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