a new understanding of today, time and space.

K: here is the question of the story/narrative plays into it…
The narrative is that commununism failed and yet, the fact is
that Soviet Communism lasted only slightly less then Athenian
democracy. The narrative however is that Athenian democracy
was successful and the Soviet Communism wasn’t succeful…
but upon what grounds are you going to make that argument?

daughter and wife call my name, back later…

Kropotkin
[/quote]
That’s a tough one .
But, here is a go at it:

Athenian democracy was in tune with Plato’s republic, before the sophists grabbed the spotlight.

The foundations did not enter the realm of doubt as we moderns had to learn the hard way with Descartes.
Their doubt was not really posed in the either/or method, they could listen to both , conflict less, their logic did not yet cause civil disobedience and the such, because they still believed in the good of having wisdom.

Then the lights went out and then the darkness of the middle ages were scripted by monks who revised the concept of guilt into their alchemycal formulations .

The doubt became a conflation between the ideal and the real situation, forming a.conundrum, geared for gathering the flock of believers.

The late middle ages and the startup of enlightenment created a huge conflict, socially, starting with the Reformation and the American/French revolutions, and the pover of the new fkind masses had to be eventually controlled.

The either/or problem resurfaced with a.vengeance, and Hegel tried to infuse it with a presumed absolute idealism, while Kant tried to solve the puzzle, finally Marx merely changed the same alchemical formula by renaming spirit by magical conversion into spiritual materialism, which worked for a while, until people began to compare that with other ideologies which promised AND delivered more subter fuses and ‘freedoms’.

Both failing, (falling) the spiritual idea behind the magic of free enterprise, based on the wisdom guiding the efforts of the ‘founding fathers’ makes more sense.then the idea of social raising and responsibility taken by The State. ( The low wages in the Soviet Union made the Father State a pitiable comparative model to Uncle Sam, who was wise and generous beyond comprehension.

A poor free man within a wealthy society is better off then a controlled man , especially where, the societal dictator cam never find the graft, and they again compared it with the wise and compassionate Uncle Sam.

The same Uncle Sam who is complicit in The Revolution, with the Geek Wisdom implicit and the spotless moral compass represented in The Statue of Liberty.

The great doubt of then Great Divide, has not yet, ideologically touched our pristine shores yet, with most of is living in the promise of.Levittown.

K: here is the question of the story/narrative plays into it…
The narrative is that commununism failed and yet, the fact is
that Soviet Communism lasted only slightly less then Athenian
democracy. The narrative however is that Athenian democracy
was successful and the Soviet Communism wasn’t succeful…
but upon what grounds are you going to make that argument?

daughter and wife call my name, back later…

Apparently, my wife’s car was broken into and the window was broken…
We had to deal with that…and now I am back…

When last seen, I was comparing Athens to the Soviet Union…
the length of time for the two is similar, roughly 80 years…
or basically for Athens, the length of Socrates lifetime…

and yet, Athens is considered one of the great success stories
and the Soviet Union which existed roughly the same time length
is not… but why? I have suggested that the reason is the
story or narrative for each one is different…

Like Athens, the Soviet Union had a great empire…
and the ideology of both dominated the known world…

If we consider power as the connection between Athens
and the Soviet Union, then both had a great deal of
power, both internally and externally……

The vision created by both excited the world and many people
came from around the world to be a part of both their vision……

So what is the difference? The narrative of both is different……

For example, one of the great insults of modern America is calling
someone a “communist” and yet, people can’t correctly identify
what a “communist” actually is… they don’t know and they are simply
repeating the childish insults they have heard……

so what we must be aware of is, that the narrative we repeat is often
just a replay of other stories or narratives we have heard…
It may not be the truth because stories/narratives are always
about the truth. The stories we hear are often meant to be
directive narratives, a directive narrative is a story/narrative which
is meant to direct the listener to adapt or accept a certain point
of view…that is the point of the insult “communist”… it is meant
to direct the listener to adapt a certain point of view which is
negative against the person being accused of being a “communist”…

It is all about the perception that is being created… not the reality,
but the perception, the viewpoint that is being created by such
negative language as Hippy, communist, socialist, undemocratic,
against people……

If you listen to someone being called a “Communist” and you
have a negative connotation toward that person, then
you have been brain washed… you have allowed the
narrative or story to influence your perception of someone…
a narrative or story that is meant to influence your perception
negatively about someone. That is the point of the negative
narrative or story about the Soviet Union… it is meant to
influence you into a negative perception of communism…

but what is the truth? you have to research and understand what has
happened. As I have noted before, the Soviet Union was not
a communist society… it was a dictatorship posing as a
economic system……… for communism is an economic system,
not a political system and that is where the failure occurred……
they stretch the economic into a political and it failed for that reason…

Marxism as understood by Marx has never been tried… the Soviet Union
and China and all the other “communist” society, were actually
dictatorship posing as an economic system………

But that is not the story or narrative we hear today…
and that false story or narrative is driven by those
who benefit from the false story or narrative and
and that is the 1% of American society……

it is in their best interest to negate any other economic system
or political system because the 1% dominate our current system
and for them, they want complete control and one way to do
that is to create a narrative or story that negates other possibilities
so that we have only one choice and that choice is capitalism/democracy…

but the problem with that is the entire selling point of capitalism/democracy
is that we have choices but our choices is limited to the cars we buy
or the cereal we purchase, but we have no choice in our systems,
either economically or politically… and thus the system of choice has
no choice when it is about the overall system…………

you have to pay attention to the story or the narrative that is offered,
because quite often the story or narrative is meant to influence you into
a negative belief about something or someone……
the stories or the narrative is quite often is propaganda and that
is what we see today, the narrative of the Soviet Union is
nothing more then Propaganda meant to influence you…….
it was not an economic system but a political system and a
dictatorship at that, but the Soviet Union had nothing to do with
Marx’s vision of how we should exist and how we should spend our time…

Kropotkin

“and yet, Athens is considered one of the great success stories
and the Soviet Union which existed roughly the same time length”

Yes, Athens exists merely 50 times as long as the USSR did.

K: it wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little history…….The Athens that was
the Athens of fame, lasted from roughly 480 BC to 404 BC…The Athens
afterward until the Romans conquered it, was a non factor in
philosophical, social, military history… Hellenism which was
the ism that Alexander the Great carried all over the world, that
was based in both Greece and the Mediterranean world, not just Athens…

Great philosophical schools were established in several cities
around the mediterrianean and Alexanderia was the great
city of knowledge during Hellenism…but Athens was just
another city living off its previous fame, but it had nothing
to offer unlike the time period I am speaking of…

Kropotkin

Americans and their ideas about Europe.
You people really need an education system.

Skepticism: a skeptical attitude; doubt to the truth
of something

2. Philosophy: the theory that certain knowledge is impossible…

The question of Skepticism has been that Skepticism leads one
to nihilism or even worse, Atheism. Being an atheist means
one is lead away from the “truth” of god, with god as being
the definition of truth…

but why this fear of Nihlism? The last century and half has
been a nihilistic age and no one else seems to notice or care…

But can we connect the rise of Skeptism, the scientific age
with the 20th century nihilism? I have stated more then once
that I believe that the rise of the industrial revolution is
a greater cause for our age nihilism then the rise of science…

If Skeptism is the illness, the sickness unto death, then
what might be the cure of this illness?

We must continue to doubt for the path to wisdom lies
along the path of doubt, so what amount of doubt is acceptable
and what isn’t? It seems to me that as in all things, moderation is
the answer to our question of doubt…

I am Skeptical about god and capitalism and modernity,
but must I be so immersed in doubt that I cannot exists in
the modern world of god of capitalism and of modernity?

I am an atheist and yet that fact doesn’t prevent me from
acting and being in the world… we can engage in doubt,
Skepticism and still be able to function in the world…
we can still go to work and pay our taxes and riding the roller coaster at
Disneyland…our doubt, our skepticism must not prevent us from
engagement with the world…… we can doubt and still engage……

as with everything, it becomes a question of our overcoming…
we can overcome, even skepticism and nihilism…… if, if we
remember that it is our engagement in the world that matters,
the skepticism and doubt only provide us with a guide, a map
to the world, doubt isn’t a absolute road to follow, but more of
a guide to allow us to understand the world and ourselves better……

Kropotkin

K: and yet, you still haven’t proven your point or disputed my point…

Kropotkin

I find it confusing that I can “see” or understand
questions that other people can’t even see is a problem…

I find existence itself to be a question, and yet I don’t see
other people thinking it so……

and I don’t understand how people cannot see existence as
a question……. How are we to live? In what should we believe in?
What values are values worth having? and I don’t see any concern
by anybody else as to what I see as vital concerns………

If existence is the question, then what might the answer be?

As I prepare to go to work on one of the busiest days of the year
and I see people running around for no real apparent reason,
spending money on other people with gifts and to show what?
it really is a reflection on those people trying to find the “perfect” gift…
What does all this materialism meant to do? and what does it really do?

existence is the question but where does one go to find the answer?

I have questions without any answers…….

Why don’t people see how the religion of materialism is
negating their lives… and their values

I don’t know how people cannot see the nihilism of our modern age
which is destroying their lives and the human values of love, peace,
hope, charity, justice………….

I offer this as my Christmas message…

This materialism by which we live our lives is also the mechanism
that is destroying our lives and our values……….

is anybody out there? does anybody care?
do you see what I see?

the beginning of finding a solution to any problem is recognition that
a problem exists and today we don’t have any sort of recognition that
an existential problem exists with the very system in which we have
engaged with…we don’t see the nihilism that is destroy who we are
and what is possible…

and so I go to work, and I wonder as I work in the very heart
of our materialism………

Kropotkin

I have often wrote about this question of who we are and what
are our possibilities…but I haven’t address a major point of
being human……

The other day I was at work and a couple I had known for a long while
came in and while speaking to them, I managed to completely and totally
insult them. It was a horrifying experience that should shame and
embarrass my family for generations to come, 6 or 7 generations at least…

Since then, I have wondered about the house beating myself up over this
completely idiotic and incredibly stupid thing I said…My wife has notice
and has commented on how I am talking to myself more these days…
well yeah, I made a complete and total ass out of myself in front of
multiple people and this very nice couple who didn’t deserve any of it…

The question is not what happens when we make a total ass out of ourselves
but the question becomes, what is next? How do I mentally recover from
this… we humans, this is part of being human… making complete and total
asses ourselves… the difference between me and most people is, I do it on a
regular basis…

So they say that confession is good for the soul and I can see how confessing the
idiotic words of mine would be good for the soul, but I doubt this couple
will ever talk to me again and frankly I don’t think they will or should for that
matter………

So I confess my sins but it is not enough to confess one’s soul, we must learn
from our actions…we must come with our flaws to some new
understanding of who we are… and we are flawed creatures…

and that too is part of being human… making a complete and total
ass out of yourself is part of being human…but how do we jib this
with how philosophy has been done for 2500 years? Philosophers
don’t talk about what it really means to be human, they ask themselves
what is the extent of knowledge or how can we deconstruct this sentence
or paragraph and while that may be interesting, it doesn’t speak to the
real question of being human, how we fuck up and how we regret our
fuck up and how do we recover from our fuck up’s………… that is truly
our human mission…… it isn’t just about the pursuit of “life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” that drives us, but the redemption from being
flawed human beings…This is a rather strong selling point of religion and
it addresses this point beautifully…we confess our sins and then
we are forgiven by the point man for the lord… and yet, we are still
flawed beings… being forgiven isn’t enough for us…… we must find our
way to become better human beings………

we confess our sins… and we can think of other examples of
where confession does the soul good… the entire basis of Freud
“talking cure” is to confess to the psychoanalyst……… relieve
your burdens in the “modern” way… without all that religious context…….

we also have the confessions of philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,
who also have confess their sins, their “modern” sins to us…….

So how do we transmute our sins, our making complete asses out of
ourselves into an understanding of who we are and what are out possibilities?

How do we overcome ourselves? By accepting or by knowing we will
continue to make asses out of ourselves, for that is being human…

we cannot change that but we can become more forgiving of our innate
instinct to fuck up…….

in the end, all this is to somehow rationalize or relieve myself of
my burden, my weight of asshood from my soul…………

but the real trick is more then just relieving my burden of idiocy from
my soul, I must somehow turn this into something more then feeling
the burden on my soul… I must engage with this in some positive manner…
in some manner that will allow me to come out of this a better person,
a more compassionate person, a person that doesn’t routinely makes
an ass out of myself………….

we must get more from philosophy then the limits of knowledge or
an understanding of the original/first cause of the universe or
how we must read text… philosophy must dare to tread where
psychology now reigns supreme……. for the answer lies in some
fashion where philosophy and psychology combine into a new
understanding of what it means to be human…….it is not enough to
wonder what are the limits of knowledge when we could be asking ourselves
as to why it is important to understand what are the limits to knowledge?

The quest to understand ourselves is as much psychology as it is philosophy……
for we are not just about the limits of rationality that makes us human but
about the parts of us that make asses out of ourselves on a daily basis………

the truth is we can never find out who we truly are unless we engage
in philosophical psychology…… we must understand who we are in terms
of the rational and in terms of the emotional………. we must unite our
search for what it means to be human with a new emphasis on both
our rational and our emotional side……………

as for me, the burden on my soul is rather large and I hope to someday,
find out why, why must I make an ass out of myself?

this is just another step along my path to discover my own
humanness within me……… to become human, more fully human
is to accept this need for asshood that I quite often undertake…

My name is Kropotkin and I can be an ass… it doesn’t make it right,
just understandable………and part of being human is understanding that
I can be an ass as well as loving or kind or nice or………

Kropotkin

Now I can report I feel calmer because I have confessed…one of
the professed goals of philosophy is to calm the mind, sooth the soul,
and I have achieved this but I didn’t achieve my state of calmness
by philosophical means, I did so by psychological means…
and it certainly isn’t an absolute calmness that exists but a degree
of calmness…

psychology is the understanding of thought, feelings,
and behavior of human beings…whereas philosophy
deals with the thought aspect of being human and
psychology deals with feelings and behavoir … but
philosophy doesn’t deal with feelings or behavior…
so in a real sense, psychology deals with a greater
aspect of being human then philosophy does…

psychology attempts to proclaim itself a “science” whereas
philosophy has given up trying to make itself a science…
it is simply a academic discipline and nothing more…

there are many claims that “big brother” brainwashes us into
certain beliefs… now that may be true but that suggest that we
know ourselves in a psychology sense better then we know ourselves
in a philosophical sense… we have a better sense of who we are, as humans,
by psychology then by any other aspect………

to become human, fully human requires both philosophy and psychology…
for psychology can tell us the how and philosophy can tell us the why…
for psychology can never give us the why… why is it important or to what
end does become emotionally and psychologically healthy mean to us?

Psychology can aspire to making people mentally or psychologically healthy
but then what is that point? One might claim to be mentally or emotionally
healthy allows people to become “productive” members of society…
but I ask as psychology cannot ask, what is the point of being a “productive”
member of society? Is that even goal we should try for? or should we engage
in humanistic education and not just education to train people to have jobs…
as our education system is now…………as for a humanistic education, that
means education is not to train people for jobs or to have job skills but
to better understand what it means to be human and what it takes to
become a better human being? For psychology is to make a person
mentally and/or emotionally healthy, but to what end are we becoming
mentally or emotionally healthy? I would submit that our modern age
of nihilism is creating several generations of people who are alienated
and disconnected from ourselves due to the nihilism of a modern age
which negates human beings and their values for profits/money……

It is one of my contention that psychology can only have arisen in our modern
age because the very nihilism has created our modern age also created
mental and psychology disfunction that exists today…

we remove the system of nihilism that created our modern age we also
remove the severe trauma and psychological stress that has afflicted our age…

trauma and stress that is the cause of the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the cold war and all the Strum and Drang of the last 118 years……

We must merge philosophy and psychology into one discipline because
each discipline affects the other and each runs into the other in numerous
ways, too many ways to count……….

Kropotkin

we attempt to achieve peace of mind, calmness of soul, understanding
of purpose… and are all of these are philosophical goals or are they
psychological goals? Yes………the ancients thought that philosophy
goal was to supply a human being with the necessary understanding
that allow them to face death with dignity and composure……
is that goal of facing death with dignity and composure a philosophical
endeavor or a psychological endeavor?

psychology has yet to do what philosophy has done which is engage
in itself historical… Hegel taught us to understand philosophy
historical… philosophy has a past, present and future……
Philosophy isn’t what Plato had us think which is philosophy is
a static picture in time for Plato and Aristotle and Descartes and Kant…
But Hegel, Hegel thought about concept through time… It has been said
that Hegel “Phenomenology” is a book about freedom, as a concept,
as it has gone through time……… Philosophy is no longer about static concepts
that don’t change through time……… concepts and idea’s and theories are not
static, unchanging idea’s through time…… they have a history, a past, present
and future…and does psychology also exist in time? as past, present and future?
and that will be the big change in psychology…… evolutionary psychology is
the start of making psychology historical…… was Socrates a “normal” person?
all indications suggest that by currents standards, he wasn’t a normal person?
but does, somehow, the feelings and behavior of people change over time given
the different experiences of people? and what does psychology make of
the experiences that have fascinated philosophers since Locke and Hobbes?
Psychology can react after the fact in regards to an experience, such as
a traumatic or stressful experience such as a car accident or a rape or
even day to day stressful conditions of living and working in a nihilistic
country…how can psychology prepare us to encounter these conditions
that philosophers have been working on since the inception of philosophy…
for example ancient philosophers like the Stoics worked on keeping one’s
composure in the face of traumatic incidents…….

can psychology also begin to prepare us for daily living with stress
and trauma? is not philosophy and psychology working toward the exact
same thing but from different angles, philosophy is working on preventive
damage from experiences and psychology is working on recovering from experiences.

how are we to approach life? is it via philosophy or via psychology?

Kropotkin

read as much philosophy as I do and one thing become evident,
that self understanding is one of the key points of philosophy…
and it is one of the key points of psychology………….

when I self-diagnose myself, am I conducting philosophy or
am I conducting psychology?

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
read as much philosophy as I do and one thing become evident,
that self understanding is one of the key points of philosophy…
and it is one of the key points of psychology………….

when I self-diagnose myself, am I conducting philosophy or
am I conducting psychology?

K: now some my wonder about my term “self-diagnose”, what exactly
am I saying?

If I ask myself, am I alienated from or am I disassociate from myself and/or
my society? is that philosophy or is that psychology? and the solution?
is the solution philosophy or is it psychology?

If I find that my alienation from my society is because it has
chosen to engage in the pursuit of profit/money over me and
my values? then what is my solution? and is my solution to be
considered psychology or is my solution considered philosophy?

Depending on the solution… if I am engaging in therapy and
taking drugs, then the solution is psychology and not very
productive in finding a solution that really answers the question or
if I engage in overthrowing the system, I am engaging in a real solution
to the question of my alienaton from myself or my society…

but in my engagment in overthrowing the society, I am not
being a very productive member of society which is a key critria
of being a citizen in modern society…to threaten a system
like our economic system is to threaten the stablity of society
and I can be considered to be insane or demented while all I am doing is
is trying to discovering a “cure” for my alienation and dissociation from
myself and the society…

some “cures” are acceptable and some are not……….

what “cure” do you find acceptable?

Kropotkin

That which drives us………

we have many drivers of behavior… we have (and in no particular order)
lust, hate, fear, love, anger, greed, duty, honor, passion, biological needs…
and beyond those individual needs, we have social, group needs…
the need to fit in, the need to be part of the group, which is part of our social needs…

now these social needs and our personal needs often match up, we need to feel love
and being part of a group can allow us that…….

sometimes our social group and our personal needs don’t match up……
for years, I was a committed pacifist and I wasn’t going to fight, commit
acts of violence for me or for my social group… so if I had been drafted,
I would not have served regardless of how much “benefit” I might have received
from serving…my own personal convictions prevented me from engaging
in actions that would have benefited my group…

we have heard of other drivers of actions or behavior…
the human need for pleasure or the pursuit of “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” or the pursuit of knowledge or the avoiding
pain or to escape suffering………there are many different drivers of
actions or motivations to act that we humans have………

Now these motivations are sometimes driven by physical needs,
love is just as much a physical need as it is a psychological need,
and much of our actions and behavior is fueled by needs of
food, water, clothing, shelter, physical needs……

but much of our actions and behavior is driven by mental,
emotional and psychological needs………we must account
for our psychology needs as much as our physical needs…

in other words, our psychological needs drive our behavior as much
as our physical needs…………we cannot construct a honest appraisal
of what a human being is unless we address the psychological side
of who we are……….it is these inner needs that we exist in
that makes an understanding of who we are so difficult…….

and it is the experiences we have that, in large part, shape
who we are… but each experience understanding is shape by
the very tools we bring into each experience… Think garbage in,
garbage out………if the information we receive is garbage, then
all we have to put out is garbage……….but part of the philosophical
experience is to shape our inner self to be better able to internally
understand experiences, be it garbage or not… Think the Stoics…
by training and discipline, we can shape the way we react to experiences
and thus not be affected by such experiences… be it good experience
or be it bad experiences………philosophy has gone ahead and tried to
train people to better handle the experiences of life… it is time that
psychology becomes more pro-active and get people the tools to
better confront or explain the experiences we human beings
face in our lives…….

we don’t need classes on how psychology works, we needs classes
on how psychology prepares us for the experiences of life…
how do we cope when bad things happen, how do we cope when life happens,
how do we cope when good things happen……… psychology is too static in
allowing people to become prepared to undertake this emotional/psychology minefield
of life……. we spend far too much of our education training people for jobs or careers
instead of training people to become prepared for life and its consequences…….

what does it mean to be human instead of what jobs skills can we train you for…
that is the point of education, to train human beings, not workers………
and psychology can be an essential aspect of our training human beings…
one might argue that psychology is much to confusing to people and it
will cause harm to them if they actually understood themselves……
that is the point of psychology… to get people to understand themselves
regardless of any confusion it may cause………… for it is better in the long run to
be able to understand yourself then to have a job skill or to be confused about
your self………….

we must begin to understand what drives us into actions and behavior…
and that is the point of psychology… to understand what drives us………
what causes us to act and behave in the way we act and behave…….

that is why we must unite psychology and philosophy… for these
two disciplines can allow us to gain an understanding into the forces that
drive us to actions and behaviors………to allow us to prepare to
engage with and understand experiences that we human beings
must deal with on a daily basis……. life, death, despair, sadness,
happiness, joy are just some of the reactions we must deal with
every single day, reactions to events and experiences we have every single
day…………….

and we must train for and begin to learn how to cope with these
multitude of possible responses we can have to events and experiences…

This is really more important then learning a job skill……
learning how to cope with life and all its ups and downs…
and psychology/philosophy must lead the way into this future………

we must have an education that allows us to deal with future events
and experiences and job skill are secondary to that primary mission of
learning how to cope to the events and experiences of life………

Kropotkin

psychology deals well with one’s individual mental health
but psychology must become adept at dealing with not just the
individual mental health, but a society’s mental health……

for I maintain that our individual issues and problems that are dealt
with on a individual basis are really because of society’s pursuit of
profit/money over humans and their values… this fact alone causes
much of the basis of alienation and disassociation that modern people
suffer from…we individually suffer from societal issues…
how does psychology or philosophy, for that matter, deal with that fact?

we cannot solve the problem of societal issues on a personal, individual
level……. those societal issues must be solved on a societal level……
and thus we see how philosophy can impact psychology and society at large.

we have social issues, psychology can try to treat those issue’s and
philosophy can search for a “cure” by its attempt to discover the true role
of man in society… a role that doesn’t mean that we traumatized
by society as we are in modern life… that is what happens in the modern world,
we are traumatized by our role, our place, our actions in the modern world…
and to recover from it, we must engage with psychology to heal the modern man…

but if we work to prevent our trauma by changing society then we have taken
a large step toward healing ourselves by taking pro-active steps to prevent
the trauma, the alienation, the disassociation that we modern feel because
of society’s nihilism in its pursuit of profit/money……
we must prevent the negation of modern man and in that we
prevent the otherwise ensuing trauma and mental illness that is
the hallmark of being a modern human being………

we must return human beings to having some value, value other then
just being consumers or producers or citizens…we are more then our roles…
we have value beyond our roles……. we are valuable for ourselves…

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that 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 hold these truths to be self-evident……. that we are of value, regardless
of our roles, regardless of our wealth, regardless of our title………
we are to be treated equal because we are equal and in that equality we discover
ourselves to be of value……….

It is not just in political equality that we are one, but in economic equality
that we are to pursue our inalienable rights………to know yourself as equal is
to know yourself as being of value……….to know you are not being negated
because you above the act of negation by virtue of the fact that we are equal…
you and I…….

We have individual value… all we have to do is discover our equality…

Kropotkin

I have been trying to connect the dots on this whole
head/intellect vs the heart/emotions/psychology… thing……

We have the head, the intellect which sets the table for
all things intellectual… when we doubt, we doubt from the head…
when we practice skepticism, that is the head for skepticism is
the intellectual aspect of us…From all accounts I have read,
German idealism had two missions, one was to escape the idea
that the skepticism of the Enlightenment lead one to either
nihilism which is skepticism carred to its logical place or
one was lead to atheism… which was no better…

The argument has been made that the entire argument
of the German idealists from Kant to Hegel was an attempt
to avoid these two dangerous positions, nihilism or atheism…

so the head in its skeptism could lead a person to either
nihilism or atheism…

Now that would be true if, if we simply account for us as being
only thinking creatures… but we are not, we are emotional,
feeling, psychological creatures…

we might intellectually dismiss such things as love or hate
or to reduce the world by intellectual arguments into
nihilism or atheism… but the heart, the emotional part
of us will say yes to love when the head says no……

quite often the heart opposes the head…this conflict between
the intellectual and the emotional has been noted since time began…

if a person in conflict between the head and the heart, you cannot say
that person is complete or whole or even fully human………

to be complete or whole or even fully human, the head and the heart
must be going in one direction……

that is the path to being completely human, when the head and the heart
are traveling in one direction with one goal………when we find ourselves
in conflict within ourselves or when we find ourselves out of sorts or
incomplete, the problem is that the head/intellect is in conflict with
the emotional/psychology part of us……….

When we become alienated from ourselves it is because the head
and heart are in conflict……… once we solve this conflict, one way
or the other, we begin to become one, not two… remember
Goethe’s quote, “alas, two souls reside in my breast”

alas, we have conflicts between the head and the heart and sometimes
conflict between the emotions, recall the closeness that exists
between hate and love……. we cannot love that which cannot potentially
become hate………if we are indifferent to something, we cannot love it
nor can we hate it…….

but let us get into specifics… my heart may want something that
is out of bounds, taboo in some fashion and my head may agree with
this taboo… but the heart wants what it wants……. this conflict
is between the head and the heart and anybody having this conflict
cannot, cannot be united and thus whole… they are incomplete,
partial because the head and the heart exists in two different places…
there is no unity between the head and the heart and thus we are alienated
from ourselves……

The goal is to become more human and the path to that lies
with the unification of the mind/head and the heart……
two different aspects of us must be traveling in the same direction,
toward the same goal if we are to understand ourselves as being whole,
complete, in control… to be human…………

how do we connect the head and the heart?
that is where psychology can come in… how do we unite
two different and contrary aspect of ourselves? how do we
unite the head and the heart?

philosophy is the head and psychology is the heart……
and we must unite the two into having the same direction
and the same goal… or we will have conflict within ourselves…….

and this is why German idealism failed… because it failed to make
as it primary mission the attempt to unite the head and the heart…

it came close but close isn’t good enough……… we must unite the head and
the heart if we are to become human, truly human……. that means we
must begin to understand the forces that exists within us… for me, that means to
understand the forces that “makes” me be a complete and total ass at times…
to understand the emotional side of me that has steered me wrong many,
many times before… or perhaps I was lead on the wrong path because my
intellectual side and my emotional side are not united, not working as one…
with different goals and different agenda’s…….

I must engage with myself on an emotional, psychology path
to understand myself…I must try to unite myself mentally and
emotionally…whereas I have thought it was society that
created this alienation in me, perhaps it was my disconnection
between my emotional side and my intellectual side………
and then how do I connect my newly united two side/aspects of
the being known as Kropotkin with society?

I may be 59 and physically toward the end of my journey,
but I am not done with my journey at all…I am at the start
of the journey to connect the intellectually side of me with
the emotional side of me… connect the philosophy with
the psychological side of me……….

the road as always begins first with the understanding that there
is a problem… then you must understand the exact nature of the problem,
then and only then can you overcome the problem… for we have
another situation where we first begin to know thyself, then we
overcome ourselves and then finally, we become who we are…
and this is by uniting the intellectual side of me and the emotional
side of me…uniting psychology with philosophy………

Kropotkin

when we think about it, the eternal questions of
Kant, of God, freedom and Immortality are questions
of the heart, questions of psychology, not questions of
intellect, of the head…………

Freedom for example, we feel the question of freedom
and not necessarily think about the question of freedom…
like some two year old, we think we should be free to act
as we see fit… but intellectually, we know that we cannot
so freely act… we know the damage that can be inflicted upon
people and society/system if we engage in freedom of action…

Our head/intellect rightly limits us from our desire to act freely…
and when our head/intellect try’s to use skepticism to negate,
to so thoroughly negate that we arrive at nihilism, then the heart
will quietly say, no, no I love… and we find our limits with our heart…
and thus we can never truly be devoid of intellectual beliefs because the
heart will simply announce, I believe, and negate the negation……

we can never be truly be without faith in some beliefs because
the heart will always put an end to such skepticism… even though
the head may allow us to deny the validity of idea’s, beliefs and theories,
the heart will simply say, I believe… and thus explains the right wing…
where evidence and facts mean nothing because their heart says they believe,
regardless of the evidence or the facts…I believe and the heart will hold
faith in idea’s and beliefs and facts that no evidence or facts support…
there is no evidence or facts that support the idea of god… and some believe
that atheism is dangerous and damaging to society… but no matter how far
into of an atheist one become via mind, the heart will simply say yes…
and regardless of the evidence or facts, one will believe in god…

the heart limits the head and the head limits the heart…….
and thus true, absolute skepticism that one may practice
really becomes limited by the heart and its faith, it beliefs…
true nihilism isn’t really possible…… the heart will have its say…

now my mind and heart are united on this idea of
there being no god… thus I don’t have conflict between
the head and the heart in this matter… I am united
and this togetherness allows me peace of mind…

now in other matter, I am conflicted between the heart and the head
and that conflict brings to me, alienation and disconnection…
between me and my soul and me and my society……

I am alienated and disconnected because of my conflict between
my understanding emotionally of capitalism and my knowledge
that I must feed and clothe and shelter my family… I hate capitalism
and I fight it… but I also must feed my family…… how do I resolve this
conflict between my emotional and my intellectual side of me……
and to be honest, I am afraid of walking away from the only economic
system I have ever known… fear is a great motivator and a wonderful
tool for hanging on to for dear life even something that we know is
harmful or dangerous to us… fear prevents us from breaking away from
actions we should take… like sometimes fear prevents us from leaving
another person who is damaging to us, but we are afraid to leave because
the devil we don’t know is scarier then the devil we do know…

and fear is psychological and once again our actions are dictated by
emotional and not mental/intellectual… we must act with one mind
and one heart…… together united… working toward a single goal, taking
a single road together…………

the idea of immortality is a question of the heart… we feel we must live
forever where if we were to actually think about it, living forever is a
nightmare… and I for one, would never accept any attempt to
live forever……… mentally/intellectually I understand what living forever
would mean, no greater horror can be imagined, but emotionally, the heart
wants to live forever… and we have the conflict between the heart and head…

we need the head to steer us into safe terrain and we need the heart
to understand why we need that terrain to be safe……… to be safe,
that is an emotional response… security is a question of the heart,
of emotionalism and the conservative believes in security, believes in
being safe……

the left believes in justice… and justice is equality in actions toward
all people… and too is an emotional response but we can justify
justice on a intellectual level whereas we cannot justify security on
an intellectual level…for most of human existence has been insecure,
the average person in earth’s history has been insecure in life…
the dangers in life where plentiful and quite present…

whereas justice is a “modern” idea……. we can pursue justice
as the practice of equality in modern society…………

does justice and security clash?

justice is where we treat everyone equal and security doesn’t care
if people are treated equally as long as one feels secure…

under the guise of security we can mistreat and abuse and
torture people because the goal is to “feel” safe regardless of
who is hurt and who is damaged……

justice is where we are willing to sacrifice security to achieve
equality for everyone…… which I am willing to do…….
to achieve freedom requires justice, not security, for security is
willing to destroy freedom in the name of security…

and all of this is psychological and we must understand that much
of what we do is psychological, not philosophical…

we must learn to understand ourselves psychological so we can
act philosophical…………

Kropotkin

we have forces bearing upon us… we have natural forces such as
gravity, strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic which affect us
and also were instrumental in creating us…

we also have forces bearing upon us like governmental and economic
and social forces who affect us every single day………

Early man was concerned with forces beyond their control, forces
they considered to be god…and then we have those political
economic forces but human beings until the age of enlightenment didn’t
ever considered those manmade forces that work upon us every single day…

now given the forces upon us, both natural and manmade, how are to
express our freedom against those forces? In other words, we have gravity,
we cannot act freely against the force of gravity… we cannot defy or
change that force…

in regards to the forces that are manmade, governmental and economic forces
that dominate our lives today, how are we to be free against those forces?

how do we navigate our way through forces that we have little or no control over?

How do we express freedom in regards to the political and economic forces
that dominate our lives today?

How do we find justice in the forces that dominate our lives today?

that is the question… how are we to find out who we are given the forces
that exists in our lives today? we have the force of capitalism and democracy
in the modern United States… how are we to find ourselves in the face of
these forces that control our lives? If our economic system forces me to
be an economic being and I am a philosophical being, how do I reconcile
my need to act as a free being in the face of severe economic forces that
demand my obedience to economic factors…my role in society is to
be a consumer and a producer… not to have any direct say in society, but to
consume and produce, materialism that is the driving force of our modern society…
but I am not interested in either role, neither consumer nor producer…
I am interested in engaging in thought and creating idea’s…neither of which
befits us politically or economically… and so according to society, I have
no value………as I am not engage in the creation of wealth or the use of wealth,
I have no value in our materialistic society…but, but how do I find my value given
the forces around me, politically and socially and economically, demand, demand
my allegiance to concepts, beliefs, idea’s that I believe to be damaging to me
and society… I believe capitalism to be damaging to society and yet, I am unable to
free myself of its insidious, corrupt method of negating who I am and what my values are……

How do I find the freedom to attempt to negate capitalism which is destroying
my body and my soul? 40 years of work and my body is pretty much crap…
I can barely walk and I can’t sleep at night because of the pain that I endure
from hours of hard physical labor… and yet, I cannot escape…

How do I exist within the forces of both natural and manmade forces that
dominate and control my existence? how do I find my freedom?

this is the question of how we work within the forces that exist in our lives…
this is not a psychological question, it is a philosophical question… how to
create a system of politics and economics that doesn’t nihilate who I am
and what I am and what I value?

my mind quakes at the thought of fighting our manmade systems of
political and economics, but my heart knows what is right and says,
don’t worry mind, I have enough belief for the both of us… let us do
battle for I shall carry the day because passion is enough to overthrow
everything that stand between us and freedom…Be still my friend,
mind/intellect… for the heart can carry the day because we have hope
and hope is the greatest tool we have for overcoming anything…
be like me mind/intellect and have faith…for we shall overcome…

and so the heart and head work together, as one in finding
its place in a system that negates who I am and what I value…

Kropotkin

as we have already spoken of conservatives and their commitment
to security and its fear based ism/ideologies………….

we have to understand what is the basis for their ownership of
their belief base system which can ignore even basic facts to
accommodate long held beliefs like god and they will not
adjust or change their beliefs regardless of any fact or knowledge
that may challenge those beliefs system…

and we have already encountered the reason for this…
their childhood indoctrinations that everyone receives but
conservatives cannot escape…
they will hold unto their childhood indoctrinations regardless of
whatever evidence or facts that come their way… they
will not evaluate or reevaluate their values… they will not
begin the process of know thyself and then overcoming
and then becoming who they are……. conservatives are stuck in
their childhood indoctrinations…

beliefs held long enough become articles of faith…
Once a long time ago, I was told or I simply “remembered”
that my mother grew up on a farm… it was not even a questioned
in my mind that my mother grew up on a farm…it was a
childhood indoctrination… one day, my wife asked my mother
where she grew up when she lived on a farm… my mother, say what?
I never grew up on a farm… My wife who only knew of this from me,
couldn’t believe it, an article of faith with me, my mom grew up on
a farm was wrong… I was wrong… It was unsettling that
an article of faith with me, the fact that my mom grew up on a farm
was completely and totally wrong…… I had to rethink because the evidence
was rather conclusive… my mom grew up in a city… It never even occurred
to me…I now have my facts… I no longer believe my mother grew up on the farm…
another childhood indoctrination down the tube… I must adapt to this
new information…another idea that I had held for years was this idea…
I played baseball, little league until I was 15… and the
was that my only thing I wanted to be growing up was a baseball player…

the other thing I wanted to be was President of the United States…
that was my childhood, either growing up to be a ball player or
president of the U.S… those were my only answers to what
I was going to be when I grew up…

and now many years later, I tell the story of how one day, same day,
I gave up baseball and threw my glove away and no longer wanted to
be president of the U.S. because I figured out that those two dreams
were my fathers dream, not mine…he wanted to be a ballplayer
and he was a frustrated politician… and so I, as my childhood indoctrination
was indoctrinated into either being a ball player or being president…

and the story is true, except for the little bit of fact that I made
those two realizations months if not years apart… it wasn’t the same day
that I gave up my two childhood dreams… but it makes a better story…
and so I kept to the story even though the reality was quite different…
BTW, I never recovered from losing those two dreams… I am still, after all these years,
trying to find out what I want to be when I grow up to be an adult…
so the stories are accurate to a point, but I changed it and as I believed
the story after so many years, it became an article of faith that I lost my
belief in being a ballplayer and being president the same day…
an article of faith… because the number of years that past, gave my
beliefs certainty, just as I believed my mom grew up on a farm…

It was an examination of my past that led me to an understanding of
what really happened in terms of my playing ball and being president
and of my mom giving rather irrefutable evidence that I was wrong,
that my belief that she grew up on a farm was wrong……

we are faced with these childhood contradictions all the time…
how do we resolve them? do we begin to reevaluate them or do
we hold to the childhood indoctrination regardless of the facts or
evidence presented……. do we act as conservatives do and stick
to the childhood indoctrinations regardless of the facts or evidence
or do we begin the process of knowing ourselves and then overcoming
and then becoming who we are……….it is a choice… freely made…
and given the forces that determine our lives, a freedom one should
act upon because what other freedoms do we have?

Kropotkin

It is late after a long day at work, so let us see how coherent this
turns out……

The fancy writing of such people who dazzle us with their bullshit…
like Kant and Hegel who use words to conceal and hide their words and idea’s…
they have nothing to say because it is hidden behind verbiage of unnecessary
words… why can’t they speak plain?

Einstein once said, if you can’t reduce a theory to be explainable to
a 12 year old, you don’t know it at all…….

the attempt to seem profound and meaningful is widespread and
not surprising…… this need to feel one is above others by pedantic
words is just another attempt to feel superior to others………

it is also an attempt to avoid dealing with the real questions of
one’s life… how are we to live? What are we to believe in?
what values should we hold? what should we hope for?
these are the real questions of one’s life, not pedantic
bullshit of the academic professors who try to impress each other
with pretentious crap…….but do nothing to improve our understanding
of the questions facing the common human being in their desire to
understand what it mean to be human and what it takes to rise above
merely being human…….for being merely human is just more words for
being an animal…… we are more then just animals if, if we rise above
our animal instincts which are the lower level of human existence……

who are we and what are our possibilities is not answered by any university
professor who has their reputation to maintain by writing above the “masses”.
with language and words only the highly educated can know……. how is that
going to allow the “masses” to understand what it means to human and what
is our possibilities…if philosophy engages in the university group masturbation
speak of those who follow Kant and Hegel and other in an attempt to hide
the fact that the university professors have knowledge but no wisdom…

Socrates used words and language that could be followed by anybody and why?
because he wanted people to understand what he was getting at… He didn’t make
it hard or understandable only by those with specialize knowledge of what certain
words and idea’s meant…we should follow Socrates and not Kant or Hegel…
we should make our language plain and simple, easy to understand by anyone with
a 12th grade education…the path to wisdom is not to make knowledge
inaccessible because we are using words to hide the lack of wisdom…
words and language should be understandable to all because we want all,
there is that dam equality thing again, we want the path to wisdom to
be accessible to all and the only way to achieve that is by using language
and words accessible to all………

stop using words to hide the fact you lack wisdom…

and if you are offended by this, note that I haven’t named anybody and in fact,
I don’t have anyone at all in mind
then you might want to rethink your words, your language to
become understandable to everyone…….rethink, reevaluate your language
and how you convey your message and your idea’s…….

stop hiding behind words and language to cover up your lack of wisdom…

Kropotkin