a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

how do we actually understand things?

let us take a previous example, a tree falls down…….

how would a child who hasn’t been indoctrinated understand
a tree falling down?

it becomes a magical event……… the child does not and can not understand the
cause of events required to have a tree fall down…………

if you don’t have some causal understanding of an event, it becomes
magical………

another example is a elevator… from a child perspective, a door
opens up and then people walk out… and the elevator is empty…the door closes…
then a few moments later, the door reopens with more people in it…….
wow…… a magic event where a door opens up and an empty box/ room,
becomes full again with people who then walk out and over and over again…
we know that the elevator goes from floor to floor picking up people…
but a child doesn’t know that……… and we have to explain to the child the
“trick” of the elevator……… it no longer becomes a magic event…….

but for a child to understand, they must be taught the causal relationship
of the event, the elevator and how it moves from floor to floor…
until the child understand it is the elevator that moves from floor to floor,
the child won’t understand how it picks up people…………. from the child’s
standpoint, most of life seems to be magic… and from their perspective, it
is…………… because they don’t have the causal understanding of reality…………

which is why Kant is wrong in his understanding of the universe being in
categories……………… we don’t understand the universe that way until
we are taught the categories and what the categories are for………

in other words, we learn from experience what the categories are and
how they are used…………… not from some innate sense of the categories……

we learn what motion is from people describing motion or we learn motion
from actually doing motion… from experience… we learn what space
is from either a description or from experience, not from some innate
category because the category itself must be furnished from experienced…

when we are adults and we have categories, learned from cold hard experience,
we can label or categorize or time or weigh matter or experiences and put
them into a category learned from experience…………. not an innate idea……

the category of hot things we learned from experiencing hot things
and the category of hard things we learned from experincing hard things…
and time and space from our ever present existence in space and time…

does a fish understand it is in water? no, it is just the enviroment
that the fish has existed in all its life and it doesn’t know or understand
any other enviroment… space and time are simply the enviroment we
have existed in all our lives…and thus we don’t need to have an “innate”
or a category of space/time… it already exists and has all our lives…

what we fail to understand is the human being has existed within
a enviroment all of our lives… it is a part of us…we no more think
of the sun as being a star as we do of earth being a planet…
it just is and has been all of our lives… it doesn’t need a category…

oxygen was discovered in 1772… no one bothered to look for it because
it never occurred to anyone… because we have always have had
oxygen… it is part of the enviroment… why look for something that
is ever present… the question of space/time is the same thing…
it is always there… ever present…

to create categories for our understanding is to miss the entire
point of childhood where we learn from birth, such things space/time/ matter
events/causal relationships and we learn such things from experience
and from people’s explanation of what happened and why…

Kropotkin

we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world……….

and all our work is meant to rise above our imperfectness
or the world’s imperfectness, or perhaps both………

Leibnez is wrong in thinking that this is “the best of all worlds”

it is not perfection we struggle against… it is the opposite,
imperfection……………… you don’t struggle against perfection,
you emulate it, you copy it, you steal it… you don’t struggle
against it…………………

but what imperfection do we struggle against exactly?

the world/nature isn’t perfect or imperfect, it just is…
Nature is neutral… it doesn’t give a shit about us…
negative or positive………….

what is imperfect is us……… and our response to nature………
we have anthropomorphize nature to our detriment in understanding
the world/nature………….

so how do we make ourselves perfect? we don’t…….

we simply begin to understand/ become aware of our imperfection……

from what stems out imperfection? By relying on our childhood
indoctrinations, we have a false understanding of the world and
who we are…… if we overcome those childhood indoctrinations,
habits, myths, prejudices and superstitions, we will have a better
understanding of who we are and what is possible…………

no longer will we be imperfect because our imperfections is a result
of our false understanding of the world……………create by the childhood
indoctrinations………

childhood indoctrinations create a bad fit in our adulthood, for they
lead us to make false and erroneous conclusions about who we are and why
we are here and what is possible…………………

it is not the world/universe/nature that is imperfect but the way we
we look at the world that is the problem… fix how we look at the world
and the “imperfection” that is, is no more………………. the problem is us,
not the world………the imperfection is us, not the world

Kropotkin

love… one of the basic emotions of life and for
many, one of the reasons to remain alive… love is the
reason for existence……………

so how would you describe love?

would you use scientific terms? would you use
philosophical terms? No, I don’t see that working out well…

so how would one describe love…

"How do I love thee? let me count the way.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

for the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
most quiet need, by sun and candlelight

I love thee freely, as men strive for right…

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
in my old griefs, and with my
childhood’s faith…

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
smiles, tears, all my life; and, if god choose,
I shall love thee better after death…….

Elizabeth Barret Browning………

you cannot clearly and distinctly describe love with science or philosophy
or math or history… you need the right words to describe love and
poetry and songs do have the right words to describe a personal event
like love…….but you cannot describe philosophy with words of love…
and you cannot describe history with mathematical formula’s……

what we need is to understand that to describe something, we need the
right words to be able to describe that something…and we cannot use
science to describe love or love to describe science…………………

much of our current failure arises because we are using the wrong words
to describe events and feelings and our life……….

but more of interest is this, why don’t we have a current theory of
“aesthetics”? what is art and what is it meaning for us? what is beauty
and what does beauty mean to us? the problem of “aesthetics”
is one that we need to sort out…………. but we don’t know or care
what is beauty or what it means to us……. ask yourself, why?

for over 200 years “aesthetics” was a major problem in philosophy and
today, we have even forgotten what “aesthetics” is… why?

find a poem, read it, think about it……… try to understand what it means
and what it says to you………………… most people would consider that a waste
of time… there is no reason for us to ever think about or understand poems
or literature or great art… but why? understanding art was
one of the Greek’s great pleasure… they created great art in response to
what they saw or felt within their reality…………… why don’t we create
art in response to our reality, to what we see in the universe?

perhaps the failure of modernity lies in it forgetting how important
art is and pursuit of beauty is to us…………

we lost something very important when we gave up our engagement with
art and beauty and began to pursue money/profits/ upwardly success…….

we lost part of our soul……… and this is reflected in the emptiness of
our time……………… what is art to you?

and begin to understand the emptiness of your soul because you have forgotten
what it means to pursue beauty instead of money……….

Kropotkin

You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.

K: it is not the world/universe/nature that is imperfect but the way we
we look at the world that is the problem… fix how we look at the world
and the “imperfection” that is, is no more………………. the problem is us,
not the world………the imperfection is us, not the world"

I: You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.
[/quote]
K: it is always a pleasure to hear from you…there is much misunderstanding
about my “method” and I shall take a moment to clarify…….

there are, so far, two ways to understand things, one is the universal to
the particulars and the other way is to go from the particular to the universal…
the misunderstanding in my case is although I do have a certain “political”
viewpoint and that I go from the universal to the particular there, this
is philosophy and I go from the particular to the universal in philosophy……

now one method people use is to begin with a universal, I am a “Hindu”,
to use one of your examples, and argue from the universal, “Hindu”
to the particulars to promote or to encourage people to understand
what it means to be 'Hindu" or to even encourage people to become “Hindu”,
the universal to the particulars…but my “philosophical works” do not go
from the universal to the particular because I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint to engage from…I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint…….whereas I do have a political or religious
universal standpoint………I don’t argue philosophical that my position
is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same
because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from…………

don’t mistake my political or religious viewpoints as a means to influence
my philosophical viewpoints… they don’t……….

what I am doing is simply trying to take some particulars and then
use those particulars to create a philosophical position…
go from the particular to the universal……………

to call me an “objectivist” from a political or religious standpoint,
may or may not be correct, but I have no set philosophical standpoint
from which to call me an “objectivist”………….

I am simply trying to gather the evidence to make some sort of
judgement about the human condition… to try to discover
what is the human problem and how do we solve this
problem of existence……………and I am now leaning toward
some sort of embrace with art as a means toward our understanding
the problem of human existence……………but I could easily be wrong…….
or not…………………

my positions are simply just questions attempting to create some meaning
in my life and perhaps, perhaps in yours or someone else life… I simply report
my finding about the human condition… I state the problem of existence
and I try to understand the solution, if any, to this vexing problem……….

it has been my experience, that quite often in searching for answers to
problems that having a fixed, set position prevents any hope to find
answers to the questions……………perhaps the solution to the question of
existence is found in being “Hindu” or “liberal” or “fascist” but I doubt it…

I am, in the worn out cliché, attempting to “think outside of the box”………

I may succeed or I may fail………. but I don’t believe that taking a set
philosophical position will allow me to solve the question of human existence……

but in any case, I shall continue to search and ask questions about
what I see as the fundamental problem of our age,
“the problem of human existence” ……………………………………………

Kropotkin