a new understanding of today, time and space.

talking with my mom… I could/should write a book titled
“talking with my mom” anyway, talking to my mom and she
was talking about my siblings, 3 sisters and one brother…
and how each was different as a child…my older sister wanted
to be in charge and my younger sister was always running away from
home, she never got past the end of the driveway in all those attempts
at running away and my brother was always and still is, by the way,
involved in his “thing”… he never paid much attention to anything that
wasn’t his current passion… as for me, my mom says, everyday when I was
4 or 5, I would come home from school, once inside the house, I would
sit on the bottom of the stairs and shake my head, saying, “I didn’t learn to
read today” and repeating that, “I didn’t learn to read today”……
even as a very young child, I had a passion to learn,
to understand, to know things…

today, the only difference between me now and me then is this, today
I sit at my computer and say, “I didn’t learn what it means to be human today”
and in various ways, I would repeat myself… I haven’t change much…

my mom says that she would distract me by taking me into the kitchen
and having a bowl of Ice cream… I think that is what I shall do right now…
then and now, my favorite ice cream is Vanilla ice cream…
I may not have found out what it means to be a human being, but
I am at least consistently… boring…

Kropotkin

I had a whole set piece of thought I was going to
lay down this morning…I was going to connect the Romantic
viewpoint of individualism and nationalism with the failed thoughts
of Hitler and IQ45 and conservatism… and as part of my argument,
I was going to use my friends at Wiki article on “Romanticism”…

well, this morning I started to read Jacques Barzun book, “Classic,
Romantic and Modern” and my whole plan went to hell in a handbasket…
I don’t know where I will end after finishing this book, but already, I see
part of the “Modern” problem comes from the fact that we “Modern”
are so alienated and disconnected from each other and from society because
of the “fact” that we “Moderns” don’t have or we haven’t publicly set
out our problem to be solved… every generation has a problem to be solved,
that is what defines a generation, the question every generation must answer,
and our generation hasn’t yet understood what is our questioned to be solved,
what is our problem to be solved?

Kropotkin

the question of philosophy and of science and history is this,
what is the question/questions to be solved?

Theology doesn’t have questions, theology has answers and that is
the failure of theology…….

The ancient Greeks thought the question was the search for wisdom…
in which they thought that truth/wisdom was beauty… the truthful was
the beautiful… which is why Socrates was such a revaluation, he was
truth but he wasn’t beautiful…that was part of the mystery of Socrates…
for the Greeks, the ultimate prize or final purpose of philosophy was
to sit in contemplation of god…(the greeks took for granted the existence of god/gods)
and the proper role of man was to sit in contemplation of said god/gods in heaven…
and the Christians took over this idea…….

so for the next thousand years, the goal was to get to heaven so one could
sit in contemplation of god…

Then came the rebirth, the Renaissance where the question of this contemplation
wasn’t question and then came the science and the philosophers, Galileo as science
and Descartes as philosopher…but the goal of the contemplation of god remained…

then came Kant who shifted the question for the first time in over 2000 years…
for Kant the question was about self determination…Sepere Aude… dare to know…
dare to think for yourself………

This new question, this new statement… how are we to become
self determining creatures…how do we become free from the authorities
that have determined for us, the bible, god, Aristotle, the church, the state…
are all authorities… how do we begin this search for self determination…

that was the new mission statement of philosophers… how are we to become
self determined? Then shortly after Kant came Hegel and Hegel great
contribution was to discover history and its influence on philosophy
and philosophical concepts…the concept of freedom is not rooted
as an ahistorical concept… the concept of freedom has a history
and Hegel’s book the “Phenomenology” is a history of freedom…
today we wouldn’t think of a concept without some understanding
of that concepts history and that was because of Hegel…

but it is time for another mission statement for philosophy
and philosophers…and Marx should us the way…

He said, “it is not enough to understand the world, we must
change the world” but here we use the lessons of history…

we must contemplate concepts and their history, yes…
but then we must use that understanding to create
a goal for us as individuals, as a society, as a culture,
as a people to reach for and eventually as a species…

we must no longer isolate ourselves as individuals or in small groups
or even as a state or some accidental trait like being white or being
an American… we must think of ourselves writ large…which means
we are part of an ever larger group of people… we can no longer think
of ourselves as just part of a family or of being an Californian or being
an American or being white or handicap or whatever accidental trait
we have……

we exist as and are part of the whole… I am Kropotkin… I am not just
white or male or handicap or an American, I am part of something
bigger… I am part of the human species and I am part of life…
and then we must create a meaningful goal that incorporates
who we are as human beings and as part of life…

I am part of life as part of life I must engage in life as a partner,
not as someone who waste resources just to keep my fat ass in comfort…
I must recognize that being human is not the end of the story but the beginning
and we must act as if we are part of the earth, not in charge of the earth…
to fight to save nature is the fight to save ourselves… if we preserve the
forest and trees and the sea, we are preserving us for we are part of the
forest and trees and the sea……

we must have an reevaluation of what is our place on earth and within
that reevaluation, we must come to an understanding of the proper
place of human beings within the context of the earth and all its
diversity…we are part of that diversity and we are part of earth
and we exist as part of, not in charge of, but part of life…….

we must expand our understanding of what it means to be human to
include our place on earth and within life…….and as we begin to
understand, we can begin to change how we think about resources
and their use and in our case, their misuse…human beings tend to
think that the universe is about them and we must learn that the universe
isn’t about us or us being human…

it is about life and we are just a part of life and not even the most important
part of life…………reevaluate your values and include becoming part of life…

lose your ego and learn to join a greater cause then human beings, the cause
of life……

and then we can become the catalyst of change that places human beings into
their proper context, as part of life and only a part of life…

Kropotkin

praise to the lotus eaters…

for they ever exist in another room in the house of man……

we, we moderns are so consumed with the practical details of life that
we sometimes forget to simply be… and thus we praise the lotus eaters…
for they are another side of the human experience…

Kropotkin

your second to last post was very touching, krackpotkin, and not badly done. the lotus eaters one was good too, i’m pretty sure. but what is this thread, anyway? one of those open journals like d63’s got over in the sandbox? well if it is, I HEAR YOU, BROTHER. i hear you loud and clear. and i might be the only one with the exception of serendipper. i don’t know if you get around these threads, but the big dipper’s got a good handle on things. the rest couldn’t care less; you might as well be talking to that produce cart you push around at the grocery store all day.

speaking of grocery stores, i actually replied to one of your monologues about that a while back over at my failed forum. i can’t find it now, but in it i suggested that you quit your job, sell everything you own except for your backpack, and become an expat over in southeast asia somewhere. this life you live now… stocking shelves for 10 bucks an hour all day and then pouring your heart out in a few posts that nobody here cares about, well… that’s no way to live, man.

and don’t you go worrying about ‘spreading the marxism’ . marx is alive and well (recall that he had no last words; last words are for fools who haven’t said enough) and coming to a planet near you. let the pros handle that… you just worry about getting the fuck out of that job and onto a beach somewhere where you can listen to michael bolton in peace. and don’t tell me you don’t like michael bolton. they play it all day at the grocery store. by now you should know every one of his songs by heart.

found it!

this is not unlike the myth of sisyphus, except instead of pushing a boulder up a hill, you’re pushing del monte green bean cans across a scanner only to have them roll back on you. but to answer your concluding question; no, you don’t have to wait. what you need to do is something outrageous, because if you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve got nothing to lose by doing something outrageous. you need adventure, unfamiliar places and people, a complete change of environment. i say sell your house and everything in it, research foreign country currency exchange rates and travel abroad. but don’t go to stockholm because nobody goes to sweden. you need a cheap country where you can turn your stacks into bigger stacks, maybe buy some citizenship and/or property, and spend all day in coffee shops and overcrowded buses touring cities, ruins, ancient cities, ancient ruins, and ruined cities where you can talk to the city’s ancients. but don’t ruin it for them… nothing’s more cantankerous and depraved than ruined ancients. most of them don’t even know america exists. don’t tell them it does. you’ll find other expats just like you who once worked in the produce section of some grocery store and were finally like ‘fuck this’. i’m not kidding man, try it. what’s the worst that could happen? typhus, maybe, but unlikely if you’re careful. and watch out for pick-pockets. south-east asians have it down to a science.

somebody please tell kropotkin to read this. i know some of you sonsabitches snooping around here are from ILP… so be a good sport and tell him for me. kropotkin needs our help. look at the guy. he’s a mess.

  1. been there done that. Alas, the soul grows weary of every and any situation and soon the grass back home tolls another country walk in those ol familiar places, be it a distorted visage of a reactionary fluke,
    there ain’t Norton’s like home, always return even of a known current nostalgic delirium. Plus K has family and he is responsible for them and tjeuay not.share his
    wanderlust.

May be, I’m all off. If he had portfolio like those post war west bank settlers , with more then a knack for personal impressions, or any channelled expression . THERE, he may be in for an incontrovertible regret.

What say?

how do we infuse our actions with meaning?

in the past, we have connected our actions with giving
glory to god thus creating meaning for our actions…

but how does modern man create meaning with our actions?

I go to the store and buy groceries… and the meaning of that actions is……
I am feeding myself and my family… that is the meaning of going to the store…

I work 5 days of the week, roughly 32 hours, (because of my back issues, I can’t work
any more hours during the week) and I have been working for over 40 years, since
I was 17… and what is the meaning of all this work? I get money from which
I pay my bills… but in reality, think about it……is there any meaning to
working for 40 years? none that I can see… it is an pointless exercise that
has no meaning outside of putting food on my table…but this is the failure
of modern man… we can only think in terms of being practical… we can no
longer think in any other terms… if making money is the point of my existence,
there is no point to my existence… there is no meaning if I spend my existence
trying to make and/or spend money…how do I create meaning in my life
without any reference to theology or biology?

we can create meaning by creating a goal in which we can achieve
our goals individually and collectively…a goal creates meaning and
purpose in our lives… but the goal must have some value that is
above or beyond just materalistic or monetary value…
for we must begin to understand that our current ideology
of materalism has failed with destructive results on planet earth…
and how can we tell if the ideology of materialism has failed?

we can see the results in the empty and pointless days of our lives…
we work and then we work some more… we work to live and that is no
life at all…the current nihilism that permeates our lives and our society
and our souls is symptom enough to tell us that the materialistic ideology
has failed…….

capitalism has failed because it is nihilistic which leaves us hopeless
and in despair…….we lead lives of quiet desperation…….
and we fill our days with attempts to forget our despair with
drugs and booze and TV and the promise of materialism (a better life by
buying things… an empty promise)

how do we achieve what seems to be the impossible… achieving
meaning in our empty and pointless lives? a return to god? we cannot
reach meaning by reaching for another empty promise…

how do I, Kropotkin, rationalize, understand the meaning of my life?

What can I think of that will give my life some meaning? I can give
my life meaning by searching for and the understanding of what it means
to be human… I can search for meaning by the search itself… the search for
meaning gives my life meaning… for it is something that is greater then myself
and it is not an empty promise… that empty promise that is so much of our modern
existence… we have been lied to so often that we have retreated into ourselves…
However if we reevaluate our values, we then give our lives meaning and that
reevaluation is no empty promise…we can give our lives meaning by the very
search we engage with to understand who we are and what are our values…

you want your life to mean something? engage in the search for
who you are and what is possible for you? the search itself will give
your life meaning…….

avoid the many empty promises of modern life… avoid the
ideology of materialism and capitalism and any other ism and ideology
that makes empty promises it cannot keep…… engage in being skeptical
about our modern world… we hear so many empty promises…

IQ45 “I am the only one who can fix what is broken”
MAGA is another empty promise
advertising is full of empty promises… buy our “car” or our “deodorant”
or our “beer” and by doing so, you can become something you are currently not
which is successful, desired, loved, the center of attention, the life of the party…
so many empty promises because are those attributes really what is important in life?

to be successful is just another empty promise and to be desired and to be the center
of attention and to be loved are all empty promises of the ads……

there is so many empty promises because we have failed to do something that is
basic for us… we no longer listen to ourselves… sometimes it doesn’t hurt
to be the lotus eater and withdraw into yourself and sometimes it’s time
to act and other times it is time to search……. sometimes it is time
to be inner driven and sometimes it is time to be outer driven…
we just need to listen to ourselves and learn to hear our inner self…

the universe is situationally driven… that there is no one absolute
factor that drives us… the situation gives is our goal and point…
our meaning is found (sometimes) situationally and sometimes
our meaning is found in the goal we desire to reach… (sometimes)

we cannot react the exact same way in different situations…
we must become situationally aware of what we do and can do……

and our meaning is found in our understanding of the situation…

as we age, we have different situations… I am old and my situation
is far different then when I was young and I must react differently
today because of this fact… I am aware of the situation and I am
reacting to my situation appropriately… if I am to find my meaning,
I must understand my current situation in life… I search for meaning
in concepts and ism’s and a engagement with who I am… I can no
longer react in some physical terms for I can no longer react physically…
I cannot climb a mountain anymore… but I can engage in the understanding
of who I am…I can find meaning… if I understand what goals are possible
and what goals are not possible… I can find meaning if I understand
my current situation…………

so what is your meaning or goal in life?

what engagement is possible for you?

what is your situation?

Kropotkin

K: I thank you for your thoughts… as for me, I really don’t care if anybody reads me
or not… I am not engage in a writing a journal…I am engage in making my report
to other human beings as to what I have found about being human…

If I was 30 years younger, I might have sold everything and do as you suggest, but
I am old now…my situation is not conductive to such youthful actions…

as to Marxism or any other “ism” those are possibilities for us to engage in…
I have reported that I believe capitalism to have failed and to why I believe
capitalism has failed…I am engaged in exploring the possibilities
to what it means to be human… I am engage in the “why”…
why… why do we live the way we do? what is the point of life?
what is the meaning of life? certainly not in the 40 plus years we work
and we gain nothing in those 40 years of work outside of destroyed
bodies and lost souls…so what are our possibilites? those are the questions
I ask… and if no cares, so be it… I care and that is enough… so I shall
continue to write… even if there weren’t another soul on planet earth, I
would continue to write and make my report as to what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

and my constant refrain of discovering “who you are”
does have an individualistic, romantic refrain to it…
but it ties into a collective understanding of who we are
and what are our possibilities… we are not individuals outside
of or independent of society/culture/state… no, we must
engage with and be part of society/the state…
and this is why I have suggested the Marx vision of
what is possible is better for us, individually and collectively…

my calls for individualism is within the context of our being
part of the collective… we can be individuals within a group/social
context…for we are social/group creatures… and we must
work our individual needs/wants/desire in the context of being
social/group creatures…… evolution has “determined”
us to be social creatures and we cannot escape this… we must
remain in contact with other human beings… this is why
in prison, solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment…
we must, must have contact with other humans or we suffer
and sometimes we even go insane from our lack of contact of other
human beings………so, what is your relationship with other human beings?

it is not only about the I… Ich as it were, it is also about the Du… the you…
some claim, Buber for example that the other, the Du… is god
and we are in relationship with god and we discover ourselves in
this relationship with the other…….I believe we discover ourselves
in our relationship with other human beings, not god or some artificial
ism…but in the you… as in other human beings………the Greeks felt
that we become human in the polis, the city… and they are right…….

you can only find you in the midst of others… man alone is man incomplete…

meaning is found within the context of the others, not just in context with oneself…

Kropotkin

for krackpotkin’s ears only:

vocaroo.com/i/s0PsVSyWDwOh

while we’re sharing a beer over the plight of the working class, see if you can top this one:

if i take the job making $8.50 an hour carrying bricks through the mud, by the time i drive the two hours (to job and back) and have the taxes taken out of my check (a portion of which is a state tax to pay for the public defender who didn’t defend me from charges i was not guilty of - yeah you read that right), what is left in my pocket? just enough to keep me alive so that i can repeat the same thing the next day. and that’s the trap much of the working class is purposely put in. i have read letters written by 19th century bourgeois factory owners who outright admitted they lower employee’s wages for that very reason; to make them dependent on their job.

well why the fuck am i working at a temp service? only an idiot or an unskilled lowlife would do such a thing, right? what about a guy who can build a house with one hand tied behind his back, but can’t get a real job because of felonies on his record that he’s not guilty of? or what if the guy did happen to land a real job when he got out of prison (he shouldn’t have been in), but the capitalist piece of shit he’s filled the pockets of over the last year has refused to pay him what he owes him? the plot does indeed thicken.

and if this guy did get hired by another capitalist parasite, he hasn’t enough money to get him to the first paycheck because he can’t make enough money at the capitalist parasite temp service to pay the small claims court fees to sue the the capitalist parasite fucker that owes him… money he’d use to sustain himself until that first paycheck.

what do i do, K? that’s right; i break out of it. but not yet. the time is not right. there is much to do first.

and it’s not that my current situation won’t resolve itself somehow. i always ‘pull through’. what is important here is that it is only a matter of time before such a situation takes shape again. the question you have to ask yourself is; how many times will you let it happen before enough is enough. are you retarded? a stupid dupe? a masochist? have you made up your mind and are just procrastinating, or are you still a coward? ah, you’re still waiting… waiting for ‘everything to magically work out’… and every time it happens again, you tell yourself the same. you’ll do this a thousand times before you finally admit to yourself that you’re a coward… that you haven’t the balls to do what you know you need to do. eventually this humiliation becomes too much… and one has to break out.

timing, my man. it’s not an if, but a when. and that ‘when’ will present itself when the moment is right. you don’t know when it will be, but you’ll know it when you see it… and you better seize that fucker before you lose your nerve.

this is not a plea for sympathy or a complaint. this is not a ‘look at how much i suffer’. this isn’t some theoretical philosophical bullshit i make up to pass my idle time at a forum and dazzle everyone with my intellect. this is the real deal, big K. and there’s soooo much more, my man. so much i no longer have the patience to explain to the wrong people. i drop this little gem for you so that you know you aren’t alone, and shake your hand as a man from your class. what do the rest matter? chatter, krackpotkin. noise in the background.

you won’t top that in a million days. you’re small fish, K, but a working man nonetheless. i promote you to the rank of cadet in the vanguard party. salutes

i’d say that’s understandable, sure, but not something i could indentify with. i had pretty much figured out that everything was ‘wrong’ by the age of twenty, and knew then that i’d never commit to the kind of ‘normal’ life most people lead. there would be no steady job, no house, no family and very little property. maybe in some other world, but not this one. this one was nothing to make any serious investments in. it was for fun and not to be taken seriously. 'course i could have decided otherwise, but it would have required me to sacrifice my ‘principles’… and these were more dear to me than anything i might gain by compromising them. and in the twenty some years that followed that decision, my convictions have only been strengthened. i thank my lucky stars that i didn’t ‘walk the straight and narrow’. i can’t imagine what a disaster i might have become had i done so.

and i never asked myself that most pressing of questions that normal people ask: ‘what will you do when you get old’. to me the answer seemed obvious. don’t get old, and if and when you get weary, it’s the right time to die. one has to know when to die. as nietzsche put it, sometimes it can become indecent to continue living.

but yes, i understand. humans are nest builders and like to live in large immobile boxes in clusters of other large immobile boxes in which other nest builders live. that’s a very strange, herd-like behavior and seems rather uneventful, but i suppose there’s nothing wrong with it.

Listen 75, please.

I know You will not. And I would not want to either to express the extent of which You’ve grabbed my attention.
You must be far Younger then I imagined .

Please listen. There is a god who can not physically help us because IT is also a spiritual being.

You must not believe that evolution not coalesced with the body and mind and soul and the spirit as well.

Its just that interaction is cyclical, just as is life. It never stops , ever, it continues for ever in a timeless void of which some have inkling. That is so hard to believe . is as hard as the breaking heart of a child who is told there is no Santa Clause

If people stopped believing in Santa, it would terminate the epoch that commemarated Christianity, which dictates positive feelings of carrying our crosses, that we can all share.

The development of this philosophical tradition is really of inestimable value,
and it’s surfacing out of the nothingness of human consciousness is a miracle really, however interpreted.

You must have had a beautiful mother and maybe a non caring father.and no caring brothers as well.

If you don’t believe in love per se, try believing in mine, toward You, a perfect stranger.

God be with You and atixl around for at.least.one person You could lovr and who may also love You for who You are.

If not, love Yourself as I tried to love , because me too feel such a failed soul, but don’t let the erosion of faith of a.20 year.old. child soul over come that, which is yet to come

Yes I like Nietzsche from the time I was in my twenties and he was.my sole mate.

Cheers.and God bless.

It may be I am way off the mark, but not by much.

The basic question of modernity is sum up with one sentence…

Upon what standard are we to judge the world?

Individual… personal standards or society/collective
standards?

and which personal/individual standards should we choose?
and which society/collective standards should we choose?

We are offered, literally, hundreds of different individual
standards…from Christian to existentialist to scientific to
ancient to modern………

and we are offered dozens of different collective standards,
which is a listing of the various ism’s and ideologies we have
at our disposal… communism, democracy, monarchy, anarchy…
political and economic standards…

and can we mix and match our individual and our collective
standards? yes……

so upon the hundreds of possible standards available to you…
which standards are your standards?

but perhaps the question can be asked differently, what are your values
and then what standards work for the values you decide upon?

the path has always been pick the standards/the different ism’s and ideologies
then pick your values within those standards…… but I say unto you…
pick your values… be it strength or happiness or love or charity or knowledge…
then and only then pick your ism’s and ideologies that match your values……

what values speak to you and then choose the ism/ideologies that match those values…

let the values decide upon your choices, do not let the ism’s and ideologies choose
your values………

so what standards are you going to choose? the question is really what
values are you going to choose and allow that to help you make
your choices……

Kropotkin

I watch Dr. Zhivago the other night… great film…
anyway, there is a point where after Zhivago is taken
by the communist partisans and there is a meeting where
the military people try to allow Zhivago to leave but the
man from the party makes Zhivago stay… his statement
goes something like this…

“we are all to be judge, but not judge by our military records, for
they don’t matter and won’t count, no, we are to be judge politically,
that is the only way we are going to be judge, politically”

which is an interesting point… to judge people only politically means
that the people who get judge are the ones who get judge by the political
people…in other words, the party is the only one who gets to judge…
no other factors are involved… when you judge people based on
the very narrow criteria of what is in you own best interest…

so for example, we Americans decide to judge people based
on money by people with money… it is in those wealthy people
interest to force people to be judge by money because wealthy people
have a lot of money and it is in their best interest to be judge by
something they have a lot of… selfish interest demands you get
people to judge other people based on something you have…
if I have a lot of something, I want the judgement to be about that
something…because I have a lot of it and I will look better being judged…

so the value we judge people is money which fits nicely with actual
wealthy people because they get judge better because they are already
wealthy…

so, what if we were to judge people based on humor… we would judge
people with humor higher then people without…well that suddenly
lowers or demeans wealthy people but raises funny people…and so
funny people rise in status in America and because of that, funny people
want and will continue to allow status to be determined by their
ability to be funny and by no other value…

so, where in my job, the values that are rewarded are punctuality…
we are constantly being reminded to clock in on time, both at the
start of the shift and at lunch and going home…practically every
single day, at the time clock there is a notice about clocking in and out
at the right time…

there is no mention of any values outside of that… the only two
things I can be fired for is stealing and insubordination… and those
are the other two values that are punished or rewarded for that matter…

it is irrelevant or unimportant if we are nice or kind or fair or just or
funny or any other human trait… these traits are not relevant to my job
or to work……. I am not valued for being honest, I can be fired for stealing,
but that that is for stealing from the company… the company actually couldn’t
care less if we steal from the costumers, which we don’t because the checkers
are actually honest… but honesty as a value is not preached or rewarded…

so what values should people have? should people be honest or kind or nice
or punctual or fair or just or mean or boring… or…….

if you could legislate values, what values would you require people to have?

now it might be that you think that the situation demands certain values…
for example in wartime, the value of love and kindness and charity
are not useful values but hate, anger and violence are values worth having…
during wartime………

regarding people who deal with money… you would want honesty as a value
but not someone who disregards the rules involving money… someone who
casual handles money to the point of losing money…

to judges, you want someone who understand what justice is
and how to apply the law fairly to people… each profession
and each situation requires different values to be applied
the same value cannot work in the different professions or
in different situations………

now think of all the possible values and their are hundreds if not thousands of
possible values, which value would seem to be appropriate to the majority of
situations? so love is a powerful value and justified in a lot of situations but
love is not appropriate in every situation or in every job…think of a value
that would have the widest practical use in situations or in a career…

the one value I can think of that would have the widest application for
situations or job is justice, which I have defined as equality… for justice
applied is really justice applied equally to everyone… justice is equality……
and that is the value I believe fits into the largest number of situations or jobs
we encountered in our daily lives…….

so what value/values do you believe is right or necessary for most situations or jobs?

Kropotkin

I have tried to understand our time period, our modern times
or if you wish, our post modern times…………

as I have thought about and studied and wrote about where
we are right now… a common thread has appeared… that of
meaning… if there is one commonality of life right now, it
involves in our meaning, what does it mean to exist in 2019?

what does it mean to be human right now…

I am old enough to have grown up with the “American dream”…
the goal was to grow up and have a nice house in the suburbs
with a white picket fence and two cars, two kids and a dog and cat…

as a kid, you were expected to work hard to get into a “prime” collage which
then allowed you to get some high paying job in which you worked for 40
years and then you retired and collected an excellent pension living our your
golden years with respect and dignity……….that was the “American dream”……

but from where I sit… this fantasy life of the “American dream” has no meaning,
it has no value… I don’t see the point of working for 40 years to get a crappy
retirement where I must choose between medicine and food…

the Modern world has no meaning… it is as simple as that…….

there is no point to follow the American dream because it leads nowhere,
goes nowhere, has no meaning………

that is what is lacking in this “Modern” age and that is meaning……
the old forms, the old ism’s and ideologies have failed to give our lives
meaning…… go through the old forms… going to an excellent university to
get an education to get a “good” job…………more training to become a worker…
nothing more… that is the “modern” definition of education… training workers…
that education hasn’t shown us how to become better human beings or to become
wiser or to gain knowledge that can actually mean something to us………

no, we are trained to be workers and the media and state “programs”
us to spend our days buying useless trinkets, to become consumers…

there is no point, no meaning to our current existence outside of breeding
more workers and more consumers……….

the modern experience is empty, nihilistic, without any meaning or hope…
and that is what is lacking today…… to have some point, some meaning to
our existence……

I have tried to create some meaning by working out some possibilities for
human beings…….ART is an example of us trying to use ART to create
some possibilities, some meaning in our lives…what other possibilities
exists for us? we reject the modern ideal of living life by being
a worker and consumer……….in fact, we could begin by rejecting
the entire “modern” experience from the university which only goal
is to train high end workers to high school which is to train low end workers…
and we can reject the “Modern” idea that we can find meaning in the
buying an selling of any goods… it is no longer about trying to create
a “comfortable” life with houses and cars and 401K plans……….
those things hide the fact that we live empty lives fuel by
empty lies and empty promises…………

the modern question is simple… how do I find meaning in this modern life?

where does one find meaning in the midst of all the lies and empty promises
that we get every day… buy our product and become irresistible to the opposite
sex… buy our product and rocket through to become CEO live large…

the answer, the true answer lies in both us and, and in something outside of us…

we find ourselves in our relationship with others… the DU, we cannot find out
who we are without acting and reacting with others… we simply cannot……

we human beings have qualities… qualities like love and honor and justice
and charity… but we must learn and practice those qualities with others…
we cannot love without another… we cannot be just without others…
we cannot practice charity without others…… to become who we are means
we must, must engage with others…… by myself, I can only get so far with
being human… to reach my full possibilities as human, I need others…
but our current reality, our current ism and ideologies don’t allow us to
engage with other human beings in an honest and open dialogue as to what
it means to be human…… because we must view others has “competition”
for the limited resources that are available and that we need… my co-worker
can take the pay raise I need… so I must treat them as the “competition”
and until we lose that “reality” that others are the “competition”, we
cannot begin the journey to real wisdom……….

it is this idea of a zero sum universe is where we first begin to fail…
we can must reject a universe where we think that one person’s
gain is another person’s loss…… we must rethink of the universe as
a place where it is possible for everyone to gain… if we rethink
what it means to be human…… the goal doesn’t have to be to
make as money as possible regardless of the cost to ourselves or to
others…….no, the goal becomes non economic and more about the
path we must take to become human… for any journey of discovery
is about more then just us, it is about everyone and our relationship we have
with everyone………it is relationships that we must focus on, not losses or gains…
among others things……. the path to being human is a long path…

Kropotkin

and the value of someone like Kant or Nietzsche?

they tried to create meaning in our modern world…

Kant tried to create meaning by making existence about self determination…
the enlightenment ideal of no longer being held hostage by the old
idea’s, the old authorities like the church, the state, the bible, Aristotle…

become free of the old authorities… that was the enlightenment goal
as it was Kan’ts as well… his entire philosophy is about finding meaning
in the world…

and Nietzsche? his idea of the ubermensch and the eternal return both
existed for Nietzsche as part of the meaning of the universe…

Nietzsche idea was to create meaning without any reference to god or
any metaphyiscal idea…how do we find meaning in a secular world?

that was Nietzsche problem and to a great extent, that is also our
problem… how do we find meaning?

so… how do we?

Kropotkin

you don’t mind occasionally a stab of pedantry or comic amusement, but I wholehardly approve of Your comments here and have a very very difficult time with it, the sadly faded 1960’s remind me a quote loosely described a Saturday night in this lost America of the lost soul where everybody everybody feverishly is going somewhere , but really nowhere.
It is the air conditioned nightmare of the ugly American, who’s darkness is at noon, the hottest time in this heart of darkness , where so many gifted took their life, Hart crane coming back, coming back from Cuba the last time, the same cuba which drove Hemingway to madness, and his daughter by consequence, husband of Caresse Crosby expatriate grandson of international banker and black sun publisher , where Ginsburg said all the best minds of our generation driven mad, what else is new ?

We striving and starving expressionist of the 21 st century need more then an occasional bread crumb like the New Deal giving paltry soup kitchen handouts.

Most having the suburban house with 2 kids andn2 cars and looking toward their golden years had it in the sixties so close yet so far, nestling in their most cherished absolute minimalism:

That of the promise of otherwise perfectly legit users of modern versions of absenthe, the coke infused in that well established product, of the acid test of kesey, of Huxley’ s indulgence with magic and the shrooms and the grand vision of even that noble Dylan whose Nobel prize people noblesse oblige the valuables lost therein , thereby.

K. you said a few months ago I’m always welcome here. Well here it goes.

We’ve got soul man, along with the noble savages, those whose blues captured the universal soul, but sold out man. Sold out to the commercial system, big time, the monkees were among the first the pitiful tv show that bought into the American dream.

And what that is? The golden arch like the one at the end of the yellow brick road, promising a very neat and hygienic funeral, with a minimum of inconceniemce and pain to all those who have been unable to settle into the mystical meaning that which is base to the nihilistic posture . as though it is a sort of chronically manifested revival show, in a kind of circus held briefly by the owner of city lights , a light captured only by some who can make s mountaintop into their comfort space.

No. Coming back from the chocolate steppe of Asia, shared by a Catholic priest in his Asian journals , highlights omitting scenes such as:

A new practice of snatching children , one an old woman apprehended in the knick of time, ( and this addressed only to pure heart spiritualist to whine fame and fortune has become as opaque as that through which darkly is still a shemantic option, au-vigour), she tries to snap the baby so that, so that, within her convoluted mind she still, secularized Catholic( where Jesus warned about harming babies),
snatching kids become a commercial enterprise, slitting their bodies open while alive, and removing valuable transplanteable organs , kidneys going for 200M, lungs, livers , you name it, and then retain the nerve of attending holy mass on Sunday.

Probably without confession.

This description for only one purpose, to compare it with the American dream.

The choice is not difficult, albeit extreme.

The 60’s sellout really fortifies the connection between east and western values also approaching another absolute, that consisting within the vagrancies of their one time equivolence of the loss of the soul.

all those things you complain about in that second to last post would not be so augmented if the world was rid of the unproductive and parasitic class… and that’s going to be a long arduous war, comrade pete. but to imagine a world in which we aren’t required to work is preposterous. it is only because of the presence of this parasitic class of people that those who do produce live so miserably, e.g., your having to choose between food and medicine in your retirement. therefore it would be misguided to pass sentence on the whole of life and declare unequivocally that having to work ‘really sucks’. it doesn’t suck, it just sucks at the moment because you’re having to carry the dead weight of the unproductive class.

here’s a sneak-peak at the furture:

anti-dialectics.co.uk/AAA_Socialist_Economy.htm

but like i said, it’s gonna take some time. the parasite class will not go quietly into the night (or the toilet, if you prefer). but we’re experiencing a major shift in the zeitgeist right now, bro. all these democratic forces are slowly dismantling the old system and waking the people out of their slumber. we let the democrats do the dirty work, and when the republicans are finally destroyed, we flush the democrats down the toilet right behind em. then we will finally be rid of that political circus we have been passively watching for centuries.