a new understanding of today, time and space.

Meno, after reading your post, I am not sure
what you are proposing? As a solution, should
we just give up or should we fight back or should
we be doing something else?

It is not enough to diagnose an illness, we must
also be ready to seek a cure. And what is your cure
for what ails America? What is the solution to our illness?

Kropotkin

I suggest that we are ill/sick because of several different factors.

One: we are suffering from society’s nihilism. Society in its pursuit of
profits/money has negated humans and their values. This nihilism
is quite evident in America’s reaction to the death of black people
at the hands of the police. OH WELL. Is pretty much the response
of white America to the unnecessary deaths of its citizens. We have
become immune to the gun violence that exists in America.
and this becomes evident in where we show our outrage.
A dog lock in a hot car garners much more passion then
a dozen deaths in a church or a synagogue.
That is nihilism, pure and simple.

two. We favor or champion the corporation over the individual.
This is another form of nihilism. When we give massive tax cuts/breaks
to immense and out of control mulitnational corporations instead of
funding programs which feed and cloth and house the young or old or
the infirmed. That is nihilism where we consider the health of a multinational
corporation to be more important then the health of our citizens.

Three. When we just watch as the mentally ill president attacks
those instititions that are needed to keep America running like
a free press and a working state department and the judicial system
and institutions that must be outside of presidential control like
the FBI and the CIA. Personally, I despise these institutions but,
but if we must have them, then we must insure their institutional
integrity by making sure they are independent of outside influences
like presidential or congressional interference.

As a people we are not free if we don’t have these institutions
working, doing their jobs independently of outside influence.

And all of this comes against a background where we don’t know
what we want to accomplish as a people. We are against things,
but what exactly are we for?

That is the failure of the conservative mindset. It is against many,
so many things. It is the party of no for a reason, but what does
the country and the party of no actually stand for?

To what do we say yes to, outside of massive and
crippling tax cuts/welfare for the rich?

What do you say yes to?

Kropotkin

I am unsure, either. But cures are different, sometimes the cure comes from one end , the individual needs to cure himself somehow, through a kind of wholeness which only he knows for himself, and that is one way.

The other is through social cure, and that is even harder because, it involves so many regions, groups, and institutions who at times falter in their effort to join forces and link up their psychic manners of treating themselves under and over so many dissolute , sets of boundaries.

These boundaries must interphase with each other through whatever means less violent ones, absorb each other integrating their feelings with the know-how out there, whether they be of technical and human combined, without the fear and hesitation which always accompanies major shifts in policy or technique.

To bring this down to application, see man must have faith in his instincts to survive, and not put up barriers.

Bring it down to earth, so that everyone can gain knowledge in the actual kindness of creation through self creation.

Do not find fault before accepting your own and treat your brother as you would treat yourself, and present yourself as you accept to understand others.

These are foundemental challenges in a near faithless world, but perhaps this gross entropy we are all experiencing now, may mean nature’s efforts to regain something very ancient and forward signaling that even when we hit the bottom, its only a part of what’s going on, and a person who does think he hit bottom, can and must get up and try again.

Its like the myth of Sysiphus , who carries a heavy load up a mountain, so unbearably heavy that it almost kills him and when he almost made it a few Liu chez from the top, he can’t beat to push it over and it is flung back by the enormous force of gravity.

Now he is near the top but can’t get on there, because he looses all energy to do that because he lost his load, his object to live for, and he has to descend again into the lower realms to find the source, the mitherload of his search.

And then he starts all over, but not without hai ing more energy whi c he can not recapture by the use of his memory, but he needs to connect with the added energy gained through more and more trials.

And the energy is there in a store down below and its free , but the price is there in different forms and it is up to him to mine it out.

I took a few days off to think about an answer…….

What is the status of our “Present age”?

Look about you. What do you see?

I see fear and the stench that comes around when we are driven
by fear. Our present age is not lacking in passion. God knows what passion
we mere mortals have unleashed upon this mortal coil, no, no, our age lacks
reflection. We are unable to simple stop and wonder what has become of us.
Instead of reflection, we wield our passions as a sword. The problem lies with
the fact that our passions have been muted, made impotent, by our desperate
need to fit in and be part of the “civilized” crowd. It is simple uncool to wonder who
we are and what are we to be? I wonder who in this “modern” age actually
sits down without all that technology and ask, ask themselves a simple question,
engages in simple reflection about “who they are”? Who is so uncool as to
begin the engagement with themselves as to the nature of being?
It is so unmodern to wonder, to engage with oneself as to the nature
of who we are. For don’t the ads tell us who we are…… become part of
the Pepsi generation. Be all you can be in the army. Buy our deodorant
and all the women will throw themselves at you. Didn’t you know?
Listen to the ads and everything will be understood. The ads offer us
glimpses into images of who we might be. We the advertisers, we
can sell you an image of role playing game, want to play “The player”
easy enough, want to be the cool trend setter, done, just buy our product
and you are that trend setter. It is not being we are interested in but
we are interested in becoming that image of being. For the fact is, that
to become, being something, is hard work, whereas if we can purchase
a image of being, it is a lot easier. We can proclaim our status of, our image
of a ladies man or a trend setter or a trust fund baby, by simply buying
the correct image with a car or a house or trendy clothes or a styling haircut.
We don’t actually need to be any of these things if we are simply an image of
those things. The image, that is what is important, not the being for being
takes effort and hard work and self-reflection that simply doesn’t fit into
our days because our days is filled with yoga classes and tai chi
and we simply don’t have the time to engage in self-reflection.

And why do we plays this game of creating an image of ourselves instead
of actually taking the time to work on understanding who we are?

Why hasn’t anyone told you Kropotkin, that the world is “owned” by the
(pick your choices) the Jews, big business, the trilateral commission,
the illuminate, the freemasons and we don’t stand a chance against this
“evil” group that runs everything and so we simply don’t reflect upon
matters that we have no control over…………… It is simpler to engage
in playing images then to understand how the world really works.

Self reflection means we might actually have to do something about
what we find out and we simply don’t have time, you know with being
unable to switch the yoga class and everything…….

We are sleepwalking through the world, through our lives because we
refuse to engage in any type of serious personal engagement with
who we are and who we might become. God forbid we engage with
self reflection because it might interfere with our social life or our school
work or making money. Being part of the process, being part of the system
is more important then understanding what that system has done to
negate our being and our values… the nihilism of the system is more
important then engaging in any serious self reflection of our being, of
who we are and what we might become.

We are sheep hiding behind some image we have bought on TV,
pretending to be something when we are fearful of any type of
engagement with the serious task of discovering our true nature.

the young, they demand respect because they have no respect
for who they are. that they have no idea of who they are and
what is possible for them but that very thought frightens them
and so they hide behind the demand for respect………
respect is earned, not given… so earn that respect by
the honest engagement with who you are, not with the image
you have bought, but the true self that you are………

We old people, we are guilty of sins ourselves……

Kropotkin

and what are the sins, the crimes of the old people?

We preach values we ourselves don’t follow. We proclaim ourselves
Christians and we practice violence and prejudice and bigotry
and intolerance and hatred. We find it abhorrent to have someone
proclaim their Pagan or atheist viewpoints, and yet we “Modern”
souls find it necessary to proclaim to any who will listen, that
we are “Christian” in our viewpoint but we are anything but “Christian”.

We preach values we ourselves don’t follow… that is our crime, that is our sin.
This disconnect between our preached values and our actions has created
a divide in our souls that cannot be healed by yoga classes or repenting to god…

We “know” we are guilty of crimes and yet, we absolve ourselves with a slight of hand
declaration of values that we violate every single day.

To practice what we preach… that is the modern dilemma…
for to practice what we preach requires us to be honest and an honest person
is very, very, very hard to do these dishonest days. For to be honest requires
us to suffer the stones thrown by other dishonest people, people who
also don’t practice what they preach, but they hide their dishonesty
with loud proclamations of how guilty everyone else is, in not practicing what
they preach…………the symbol of the modern age is the double standard
that everyone practices, preaching values that they do not follow…
This double standard is another sin, another crime of us old folks.
We sin every single time we accuse others of crimes/sins we commit
every single day………… We are dishonest to the core if we don’t follow
the values we preach. If we preach values, we must then follow those values
even if the cost to us is the modern version of running the gauntlet…
which is public attack and ridicule and charges of hypocrisy by those
who practice hypocrisy on a daily basis. We old folks play these foolish games
of charging each other with failure to be a “modern” person.
To be “modern” in this day and age, requires us to preach values we don’t
practice and to be hypocrites about it when we accuse others of preaching values
they don’t practice.

What does it mean to be an honest person these days? Just someone
who proclaims that these are my values and actually attempts to practice
those values…… That is why Gandhi is so important. Not because
of what he accomplished but because he proclaimed values and he
attempted to follow those values… even if he failed, it doesn’t matter because
he attempted to be an honest man in an dishonest modern world. He practiced
the values he proclaimed… who among us has been so “truthful”? Only a “modern”
man would proclaim values and then practice values opposite of the proclaimed
values. Only a “modern” man would be so disingenuous as to accuse people of
practicing values that they themselves don’t follow.

Hypocrisy, thy name is called “American values”. IQ45 is not the progenitor of
our modern hypocrisy, proclaiming values that we don’t follow", no, IQ45 is
simply the conclusion of our modern sins/crimes of preaching values
that we do not follow………. IQ45 is a “Modern” man because he stand for nothing,
acts for nothing, believes in nothing outside of the modern values which is nihilism,
the one, true god of America. The negation of human beings and their values……
that is the true “modern” crime/sin… we negate and negate and negate, all the while
accusing others of not practicing what they preach. We negate when we follow money/profit
to the exclusion of human beings and their values. This negation is our hypocrisy.
We proclaim ourselves to be a “Christian” nation and yet we negate those values in pursuit
of profits and we proclaim to have as our values, “Truth, justice and the American way of life”
and yet, we negate those values when we pursue money/profits to the exclusion of
all other values. We are so practiced in hypocrisy that we don’t even see it anymore.
We proclaim values that we don’t even pretend to follow anymore. and what of the honest man?

the lonely soul who proclaims their values and then, and then has the audacity to
actually attempt to follow those values… We ship those people into jails
and prisons and mental institutions because they threaten the status quo
of following our modern hypocrisy of proclaiming values we have no intention
of following. ………. it is tough to be a “modern” person, when we must
be hypocrites to appear to be “true” American’s. It is a sad state of affairs
when we elect vast number of hypocrites to be our so called “leaders”.

And the modern hypocrite will say, the left is no better then the right
and thus missing the entire point. You, you, you are the hypocrite
and I am the hypocrite and we are all hypocrites when we speak of
left/right. When we need to be asking ourselves this final question,
am I practicing what I preach? If not, then we must become “unmodern”
and find out what are the values we should be holding and practicing?

What values should we preach and what values should we practice?

that is the only question that we “moderns” should be asking ourselves.

Kropotkin

Until we engage in this question of values, what values should
we have? any other question is bullshit. About the question of
gender or politics or abortion or race or migrant caravan is simply
avoidance of the real question of values. Which values should
we have and then we should preach those values……. that
is the only question of our “modern” age. The only question
an individual should have is about values, what values are my values
and what values should I engage with? All other questions are simply
bullshit. I must begin by knowing myself and understand
the values that I was indoctrinated with, what values were
impressed upon me as a child. Then after knowing thyself, comes
the engagement with this question of, if not those values, then
what values? and then comes the next step, after I discover
what values are my values, my real values, then comes the part
where we become who we are by engaging in those values,
we practice what we preach, by engaging in values that we have
become………. We have learned what values are our “real” values
and we engage with and become and practice those values.

And until we are honest with ourselves about what values
should we hold, we shouldn’t be quite so quick to accuse others
of hypocrisy when we ourselves fail to engage with or to practice
what we preach.

What values are my values? that is the only question I must ask myself.
What values are values that I should engage with? What values are values
that can lead me from ignorance to knowledge? I must become those values,
values like honesty and tolerance and love and justice and truth. That is the point
of having those values is to practice those values and not to preach values
I do not engage with. Become who you are by practicing the values you are.
That is the modern question. It is not enough to preach values but we must
begin to live them and anything else is simple bullshit…

Kropotkin

A brief sub analysis as to the underlying causes of why I believe you are on the money.

Religion successfully covered the object: carried up the hill by Sysyphus, even to the brink of faith: and then the final break, and angst and despair set in.

People were unable to carry willfully an object, that lost its value, because they started to remember it, and fear its total loss, intuiting that they can never really reach the goal of setting foot on that plateau, by the time the goal appeared within sight, it has lost a lot of that value, it somehow diminished.

Now the cover was no longer necessary, because there was so little left; to cover.

So now the clincher. The angst developed into the fear, the specific fear of mortality with no returns, and it was based on perception of the futility of the goal related to the value of being, as an existential crisis, foremost as apart in alienation.

More and more got alienated, and the more it got uncovered from families , particularly the heads of families : the Father.

So they needed support. Social support. They needed it more as the ideal families started to fall apart, in proportion to it.

It has slowly resulted in a crisis, where the father started to leave the family, and the mother had to take over.

The mother had to become self sufficient, and increasingly sought help from agencies that could give a hand to increase her perception of security.

What resulted is a willingness to trade ideal values for security. The need to become somebody that could face life and death with more and more like people, which added to the feeling that if they were to become more alike, then the fear of will be perpetually diminished, since they did not fear lookin. through an ideal state as the father did , but envisioned a perpetuum of alike and liked , by familiarity, their own families disintegrating and becoming dysfunctional , they pine for familiarity, of resembling qualities in people.

And most of it done in remembrance of the Son, their son.

How is this significant?

This is hard to understand , but in developing countries qualities and characteristics are more valued as racial characteristic then cross national-political Alliances.

The mortal fear is allayed somewhat by global identifocation of power motives, and the prior colonisation does bode for trouble when reactions start to pop up , as they are now, in many parts of the world.

The fear of eruption and subsequent suppression of them, create the overall con flirting tableau, to those, who think that short term band aid affects will fool such large cover ups, by clever oratory based on contradictory subterfuge.

However given the extremely ideological machines on both sides, of is yet a matter of conjecture which set of advertised program will be more credible overall… The enormous power of the U.S. military empire , holding together by the threat of unlimited war, caused pop ups all over the world. Angela of Germany resigned, under tremensous pressure May of Britain is under constant pressure by a male dominated international syndicate.

That is the real name of the game, and both sides do have warranted gripes not at all in conjunction with internationally cohesive sane dialogue, and all fear the oncoming insanity of a probable real war.

To avoid it , it is imperative that a cohesive and stable multi leveled political standard be set, regardless of those few power mad , who would see it as an opportunity to radically reduce population as a.solution, and profit qualitatively, at least.

Imagine some very uncompromised and ill informed men. with members of their tribe conjoined , relishing the thought of survival on their retro-looking terms into the manna loaded haven of qualifying a new life with a new oncoming vision of nature’s blessing. of retributive solutions. .

Impossible? That is why I think naive realism such as you presents makes a lot of sense.

I thank you Meno for your engagement with these matters.
I appreciate your thoughts on this… It is irrelevant if I
agree or disagree, the point is you are engaging with your
own thoughts and that is what matters. Please continue to
engage with what really matters which is the pursuit of
what makes us human and what are our possibilities.

Kropotkin

How do we justify our actions and our beliefs, either
to ourselves or to others? I hold the belief that there are
UFO’S and I hold this belief because I saw a UFO when I
was a kid. So I hold this belief and I justify it because I
was a personal witness to it. I don’t need outside evidence
or other witnesses because I can attest to my own evidence.

How would I justify other beliefs of mine? I hold the belief
that liberalism is a far better idea about the nature of human beings
instead of conservativism. How do I go about justifying this belief,
either to myself or to others. Upon what standards would I use to justify
my “liberalism” belief? I can justify my belief with “evidence” such as
human beings are by nature, social creatures. We do not exist as
conserervatives claim, we are not single, solitary, afraid of everything
creatures. The vast majority of Americans don’t own guns because we aren’t afraid,
the percentage of Americans who actually own guns is around 17 or 18%.
We belong to many different social societies. The human being who tries to
exist alone, will soon die alone. A single, solitary human cannot exists…
it is as simple as that.

The very basis of the conservative understanding of what a human being
is wrong. The liberal understanding of people fits what we know about
human beings. A liberal description of human beings better fits the facts about
human beings. And isn’t that the point of our descriptions of reality? To find
the best description of reality we can find and then use that description to
better understand our reality? Science uses math and systems understanding
to better describes reality and the better description of who human beings
are is the liberal description of human beings.

So I can justify my belief in Liberalism because Liberalism better
describes human beings as they exist today.

OK, so let us continue this understanding of the way we justify
our beliefs. A belief that exists and is common among uneducated
people is that White people are superior to black people. It is a belief.
So how does one justify that belief? The facts certainly don’t support
that belief. So how can one hold that belief? we have several categories
of beliefs and some beliefs are fact base. I belief the Earth is 93 million
miles away from the sun. I hold this belief because it is a scientific fact.
I personally cannot prove that the earth is 93 million miles away from the sun,
but people like scientists can make the calculations and prove that the
earth is 93 million miles away from the sun…… I can’t but people with
actual math skills can.

But with a belief like the one that whites are superior to blacks have
no scientific basis, has no facts to support it, has nothing to suggest it it true.
It belongs in the second category of belief which is faith base beliefs.
I believe in god. That is a faith base belief because there is no evidence
of any kind to support that belief. One might say, but I saw god… Insist upon
that too much and the men in the white coats might come for a visit. I
hold evidence for god existing because I saw god or I heard god or I felt god’s
presence. There are no facts there, just some faith that a being called god
exists and you in some fashion witnessed him. the problem lies in motivation
for seeing god. I did not have any motivation to see a UFO. It wasn’t part
of the habits, ism’s, ideologies, myths, superstitions of my childhood
indoctrinations. To suggest I had some ulterior motive to claim to witness
UFO’s is to suggest that didn’t care about the fact that at the time of my
witnessing a UFO, it wasn’t cool or something everybody did. To state you
witness a UFO is to ask for ridicule and people laughing at you. Now days
it is not a thing to claim to have seen a UFO, Jimmy Carter says he saw
a UFO. No one ridicules or laughs at you anymore. but when I saw it,
about 1969, it wasn’t something you admitted to. It was a sign
of existing outside of the group and being “out there”. It was a negative.

So what is the motivation of seeing “god”. I would suggest that most
people who see god or hear god or have some intimate knowledge of god
also grew up in a religious household where part of the childhood indoctrination
was about belief in god. All knowledge, every that has ever occurred to us,
still exists in some fashion in our soul or body or mind. We still have
memories of our childhood indoctrinations somewhere in us. That memory
still lies within us and that is what comes out in someone who claims
to have witness god in some physical fashion.

We have a president who is racist, a bigot, sexist, a pathological liar,
and hate minorities and the handicap. Just how does he justify his
beliefs? What standards does he use? The standard he uses is money and color.
Everything including people is judge by the money they have and the color
of their skin. Two standards that mean absolutely nothing… the color of ones
skin has nothing to do with who a person is… Skin color is just an accidental
trait, like being 6 feet tall or having brown hair or having 6 fingers. These traits
are simply accidents of birth, nothing more. You don’t judge people on accidental
traits because those people had nothing to do with the creation of those traits.
and money, most people of wealth were born into wealth. Bush jr was born into vast
wealth as was IQ45. Being born into wealth is also an accident of birth. I was born into
wealth and by age 10, we were poor, dirt poor. So which Kropotkin would you judge me by,
the being born in wealth or being poor by age 10? And I had nothing to do with
either Kropotkin. I had nothing to do with the wealth at birth and nothing to do
with the poverty at age 10. So how would you judge me? With evidence that
I had nothing to do with? Accidents of birth? Might as well judge me by being
5ft 8inches tall because I had nothing to do with that either. To hold beliefs
based on such accidents of birth in regards to skin color or wealth is silly.

So upon what standards should we hold our beliefs? Should I really
consider whites to be superior to blacks based on some fantasy about
accidental traits in birth?

We must base our beliefs upon facts. Facts that have some basis in reality,
like human nature is closer to the liberal vision of people instead of
the conservative vision of people which is less fact base and more
like childhood indoctrinations that were never examined or understood.

More on this later as I must get ready to go to work.

Kropotkin

So I hold X…Y…Z beliefs. How would I justify holding those beliefs?

Belief X is the belief in GOD. Now how would I justify such a belief?
Well, everyone believes in god. UH no, not everyone believes in god.
The belief in God is the only way to understand the universe.
UH no, there are dozens if not more ways to understand the universe
outside of a belief in god. One might say, God is the answer to all the
questions. UH no, there are many answers depending on the questions.
It is rare that there is only one answer to one question. Most questions have
many different answers. Some of course better then other answers, but still
many answers are available for one single question. What time is it? That
question depends upon where you are. Here in California, it is 9:30 in the morning.
Where you are changes the answer.

I hold belief Y…which is the belief in Liberalism. I believe in liberalism
and that it is the best way into the future. How can I justify that belief?
I can say that Liberalism best matches what we know about human beings.
I can raise my arguments and you can raise your arguments. We may never
have an answer because the answer requires a value judgement.
You judge by some chosen standard that the question is answered this way…

I say Barry Bonds is one of the top 5 best baseball players of all time…
and the stats support my assertion. But you may state as part of your
argument, that Bonds “juiced” and that disqualifies him from any debate
about the top 5 best baseball players. Your statement however is a value
judgement. You use some other standard outside of stats to determine
his top 5 status. Now it is said that Babe Ruth was the greatest player of
his time, but and this is important to note, that blacks were not
allowed in the MLB at that time. It was white players only and so,
we are unable to correctly judge who was the greatest player of his time
because of the prejudice of the time. In fact an argument can be made
for a black player named Oscar Charleston to be the best player of that era.
So any answer on this type of question depends upon the criteria used.
So by cherry picking the criteria used, one can make the case that
IQ45 is the best president of all time. Of course, the truth is he is the
worst president of all time.

But that is the point of value judgements. It can be used to justified
anything depending on the criteria used. How you judge something is
just as important as why you are judging something. And that leads us
back to beliefs. Our belief system is a value judgement system.
What values are we judging and why those values. Is the most
important value of the president, honesty? Then Jimmy Carter becomes
the best president of all time. Is the value used for president character,
then we might suggest Carter or maybe Lincoln. The value itself
determines our understanding of the best president. Even the word
“best” can be understood in terms of what criteria we used to decide
what the word “best” means.

It is my belief that much of our judgements made like best president
or best ball player depends upon the criteria used and that is nothing
more then a decision on values. what value or values do we use to make
our judgements upon.

so the question of our beliefs is really a question of what values
are we using.

If I hold these beliefs, what values am I employing?

Kropotkin

If our beliefs simply a value judgment system, then
we ought to understand our values. What values are
you interested in? and that understanding, determines
what your beliefs are. My value system determines
my beliefs or more correctly, it should. We often
just accept the value system indoctrinated in us as
children and we return to the question of our childhood
indoctrinations. Everything is connected. You just have
to understand the connections to make sense of your life.

Kropotkin

Or perhaps the question of existence, the problem of existence
is simply a question of what values are we going to value.

Therein lies the 20th and 21st century question, what are the values
that we shall follow. You might say, that the last 118 year have simply
been a battle over what values we shall live under. If you pick IQ45
with his Nazi dictatorship, then you are choosing certain values and if
you pick democracy and freedom, you are picking other values.

the question of beliefs is simply a question of which values shall
we uphold. what values shall you uphold?

Kropotkin

So what values are we going to choose?

How would one decide upon the values that they base their live upon?

This becomes a question of system understanding. For example,
the family unit, which is a system. What value helps the family
system work better, honesty or lying? If you lived in a family where
lies were common, then your system, your family was compromising
its ability to maintain that system. Lying increases the loss of energy
in a system. Lying increases the chaos in a system, the family system
and thus the family loses energy which is entropy. A system, any
system is either increasing its energy or it is losing energy.
Increasing energy insures a system’s survival and losing energy
threatens a system… It is really that simple.

Values which increases a system’s energy are values which
are needed… and that is your criteria for values.

What values increase your system energy and that is the value
for which you strive and any values which drains your system
of energy is to be avoided.

So in capitalism, by its constant negation of human beings
and their values, you decrease the energy of the capitalism
system, and thus you threaten the capitalism system……….

We can begin to see what values we should be holding
and which values we should be avoiding.

Philosophy is simply an understanding of our values
and what values are important to the system in question,
be it a political system or an economic system or a social system.
What values will allow that system to best survive the increasing
entropy that exists within the universe. For that is the next thing to
understand… a system, any system must increase its energy as its
ages because the system in question due to age or growth, needs
more energy to just maintain itself. As I age, I need more energy to
just maintain myself as my body becomes more and more inefficient.
As I age, my body loses more energy then I can replace and that
entropy causes old age. I suffer system slowdowns and failures as
I grow old due to entropy.

A system, any system is either increasing in energy or losing
energy, that is simply a statement of fact. So the question becomes,
how do we increase the energy in our systems? One possibility
is in the values we choose to power our systems.

What values are you choosing to power your system?

Kropotkin

Values come into conflict all the time.
IQ45 values lying and dishonesty and hatred
and greed and lust and his followers also values
such things. A system understanding leads us to
understand that those values, lower level, animal
values, leads to the loss of energy in a system.
And we, who resist, have choosen different values
for our understanding of our systems. And this leads to
conflict about which values are the values that
we should be following. How are we to resolve this conflict
in values? Violence? The followers of IQ45 certainly do
want violence to be a deciding factor in the resolution of
the conflict of values, but violence never solved anything.
It simply postpones the resolution, it doesn’t solve it.

so we must find a means to resolve our conflict as to
which values are the values we should, as a people,
as a culture and as a society, should be following.

One could say that our political systems are simply
a means to understand what values we should be following.

Democracy is simply a system to allow people to decide the
values they will live under by themselves… Monarchy
is a system whereas a monarchy decides the values
the people shall live under and a dictatorship
is whereby the leaders of the dictatorship decide upon
the values the people live under.

This is, in part, why I have chosen to follow democracy even
though I believe democracy has been compromised by
money to the point where the “leaders” no longer work for
the people but the “leaders” choose values that they have
been paid to choose by corporate and powerful interest.

I believe that the only answer for our modern political
crisis is far greater democracy to the point where
we have elected leaders who simply follow the will of the people,
not by making decisions, but by following the decisions of the people.
the answer to our modern crisis is pure democracy.

“Government of the people, for the people, by the people”

We can increase the amount of energy people put into a system
by increasing the participation in their lives with increased
participation in their political lives with increased democracy.

The conflict in values that we see every day can be worked
out in the choices we make as a people… as to which values
we, as a people, as a system, as a culture, decide to follow.

a system, any system is best lead by the system working as a whole
instead of parts of the system deciding what is best for the whole system
because the parts of the system will always choose to protect its
interest instead of the whole system and that is what has happened
in the U.S… The parts of the system that has bought the leadership
of our political and economic system is only concern with its part of
the system and not the whole system… Thus we have the failure of
America… where parts of the system that is concerned with only
itself is deciding upon the whole system and anything that doesn’t
increase the small part of the system making those choices
simply doesn’t care about the whole system. That is us folks.

The few is deciding our fate based on what is best for them, not
for us. That is our modern world in a nutshell…

Kropotkin

How do we know ourselves?

We compare and contrast ourselves to other people, things,
places and animals…………

Think of yourself… Think of you as a lone, solitary creature
all alone in the universe. There is nothing else. How would you know
yourself if you are the only thing in the universe? How would
you understand yourself without something to compare or contrast
yourself with? To understand yourself as an being who communicates,
how would you know this without anyone else to communicate with?
You cannot know if you are smart or funny or wise or even tall without
something to compare yourself with. It is by other things, be it people,
things like chairs or walls or idea’s like freedom that we understand
who we are. You are not an isolated being. You are connected within
a entire universe around you. We humans seem to be big until
we compare ourselves with elephants or the universe itself. It is
this comparison that allows us to begin the process of understanding
who and what and why we are…….Even something like death must
be compared to something for it to be understood…

So you want to understand yourself? What would you compare yourself
to? If I compare myself with an ant, I look pretty dam good and if I
compare myself with Gandhi, not so good. So it is in comparison
that we see what values are the values worth having and worth
living for and dying for? So who should I compare myself with?
Should I compare myself with someone like Newton or Einstein
or perhaps Spinoza or Socrates or Gandhi or Martin Luther King?

Yes, I should compare myself with the higher, more accomplished
members of the human race. To compare myself with higher, more
accomplished members of the human race means I am comparing myself
to someone who has accomplished something or has raised themselves
to a “higher” level then I have reached…… I must to reach their level of
achievement or accomplishment, raise my energy level. To reach
someone lower in the achievement or accomplishment level, I just
need to be lazy and unmotivated. It is about the energy expended
that allows me to reach higher or no energy expended to reach lower.

I can also use society, the polis to compare and contrast myself
with, I can use the society at large to compare myself with.
For example, IQ45 and his followers, those who believe in intolerance
and bigotry and hatred and violence and greed, I can compare and
contrast myself with them and find myself in opposition to them
and their beliefs. Why? Because of the values I hold are not
intolerant or bigoted or full of hatred or violence or of greed.

“I hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”

The values I hold, that I can compare with others, are values which
are about toleration and non-violence and of love. for I can compare
those values against other people and see the value of those values…

Compare for example, Hitler’s value against the values of Jesus.

I find the values of Jesus to be of more societal value, whereas
the values of Hitler are destructive and lower the energy
put back into society. Look at Hitler Germany and look at the
result of Jesus. See the negative energy of Hitler and the
positive energy of Jesus. And I can compare and contrast those
values with values I have or want to hold or should hold.

It is this comparing and contrasting that allows us to
orientate ourselves in the world and the universe.

What does it mean to be human? I can simply compare
and contrast what it means to be a dog or a rock
or another person and I can begin to see what it means
to be human.

And the values we have, I can do the same thing with values.
Compare and contrast the values I have with the values of others
and see which values become important and which values become less
important. compare and contrast……. this is one way to become
who you are…

Kropotkin

In thinking about existentialism, one of the main idea’s behind
existentialism is this notion of bad faith, self deception.
We see this self deception all the time, both publicly
and privately and we see bad faith all the time both publicly
and privately. The idea of self deception is fairly obvious but
the notion of bad faith seems to require some description.

From wiki: “Bad faith is a philosophical concept utilized by existentialist
philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to describe the
phenomenon in which human beings, under pressure from social forces,
adapt false values and disown their innate freedom, hence acting
inauthentically”

We see this phenomenon all the time. When in a group of people and
people go around the room to ask everyone, do you believe in god?
Most people will answer, yes, I believe in god, just to fit into the group
or to be part of the group. It takes courage to answer no in such a group
situation. We have adapted the belief in god to fit into a situation.
We act falsely if we don’t believe in god and say we do believe in god
to fit into some social situation.

This act of self deception occurs all the time. We see IQ45 proclaiming
himself “a great president” and that is an act of self deception.
We see IQ45 saying he knows more about the military then
actual military types like Generals and West Point grads.
He knows these things without any actual study of military
tactics or goals or procedures. That is another form of
self deception. Thinking we are something that we are not.
Thinking that I am brave or smart or courageous when I am not,
any of these things is an act of self deception.

We engage in self deception and bad faith all the time.
One, self deception is an attempt too either to make
oneself feel better about oneself or to hide something
from you own heart. Bad fait is an attempt to hide something
from others, to deceive others.

Self deception and bad faith are
attempts to deceive, either yourself or others.

So the question becomes, why is this understanding about
self deception and bad faith so important?

Why does it matter that we engage in self deception or in bad faith?

Kropotkin

Now in my last post, I asked, why, why does it matter that
we engage in self deception and/or bad faith?

It matters because the acts of self deceptions has, in part,
created the age of Nihilism that we live in today.

To engage in the self deception/bad faith of our modern lives is to engage
in and be part of the Nihilism that we see all around us.
Nihilism is the negation of human beings and their values.
To engage in self deception and/or bad faith is the negation of
human beings and their values. to engage in self deception is to
negate the true values or our true understanding of who we are.

I am a valuable member of society due to the fact that I exist,
as a human being, I have value. But if we engage in this self deception/
bad faith of capitalism, then we participate in the negation of human
beings and their values. Our bad faith in regards to ism’s such as
capitalism and democracy has the effect of negating who I am
and my values, as capitalism is only about one value and one value
only, profits/money… All other values are negated as being against
“capitalistic” values, being against the pursuit of profits/money.

It is this self deception/bad faith that allows capitalism to grow
and flourish in our modern age. We have been deceived and we
self deceive when we believe and act upon the ideal that
we have three inalienable rights, upon which is “life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness”.

It is this idea of the pursuit of happiness that leads us to engage
in and participate in self deception and bad faith. We should be
happy and so we engage in self deception as to why we are or more
likely, not happy. This idea of bad faith which is the act of deceiving
others is part of this notion of happiness. If we were really honest with
ourselves or with others, then we could admit the truth. Few of us, if
any, are truly happy. And part of the reason is the acts of self deception
and bad faith that we engage in.

Happiness, true happiness can only occur when we have come to an
understanding of who we truly are and then act appropriately.
If we want to be happy, we must become who we are.
this self deception and bad faith is also a result of
our failure to know thyself and to overcome and to become.
To engage in our knowing ourselves, as Socrates said,
we must engage in honesty and not self deception.
to engage in overcoming what are the childhood indoctrinations,
which are nothing more then an engagement with self deception and
bad faith. and to overcome those childhood bad faith also leads us
to becoming who we are and that is only possible when we no longer
engage in self deception and bad faith.

to overcome this age of Nihilism means we each, individually and collectively
must engage in honesty with ourselves and each other. We can no longer
afford our self deception and bad faith because to hold self deception and
bad faith as our models is to threaten the stability of our society, our system.

We Americans in engaging in our acts of self deception and bad faith has
endangered the foundations of our society. As dishonesty and lying always
endanger and threaten the foundations of any system, be it the family system
or be it the political system, or the economic system or the cultural system.

You want to “Make America Great” then we must begin with the ending
of the self deception and bad faith that so dominates our society
today. We must remove the president as the leader of the dishonest
and self deception and bad faith movement in America and the world.

His self deceptions/bad faith and our bad faith threaten our society and our very existence.

But it doesn’t begin there, it begins with us. Engage in an honest understanding
of who we are and what is possible and do so without any self deception or
bad faith. See yourself without any self deception or bad faith. Just know,
that such insight will bring about our moment of Zen where everything
is toss around, the mountains are dancing and mobile and the sea has the
waves crashing and violent and in an uproar and the river has overflowed it banks.
To engage in an honest understanding of oneself can bring about
great personal turmoil, but, but it is the only way to become who you are.

Kropotkin

A recitation of the 20th century would include the horrors
of the two World Wars and the Holocaust as given by one
name, Auschwitz. We have the Great Depression and the long
lasting cold war and we have Hiroshima……… and the question
must be asked, Where was god?

Now some might say, that the horrors of the 20th century occurred because
we didn’t listen to god, but I say unto you, the 20 century came about because
we did listen to god. Religion has always been about us vs them. You have
the believers and you have the non-believers. But isn’t Auschwitz a monument
of believers who acted against non-believers and wasn’t the two World Wars fought
between two rival factions of believers. It isn’t any one ism or ideology or
faith that created the schism that has consumed the 20th century.
It is the us vs them idea that has created the massive death toll of the last
century.

It is the faith inherent in the believers that cause all that death and all that
destruction. And the evil of our times, it is about us vs them. To tear children
away from their parents is evil by every standard and yet it is condoned because
the believers believe and victims are always easy to find when one is a believer.

Us vs them……………

all the evil in the world has come about because of the, us vs them, understanding
of the world. If you are not us, you are the enemy. You are object of hatred
and persecution and violence… why, because you are not us…………

So much hate and violence because people see only two possible
outcomes, us……. them……….those are the choices. what a small and
narrow way to see the world… If I am not us, I am outside of the pale.
if I am not us, I am suspected and demonized and terrorized… even if I look
like you and sound like you and behave like you, I am not part of us and thus
I am the enemy and treated with violence and hatred and anger.

The point of toleration is to eliminate this narrow viewpoint of, us vs them.

If I engage in toleration, I no longer see people in such narrow and violent
terms of, us vs them. I see people as people and people the world over
look like me and act like me and talk like me. We both want to love and be loved,
and we both want respect and honor and an opportunity, a chance to become
something and that is true the world over…….

but if I engage in the age old game of, us vs them, I summarily dismiss
you, I engage in violence against you and all because I have classified
you as being different, them. If I am tolerant, everybody becomes us.
There are no outsiders and no one to be violent against and no one to hate.
but some of us are really comfortable with our hate and anger and greed and lust
and to change would mean we would have to no longer see the world as, us vs them.

and change is hard and a whole lot of scary. but who is brave enough, courageous
enough to see beyond the old failed classification of, us vs them. Who is willing
to be human enough to accept all, to look beyond our minimal difference and
see the vast similarities that is the human race. How can I truly dismiss anyone
because they have the accidental trait of birth, color, race, speech, disability or
gender. Am I so wise as to proclaim myself the arbiter of what is right and normal
in human beings? NO, no I am not so beyond everyone else that I can proclaim
what is us and what is them.

Auschwitz and Hiroshima and the long cold war all demand an answer from us.
the question is simple, must we continue with our understanding of the world
as simply nothing more then, us vs them? Or, or do we engage in the process
of expanding our idea of a human being as to be everyone, not just, us vs them.

the truth of the matter is, we cannot as human being begin our process to
become something more until we begin to understand human beings as us.
there is not such thing as them. and once we learn this, we can become who we are.

us.

Kropotkin

I guess what I am asking for is a radical new understanding of
what it means to be human. We must see who we are with
new eyes and a new vision. The old vision, the old understanding
has failed. We see this with the immense problems that we face.
If the old understanding had succeeded, then we wouldn’t have
so many problems. It is the sheer number and extent of the problems,
that tells us that we must engage in a search for a new direction,
a new vision of what it means to be human. If you think, hay, its
all good because I am well off, then you are engaging in both
self deception and bad faith. Any true understanding of
our current situation cannot just be about how I am doing personally.
It must included the overall situation that humans find themselves in
and that overall situation as of right now, is bad and IQ45 policies
and welfare for the wealthy tax cuts is making a bad situation
worse, much, much worse.

this is why it is so important to not engage in self deception and
bad faith because it leads us to make choices based upon
our self deception and bad faith instead of where our choices
should be made, with an honest and open mind to where we are
and what needs to be done. Self deception and bad faith undermines
the search for the answers we need to find our path because
self deception and bad faith gives us a skewered
understanding of those issues we are facing.

Because we are engaging in self deception, we cannot really see the problems
and solutions that exist in any type of realistic manner. Our self deception
and bad faith doesn’t allow us to accurately understand, either the problems or
the solutions to those problems.

How can one or a collective solve a problem that they don’t properly understand?

You can’t. In America right now, our problems are so great and been created
by our system of economics and the political, that a tweak or simple tweaking
the system will not be enough. We must have a massive, radical overhaul of
the economic and political system if we are going to solve our massive problems
created by the nihilism which is the basis of our economic and political systems.

We cannot allow some fake understanding of '“traditions”, which is another form
of self deception, to prevent us from engaging in actions that are necessary
to ensure our safety as a state, nation and even species. The current
isms and ideologies have driven us into a corner and no amount
of tweaking will save us from this corner of nihilism and destruction that
faces us………

In other words, the classic definition of insanity is to do the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results. We are doing the
same thing over and over again, from electing the same corrupt politicians
to office hoping that this time, this time that they might actually do the
right thing, which is remove the money from politics but they can’t because
that is what drives politicians, their goal is the nihilism of money, to
doing something new by engaging in changing the system that has
created the massive problems we have right now. We cannot do the same
thing over and over again expecting different results. WE cannot expect
to tweak our way out of this mess. We must make radical changes if we
expect to survive into the next century.

Now one might say, Kropotkin, you are wrong…… but as usual,
those who claim I am wrong won’t or can’t provide us with any new
solutions to our problems/issues because they want to engage in
the same old solutions, the trying the exact same solutions that
haven’t worked in the past and that will not work. The doing the
exact same thing over and over and over again, all the while expecting
different results. That is insanity.

How do we begin? by engaging in the understanding of the self deceptions
and bad faith that drives us today. The quest for tomorrow will be different
once we have solve the problem of self deception and bad faith. How do we solve it?

By becoming honest with who we are and what is our current political, economic
and social situation we find ourselves in. Become aware and end the
self deceptions and bad faith that drives you.

Save the world, one soul at a time and the first soul to save is you………

Kropotkin

Bad faith: let us recall our prior definition of bad faith…

Bad faith is a philosophical concept utilized by existentialist
de Beauvoir and Sartre to describe the phenomenon in which human
being under pressure from social forces, adapt false values and disown
their innate freedom hence acting inauthentically.

This description revolves around the idea of “adapt false values”.
Now how would we understand this idea of “false values”?
What are the “false values” that we shouldn’t be adapting to avoid
being in “bad faith”?

As you might recall, I suggested that we are, all of us, are indoctrinated
with values, imposed upon us by the family, state, church, media,
culture…If one continues to hold these values without any examination
of their usefullness which is really just their ability to increase the
amount of energy in a system or improve the system in some fashion.
It is in a systems understanding that values have any use or value.

To hold a value indoctrinated into you without any examination of
that values use to one who has engaged in the process of knowing thyself means
if you have engaged in knowing thyself and if because of social forces, you
still hold to those values indocrtrinated into you even if you own values
have changed because of this process of knowing thyself, then you are
guilty of holding bad faith. The values we hold must, must be values we
have engaged with in our understanding in the process of knowing thyself,
overcoming and becoming who you are. An example of this might be the
young man who after engaging in his process of knowing thyself and discovers
himself to be holding values of love, peace, charity and his family has raised that
young man to follow the family business which is being a soldier, the military.
What if the young decides in his conflict of values between his personal values
of love and peace and the family values of war and violence, what if he decides
under social forces to hold “false values” of war and violence even though his
real values are of peace and love… that young man is engage in “bad faith”.
The false values in this case are the values of his family which is violence
and militaristic and not his personal values of love and peace. That is an example
of “false values” values held by others who with the use of social engagement
force one to adapt their values instead of a person engaging with their own
values. to hold any values that haven’t been “approved” of by the person during
their process of knowing thyself, is false values. Only values we act upon and
approve of are “true values”. I say I believe in god because the group or society
or the nation hold these values and I hold these values to gain their approval
is me practicing bad faith. Anytime I approve of values that are held by others
is me engaging in bad faith…… so in dating a women, and she asks,
do you believe in…… and I say yes to get her to bed or to gain her hand in
marriage is me engaging in bad faith. If I don’t believe in those values
and I still give my approval to gain something, that is acting in bad faith.

So this idea of bad faith is all around us… the Politician who says one thing
to get elected but act upon other values is acting in bad faith because
he is not engaged in his values, acting upon his values and he is not being honest
with what his real values are, that is bad faith. We see this all the time.
We see people saying and acting in a homophobic manner and yet engages
in homosexual activities is acting in bad faith.

We now see that we engage in bad faith with ourselves and others
all the time. Part of the challenge of becoming human is to overcome
our bad faith and become who we are by becoming the values we
believe in and engage with. Becoming who you are simply means you
are in synch with your values and you know your values and you act upon
and say those values without any interference from any social forces like
family, church, state, culture, media…………

But all of this is predicated upon one simple thing, that we engage in
the act of knowing thyself…… We must engage in the process of understanding
who we are and what are our real values are. That is the beginning of this process
of finally becoming who you are…….

Kropotkin