a new understanding of today, time and space.

I have often stated that the real trick is not in the
answers but in forming the “correct” question.
Einstein and Newton weren’t great because they
found answers, they are great because they were able
to formulate the right questions…

So how do we understands ourselves in the form of
the “correct” question?

What does it mean to be Human?

How do we become who we are?

What are the values we should have has human beings?

As I stated before, I think human existence is a question
of values…I am a white male who is almost a senior citizen,
what values should I have? and if you are a black female,
what values should you have? Are they the same values or
because of our much different starting point, should the values
be different?

I think that if we accept the positive values of our higher nature,
the values are going to be similar… values like love, peace, harmony,
justice… values which I call building values… those values build
into something. Negative values are negative because they don’t build into anything,
they are destructive, they negate and deny…

Destructive values only purpose is to negate, destroy and thus
they can be wide ranging and random…

So the human question is about the values that we should hold
and act upon…what values are values that we can then
use to become who we are… for the process of becoming who you are
is simply the process of becoming the values that you hold…instead
of proclaiming you hold positive values like christian values and then
you act with negative values like hate, violence, greed and lust…
You cannot hold one set of values and act upon another…Like the
Christian and the conservative do today, claim they live in Christ’s values
but act upon negative destructive values… we must become our
proclaimed values… to become who we are…so the values
we proclaim are the same values we act upon…

What was the value of Gandhi? He acted upon his values in a consistent
manner…His beliefs were the same as his actions…
He didn’t proclaim one set of values and acted upon another…

Can you say the same?

Kropotkin

In reading Hegel and about Hegel, one often comes across
statements about “THE WORLD” as if the world were some
unified, united thing. Statements like this, “As the world itself is rational”

This is a problematic thought at best. The human tendency is to
create unity where none exists. I have stated, more then once,
that everything is connected and it is, but that doesn’t make the “world”
a unified, world of thought or reason. The world exists, and we are participants
within that world, but the world in which we exists isn’t in some way
unified or prone to human conceits like being “rational”. The world is
and we are… but any rationality we might see comes from us, not from the world.

The world/universe runs on its predetermined rules and laws and forces like gravity
and the 3 laws of motion and the 3 laws of thermodynamics.
The world/the universe is “genetically” engineered to work in a certain way
just like animals have their genes and instincts which drive how they
operate. Just as we cannot attribute to animals rationality because of
their DNA operating instructions, we cannot attribute to the world/universe,
any rationality because it is simply obeying what it must obey in following
the force of gravity or the 3 laws of motion……….even evolution is simply
guidelines for the rules of how animals grow from simple creatures to more
complicated creatures……. The “guidelines” of evolution is simply
a picture of how animals become more complicated in nature………
It is a set of rules of how animals achieve this complication.

Now don’t mistake the “rules” of evolution as being some sort of
rationality, it isn’t. When we speak of the world, we simply speak
of individuals, either people or animals, or both, and the plant life
which follows its own rules………… The world, properly understood
is simply a collection of individuals. Now these individuals may have
rationality, but the “world” in which these individuals operate in, does not
have rationality. so it is important to keep separate this notion of “The world”
and the individuals within that world……

So the “THE WORLD” does not have rationality or purpose or design, the
world simply exists and it is those creatures that exists within the world
that create the meaning/purpose or rationality of “THE WORLD”.

We must be careful in giving 'THE WORLD" meaning and purpose that
doesn’t exist within “THE WORLD”. “THE WORLD” is and we are,
and the 2 don’t necessarily support each other or create meaning
for each other.

So our understanding is that when people state, “The world is a harsh
and cruel place” that is an incorrect statement. It is us as operators of
the world that has created the conditions of being “harsh and cruel”.
The world has done nothing of the sort, being “harsh and cruel” for
the world is simple following those rules and laws that the “THE WORLD” must
follow, just as animals must follow their DNA and their instincts.

Anthropomorphism is the human trait which is the attribution of
human traits, emotions, intentions, values to non-human entities.
And our thinking the world as being rational is just one such
example of Anthropomorphism.

So for reading of Hegel, we see that he too Anthropomorphize
“THE WORLD” and thinks that it is some “rational world” when
in fact the world is nothing of the sort. Hegel’s failure is
assuming facts not actually present. He has created
a fictional idea which is the Anthropomorphism of “THE WORLD”
and given “THE WORLD” traits and intentions that the world doesn’t have,
like rationality and purpose and intent.

Hegel’s thought is flaw from the very beginning because it is based
on a flawed idea, that “THE WORLD” is somehow human in nature
and it isn’t. “THE WORLD” just is and it is us that create value and meaning
in the world. We make the world a “harsh and cruel” place. We should
finally own up to this basic fact. That we humans are the creators of the world,
in our actions, words and interactions between each other. If the world is a
“harsh and cruel” place, we are responsible for it and we are the remedy
for the world being “harsh and cruel”. The answer to the question of what
kind of world do we exist in, is simple our actions and interactions between
ourselves and our fellow human beings, that create what kind of world we live in……

Kropotkin

If we understand the above correctly, then we understand
that we are the creators of our world. If I were to take a baseball
bat and hit someone, the world wasn’t “harsh and cruel” nor did
any of you have anything to do with it, I was the creator of being
“harsh and cruel” to that individual human being. We have used
this failed understanding of the world to escape responsibility
for the world. If we can successfully place the blame elsewhere,
put the world on the hook for it being “harsh and cruel”, then
we have escaped responsibility, accountability for
the world being “harsh and cruel”.

We make the world responsible to make us unaccountable for
“the world” being “harsh and cruel”.

If the world is rational, then we are off the hook for
“THE WORLD” being a place of poverty and crime and
pollution and global warming…… but the world is neutral,
it doesn’t have any rationality or any designs on making the
world suck………It is us… we are responsible for the “THE WORLD”
being a “harsh and cruel” place. It is our actions, our words, our
interactions with each other, our intentions and our goals that
make “THE WORLD” seem to be “harsh and cruel”.

The world has a large series of problems and we must face up the
to fact that we humans are responsible for those problems.

That in the nutshell, is the question. Are we going to take
responsibility or not?

It doesn’t matter if the problems were created thousands of years ago,
at what point do we begin to accept responsibility for actions
done by humans, for human, with humans in response to some
question or problem. We are accountable because the acts, actions,
words and interactions that created a world that is “harsh and cruel”
were done by human beings. By virtue of the fact we are human,
we are responsible for the acts, actions, words and interactions of
the past human beings. Actions, words and interactions done in
our name, done for our “benefit” and so as inheritors of the world,
we are now accountable, responsible for the debts of our fathers.

Just as we are accountable for the debts incurred by our parents
when they die, we are accountable for the debts of action and words
and interactions we have inherited…….

If we have inherited the debt of a “harsh and cruel” world,
then we have to, as to pay off that debt, try to make the world
less “harsh and cruel”………….

“THE WORLD” is our debt and we are responsible for that debt
and like in any inheritance, we are put in charge for the world’s
situation regardless if we are responsible or not, the inheritance
is there and there is no escaping that debt.

We are to held accountable and responsible for the state of the world…

What will you do to improve your share of our inheritance?

Kropotkin

understand this; I am not attempting to “understand”
anything or explain anything, I am just describing…….

I exist: How or why I exist, is, for now, unimportant.
I exist within the “world” what the world is, is unimportant, for now.
I exist as a biological entity: I am living.
This living means that I must, must follow certain rules or laws
of life. Just as natural systems have rules or laws, the laws of motion
or the theory of gravity, I must “obey” certain biological rules/laws.
My rules/laws can be called necessities. I must eat to survive.
I must breath, I must drink water, my body to survive, must obey biological
necessities. I must remove bodily waste. I have no choice.
To mentally/emotional survive, I must have love, security, freedom………
I must have contact with my fellow humans, not as a physical need, but
as a psychological need, a mental and emotional need. We are social creatures,
we must have social contact to survive…(which is why the worse form
of punishment is solitary confinement) For some the scars of loneliness can
never be healed.

We have, for lack of a better word, a “world”. Now what exactly is this
“world”? The “world” is our interactions with anything outside of us.

For example, I have the day off. I can do many things on my day off.
I can read or watch movies or jack off or pet the cat or stand in front
of the window and watch the “outside world”. However, I must, must follow
my biological necessities, I must eat, I must breath air, I must drink water,
but because I am only alone for a few hours, I can survive without any
physical contact with other human beings. So we have two type of actions,
one is biological necessity and one is based purely on choice.
Now at this moment, I am doing laundry… I kinda like clean clothes,
and my wife has told me to do the dishes. These are mixed type of
things, I don’t necessarily have to do them, but someone does.
As my back is really bothering me this morning, I probably won’t
do the dishes as that means I have to bend over and that hurts too much.
And my wife understands (or so I hope) and so she will do the dishes later.
I can also walk around my condo, just walk. Now at what point of this day
of being inside my condo, will it mean, am I, “IN THE WORLD”? We often
talk about “the world is a cruel and harsh place” and yet, in my condo,
am I “in” the world? The “world” seems to be something outside of me
and my condo. As I exist, right now, in this moment, am I “in” the world?
I am not in contact with the “world”, I am not on the phone, I am not
watching TV, I am not looking outside, am I “in” the world? I am on
the computer writing this, but until I press send, it simply sits on
my computer, waiting. How can I use the sentence, “the world is
a harsh and cruel place” just sitting here, quiet and peacefully listening
to music and writing this. The sentence “the world is a harsh and cruel place”
has no meaning in this moment, in this place. It is outside of me and
outside of my condo. Now if someone were to suddenly break in,
a home invasion of sorts, then suddenly, “the world is a harsh and cruel place”
seems to fit. But that requires someone to interact with me. I haven’t left,
they entered. If I were to shower and changed into something other then
the sweats I am wearing, and I were to enter the “world” then, as I am now
“in” the world, the statement that the world is a “harsh and cruel place”
might be accurate. The act of engagement or entering the world,
that becomes the answer to the question of, what is the world?

Something outside of me. If I leave my condo and walk down the main
street of my little town, then I have entered the “world”…….
As I walk down the street, I can engage with or participate in with
other lives, other beings, animal and human. In my little town,
everybody walks their dog down the main street, so I see all kinds
of dogs as I walk, and I either engage with or ignore them and they
might do the same. At this point, there is no biological “necessity”
driving me. I don’t have to engage with or be part of any person’s
activity. My physical needs, my necessities, have been met and so
I don’t need to “obey” anything right now. I walk because I want to
and my interactions with other people can be random because I cannot
know or anticipate who else is walking down main street. I might know them,
I might not. So another factor of “this world” is its randomness, chaos as it were,
anything might happen as I walk down main street. I cannot know.

Is the world “a harsh and cruel place”? I cannot know until I interact with “the world”
and something happens. Now if a car being driven down the street suddenly loses
its brakes and hits me as I am walking across the street, that can be considered
to prove the point that the world is “a harsh and cruel place” but it can also
be considered to just be a random occurrence. The world is a random, chaotic
place, one can never know what will happen or why.

It is this interaction with things, people, places that constitute
“the world”. I do not have control over these interactions, they
are random. It is this “other”, the interactions outside of me,
that is the “world”. The cat has been bother me all morning,
hanging around and walking all over the computer
and clinging to me. I finally feed the cat and the cat is no
longer bothering me. It is that interaction that is the “world”.

So interactions are the “world”, but how am I suppose to
understand those interactions? If they are as I have suggested,
random interactions, then what “sense” of them, can I make?

I can suppose that those interactions are the work of “god” but
there is no evidence of that. Because if the interactions are
random as I have suggested and caused by god, then god
is random, chaotic. Now some might suggest that those interactions
were not random, but those interactions were created by and
part of god’s plan for me and the “world”. But still I cannot react to
that because if those plans are “inscrutable” as suggested, I cannot in
any way, shape or form, understand them, I cannot react to them.
I have no means or way to react to “inscrutable” plans……
I am, by definition, unable to understand them, and thus I have
no way to react to them…………they lie outside of me.

I can suppose the interactions of me and other people, places, events
are part of some “scientific” explanation for the “world”. But as we know,
science as shown us the “world” is random, chaotic, just as we have discovered
walking down main street. But that still doesn’t help us understand anything.

Things happen when we interact with the “world”.
How are we to explain those “things”?

Kropotkin

so the question becomes, what does it mean when we
say, “the world”? What does this “world” look like, how
do we understand it, what does it mean to be in the “world”?

How are we to understand, “the world”?

Kropotkin

so given what I have said, we seem to have a dualism, like
Descartes, mind/body problem or Plato’s eternal world
and his temporary/ impermanent world.

We know because we exist within them, we humans have
rules/ laws we must obey if we are to exist or continue to exist
and the “world” the “universe” has its rules/laws, it too must obey,
the laws of motion and the theory of gravity, for example. The “universe” has
laws and rules and forces it must follow, necessity demands that
universe follows certain rules/laws/forces. Just as we must “obey”
our necessities of eating, breathing, waste control, bodily feedback and
other laws/rules/ forces of life. And some of the rules/laws that govern
the universe, also govern us. We too must “obey” the laws of gravity
and the laws of motion. The universe must also follow certain
rules/laws we must obey, for example, the need for energy, for consumption
of matter which allows the continued existence of the universe and us.

This is what Einstein meant by his famous formula, E = Mc2…….
The universe and us, we are both energy and matter as the two
are interchangeable. If it is matter, it is energy and if it is energy, it is matter.

so what looks like a dualism isn’t really a dualism. If we break down
the universe and we break down us, we see that it is the same thing, energy/matter.

so as I quietly sit in my condo and listen to music or if I walk down
the main drag of my little city, everything I see is matter/energy.

If it looks like a dualism, that means we may not have broken it
down to it basic parts. But in regards to Descartes mind/body problem,
if we hold that mind and body are two entirely different things,
what about mind? body is clearly matter/energy so it is accounted
for, but what is mind? what is thought? It is energy and so it too
can be converted into matter. Everything in the universe is
energy/matter. If if it matter, it can become energy and if it is energy,
it can become matter.

So how do we humans, how do we understand the universe?

We experience the universe. We have contact with the matter/energy
of the universe and then we tell some “tale” about that matter/energy.

We are matter/energy and we experience other matter/energy
and then we try to “explain” that experience in some fashion.

at certain temperatures, water can be a solid like ice and at another
temperature, water can be water, and at other temperatures, water
can be in another state which we can call vapor. In other words, water can
be solid, wet or a gas. There are four states of matter, solid, liquid, gas and
plasma. we can also stipulate other forms of matter, glass or liquid crystal
or in more extreme conditions, such as the Bose-Einstein condensates,
neutron-degenerate matter and quark-gluon plasma which only occurs,
respectively, in situations of extreme cold, extreme density and extremely
high-energy.

So this “simple” question of matter can suddenly become quite complicated.

But isn’t that true for anything. We can, by how we go in depth
into something, create complications. Humans are, visually,
different from animals, and yet if we exam both animals
and humans, we find they are actually very similar. They have
similar body functions, similar purposes of inner organs, similar
genetic code, similar ways of movement, similar information
gather systems which we call senses.

Animals and humans must obey certain laws/forces/rules that
is imposed by our common evolution. Our shared history means
we are connected in many ways and yet, we look different.
we allow our different forms and structures, to confuse the matter
between humans and animals. We are in fact, animals.
We are simply two species which have a common ancestry.

The difference between animals and humans is the difference in
how they respond to each other and to events/ experiences.
And that is really the function of how evolution/ changes
has created different response to experiences. We both, still,
respond quite often with the same response like the fight or flight
response both human and animals have to extreme experiences.

Now have I “solved” or settled anything, nope. Not in the least.
In fact, I may have complicated matters by pointing out the various
differences and similarities in animals and humans.

I have in fact, muddle things by not even really having a point.

and so what? Is having a point going to “solve” anything?

How would you go about answering the question I didn’t even pose?

Kropotkin

“she should have died hereafter;
there would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that
struts upon the stage and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

To those who have read my last several post and wondered.
For some will wait, most in fact, until Kropotkin reappears and answers
the questions he raises… And some, a few, will try to answer the questions
raised by putting together the clues… yes, the clues… for there
are questions asked and mysteries to solve and we have a whodunit with
clues and everything………… for we are in the crux of the problem…

We have a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

How do we solve an tale that is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

We can look for pattern and coherence and meaning even if none exists
or we can say, you say tomato and I say tomahto, or we can
hold to the mystery and proclaim it is beyond our comprehension…….

in the way we seek understanding or not, we tell the world who we are,
are we the scientist/philosopher or are we the religious or have we gotten to the point
where everything is the same anyway, why bother?

How are you going to approach what I have written?

the answer is not what I wrote, but in how you answer it.

Kropotkin

or said another way…

what is truth?

am I understood?

doubt it……

Kropotkin

As my back hurts, I called in sick today

So I’m very tired of Hegel, so to break it up, I began
another book, “Philosophy, as a way of life” by Pierre Hadot.

As I read it, I came across a very interesting idea.

“Now we have a better understanding of atopia, the strangeness of the
philosopher in the human world. One does not know how to classify him,
for he is neither sage, nor a an like other men.”

It is this atopia, that I wish to write about.

The strangeness of the philosopher in the human world! What a concept.
Indeed, why should one even think about philosophy when there is money to
make or deals to make or to influence others, so to make money……….

But he is not a sage… and the sage in the Greek world was the highest form
of what a man could be. But the philosopher is not a “regular” man either.
How do we account for such a person? What can we do with a person who has
rejected the values of their society? This smacks of the highest crime in the modern
world, disobedience. What is wrong with someone whose chief goal isn’t making money?

I have rejected modern values as being nihilistic… the pursuit of money/profits
to the negation of people and their values is nihilistic.

But I am not a sage for I haven’t listed any alternative values to
substitute for our nihilistic modern values………

Instead I have done something different. I have engaged in
getting people to see their own possibilities. I have offered up
the ancient method of philosophy which is philosophy as a way of life.
The modern world sees philosophy as a outside of yourself understanding
of abstract idea’s that don’t have any meaning in one’s direct life…

Philosophy is an abstract discourse into several area’s of inquiries
that have no impact in one’s life. One might study Epistemology,
the philosophical study of knowledge, which dominated philosophy
for two centuries, from Descartes to Kant. One might study Metaphysics,
which is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of existence, of being.
Now one might study ethics, which is the study of moral values and rules.
One can study Logic which is the study of rationality and seeks the basis
upon which rational discourse if possible. Logic has dominated the philosophical
scene for over a 100 years and has lead to no great understanding of who we are
and what are our possibilities…We have political science which is the study
our political environment and its possibilities and we have Aesthetics which is
the study of beauty and taste and understanding the criteria of standards
we use to study and understand beauty. This understanding of Aesthetics
has pretty much fallen by the wayside in favor of other idea’s, mostly
logic.

In each of these is the abstract understanding of our lives… we can study
philosophy in terms of these abstract idea’s and still be terrible human beings,
because our study of philosophy is about an intellectual understanding of philosophy,
not a emotional or philosophy as a way of life… Philosophy done intellectually,
as it has been done in the modern age, engages the brain, but not how we live or
how we should engage in our lives… You can study philosophy and not have
it engage in any way, shape or form in your life. It is just an abstract study
that means nothing in our lives. We can study philosophy and commit crimes
like murder or torture or rape because the study of philosophy is not engaged
in who we are or how we should engage with the modern world.

Philosophy is an abstract study about an abstract subject which engages
in the world abstractly. When I proclaim one should, know thyself, it is
not about an abstract engagement with who you are as a person, I am Kropotkin
and I believe in……… No, it is about knowing who you are as a person, I am
Kropotkin, and I am not taking philosophy seriously because I can read the most
profound philosophical message and then go out and engage in the world
in a most superficial manner with no thought as to what is my responsibility
to become a better person, a more philosophical person. I can read the most
profound message and then lie, steal, cheat and yes, even murder because
the philosophy I read, is read superficial and doesn’t engage me on a personal
level…I don’t need to take philosophy seriously. I can read it the modern way
which is to say, it doesn’t involve me as a way of life. Philosophy is simply
another subject to study like knowing the declaration of independence
was written in 1776. It doesn’t affect or matter in my life in any way, shape or form
that the declaration was written in 1776. It is just a date which as no
meaning in my life. It doesn’t change or impact or involve me on any other level
outside of being information that I happen to know. My actions nor my behavior
will not be any different because I happen to know the year of the declaration
of independence and the same can be said about philosophy.

Descartes created the modern notion of the body/soul problem.
what does that actually mean to us as human beings is unimportant
because it is simply a fact to know, not to engage with or to
change one’s life, but simply just to have a fact and knowing that
fact changes nothing in my life and philosophy done right should
change and move and shake one into beliefs and actions that make
a person become more engage with their life.

Philosophy should become a way of life, not just facts to know……

Kropotkin

America is guilty of a crime and you, you my friend
are also guilty of that same crime………

America and you, are guilty of dishonesty and fraud
and being sanctimonious and engaging in hypocrisy…

The actual crime being committed is bad faith……

You proclaim your allegiance to certain values,
values that represent America… or so you say……

and yet you either engage in actions that are not representative
of what it means to be an American or you commit the equally grave
crime of inaction…

Perhaps this is what is mean by “modern”…
to engage in hypocrisy by action or inaction…

The American lie that all life is sacred is put to
the test when the budget, which is a moral document,
reduces the social net that keeps people alive. When
you reduce benefits to seniors, like my mother who monthly
faces the choice of either eating or getting life saving medicine…
or the parent who is face with feeding their children or paying medical bills…

As long as we practice the American nihilism of putting money before lives,
we are engaging in hypocrisy when we proclaim ourselves a “Christian” nation
and we don’t practice what we preach…

When we seprate children from their families for the “crime” of being illegal,
that is not “Christian” nor does it fall under the declaration of independence
where

“All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable Rights, that among these rights are life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness”

We failed to practice our basic principles if we pick and choose who
we are going support or who we attack…….

Holding certain beliefs mean we must engage in those beliefs
both in practice and in theory…

I have accused you of grave crimes and most of you will simply pretend
it doesn’t mean you… because hay, we always assume ourselves to be innocent
of any crimes because we are perfect, we are certain, we are American’s…….

How can we commit a crime if we are Christians because Christians
are always saved and doesn’t being saved mean you are not longer guilty of
any crime. You can’t accuse American’s of engaging in hypocrisy because
we have the documents we profess our allegiance to, the declaration
and the constitution… we are saved because we profess our belief in
those documents… but we practice bad faith because we don’t act upon
those documents, act upon them as if they are real, functional truths,
about what is our principles………At best, we offer lip service to the American
ideals of “truth, justice and the American way of life” or the concept that
“all men are created equal”…………………….

If you are silent about the hypocrisy of America and if you are silent
about the crimes committed against American’s because they hold different
beliefs, then you are guilty……

But no, most people reading this won’t take this seriously……
but why? because we think of ourselves as incapably of
committing crimes and yet, we do so all the time……

Hypocrite… your crimes of hypocrisy and bad faith is
clear as day… and yet, you refuse to see, refuse to engage
with your bad faith… what me? Nah, I am as clear as a window
in my engagement with my principles…

liar… liar… liar…….

You can no longer sit on the sidelines and pretend you are innocent,
pure as snow…… your silence convicts you of crimes against humanity…
crimes of bad faith… crimes of complicity with the forces that negate
human beings and their values… you are guilty of practicing nihilism when
you negate human beings and their values………

Nah, I am innocent of any crimes… because I have never given it a minute
thought if I am guilty of hypocrisy and bad faith……. and that is your only
defense… I have never given it a moments thought…

don’t treat your principles and beliefs like you do philosophy…
as if it doesn’t engage with or have anything to do with yourself…
my philosophy is simply an engagement with sterile and abstract
thought that doesn’t commit me to anything in the real world…
it is simply mental masturbation… and that is how people here
on ILP engage with philosophy… not with any real intent to practice
what they engage with in their interest in philosophy……
philosophy is simply something someone does to pass the time,
not really to engage with or practice as a real thing……

bad faith is about the false engagement with philosophy with
no intention to actually change one’s beliefs or actions……

Kropotkin

If you chanted, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP…

you are not a “Christian”…for one of the guiding principles
of “Christianity” is forgiveness… and if you chant “LOCK HER UP”
you are not engaging in forgiveness or any other “Christian” practice…
You are not engage with forgiveness or love or charity… all “Christian”
principles or beliefs………….

that is what I mean by practicing what we preach……. if we preach
Christian idea’s, we must practice Christian ideals and if we preach
American ideals, then we must practice American ideals…….

and you might ask, legitimately I might add, what are “American”
ideals?..and therein lies the problem… we can say without
any fear of contradiction, that we have no idea what American
ideals really are………

so what are your values, your principles, your beliefs?

and what do you practice that is in support of your values, your principles,
your beliefs?

Kropotkin

let us rethink, reevaluate philosophy as we know it……

Let us understand philosophical works as, as spiritual documents…

So let us take Descartes method, not as an quest for knowledge but
as a spiritual document……

Descartes doesn’t unify man, he separates him into body and mind…
as a document to live by, Descartes book, “Discourse on method”
tells one how to achieve certainty, but doesn’t tell one how to
engage in life…I think therefor I am… isn’t a spiritual message,
it is a knowledge understanding…and what of Spinoza, “Ethics”…
is that a “spiritual” book, no… it too instructs us in certainty
and doesn’t tell us how to engage in life…and Hume and Kant
and Hegel, they are instruction manuals about philosophy, not
in how to live… modern philosophy of about “what to know”
and not “what to be”… What you should know is the rational,
philosophical things you should know to be a philosopher,
but the real quest of philosophy is “what to be”……
what shall I believe in and what shall I practice?

that is the true statement of philosophy…….

what is to be our engagement in our lives and in our society’s life?

In what beliefs should we have and how do we practice our beliefs is the
real engagement in philosophy………

What values are we to hold and how do we practice those values… is just
another way of saying “how do we practice our beliefs”

How is Nietzsche for example, to be read as a spiritual document?

How is Hegel or Foucault or Heidegger to be read as spiritual documents?

One might ask, what does it mean “spiritual documents”?
and by doubt, you can achieve wisdom…

Kropotkin

ask someone of the MAGA crowd about why they favor IQ45
and quite often they will say, it pisses off the “libtards”.
That is an rather astonishing statement. If you mean it,
and conservatives seem to lead with their anger and hate
and fear and greed, it means the entire concept of MAGA,
Make America Great Again, is a entirely false objective…

For the entire reason for MAGA is to make America “Great”
(and we will for the moment, not ask how America is not great or
how IQ45 particular course of actions will make America great again)

No, we will point out that if, if the entire point of the exercise, of electing
people just to piss of “libtards”, then we are not dealing with making
America great again, no, we are dealing with the right’s anger
and fear against the left. The hatred of the left is so great that
the entire point of electing IQ45 is to piss off the left, but that
has nothing to do with making America great again…

a fairly good argument can be made that it was liberalism
that made America great. For the operating ism of the United States during
the years of greatness, from 1945 to 1980, were years of liberal beliefs
and actions… the one blemish on those years, Nixon’s Watergate which of
was driven by Republicans. Starting with the election of the conservative’s
darling, Raygun, in 1980, we begin to see cracks in America’s greatness. We have
the Iran-contra debacle which was run out of the White house, the Vice-president
office, in 1986, by the recently deceased Bush Sr, a Republican.

We have in 1992 a fairly conservative democrat, Clinton, still following
a mild, tamed down Liberalism. His blemish was the Lewensky affair
(and if have to impeach him for that, then you must impeach IQ45 for
the far more serious crime of federal election laws, you cannot engage in
selective enforcement of the law, for that is not justice, which is equality,
but that is the beauty of being conservative, you just cherry pick your beliefs
and their enforcement )
but then after Clinton, we have Bush Jr. (who is looking better every day)
and his crimes were about the full frontal attack upon the rights of every single
American…and then Obama, who was a far more conservative president then
Clinton, in fact, I would say that Obama was right of center, not even center
of the profile, but right of………

But we have conservatives who will defend the election of IQ45 as
being about pissing off “libertards”…but what exactly has IQ45 done
or accomplished? You can only point to one thing, the massive
tax give away to the wealthy and corporations. That was his only
accomplishment in the last two years, even with a GOP house, a
GOP senate, a GOP supreme court… and yet, yet, we are expected
to make America great with zero accomplishments? I don’t see how
we can make America great given the complete failure of the conservative
agenda which is clear in its welfare for the rich program as its only
accomplishment. Virtually every other thing IQ45 has done has
been by executive order. He has been doing the agenda of the
wealthy and the corporations by making profits, the pursuit of
money as the primary goal of the political agenda. The pursuit
of profits, as I have noted is nihilism and if you support it,
you are also engaged in the pursuit of nihilism…
which is the negation of human beings and their values…
To support the conservative agenda is the pursuit of nihilism…
and that is the real point of my topic today… conservative values
are nihilistic values because they negate human beings and their
values… And it is quite clear if one looks at the political
actions of the GOP over the last 40 years, since 1980, that
the goal of the GOP has been the negation of human beings
and their values… for example, we have the attack upon
the freedom of women to choose what happens to their bodies,
which is under attack by the GOP… taking away freedoms
is a negation of values and that is the GOP agenda,
taking away freedoms…The GOP is trying to take
away the freedom of voting, as exhibited by voter suppression
laws in many states and taking away democracy as exhibited
in states like Wis and NC. in which the GOP is trying to
suppress democracy after losing the 2018 elections…

It is clear that the GOP is anti-democratic…
look at their actions and yet, yet, people still
still support them because it “pisses of the Libtards”

yes, support anti-democratic policies because if pisses
of liberals but perhaps should engage not in just
“pissing off libtards” but engage in some concern
about what will actually make America great again…

which is a strong dose of liberalism in public policy
and public actions… because that is how America
became great the first time… before American values was destroyed
by conservative Icons like Raygun………

Kropotkin

As I sit here, just thinking… and how many people do that?

I am thinking about my relationship with philosophy.
I have been reading philosophy for over 40 years… looking, seeking,
searching and for what? I don’t know, perhaps I may never know…

I am thinking about philosophy and using philosophy as a way of life……

But as I think about my engagement with philosophy, I remember my past
readings of philosophy… I began with the Greeks and Romans…of ancient
philosophy, the schools of philosophy… of Stoicism and Epicureanism and
Platonism and Aristotelianism……. As I read them, they did not engage with
me, with who I am…They were cold and sterile, at least to me and I
did not find a home in ancient philosophy……

So I recalled my readings in medieval philosophy… and they left me even colder…
The medieval philosophers left me cold because they engage in a topic in which
I could find no respite from life…….

I recalled my readings from the Renaissance writers and they too didn’t engage
with my heart… The Renaissance writers were about rediscovery, they were
at heart, Librarians…and that left me cold………

Next came the enlightenment writers… and for the first time, I was engaged…
They at least were about trying to find a new path, an individual path,
a path that didn’t depend upon the old authorities like the bible or Aristotle
for guidance…
But in the end, the enlightenment writers seemed, at least to me, unfinished,
incomplete…they hadn’t finished their studies and then, I reached the German
idealism that I am now engaged with… and after two months of study,
I am left cold by them………I have read them and my heart is left as cold
as my head……. I cannot engage with them as we don’t talk about the same
things………

As I have stated, I have read philosophy for over 40 years and although I haven’t
reached them in my studies yet, I have extensively read Kierkegaard and Nietzsche…
I have almost all their books and have most of what they have written…of
what I have read of “modern” philosophy, most of it leaves me cold, but not
Kierkegaard or Nietzsche…….I have “engaged” with both over many years
and I shall do so again, shortly…

What do I demand from philosophy?

I demand engagement with philosophy with both my head and my heart.
Philosophy has to engage in the past, present and the future.
For philosophy to engage with me on a personal level, as a way of life,
it must engage with me on a very personal level.

Kierkegaard once wrote this

“What I really need to get clear about is, what I must do,
not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede
every act. What matters is to find purpose, to see what it really is
that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth
which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to
live and die”

Remove the word god and this could be me………

I sit here, all alone in my condo, wife and daughter have gone to work…
I sit here with my headphones on listening to music, as I do at every chance I get…
As I listen, I attempt to hold a conversation with my soul………
In a crowded room, where every one congregates in the middle, you will
find me by the wall, headphones on, listening to music……
In fact, I suspect if you ask people to give one image of me, they
will say that I keep to myself and isolate myself, either with headphones or
with a book………And yet, and yet, I try to engage with myself in what
I am to do, even in my old age, I am still trying to find my “purpose”……

one might say, Kropotkin, you are full of contradictions… yes,
a thousand times, yes… but to say I am full of contradictions is
to say, Kropotkin… you are human… yes…

Perhaps I have confessed too much, perhaps I haven’t confessed enough…
for all of writing, all of philosophy is a confession of the soul…

my philosophers of choice is a confession……. I am a man…
the person I most resemble is Goethe… not in talent, for I will
never have that kind of talent, but in the reserve I show people
and yet my inner soul is in torment… I contain my emotionalism
under a cold exterior……. I laugh and cry and fall in love, in silence,
out of sight of other people……… I watch a movie the other day,
and I cried, but silently, inside of myself……………

How can I find a philosopher or philosophy that engages me on
several levels, mentally, emotionally, psychologically……

and so I keep looking…………

Kropotkin

As I read Hadot, I am beginning to wonder if, as he claims,
that Philosophy itself is a spiritual exercise!..…

This notion intrigues me…Is not the point of spiritual exercises to
allow one to rise to the level of becoming acceptable to god…

Let us secularize this and make the goal of philosophical spiritual
exercises to become the best possible human being one can become…
It has nothing to do with god or heaven or hell or Satan, but with
one becoming who they are………isn’t that the philosophical goal!

Not only to understand but to remake one into a better person…
As Marx once stated, it is not enough to understand the world,
one must remake it…….

so let us put this into context…

You are born into a world with already preset ism’s and ideologies
biases and prejudices and habits and superstitions…
You are indoctrinated into those ism’s and biases by family,
society, media, church, state…

You grow up in those indoctrinations… then at one point in time,
whatever age, you learn that those indoctrinations are not or do
not adequately explain what you are seeing on the ground…
they are contradictions, discrepancies, incongruities, anomalies,
that are not explained or understood by your indoctrinations…

What are you to do?

For most people, they sweep it under the rug, just write it off.
For some, the anomalies are enough to get one to reexamine,
reevaluate one’s indoctrinations… they become thinkers, philosophers…

for example, we have been lead to believe that capitalism is the
“greatest” economic theory ever, and yet, capitalism is flawed,
severely flawed to the point where it has threatened to
destroy everything it touches…including America……
The rhetoric of the greatness of capitalism is denied by the
anomalies that capitalism creates. The massive poverty it creates,
the wonton destruction of the earth to the point of massive
extinction of plants/animals/species is in progress…
we have pollution and global warming which is the “cost”
of capitalism and I as well as many others, believe to be
to high a cost to pay for the 1% to enjoy the good life…

The problem of capitalism, the system of choice, is that
there is no other choice besides capitalism…capitalism
doesn’t allow any other choices, you cannot exists within
the capitalistic system without making the pursuit of
profits/money as your primary goal and that pursuit is
what is damaging and destroying the earth and, AND
our souls…….

And this is the point of thinking about philosophy as being
a spiritual exercise… At no point must we or should we
reference god or any other metaphysical concept, we don’t have
to, we can use philosophy as a spiritual concept without any recourse
to metaphysical concepts…

Philosophy as a spiritual exercise means we use philosophy
as a tool of diagnosis of our “illness” and as a tool to
find our means to the path of recovery from our “illness”…

By philosophy, we understand the failure of capitalism
and by philosophy we then find another economic system
that is not so destructive to either our planet or to us……

We make choices based on our philosophical understanding of
what it means to hold a capitalistic system opposed to
a non-capitalistic system or some combination therein…

In other words, we shall follow the ideal of the French revolution
and instead of falling into our choices, we make our choices,
we create our future instead of just accepting whatever comes
around… we actively participate in the creation of our future,
which is quite a change of pace from what has actually occurred
over the course of human existence…We have said “god wills it”
or “historical materialism wills it” which is the same thing and
then we just simply accept without comment or reaction to this
rather passive accepting of our fate…I want an active, not reaction,
to the events and actions of our time… and the organ of our understanding
of the events and actions of our time is or will be, philosophy……

Instead of being passive in our future, we engage with and
create our future…we engage in creating our own future
and philosophy as both a branch of rational thought and
as a spiritual exercise is a means of doing this……

we become “enlighten”, to become better people, which
in turn allows us to bring about a better future…

You want a better future? you must work at it, you must
become the person you want to be and that takes
effort and work and that work is philosophy…

To become who you are……. that just doesn’t just happen
overnight………we have the template of becoming…
we just have to have the courage of practicing what we preach…

How will you become?

Kropotkin

I am listening to music, as is my wont,
and right now I am listening to a full orchestra playing
Canon in D Major by Pachelbel………and I wonder
at the genius of the person who stripped down the canon
into just piano and violin or even just the piano…

To take the richness of that piece and by stripping it down, to
give it even more beauty, more power…….

Life has an existential property that most people won’t acknowledge…
life has an existential aspect that is hard to understand, little less to explain…

Many have attributed to life the question of its being…
Is life “being” made up of suffering as the Buddha said, or is life
the philosophical preparing for death as the main thing or is life the pursuit
of “truth” whatever that is or the pursuit of wisdom or perhaps something
else all together…

The very fact that after thousand of years, we still don’t know, leads us
to wonder if the question is even the right question…

Now one particular theme of life’s being has been stated over and over,
and it goes like this………It is better not to have been born then to be born…
or as the noted philosopher C-3PO said, it is our lot to suffer…
thus meaning it is better not to have been born at all…

And after 40 years of thinking about this point, I still can’t tell………

In reading Plato’s apology, at the end where Socrates says to Critio,

“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please don’t forget to pay the debt”

And Asclepius was the god of medicine and thus Socrates was asking
Crito to pay the debt for being healed from some illness……

Now a rather common interpretation is that Socrates was implying
that life is an illness and death is some sort of cure and he wanted
to thank Asclepius for being “cured” with his death…

That being was an illness and the only cure was death………

and it certainly does seem sometimes that we suffer and that
our time on earth is full of pain and misery and horror and all the
other words to describe our days on earth……

I cannot deny that we suffer and that I personally have suffered…
I was born handicap and have had my fair share of suffering
and misery……… and the existential question is rather simple,
does our life, such as it is, worth all that pain and suffering and misery?

One can see the point of those who claim that it is better not to have been
born then to be born… and one can see the point of life is to prepare for
the inevitable death that is sure to come… and death with dignity is simply
a false idea… there is no death with dignity, in the end, we drool on ourselves
and then unload a pile of shit… and it is over… our last act of being human
is dropping a load of shit… and that seems to me to be very appropriate
final act of life…

and in all of this sound and fury, signifying nothing, what can we find that
will make all this effort worth our while?

We can claim that life is worth the effort because of friends, family, country,
faith, fame, materialism, or any number of combinations of those factors that
we have listed or might list………

And each of these factors has had their defenders, faith and country and
nationalism or some very narrow factors like being white or being a man…

What has given our life meaning and purpose has been fought over
since time began and that battle surely will not end because of anything
I have written…

If life is not an illness that only ends with the cure of death, then
what is this thing we call life?

Kropotkin

We hear of philosophy and religion whose goal is to create
peace of mind and serenity and tranquility……… especially
in philosophy……… we are suppose to use philosophy to gain
that serenity and peace of mind……. in the same way that
the Buddha tried to create a peace of mind by making people
aware of their desires which is the cause of suffering…
we suffer because we cannot achieve what our desires demand…
by removing desires, we no longer chase after the empty
and unfulfilling objects of our desires………and that eliminates
suffering…

Or said another way, we are addicted to our various objects of
desire, we are addicted to our materalism, we are addicted to
our need for more and more and more in our life…

to achieve peace, we must eliminate the desire for those
things like materialism and sex and drink and food and fame and money,
that we pursue and crave…

It is kinda an all or nothing thing… this demand for peace and serenity…
to achieve it, you must give up all you desire…then, then you can
achieve tranquillity and serenity…

But I offer up a different solution… We can say yes to materialism
and to lust and to greed and to desire… if, if we find a balance in
our lives… a place where we can naturally act upon our desires without
turning that desire into suffering by having balance in our lives…
that there is a place for desire cannot be doubted, but we also must
be able to say no…….when the time is right…… sometimes desire is
right and appropriate and sometimes it is not………

to find our balance we must become aware of who we are and
our surroundings… The very act of desire is not by itself bad or
evil, it is in how we desire that become the question… does
that desire take over our actions and thoughts? Does achieving
that desire become the only goal? then desire has become bad,
unwanted…… but I desire and you desire and it is in the way
we respond to our desire that make it either right or wrong…….

I desire understanding, knowledge and in so desiring, even
though money is rather tight right now, I still am buying books
on philosophy and history and what it means to be “modern”…
my desires has influenced my shopping habits but it hasn’t overwhelmed
me, it hasn’t caused me to spend our food money on books…… I am
still in balanced with regards to my buying books……
gaining knowledge, understanding is a priority for me, I desire it,
but I still try to keep balance in my life……… My desire hasn’t
taken over my life…….I can say yes to buying books as long as
I understand, recognize that I cannot buy as many books as I so desire,
I must limit my book buying to what we can afford… I have balanced
my desire for knowledge with the realities of my life…I have said yes…
in a practical and balanced fashion…………

I can achieve peace of mind within the boundaries of what I desire
and what I do as a father, husband, breadwinner…………

My desires are simply one aspect of my life, the desires have
a set and organized place in my life and I can say yes, as long
as I practice moderation in those desires…….I have peace of mind,
serenity, tranquility because my desires are part of, part of my
existence, not desires denied and not the totality of my existence, just part of…
and that part is practiced in moderation…

We can achieve our desires without causing suffering if we
engage with our desires with moderation and balance…

Kropotkin

This question of the human existence,
the human condition is puzzling…

In reading the ancients, the ancient schools of philosophy,
The Platonist, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean and Skeptic…
one see’s that they each agree in that we are too attached
to things, either physical or emotional… we are too attached/addicted
to things like TV’s, Cars, the so called “finer things in life” and we are
too attached/addicted to such ephemeral things like fame, money, titles…
things that are short lived, transient… things that come and go like a fart in
the wind…

Read the Buddha and his message was exactly the same…
and by being attached to such transient things, we set ourselves
up for the suffering we see in the world…

Read Jesus and he says the same thing… He suggests (as does the Buddha)
that we must reject the material world in favor of something more substantial,
something that is of value not just today, but for all the days to come…

The two differ on the question of what is the thing of value, the Buddha
suggest that we focus on the present, right now and Jesus suggests
that we focus on the coming of the lord which will take us to heaven
if, if we believe in him… this belief that the answer lies in the future for
Jesus and the answer for the Buddha is today, right now… and that is the main
difference between them…

But both believe that the answer lies in improving ourselves…
one for the trip to heaven and one to improve man’s soul…
The answer for Jesus is a personal, individual matter…
and that is the failure of Christianity… its focus on the
one, the individual instead of the focus on what the one
can do to improve society which is by becoming a better person…

Jesus doesn’t say anything about how to improve society, the whole,
whereas the Buddha does and that makes the Buddha’s message far
greater and more important……….it is not enough to ensure our
own passage to heaven, we must be engage in all mankind, in fact,
all life…We engage in Jesus message of improving ourselves to go to heaven,
but the reality is we must engage in improving ourselves to aid society, to
improve society… to make the world a better place to live…
that is the reason for our engagement with improving ourselves…
not to selfishly go to heaven, but to help others… personally, I would refuse
to go to heaven if others can not go to heaven, it must be an all
or nothing for me… if all cannot get to heaven, I won’t go…although to be
honest, given my track record, my chances for heaven is a bit on the slim side…
but you get the point……… it is not enough to ensure ourselves personally, of
salvation, we must engage with others so they reach salvation…it is more
important that they reach salvation then if I reach salvation………

and one possible way of achieving salvation is by refusing to engage
in the modern fixation of materialism…our attachment to things, material
and immaterial…we already know the answer to how to improve ourselves,
we have heard this message all our lives… we have been indoctrinated with
the words of Jesus our whole live and yet, yet we continue to ignore that
fundamental message that not only Jesus gave us but the schools of
ancient philosophy and the Buddha gave us……….that we must free
ourselves of attachment to values that have no real meaning……
materialism as a value is worthless, addiction to such transitory things
as fame, money, goods, respect are values not worth having because
they don’t answer the fundamental needs of the human being……
they answer the empty needs of a hungry man who would eat anything
in some attempt to fill his empty stomach… the hungry man would eat
anything if hungry enough and we are like that hungry man…
we are starved and we will eat any values that seems to appease
that hunger…… but the values offered by modern society are empty
calories… may has well be eating the cardboard those values came in,
which is just as filling as the modern values we are given……

In rejecting those empty calories, we call modern values,
we then are faced with the choice of what values are not
empty calories…… cardboard values……….

among those empty values, the empty calories is any possibility
of future salvation and any possibility of replenishing our souls
with the empty calories of fame, money, materialism, respect,
the modern nihilism of the pursuit of profits,
those are empty values, empty calories……

it is the values we engage with, that make life worth living…
the positive values of love, peace, charity, hope, honesty,
it is these values given in the present that offer us any hope
of filling our souls, of enriching our souls with values that
feed our soul…….

we can no longer believe that the empty promise of
modern values, nihilistic values can feed our souls……… only
positive values can offer us any hope of not starving to death in
this nihilistic world………

we must escape the transient world of modern values
and begin to reach for the more lasting and edible values of
the positive values that we need…love, peace, charity…….

Kropotkin

The dichotomy of our lives is easily understood…
good vs evil, mind vs body, real vs imaginary, male vs female…
that list can be extended……………….

We have another dichotomy that has been plaguing human beings
since time began…… that of the individual vs the collective………

the one, the individual and the many, the collective…….

Depending on the civilization, the emphasis has been either the
one or the many…Greece fell in part because of its emphasis
on the one, the individual…and Greece fell to Rome who emphasized
the many, the group……

We have had many champions of the one over the many…
The Greek play “Antigone” is one such play…
Of course in modern times we have Kierkegaard and Ibsen
and Nietzsche……….

and the list of those who have championed the many over the one is
a long and lengthy list…from the declaration of independence
to Marx to the French revolution……

Religious founders tend to favor individuals, Jesus and Mohammed and the Buddha
speak to the needs of the individual, not the collective…

But Confucius speaks to the many, the collective…

It has been an ongoing question of the one vs the many…
It even has been referenced in movies like the Star Trek movies…….

“the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one”

America has been the home of the individual, the philosophy
of the “rugged individualism” has been present in all of American
history… and even today, conservatives has advocated the one
over the many… the individual over the collective…

whereas liberals argue for the many over the one…….
the group over the individual…….

and who is right?

Well that depends upon when we are talking about?

For example, when the America was young and there was
a lot of land to be colonized, it was the movement of
the single person, the one that moved west and colonized the west…

But today, this philosophy of the “individual” no longer can
work…… We no longer have the time or space to allow individual
actions that were the norm a century ago………The larger and more
complex a system is, the less able it is to enable a single individual action,
as we grow larger and more complex, we cannot have random, single individual
actions within that system…… everyone has to move in the same direction
in a large complex system or the system gets bogged down……

Think of the solar system, it works as long as all the moving parts
are moving the same way in a circle, if Mars were to escape its orbit
and wander freely across the solar system, massive chaos would
occur in our solar system… large and complex systems must have
all the parts going in the right direction or the system risks failure,
risk coming apart……

and that is true of our very complex, moving system we call the modern world……
everyone has to be moving the right direction or the system risks failure…

there is certainly a time and place for individualism and a time and place
for collectivism and today, in the here and now, the system requires,
demands that we engage in the system as a collective because of
our large and complex system that we have in place………random actions
of the individual threatens the complexity of our modern system which
demands that we all play our role in the specific way we are supposed to…

but that conflicts with the goal and aspirations of the individual…
me included… for I too chafe under the modern world need for collective
action…for I stand with the individual, but I also recognize the need for
collective action… how do I successfully integrate the individual needs with
the society, collective needs?

and that becomes the question of the day…….we must allow the individual
the scope and freedom to become who they are and yet we must protect
the integrity of the group, the collective, society……

This clash between the individual and the group has been the basis
of much of human history, see the clash between Socrates and Athens,
where the individual lost and that individual had to commit suicide,
Socrates drank the hemlock and society was saved or was it?

We have Jesus’s clash with the state and we have
Spinoza clash with the Jews…

History is replete with examples of the ongoing clash
between the individual and the state/collective……….

My natural instinct is with the individual, recall I was an anarchist
for many years… and yet, yet I can see the need for collective
actions and responsibility…hence the communist part of me…

Within my soul lies the battle, the ago old battle between the needs
of the individual and the needs of the collective/state…

and we can see this ago old battle being fought out today between our society
and the individuals within that society…

I wish I had some answers, but I don’t… I do not see any answers between
the needs of the one and the needs of the society/collective…

Kropotkin

I have inside of my mind, many idea’s and thoughts and images
and I am trying to make sense of all of it… trying to put together
the puzzle as it were… without any sense of what the overall image
should look like or what it might look like…….

I was born into the world… just as you were………
we are born naked and dependent…
the “world” that is made up of family, friends, media,
church, state… the “world” spends the next 20 years indoctrinating us with
the myths, biases, prejudices, habits, ism’s, superstitions of that “world”…

But what exactly are those indoctrinations? one way to think of those
indoctrinations is that they are the prism, the values through which we view
the “world”… In other words, the indoctrinations are the perceptions through
which we view the “world”. We are taught, indoctrinated with the viewpoint
that all men are evil, conservative viewpoint, and then we perceive the world
through that lens of all men are evil. The indoctrinations are a method of
perceiving, seeing, the world……. we use those indoctrinations as a means
of seeing… the Greeks viewed wisdom as a means of seeing… wisdom was
connected with sight, the act of seeing……. so we can think about
those indoctrinations as a means of how we see the “world”.

When we begin the process of knowing thyself, it comes about because
we begin to see ourselves differently then we earlier saw ourselves…
in other words, the image we have of ourselves that is dominated by
the indoctrinations of our childhood, change because of life’s experiences…
as we grow older and “wiser” we see ourselves in different terms then
the indoctrinations of our childhood…
again focus on this act of sight, seeing, vision, perception……

we experience… and in that experience we see things differently…
for example, the first time we fall in love… that experience
changes how we see the word love… for we have heard of love all our lives
but once we fall in love, we see what love really is and that changes
our perception of the world…this new found understanding comes from
a new perception of “reality”, a new vision of experiences, we experience
love for the first time and it changes us, for many of us, it radically changes us…
and that change is the act of changing perceptions…

so it is important to think about change as changing perceptions,
we view things differently and in that difference we become something
else………

In high school or shortly thereafter, I tried reading “Zen and the art of
motorcycle maintenance” The book had just been published and I was
curious… I didn’t get through the book because my perceptions wasn’t
ready, I wasn’t ready to read the book… it was gobblygook for me…

at some point in the 1980’s, I tried again, I got through it this time
and it seem to me to be profound and deep and I didn’t understand
its greatness…my perception had change about the book,
the book itself hadn’t change, I had change since the last time
I read it…

at some point in the 1990’s, I read it again…and I was disappointed
because it seem shallow and incomplete, unnecessary……
the book still hadn’t change, but I had dramatically changed
with each passing decade… by the 90’s, I had read a lot
of philosophy and I have had a lot of life experiences…
the book hadn’t change but I had change…

now if I were to read it again, my understanding
of the book would once again be dramatically different.
my perception, my seeing the book would be very different.
In the 40 years since I have first read the book, I have become, I am
a completely different person…… I am now old… where I am
in my place in life changes how I read and/or understand idea’s,
books, movies, people……. I see things differently because I
am different…….

it all becomes a question of our perception of events, experiences,
people……… it actually has nothing to do with the actual event,
experience or the person in question, it has everything to do with
how we see, how we perceive these things……

I see IQ45 as a village idiot and another person might see Jesus
walking on water and we might see the exact same event or
experience… and yet we perceive events and experiences far
differently…

the question of life is not in the event or experiences we have
but in how we see them or how we perceive them…
it is in our perceptions of things that matter, not in the things
themselves.

In this regard, Kant was right… it is in our perceptions that
make all the difference in the world, not in the experiences
themselves………

So how do you perceive the world?

and that answers everything about who you are and
what it means to be human to you………

Kropotkin