a new understanding of today, time and space.

I read a story this morning, about a minor Hollywood star,
who went to the DMV, motor vehicle department in California…

he went in with a bad attitude, making a fuss right from the start…
and then later realized he had forgotten his wallet in a taxi…
and made a huge fuss about them letting him get by without some form
of I.D because he was a star and everyone knew him…
left and came back shortly to accuse someone of stealing his glasses…

and the moral of this story is that he was aware of one thing and one thing
only, himself…he had no understanding of the fact he was one of many people
in the DMV office, and given how many DMV offices we have here, one of thousands
in a DMV office and one of thousands engage in activity with the government here…
he was so lock into himself and his thoughts and his feelings that there wasn’t room
for anything else…

we get so lock into our thoughts and actions, we forget that we too
are also part of billions of people and a part of hundreds of systems…

or to say another way, we, individually, are just one atom in the midst of
billions of atoms…

to understand, really understand who we are, you must place us into
context, of each of us being one voice in the midst of billions…

you must become aware… and in doing so, begin to place us into
context…you want to know your place in this story… this human story…

begin by understanding that billions have come before you and billions more
will come after you…context is everything… context is just another word for
experience…and what is your context in everything? what is your place in everything?

do we ever rise above context? no, but we can make sense of and learn what
is possible within that context…

but the first step, the very first step is to become aware… place yourself in some
context and see your role within the many systems of which you are part of…

become aware…see every action you make as if you were on stage in a play,
does your action/actions make sense in the play currently going on?

what if you don’t like your lines? rewrite them…

what if you don’t like your part? get a different part…

expand your thinking about who you are and what is your role…

and all this can only happen once you become aware of who you are…
or said differently, once you begin to understand your context in life…

everything begins with awareness…

Kropotkin

we have limitations as human beings…

personally, I am limited by my loss of hearing but even hearing people
have limitations… they don’t hear as well as dogs or cats or lions or…

and we not only have physically limitations, but we have other limitations…

for example, the Romans or Greeks or Egyptians had only ground transportation
to move people and goods… cows, horses, carts, people pulling carts…
for most of human history, there was a limitation on how far and how fast
people and goods could go…you had boats and the like but it was still limited…

today we are less limited in the ways we can transport people and goods…
we can, in many ways overcome our limitations by technical means…
we have glasses to overcome bad eyesight and hearing aids to overcome
bad hearing and medical techniques to overcome a lot of medical limitations…
and we can use tools like a telescope and microscope to overcome our limitations
in seeing a long ways and seeing the very small…the entire advancement of
the human race can be considered as a means of overcoming our limitations…

so, we see that overcoming limitations is in large part what makes us and our
technology today…so what limitations are you overcoming?

limitations don’t necessarily need to be physical, they can be mental,
psychological, emotional… but the process of becoming must involved
overcoming limitations… the battle to become human means overcoming
our limitations…even if those limitations are being human… so what do
we need to do to overcome being human? the process of evolution is all
about overcoming limitations…

so what are you overcoming? what limitations are you trying to overcome?

perhaps that is the meaning of life…the simple act of overcoming your limitations…
whatever they are… mental, physical, emotional, psychological…and limitations
of your society and the environment you exists in… we are always in the process of
overcoming some limitation of some sort… become aware of what limitations
you are trying to overcome…be it social or environmental or personal…

Kropotkin

what of those who accept the myths and prejudices and superstitions of
their youth… what about those who never overcome their indoctrination
of childhood…how are they overcoming? it is not just a physical
overcoming but overcoming our childhood training and indoctrination
that society places in our heads from the very first day of birth and lasting a
lifetime…those myths and prejudices and habits and superstitions that
society implants within us every day of our childhood… part
of overcoming is overcoming that childhood training and indoctrination…
to overcome means to overcome all aspects of life…we must overcome
or we are unable to escape our limitations… we become trapped by our
limitations and are unable to grow and become more…human…

a person who walks the same ground everyday never learns any other
part of the land outside of the area he walks…he becomes
limited in the very area he walks… to become human, we must
walk in new areas and new paths everyday… we cannot be limited
and walk the exact same path every day… we must become free
of our limitations, be it overcoming our myths and habits and prejudices
and superstitions of our youth or be it overcoming our hearing loss
or our status in society…

the path is to overcome… what are you overcoming?

Kropotkin

we are the greatest country on earth!!!

that is the mantra of the right and yet are we?

I would say no…

NO, WHAT BLASPHEMY… TRAITOR… TRAITOR…
comes the calls from the bleachers…

and of the charge that we are not the greatest country on earth?

I come from a sports background… I’ve played sports since I was 4…
in sports, you have to prove yourself every single day…
even if you win the championship of that year and I have…
you still must go out and prove it again the next year…
and a baseball player who helps win the championship hitting
275… must still go out the next year and become better…
you must improve yourself because the other guy is out there working
hard to improve himself…you can’t be happy hitting 275… you must improve
your average to 280 or 300… if you want to win the game…
and we in America don’t work to improve ourselves…
others are working far harder to improve themselves while
we spend our time congratulating ourselves on being the greatest country on earth…

as a country we must improve and part of the improvement involves
helping our citizens improving themselves in some fashion…
this is a team effort to improve ourselves… we must become something
more then we are today… to really be able to make the claim that we
are the greatest country on earth… our citizens must be happier and
wiser and wealthier then other countries to be able to make that claim that we are the greatest
country on earth. if we have citizens who are poor and trying to make it, then we cannot
in any sense of the word, claim to be the “greatest”…

if the police is killing black people then we cannot claim to be
the greatest country on earth… well, one might say, a few bad
apples… but we cannot and I cannot accept that as an answer…
a few bad apples as an excuse is not what makes a country great…
as a runner, I cannot excuse a bad outing by saying a few bad apples…
if I ran a shitty race, and I ran a few, then one person and one person
is responsible and that is me… but if we let down large segments of
the population and allow to exist in poverty and despair, then we are
the few bad apples…and we don’t allow that excuse to exist anymore…
we in society have failed if even one person exists in poverty…
yes, we must set the bar that high if we want to be considered the
greatest country on earth… for to be the greatest country on earth means
you have passed a very high standard and we have failed at that…
we must overcome, not only who we are individually but together…
we are judge not only individually but collectively… to be the greatest
country on earth we cannot have a “few bad apples”, we must all become
accountable…to become something greater requires work, a lot of hard work…
are you prepared to work hard to become part of the greatest country one earth?

no excuses… for those who say, it is someone’s else fault that we aren’t
the greatest country on earth…I am doing my best…
your best is no longer good enough…to become
the best, you must work harder then your best…

if you want to hit 300 or run a 4 minute mile, you must
work beyond your best… if you want to be part of the greatest
country on earth… you have to offer up no more excuses and
be prepared to work… to be the best, you must work the hardest…

are we in this country working to be the best or… or are
we just interested in just keeping the status quo… and
if you are interested in just keeping the status quo… then
you are not the best and you don’t exist in the greatest
country on earth… for the greatest country on earth must earn
that title every single day by getting better and Improving every single day…

what are you overcoming to become the best every single day?

Kropotkin

in regards to overcoming, I was thinking about Alien civilizations…

under what circumstances would they have to overcome…

and in thinking about it, I think that there very civilization can
be based on what they had to overcome…

for example, a planet that is cold or too warm or some other climate
change that makes life difficult… but they could have overcome some
other natural factor to unifying to overcome very large creatures…

for example, they might have dinosaurs type of creatures to deal with
and the only way they could survive was to cooperate…and so the
basis of their civilization and culture is to cooperate…

we haven’t had such a thing in ten of thousands of years…
and so we sort of cooperate and we are social creatures,
but we fail to understand that given our limited set of survival tools
we must unify to survive… we must cooperate in order to succeed…
but not to the extent that some alien space civilization might
have…

the individualism that we see as important might not be important to
some alien civilization because of what they had to overcome to succeed…

in other words, evolution might be the key to understanding who we are
and what we might become…what we had to overcome was, in part,
was the fact that we had limited tools to survive… we didn’t run fast,
we don’t have sharp claws or teeth, we aren’t very strong… in other
words, animals that have such tools have an biological advantage over us
and have a better chance to survive then we do and yet…

so what was our key to survival?.. our ability to cooperate and our
brains…so if we refuse to use those two basic tools we used to
create human civilization, then we are setting us up for failure…
if we survive because we used our tools of cooperation and intelligence,
then we should consider using them some more… but people don’t want that…

people want to lower themselves to other lower aspects of their nature…
for example, we see in the animal kingdom, animals fighting over basic
lower level needs, for example food and mating and territory…
and we see this in the human animal… fighting over lower level needs like
food, mating and territory… but we claim to be superior to animals and
yet, and yet, we fight over lower level needs like animals… are we animals
or are we humans? if we fight over lower level needs then we are nothing more
then animals… we must overcome this if we want to be human, truly human…

we must overcome our limitations of the lower level needs and rise above
them… we must engage in our higher level needs which are security and peace
and love and recognition from our fellow humans… we need acknowledgement
from our fellow human beings…why do we need acknowledgement?
because we are social creatures and we need to know our fellow human beings
see us and acknowledge us…from this need comes the whole “are you disrespecting me”
mantra…that need arises because we need to be acknowledged and “respected”…

and that comes from millions of years of evolution… we can explain who we
are and what we do from our past, from our evolution… but now that is not enough…
we must overcome our limitations and evolution to become something more…human…

so, what is the lesson of the Aliens civilization that arose overcoming their limitations?

the lesson learned is we too must overcome our limitations, both personal and collectively…

Kropotkin

After a week of being sick, I am finally getting better except
for my cough and getting rid of a cough takes forever……

which leads me to my thought process while I was sick…
there wasn’t any…I was pretty much unable to hold any
real thoughts… I wasn’t able to concentrate…I couldn’t focus…
I was just about me and my health 24/7…… I paid no attention
to what was going on around me and I paid little attention to family…
(thank god they understood)………… but I was pretty much wrapped up into me…

I was sick…………

and later I realized that this is how people often react regardless if they
are sick or not……. people become so self involved they forget their
is a world around them…it is about me…me…me… and nothing else…

I then realized that most people are sick, not physically sick like I was,
but soul sick…and soul sick people react the same way as physically sick
people do… the sick person is all about their needs 24/7……
and they focus only on themselves…….that is a soul sick person…
the same symptoms as a physically sick person………. and that
is a good description of America as well… it is soul sick………

we have become old… old and scared people are concerned with safety
and security… they don’t care about freedom or freedom of action…
they just want to be safe and secure… that is soul sick…

young people want freedom…they don’t care about being safe and secure…
they want to be free to explore…in fact young people will often rush into danger
and unsafe situations… we old folks don’t do that… we want to be safe and secure…

America is that old person… forsaking freedom to feel safe and secure………

and that is soul sickness…

old people say no… young people say yes…

we could learn something from young people…

it is not enough to be able to say no, we must be able to say yes…

or are we too sick to even say yes anymore?

Kropotkin

another school shooting today… I read in the news…

more politicians offer up prayers and thoughts…

politicians say, more and more guns will make us safer…

politicians bought to say, more and more guns will make us safer…

and other bought politicians will say, a few bad apples is the cause of gun violence……

over 11,000 deaths from guns last year… that is more then a few bad apples…

with that number, you can no longer say, a few bad apples causes gun violence…

with that number, you can only say, this is the manifestation of our soul sickness…

when guns, violence is the answer to our difficult questions…

and those who promote gun as a solution are promoting violence as an answer……

and that is soul sickness…….

to see guns, violence as an answer to any question is to be soul sick……

violence destabilizes society, violence encourages more violence…

violence causes sadness, fear and hatred… traits that define soul sickness…

want proof? see America after 9/11………

healthy minded people don’t resort to violence……

healthy minded people look for peaceful answers…

those infected with soul sickness, look to guns and violence as answers……

the soul sickness of a single human being is the soul sickness of America……

for what ails a single person, can ail an entire society or nation…….

and how do we heal?

by first becoming aware………

and not just individually, but become aware societally, nationally…

until we do that, until we understand that…

I will continue to read the news…of a few bad apples…

and other lies I read today……

Kropotkin

I read a phrase the other day and it keeps rattling around my brain…

the problem of existence…existence…
the fact of existence does create problems…

how are we to live?
what is the right way to act?
what is the purpose of life?
does life have any meaning?

the existential questions that has came to light during
the course of human existence…

but magnified during the 19 and 20th century
because of the drastic changes in human existence with
such things as the industrial revolution…

when faced with a problem, what should our response be?
peace and love and charity or hate, violence, anger?

the problem of existence must be solved before we can ever
hope to move past our current state of being…

so how do you see the problem of existence?

and your answer is the question you face within yourself…

Kropotkin

I sit here reading quite a bit of this and wonder why Peter Kropotkin isn’t locked up in the Rant House.

K: because I am one of the few around here actually posting philosophy…
and good philosophy at that… :-"

Kropotkin

Is that a challenge to PK, P-C?

Existence is like final fantasy.
You need to gain more experience, defeat monsters, upgrade your equipment,

Seriously though, I blame reality for the things that are real.
Goodness is a for the lucky. Luck is when chaos smiles upon you for a moment.

the problem of existence………

we don’t have maps or guides but at birth, we have those pesky myths and habits
and ism’s and ideologies and prejudices and superstitions, all of which act as
a guide or map for us to follow… to give our lives shape and meaning…

but what if, what if we see past the myths and ism’s and prejudices to something
else…if we fail to follow the guideline set out by society, we become
alienated from society…the path set out by society/culture is simply
not enough, it is simply written and in very broad strokes to cover most
people and it is enough for most people… few question beyond it…
certainly most people just accept it and go from there… but it is not
enough and it is too broad and too simply written…and it is concieved to
allow most people the belief that by following these simple rules, one has
lead a good and productive life…but it doesn’t allow people the chance to
become something else, something human…it is so mechanical the rules
we have that it has obsure the reality that we can overcome and become
human…

in other words, in life, we are walking on a path already created
and set in a certain direction… and on either side of this path
is tall tree’s… which blocks our view of anything outside of the path…
but we must learn to look beyond the tree’s and see what is on the other
side of the tree’s……… to see what is possible for us…

the path leads us to school and 40 years of work and then retirement
with family and grandchildren…and birthdays and Christmas’s in between……

but the reality is, we don’t have to do that… if we can see beyond
the tree’s, we might see fields and meadows in which to lie down in and spend a sleepy
afternoon or a lifetime in………the path laid down for us by society doesn’t have to
be followed………we can follow another path… if we have the courage and the foresight
to follow it…

we can simply follow the path already laid out for us and have nothing to overcome
or, or we can find our own path and begin to overcome……

Kropotkin

K: I am guessing that final fantasy is a video game…I guess you could look at it like
that…But then I am not a video gamer, so I wouldn’t put it that way…

Kropotkin

what seems to be needed is some combination of existentialism
and pragmatism… existentialism for its concern for the soul
and who we are and the emotionalism part of the human being…
pragmatism for the logical, rational side of the human being…

so some sort of marriage between the two, existentialism and pragmatism…
might be the temporary solution… temporary because all solutions in the end
are just temporary solutions because once the situation changes, the solution must
change… and as situations are always changing, the solutions are always changing…

so, anyway, we must unite in some fashion, existentialism and pragmatism…

the soul with the body…

Kropotkin

who am I?

a father, husband, son, brother, co-worker, member of society, democrat,
liberal, a baseball fan, consumer, producer, checker, taxpayer, law abiding citizen,

all of these… are labels……. they cast my role in social terms…
but the labels don’t tell you who I AM…they tell you my roles in society…

these roles are easy to understand in this Kabuki theater we call life…

but how do we break out of our roles and our Kabuki theater?

how do we become who we are instead of just playing roles?

Kropotkin

this question of existence which really is the sole question of our lives…

how do we answer this question of existence?

now there have been several answers about freedom in our existence…

for example, begining with Rousseau who once wrote: man is born free but
is everywhere in chains…

and Satre who asked: are we condemned to be free?

and is Rousseau chains forged from actual metal or are the chains,
the chains of the myths and habits and ism’s and prejudice and superstitions
that are taught to us from the day of birth?

and as for Satre, are we condemned to be free? free from what or free for
what?

so the initial question, the question of existence can become many different
questions after that… for example, we are born free… but if god exists,
we are not born free… for our path is clearly set…… and the path either leads
to god or away from god… this belief in god is really just another chain forcing
us to follow a certain path………… so god becomes just another question…

how does this one individual person born free and wanting to be free, have
freedom within these set paths of myths and habits and ism’s
and prejudices and superstitions? to be a good “citizen” one must follow the
path of being a good citizen where following the rules and obeying the
authorities become more important then any other aspect of society…
this does not lend itself to freedom… and how do we obtain freedom
of action given this attempt to create good citizens?
once again, the path to good citizenship is by transactional actions,
not transformational actions………

we are born free yes, but then we have all these rules and myths and habits
and ism’s, we must follow…how does one find freedom in the midst of all
these rules and myths and ism’s?

or stated another way, how do we find freedom in the midst of
being in the center of many, many systems… systems which require
us to follow the rules for the systems to maintain themselves…

if we all just do our own thing, the systems that are necessary for our
survival will collapse… so we must maintain the systems by acting
in a collective manner, but how do we find individual freedom in this
midst of collective actions?

what is our place in the midst of all these systems we find ourselves in?

can pieces of an machine find individual freedom?

religions offer us a promise of the next life in which to be free…
I rather take freedom in this life, thank you…

but how?

how can we find individual freedom in the midst of being part
of many systems?

we understand like the Greeks, that we cannot become fully human without
a society, another system, to engage with…the Greeks felt that only
people who lived in the polis were able to become fully human and they
were right…but that means being part of the systems…….

how do we solve this problem of existence?

Kropotkin

I, at random really, picked the value of freedom to bounce the idea
of, how are we being born free and yet everywhere in chains…

I could have picked as a value, love or perhaps, security or perhaps
justice…

so we replace the word freedom with the word justice…

how are we to find justice in a world of systems? how do we find
collective justice and individual justice, given we are pieces
of a machine, parts of a system or systems…

or how do we find love, given we are in a world of systems?

we can understand our place in the universe by understanding
the question of values in our world of chains, of myths and habits and ism’s…

and what roles does values have in a world that is about maintaining
the various systems that keep the world running? we now see why
capitalism negates human values like love and justice and peace
and charity because those values don’t help maintain the various
systems that we exist within…and capitalism must maintain to
keep the systems running………

if we stoutly defend our right to be an “free” individual, we risk
allowing the systems to crash around our head… and if we acquiesce to
being part of the system, then we risk losing our individual freedoms and
we lose that which is specific and unique about each of us……

the problem of existence…….

the question of individual needs vs collective needs…

Kropotkin

let us understand transactional actions:

“set goals, articulate explicit agreements regarding what the system
expects from organizational members and how they will be rewarded
for their efforts and commitments, and provide constructive feedback to keep
everybody on task”

we see this every single day in system after system after system and in
general, work hard and you will be rewarded with your hard work…
if that isn’t the mantra of capitalism, I don’t know what is…

“transactional actions focus on increasing the efficiency of established
routines and procedures and are more concerned with following existing
rules than with making changes to the structure of the organization”

“transactional actions establishes and standardizes practices that will help
the organization (system) reach maturity, emphasizing setting of goals, efficiency
of operation, and increase of productivity”

that pretty much explains modern society… and how are we to find individual
freedom or justice or love, given the parameters of transactional actions?

I am interesting in making changes to the system while allowing the system
to keep functioning… to allow individual freedom or justice or love,
while keeping the system operating…….

how?

the problem of existence……….

Kropotkin

the problem of existence can be renamed the “question of limitations”

at every stage of human existence comes a “question of limitations”
and how do we overcome those limitations?

when human beings first came out of the tree,
how are we going to survive?
our limitation was simple, how do we create
enough of a surplus of food, which will allow us to
survive? with arms and hands… we can carry enough food
with our arms and hands, that will allow us a surplus of food
to allow our survival…then we face the question of
how do organize ourselves that will allow us to survive?

we begin with a simple government… we or the head person,
appoints a few people to guard the way into camp which gives
us some security… the beginning of a defense program…
that is the beginning of government… a few sentries to guard
our camp…….

with each step of civilization, we somehow overcome some aspect
of our limitations… which leads us to the next step of limitations
which we must overcome to advance to the next step……

how do we organize ourselves? by creating a village which has
leaders and a rudimentary military or a sentry system to watch
for “enemies”…

with each step of government, we become more complex and
sophisticated…and that is to overcome some limitation…
with each step of sophistication, we find some limitation to overcome…
until we reach today… and we must overcome some aspect of our
current limitations……. and then we do it all over again, and again and again…

overcoming our limitations is simply another means or an answer
to the problem of existence…

Kropotkin