a new understanding of today, time and space.

problems of existence:

there are many problem in the world and in philosophy
in particular, we have the cause and effect problem which Hume
was so interested in… we have the Kantian problem which is
"how are synthetic a prior judgments possible?

the problem of knowledge that so plagued everyone from Descartes to Kant,
is not the problem.………

so if a problem which bother philosophy for almost 200 years is no longer
a problem, what is philosophy problem?

I believe that existentialism reached closer to the “problem of existence”,
far closer then Descartes or Kant’s trying to work out the problem
of knowledge………

we don’t need to understand this question of knowledge, but we need something
more basic, something basic to everyone…

how are we to live? what are the rules of human existence?

science cannot answer these questions and religions answer
becomes false because of it where it starts and where it ends…
with the original sin and ending in heaven or hell…

existence in all its forms must begin and end with existence
and experience……….

there is no other path… we exist and by existing, we experience…
and we understand our existence through experience…
we can exist without experience… (people in a coma, type of thing)
but we don’t have any understanding without experience…

we cannot reason our way into understanding, not without experience…
so called “pure reason” cannot lead us to any understanding unless “pure reason” itself
is educated by experience………it is reason that teaches us, shows us
categories that we then can place life and its experiences into…

we don’t begin with categories, we begin with experience and by
experience we build our categories……. we learn, which is experience,
how to create our categories………

the mind is very active, which is how it builds its categories………

the body and mind together, for mind need body and the body needs mind, in
order to understand it place in the universe and who we are to be…….

the mind does the understanding and the body does the experiences……

and we build our categories up, day by day, experience by experience…….

but how are we to live? that understanding comes from experience…
we see from our experience, how we are to live… and what is our place in
the universe…….

the problem of existence.

is answered by our understanding of experiences……

Kropotkin

we know our lives, our society, our world is getting more complicated…
for at each stage of our lives, our relationships get more complicated…

in grade school, life was pretty simple… I went to school,
I played baseball and I watched TV………life really wasn’t more
complicated then that…

in high school, life became more complicated…I went to school,
I ran cross-country and track, family relationships became
more complicated, friendships became more complicated…
in other words, life became more complicated for me…

in my twenties, life once again increased in complexity…
dating, work, family issues, becoming engaged with
social issues and political events… for example,
the election of Raygun, when I was 20 or 21, radicalized me
and I became an anarchist…

and at every step of my life, has become more and more complicated…
getting married and family and work and engaging in social issues…
and now I am 59… and my life has for the first time, become less
complicated and that is because I have made a conscience decision
to remove complications…….

but what is true of the individual, is true of society,
as society has progressed, it too has become more and more
complicated… with the every single birth, society becomes
more and more complicated……. each human birth complicates
society…just the numbers alone, makes life more complicated…
and just the numbers of human alone, increases pollution,
increases global warming, the decline of resources from feeding
and clothing and housing all those human beings…the sheer weight
of all those human beings will some day, bring about the collapse of
human society… life will have become to complicated for us to
continue society………

that is why we cannot follow the conservative mantra of less government
and less government regulations and less anything… simply because
we need more government and more government because our rising
population demands we do so… for any system to succeed, the system
must have the resources needed to maintain that system………
and the only way to get those resources is by government intervention…
for capitalism is only concern with profits and not the viability of the
system…as long as profits are made, there is no concern as to
the system as a whole……. and that is why we need government…
to be concerned with the whole system, not just about the profit margins…

an ever increasingly complicated system must have oversight
and an awareness of the overall system…….

and only government can do so…….

Kropotkin

one of the constant in life is the laws/rules of life…

we have rules/laws for just about everything…….

E=MC2 is just another rule/law…as is the law against
jaywalking as is the rules of basketball and rules
of chess…

Kant believed in rules/laws…

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
admiration and are oftener and more steadily we reflect on them,
the starry heavens above me and the moral law withing me”

we have personal rules/laws… I don’t pursue women…
but I have been married for almost 22 years, so I don’t engage with that…

and we have other personal rules like we might have like, to never
wear white after labor day…or other rules like this…

we have personal rules, society rules and rules like
the rules/laws of how planets revolved around the sun…
scientific rules/laws…

now the question becomes, given our current situation,
what rules must we follow and what rules can we
break at our leisure…
for example, the rules/laws of gravity… we have no choice
but to subject to the rules of gravity… we have no choice…
and we must adjust our actions, our behavior to the rules/laws
of gravity…

and other rules/laws we can follow or ignore at our leisure…
for example, my own personal rule of not attempting to
lure women into bed…I can, if I were so bold, try to
seduce women… but I would pay the consequences for such
a rule breaking with possible divorce and losing my family…

so where does this leave us?

we exists in a universe/reality where we have rules/laws
and we spend a great deal of time, trouble, money and effort
trying to understand the rules/laws of the universe………

and this might be what life really is… life is simply an attempt
to understand and adapt to the rules/laws we are subjected to…

laws/rules which can be personal, legal or natural…

and at each stage of our existence, the rules/laws can and might
change for us……. rules/laws change with our growth as human beings…
personal laws anyway, legal laws like the law against jaywalking might
or might not change as time passes, but natural laws like E=MC2
might not change in our lifetimes or might never change………

so the problem of existence might simply be a question of
learning and understanding the rules…the rules/ laws of a personal
nature, or the rules/laws of a legal nature or the rules/laws of a scientific nature…

what are the rules?

that might be the question of our existence…….

Kropotkin

we are born and then we are indoctrinated with
ism’s, myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions, biases…
now these myths, ism’s, habits,prejudices…
are simply society attempt to instruct us with the rules/laws
of society and the universe…

to quote Kant once again…

“all perceptions is colored by emotions”

we perceive the universe through the lense of our emotions…
these emotions are the myths, habits, ism’s, prejudices…
we are indoctrinated with from our birth…

in other words, our perceptions are distorted by the myths and
habits… of our childhood…

an example is, the prejudice that black people are inferior to white people…
this myth, prejudice, habit is the lens in which people make an understanding
of the universe/reality…they see reality through the emotion of
their childhood indoctrination…the prejudice they were taught…
so, in seeing reality, they can only see black people as being inferior,
and so that is what they see… regardless of the truth…

“all perceptions are colored by emotions”

so if people are indoctrinated with the understanding of the universe
in terms of the emotion of hate or anger or greed, that is how they
see the universe… in terms of those emotions… hate, anger, greed, lust…

so if we indoctrinate children with hate, that is how they see the
universe… if we indoctrinate children with love, that is how they
will see the universe…

the very rules/laws we indoctrinate children with, will in large
part, determine how children will see or perceive the universe/reality…

“all perceptions are colored by emotions”

so, now we can connect the first part about laws/rules with this second
part, which is perceptions are colored by emotions…

so if we teach the rules/laws of life to be about the higher
level of being a human being, that love and hope and charity
are the rules/laws of the universe, then the myths, habits,
prejudices we teach our children are about the higher aspects
of being human……… we color our children emotions with
love and hope and charity… and through those emotions,
they perceive the universe/reality……… instead of hate or greed
or lust or anger…………

by what we indoctrinate, we teach the children how they perceive
the universe…………

Kropotkin

so the problem of existence…
what rules/laws are we going to indoctrinate our children with?

“all perceptions are colored by emotions”

conservatives believe in a set of rules/laws that colors their
perception of the universe/reality…

their “emotions” are colored by their indoctrination of the rules/laws
of society/universe/reality……

so, what rules/laws are conservatives indoctrinated with?

the idea of a fixed/set universe…of their being a god,
of the notion that human beings have a set and fixed
nature… once a person is born, they are fixed in either
being “good” or “evil”…………human beings cannot change their
nature is a perception of conservatives………

our understanding of reality/universe determines in large
part what the universe is…

and we indoctrinated children with our understanding of reality/universe…

we color their perceptions with emotions/myths/prejudices, that we teach them,
that we indoctrinate them with…….

so we indoctrinate children with the capitalistic idea that all human beings
are selfish, greedy, lusting after… the rules/laws we teach/indoctrinate children
with are colored by our emotions which we were indoctrinate with as children…

so how to break this cycle?

the enlightenment answer was to think for oneself, not to bow down
to authority, to question everything, to become aware of the myths,
and ism’s and prejudices and superstitions we were taught as children…

and this is solid advice… become aware of and understand your
biases and ism’s and myths, you hold and act upon………

as your perceptions are colored by emotions……

so to escape being held hostage by emotions and biases
and myths and prejudices you were indoctrinated with…
you must first become aware of them…….

now, we know, yes, know that as we grow, we change
all the time… the myths and biases we were taught as children
change, for example, we are taught that Santa Claus exists
and that the Easter Bunny exists and that there is a tooth
fairy that bring us money for each tooth we lose…
but we learn, become aware of, this indoctrination that
there is no such thing as the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy
or Santa Claus… we outgrow these myths…….and we are
none the worse for wear for outgrowing these myths……

and this is where conservatives fail… they fail to understand
that we do grow and learn and change every single day in
our understanding of who we are and what is possible…
we are not fixed and determined in our relationship with
the rules/laws or in terms of our relationship with the
universe/reality………….we can change and become something
new and it is all right…

“all perceptions are colored emotions”

we just have new emotions which change our perceptions
of the universe/reality…………

the human being is not fixed and determined as perceived
by the conservative…

we change all the time as we grow… our very aging process
brings about change… I am different today, at age 59,
then I was at age 29 and just because I am 59 and not 29…
the very fact I am 59 changes my or colors my perceptions
of the universe/reality………it requires nothing else to happen
but for me to grow old and that changeds my emotions…which
colors my perceptions………

so the very laws/rules of our life changes as we grow because
our situation changes, we grow old…… we cannot hold
our youthful perceptions because we are no longer young……

Kropotkin

now how do we tie this all together?

we have laws/rules… we have perceptions that are colored
by our emotions… we have our childhood indoctrinations
that create our perceptions of the universe/reality…

now each aspect, laws/rules… or our perceptions that are colored
by emotions, our childhood indoctrinations… they cannot be
explained by any aspect of the three… we must find an answer
by looking to some overall, overarching answer…

we are being that exist in time and space…
and we need to have some goals or a destination to
reach for… now why that is important is really the point
of this particular post…

as human beings, we do better when we have a goal or destination
to strive for… it gives us some meaning or purpose to our life…

but we have our indoctrinations from childhood that also exists
within us…so we tend to pick goals/destinations that work
with the indoctrinations of our childhood……. the conservative
goal of anger/greed/ hate is an indoctrination and so conservatives
tend to pick goals/destinations that incorporate these preconceived
emotions………. but in realty, what goal is really understood by
conservatives? they fight for such things, as greed and anger and hate…
so the goals/destination is about greed, anger and hate…
but greed and anger and hate, can only bring about greed
anger and hate…… it doesn’t have any goal behind
the anger or hate or greed… to be greedy is the goal,
to have hate is the goal, to be angry is the goal…….
the conservative has I have pointed out, is about
security… but the goal of being secure is as far as that
goal goes… in other words, being secure is the goal in itself…
but it doesn’t lead to any other goal past being secure…

but love and charity and hope lead us to goals past these
emotions… to love is to have something to love and
to strive to keep that love… Kant once wrote…

“the rules of happiness… something to do, someone to love
and something to hope for”

each of these goals reach beyond themselves…they are not self contained
goals/destinations like anger and greed and lust…….

and that is the difference between liberals and conservatives…
values for the liberals are different then the values for conservatives…

liberals values reach beyond themselves… a value of love
doesn’t just end with itself, it must have something to love…
and something to do, reaches beyond itself… and something to
hope for, reaches beyond itself… you need an object to
love and an object to hope for and an object for something to do…

to hate, to have anger, to have greed is enough for itself…
it is enough to hate and it is enough for greed and it is enough
to hold anger… for they exists for themselves…the objects of
the hate and anger and greed is irrelevant… it doesn’t matter
what you hate or have anger about or being greedy about…

when conservatives hate… they claim to hate because liberal hate
or because of liberals actions or thoughts… conservatives blame
others……. but that is to escape responsibility for their hate or their
anger or their greed……. … they don’t take responsibility for their
anger or hate or greed………and that is the point of existentialism…

to understand that we are responsible for our perceptions and we
are responsible for our emotions and we are responsible for our
actions and we are responsible for who we are… and if we unable
to adapt to ever changing conditions, that too is our responsibility…

we are responsible……. and we are responsible for our emotions
and we are responsible for our hate or anger or lust or greed
and we are responsible for our love and our hope and our
charity…….regardless of the indoctrinations we are given as
children because as we grow and age and become adults,
we need to change and adapt and become who we are…
if I am 59, I must change and adapt and become who I am
at 59… I cannot become my understanding of the universe
that I had at 29………I am older and I must become who I am
at 59…….and I am responsible for that……

we must overcome and overcoming means overcoming
our childhood indoctrinations… which means overcoming
our childhood perceptions and our childhood emotions…

we must adapt our understanding of the laws and rules
we live by because we are now older…our understanding
of the laws/rules is different because we are older…
our very aging process changes how we perceive the
universe/reality… and our understanding of the law/rules
changes too………

it is all connected…… you just have to follow the connections…

Kropotkin

we have philosophy which is far more complicated
then in the time of Plato or Descartes or even Kant…
and why? because we live in far more complicated times…
with a different set of questions, a different set of needs and a different
set of indoctrinations that we grew up with…….

we are children of the industrial revolution and the children
of Auschwitz and the children of Hiroshima…and we
have our indoctrinations learned from these events……
regardless if we remember these events or if they impact
our daily lives………. every single event in your life is still
there regardless if you remember it or not… it still impacts
your life…….as does the impact of events like Auschwitz or
Hiroshima still impacts our culture or our society or our
personal self even if we didn’t feel its impact directly…
we are connected… and events from very far away can still
impact our lives even if we don’t see it or hear it or feel it…
it is still there…for we exist in the world, of the world,
for the world and anything that happens in the world impacts us……
you don’t live in isolation of events, in isolation of the world…
we exists in the world and that means we are of the world…

if it change the world, it exists within you… and everything changes
the world…….even the smallest of actions……

thus the reason for the complication of philosophy…
it must reflect the world and the world changes,
repeatedly and often quickly…….

with those oft changes and the speed of changes, how
can we create a philosophy of history, a philosophy of
political science, a philosophy of education, when the world
we live in changes so rapidly?

philosophy to become successful, must reflect the
world at large……. we must reflect the rapidly changing
world with philosophy that is written in ever changing formats
and ever changing idea’s… to keep up with the ever changing
world… in other words… philosophy isn’t about the
the permanent or the unchanging aspects of the universe/reality…
because the universe/reality is always changing…

philosophy must no longer say, thou must live like this…
no, philosophy says, today we live like this and tomorrow,
maybe, no, tomorrow will be different…

philosophy must be written in the air and no longer
in stone……….

a new philosophy is needed… as Nietzsche says,
philosophy must be able to dance……….
and you cannot dance if written in stone…

this is why philosophy has been deemed to be a “failure”…
it hasn’t kept us with the everchanging reality of the universe…
and why religion is deemed to be a “failure”
whereas science has kept up and is far more respected
and understood…it has kept paced with the ever changing
universe and reality…

so what is philosophy? it is a method to discover
what are the rules/laws of the universe…

a method, not a absolute point of view, but a method like
logic and science and math… used to discover our current reality…

and once it is understood that philosophy is a method, not a goal or
a destination, then philosophy will take its place once more as
the queen of the sciences… because philosophy is to better understand
the values we live by and values as such, change sometimes quite
quickly…… so philosophy is a method of understanding values
and the values we either have or we need to have… philosophy
can be used to understand the values of yesterday or today or tomorrow…

what value is more important, love or hate?

and philosophy can help us to understand that the values we
have today which is the values of capitalism, of greed and envy
and lust… and we must move on from these current values of today
and move to the values of tomorrow which is the values of love
and hope and charity… we use philosophy as a measure of values
and what values we should hold and why…….

Kropotkin

philosophy must change or adapt to the conditions and environment it finds itself
in and today conditions and environment is a rapidly changing one…

whereas during the middle ages, the conditions and environment
didn’t change that fast…so philosophy was able to
remain the same as a method for centuries…

but the new reality is that the conditions and environment of
today is ever changing and philosophy must change to reflect
these ever changing conditions and environment…….

philosophy cannot be tied down to any permanent and fixed
position because then philosophy cannot change to met the
changing environment and conditions………

and philosophy is just a method to discover what values are needed
in any given environment……or not needed as the case maybe…

Kropotkin

I have often thought about the Buddha and his thought
that the point of existence is about suffering and how to
escape suffering……

and my first thought is that by making suffering the key value,
you deny other possibilities like searching for the truth or
seeking god or finding happiness or seeking the values worth
living for…….

in denying other values like seeking happiness or searching for
the truth, that single minded value is a negation of other values…
you negate other values when you put only one as being the “only” value
worth understanding… or seeking…

it is like capitalism and its focus on profits/money before all
other values… this focus on profits negates all other values like love
or happiness or hope or justice…

suffering is a part but only a part of life…
and it is no different then a focus on other values
claimed to have value such as pity and compassion…
which some philosophers have claimed to be primary or
the most valuable value to have…

while I agree that pity and compassion are valuable
values to have, they are not the only values we must have…
we can put guilt into this mix…and then after some thought,
I see that religions emphise certain values like guilt or pity or
compassion or even hate…

and make that value the primary value of that religion…so
catholics can suggest that the primary value of religion is guilt…
we are all guilty via the original sin… and to absolve ourselves
of this guilt is the drive to be saved……… which is no different
then the Buddhist drive to claim suffering the value we must
must drive for……

the Jews speak of the “law”… and even Jesus, who was Jewish,
said,

“do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets,
I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them”

this focus on the law and obeying God’s law is fundamental to
Jewish faith… another aspect that is one single view turned into
an entire faith, religion…………just like the Buddha and his focus on suffering…

what is needed is a religion that answers all the questions of existence,
not just the single focus of suffering or of being saved or of obeying the law
or to find an answer to the guilt “all” humans feel…

we don’t yet have an religion that truly answer the call of what makes
a human being, a human being……

religions are just one side of the human experience…and they ignore the other
side of what makes us human… be it suffering or guilt or obedience to the law
or pity or compassion… and we need an religion that answers all those questions
of guilt and sin and obedience and pity and compassion and suffering…
equally………

Kropotkin

Existence is like a dandelion.
We start as a seed carried by the wind.
Then we find earth and water.
We take root, but eventually we die.

My answer to this problem is that although all knowledge is good,
some types of knowledge are far more useful than others.
This giant chain-reaction is life.
We have limited time so we can’t piss away our mind on things like movies and politics.
Happiness comes from within,
but truth comes from the outside world.

Wisdom however comes from within and the outside both, when they are combined.

K: ummmmm, if happiness comes from within, then why do people spend so much
time trying to find happiness in outside stuff like material goods, in a new job or
a job title, in seeking out wealth, or in trying to earn fame or glory or happiness in
having a TV show? why do we try to seek happiness outside of us, instead of inside of
us…

and why do we try to seek happiness instead of something else? is happiness
really the goal we should be trying for?

Kropotkin

Externalizing is a form of gradual suicide.
The bitter-medicine analogy applies to all things in our life.
We prefer flavorful things, not tasteless or bitter things.
The result is that people chase after the most appealing things,
of which in capitalism become expensive, and therefor a person’s
suicide empowers a capital service or commodity.

I fight with myself to focus on important things instead of doing crap.
I still do crap, but a lot less than a regular person.

we return to Kant and his questions…

  1. what can I know?
    2.what ought I do?
  2. what may I hope?

now we also have Kant’s three thoughts…
god, freedom and immortality…

so, how do we know god, freedom, immortality?

how are Kant’s three point relevant to “what ought I do”
and “what may I hope”…

now if we take Hume seriously, then we cannot “know” any of these
concepts of god, freedom or immortality… for Hume has shown us,
that knowledge of these concepts is not possible…all knowledge
Hume argues is only possible by experience and god, freedom and
immortality lies outside of our experience…

god, freedom and immortality are metaphysical concepts…
they exists outside of physical experience…(now one may argue that
freedom isn’t outside of experience, but for the moment let us assume that freedom
is a metaphysical concept)

so, what can I know? In light of Hume, we realize that our knowledge
is limited… we have limited senses and limited ability to
understand what our senses tell us, so we are in fact, limited to
the extent of our knowledge…I can tell you, know, that I am in the
kitchen, writing on the dinning room table because that is the only spot
in the house I can write in…we have this limited amount of knowledge…
now according to Hume, we cannot have any other knowledge beyond
simple, basic knowledge like my sitting at the kitchen table…
we cannot have metaphysical knowledge because that knowledge exists
outside of our sensory ability, outside of our senses, outside of our
experience…as the knowledge of god, freedom and immortality
lie outside of our senses…

so, this question of what can I know? Is a limited one, we
can know what the senses and experience tells us and as we
have limited senses and can only have limited experiences,
we are limited in our knowledge………

so we face Kant’s second question, what ought I do?

this is an rather open ended question…… what ought I do in regards to, what?

the answer to this question seems to lie outside of the question…

so we try to understand this question in terms of, let us try possibilities,

what ought we do given our possibilities?

so now we have to understand what is possible for a human being?

at any given time, we have different possibilities… for example, at age
18, I could and did, run a marathon… at 59, not so much, I can drive 26 miles,
but I doubt I could walk or even bike ride 26 miles… so at different ages, what
is possible for me changes…

my thoughts of today, weren’t possible at 20 because I needed time to
reflect upon and read about and live the possibilities we have…
and the years of reading and thinking make it possible to have the thoughts
I have today… my wilderness years as I like to call them…

due to my experience, I avoid the mistakes of youth… I can see, spot
trouble before it ever comes near me, and I can avoid it……
and that is due to my age and experience… in my youth, I made
plenty of mistakes… mistakes I could have avoided if I was a little
more experienced… but that is how we become wise… the wiser
the man, the greater the fuck ups he has had…kinda good rule of the thumb…
a wise man has fucked up enough to have learned from his mistakes…
an unwise man still hasn’t learned from his mistakes…

so, fuck ups are the key to becoming wise… and the moral of this
story is to fuck up and often………

so anyway, what ought I do?

let us think about this ……

Kropotkin

so what ought I do?

society has created myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions and biases
to tell us what we ought to do…… that is the point of society’s
myths of childhood… to point out what we ought to do…

we ought to be patriotic and fight for our country
and we ought to obey the law and we ought to
believe in god…(recall that insubordination is the greatest
crime in the bible and in the state and in business… as a union
person, I can only be fired for two and two things only,
on is stealing and the other… yep, insubordination… think about it)
and we ought to hold certain beliefs and act in certain ways… that
is part of the indoctrination of our youth… we must act, think, believe,
in certain things or we shall be tossed out of paradise…

(to my mind, Adam is the best example of what a real human being needs
to be, someone who rejects authority to become their own person, to
act upon their own reason, not on authority’s reason…
to become fully realized human beings, we must be like Adam
and reject authority and become our own person and yes, mistakes
will me made… that is the moral of that story… become a real functional
human being, but beware, it comes at a cost… are you willing to pay that cost
and for most people, they are not willing to pay the price to become fully human,
it is easier and less complicated to remain under the thumb of authorities)

so, what ought we do?

the example is really more of what ought we aspire to, instead of
being like Adam pre-fall, we should be like Adam after the fall and
try to realize our possibilities by attempting to become more,
not to listen to authorities who try to limit what is possible, but
to become fully human…Adam didn’t become fully human until
he ate the apple, the fruit of knowledge… and we should listen…

(I am saying Adam, but I could have easily said Eve also, as I am
a man, I tend to think in terms of a male, if I was female, I
could have and most likely would have said Eve… it is easily
understand regardless of who I had used, Adam or Eve…)

so, what ought I do?

Kropotkin

so what ought I do?

we use such things as physical activities like running, swimming,
basketball, mountain climbing, baseball, to name a few things,
to discover what is possible for us physically…we push
the boundries of being human with such physical activities…
we try to break the 4 minute mile and we try to hit the baseball
enough to get a 300 average and we climb ever new mountains to
discover who we are………

we use these things to discover our physical possibilities…
we have yet extend this into our mental or emotional life…
in other words, what ought we do to discover our mental or
emotional abilities?

we can use such things as history or philosophy or math to discover
what our mental possibilite are and we can use love and hope
and justice to discover what are our emotional possibilities…

I have have loved… I can love… and if I have learned something
like philosophy, then I have learned my possibilities in the mental…

what is possible for us emotionally is things like love and hope and
equality… for we emotionally hate inequality…

so we have emotional possibilities… things that we learn when
we act emotionally…love is a great example… I haved
loved my wife for over 20 years but it is not a love like the
rush of a new love…I was watching some TV show where the
character falls in love… and it has been a long, long time
where I felt the rush of falling in love with someone like that…
and it is attractive, a wishing for, to fall in love like that again…
but then I have something else… a different kind of love…
whereas my love is a slow burning, steady pace of a long
lasting love… not the bright fire and indeed, explosive
first moments of a new love…

I don’t think I shall ever have the rush of falling in love again,
but it is understanding of where I am at these days…
experience does help us make these understandings…

so, what ought I do?

we should use things like our physical activities and
falling in love to discover what are our possibilities…
we must push the boundary of what is means to be human
with such things as our physical activities and our mental
ones such as learning a new language or learning disciplines like
math or philosophy…

and why? because we cannot “know” what is possible until
we push the borders of human actions in the physical, mental
emotional………… for example, we have seen such events as the
Holocaust and we wonder how, how someone could participate
in such horrible actions… guards and doctors and plain folks who
engaged in such actions… these actions push the boundary of
what is possible for human beings…we see it is possible for
ordinary people to engage in and be active participants
in pure and unadulterated evil…we see what is possible for
people, for us… for despite our best intention, we too can
engage in acts of evil, even in such evil as concentration camps
and the deaths of people whose only crime was to be born a different
religion…or to be born loving someone different then who love…

and this is why we must engage in and become aware of
intolerance and bigotry and inequality…for belief in those
beliefs allow us to accept and possibly engage with evil like
Auschwitz… intolerance and bigotry and inequality gives us
the possibility of thinking that it is acceptable to engage in
and support acts of evil like Auschwitz…

belief in intolerance and bigotry and inequality leads us to
to the possibility of acts of evil…

and is that how we are to define the possibilities of being human
by acts of evil? don’t we engage with our possibilities best
when we engage with our higher possibilities… the possibility
of love and the possibility of hope and the possibility of peace
and of justice and equality…

we must engage with, ought to do, with the higher possibilities
of being human, not with the lower possibilities like hate
and intolerance and anger and greed and lust……

it is not about our oughts being acts of something,
like slaying the dragon or making millions in business but
what we ought to do is explore the possibilities of being human…
that is what we ought to do…discover who we are and
what are our possibilities…and we use actions and event
and experiences to discover those possibilities…

we ought to become more human…

that is what we ought to do…

Kropotkin

we have Kant’s three questions…

What can I know…
what out I do…
want may I hope…….

as I touched upon the first two questions earlier, I wish to
discuss the final question……

what may I hope…

now Kant had taken his three other question of
god, freedom and immortality away from the first question…what can I know…

and he placed in the third question of what may I hope,
the question of god, freedom and immortality…

so we cannot know god or freedom or immortality…
but we can hope for them……….

that was Kant’s position…and in a real sense, he is right…
we cannot know if there is a god or what is freedom or is
there is immortality…

we can however hope for them……….

but that list of things to hope for seems, to me anyway, rather limited…….

as hope is really just another way of saying prayer… what do we pray for,
which is to say, what do we hope for?

so what do we pray for?

Nietzsche ubermensh, he has said yes, yes to all that the universe
offers and so he has no need for prayer because he has nothing he
needs to hope for… he is a man content with what the universe has
to offer, and we know the universe offers us pain and suffering
and agony and joy and delight and love and beauty and we say yes…
thus we have no need to hope for something when we have all that the
universe has to offer us…………we have overcome what others might
call good or evil because they are simple the same thing thought of
in a different, higher context… and what does the word “context” mean?
experience……….

as a modern man, a man of 2018… what should I hope for?
what should I pray for?

nothing, nothing at all………

Kropotkin

I had a conversation with a man…

he told me that there was no difference between
self help books and philosophy…….

and he was right……… both are meant to help us understand
and improve ourselves………

but what does philosophy do that the self help books don’t do?

philosophy tries to extend understanding to the world…
it also questions everything, creates doubt about everything…
the beginning of wisdom lies in doubt…
the self help book only want to create certainty…
I don’t want to create certainty…

I want to create that Zen moment when the mountains are leaping
and the sea is dancing and the rivers have overflowed their banks…
that is the moment that I look for………

I have said yes…

Kropotkin

in thinking about this ongoing battle between
hate, intolerance, anger, greed and lust
and the enlightenment ideals of tolerance,
reason, thinking for oneself…

the forces of hate and intolerance are winning at this time
and I was wondering why? then some thoughts came to mine…

the lower instincts of hate and intolerance and anger and greed,
need only themselves to exists… they don’t need any plan or goal or
destination outside of themselves…you hate just to hate… it has
no other meaning or goal…

whereas the liberal ideals of the enlightenment do have a goal,
do have a destination……. the enlightenment was about
following the path of progress (and progress was assumed to exist even if
the progress didn’t always follow a straight path) and it was a given that
the enlightenment ideals were part of the overall path of progress…
by following the enlightenment ideals of tolerance and thinking for oneself,
Sapere aude……Latin for “Dare to know” or has some have thought about
it, “Dare to be wise” or for some, “Dare to think for yourself”
one was engaging in the path of progress………
not only individually but as part of a social collective progress…

but hate and anger and greed don’t care about progress and they
don’t care about any individual goal… hate exists for hate and
that is why those who hate seem to, seem to, achieve more
then those with liberal idea’s because it is easier to hate then
to achieve positive ideals by following the path of improving oneself
and finding out what is best in us, instead of what is worst……

hate only needs hate… and is the path of least resistance…

Kropotkin

if I were to say, the ideal society is where
we have ended war and poverty and intolerance and hatred
and bigotry and religions…

the ideal society is one where we only work a few hours a day and
we spend the rest of the day, in some aspect of improving ourselves…
learning a new language or climbing a mountain or running a 5 minute mile
or reading a book are all forms of improving ourselves…changing who we
are……….

now many will jump up here and say, it isn’t possible or it won’t work
this utopia of yours or it is a fantasy or it is what it is…

thus affirming the idea that people can only say no,
they cannot say yes and see the possibilities of change…

we can have a society where we only work a few hours a day
and spend the rest of the day doing things of interest to us…
the question becomes, do we spend the effort to try
to get from point A, which is today, to point B, which is our
ideal society… instead of saying, it is impossible or it is a
unreachable fantasy, we could say, how do we go from point
A to point B………… how do we achieve our goal here……

what will it take to get from our current broken society to
a point where we are no longer a nihilistic society/culture?

instead of saying no, it is possible to say, yes, what does it
take to get to our ideal society/culture………….

we are far too use to saying no,
instead of saying yes…it is possible…

what would it take for you to learn to say yes instead
of saying no?

Kropotkin