
bad? only in context to the historical event of the industrial revolution…

the idea of a slave mortality created by Christianity really doesn’t match
the rise of the new historical events because that slave mortality had
been around for 1500 years and still, we had historical events like the
Renaissance which showed us that the so called slave morality, those values,
didn’t really effect the Renaissance… but somehow did effect the values
of Nietzsche time… that doesn’t really seem to be the case, so it becomes
more likely that historical events after the Renaissance created or changed
the values of the time period and the only logical candidate is the
industrial revolution…

so perhaps Nietzsche was thinking about the fact that the industrial
revolution, about which he didn’t anything about at all, mostly
because he wasn’t looking that way…anyway, the industrial
revolution created values that manifested itself in ism’s
like Capitalism…and capitalism in pursuit of money/profits,
negates human values, this negation of human values also
removes human context… we receive our context, not from
events or experience but from values we give to
the events or experience…so if we negate human values, we
negate human context… and this leads right into the writers that
I listed… they wrote about the isolation of man, they wrote
of the alienation of man… of course man is isolated and alienated
if their values are negated by capitalism pursuit of money/profits…

without values, we have no context and no meaning… is this not
the very definition of the modern man… we have no context and no meaning…

the movement of existentialism is all about creating values and creating
context and thus meaning… if our values are negated, we have
no context, no meaning… and the battle to become human is
really a battle to create new values… to reevaluate our values…
a reevaluation of values… from the negation of capitalism to
the new values which create new context and meaning for
the human being…

so what should our new values be, what should our revaluation of values
lead us to… what should be our new values…

Kropotkin.

so we ask ourselves, what other understanding of the
human being, could have brought about the industrial revolution?

and one possible idea comes to mind… the philosophical idea
that man is a machine…this idea that man is a machine came first
came about with the thought of Descartes when he began
his quest to create certainty about our knowledge…
his answer was the beginning of these notion that man
was a machine…by Descartes dualism, he gave room
for the understanding that man was a machine…
with each succeeding philosopher, they added bits and pieces
to this idea, Spinoza did by his reduction of everything into
one attribute of god and then Leibniz and his monads…
working along side the philosophers were the scientist like
Newton who created a very mechanical vision of the universe…

the philosopher who tied the whole thing together was
De la Mattrie… whose book in 1747, “Man as Machine”
made the greatest argument that man was a machine…

and now we become historical again… in the U.K…
we have the beginings of the industrial revolution by
1750…it is easy to conceive man as a machine
in the large factories that built the great modern
commodities of the modern era… I exist as a commodity
and machine in one such type of factory as I scan goods
day after day after long day while standing up in one spot…
that is very machine like…

so we can trace the modern era back to this notion
that man is a machine, not as a human being…
so we can now think that part of this idea of the modern
man is partly from the philosophical idea’s floating around
the 18th century and turned into life into the 19th century…

and we can see how existentialism was founded to fight this idea
of man as machine…

and we can see how the events and experiences of the last 200 years flow
from this notion of man as machine…it does make the two world wars and
Auschwitz and Hiroshima much more likely if we take the position that
man is a machine and is only useful as a too of production…

in fact, at the entrance of the concentration camps including
Auschwitz were signs saying,

Arbeit macht frei?

and what does “Arbeit macht frei” mean?

“Work sets you free”…

that is only possible if humans are machines and work is all we are capable
of… but we are human beings and we are capable of much more then just
working as machines in the factories and factories light like the supermarket…

Kropotkin