a new understanding of today, time and space.

I saw more of this thread and only understand now it is a private one.
Sosorry.

K: it is not a private thread… but I expect the same level of self introspection
that I offer of myself…………. anyone may come or go as they please but here
you must be able to challenge yourself on what your values are or your idea’s…

for example, you stated that “its really all baloney our system”

and I then ask, ok you have an analysis of our “system”
what are you going to do with that analysis?

your didn’t really have a response… and because I expect people to
engage, they usually just run away as you are apparently running away…

and that is fine…I don’t expect people to hold themselves to the same
high standards I hold myself when engaging in philosophy………

what I am doing here, as philosophy is a good as anything written in
the last 500 years…….and as with any good philosophy, it is hard…
to both understand and to engage with…to do philosophy as I have
done it requires commitment and a willingness to engage honestly
with the values and myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions
that we all have…few want to engage in a real search for the truth…
frankly, it a lot of work and can be on the painful side…….
I have changed my political thought 3 times in my lifetime and
my philosophical thought/stance more then that…but it takes
courage to engage with oneself and few have that courage…

so it seems that this is a private thread but really it is a private thread
because people lack the courage for an “attack upon their convictions”
and so they run away…personally, stay or leave, it doesn’t changes what
I see as my essential mission which is to explore what it means to be human
and explore what are our human possibilities in the modern age……

and if I am the only seeker, that is fine too… I recognize that
my thoughts and my commitment to finding the answers to the
Kantian/Kropotkin questions leave me being a man apart from
society and so be it…I thank you for your input…

I shall continue on my discovering what it means to be human in
this modern age…….

Kropotkin

as we are rapidly heading toward a totalitarian society,
I thought I should try to understand what the path to
an Authoritarian/totalitarian/dictatorship looks like…

and it is a part of the modern problem which is the path of
least resistance… it is easy to allow someone control over our lives
because it relieves us from needing to accept responsibility for our lives…
if we allow someone else to tell us what to do, we don’t have to
be force to become accountable for our actions… I am no longer accountable for
my actions if we live in a dictatorship/totalitarian society…they are
making me… can be the mantra…….escaping responsibility is something,
we as human being have done since we were children, “I didn’t break that lamp,
no, someone else broke that lamp, it wasn’t me” was a favorite comment from
my childhood… as the second born in a family of 5, escaping responsibility for
my actions was a theme of my childhood………… and a theme of
Americans today… what, I didn’t vote for that village idiot, whose presiding over
a major clusterfuck in America today……. no, you didn’t vote at all…
and thus you cannot escape your responsibility because you didn’t do
anything at all……….escaping responsibility for IQ45 is the political game
being played today in Washington and on main street in America today……

and escaping responsibility has lead us to this path of heading toward a
totalitarian society……… as Americans voted in IQ45, we must bear
final responsibility for the clusterfuck that is America today…….
then and only then, can we begin to find a solution to
this major crisis, maybe the greatest crisis in American history………

if you try to escape responsibility for IQ45, then you are not part
of the solution, you are part of the problem……

Kropotkin

I will occasionally write out notes and leave them on the kitchen table,
as that is where I work because I don’t have anyplace to set up my computer,
I found this note from a while ago, while it doesn’t have anything directly to do
with my thoughts of late, it is interesting…

the religious denies the body in favor of the soul…….
the emphasis of religion is to be “saved” which means to be
saved as a soul, not as a body… religion ignores, avoids
a major aspect of the human experience which is our experiences
as a body… a physical being with physical needs and wants and desires…
the problem of being human which in part is the suffering of the body
which the Buddha among others tried to offer us answers to………
but the problem of Buddhism is simply that suffering while a part of
human existence, is not THE aspect of human existence that the Buddha
or Buddhism makes it to be…

we suffer… that is true, but we also love and hate and bleed
and suffer mental breakdowns and lust and eat breakfast food for dinner…
and attempting to escape suffering as the sole cause or point of human
existence doesn’t answer the other questions of the human condition…

religion can only vouch for or speak to the needs of the soul but
we humans, we are so much more then just spiritual needs…
we are biological needs… we must attend to the body
as much as we must attend to the soul………

religion cannot answer the myriad questions of human existence…
because religion can only focus on the soul whereas philosophy
can answer many of the questions of human existence because
it is not focus on the status of the soul but it can
extend its focus to both the body and the soul………

the religious is too narrow in its focus as if the concern with
the soul is the only question we humans must face and although the
concern with the soul is valid, it is not the only question of
human existence……………. the questions that is of concern
in our engagement with the human condition is about both
the body AND the soul……….

Kropotkin

I have been thinking about a way to rethink, reevaluate government
in our modern times………….

we have “modern” government which is based on the new norms which
is that we serve the government…… when a politician see his/her constituents,
they see someone who serves them, not the politician serving the people…

we see this “modern” condition in police… on the sides of their
car’s, you see this, “To protect and serve” and today, in
modern America, the police do neither… they don’t protect
and they don’t serve… the modern police act as if you work for them
and they demand that you obey their every order as if a voice from
god… try to ignore or argue with a policeman and if they don’t shoot you,
they at least will arrest you for disobeying an order… once again, we
find as THE modern crime, that of disobedience……………
that is not protecting and serving, that is making you serve them……

the path is see is a new path of government but a common path found
found elsewhere in life… the new idea of government and the
future model is simple, government as customer service…
think of the government as offering customer service…
just like a business… the government is in the business of
providing customer service………… the government works
for you, the customer, you don’t work for the government…

a politician elected into office is not your boss, but your
employee…… and is expected to provide customer service
to you… what can I do to make your life better… that is the new
model of public office and of government……. how can the government
better serve its customer, its citizens? that is the new question
of government……

a president is not the leader of the free world…
he/she is a employee of the citizens of the United States…
not an employee of those who buy and sell politicians,
the Cock brothers or big pharma or any big corporation or
lobbyist but a politician who works for the American people…

If elected president, I will be your employee, not your boss……
this is a fundamental change in how government has been done
for last 70 years or so………… government is and should be
engaged in customer service for its citizens…
how can we make your life easier, your life better, your human experience
an experience that is worth living…… that is the question that must
be answered……

Ronald Reagan was wrong on so, so many things and he was wrong
on something else… government is not the problem, government is
the answer when it engages in the simple and basic reason for its existence,
that of engaging in customer service for its citizens…

a president who doesn’t ask, How can I make your life easier?
isn’t a fit president, isn’t a president I want, a president we demand…

only by having a president who understands the proper place of government
is to serve, not to lead, but to serve it citizens……. that is the true, proper
place of government……… to serve the people………

only by having not just a president, but all branches of government understand
the proper role of government is to serve the people, to engage in customer service
for its citizens…how can I/we make your life easier or simpler?

that is the true, real function of government… to serve its customers…

and we can achieve this by electing those who truly understand this notion……

a president cannot lead, must not lead, but a president takes his marching orders
from the people… those that he serves…………he gives the American people
customer service and that is the president’s role…

how can I serve you? that is the question of the president, not how
do you serve me……………… government redesigned, government
reevaluated…….government as it is supposed to be………

government of the people, for the people, by the people…

Kropotkin

so the new paradigm is that the president and congress and
the courts work for you… you don’t work for them…

so, when IQ45 said, MAGA, make America great… he was wrong…
completely and utterly wrong (as he is wrong about everything else)

no, that is not the job function of the American government…
to Make America great…no, the job of government is to improve
your life and by doing so, you, the american citizen will make
America great… the government doesn’t make america great,
the citizens of America is what makes America great…

and by providing support and help and encouragment to the true
boss of America, which is its citizens, American goverenment can
improve its citizens life’s and THAT is what makes America great…
the citizens of America is the reason America is great, not the president,
not the congress or the courts or any institution that exists in America,
but the people, that is who makes America great…

We return to this idea of government of the people, for the people,
by the people… and that is the only way, the only way you can create
greatness in America…to make America great again is to
allows the citizens the chance to make America great again…

it is not the government we trust or in god we trust or in our
institutions, but in the average citizen of America that we
give our trust to… they are the ones who will make
America great again…

Kropotkin

Do you think that civilians are less crooked than governers?

K: it is not in one person that we depend upon but all of us…
a group of people are far more likely to be honest then just one
or two people………think about any situation involving a group
and morality… it is far more likely that a group will engage
in moral acts then just one person…… now, I will grant you that
quite often, groups will commit immoral, unjust actions like
the lynching of blacks in the south during the Jim crow years…
the individual will feel embolden, safe when acting in a mob
as one person in a group committing unjust, immoral acts
they wouldn’t have done alone… but with that said, quite
often, one moral person in a group will often provide moral guidence
for a group to be just and be moral within a group situation…the
question in a group situation is one of accountablity… holding a group
accountable just as we hold an individual accountable is key to
keeping a group of people acting just and moral…

(at this point, we don’t give an account of what is just and moral because
that could be a 300 page book… we state that knowing what it means to be just and moral
are known, they are just ignored by people)

I do believe that people can be moral and just when they are being held
accountable for their actions and given this, I do believe that individuals
can be more moral then our “governers” especally when people are being held
accountable, being held responsibile for their actions…

and in this lies the failure of our “modern” society because we are only
accountable, not just for being kind or nice or having love in our hearts,
but being accountable by monetary standards… having money/profits as
guiding our actions and not the safety and stability of the systems we
belong to…

in the end, we are all acountable for each other… that news just hasn’t
reached the ears of everyone yet… but I hope it does reach people soon…

Kropotkin

I went very deep into that in my first post which you did not answer to!
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=188122&start=1925#p2708744
It was meant as a friendly but tough challenge on what you had said.

I have read the post in question and will respond when I have
a chance but work calls my name for the next two days…

Kropotkin

I much appreciate it.

K: I recall reading this post and thinking then, as I do now, I did not
see your post as a challenge, friendly or otherwise…I simply did not
see your post as any sort of attampt to get me to “reevaluate” my thinking…

I saw your post as simply responding with your own thoughts about what I wrote…
for example, one might post, What about god? and the next poster might respond
with their own thoughts about god, but at no point that response includes a
challenge to the first poster to engage in a dialogue about the “fitness” of
beliefs by anybody…In other words, I didn’t respond to your post as
you wanted me to respond/engage to your post because we saw your post differently…

you saw it as a challenge whereas I just saw it as a personal response to a post of mine…
no challenged was offered and no challenged was accepted… at least in my view…
whereas you might have indeed offered a challenged and I, in your eyes, refused…

these brings up points of communication that often plague communication…

as individuals, we bring our own intrepretations to every aspect of communication…
as I am hearing impared, I intreprete communications different then hearing people
and different then fully deaf people… I exist between two worlds, the hearing
and the deaf…as I exists between many other “intrepretations” of the world…

I am not materialistic in the sense of finding my reason for existence
to be the buying and selling of anything… I don’t exist to make money
or to gain the usual reasons for existence, fame… fortune… power…

I have, for over 40 years, searched for the “TRUTH”……. but the “TRUTH”
I have found is that we, each of us, find our own individual truths…
I have studied philosophy, science, religion, history, economics,
art and literature in an attempt, perhaps a vain attempt, but an attempt
nevertheless to discover the answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions…

What can I know? what are we to do? ………

my engagement with the world is different then your engagement
because we exists in different but parallel worlds…
by that I mean that we exists as human beings with a common history,
with a common biology, within a common ideology…
but different because our own individual history is different…

I am male, 59, American, white, middle class, hearing impaired, wears glasses,
not traditionally educated but self educated and quite self educated at that…

whereas your individual history is whatever it is………

and because of our mutual shared common history, we can understand
each other, but because of our different personal history, we quite often
misunderstand each other……….the question of communication is a complicated
one and has been discussed at length for over 2000 years and will continue to be
discussed for another 2000 years because of its nature…

you see a challenge and I simply see a response… we can see the same
word and interpret it quite differently…………… that is both the
pleasure of and the problem of communication…………

Kropotkin

to return to the problem of the “modern” age…….

I see the “Modern” age as being different then the other ages,
not necessarily better or worse, just different……

the industrial age and the ensuing technological age
has created a different understanding of the universe then
prior ages… the ancient world and the medieval world had
different paradigms, different realities, different goals and agendas…

we see very essential matters like time differently…

a complaint of the Greeks and Romans was that when two
parties agreed to meet, that each party had a different sense
of what time they were going to meet and quite often
it led one party or another to wait a considerable time for
the other party to arrive… they didn’t have clocks as we
have them and so, meeting at 10:00 am as we would meet was
really not possible…the time they fixed was really just
rough guess… what does it mean to meet mid-morning?
we have clocks and so for us, it is easy to arrange a very
specific time to meet… for them, not quite so easy…

this one example is just one point how we differ from the
ancient and middle ages…………….

we are human but our individual circumstances
dictate how we see the universe and reality……

existing in the “modern” age determines that we see
reality and the universe differently then someone from
the ancient world or the medieval world……
just that fact alone, of when we exist, determines how
we interpret the world……………

the tools of man also determine how we understand the world……
for example, if the only tools you have is a hammer, then you
see the world as being one where a hammer pounding something
down is how you see the world… whereas if you have a nail or
a computer or a wheel makes how you see the world differently…

if we can only transport ourselves via a horse or a wagon changes
how we see the world as oppose to if we transport ourselves via
cars, trains, airplanes or spaceships……. the very means of
transportation changes how we see the world… the technological
aspects of the world changes how we see the world………

if I live in a house changes my perception of the world as does
my living in a cave or a yurt, changes my perception of the world…
we are still human beings but because of our different technologies
and means of living, we have different understandings of the universe
and reality…………… how we live changes how we understand…….

so as an American living in 2018 changes my understanding of the world then
a person living in a tribe in China understands the world……………

so when I speak of values, it is really speaking of values
that exists in modern America in 2018………

but, but values that have value in modern America 2018,
can have value in modern China because values do have
the ability to leap over technology and science and politics…

for example, we can speak of love as a universal value because
because it can exists independently of the external operations
of the world… in other words, love is not about technology or
time or the political or social or economic goings on in the world…
love isn’t about those things and can exist in or out of those things……
love is independent of external matters…….values are independent
of external matters like time or space or the political or economic
or social goings on in the world…………. we can have love in
any form of government or any form of social or economic system…

that is the value of “values” they exists independently of the external
world but they are influenced by the external world… how we think
of say, Justice, is impacted by the external events of our world, our reality…

thus, IQ45 attack upon basic human equality/justice changes our
perception of what justice/equality is……… values don’t exist completely
independently of our world

WAIT A MINUTE… WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE…… you said two
completely different things in the space of three paragraphs…
first values are independently of our reality and then
you said values are impacted by the world… you can’t have it both ways,
…………ah, a contradiction…I am not afraid of
contradictions because I believe the truth, any truth, is
found within a contradiction………

Kropotkin, you aren’t making any sense……… but I am making sense
if, if you aren’t married to or have your understanding of the world
written in stone………………… this is a Zen moment………

the questions and answers of the “Modern” age is found in the contradictions of
the “Modern” age……… and we are full of contradictions in our
current understanding of the universe, of our reality…………

Kropotkin

one of the “modern” questions is about certainty………

what is certain? that has been the pursuit of both science and
philosophy since the rise of science, roughly 1500…….

the Roman/Greek world had their version of certainty…both
operated with the certainty of a fixed and set universe…

the medieval world has their certainty in their belief system in which
the point of existence, human existence was to get to heaven…
the medieval world negated the physical world… the body was
denied in favor of the soul…and the order of the universe was an
hierarchy… from bottom to top with god being at the top and the pope
next and the staff of the pope next with the kings and royality being next
with the lessor nobality next with the large base of this pyramid being
the large mass of peasants and serfs…

this was the certainty of the middle ages… and then came the cracks
in this belief system… we call it the rise of science which has engage
since 1500, the search for certainty…the same certainty that was felt
during the Greco-Roman period and the Medieval period…

you can describe the “Modern” era, as a search for certainty…

for example, Marx and Hegel both wrote about how their “systems” were
both models of certainty…and you can see in Kant how he thought his
Critiques, all three of them, were models of certainty in his pursuit to
find certainty in philosophy, especially in his “Critique of Pure Reason”

but we now live in 2018 and certainty is hard to find… science does
not guarantee the existence of a “certain” universe…philosophy
has its own issues and our political, social, economic and historical
understanding of the world has left us without any grounds for certainty…

I have gone over this ground before but I don’t think or see how
an understanding of moving objects that is the bases of Modern
science can help us or aid us in the gaining an understanding of
the world, how the understanding of moving objects can create
certainty in the world…………….the entire theory of relativity is
about a mathematical understanding of the movement between
objects in space with one being stationary and the other moving
whereas the special theory of relativity is about two moving
objects and how we can account for their relationship as they move…

I just don’t see how we can build a coherent system of or a model
of what it means to be human based on a mathematical understanding
of moving objects………………that is one of the major problems with
trying to stretch science into philosophy… science does it thing
which has little to do with any kind of understanding of the philosophical
nature of the world…….

so what is the philosophical nature of the world? Let us remove what isn’t
the philosophical nature of the world………. the movement of the planets,
stars, galaxies and of atoms… none of this creates any type of understanding
of the human condition, the human problem……

even if science were to discover what in fact began the universe, it doesn’t
change the reality of us being and existing in the here and now…

the existential crisis of being human does not come from our beginning,
to the big bang, but to the reason for and what is the point of our existence…
I submit that when science does find out the reason for the big bang, it will
not solve a dam thing… the question of human existence does not
resolve around how we got here but why, why we are here?

we are attempting to find certainty in this question of why we are here, instead
of how we came to be… (a side note, it would be quite interesting to find out
how we came to be, but it doesn’t really change the existential questions of
human existence)…

how does one find the answers to the existential questions of our human existence?

we use our tools of logic and science and philosophy and religion and history…
but the are just tools, a process to discover answers to certain questions……

this question of certainty looms large over every thing we do and act upon…

how are we to be sure that our hard earn taxpayer money is being spent
wisely and on things that matter in our lives? that is a question of certainty…

How can I be certain that my taxes won’t go up this year? How can I be certain
that we have a strong enough defense, a military, to protect us?

How can I be certain that I have all the freedom I am suppose to have?

How can I be certain that the laws being passed, benefit me?

How can I be certain that the company I work for won’t go bankrupt?
It won’t go belly up next year?

the many questions we have of the universe and its nature, revolve
around questions of certainty… ……

the next stage of philosophy is an understanding of what it means to
exist without certainty…the next great philosophy is a understanding
of how to exist without certainty………… how does one “ride” the wave
of uncertainty into the future? the quest for certainty is a search done
by our ancestors…… we “Moderns” have no need of certainty anymore…
because that certainty locks us into actions, behavior, schools of thought,
that are temporary… we act, think, behave, believe in a temporary
fashion……… our beliefs as children are temporary… the belief in Santa Claus
is an temporary one…our childish behavior is a temporary one, our
belief system is a temporary one at every age……….

at no point do we engage in or with permanent thoughts, beliefs, behavior,
or actions… so why should we believe in permanence, in certainty, when
clearly at every stage of our lives, we act, believe, think, behave in a
temporary manner… my beliefs, actions, thoughts, behavior are different
today, then they were 20 or 30 or 40 years and they will continue to change
and evolve as I age… become an senior citizen, just 3 years from now……

so why should we engage in finding certainty when our very lives change, modify,
develop, revise and turn over as we age……… I am not the same person, the same
man I was and I shouldn’t be…as I age, I change………

and this pursuit of finding certainty doesn’t reflect this constant
change that we human beings exist in…….

so in the final analysis, finding certainty in a life full of change, temporary
actions, beliefs and thoughts is a foolish task.

we should reject any attempt to spend our lives seeking that which
we don’t live our lives in, we don’t exist in or with certainty…
so why search for it?

embrace the who we are, embrace or become who we are…
we are creatures that change, evolve, seek, and engage with
movement… let us embrace that movement as our existential
core of being human……… the human being you are at this moment,
that will change in time, in the next 5 minutes you will change in some
fashion… embrace that change… become who you are… the
human creature is one that is constantly changing and evolving…
become that creature………

become who you are

Kropotkin

We have in the last post looked at certainty.
we shall continue this look at certainty by other means.
This however requires us to engage in theology and we all know how
much I dislike theology, but it must done.

This question has been at the forefront of modern philosophy since Descartes.
and the outright search for certainty lasted until Kant, slightly less then 200 years.
But the search for certainty didn’t stop, just changed directions.

We all know the story of Adam and Eve and original sin. This is where we begin.
The story looks like this, god created Adam and Eve and place them into
paradise which was named, The Garden of Eden. god had but one demand,
that the two of them, did not eat the apple of knowledge. They disobeyed
and that was the real original sin, the act of disobedence to god, insubordination.
And for this “crime”, Adam and Eve suffered punishment. Both were tossed of
paradise, Eden and Eve was made to additionally suffer by the pain of childbirth.

By this act, this crime of disobedience, this original sin is the reason that
evil was released into the world. For the punishment of original sin was
the creation of evil. To be absolved of our crime, we must confess our sins,
our original crime and thus be able to return to paradise.

What we lost in the commission of the crime of insubordination was the certainty
Eden. With the crime of original sin, we were tossed into an uncertain world.
With our “crime”, we lost certainty. So how do we find or rediscover certainty?
The bible tells us we must confess and thus might, might be able to get
forgiveness from god. Thus the finding certainty or heaven, involves a
confession. OH Lord, I have sinned. And the only hope of forgiveness lies
outside of us. This is important. The only hope of salvation lies outside of us.
Salvation is found when we are forgiven for our transgressions, our original
act of insubordination. This act of forgiveness cannot, cannot originate
inside of us. We cannot find certainty by any act of our own. According to
religions, we cannot find salvation, certainty by any means within us, within
our own works, words or prayer. Salvation can only come from outside of us.

The question thus becomes, can we find, discover if certainty, forgiveness,
salvation can exists within us? Can we with our works, our words, our beliefs find
certainty, salvation, forgiveness within us?

We know that the outside of us, the world, reality is uncertain, random, chaotic.
Science has told us so. There is no certainty that lies within the scientific theories of
our day. There are simply theories that get modified when some new discovery is made.
What truth can be found in the theory of Gravity? What truth can be found in the theory
of evolution? For theories evolve and adapt and change with every new bit of information
or data that scientist find. How can we find certainty with scientific theories when
they are so easily modified by new data?

The outside world cannot provide us with any sort of certainty because
of the problematic nature of reality, of the universe we see.

Certainty must be found within us, but how do we find certainty within us?

By the use of values. We can create certainty with values that begin within
us and are the means by which we can use to judge and understand our
actions and meanings. We can find certainty with our use of the value
of Justice. Justice as a value can give us a meaning of life. We can base
our life upon a search for and a finding of Justice…………

The act of Justice can create meaning, value, certainty in our lives.
Justice which is equality, if practiced correctly, gives us a certainty
that we cannot find in any other way. Justice/Equality which as been
the same since the beginning of time and will continue to exist till
the end of time, is a certainty we can use in our lives. We can hold values
which create certainty in our lives of which Justice/equality is one.

We can hold values that mark what it means to be human and the use
of those values create certainty. For to be human means one who holds values.
That is the working definition of a human being, one who holds values.

The values we hold can be positive ones or they can be negative one.
The problem with holding negative values is that they aren’t sustainable.
The negative values cannot be used to sustain a system like a political
system or a family system or an economic system. Values like hate, greed,
lust, anger, by their very nature, disrupt and creates entropy within
any human based system. The loss of entropy in a human system can be from
the use of negative values which drains a system of energy. Negative values
drain energy from a system, positive values increase energy into a system.
And that energy either coming or going, increases or decreases energy which
going out is entropy and coming in, makes a system stronger.

It cannot be denied that positive energy comes from positive values.
A family with positive values is a energy plus system and a family with
negative values is a negative loss system. Positive values like truth,
justice, peace, love, honesty creates energy, positive energy in people,
groups and entire systems. Positive values are sustainable energy in
a system. Which system would you contribute your energy too?
a negative value system or a positive value system?

Unless you are lying to yourself, you want and people want
a positive value/energy system and that type of system is
sustainable. If we can, we will pick, choose an positive energy/value
system every time.

We can find salvation, forgiveness, peace in a positive energy/value system.
We cannot find salvation or peace in a negative energy/value system.
Your choice of values that are positive energy/values can create
positive energy/values in a system which is the opposite of entropy.

Entropy is the result of energy leaving a system and negative values
helps drive energy from a system. Negative values are values which
encourages entropy, the loss of energy.

and we are lead back to our original question, which is how do we find certainty?

we find certainty by values and the energy those values create. the values we
choose creates certainty in our lives as long as the values we choose are
positive values and not negative values. You can find certainty, forgiveness,
salvation in choosing positive values which lead to positive energy. Values which
form the basis of our understanding of our actions in the world. Values create meaning
within any action we take. We must choose our values then and only then
can we act with an understanding of what that action means. That understanding
comes from the certainty of knowledge that we have positive values/energy.

Our actions is understood best by the values we have. we must base our actions
upon our values… values come first, then actions. Justice as a value can give
meaning and purpose to our lives and create meaning and purpose in our actions.

If we apply values to our actions, we create meaning and purpose in our lives.
And that meaning and purpose is certainty of our values and actions.
To be just is to create energy/value/meaning/purpose and certainty in our lives.

If we apply justice and love and peace and honesty to our lives, we create
better lives with more meaning and energy and value and purpose.
we create certainty…………

So the path to certainty is the path of positive values which creates
positive energy and meaning in our lives. If we adapt positive values,
will there be no failure? of course not, but failure itself can be
a positive thing if we realize that “to fail is to be human”.

that there is no failure, just a new understanding of the universe.

If we are to achieve forgiveness, salvation, certainty, it begins
with values that we choose for ourselves. Positive values.

Kropotkin

We both enjoy the privilege of being a western man with the right to spend his time writing down his god to honest thoughts.

I have very few minutes today…

I was in a bookstore and I saw a book about feminism and the modern world.
One of the points of the introduction was about identity.
I have read a lot of history and I don’t recall in any society or culture
that identity was ever a problem. Why is identity a problem
in the modern world? What about the modern world makes identity
a problem?

Kropotkin

so, when last seen I asked about identity.
Why are we, in this modern or postmodern world depending on
who you speak to, so concerned about and with identity?

If you read the Greeks or Romans or Medieval writers, you don’t see any such
wonder about identity or gender or even a sense of "where are we going? that
we see in the writings of the last 200 years. The certainty that existed for those
Greek/Roman/Medieval writers does not exist for us.

The question of “Who am I” never occurred to those writers of the ancient world.
It is a “modern” question but why? Why do we ask those question?
what is it about the Modern world that forces us to ask ourselves,
“Who am I”? What has changed?

Clearly, science and technology are a major reason for the change from
the ancient and medieval world to the “Modern” world, but what is the
change that has happened in our modern world that has occurred from
the beginning of the modern age, say 1500 to today, 2018?

Some sources I have read believe that the change is from the “Enlightenment”
to the current thought… which is to say, the “Enlightenment” thought, beliefs,
idea’s and methodology carried the day for roughly 150 years, depending on
when one believes when the “Enlightenment” began, some like Jonathan Israel,
believe that the “Enlightenment” was over by 1750 and some believe that it was
over at the French Revolution, 1790. In either case, the end of the “Enlightenment”
seems to have occurred at the beginning of the First World War, 1914.

Romanticism which was the next phase of thought, can be said to begin with
Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and has never really ended.

Has it been this clash between the ideals of “Enlightenment” and “Romanticism”
that has created the modern world? Hitler, for example was an Romantic.
Hitler was an romantic by trying to recreate an Aryan person, an aryan society,
that hadn’t existed for over a thousand years.

Ronald Reagan was also an Romantic… How is this? Raygun believed in
trying to recreate a past that didn’t exist in the first place. He was always
trying to bring back the 1950’s but a 1950’s that didn’t exist in the first place.

so this question of identity is about who we are in this modern age of
2018. Read the Greeks or Romans and you don’t have this modern
question of sexual identity. Many Greeks and Romans did have homosexual
relationships but it wasn’t the identity crisis that it is today. They simple
did what felt good and was pleasurable to them. So, once again, why in the
modern era, do we have this issue? One possibility was that the Greeks, and Romans,
lived in far more certain times. If the state was floundering and problems existed
as they do, then it was felt that the gods were mad at the state/people and brought
these problem to the state/people as punishment. But it wasn’t because of the very
nature of the universe was random or chaotic as we believe the universe is today.

What is different about today then it was 2000 years or a 1000 years or
500 or 250 or 25 years ago? What makes our times, “Modern” times?

Kropotkin

so, a Romantic is one who wants a return to a past, either
a past that didn’t exist or one that has been romanticize.

Now this last election had as the theme of IQ45 being,

MAGA. Make America great… Again.

This is a romanticize idea of an America that was, not as it is today.

The key word is Again. Once America was great and by following the
village idiot, we can be great again. How did that work out for you?

Greatness can never be achieved by following a past result or history or
past events… Greatness is a function of adapting to the current conditions
and then seeing a possibility/possibilities that can be achieved in the current conditions.

In other words, we must follow a vision of where we want to be, not
a vision of where we were. That is greatness. Going from here to some
future possibility, not going from here to a romanticize or never existed.
IQ45 is a Romantic and anyone who follows him is following a Romantic
vision of the past where America was great. We must go from here to some
future possibilities… we must have a vision of a future and then work toward
that future. That is the only possibility of greatness available to us.

A vision of achieving the past has never lead to greatness. Can you name
one who had a vision of the past who lead any society or culture
to greatness? I can’t think of anyone and you can’t either.

The quest of either a person or a society is to go from here to there,
and there is always the future. So how do we achieve our possibilities
of the future? By creating a vision of the future we want.

But to get from here to there, we must properly understand exactly
where we are and that means understanding the “modern” world
and what it means to exists in “modern” world.

Why are we different from the past? What has created this difference?
And what is the means for us to take that knowledge and go into the future.

Kropotkin

We have this question of identity and the Modern age that exists
because we are uncertain or unable to get a fixed on
what vision we are to follow. Are we to pursue a prior vision
of what made us “great” or should we attempt to pursue a vision
of the future and its possibilities?

Ours is truly an age of ideology, Capitalist, communist, liberal,
conservative, totalitararism or democracy? All of these are not
statements of fact, they are possibilities for who we might be.
We are in the midst of severe issues and the solutions offered up
are ideological solutions, not solutions based on the problems.

Let us look at and understand the nature of our problems.
First we have structural problems, non ideological problems,
climate change, extreme poverty, massive pollution, the coming
scarcity of resources… these are not left/right issues but issues
that challenge us as human beings. Another way to understand this
might be this, these issues are issues because we have to come to
understand that the rights of human beings are a legitimate concern…

Thus we can state that human beings have the right to… food, water,
clean air, education, medical resources and care,

Will continue later, wife is home.

Kropotkin