a new understanding of today, time and space.

so, I return to an earlier thought, which
is Anthropomorphism……

which is the attribution of human traits, emotions and intentions
to non-human entities and is applied to such disciplines as
history, psychology, and yes, even philosophy…………

part of the indoctrination we have as children is this
Anthropomorphism within our world…….
the environment was “created” for the use of human beings…
the world was meant for human beings to use as we wish…

I doubt the universe was created with human beings in mind…
in fact, the universe has evolved without humans beings in mind at all……
the universe exists as a neutral entity… with no thought at all to
its citizens, be it human or otherwise……………

we fit into the society as do all other creatures based on the fact that
we came from this evolution of life… this idea that we are the solely the receivers
of the universe benevolence to us as human beings, is just another example
of this Anthropomorphism…………. the “universe” doesn’t know or care about us
in any way, shape or form…it is and we are and the interact with each other,
the universe/environment with us, but we came from the evolution of living matter,
but we are not the reason for the evolution of the universe…that just happened…
and we are simply the results of that evolution, that random evolution that
happened to create us as it did all life…….

the result of this random understanding of the universe is that because the
universe is and does act random, it doesn’t give us any possibility to create
a coherent viewpoint, a worldview that gives us our place in the universe,
that gives us a home within the universe…… a random universe is just that,
random and random doesn’t give us any line graph of who we are and what is
our place in the universe………

that is in part, why people hate evolution so much… it takes away
the possibility of anthropormorphism that drives so much of our religion
and philosophy and history and our view of who we are and what is possible…….

the truth is that evolution doesn’t give us a place or home within the universe
and that is what drives the hatred of evolution…………….

people want a given understanding of our place in the universe that
religion or a political viewpoint gives………….

we Anthropormorphize the universe in order to create an worldview of
where we exist within the universe, a home to understand who we
are and what is possible for us…………

a reevaluation of values might take away that home, that special place
that we need in order to maintain the fiction that we have a home,
a place within the universe, a special viewpoint from which we can judge
the universe from………………. take away that viewpoint and how do we judge
who we are and what is possible for us?

Kropotkin

recall earlier, when I spoke about accidental traits…
being born an American is an accidental trait, being born
white is also an accidental trait or being 5ft 8 inches tall
or being a man or woman, all accidental traits……

we think of those accidental traits as being definable traits,
in other words, being born white in terms of the misguided
thought that, “white is right”… and in terms that the white man
is superior to the black man or to the Asian… and yet, being
born white is just an accidental trait just as much as being born
an American………………

we take these accidental traits and in a sense, anthroporomorhphize…
them…….I was accidentally born white and by taking that accidental trait
and making it a definition of who I am, is anthroporomorphising it…
giving it value it doesn’t have…
it is accidental… it has no value outside of what we give it…

we have constructed our values and meaning due to the accidental
trait of being born on one side of a line or being born white or being
born a man or woman, as it were…

all of religion, all of politics, all of thinking about who we are
and what is our purpose is based on accidental traits and
our anthoroporthism of those accidental traits…

the universe doesn’t give a shit who we are or the fact we
are “human”… it just doesn’t know or care…

think of Ants… we have literally billions maybe even trillions of ants
on planet earth… think of one specific ant in Brasil… now do you care in
any way, shape or form about one specific ant in Brasil? of course not…
you don’t know or care about one specific ant in Brasil…
and now think of yourself as being life, does life care about
one specific human being or even the human race? naw…

life doesn’t care or give a shit about you or your race, creed, color,
ethnicity or gender or anything else about you?

life is simply about life and what specifically happens in the creation
of life is not important……………evolution doesn’t care about you or
who you are and what are your possibilities……

that is the beginning of wisdom… the true understanding of
your place in life and the true understanding of who you are
and what is your possibilities………

don’t let your ego decide what life is or isn’t…
think about life as being neutral… it just doesn’t give a shit…….

now what?

Kropotkin

so if we can’t self identify as our accidental traits of being white, or
being an American or race or sex, then how should we identify ourselves?

If we remove our accidental traits, being white or male or 5ft 8 inches,
American, then what do we have left?

We have being born human… for we cannot be born any other way then
being human because of our programming, our DNA…….
our software demands we are born as human, not as pigs or dogs
or cows, but as human… being born a species cannot be accidental because
of the programming we have as humans… we can only give birth to humans…

we can also become more then any accidental trait by proclaiming ourselves
as being part of life… for being born as part of life is not accidental…
the part of being born, means we are part of life, it is not an accidental trait.

we can celebrate that fact that we are human and a part of life…
that is something that is not accidental… it is a part of us that
is not accidental…………

we can take pride in and proclaim in a loud voice, I am human being
and a part of life…………… thus you are part of the tree of existence,
you are part of all life, all living matter… the tree, the bird, the cat,
the cow are all part of who you are because they are part of life also……

you don’t need to be white or male or American to be part of something that
is real… those are accidental and thus not something that we can
really claim credit to… but being born human and being part of life…
that is something you can be part of and something you are already part of…

for being human and being a part of life is not accidental…… it is a basic
part/ function of who you are and what is possible for you… but being human
also means you can achieve something more because of your programming,
the software we are born with can be overcome with a conscience decision to
overcome… I am human but I can overcome my childhood indoctrinations…
and become something more then just what I was trained to be…… indoctrinated with……………

who are you and what is possible?

overcome and you will find out…

Kropotkin

as I can’t sleep and I have to get to work fairly early,
this won’t be very pretty tomorrow morning……

anyway, this question or problem of human existence is really
a question of who are we and what is possible for us………

and we cannot tell or understand who we are until we
escape certain idea’s like our anthropormorphism of our
environment…….we cannot understand our environment a priori…
we must have experience and observation to understand our environment
but our need to anthropormorphize everything damages our ability
to correctly understand who we are………we fail to correctly understand
our place in the universe because we anthromoprize religion and god
and thus mistake who we are and what is our possibilities…

thinking that there is a god leads us to incorrectly understand who we are
because we believe we are spiritual creatures when in fact, we are social
creatures…………….and this misunderstanding effects how we understand
the world…if our starting place is wrong and the ending place is wrong,
then how are we to get to the starting place we need to be and the ending place
we need to have?

we must reevaluate our starting point because if we have a wrong starting point,
we cannot possible end up where we want to end up………. and
we have the wrong starting point……………… all we have is
experience and observation to guide us, nothing like the a priori
of Kant…… let us begin with experience and observation and see where
that takes us……………

Kropotkin

ok, so let us begin with experience………

since oh, Descartes, philosophy has been done on
a “scientific” basis. Descartes starting point was with the
new physics… began in large part by the new science of Kepler and
Copernicus and continued by Tycho Brahe and moved along
with the new idea’s of motion by Galileo who died the same year as Newton was born…

Now for Descartes, he only knew the idea’s of motion from Kepler to Galileo, not
Newton………….

the new physics was about motion…the movement of the heavens,
the rotation of the earth and the stars and the planets…….
everything seemed to move including the earth……

And so to be scientific, that is where Descartes began, with movement…
so if everything is moving, how can one create a starting point?

so with that in mind, Descartes wanted to create a fixed and firm starting
point that didn’t move………………

he ended up with the mental mind, not the physical brain,
“I think, therefor, I am” is not about the physical brain, because
physical objects move and you cannot gain certainty from moving objects…
because they are always moving which includes the physical brain…….

“I think therefore I am” is about mental thought and not physical
movement or motion……… he was trying to avoid this motion…

Spinoza solution was to include everything into what he called “nature”
which was everything including god… everything was an extension of
“nature” which included motion and movement……….

so, Spinoza simply just included everything into one neat and tidy box
which he called “NATURE”… he didn’t have to worry about thinking about
how motion or movement needed to be included into his philosophy…….
it was already there as part of everything else…………

now Hume thought that cause-effect was simply formed by our thinking,
by our habits and myths (although he didn’t use the word myth, he meant it)
indoctrinations, prejudices and superstitions…………

space/time was part of our mental facilities and not some outside existing
force… and Kant accepted this… thus Kant tried to show how
time/space was relativistic, based on each of us and not on some outside
force…………

so we have as part of our modern philosophical history, science being
a key understanding of philosophy…whether the philosopher correctly understood
the science or not is actually irrelevant……….he based a large part or his entire
philosophy on the motions and movement of the universe, the reality of the universe
was about motion/movement of everything…….

Hegel began the shift away from basing philosophy on science……

so let us look at science today and understand it in terms of
philosophy………

Modern science is in a wild mess because it has several problems it cannot solve
and doesn’t know how to solve……

first we have the macro science, the large theories of gravity and the motions of
the earth, sun, planets, stars, which is pretty well understood except for the idea
of gravity……. Gravity is a major sticking point in our understanding of the universe…

what exactly is gravity? No one actually knows… we can predict it and we understand
its motions, but we cannot say for certain what it is…………

so we have uncertainty because we don’t know or understand exactly what gravity is…

and we have beside the macro, we have the micro world, the world of the small…
and we understand that fairly well… but and this is a really large but, we do not
have a theory to connect the two, the very large motions of the universe and
the motions of the very small universe………….this is the very dream of science
to connect and if someone does manage it, they will go down as one of science
greats with Newton and Galileo and Einstein………

so there is a lot of motivation to create such a theory……………

having laid out the groundwork of where we stand, let us take the next step…

Kropotkin

so, having covered the issues in my last post, I will
go the next step…….

which is we don’t seem to be able to create a “philosophy” based
on motion or movement. I don’t see how you can create a human
philosophy based on how things move, things being either planets
or the sun or the stars or the universe… everything moves, we get this,
but it doesn’t seem to get us to any form of “philosophy”………

so, much of our philosophical heritage is about space/time…
again beginning with the new physics… and going until
Einstein, who connected space and time into………… space/time…
pretty original, don’t you think?

anyway, so we have space/time and now what?

it seems to me that if space can bend as it does, see wiki’s article
on "space/time and look at the diagram of earth bending space, as it sits
on “space”…………if this is true and we don’t have any reason to doubt it,
then space itself is an object! in other words, if space can bend, it is something
physical and not some mental construct… if as Einstein noted, time does seem
to, depending on our facilities, move fast or move slowly, then time seems to
be a mental construct, but that doesn’t make sense if Einstein is right about
space/time………

let us think about this a different way………….

we humans, we exists within and of space/time…… it is not something that
is separate or outside of us, we exist and have existed within space/time since
our birth……….take a walk from one side of the room to the other and that is
space and it takes time to walk from one side of the room to the other…
so space does exist and apparently so does time………….

so, let us break out space and time for the moment……

space I contend, is a physical matter… it has properties that
are matter… it can bend, it can flex, it can be sucked into a black hole…
it has physical properties… which means it is a physical object…….

so what might space be made of, if it has physical properties?

ahhhhh, that is the 64,000 dollar question…….

science calls space/time, dimensions… like up and down,
think of the length, height and breath of a box… those are dimensions
and we think of time as another aspect of those dimensions…
so we have 4 dimensions………(and other dimensions but that is
trickier and we won’t involve ourselves in that)

but thinking of space/time as dimension doesn’t get us any closer
to some answers about what, if any, physical properties, space or even time
for that matter, might have…

but the problem with any of this is, it doesn’t seem to leave us any closer to
be able to manufacture or create a philosophy from any of this, space/time
or the 4 dimensions or motion………… I just don’t see anyway to get from here to there…
from space/time/dimensions/movement to any sort of philosophy………

so, what might we deduce from this?

Kropotkin

if as I have stated previously, science is about facts and
philosophy is about values… I see space/time/dimensions/
motion/movement as being about facts… they exist in a physical
sense and thus they are science issue/problem… not philosophy’s problem…

but if we cannot base philosophy on space/time/dimensions/ motion
then what can we base philosophy on?

at this point, let us return to what philosophy actually is……

it is an human attempt to rationally understand the world
and where we stand in that world/universe/reality…….

philosophy is positional like trying to understand
the dimensions or space/time………

we are trying to locate ourselves in this reality……

but we don’t seem to be able to use science in any meaningful
way to locate ourselves in this reality………

why not?

because philosophy is not a scientific theory or construct to understand
the world, that is science… philosophy is a mental construct to understand
the world… science deals with the physical location of where we are
and philosophy deals with the mental construct…let us try out this
thesis/ hypothesis…….

philosophy is some mental construct which we use to locate ourselves in
a world of other mental constructs such as ism’s, ideologies, myths,
prejudices, superstitions…………………

an ism doesn’t have any basis in reality like matter or space/time does…
an ism is not a physical property… it doesn’t have any kind of physical
reality……… we construct an ism and then we create a physical reality
to match that mental construct… we don’t have a physical reality
then we use philosophy to describe the physical reality… or do we?

so let us look at one instance, capitalism… did capitalism exist before
Adam Smith describe it? I would say yes, he gave a description of capitalism
that he saw, not that he “invented” it, but he did describe it…………

but capitalism is a mental construct that grew up in a physical universe……

so what is capitalism, is it a mental construct or it is a physical thing?

yes………………

ummmmmmmm, we have a contradiction…… it cannot be both………

here I point out, Schrodinger’s cat…

but that doesn’t seem to leave us anywhere……

yep, that is true… but sometimes the answer is not in the yes or no,
or in the black or white or in the up and down, but the answer lies within/between
the yes and no, between the black and white, between the up and down………

Kropotkin

let us look at something that is both, good and evil, at the same time…….
what is the quintessential defination of evil? the Holocaust…

and yet depending on where one sits, the holocaust could have been
good or evil… if you gain or benefited from the holocaust, it was
good, if you were Jewish or understood the event as evil, it was evil…

but how can the Holocaust be both good and evil? It depends on whether
you gained or benefited from it or didn’t gain or benefited from it…

there were Germans who did benefited from the Holocaust… those
who financially gained from the deportations and deaths of the Jewish people…
for them, the Holocaust was a “good” event… they financially gained
by getting the jobs of the deported Jewish people or they were able to
get assets of the Jewish deportee’s, like jewelry or property or businesses
of the deported Jewish people…that is good if, if you understand
life to be a economic question… a business to improve oneself via
economic means… the more objects, the more material goods one has,
the “better” off one is…

it really depends on the “good” or evil" of the matter of the Holocaust
based on how one observes or understands “good” or “evil”…

One’s location or position decides if an action is “good” or “evil”

the observation location of a person, does he gain or does he loses
from any particular action decides if that action is “good” or “evil”

in other words, “good” or “evil” is a transactional event……
do you gain or do you lose in any particular event will decide
if the event is “good” or “evil” for you…….

if, if you look upon the Holocaust as being more then an transactional event,
such as all life is sacred or the point of existence is to be free, then an event
like the Holocaust becomes something different…… how we observe it, the event,
determines the “judgement” of the event…….

if we use freedom as our guide in understanding the Holocaust, then
it was “evil” or if we use life as our guide in the understanding the
Holocaust event, then it too is “evil”………………

but there are other standards one can use… for example,
we have the utilitarianism standard… which describes
utilitarianism as…

“utility as the sum of all pleasure that results from an action,
minus the suffering of anyone involved in that action”

so how would we weigh out the pleasure of the Holocaust
against the suffering of the Holocaust?

would we use the theory that if the majority of people benefited
from the Holocaust against the suffering of the minority, then
the Holocaust was overall, a “good” or was it an “evil”?

the problem with that theory, among many problems, is
how do we decide or determine the overall benefit or
suffering of the people? Does the suffering of those who
existed in concentration camps or died in them, outweigh
those who benefited from the removal of people into concentration camps?

what criteria would I use to somehow compare the benefit to some people
to the suffering of other people in the exact same action?

Does the suffering of some, somehow outweigh the benefit to others?

I think, but cannot prove, that suffering in some fashion does outweigh
the benefit to others from that suffering……………

no matter upon what standard we use or what criteria we use,
it will be an artificial standard, an creation of an viewpoint that can be
placed anywhere… is Schrodinger’s cat dead?

Depending on our “observation” of the event, yes and no………

it is the observation that determines the cat existence…
Schrodinger’s cat depends on the observation, the observer,
for us to “know” if the cat is dead or alive…………

applying the Schrodinger’s cat experiment to everyday life,
is to risk misapplying it to everyday life………….

but it does bring about a very good point regardless if
Schrodinger’s cat is dead or alive, it points out the
effect of the observer to any example we wish to understand…….

which is a better method then utilitarianism is to understand
events……………but it is still not ideal………

so the problem, the question becomes, is there a better way, a better
means to understand our problem?

or perhaps a better way to describe our problem?

the question of “good” and “evil” might not be the best way to understand
this question……….perhaps a different method might be used?

Kropotkin

if we understand “good” and “evil” as transactional events,
in other words, some may gain and some may lose,
then the way we understand “good” and “evil” is simply as
a mathamatical event… if enough people gain, then
an event like the Holocaust is “good” or if enough people,
“lose” then the Holocaust is “evil” …

but should we regards events as transactional events?

to be sure, we cannot claim every event to be a transactional event,
where some win and some lose, can we?

upon reflection, it does seem that every event is an transactional event…
I do not see an event that does not seem to either benefit or hurt
people…now let us understand this…

I take a solitary event like masturbation………. it doesn’t seem to fall
into this category of hurting people and yet, yet people claim that
the event of masturbation does hurt you because it is “against” the will
of god and will cause one to go to hell…………. it becomes another
transactional event, because depending of how one views it, it
might be “good” or it might be “evil”……………

who benefits and who loses in a event, causes that event and every single
event to become a transactional event……………

does that include every single event? even a event like the ending of the human race
or the nuclear event that destroys planet earth can probably be accounted for
transactionally, be good or evil depending on who wins or who loses…

take some aliens who want to destroy earth to build some super highway,
(that might make a good book :-" ) it would benefit the aliens, not earth so much…

can we observe life without, without being transactional?
ummmmmm, good question………

for being transactional is just another method of observing………
and judging who wins and who loses is another method of
understanding our reality…….

so the question seems to fall upon, how many different ways
can we observe reality, the universe?

the question seems to become a question of how we observe the universe,
reality……………………

a conservative observes reality and declares it to be…
and a liberal observes reality and declares it to be……
and a cat observes reality and declares it to be…………
and a scientist observes reality and declares it to be…….
and a philosopher observes reality and declares it to be…………

and how do we decide or judge who is right or correct about
their observations? what method or criteria would we use
to understand if someone’s observation about reality is the correct one
or the wrong one?

is there “good” and a separate entity called “evil” or is “good” and “evil” really
the same thing as I have declared it to be?

is “good” and “evil” really the one and the same thing?
if some benefit and some don’t, then “good” and “evil”
are transactional, and is really the same thing because depending
on how you judge the event, it may be declared either “good” or “evil”
or the same…………… a transactional event can be counted as either
“good” or “evil” depending…….it is the same thing if it can be counted
as “good” or “evil” depending on context………………

so, it seems to me, that we don’t or can’t, observe the universe, our
reality in a method that allows us to accurately judge the universe or
our reality………we judge the universe or our reality, transactionally,
and that leads us to misjudge or misobserve the universe, reality…….

so, it seems to be the way we look at reality or the universe that needs
to be looked at and then, then we can make judgements about
or understand our universe or reality………

So, how do we change our perception or the way we look at the universe?

Kropotkin

one of the issues seems to be our very senses………
we can only observe the universe through our senses,
through experience and there doesn’t seem to be any other
way to observe the universe………

Kant would say, we observe the universe though
experience but we have innate categories in which
we then understand the universe…we see something,
then by the categories of our mind, we make sense of it…
and those categories are innate…

the problems with this theory are legion and have been discussed
at length in other material…

for example, Schopenhauer reduce the number of categories from
the Kantian 12 to 4…and Kant’s theory has been attacked on any number
of grounds by other thinkers…

so how do we understand the universe/reality by other means
other then the senses or experience?

we cannot understand the universe/reality, a priori, before
the experence? that makes no sense… .unless we take
this idea of innate thought being there and there is no
evidence for it…

we are left with a problem…

one of many…………

Kropotkin

ok, we cannot base or judge philosophy on science, as did
Descartes up till Kant did…………… so, what can we base philosophy
on?

as philosophy is a human construct, based on human values and
based upon human needs……. we must base philosophy on
human understanding, upon a human construct…….
which implies that the Existentialist with their focus on human values
and human needs are closer to what philosophy needs to be then
other philosophical idea’s like the analytical school or the
deconstructionist’s…………………………

the real question of philosophy, is who are we and what is possible?
a human question with a human focus with a human answer………

any questions that take us beyond human needs and human focus
need not be bothered with……………… so does that mean that we
entertain questions like, is there a god? or are there metaphysical
possibilities? I would say no, because they go beyond the
human question, of who are we and what are our possibilities?

in other words, we must refocus philosophy to be about the human being…
and questions that go beyond the human being, are not
acceptable or even wanted……………thus we ignore questions like,
what is the metaphysical? and is the answer to the human question,
god or religion? why not? because they take us beyond the
human aspect of philosophy… if the answer is god, then
the question is not about human beings…………

and the question must about the human being to be philosophy…….

a how to question is about science, how does the heart work?
philosophy cannot answer that question but science can…
or said another way, science can tells us facts about the world,
but philosophy tells about the why, the values of the world………
because the why and the values of humans are about human beings…
why am I here? why is love more important then hate?

these are philosophical questions because they are about
the human animal and their existence………………

questions and answers must be directed to and about the human being…
either individually or collectively… what is our individual role within society?
this question is about the nature of the human construct of society and
our role within that particular construct……… for example,
what is my place within society in a democracy? or what is my place
in a society in regards to capitalism? what is my place in society in regards
to the political or the economic or the social?

all questions about the human construct we call society……………

society is simply an answer to the question of, how are we to exist in
this particular environment? with society being part of the environment,
as well as the environment, what we call nature…….

if we live in a cold, inhospitable environment, what would our society look like?

quite differently I will wager……………you cannot escape question about the human being
that doesn’t at least engage with the environment/nature…………………

who we are is part of what is our environment at this moment…….
and again, that includes society/social/political/nature………
all of which is part of our environment…………………
and must be part of our answer in regards to the
philosophical question of, who are we and what is possible?

questions about our environment, which includes society/social/political/
nature are questions that are philosophical………………….

if the question is about humans, then the question is philosophical, unless
it asks, “how does” questions? and that is science………

Kropotkin

the story of man:

Born… pushed out of paradise
Born… tossed out into the harshness of reality
Born…bright lights, harsh sounds, rough touch
Born… why am I here?

In the begining was me
In the begining, only I existed
In the begining was my needs, my pain, my wants
In the begining…why am I here?

School… A frightful place
School, with all those creatures that look like me
School… a tighting vise upon my soul
School… why am I here?

Age… as I do so, the mystery deepens
Age… my childhood has passed
Age… but understanding has eluded me
Age… why am I here?

Finally……. I escape the drudgery of school…
Finally…I can call myself an adult
Finally… I can claim my freedom
but I only find obligations, responsibilities, bills
Finally……… I ask, why am I here?

Adulthood… a job, a wife, a two car garage…
Adulthood… there is no freedom in adulthood…
Adulthood… I am tied down, staked to the ground, immoble…
Adulthood… isn’t what I thought it would be
Adulthood……. is asking, why am I here?

Aged… I have gained and lost, both jobs and wives
Aged…my children have all begun their own bondage…
Aged…now all I ask is, when can I retire?
Aged… Why am I here?

Old… the days have passed me by…
Old… the joints hurt, my walk is slow, hands unsteady…
Old… I am left to wonder
Old………was there some great truth to my years?
Old… I ask myself, why was I here?

Kropotkin

a plane figure with three sides and three angles………

what am I?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: a plane figure with three sides and three angles………

what am I?

K: can you figure out what a plane figure with three sides and three angles
is, without, without resorting to experience?..

Now some may say, I learned that in school and that is using experience
to find out what my riddle is… without using any experience, can you
discover what my riddle is?

the answer is no… you cannot figure out what my riddle is without
a resort to experience… experience of some sort or another…

If a priori understanding was actually possible, then we wouldn’t need to
teach children in school what items such as…hint, hint, squares and circles
and … what triangles are… we spend a great deal in childhood playing
with toys that represent the various shapes that exists…
if we had a priori understanding of the world, that wouldn’t be necessary…

we learn from teaching and experience how to order the universe
and what morals are and the shape of objects and that 1 + 1 = 2…
all matters we learn from experience…

Kant claimed that we have an innate group of categories that
allow us to understand reality… the problem lies with some
understanding from where do the “innate categories” come from?

we are born with innate categories but we aren’t born with
an innate understand of math or english or shapes or space/time…

so where does this innate catagories come from?

it has to come from somewhere, so where?

answer me this and I shall die a happy man…

answer me this and I shall become a convert to Kantism…

where do innate catagories come from?

Kropotkin

as I read and attempt to make sense of Kant,
I wonder a couple of things…… first of all,
what does this whole idea of Kant’s really mean for
the human problem of existence……………

yes, Kant was aiming as all philosophers aim for, which
is certainty and order…………but I am old and I have reason to
suspect this need for certainty…….

the most dangerious people on planet earth are the ones who
are “certain” that this is so or that is true…
religious fanatics are “certain” that there is a god and that
there is heaven and the entire point of existence is to reach
heaven and they are certain…

certainty leads people to ignore logic, understanding, compassion,
intelligence… why have any of those things if you are certain?

IQ45 is certain he is right and acts upon that certainty… to the clear
and obvious detriment of America…he is unable to see the damage
he is doing because he is “certain” what he is doing is right… he is simply
the most visible and obvious candidate of someone who is “certain” and
doing incredible damage to us as a country…

being absolutely certain allows one to act as if it doesn’t matter
what the cost are, because you are certain and to be certain means
to be right……. and if you are right, then the cost is negligible because
you aren’t paying the cost…… someone else is… and that is the problem with
being certain… the cost is almost always being born by someone else,
not the person who is certain……….

in my ideal world, we would have no certainty, no reason to be
certain because everything is in doubt and when people are in doubt,
they act more slowly and with care and caution… unlike those who are certain……

having doubt or uncertainty doesn’t mean less will happen or
that we will become timid… no, it just means that we
won’t act stupidly because we aren’t so certain that we are right…….

so in regards to philosophy, I reject the object of philosophy
as being a search for certainty……………the object of philosophy
is to gain the truth or to find one’s place in the universe or to
at least understand the questions of life… and none of these have
anything to do with certainty or finding certainty……

the search for certainty is the search for a need to be filled, but
that need to be certain leads one to make grave and dangerous
mistakes…………… better to do without
certainty then to have certainty and think you have all the answers…
and when you act with certainty, others pay the price for your
“certainty”.

Kropotkin

we must accept the fact that we are subject to the same
“laws”/ “rules” that govern planets, stars, biological matter,
space/time…

they have their set rules, for example, light must travel at a
certain speed and pig cannot grow wings and we cannot overcome
gravity and fly with just our arms flapping…

are their exceptions to the rules/laws of nature? of course, but
and this is important, to violate those rules means that violation undermines
the stability or order of nature…order here means the order needed to
maintain a stable system, which is what we are talking about… if we violate
the rules, we threaten the stability of the system in question…

we can violate the rules/laws of society, but we threaten the stability
of society… if planets can move outside of their orbits, they threaten
the stability of the solar system they reside in…

the rules/laws exist to allow the system to maintain order in which it
needs to maintain its stability… and allows it to keep functioning…

so, when Kant propose a rule/ law that says, what if we made this law universal,
so, he says,

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity both in your own
person and in the person of all others, never as a means only but as an end”

now the real question becomes, does this “law/rule” allow the system,
the social system to continue to function, does it allow the system to
to remain stable? and if the answer is yes, then it is a good rule/law…

Kant treats moral issues as part of “duty”… it is your duty to
act in such a way as to treat humanity as a end, not as an means…

a duty… where would this idea of duty come from?
duty is cold and inhuman and heartless……… for following duty
and only duty, it allows much of the inhumanity of the day…

the I.C.E agent who separates a child from his family isn’t heartless
or insensitive, no, he is just following his duty……
a guard at a concentration camp sending Jews to their death isn’t
heartless or insensitive, nope, he is just following his duty…….

at what point does becoming responsible for ones actions,
override duty… at what point does the concentration camp
guard becomes responsible for his actions even if he was doing his
duty………………so at some point, following one’s duty can lead one
to commit acts of treason or acts against humanity…….

so we might be able to accept Kant’s individual idea’s like
treating humanity as an ends, not an means,
we cannot follow Kant and make morality as a matter
of duty because in following duty, we can commit actions
against humanity and by claiming duty, we can escape
our responsibility for said acts………….

following duty cannot allow us to be no longer accountable
for our actions………………… a concentration guard is accountable,
is responsible for his actions of marching the Jews to their death,
regardless of their “duty”………

so, we reject Kant and his belief that morality is an act of duty……

Kropotkin

Who am I?

the way we self identify suggest that we don’t know “who we are”?

for example, I might self identify as a liberal or a democrat
or as an American…….but, those self identification
aren’t really who I am, they are what I believe… I for example,
being a liberal means I am telling you what political philosophy
I follow, or being a democrat means I am telling you what political
party I follow or identify with……….I am an American not by choice,
but because I was born on this side of a line and not on the other side
of a line……….being an American is about an accidental trait like
being white or being male… I didn’t choose them… they were accidents
of my birth……. just as being born handicap… it choose me, I didn’t choose it…

we self identify with our accidental traits, white, male, American…
that can’t really be who we are if they are accidents of who we are……
something that happened without any choice on our part…….

as far as being liberal or being democrat, it means we are identifying
with a ism, an ideology………. we identify with an ism, that doesn’t
mean that is who we are, that is merely an ism we believe in, not who
we are…………… so this question of who we are, who am I, is really
a question that we don’t even understand because we
identify ourselves with accidental traits or ism’s, that have nothing
to do with us personally, they are just things we believe in………….
but that isn’t who we are, is it? perhaps that is exactly who we are…
we are simple a collection of the things we believe in, accidental traits
and ism/ideologies that make up, who we are………

there is not there, there… there is no thing I can point to
and say, that is who I am…………………… it is simply a
collection of beliefs and accidental traits that make up the
human being…….we are those, the who we are, is the collection
of beliefs and accidental traits……… that is who we are……….

perhaps…….perhaps not…… maybe, just maybe Hume was right……

Kropotkin

Now Hume thought there was no such thing as a personality…
Who am I, was really just a series of reactions to sensations,
no real “I”, just a rapid series of reactions to stimuli with no central
coordination or central place for the “I”…and if you see people respond
to the question, Who are you? with responses like I am an American or
I am white, answers that are about the accidental properties or traits
we are… but this doesn’t understand or answer the question,

Who am I? Who am I, isn’t about being white or being an American,
it is about, who we are………do I read, yes, but that isn’t who I am,
do I study philosophy, yes, but that isn’t who I am

think of the question, who am I…………and put the answers into
a set theory of math…… I read, that gets me into a subset of readers,
I study philosophy and that gets me into another subset……

I am male and that gets me into a subset of being male or
the subset of being white or the subset of having brown hair…

then within the circles of the various subsets, you get circle after
circle after circle with me being in the middle of all of those subsets…

but is that really who I am? just a listing of various accidental
traits? traits I had no choice over like being white or being born American?

how about traits, wait a minute, should I call my choices like being
religious a trait? If I choose to believe in god, is that a trait or is that
something else? but do I believe in god because of my childhood
indoctrinations which means I didn’t get to choose again, I was trained
to believe in god and that isn’t choice………… it was accidental once again…
so we cannot admit certain traits to being mine and mine alone if the
are the result of being childhood indoctrinations like being an American
means being indoctrinated into capitalism or democracy from childhood…
but the reality is that if I don’t choose an ism or an ideology, but was
indoctrinated into them from childhood, that those beliefs of capitalism
and democracy, they too are accidental and thus subject to be called
traits……. but what if I choose to be something, what if I chose
to believe in god, not as an accidental traits from childhood indoctrinations,
but from an actual understanding of what it means to be religious???

something that is no longer an accidental trait, but being a choice, freely done…
is that who I am? freely made choices about what I believe in… that still
tell me about my choices, not who I am……………let me think about this for
a moment………… ummmmmmm, I read a lot of philosophy books and I think
and I study philosophy, that seems to paint a picture of someone who is
rational, someone who thinks, someone who resolves problems with thought,
not just feelings… that does tell us something about who I am…

I am a rationalist, someone who thinks and that does tell us something
about me, who I am………. that thinking is not a accidental trait or
something I was indoctrinated with, because how we think is not a function
of being indoctrinated…… it is a choice we make as to how we respond to
the world and the sensations we get from our senses, eyes, ears, nose, touch,
tongue…………

who am I?

I am someone who thinks…….

we have reduced our question into the basic form of thought or
reacting emotionally, and I think…………

so one response to the question of who am I, is
the answer, I think…….

Kropotkin

we have a couple of reactions to make…….

in light of the good versus evil question……
we understand “good” and “evil” as two distinct
and separate issues, but we understand that “good”
and “evil” are really just perspectives……….

take the Holocaust, it has been classified as “evil” and yet,
and yet, was it? People did benefit from the removal of Jews
and communist and Gays into those concentration camps…
People were able to get better jobs, make more money,
have a better house because the Jews were taken away…
from this standpoint, the removal of people into concentration camps
was not “evil”… it was good because it benefited people
and any event that was a benefit to people cannot be counted as
“evil”

but take the Jewish people or the communist or Gays that were transported
to concentration camps to die, it was “evil” nothing more, nothing less…

so, is removal of people into concentration camps, “good” or “evil”?
depends on your viewpoint……… but take an event and let us look at it…

for example, a tree falls… in one case the tree falls and it kills a lion
that was about to eat some people… in another case, the tree fell
and killed some children… now for some people, the tree falling and killing
the lion was a “good” thing and for some people the tree killing children is an
“evil” thing……. depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?

so, how is one to understand the tree falling?

you see the act, the tree falls, you see the tree killing either the lion
or killing the children……………. but you cannot make a judgment without
bringing in some other evidence………… for example, the visual image
of the tree falling doesn’t allow one to make some moral judgement…
the fact the tree will kill one life form or the other life, still doesn’t
allow some moral judgement… to make a “moral judgement” one must
have facts outside the actions itself……

to make this clear, let us take two similar emotions…

let us say, that for me, to get a sexual thrill, I like watching two women,
now let us say, that for some person, raping and killing children, also
brings about a sexual thrill… if we just judge it based on the
result that the actions have on us, we both get sexual thrills…if that
is the criteria, then it doesn’t matter what the action we take to reach
the sexual thrill… the point is to have the sexual thrill………….
not how we got the sexual thrill.…………….

but to justify either action, we must go beyond the act of causing
the sexual thrill……. It can be argued that my looking at two women
having sex is “less” a danger then some person raping and killing children……
but we have to go beyond the action, go beyond the sexual thrill and
bring in outside reasons for our actions to be “judge” right or wrong………

Now one may object to both actions equally, as watching two women
debases and demean and destroys what women are and raping and killing
children destroys lives that had no choice of any kind………….

in other words, the path to understanding the “rightness” or “wrongness”
of any action lies outside of the action itself… you cannot call an action
“right” or “wrong” or “good” or “evil” based on just the actions themselves…

any explanations must come from outside of the actions……………

the criteria for judging “right” from “wrong” doesn’t come from the action itself,
the criteria comes from some outside source… society cannot function if we allow
people to rape and kill children but society can and does function if we allow
men (or women) for that matter to watch two women have sex………

and we can create other reasons for accepting one action or another, but
those reasons come from outside of the actions itself…

so the standard we might use to judge such matters arise from outside of
the actions because we cannot know from an action itself if it is “good”
or “evil” until we take some inventory of the event and note the pluses
or minus of any given event………. it is after the fact that we decide
if an event is “good” or “evil” or simply just neutral………………
and we use criteria outside of or beyond the event itself…………

So “good” and “evil” require some analysis, some full understanding
of the event and its aftermath before we can consider an event to
be “good” or “evil”……………

or said another way, understanding “good” and “evil” requires some
perspective and a full accounting before we can make some declaration
to the value of the words “good” or “evil” and apply the words “good” and “evil” to
any action………

to understand “good” and “evil” requires a judgement to be made…
and we must understand the basis of that judgement for the
judgement to have any value………………

and the judgement requires an explanation outside of the event
and outside of some personal moral understanding……………

is "good’ and is “evil” “subjective”?

the problem with that, is the fact that we must bring in outside
evidence to “correctly” understand any judgment we might make…….

we cannot properly understand an event until we use some outside
criteria and not just judge the event by itself… but we run into
another problem, which outside criteria should we use?

But Kropotkin, you haven’t answered anything, you haven’t solved
anything… you just have more questions………… yep……….

Kropotkin

so if we understand this whole question about “good” and “evil” correctly,
then to be able to judge something being “good” or “evil”, we must resort
to some outside the event criteria……. in other words, we see an event,
a tree falling and we cannot judge the moral implications until we’ve done
a complete analysis of the event………

ummmmmm, ok, we have our childhood indoctrinations,
the myths, biases, prejudices and superstitions that we are taught
from birth……………… we take these indoctrinations and accept them as is…
we are taught that there is a god or that America is the greatest country
on earth… prejudices really… and because we haven’t done as Nietzsche
has suggested which is… “to have the courage for an attack upon our convictions”
we just simply accept our convictions, the myths and biases and prejudices
and superstitions of our indoctrinations as the basis for our understanding
of the universe, of reality……

when we look to outside evidence to understand if something is “good” or “evil”,
we resort to our convictions, which are nothing more then the myths and bias
and ism’s and prejudices of our childhood indoctrinations……………

the very evidence we use to understand if something is “good” or “evil” is itself
bias and prejudice and of superstitions……………

that outside criteria we use to understand if something is “good” or “evil”
is nothing more than the biases we are used to since we have had them
since childhood…….“good” and “evil” is nothing more then the
myths and biases and prejudices and superstitions of our childhood
indoctrinations……………

so how are to know what is really and truly “good” or “evil”?

by overcoming our myths, habits, bias, prejudice, superstitions,
and ism’s that we were indoctrinated with as children……

that is the only sure path to our becoming aware of what is truly
“good” or “evil”…………

If a man declares an event to be “evil” what he really means is,
that is an bias I was indoctrinated with as a child and I never outgrew it
because I never overcame it…

what we call “good” and “evil” are simply childhood indoctrinations
that we haven’t the courage to overcome…

Kropotkin