a new understanding of today, time and space.

I am on vacation this week and have been spending it reading.
As is my usual habit, when beginning a new philosopher, I read
a biography about them and as I am beginning Hegel, I am reading
a biography by Terry Pinkard called surprising enough, “Hegel” a biography.

And I note that as with virtually all the philosophers I have encountered so far
in the modern era, from Descartes to Hegel, that they are really philosophers
of and for and by other philosophers. In other words, the works that they
have produced for the most part is written for other philosophers and not
for the average person on the street. Take Kant for example, after reading 12 books
by and about him, I still don’t understand his philosophical idea’s. It hasn’t been
for a lack of trying, but his idea’s have no bearing on the average person on
the street. His philosophy has no bearing on anything an average person thinks
or does and that is not going to help us trying to get an understanding
of the point and purpose of our existence. Kant’s gobblegook doesn’t
help me become a better person or understand life better or help me
understand my place in the universe or even understand the Kantian questions:

What am I to do? What should I hope for? What can I know?

I cannot relate what Kant wrote with the questions he asked.
And Kant is not alone in his failure to make his philosophy
assessible for the man on the street. Hegel makes the same mistakes
and in even worse language, if that is even possible. The mistake of
having language hide what is being said instead of using language to help
understand what is being said. If philosophy is to help people understand
their place in the universe, then the philosophical language must
be understandable, even to the average person. It is not until Kierkegaard that
philosophical language becomes plainer and even then, Kierkegaard
tried to hide his meaning through various tricks like third person use
of language and pseudonyms and pretend editors of his works.

This use of language to hide, obscure what is being said, to my mind anyway,
is meant to show us that the author meaning is so brilliant that us common
minds is unable to understand it. However I would suggest that the language
being used is to make us think that the author is somehow way above us,
but in fact, the author is really hiding the fact that his knowledge is for
show and a pretension to brilliance. If you can’t make your language
plain, then why bother? If is a matter of instruction that you make
your presentation, then make your idea’s clear and concise, so people
can learn from you…………If is your intention to show us how smart
you are, then obscure language is your path to this goal. I believe
this urge to pretension is, in part, why philosophy has such a bad/no
reputation these days. Philosophy can show us our place and our
meaning in the universe, but it has got to become of the people,
for the people, by the people. Philosophy can be rigorous even using
plain, common language. If we want to return philosophy to the
“Queen of the Sciences” then philosophy must speak to those who
need it most and in language that they can understand.

Kropotkin

In my reading of “modernity” and “postmodernism” I’ve come across
one concept that that has piqued my interest and I’ve commented
upon it before, the fragmentation of modern man.
Goethe commented on this when he said, “Alas, I have two souls
in my breast”. And the modern man says, dam, I wish I only had
two souls. The modern man’s soul has been fragmentated
like a mirror or cup that has been dropped from a great height.
But that mirrors our understanding of physics and how the universe
works……. Once our understanding of the universe was Newtonian.
Which is really the clockwork nature of the universe and how it all flowed
all together under the great laws of Newton and Math. Under Newton,
there was no fragmentation. Everything had its place and that place
could be found by the laws of science and math. The clock was really
the symbol of the age of the enlightenment because everything
was defined by its place in the universe and that was as sure as
as how direct and clear the clock worked.

But the age of the enlightenment occurred before the modern age,
before the industrial revolution. The age of the industrial revolution
also adopted the clock as its symbol but not the clock that stands upon
your desk, but as the timepiece that measures all activities. Recall
that saying, “Time is money”. That is a indication of the idea that
the industrial revolution took as its chief symbol the timeclock upon
which all workers must time in and out of everyday……

We are seen in the modern age as workers and only as workers.
What is THE modern symbol of our industrial age? Work.
We are determined and judge and measured by the work we do.
What is virtually the first question you ever ask of someone you first meet?
What do you do? What is your job. And then we judge them based on that
criteria. Not is they are good people or honest people or just people, but
do they work and what is that work? And we then judge their honesty
and value as an individual based on the criteria of their employment.

But the fragmentation comes from the fact that we are so much more then
just working individuals. We attempt, in our own way, to answer the
Kantian/Kropotkin question of "what can I know? What am I to do?
What values should I hold? among other such questions.

And in our search for our answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions,
we discover ourselves to be greater then just our work status. We are not
just the sum of what we do for a living. We are so much more and this is
the crisis of the modern age. We are fragmented because we are seen as
only workers (and consumers) but as nothing else which flies in the face of
who we are. In our own self analysis, Know thyself, we find ourselves to
be holders of values but these values are in conflict with the modern
age demand, that all we are is workers. I hold values that are
being negated and devalued in the modern world pursuit of profits/money.
I am fragmented because of this conflict between the nihilism of the
modern world which is attempting to crush all values that don’t lead
to profits/money and my need to hold values like honesty, justice,
truth, love. If I am to fit into the modern age, I must also negate
and deny my values because they don’t lead to profits/money.
This is the fragmentation of the modern age. If I am to fit into
the modern age, I must deny and negate who I am and my values.
Either you accept the modern proposition that profit is the basis
of existence or you don’t and if you don’t, you are committing the
greatest crime of the modern age… and that is disobeying,
disobedience. Just like Adam and Eve, you are committing the
crime that will have you removed from “paradise”.

I don’t accept the premise that the value of human beings come
from the creation of profits/money. Simple as that
and with that, I am in conflict with my age, I am alienated
from my age, I am fragmented. So now the question becomes,
like the broken cup, can I be repaired? Can I be made whole again
or must I suffer from my fragmentation till the end of my existence?
From this we can now see the demand for the search for wholeness
that dominates our age. But the fact is, we may not be able to
put humpty dumpty together again. Think of it this way,
are we the single individual atoms that society/the modern age
has created or are we part of a whole? And if we are part of the whole,
which whole shall we be part of? Hence we now see or have an explanation
for the various ism’s and ideologies that have dominated the modern age.
For the rise of ism’s and ideologies come from the fragmentation of the modern
age and our attempt to make ourselves whole again with a return to
such ism’s as nationalism and religion and such idiocy as “white is right”.
I see such attempts to ism’s as a response to the fragmentation
of the modern age.

We have been torn asunder because of the industrial revolution which
has devalued and negated humans and their values and we respond
as best we can to reuniting our fracture souls with ism’s and ideologies
that seem to be able to reunite who we are into one soul……

but is that even desirable? Should we even want to reunite
into one soul, be it in the name, the ism of nationalism or religion or
racism and bigotry? Should we attempt to reunite our souls or should
we attempt to conquer who we are and accept that we are individual
soul, individual atoms who cannot become part of any false ism or ideology?

The universe itself offers us an answer. We know that the base
of the universe is individual atoms. That is the basic structure
of the universe, the atom. But we also see atoms combining into
structures like the TV set and stoves and human beings and then
the atoms come apart, entropy, and then the atoms come together
again into a new structure. The number of atoms in the universe
has never changed since the second of the big bang to today
and it will never change till the end of time. We are just individual
atoms but we also change combine into structures and still
be individual atoms. Thus as individual atoms, we can become
part of structures like democracy and socialism and work and,
and we change and adapt, we can dissociate ourselves, as individual
atoms, and become part of other structures like dictatorships
and capitalism. These structures, like giant Lago logs,
are made up of many, thousands, indeed, millions of individual
Lago logs. but we have free will, we have the ability to
dissociate ourselves as we want from our created social structures
like communism and Catholicism, or to join other created social structures
or institutions like the party of treason, the GOP.

That is where we have freedom. to join or to dissociate ourselves
from created structures of ism’s and ideologies like monarchy
or anarchism.

The path to becoming who we are is by understanding we
are individual atoms, each and every single one of us,
but we can join or dissociate ourselves from created social structures
that are created to harbor and help us individual atoms to survive.

The key is to accept us as individual atoms and the use that
understanding to accept our fractured souls. The fracturing
of our souls is because we now understand that
our social structure of modernism, capitalism and the industrial revolution,
has fractured our soul with its nihilism/negation of who we are
and what is possible by its relentless search for profits/money.

We are individual atoms… the question becomes, what is next?

Kropotkin

OK, when last seen, I ask a simply question,
as individual atoms, what is next?

But let us understand how we connect as individual atoms.

We know that in the beginning, the big bang, that the universe
was a random series of atoms. What connected them was a force,
that force, we call Gravity. The begining of the collection of matter, or
thought of another way, the unification of atoms, into matter that we now
call stars, planets, galaxies, space/time, all began because of gravity.

So, today we exist as a collection of individual atoms, we call cells.
this collection of billions and trillions and whatever is the next largest
number called, how did that collection of cells become, the human being?

We call this evolution. So matter began to collect as a response to Gravity
and became planets and stars and galaxies. We responded to Gravity in the same
way and we began to collect as individual atoms. Then after billions of years,
we began to be life, as we know it today. The path to the human being began
with the collection of random cells that, for whatever reason, became life.

Just as the organizing principle of matter is gravity, the organizing principle
of life is evolution. And as it does with Gravity, evolution goes from the small
and simple to the large and complex. We are not the last stage of evolution,
we are simply what has come to now and after us, life will continue, by
using such organizing principles of evolution and gravity, to continue to
build and create life into a collection of individual atoms. The next super power
of life on earth after the disappearance of human beings, may well be the
common dog or rats or alligators or some other random collection of individual
atoms that, by evolutionary means rise to the top of the food chain.
Life is created by some means we don’t yet understand, and frankly it doesn’t matter,
but life is maintain by evolution……. we are individual atoms that has our organizing
principles as evolution. We exist as a collection of individual atoms just as the sun
and planets and galaxies are a collection of individual atoms and they are organized
by gravity. So as we are created by the “laws” of evolution, we must organize
in a certain fashion. We are social creatures, we must congregate together,
we human beings and this is because that is how evolution created us.
The rules, think of evolution as rules, and we humans must obey the rules.
And part of the rules for human beings is we must be social. That is inborn
within us as part of the rules for being human. So as individual atoms,
part of the rules for us individual atoms is we must congregate together
and so the social order of families and towns and cities and social organizations
like government and culture and ism’s and ideologies like communism and democracy
exist because of the rules of evolution which demands, yep, demands
that we socialize together and exist together and live together. So this is why
as individual atoms, we tend to congregate into social structures like families
and groups. But we have freedom and part of that freedom is to associate
or as the case maybe, disassociate ourselves from a particular social order
such as a family or group or ism or ideology. Now seen this way, the real
path of freedom claimed by many is really just our ability to associate
or dissociate from any social structure. We have the right as given
by evolution, to dissent from and disagree with any social structure
that we, as individual atoms, agree with or disagree with.

We are determined by such factors as being inborn with certain
evolutionary forces such as the need to survive and the need to
be social. This need to survive is strong in all evolutionary/biology
structures we call animals or living beings such as fish and plants
and algae… That is the inbred function of evolution, to create
certain conditions of individual atoms, of which the will to survive
is strong. We as a collection of individual atoms, living in a universe
of collected atoms, both big and small, and the biological atoms
have as part of their code, the need to survive… for that is written
within atoms by evolution, the need to survive. Recall that a cell,
a single, individual cell has as it basis, the coding written into
it by the force of evolution and we know that code as DNA and RNA.
That is the code that billions of years of evolution has written
into all biological cells………

We cannot, as of yet, override those codes, but that is part of what
we are doing with our work with genetics and the study of genes and
heredity in living organisms. Seeing how evolution has wired us
as biological beings with DNA and RNA. So within us, as part of our
individual cells, is the coding of evolution and as we are also
part of that coding, we exist as being coded by evolution and
all life is by being life, coded by evolution. So as gravity has
organized matter into such things as stars and planets and galaxies,
evolution has organized matter into biological/coded individual
atoms which given enough time become more and more complicate
and eventually turning into us, not the final chapter of evolution, simple
the next chapter of evolution and after us, will come another chapter
and another and another. Life goes on…… with or without us.

With this in mind, what is next?

Kropotkin

As have understood ourselves to be a collection
of individual atoms that has united under the forces of
gravity and evolution. We have both forces bound
within our own evolutionary growth. We are made of
both gravity and evolution. That is part of who we are
and you cannot remove or dissociate oneself from those
forces any more then you can remove your heart, as a physical
entity that moves your blood around your body. If you remove
your heart, you die. It is just that simple. But let us understand
the heart in the symbolic method that the heart is understood,
as an symbol of love and emotion. The creation of love and emotion
and passion comes from the evolution of the biological form we call
human beings. It is as much a part of us as the heart is a physical muscle
that pumps blood for us… To state the obvious, you cannot live without
the heart as a physical function because it is part of us, as the brain and
liver and bones and sinew are also a part of us…… but as we cannot
live without the heart as a physical force that moves blood, we cannot live
without the heart as an symbolic force either. In other words, we are
created by evolution to have emotions, to love, to engage with passion
and we cannot remove those emotions, love, passion inside of us…
They exist just as surely as the heart and brain exists and for the same
reason, they somehow allow us to survive, which as you recall is one
of the patterns evolution has written into our genetic code… All physical
forms created by evolution, has written into it, the will to survive.
It is part of the coding evolution has written into us and
emotion, passion and love is also written into us as genetic coding.

We cannot separate out from us emotions, passions, love any more then
we can separate out our heart or our brain. This is something we need
to learn. Is that we can separate or associate ourselves with ism’s and
ideologies and specific social structures, but we cannot because of our
evolutionary coding escape being part of social structures or escape
being emotional, passionate, loving… This is the failure of
the school of thought that says we must divest ourselves of
emotions, passions, love. We can no more divest ourselves of
that which is coded in us then anymore we can divest ourselves
of our heart or our brain as physical structures that allow us to live.

The 20th century is a lesson in our attempt to follow the
enlightenment of the 18the century and become only rational,
logical. We cannot divest ourselves of our feelings, passions, love,
emotions anymore then we can divest ourselves of our rationality,
logical side of us as that is also written into us as genetic coding.

so our genetic coding, has us being both rational and logical
and passionate and emotional and loving. We must accept
this basic fact and learn to work with both sides of our genetic
heritage, the brain as a symbol and the heart as a symbol.

We cannot deny or negate either side of our genetic heritage
without real problems and those real problems threaten
our very survival. We must learn to work with the rational,
logical side of us and work with the emotional, passionate side
of us… The two sides, because they were created by evolution,
are a fixed and always present part of us and we must exist with both
intact and working. This is part of the challenge of being human,
learning to work with and be part of both the rational and emotional
side of the evolutionary forces that created us. We must work with
our rational side and our emotional side of us just as we must
work with the forces that created the universe, matter in the laws
of gravity and living, biological matter, evolution. We must find
a work to exist and work with gravity and evolution as they are
the forces that are a part of us, exist within us and we cannot escape
the forces of gravity or evolution any more then we can escape the
evolutionary forces of rational thought and emotional feelings.

It is within us, part of us and we must deal with that as best we can.
We have no choice, so we must incorporate both factions of
the evolutionary process that is rationality and emotionality.

so the path to becoming human, fully human lies in learning to
incorporate both sides of the evolutionary coding that exists
within us, emotions and rational thought. so, you want to
become a better human being and a better living being,
the answer lies in incorporating the two sides of our genetic coding,
the emotional and the rational.

Kropotkin

When all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail……

And within this quote you have the modern world… for people think
all they have is a hammer, which is the ism’s and ideologies that they
are committed to, be it capitalism or Catholicism or nationalism.
For example, if all you use to make judgements is profits and losses,
then every example you look at, will involved profits and losses.
This lack of imagination allows us to think that we can judge everything
by profits and losses. Thus we can negate and devalue people if they
don’t create profits. If we judge everything by our hammer, which is
the profits/losses, then everything looks like a nail which in this case
is the question of profits/losses, the GDP, (Gross domestic product)
wealth………….If we stop looking at everything through the paradigm of profits,
the hammer of profits, then we can reevaluate, better understand the world…
For that hammer of wealth/profits is a false vision of the world… it is
an artificial vision of what the world looks like………

We judge, value, understand ourselves in terms of profits and losses.
what a lack of imagination we have, to see ourselves in such nihilistic terms.
We can no longer have this lack this imagination and short change who we are
because offers us a false picture of who we are.

who I am and what is possible for me is not dependent upon any standard
of wealth that I have or might have……. who I am and what is possible for
me exists within a different context outside of profits and losses.

Or if you see the world in the context of racial or sexual or gender identities,
then everything you see, the hammer is that context. If you see white identity
as the context for things, then that is your hammer and when you use that hammer,
everything looks like a white identity problem. That is lack of a imagination at work.

Change your vision, your hammer of the world and everything changes.
Here we become aware of another great problem of our age, the lack
of imagination. We are trapped because we lack the imagination
to escape our viewpoints……

Kropotkin

Here are a few notes I have collected over the last few days.

The continuity of life plays role in our lives. I was on vacation last week
and even though I wasn’t there, the store continued on, as it does whether
I am there or not. Life is the same way. It is impossible to understand
life without understanding the continuity of life. We are born within this
continuity and life continues within this continuity. To be or not to be,
still exist within the continuation of life.

Now conservatives use this continuity as a justification for their ideology
which is basically, this continuity of life, of society, is the basis for all the good
things in life. A conservative values and believes in this continuity
that is our existence. But the problem of continuity is simple, it makes
no value judgment about the continuity of the life. For example, if we base
our existence on the continuity instead of the nature of what is being continued, then
we have our justification for such things as slavery, women being barefoot,
pregnant and in the kitchen, of political systems like the monarchy and not
democracy. For it is the modern world attack upon the continuity of
these institutions that has lead to the modern world as we know it.

To simply continue things because that is the way that they have always
been done is the carrying of the age old myths, biases, prejudices, habits
and superstitions into the modern world and into today. We cannot simply
be engaged in the act of maintaining our continuity instead of understand
as we have what is being continued. This is the difference between the liberal
and the conservative. For the conservative, it is about the continuation
and not necessarily what is being continued and for the liberal, it is about
what is being conserved, what is being continued that matters, not the act
of continuation. The second aspect is the speed of any change that might
be made. For the conservative, speed matters and if one is to conservative,
maintain our continuity, then it must change slowly if at all.

for the liberal, change cannot come fast enough. But once again, it is not
about the continuity itself, but what is being continued. And if what is being
continued is considered “wrong” by the liberal, then change cannot come fast
enough. Let us take one example, slavery. Slavery has existed since the beginning
of time and is mentioned within the bible. So in the eyes of the conservative,
slavery is acceptable because it is the continuity of existence that allows
society and the culture to survive. It is not about what is being continued,
just as long as it is being continued. But slavery is wrong and the sooner
we can removed it, eliminate it, the better off we are, that is the liberal
thinking. It doesn’t matter about the continuity or the speed of change,
as long as the necessary change occurs to help those who are in the bonds
of slavery. For those who wonder, slavery is still practiced in the world.
We are not as advanced as we like to think.

So, what about continuity that appeals or doesn't appeal to you? 

What do you want to continue and what do you want to change?
And the liberal ask, why? Why continue this and why change that.
It is not enough to engage in change but to understand what
change we want and why.

Kropotkin

again a note taken a day or so ago…

Note the “common” sense idea’s of society that fall apart
upon examination. Idea’s like “Truth, Justice and the American way of life”

I grew up upon the phrase “Truth, Justice and the American way of life”.
But upon reflection, what exactly does this mean?

“Truth”. What is “Truth”??? That which confirms our understanding of life,
or said another way, that which confirms our myths, biases, prejudices, ism’s
and superstitions that we are indoctrinated with, in our childhood.

And what of Justice? What does Justice mean? Plato engaged in this
2,500 years ago and we have gotten no further then him. I have defined
Justice as equality and we clearly don’t have equality in our justice system,
so we don’t have justice in America. What does Justice mean in modern America?

and the American way of life? There isn’t a person in America who can explain
to me what is the “American way of life”. It is all empty words and phrases that
mean nothing. An honest examination of these and other prejudices and “buzz” words
show us the emptiness of our words and the emptiness of the “American way of life”.

You want to get to the emptiness and apathy and nihilism of us Americans,
you must first get to the heart of our alienation from America and that lies
in the deep and vast separation between our ideals and the reality of those ideal’s.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal”

And our words, vastly differ from our laws and our actions and who we claim to be.
The alienation between who we claim to be and who we actually are, has lead
us to an emptiness of soul and heart of American’s today.

It is this disconnect between the words of our public monuments and
our actions that has lead us to, in part, to the fragmentation of the modern soul.
We are clearly leading fragmented lives/ souls and we cannot continue, as the conservative
wants, to continue as if nothing has happened to who we are and who we want to be.

But this is the problem with our going from here to there in regards to who we are
and who we aspire to be, because we see and feel and are alienated from
that which we claim to be and that which we are. We cannot become who we are,
if we are alienated between the words of our claims and the truth of our reality, of our
actions. We say, we are honest, and we lie and we say, we are just, and we are anything
but just, and we say, we are truthful, but we are engaged in deceit and lies and
following the footsteps of our so called “leaders” who lie and engage in deceit and
engage in dissembling their motives and beliefs.

A dishonest person, an American will say, “not me, I am truthful. It is everyone else
who is lying” but the fact is, concealing is the new America. Hiding the truth,
hiding justice, hiding honesty is the new America. The new America is a sham,
an act, an masquerade posing as honesty and truth and Justice and the American
way of life, with everyone denying their involvement with injustice and dishonesty
and their involvement in deceit and dissembling the truth.

IQ45 is not a anomaly, but the quintessential American. “we hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men lie and cheat and hide the truth” That is the
America of 2018.

It is not common sense that has taken a beating in modern America, but
the truth and honesty that has suffered a beating.

What have you done today to be truthful and honest and to pursue justice
as equality, not as justice being bought and paid for?

Kropotkin

The search for philosophy is not a search for
philosophy as a science, but philosophy as
a search for the truth. Science is about facts,
philosophy is about the why. There are no facts in
say, Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” or in Nietzsche
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” or in Plato’s “Republic”.

To turn philosophy into a science means you need to
have some philosophical facts. What would constitute
a philosophical fact? That all men search for happiness?
Or that we exist to search for knowledge? Or that we
try to understand the “meaning of life”?
There are no “facts” in these statements.

The point of philosophy is to understand what it means to
be human and we don’t need facts to understand what it means
to be human. Understood correctly, literature can answer the question
of what it means to be human as well as philosophy does and sometimes
even better. Literature can educate us to the possibilities of being human
in ways that philosophy cannot and why? Because of the interaction
between characters reveals to us the possibilities of being human in ways and
language that is understandable whereas philosophy confounds us in
the understanding of what it means to be human because of the obscure
and esoteric language use of philosophers. The search for our understanding
of what it means to be human doesn’t have to be guided by obscure language
and convoluted sentences as in Kant and Hegel and Wittgenstein and Heidegger.
The prose to philosophical understanding can be a clear and open as the
language of Hemingway and Goethe and Shakespeare. In fact, I would suggest
that the greatest philosopher of all time is really Shakespeare because
he was the first to alert us to the possibilities of being human and the Bildungsroman
of Goethe brought to light the developmental nature of the human being.
We are not static machines, but creatures with adaptable and changable
nature that progresses over the years. The truth is trying to find the truth
of human nature, of the answer to who we are is difficult because of the
changing nature of the human soul. I am different today then I was
5 or 10 or 20 years ago. Partly because I am older today and partly because
of events and people who have changed me, but who is the real me?
The me of 10 years ago or the me of today? I suggest that both are part
of me and the answer lies with the fact that we humans change and adapt
and progress with time. It is that change and adaptation that messes
with any understanding of what it means to be human because we
are in constant state of process from one day to the next to the next and
to the next day. The human soul is in a constant state of flux and that flux
makes it next to impossible to us to fix our understanding of what it means to be
human. Any account of what it means to be human and what are our
possibilities must take into account our soul as it changes and adapts
and continues of process from one day to the next.

I am Kropotkin… but what that means has changed over the years.
Philosophy must learn to accomadate that change and constant
flux of being human. And philosophy must learn to do that with
clear and graceful langauge.

Kropotkin

The changing question of what it means to be human
and its possibilities are also a question of what it
means to the relationship between individuals
and the state. This question of the relationship
between the state and the individual lies at the
heart of the Greek understanding of what it means
to be human for the Greeks understand the question of
becoming human in terms of the polis, the city.
It was not an individual question of how to become
human but a societal question, a question involving
the entire society, not just the individual.

Today, we have a mixed understanding of what it means to
become human because of our mixed attitude toward the state.
Is the state really the enemy of people as Ronal Raygun said it was,
or is the state really an agent of change in people or is the state
just an umpire that doesn’t dictate change at all, it simply
stands as an umpire does in a game of football. Once we answer the
question of what is the role of government in the lives of people,
then we shall have some progress in what it means to become
human.

Kropotkin

It is not a question of our understanding human existence
as being a static, unchanging existence, but a question
of the ever changing, ever moving nature of human existence
that we must understand…… It is the change of human existence
that we must begin to understand, not the static nature of
human existence.

Kropotkin

As a philosopher, one who is attempting an inquiry into the nature of things,
I must have some place where I begin……

therefore, I begin here…… I do not believe in god or an metaphysical
notion that there are things beyond the physical. What is, is in the
known and seen universe. It has been said that there is such stuff as
dark matter and dark energy but we cannot see it…… I say, we can’t
see it yet. We just haven’t created the tools we need to see or measure
such things as dark matter or dark energy. Our scientific growth has
come because we have created tools that allow us to expand the use of
our senses with such devices as a telescope and microscope and antennas
and particle accelerators…It is the use of and growth in such tools
that has allowed us to gather a greater understanding of the universe and
the forces or laws of the universe. We have such human tools as logic
and science and mathematics that allows us gather information about
the nature of and reality of the universe we live in.
If you want a definition of a human being, it might be this, a human being
is a tool using animal.

It is the rise of modern science which has created our modern world.
Science measures, weighs, counts, analysis matter, forces, time/space…
in other words, if it can be studied and measured, it is science and science
uses those tools of science to measure and weigh and count……

The question of science is about the who, what, when, where, how but
and this is important, not the why. Using the tools of science we can build
an atomic bomb but science cannot tell us if the use of the atomic bomb
is a “good” or a “bad” thing. That is the role of philosophy. But one may ask,
why isn’t it the role of religion? Because Religion takes into account
evidence that isn’t really there… In other words, in a court of law,
the trial of a person, the court would introduce the evidence of a crime
and that evidence must be physical evidence, paper work, a gun or a knife,
tax documents and if the evidence is a person who has knowledge of
the crime, it cannot be the sole evidence of a crime. In other words,
we must conclusively connect the person who is being charged with a crime
to the evidence of a crime. let us return to the role of religion.
For the evidence a religious person needs to prove there is
existence of a god, the evidence is not physical evidence.
The religious person accepts non physical evidence that a court
of law would not accept. You cannot prove that a god exists
and no court in the universe would accept that evidence because
there is no physical evidence connecting god to the physical universe.
a person saying in a court of law, I believe this is true and that makes
it true would not be accepted in a court of law as evidence of a crime or
any type of connection to a crime. simple belief is not enough of a connection
to be accepted in a court of law……… and that is how I judge evidence for
something. Would it be acceptable in a court of law? If I hold this belief,
is there enough physical evidence to have this belief as holding true
in a court of law? In other words, my burden of proof is very high.
I cannot hold a belief if there is not enough supporting physical evidence for
that belief.

so in my inquiry, I can hold a belief if there is enough evidence that holds
true in a court of law. So I hold the belief that there are UFO’S because I
believe that there is enough physical evidence to bring into a court
of law and that evidence can be used to show that UFO’S exists.

But there isn’t enough physical evidence to show us that a god or gods, exists.

We have enough physical evidence to show that black holes exists
and that time/space are a physical entity. That time/space is not
just a mathematical concept but a physical one like the planet
earth is physical evidence that planets do exists.

We have evidence that time/energy/matter/mass all have
a beginning in the big bang and thus have a ending date at
some point in the future but and this is important,
that the amount of matter/energy created in the big bang
is still the same amount of matter/energy that exists today and will
be the same amount of matter at the end of existence.

so how we will be able to explain the ending of the universe
in light of the fact that the amount of energy/matter in the universe
will be the exactly the same from beginning to end?

This is done by entropy. a decline into disorder from order.
Order exists because of the amount of energy that is in the system
or put into a system allows the system to maintain order.
Once a system doesn’t have enough energy to maintain itself,
it begins its decline into disorder. The amount of energy a system
needs changes as the system changes. A political system in the
beginning phases of it operation needs a different amount of energy then
during it middle phase and a different amount during it ending phase.
At our current phase of existence we need more energy to maintain
our existence and yet, people try to increase disorder
by removing energy that goes into the system. That is done by
removing the energy a system needs to sustain and build itself.

a political system does this by money which allows a system
to maintain itself and the amount of energy that goes into a system.
so if we understand that a system needs an ever greater amount of
energy to maintain itself because a system becomes ever greater
more complicated. So the energy needed to maintain the American
political system was less during the 18the century and then every
century thereafter the amount of energy needed increased just
maintain itself. A large system needs ever greater energy then a smaller
system to maintain itself and the energy a political system needs is
twofold, participation and money. A reduction in either type of energy,
participation and money into a political system increases the disorder
into a system.

To truly understand the modern world, we must understand
systems and the energy that goes into the modern systems that
makes the systems work.

this is some of what I hold to be true.

Kropotkin

If we hold ourselves to the higher standard
of it must eligible as evidence in a court of law,
then much of philosophy gets tossed into the garbage heap.

an example of this is Kant and his famous saying:

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration
and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them:
the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me”

OK, we have evidence for the starry heavens above but
the “moral law within me”? Nah, that is an assumption of
facts not admissible in a court of law. There is simply no
evidence of any kind of a moral law in Kant, in you, in me,
in anybody.

We see this false attempt to act upon evidence that we simply
don’t have. The group after Kant, which included Fichte, Shelling, Schleiermacher, and
of course, Hegel, all began with unproven assumptions not admissible
in a court of law. Each of them wrote about assumptions like the
“divine absolute” which is another name for god, and the existence
of some sort of spirit which infuses “the People” which causes “the people”
to act in some fashion. Each of those named above writes about the
“Spirit of the people”, the “German Spirit” as if it actually were a thing and
not some made up metaphysical thing. You have to stick to the facts as they
present themselves, not as how you want them to appear. This is the failure
of “German Idealism” during the period of Kant and thereafter. They assumed
facts not in evidence.

So what other “facts” that we have that are assumed
and not actually proven? The idea of “progress” is one.
We have no evidence that the human race is supposed
to travel the path of “progress”. From the lower, simpler
to the higher, complicated level. There is simply no evidence
for this idea. It is assumed that because we have a higher level
of technology, that we are “higher” or further along with
path of “progress”. But this idea of “progress” assumes that
that there is some liner progression involved and we see no evidence
for that. I would suggest that the Greeks were higher then us in area’s like
philosophy and ethics, and we are higher in science and technology.
so the question really becomes, we have “progress” in what exact area’s
and depending upon that area, we may or may not have “progressed”.
It depends upon how you define “progress”? The entire question of “progress”
revolves around how you define “progress”. The question of “progress”
and other questions, really operate within the boundaries of your definition and
thus have no basis for being admissible in a court of law as being
“facts”. As I stated, much of what passes for philosophy gets tossed
when judged upon being facts or being judge as opinion.
So we have statements like this, “The creative spirit of the people
help create democracy” Ok, there is no evidence of a collective
creative spirit of the people. We have individuals who are creative
and they do create. Am I such a creative person? Hell no.
We cannot take an individual property such as creativity
or socialness and assume that it is a collective process,
includes everyone. My sisters are creative, my brother and I,
nope, so does the entire family have a “creative spirit”?
some do and some don’t, it is not a collective thing.
Now I could say, my family has a “creative spirit”
and I would be partly right, and I would be partly wrong.
depending on who I was talking about.

We have to speak and write with the current evidence, facts in mind.
Thus we cannot make blanket statements about “everyone” or the “collective”
spirit, or the “absolute” spirit which is god.
“I believe in god” is a personal, individual statement which
some in my family believes. “I don’t believe in god” is a personal,
individual statement which some in my family believes. So is there
a collective understanding or a collective spirit about god in my family?
Not that I can tell.

We have to be careful about making individual, personal statements
that we falsely attribute to a “collective spirit” or a “collective understanding”.

My statement “I believe in UFO’S” is a personal, individual statement,
but I can present evidence, evidence that is acceptable in a court of law,
that UFO"S exist.

a Statement that “I believe in GOD” is a personal, individual statement,
but I could not present evidence that would be acceptable in a court of law.

Why? because the evidence for a god is mostly faith based, not evidence
based. I have faith that god exists whereas I don’t need faith for the evidence
for UFO’S. Philosophy must be presented upon evidence based, not faith
base. We must have evidence for our philosophical statements.
Enough evidence for a court of law.

Kropotkin

sometimes I think we forget the order of things and it is
good to get a refresher occasionally.

I am old, 59, and so I look at things with old eyes…
I see an experience and I try to find an explanation from
the varied examples of experiences I have. I see a man die from a heart
attack. From my prior experiences, I know what has happened and
what it means for me. My experiences have supplied me with information
about what those experiences like a heart attack means.

But when I was young, an experience like watching a man have a heart
attack, was new and confusing. I didn’t know or understood what
it meant in general or specifically to me, to watch someone have
a heart attack. It would have been a confusing experience for me
because I didn’t have the experience or knowledge to know
what it means to have a heart attack.

Now let us go even further back into time, when I was young,
maybe 9 or 10, my sister and I witnessed my father having a stroke.
We had no idea what was happening. Frankly, we panicked.
My sister ran next door and got a neighbor, a nurse, to come
over and take care of my dad. Now being so young, we had no
experiences with people having strokes or heart attacks and
we had no idea what to do. We didn’t have enough experience
to make sense of what had happened or what to do. We knew
something was wrong but we didn’t know what. Now that I am
old, I can pretty tell if something is wrong and because of my
past experiences, I can often tell what the problem is and what
the solution to that problem is…

Now that I old, I can give experiences some context. From what is
totally unknown, my father’s stroke, to today where I know
and understand the context of a stroke or a heart attack.
I can place or put into context, a single experience within
lifetime of my experiences. I now know that a heart attack is
a natural event that happens for quite often no real reason to people.
sometimes the live, sometimes they don’t. I can place into context such
experiences as strokes and heart attacks and divorce and births and deaths.
Such is the understanding of life that happens when you are 59.
There are not a whole lot of mysteries when you are 59. You have seen it
all, you have done it all, you have been it all. The only mystery left
at age 59 is death and someday, I too will undergo that experience.

The point and value of philosophy and science and religion is
to explain what experiences mean. I can philosophically explain
what death means to me and I can scientifically explain what death means
and I can religiously explain what death means. Science, philosophy and religion
are all means to explain and understand experiences. Now some experiences
are unexplainable because the event/experience is random, chaotic and thus
cannot be explained in either scientific or philosophic or religious terms.
The experience lies outside of the usual explanations we offer up for
such things.

What is god? We can try to offer up scientific or philosophical
or religious explanations to, what is god? I can use my vast experience, old age,
to help me and you, understand what is god and what does that experience
explain to us or offer to us. I have learned that having a god helps us to…
or I have learned that not having a god helps us to………
depends on my experience as to what my understanding of experiences
are. I have experienced a lot, so I know a lot… is pretty much how it works.

Now what philosophers try to do is to understand those experiences all humans
have of life and death and illness and loss and turn them into some explanation.
We have some philosophers who try to turn experiences into a system, by
deriving all experiences systematically from one fundamental principle.
Thus we have Nietzsche who tried to do this with his “will to power”
He thus understood all experiences from this one principle of “will to power”
and that was his “system”.

Now we have had people who have tried to systematically turn experiences
into a fundamental principle by saying, “it is all god’s will” and everything
is understood to happen by “god’s will”. then we attempt to work out what
it means for us humans if everything is and all our experiences are simple
part of “god’s will”. What does that mean for us humans?

We have also people who have tried to understand experiences in terms
of natural forces and actions. We call these people scientist. They try to
systematically understand experiences in light of natural forces and
experiences. We drop dead because of genetics or bad habits like smoking
and no exercise. The question of how we explain the world, how we understand
the world comes from our understanding the world of the world and our
experiences of the world. Our understanding of the world could
be scientific or philosophic or religious or some combination of all three.

So the question really is, by what method do you understand the world?
How do you understand and explain the experiences of the world?
How do you create context in your own mind with experiences of
your own life?

Think about how we understand experiences and how we engage
in creating context and understanding of those experiences.

that is the entire reason and rational of science and philosophy and
religion. To explain and understand experiences.

so how do you explain and understand experiences?

Kropotkin

To keep it along the same lines as the last post, I shall use
basic experiences to help us understand.

I am born. I am born into a family and a city, a tribe or a group of people.
We are born into a already set understanding of the world which
is knowledge, superstitions, prejudice, habit, myths, in which we use
those things, knowledge, superstitions……. to explain the world
and its experiences.

I am born. to ask what it means to be a human being, being born is
religious and philosophical. How we are born is scientific. What
it means to be born a white, American male in 1959 is a task I
have engaged with my whole life. Have I overcome my childhood
indoctrinations, myths, habits, prejudices is the question?

What have my experiences over the last 59 years taught me about
what it means to be born human, in this time and this place.
What does it mean to have been born with those childhood
indoctrinations and superstitions and myths and prejudices?

I was born with some myths but not other myths… I was not born
with the myth or prejudice that white people are better then black
people. I was raised to be tolerant of those who hold idea’s, beliefs, myths
and prejudices different then what I hold

as I grew older, I began to become aware of, to begin the process of knowing
thyself and I discovered that the beliefs I held were not my beliefs but
beliefs of my family, my race, my culture… but they weren’t my beliefs,
I was indoctrinated with those beliefs.

I began the engagement of overcoming my beliefs with a rigid
and complete understanding of what I believe and why. I engaged
with overcoming my childhood beliefs and myths and prejudices…
and in overcoming my indoctrinations, I discovered that I became
who I was. Now I held values and beliefs that matched who I was…
That is what it means to become who you are… you discover
the values and beliefs that really define who you are…
and part of that is the value of experiences… I use my experiences
to help guide me in discovering who I am and overcoming childhood
indoctrinations and myths and………

experiences help guide us to discovering who I really am
and who I ought to become. It is experiences that show
us the path to overcoming ourselves and experiences that
show us who we really are……

I owe, I owe, off to work I go…
and off to work I go…

Kropotkin

The question of existence, the problem of existence, is in part,
one of how do we understand experiences, how do we create
context for experiences, how do we classify the point and meaning
of experiences?

The experiences we have, from birth to death are the same experiences,
in other words, each of us is born and each of us will die. Each of us will
have experiences like school, family, society, government, indoctrinations…
As a man, I will have experiences that men have, like peeing standing up
and the male version of puberty and the awareness of other people being
sexual objects. I will not have the experiences of women. And the specific
experiences we have affects us as much as the general experiences.

The experiences are the same for us, life, death, puberty, love, marriage,
sex, but the difference is that each of us understands each experience
differently. My understanding of education is different then yours because
of social, psychology, economic and political differences but all of get educated
in some fashion. How we understand it is different, but the event is the same.

So how do we understand the question of “what ought we to do” in
terms of experience? If we stick with experience instead of ideology,
then we can understand better “what ought we to do”? Or said another way,
what factors, what is the nature of being human and how does that
relate to experiences?

We human beings are social creatures. We exist together, not separately,
we cannot exist alone. We must have other human beings to survive and any
construct of human society must include this aspect of human beings being
social creatures. This socialness is part of being human. It is, in a great part,
the reason why humans beings survived the long evolutionary period of
our youth. Our social nature is partly why we succeeded as animals
as we grew into human beings. Now some animals have other evolutionary
means of success like sharp teeth and claws or they can run fast or
they can hide… evolutionary success has many different parts to it,
but one of the reasons humans survived was this social nature we have.
This social nature is best exemplify by our need to cooperate.
The distinguishing factor of human survival is the ability to cooperate.
The modern ideology that proclaims rugged individualism and the myth
of the self created man is a lie. We do not self create. We are created
by the hands of thousands who have touched our lives and by the thousands
who touched those hands and the thousands who touched their hands.
We are the product of millions of years of evolution and training.
And in those millions of years, we were influenced by millions of lives.
Human success is not the result of our individual actions, but by
the actions of all those who came before us who cooperated and
created the modern world. I cannot emphasize this enough. We are the
creation of millions of years of cooperation between human beings.
If you fail to understand this, you fail to understand human beings.
The key to human success has been in the creation of our social
organizations like the family and the state. This is a another step
in the evolution of human cooperation. The social structure that
lies at the heart of human survival comes from the ability to
create social structures like education and protection of ourselves
by the means of government. This ability to create social structures
is done by our social skills. Social skills that is not linked to intelligence
but by emotional skills. Social structures are created over generations
and by emotional skills. This is the basis of our emotional skills.
The ability to work in and become part of social structures like the family
and society and the government. That is a vital part of being human.
The ability to use our social skills to allow us the ability to survive.
The key to our survival comes from our cooperation and that cooperation
comes from our social skills and that comes from our emotional skills.
One of the key factors of survival is by being social and being part of the group.

One of the next factors of survival for the human being is the rationality
or the individual intelligence AND the collective intelligence we have.
We combined not only in social structures but in common debate
in which we used our collective intelligence in debate to create
policy. In other words, the creation of modern human beings
came about over the million of years in which human beings debated
over campfires, past, present and future actions.

This rationality or use of intelligence that allow us to survive
without the tools of the animals like sharp teeth or claws
or not being able to run fast, is a key part of human survival.

So we have the social skills/emotional aspect of being human
which is the skills of cooperation and the creation of social
organizations and we have the intelligence aspect of survival.

thus we now understand how come we have two important
and crucial aspects of human ability. the social and the intellectual
aspect, the social skills to adapt within the group and the intellectual
aspect to create goals and a vision of who we are and where we
need to go next. The ability to create social organizations is an emotional
skill. It is this combination of emotional and intellectual skills that allowed
us to survive.

But what does this mean to us today? Let us take IQ45 attacks upon
both the social organizations and the intellectual aspects of human
existence. IQ45 has attacked social organizations that have successfully
allowed us to survive and grow as human beings, social organizations like
the government and social natures like kindness and cooperation that
has allowed us to succeed and grow. Plus he has attacked intelligence
which is the second part of the equation of human success. We must
have and use both the emotional skills and intellectual skills if we
want to survive and prosper going into the future. To attack
our key to survival which is cooperation and the creation of social
structures is dangerous to our future.

So let us relate this to another point I have made which is
system understanding. For a system to succeed, that system
must have energy going into it and every system must
have increasing energy going into it to maintain itself.
If IQ45 takes away energy from our social systems, then
he threaten to cause disorder and chaos within the systems
because disorder and chaos is caused by the loss of energy going
into a system. This energy helps a system maintain and grow
the order within that system. It takes energy to maintain order
within a system. To keep the solar system flowing on its
path, it takes energy to maintain the system. Every system
must have energy to maintain itself and without that energy,
the system begins to fail which is the growth of disorder
and chaos within the system. The term for this is entropy.
The loss of energy which maintains a system order.

So what IQ45 is doing is causing the system, the social system
of government and society to lose energy and thus become
unstable and increase disorder and chaos. That is why conservativism
is so dangerous. The basic premise of conservatism is based
on an idea that is dangerous to social organizations and government because
it drives energy from those social organizations and government which increases
disorder and chaos in those systems. The survival of human beings derive from
the strength of human social organizations and government. We are only
as strong as our social organizations. Social organizations which allows us to survive
and prosper. and then we return to the question, what of experiences?

How do we understand experiences? What does my explanation of
emotional and intellectual engagement in regards to our social
structures and organizations help you to understand experiences?

Kropotkin

Let us look at another aspect of this……

conservatives preach and extoll the value of greed.
However, when we examine this value, it changes
into a negative and destructive value. Greed damages
a system, any social system. Greed has no effect on
such natural systems such as a solar system, but
on a social system such as society or government, greed
damages that system. How? by taking energy that is
better served by going into a system and taking that energy
applying it to own’s selfish needs. In other words, Greed
takes energy into itself instead putting energy into a social
system or government. That investment of energy into oneself
instead of a social structure removes the much needed energy
that allows a system to maintain and grow itself. If energy is spent
on private matters like greed, then the social structure and government
has less energy which is entropy. That is why we must overcome our
negative energies because those negative energies take away
energy from our social structures and government. The energy needed
to maintain our social structures becomes less because of negative energy
and that leads to chaos and disorder. Order comes from energy being
put into a system and disorder comes from the loss of energy
in a system. Negative energy, negative values take energy away
from social structures and thus increases disorder and chaos.

Now remember energy doesn’t have to be gas or oil or solar energy,
energy is the effort someone puts into something, energy is the input
of activity one puts into a system… thus energy can be
people putting energy into social system like government or
society or any social structure……… Thus when we have over 100 million
people failing to vote, they are taking energy away from our government and
our social structure and thus damaging it. By voting and engaging in our social
structures and government, we increase energy into the system which allows
it to maintain itself and grow, prosper. Energy put into a system allows it
to maintain itself and grow itself, and every social structure, organization must
have ever increasing energy to maintain and grow itself.

Thus we cannot put energy into negative values like nihilism or greed
or anger or lust because putting energy into those values prevent energy
going into our social systems like government. You only have a set amount
of energy and what shall you spend that energy on? That is the point
of the Kantian/Kropotkin question, on what are we going to spend our energy on?

Put your energy into valuable and important things like the survival of the human
race and the survival of the planet earth and stop putting energy into such
unimportant matters like greed and hate and anger and lust and watching TV.

Put your energy into stuff that counts and that will help continue the human race…

Ask yourself, what did I do today to improve the energy of the social systems
that are essential to my existence? What did I do that increased the energy
of social systems like social organizations and the government?

Kropotkin

Ever wonder why dictatorships fail and why communism
failed and democracy has succeeded?

The reason is simple enough, dictatorships and communism as
practiced by the soviet union failed because it prevented the energy
of the people to fuel the dictatorship/communism. In other words,
if a political system doesn’t have enough energy which is
motivation and enthusiasm, the system will eventually die.
Motivation and enthusiasm is energy put into a system and
no different then gas into a car or food into a biological being.

Apathy and disinterest takes away energy from a system and
thus increases disorder and entropy and chaos. if you want a viable,
organized society, you must have motivation and enthusiasm and
energy put into the system for it to survive. That is why today
political systems are failing because of the attacks upon the
voting rights and disenfranchising of people leads to the failure
of political and economic systems. You want America to survive,
you must, must increase the energy going into the system
and the only way to do that is by creating motivation and
enthusiasm in the system by engaging people in the system.

Creating energy and positive energy at that, will be the cure
for what ails America. All questions of government and the systems
within government, both societal and individual are questions of
energy. Does that system, both individually and societal have enough
energy to maintain itself and even grow itself or is the system lacking
enough energy to maintain itself? That is the real question of political
science and politics and philosophy and all things social, does that
organization have enough energy to sustain itself? The family unit is
an excellent place to begin to understand how energy is used
to maintain and even grow a unit like the family.

We have families that must have energy to sustain itself
and that energy is not just fuel of cars or planes or trains but
the amount of energy the family itself puts into the family unit.
Successful families have/put more energy into the family then
less successful families… It becomes a question of family success
comes from the energy a family puts into itself and social systems
like government and businesses and chess clubs all become
a question of how much energy, not just money, but motivation
and enthusiasm people put into the social systems, that is energy.
and the current drive to disenfranchise American’s takes away from
the motivation and enthusiasm people have for their political and
economic systems……… In other words, businesses fail because they
don’t have the motivation or enthusiasm to sustain a business.
The drive for profit/money which negates humans and their
values also negates their motivation and enthusiasm for a business
and its driver, the capitalism system. If you want to motivate and
enthuse people, you must, must engage them by giving them
greater profits and greater participation into the capitalist and
political system. You want America to survive, you must engage
with people so they become motivated and enthused participants
in those systems and the only to do that is by giving them the
motivation to increase their energy levels in the system by
giving them a share of the gains of the system… Not the
pennies on the dollars but a far more and increased participation
in the money made and decisions made……. if you want a business
or government or any social system to be successful, you have to
increase the participation of the people within that system and the
only way to do that is increase their share of profits and their share
of participation and their increase participation into government.
To disenfranchise people is to decrease the amount of energy people
will put into a system and enough of a decrease and the system
will fail. That is where we are at right now… The apathy and
discouragement people feel in the political and economic system
means that people will no longer put energy into those political
and economic systems and thus they will begin to fail and we
see this today in the beginning of the failure of the American
system because people have taken their energy and put it
into something besides the social and economic and political
systems that we need to survive. We must get people a reason
to engage in and participate in our social, economic and political
systems and that means we must give them a vested interest
in maintaining those systems and the only to do that is by
giving people a share of those systems. We must invest people
with the social, political and economic systems. Thus we must
reward them in some fashion to increase their participation
in these systems… rewards them via both increase share
of the wealth of capitalism and the increase share in
participation in the government to the people’s benefit.
If people don’t benefit from either government or business,
then why bother engaging with them? There is no benefit
right now to engage with or increase the energy one puts
into government or business because the energy put into
such a system will and is negated by the lack of rewards
for such participation into government or business…

People have to feel that their participation and energy
put into a system is worth it and right now it isn’t worth
the energy or time or effort to engage with or participate
in government or business or any social organization.

and thus we have disengagement and apathy and general not
caring if the system lives or die because we get no benefit
from either engaging with or participation in government or
business… when we increase the benefits of engaging
with government and with business, then we shall see an increase
in motivation and engagement and enthusiasm and thus an increase
in energy in the social, political and economic organizations and thus
we shall have a better chance of succeeding in the social, political
and economic systems that we have. The success of all social,
political and economic systems/organizations come from the amount of energy
we put into those systems/organizations.

so what energy have you put into societies systems or organizations
that will allow it to maintain and grow itself?

for that is the question of human existence… how shall we expend
our energy? On what shall we expend our energy? On private
goals or private desires or shall we expend our energy on
social, political or economic systems or organizations?

This leads us to negative energy like anger and hate and lust
and greed for these private uses of energy takes away from
the overall and needed energy a system needs to maintain and grow
itself.

Kropotkin

so what does this all mean for such things as private property?

Well, if we have private property, then we are using our energy to
keep and maintaining such private property. We don’t use our energy
on such public activities as the political, social and economic.
We use our energies on private matters which don’t benefit
us socially and politically and economically. The point of energy use
is to improve ourselves in a public manner as in the social, political
and economic. the engagement for us to understand is
the engagement between the private use of energy and
the public use of energy. When I use the energy of greed or anger
or hate or lust, I am using that energy for private uses which doesn’t
benefit anyone including me. It is only by the use of public energy
that we bring benefit to us and to others in our society. Only by the
use of positive energy or public engagement with society or the political
or the economic does our energy help maintain and even grow
the social, political or economic. We must bring our energy to
benefit our society, or our government or our economic well being.
and that is only possible by bringing our energy to public uses,
that is to engage with society and government with energy and enthusiasm.

We must fuel our society with energy and enthusaism along
with the cold hard cash that is the energy of taxes. We must
pay for our society in cash in the form of taxes and
we must pay for our society with engagment and energy and enthusaism.

Kropotkin

As we are social creatures, being born to be social is our default
condition. This sociability of human beings is the start to us
understanding what it means to be human and, and the
questions of human existence such as “how am I to live”
“what am I to spend my energy on”. These simple questions
are question leading us to political science. How are we to
organize ourselves? The answer is found in one simple phrase,

“We the people”

As it is our strength to organize ourselves, we must begin all political
philosophy here. Being social is the human condition and the best
format for us to be social is democracy. We can collectively decide
our present and future as we always have done, in discussions between
ourselves. The very strength of human existence and the reason for
our very survival has been the human ability to unite and discuss
matters that matter to us both personally and collectively.

Individually, we can not survive on our own. As an individual,
no one human can survive or exists on their own. This is not only true
physically, but emotionally and psychological and mentally. Humans
are constructed to live and work and play with each other.
For that is how we became the leading animals on earth.
By our working together as a group. That is the human key to
success. So any attempt to create an ideology or myth that
proclaims that we have success individually is simply wrong.
The myth of rugged individuality is just that, a myth.
The strength of humans is in their collective approach to
existence. One for all and all for one is not just a movie
slogan, but it is the very reason human beings exists today.

So this idea of going it alone and the solitary individual creating
greatness is a myth. Surely we must exist together or we die alone.

So this means that politically and economically, we must organize ourselves
into collective units. As that is what we do best. The social organization
of the hierarchy approach of the modern world is doomed to failure because
it doesn’t address the very strength of the human animal, which lies
with cooperation and discussion of the values that matter to us……

The up and down approach of business must be replaced with a
general leveling out of hierarchy into more of a group leadership effort.

We survive and grew because we practiced more of a group understanding, more
of a group leadership model instead of a hierarchy model. A problem arose and
the leadership didn’t solve the problem, the entire group after discussion
and group engagement then worked on solving the problem. We survive as human
beings not with a top down model of leadership but with a group leadership model.

We want to create a new model of existence and that is really an old model of
existence. This “new” solves several problems that exist in the modern world.
First we have the problem of alienation which is the question of the feeling that
I am apart and separate from my society. If you want engagement, then
you must, must include everyone into the discussion that affects their lives.
This also helps in apathy that people feel in modern life. If you include people
in the discussion of where we are and where we need to be, then
you bring people back into society and away from alienation and apathy
and yes, even nihilism. For our modern society has practice nihilism for
for far too long… where the modern pursuit of profits/money has
driven people into being negated as they are valued less then profit or money.
We don’t need to make the planet the center of the earth as religious types
proclaim. We just need to return people to a place of value by removing the
current model of nihilism that exists, both politically and economically. The answer to
what the solution for our modern life is the return of people into
being able to engage with and be part of discussions about matters
that matter to them and the hierarchically system currently in use,
doesn’t do that, the hierarchically system we have both politically and
economically.

The driver of the Kantian/Kropotkin question is no longer
the top to bottom theory of modern life. The new driver of
the Kantian/Kropotkin questions lies within the communal
discussions and decision making that was the basis for becoming
human. The group in discussions with itself, that becomes
the driver of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions. “What can I do”
is answered in a group context because the real question is
“What can we do” and that is the real question.

Now one might argue that we will slow down “progress”,
with a group leadership model instead of a top down leadership model,
perhaps, but I am not so sure that is a bad thing. It might not be a bad
thing if we took our time and made our decisions a little slower.
It is a rare time when a decision must be made overnight and as
anybody who has made a rather quick decision knows, sometimes the very
act of rushing a decision can lead to rather bad decisions being made.

the modern world can learn to slow down and takes its time.
From this we can make better decisions and we can learn to
enjoy what we have. Today, we rush from here to there without
any understanding of why is it so important that we rush about.

So far the pluses of removing the top down leadership model outweigh
the negatives. With the group leadership style, we can get people
to become engaged with society again, we can remove alienation
and apathy as part of our current modern condition and we can slow
down the rush to judgement that exists today. Rushing to judgement
can often lead us to make hasty and unwise decisions.

This idea of group leadership means we adapt as the leadership model
in all phases of our lives, politically, economically and
socially. Democracy becomes the ideal form of any discussions regarding
the Kantian/Kropotkin questions…… We engage socially and politically
and economically with and through the democratic format.

Our engagement with life is a communal engagement as
that has been the human method since the beginning of time.
Even that most dictatorship of formats, the family, has
democratic tendencies as even the family has voting rights.

One might claim that this new/old method is quite inefficient
but I would argue that the world and nature and humanity
are not models of efficiency anyway. The highest goal of
achievement is not efficiency. Show me anything that has ever been created
that has been 100 % efficient. Nature certainly isn’t that efficient and
any man made system such as the car engine or solar panels are not
very efficient. Stars and planets and galaxies are not very efficient. So why
this emphasis on something that we human cannot ever, ever, ever reach
in any case? This emphasis on efficiency flies in the face of everything
we know about human beings and the universe. Nature doesn’t strive
for it, so why should we?

So what should we strive for if not efficiency? We should be striving
for the means and ways for us to become better human beings
and that is only possible within and by a group of people living together
and working together and playing together and making decision together.
Not the modern model of the up and down leadership but the much wider
model of communal decision making.

Kropotkin

and what of experiences? experiences are how we relate to each
other. I work and I work in a really shitty job/company/industry.
If you work in a shitty job/company/industry, you can relate to
me and my shitty job. Humans use experiences to relate to each
other. I am married and have been for 22 years. Those who have
been married for a long time can relate to that fact. We have
a commonality in the length of our marriage. We share that
experience and thus we can relate to each other. Before I was
married and had a child, I thought, I believed that I knew
all the information needed to be married and to be a father.
I was wrong. The only experience for being a father is being
a father and the only experience for being married is to be married.

I lack the experience to be a doctor or to be a surgeon. Doctors
and surgeons practice, train, experience being doctors and surgeons
for years before they actually become doctors and surgeons.
This experience is invaluable to them to learn, to experience being
doctors and surgeons. They have the specific skill set needed to
become doctors and surgeons.

I had spinal surgery and the surgeon was considered one of the
best spinal surgeons west of the Mississippi, but he had no and
I mean no personality of any kind. He had the
worst bedside manner of any doctor I have ever met, but he was
a great surgeon and I decided to use him. My workmen comp doctor
was in the surgery to watch and he told me that this doctor was
a very skilled and accomplished surgeon. Just no bedside manner.
so which skill do I value? the fact he was a great surgeon or
the fact he had no bedside manner of any kind?
the fact I am able to move today tells me, that given
the choice again, I would pick a great surgeon
over having a good bedside manner. That is the skill set
that was necessary for me to find in a surgeon.

So this idea of having a skill set can be manifest in several
different ways. For example, what skill set do I need to
become a valued member of society? What skill set would I
need to become a better human being? What skill set would I
need to become president of the United States?

Experience tells us what skills set is necessary to accomplish
a certain goal. For example, let us say, I want to climb
Mt. Everest. I would need to get the skill needed to climb
Everest and I would need people around me with the skill sets
to get me to and from Everest. I cannot accomplish climbing
MT. Everest by myself for I lack the necessary skill set to accomplish
that feat. I no longer have the physical skills or tools to
to make that journey. I did once, a very long time ago, but not now.

So it is more then just understanding the skill set needed to accomplish
some task, but the understanding or being realistic enough to know
if I have or might have the skill set to accomplish something.

I play chess but I am not very good, but I keep trying.
Realistically, I will never become a grandmaster or win
the world championship at chess but I can try to become
the best player I can possibly be and that is a realistic goal
for me to achieve. We can only become who we are by
becoming realistic about who we are and what is possible for us.
Experience can teach us about what is possible and what is
impossible for us to reach. I cannot fly by flapping my arms
really fast. I am realistic about what I can accomplish
physically because of my age. I don’t believe I can ever
run a marathon ever again but I can run, maybe a mile or two.
I can work at being the best possible person, runner, athlete
or thinker that I can be, given a realistic understanding
of what is now possible for me.

Experience gives us our realistic possibilities for some
doing or actions we might take. But I have a greater
possibilities for, a realistic understanding for what my mind
can do such as philosophy and the study of history
and other such mental activities. I am not as limited
in mental activities as I am in physical activities.
My mind still functions and works at a high level
whereas my body does not. So I go with my current strength which
is mentally, not physically.

Experience can give us general guidelines of what is possible
and what is not really possible. And those older folks whose
days of running marathons are over, can relate to my issue
and those young folks who can still run marathons cannot.

This understanding that experience gives us a knowledge of
our skill set and what is possible and what is not possible
given our current skill set. I cannot run marathons but
I can be president of the United States or I can be a dam
good philosopher or I can relate what is left of my physical skill
set with others who are old like me.

I can still walk many miles whereas because of her declining
physical nature, my mom cannot walk more then a few hundred feet
and she knows it because her experience has given her an understanding
of her physical possibilities and my experience has given me
an understanding of my physical possibilities.

Experience is a tool to understand what is possible and
what is not possible. So what is still possible for you
and what is impossible for you given your current skill set.

This is the value of experience.

Kropotkin