a new understanding of today, time and space.

Upon reflection, this notion of capitalism, that somehow
the greed and materialism of capitalism brings about
the betterment of society, is nothing more then a
metaphysical account of the “hand of god” as an justification
for the lower instincts of greed, lust, envy, hate and anger, among
other lower instincts that are driven by capitalism…….

Some humans that are not self-determined, believe they
need some justification for their greed and lust and they find
this justification in a metaphysical concept that is the “invisible hand
of god” that drives our materialistic age of capitalism…….

Kropotkin

I have been thinking about this for some time, well since yesterday anyway…

I have already presented the concept of the “common good”
which was presented originally by Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle…but one has to understand the basic premise
of their argument…….

To the Greeks, it was only in the Polis, the city, that man could find
his Arete, his excellence and the only place where a man could become
a human being, not a barbarian. They accept and understood that was in
a civil society which they equated with the state, that someone could
become who they are. The emphasis that Plato place on the state wasn’t just
theoretical jibber jabber, it was the emphasis that the Greeks placed on
the State. To engage with the “common good” meant you were improving the
most valuable tool a Greek had, the polis, the city.

To engage with the Polis, that there was no higher goal of the citizen,
wasn’t contested by any Greek…The Greeks engage with and understood
that they were social creatures who needed the state to find their better natures.

the idea of modern rugged individualism or Ayn Rand nonsense wouldn’t have
made any sense to them… the individual cannot survive on their own, we need
the Polis to survive and become even better, find our Arete.

This is a truth that we have lost and if we are to survive, we must recover
that long lost truth… that alone, we cannot survive and we cannot make the
best of who we are…it is only in our engagement with others, in a civil society/state
that we can we make it.

The idea of the “common good” was continued by virtually every single philosopher
since Aristotle……until we reach America in the 1900, where the idea changed
names and became the “public good” but the same theory. It has many different
definitions which is part of the problem with the notion of the “public good”.
You can almost state the “public good” as almost anything and many dangerous
ideas and policies have been done in the name of the “public good” including
the Holocaust and the atomic bomb and IQ45 tax cuts……so one has to be aware of what the
proponent of the “public good” is actually advocating, but the essential nature of
the “public good” must have actions that actually benefit the “public”. As the
sign on America’s wall says, democracy, then we must conduct actions
and policies that benefit its democracy…… not any particular small group like
people who donated to your campaign, or as we call them in my house, bribes…
the “public good” must actually engage and benefit the public, so we include
education and healthcare and social security and Medicare… in other words,
things that are socialistic, as the Greeks knew to be true, we must discover
to be true that the only path to success we can know individually or collectively
must be together, capitalism is not a sustainable ideology and the only path left
is working together and combining our assets and then collectively disposing
of them to benefit the “public good”……….socialism accepts the proposition that
many hands make light work… if we work together and with purpose, we
can solve many, many of the issues that plague us today…….

which leads me to my last point, vision… who among our leaders
have a vision that leads us to some goal or destination? we see the younger
leaders like Kamala Harris trying to create ad hoc decisions, but they
aren’t leading to some overall, comprehensive goal or vision of where we
want to be and where we need to be…It is not enough to fight against global
warming, you must endeavor to fight global warming within some vision of
where we want to be in the future……. the solutions we seek must exist
within some overall plan or destination we want to reach…it is not
enough to create solutions to immigration if we don’t understand immigration
in the context of past, present and future and of where we want to be
in the future.

some goal is needed to create some understanding of what steps we
must take to reach that goal…… even if and especially if the goal is
far into the future…… we must begin to plan not just the next quarter
or to the next election, we must plan 5 or 10 or 20 or a 100 years into
the future. We must engage in the long game of the human race…

for the “public good” demands that we not only focus on the past
and present but on the future and a future where we will not exist…

I am transitory, temporary and you are transitory, temporary… the
polis, society the state will all go on after we die… the society, the state
doesn’t need any one individual, but the individual needs society, the state…
in order to exist, to survive… this is an essential fact of life and we must
think of our goal, our destination in light of the fact that when we die,
we will leave our children and their children, a better life… and that takes
planning, long term planning and thus we need to have a vision, a goal,
a destination for us to reach for and that goal will decide, determine what
steps we must take to reach that goal………who among our leaders have
a long term plan, a vision of what tomorrow will look like? None right now…
and thus, I haven’t found what I am looking for, apologies to U2…….
in our current crop of people seeking to become president……

Kropotkin

let us take as our guiding principles,
certain ideas that can act as guides into our
vision of the future……

All human beings are created equal…….

that human beings are transitory, temporary…

that the search for truth begins with doubt, not wonder…

that the pursuit of “life, liberty” is fundamental but not the
pursuit of “happiness”. No, a thousand times no. This error has
lead humans far astray from what should be their journey……
what should be in its place? the third phrase should read as this,
the pursuit of “life, liberty and the journey itself”…

for all of human existence is a journey from birth to death…
what is the point or purpose of life… to die……
that is the final end game of life,

to die: to sleep, No more:
and by sleep to we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural
shocks that flesh is heir to, tis a consummation devoutly to
be wish’d. To die, to sleep: sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there the rub;
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause:

Indeed, in this passage of the bard, we see another principle, we discover
the function of ART as it gives us pause, to see another possibility
that exist for us, that in death, we might dream but what dreams must,
give us pause…we imagine our possibilities as human’s and we call that
ART.

so the next example of guiding principles is simple, we must dream
and we call those dreams ART. ART is simply dreams taking form…
and we must express those dreams in some fashion and we have ART.

Another guiding principle is, we must have a vision, a goal, a destination
of where are going, both individually and collectively…Martin Luther
King said, " I have a dream" and that dream is a vision, a goal…and
when the founding fathers said, “all men are created equal” that is another
vision, another goal.

I too have a dream, Kropotkin’s dream is that all human beings have
as their guiding principle, the dream of justice… where all exist
in a state of justice, both individually and collectively……
and what is justice, Justice is just a term for equality…

and the cynics and parties without values or hope, shout,
"Utopia, you speak of Utopia… “man will never reach a state
of justice because we are built too differently. I am different then
my fellow man. My state of justice means I must be treated differently”.

and to all who declare themselves above equality, I say unto you.
If wanting justice for all, as a goal for all, makes that vision
a Utopian dream, then let us dream for Utopia. Let our vision of
another day, be a vision of what we call Utopian. Why must we force ourselves
to dream small, why must our vision of tomorrow be so shallow and narrow.
Why not dream big, why not have a vision of tomorrow where there
is justice for all. It is a goal, a vison worthy of being pursued, not this
puny vision/goal of our pursuit of our materialistic theology, where money
is god. NO, let us dream big where we pursue our dreams of where
justice and not security rules the day. and if it be called Utopian, so be it…
I am not afraid of dreams that benefit the entire world…

and the party of no, shouts, “Naïve” “Innocent” “Dewey-eye liberal”

and I ask, why, why am I “naïve” and they shout back, you can’t dream big…

“Why, I ask”

and finally they reveal the truth about themselves, these naysayers and “realist”…

“We cannot dream big. We are not capable of having large visions.
And because of that, we must deny any who dream big, who have a
vision that answers for all of us. To dream big, to imagine utopia is antithetical to us
because we are incapable of such grand visions, of such power of imagination.
We abhor those who can dream big, of those with visions of utopia because
we are unable to dream of such sweeping grand visions…… we have limited, narrow
dreams and visions…and that makes us suspicious of any who can dream larger
then we can… and that is why we call liberals names… we have small and
insignificant dreams and goals and visions… so we must belittle those who can
dream big”

and the truth wills out, for it is jealousy that drives those who
deny the dreamers of large visions………

I want a world where the values are values of love, peace, hope,
charity, justice and honesty……. I want a world where we wake up
every day with hope in our hearts. If that be called a utopia, then
so be it…I dream of a utopia where everyone can become who they are
and I dream of a reality where dreams really do come true…

I dream of a world of hope and justice and love… I see a vision of
humanity where we live in peace and happiness… and if that is called
a utopia, then so be it… I dream of utopia… and you should to…
for that is the only way we can make utopia real, possible… it is
by our dreams and our actions that will make utopia real and possible…

so call me such names as you see fit… for I shall be dreaming of a future
where we wouldn’t even dream of calling someone names…….

I have a vision…and if is utopia, I plea guilty for I desire to live
in a world where we have peace and justice and love… why dream
of anything less?

Kropotkin

a question that has faced “Modern” thinkers is this question of
self-reflection… In other words, we see the universe, reality,
through the lens of “what does it mean to me”. Self -reflection
is about seeing reality, the universe through the lens of our “soul”…
but what if, what if we need to see the universe, reality, not by self-reflection,
but by our relationships to other things in the universe.
that is to say, I understand who I am by my relationship to the civil society,
by my relationship to god, by my relationship to other people…….not by
self-reflection. Seeing who we are by our actions and interactions with others,
individually and/or collectively… not by any self-reflection that says, I am Kropotkin,
and I understand reality, the universe through my understanding of who I am
and what is possible for me…my value that I understand life is justice, is
that just or not, that is the lens through which I see the universe…that is
just one way to discover or see reality, the universe… the way of relationships
says, that I discover who I am, is by my relationships with others, with the state,
with god… So I learn who I am by my understanding of my actions and interactions
with others/the state/civil society instead of discovering my relationships through
some understanding of what it means to be Kropotkin…I Kropotkin, I am a liberal,
so I see the world/reality through the lens of my being liberal which I gained through
self-reflection… no, I understand I am liberal by my actions and interactions and
relationships in the world and that tells me I am a liberal…This question of through
which lens we see the world is one of the basic questions of modernity…….

Do I see the world through subjectivity or do I see the world through the actions
and interactions and relationship within the world and I take that knowledge back
to my subjective self and thus learning the “truth” about the world?

we must at least visit the possibility that we see ourselves and learn about ourselves,
about who we are, by our experiences and interactions with the world instead of
having self-reflections and then seeing the world through those self-reflections…

How do we see the world/reality?

by what method?

Kropotkin

these modern leaders who want to be king, they proclaim their solutions
to the problems of the world, my solution to immigration is not a wall, but
comprehensive immigration reform or the solution to poverty is………

and they see the ying of the world, the troubles of the world and
the gigantic issues that seem to have infected the world…
but these leaders lack the vision or the sight to see the yang
of the world which is the beauty of the world, the vision to see
a world of hope and kindness and justice that does exists in the world…
they see the problems but not the hopeful and positive things in the world…
for that too requires a vision, a insight into what is and what is not…

we see the problems but not hopeful nature of what it means to be human…

we humans, we need, desire, demand hope and what hope demands,
requires and needs is a vision of tomorrow and what is possible tomorrow…

for our tomorrow can be a place where justice and love and peace does
exists, not only for us, but for all of us…

Our leaders see the issues, but not the vision or the dream of a better place
that can be found if we just dream and then act upon our dreams…

I see a tomorrow where there is justice and love and peace…
but our leaders can only see the problems created by man,
but what of the vision to make all our tomorrows possible?

that is lacking……

it is not enough to say, I see injustice and hatred and anger and greed,
we must do more and dream more and act upon those dreams/visions.

Dream of a utopia where we have justice and hope and dreams and
love and peace… dare to imagine that possibility… that is what ART
does. it dares to dream and imagine those possibilities.

but the naysayers and “realist” might say,

"but utopia has its failings and it is possible that utopia might be a nightmare…

yes, that is true, but until we dream and act upon our visions, we can never
find out… and I would rather find out then just deny its possibilities because those
possibilities might, might not work out……….

working for an impossible future is preferable to just existing in a world lacking
in hope and justice and peace…….

Someone once said, “workers of the world, unite! you have nothing to lose but your chains”

people of the world, unite! you have nothing to lose but your injustice, your despair,
your misery… Unite and become who you dream of, unite and discover
your possibilities… what do you have to lose but your anger and your hate and
your bigotry, your intolerance and the hopelessness that exists in our world today……

it is not about the struggle of the classes against each other, but about the possibility
to achieve something beyond just class consciousness… to achieve the possibility
of becoming human, fully human… rising above or overcoming those lower
instincts that hold us back from becoming human… the fear and anger and hatred
that is the lower instincts… rise above those lower instincts, those lower values
and dream of world that has justice and hope and charity and peace……

dream big or go home……

Kropotkin

Heidegger spends a great deal of time dealing with concealed
and unconcealed…things are concealed and then unconcealed…
this uncovering happens as a historical event, but let us take a closer
look at what it means to travel from concealed to unconcealed…

Christians believe in god and jesus and heaven and hell, in
fact they take all the ideology that goes along with believe in god…

we know that belief in god was very strong and is strong today…
but let us take Nietzsche’s word when he said, “god is dead and we have
killed him”………this type of concealment where god had died but
we didn’t know it, we didn’t even know we killed him…
then Nietzsche unconcealed it, revealed the “truth” that god was died……

Now think of the 19th century, from the Napoleonic wars to the death of Nietzsche,
in 1900……… how could Nietzsche discover that “god was dead” if it was
concealed, how did he uncover it? what was his evidence for the statement
that “god was dead and we had killed him”?

I received some truths that had been concealed from me and now
they are unconcealed, uncovered…

I don’t hide the fact I hate my job and the corporation I work for and
after transferring me to a store much further away, that was the last straw,
I sent out resumes and contacted people…….and one honest person,
spoke truths to me and uncovered my reality……. I am too old
and have worked too long at my company for anyone to hire me…
I am unhirable… pure and simple… this truth has brought some
uncomfortable truths to the table for me………

when we are young, we have possibilities, choices, options,
door open when we are young…… as we grow older, our choices,
our possibilities, our options grow ever smaller… doors once opened,
no longer open… I no longer have choices, options, possibilities to find
another job… I am too old… and the truth announced itself to me…
I have been reduced to only two working choices and that is the outcome of
being old… I work at my present job in my present company and be unhappy
and miserable or I retire and I can’t afford that… so as we grow old
the fact of life is we have our choices and possibilities ever reduced, grow
smaller………but given this unconcealment of my ever reducing possibilities
and choices, I must find out what possibilities and choices, I do have?

and after a rather bitter day mulling over my reduced choices and possibilities,
I’ve come to realize that I can still exercise my possibilities and choices, here
as I write and read and think…….I can still find my possibilities within the
words and art I create here at ILP……. as one door in my life closes, I can
find other possibilities and choices in my writings………in my working life,
I must work until I can retire or I die… that is my only two choices but
in my art, and I call my postings here, ART… for it is the act of creation
that I engage with here and, and it reveals to me, my still existing possibilities
and choices………

yesterday was a day of uncomfortable truths, but my reality isn’t solely based
on my working status… I must find my truths elsewhere and that will be
in my studies……

one door closes and another opens……

Kropotkin

I just had a thought, so think of this as an thought experiment
more then my usual ramblings…

modernity…and what separates modernity from what came before…

think of how things were done before technology and science…

most of the world for most of humanity’s history has grown their own
food and/or hunted and/or fished… if you wanted to eat, for most of history
you either grew it or you hunted it… that has been the human way for
since the creation of humans and in fact, that is the way it is for animals…
to eat, you found your food, you killed it, then you ate it…
that has been the way of animals for over a billion years here on planet
earth…

now at time the technology grew from spears to bow and arrows to guns,
but the idea was still the same, the tools used changed…

for American frontier families, they grew their food and then went into
town and traded that food for other goods they needed… but the
meat/fish was found, killed and eaten… you had an immediate
direct relationship with the processes that allowed you to exists…

to grow the food, you needed plows and other tools that farmers
needed to grow their food………

there was no separation between the actions of the human being
and how they lived… if you wanted to eat, you had to find and kill the food
and if you wanted to grow stuff, you had to grow the stuff…… there was no
mediation between human’s actions and how they lived…in other words,
you had direct control over your food and how you got them…

think of the modern world… If I want to eat, I go to the store, I buy
the food and we use appliances to cook the food…
compare that to the way of life for a million years…
If I was hungry, I had to go find the food, kill the food and prepare the food
myself or get a family member to do so…

we were in direct contact with the way we lived, the tools we used were
limited in how they were used…the modern person who is squeamish about
blood or killing animals would have died before 1800 because they had to kill and prepare
food to survive… of course this was before modernity…

now as I said, we go to the store, buy the food and pay money for it…
so clean and neat and without any idea of how that food was prepared…
we simply take it for granted……

or to say this another way, between us and the basics of life, exists
our tools, technology, machines… our means of how we survive
is separate and apart from us by technology and machines…

we exists and someone else who we don’t know and have never
meet, has already taken care of the “modern” needs of survival…

we exists and the basics of life is separate and apart from us……

we have no contact with or are completely separated from a millions
years of existence…out tools and technology and machines have
isolated us from what human life was like for a million years……

we exists and between us and the basics of life exists some sort of
mediation, tools, machines and technology and even money…

of course we feel alienated, remote, an estrangement from
our existence because we are living our lives vastly different
then all life previously, human and animal…….

we humans have had over 15,000 generations of human existence
since the beginning of modern humans, since the beginning of
“modern” times, say the French revolution, we have had 9 generations…
(at roughly 25 years per generation)

9 generations isn’t enough time to adapt or learn to cope with the radical
changes that has happened since the French Revolution…my great grandmother
was born in 1849, thus I am 4 generations away from 1849……
so personally, I am roughly 6 generations from the French Revolution…
not much time………

so how do generations adapt so quickly over so short of a time to
go from living a life that in 1789 would have been familiar to
Julius Caesar, some 2000 years ago, to living a life that would have been completely
unfamiliar to someone like Napoleon in the short span of the 230 years
since the French Revolution………

we have become separated, apart, alienated from the human existence that
had lasted for over 300,000 since the rise of modern humans………

so let us think about history for a moment…

the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans were part of the cycle of human existence
that went from the rise of the city to the Medieval times… The Greeks for
example, felt they were part of a long past that went back into the unknow past…
they felt at home with the long standing tradition that the were part of and had
lasted for a couple of thousand years…that collapse and the new age began…
but this new age had much of the same process that had lasted for a million years…
Human beings lived off the land… thus the political and economic and social
order may have changed, but it didn’t change the fact that human beings still
existed by living off the land… that didn’t change until the start of the industrial
revolution or roughly 1789……….and within a hundred years, the modern world was
not only born but brought into fruition… we can easily see the modern world
by 1900… phones, cars, airplanes came a few years later, but at the French Revolution,
you cannot see the modern world, not yet…the machines and science and technology
wasn’t there yet…the science and machines and technology which has divided us
from the previous 15,000 generations of human beings…

and now the 64,000 dollar question? is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Kropotkin

when thinking about it, metaphysics makes sense when
one is in immediate contact with living off the land…
you hunt, you fish, you grow stuff on land… that is immediate, direct
contact with how human beings have lived for 15,000 generations…
you are in touch with all those ancestors who lived before you because
you are living your life in the exact same way they did… tradition
is strong because tradition is a way of life…

we moderns have no contact with our traditions, because we
don’t live our life as the prior generations did… we have become
apart, separate, alienated from that way of life that existed for a million years
and a billion years before that…

and having a god or a religion makes sense in the midst of a history that
has existed for several hundred of thousands of years………
but as we don’t have immediate contact with or better said, we have layers
of science and machines and technology between us and the basics of life,
we don’t have the same connection to the past that had existed for
15,000 generations of human existence…

even in the urban environment of existence, it really didn’t change much
from Egypt to Greece to Rome through the Middle ages through the rise of
the modern city, Paris, Rome, London… … until the French Revolution,
living in the city was pretty much the same everywhere because the city
life itself didn’t really change from Greece to 1789… the rise of science
and machines and technology, that changed city life to what the modern
city is today…the connection that existed in the city that was there
since the ancient times, change because of the rise of science, technology
and machines………the very act of living is different today because of the
science and technology and machines that exists and we haven’t come to
grips with what that means yet………before the French revolution,
life in the city was pretty much the same outside of local differences,
but now life has changed and, and this is the confusing part,
travel from one city to the next, and there is a certain sameness,
a certain local feel, but each city is tied and connected to each other
by science and technology and machines that makes every city seem to
be no different, again outside of local differences…… so, San Francisco
is different then Chicago, having lived in both, but they are connected
by the science, technology and machines that exists within both and tie both
together…….if someone dropped you off in an American city and didn’t tell
you what city, without asking someone, how long would it take for you to know
what city you were in? As every city has cars and public transportation
and streets and tall buildings and everywhere exists the same stores,
7/11 and Walgreens and rite-aid and Burger King and MacDonald’s and Wendy
and Macy and Sears (before they fell) the Gap and Nordstrom’s…

the sameness of our American cities is scary… and something of a connection
that human beings need…

this sameness that is American cities also existed in various cities in Europe
not because of the fact that cities didn’t really change for the average person…
Paris of 1500 and Paris of 1600 and Paris of 1700 was remarkable the same city……
And London didn’t change that much over the 300 years and during the Middle ages,
the cities didn’t change that much, from 600 AD to 1500 AD, Paris wasn’t that different.

a citizen of 800 Paris could have easily gotten around during the 1500’s, the only difference
was the city of Paris was much larger, but the life within the city was still the same with
people leading similar lives, doing the same jobs, getting around the same way, it wasn’t
that different from 800 Paris to 1700 Paris…their lives were the same, they lived the
same, the taxes was the same, the churches were the same, the food was the same…
life was no different in 800 as it was in 1700… but life was completely different in
Paris by 1900… and science and technology and machines changed Paris enough to
make it unrecognizable to someone from 800 or even 1700…….

we must understand this change before we can understand what it means
to be “moderns”… Modernity cannot make sense until we understand
what it meant to live in the past…….

Kropotkin

we must locate modernity in our understanding of the past…
recall our standards for understanding: compare and contrast…
one of the ways we reach an understanding of anything is to compare
and contrast things…am I a better person today then I was
30 years ago? I need to then compare and contrast who I was 30
years ago with who I am today…another path to understanding lies
with our engagement with others… now others can be anything else
in the universe… and that includes ism’s, ideologies, biases, superstitions,
prejudice…so I can better understand being human by comparing
who I am against animals or plants or walls and other human beings……

now is my understanding biased because I can only understand by my
one viewpoint, my subjectivity? I cannot see the universe or reality in your
shoes or in your viewpoint… I am limited to having just one viewpoint or
place to stand where I can understand the world…….and that one viewpoint
or place to stand is limited by history and experiences and by my accidental
birth in a particular place and family…… I have a hearing loss and you most likely
don’t… my understanding of reality, of the universe is changed by the very
act of having a hearing loss… just as your understanding of the universe, reality is changed
by you having all your hearing…….so ask yourself, who has a “better” understanding
of the universe? You or me? to me that is an irrelevant question for it has no
possible answer because we can never know that answer… because “better” requires
some form of comparison or contrast and what are we to compare and contrast
“better” to? it all becomes just a subjective understanding of the word “better”……

so we begin by understand modernity by comparing our “modern” lives with
the lives of people who existed before us…

first of all, most people in history had a very short life expectancy, during the
Roman empire, the average life expectancy was roughly 25 years and I can’t see
it being any different from the height of the Roman empire to 1789…perhaps
give it to 30 or 32 after the middle ages…next, the average person rarely
traveled more then a 100 miles from their place of birth… just the amount
of movement by human beings has dramatically increased… next, the average
person for most of history was a farmer. Today, we have more human beings
living in cities then living on the farm, world wide… that alone makes
all the difference in the world… for city existence is vastly different
then a farm existence…in the city, we experience far more in a year
then the average farmer in the middle ages experienced in a lifetime…
and that fact is vital………for it is within these experiences that we
compare and contrast ourselves to… I cannot know if I am a bigot for example
unless I compare myself with others and it seems clear that I am not
a bigot comparing myself to the bigots that inhabit ILP……
and that is just one way we can find out or discover who we are
and what is our nature…now some clowns here have tried to
tie anti-Semitism with being liberal but that can only happen if
you twist the entire understanding of being liberal and anti-Semitism into some
unrecognizable definition.

thus we return to Socrates and his dictum, know thyself……
and we can only know ourselves in relations to others…

and so by comparing the fact that we moderns, experience
and travel and live longer then the prior generations means
our understanding of the universe is different from those
other generations…we live in modern world where we have
science, technology and machines… the average person during
the last 100,000 years didn’t have those things. those facts of “modernity”
means we view the world vastly different then those who didn’t have our
modern tools of science and technology.

Our understanding of “Modernity” is view by comparing and contrasting
what is our modern experiences compared to those who existed before us…
we see in those difference what modernity means……

the loss of ism’s and ideologies that existed in the past came about from
the way people came to understand themselves… you can see that
when you see the rise of Christianity in the ancient world… you can compare
and contrast Rome from the time of Caesar to the fall of Rome in 476 BC…
we see Rome slowly change during those 500 years… for example,
the Rome of Caesar had engineers and builders who could build grand, fine
buildings but by the time of the fall of Rome, you didn’t have any body
who could build or construct those wonderful building of ancient Rome…
the knowledge and technique was lost during those 500 years and wasn’t
rediscovered until the Renaissance……

Modernity is more then another time period… it is about the comparing
and contrasting of the experiences and events and people of previous times
compared to our modern times…and in that comparison and contrast,
we can see why we have lost our faith in god and religion and most forms
of ism’s and ideologies……. we are atomistic and isolated from the past
in ways we haven’t even discovered yet… but that doesn’t mean we must
return to the past…as has been noted before, you can’t go home again…

we must not go back to the past… we have only one direction we
can move and that is forward… and any who call for a return to the past
must find out the past is no longer a home for us… we cannot go home again…
we must find our way forward…… but that doesn’t tell us the new ism’s
and ideologies and prejudices and superstitions that we must now
hold in order to be at home in this modern world… no, it doesn’t…

Kropotkin

so what exactly is “modernity”?

if we compare our current situation to the situation of someone in the
past, say, 1700, France… you can say that the average person was a farmer,
who lived to say, 35, who was born into the Catholic church and the King of France
had been King since 1643… all of these are part of the identity of someone who
was living in 1700…their families had probably owned the land they worked on
for generations…the average person didn’t travel that far in their life, perhaps
a couple of hunred miles away from their home…

we understand the human condition by the possibilities that exists in
that time period…the average person, I shall call Rene, didn’t go to
collage, most likely had a limited education, probably couldn’t read, as the
number of nobles were around 600,000 in a population of 22 million and the
money always goes to the wealthy nobles or the church,
thus Rene was also living on the edge of poverty…
and until recent times, the possibility of a famine was always in
mind… Rene lived a hard, brutal, short life and because of that
he needed all the help he could get and that came from the church
and its all-encompassing hold over life in rural france in 1700…
you were born, lived and die within the hold of Catholic church…
and average person like Rene most likely didn’t object because
his life was so transitory and difficult.

Now compare that to your life…

and now we see modernity in its full exposure… it is the difference
between a person’s life in 1700, Rene and your life today…

we feel alienated, disconnected, atomized by life today because
the factors that comforted Rene does not exists today…

perhaps Nietzsche was right, god is dead and we have killed him…
and it might be those factors of life, the church and the small village
near the land of Rene, that all gave solace and comfort to Rene… his life
was a life grounded into the traditions and experiences he had living
in his very limited life……compare that to your life or maybe I can compare
that to my life… at one stretch, my family moved over 10 times over
4 states in 10 years… I had no stability, nothing that was a shared experience
during all those moves outside of my family and books…compare my life
with Rene’s life…… I had a completely different experience then Rene
and that difference is called “Modernity”. Also in play with the difference with
Rene is all the science and technology and machines that exists in my life that
didn’t exists in his life. I have never killed a animal in my life… I have never
picked fruits and vegetables in my life. I have never fished in my life……
I am separated, apart from the experiences that Rene had, that he needed
to have to survive… and those difference is what we call, “modernity”.

god is dead and we have killed him… we killed him when we became
separated from, alienated from, that which keeps us alive,
the basics of life… I have never build a shelter and I cannot fix a car,
I can’t tell you how an stove works nor how the computer works…
I use these things all the time and my shelter was built for me
and my car is fixed by someone else and my food is prepared
by someone else… I am mediated from my life by the tools,
science, technology and machines that exists in my life……

that too is “modernity”… our separation from the basics of life…

I stand here and the basics of life stand over there and all these things,
tools, science, technology and machines stand between me and the
basics of life…it creates a different reality, experience for me, then
it does for Rene who had to find his food and fix his food and repair
his hovel with what was at hand and fix his wagon with whatever he could
find…and then he would go out into the field and plant his crop
and raise that crop and then sell that crop for whatever he could get…

I woke up today, it is my day off, I came into the kitchen and turned on
the TV and then I took my various pills that I need, then I microwaved something
for breakfast… I am wearing my headphones to listen to music and I did read
some but I have mostly spent my morning writing here… compare my day
with Rene’s day…… that is “modernity”

Rene’s life was grounded in the fact he was a farmer and his life was grounded
in a life that his father had and his grandfather had and his great grandfather had…
with a church his father and everyone before had, with a state with Kings
and nobles that been there for a thousand years…he didn’t travel and he couldn’t
read and his experiences are the experiences of a French famer in 1700… limited,
at best………

I am not grounded by my experiences, I will work again on Weds, standing for
8 hours while I scan and input codes into the computer… weighing fruits
and vegetables and chit chat with the customers in a brightly lit store full
science and technology and machines…….as I now work much further away from
home, it takes about an half hour to drive home in my car, mostly in ugly
traffic… I reach home and perhaps my wife will make me dinner by using the
stove or more likely the microwave to cook my dinner…….

My daily experiences are so different from Rene’s that we could be
from different planets… and that difference is “modernity”

now the question arises, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

and do we, must we change ourselves to become more grounded?
or should we just learn to change and adapt to our new reality, our
new understanding of what it means to be human?

many, many questions are here… and I don’t know the answers…

Kropotkin

so we have tried to understand modernity as the
difference between, compare and contrast, the lives
of people before say, the French revolution and today…

but that compare and contrast lies in only one direction, the past,
what about the comparison between today and tomorrow, the future?

is society moving in the right direction? is my life “better” off then
my created person described in my last post, as Rene, is my life better
off then Rene? Depends on what is the standards used?
I am economically better off then Rene, I am not faced with possible
famine nor will I starve to death… but and this is important…
I can fall a great deal further then Rene… he is basically one small step
from complete poverty and homelessness whereas I while solidly lower
middle class, within missing three paychecks, I could face poverty
and becoming homeless… I have further to fall then Rene…
and that is another experience Rene will not face……

but the question still remains, how are we to face the future?
the conservative demands a return to the past, but we cannot
go home again… we can never return to the middle ages or
even the 1950’s… for better or worse, we are here, right now
in 2019 and we must decide how we are to engage with 2020 and beyond…

so much of our thinking is engage with ad hoc thinking… that is to say,
we deal with, focus on fighting the fires of our times with solutions
that are meant to solve those small scale problems…we see homelessness
and we answer with increasing the budget to better improve their lives…
but that is a ad hoc solution because it doesn’t engage with the reasons
we have homeless people… a solution must deal with a small scale
immediate solution when we must really create a large scale, comprehensive
solution that is a sociality solution for the homeless arise from
issues and problems within our society… homelessness is not
an isolated, individual problem, but a problem that stem from
our system and our choices within that system……

every problem I can think of that plagues society stems from
society in some fashion and every single problem must
be solved from a sociality standpoint. we cannot create small scale
ad hoc solutions for problems that stem from sociality issues…
homelessness is a problem because of the way society is organized
and arranged and can only be solved on a sociality level…

the same is true with every single problem we are faced with, from
poverty to homelessness to children’s lack of food to climate change
to pollution to overpopulation to income inequality and so on……

we cannot simply use an half ass a solution and call it a day…

we must be prepared to rethink and reorganize our entire
society if we are to successfully engage with and solve our
myriad problems…

but one might ask why? if you ask that you have failed to understand
the entire point of society and government……
the use of society and government is to find solutions to a problem
or problems facing a people…society/government is a problem solving
method for individuals… we use government to solve problems that
are not possible on an individual level…for example, on an individual level,
I cannot successfully live my life without the various solutions that
the government has provided me such as police, fire departments,
sewage plants, road and hospitals… these governmental solutions
to problems free me up to engage with my life and my own search
for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”………

without these governmental solutions, life is as Hobbes describe it, is…

“Life outside of society would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”

it is society/the tools of problem solving like the government that
has created our “modern” way of life…….

and then we are still faced with the question of the future…

but the conservative demands that “government become small
enough to drown in a bathtub”

and the conservative works for and demands a small government
all the while ignoring the fact that it is the government as a solution
that has created our modern and somewhat successful modern world…

so it becomes a question of what problems, issues that currently
bedevils us that we must find solutions to and we must engage in
all the tools, science and technology that we have along with
that other tool, government to find solutions to our problems…

for that is really the path into the future we must engage with…
what are our problems and how do we find solutions to those problems?

that is the path into the future or a least one possible path into the future…
we can go into the future with the understanding that our engagement
with the future is about solving our problems and what tools do we use to
solve those problems like global warming and poverty and overpopulation…

that is one possible answer to how are we to face the future…
but there are always other possible answers to
this question of, how are we to face our future…

Kropotkin

to make sure its clarified, we have serious issues such as
global warming, income inequality, poverty and pollution…
these are not 4 distinct and separate issues or problems,
these are 4 connected and interrelated problems/issues…

there is not one answer that will solve any one of these problems,
there is only an overarching, overall solution to these problems…
anyone who says we must solve poverty by raising taxes is not understanding
the issue… we must not advocate ad hoc solutions to distinct
and separate problems/issues because there aren’t distinct
and separate problems/issues… they are simple part of the overall
problems and issues we face…

Kropotkin

and so one might say, ok, what is the overall solution to
our overall problems… and they are still missing the point…

the answer lies with and begins with an overall understanding of what
it means to human and what are our possibilities and what is our future
goals… the solution begins with changing our understanding, of
our beginning with Socrates, know thyself and then understanding
what values are really our values and what values are values we
were taught and indoctrinated with as children and then
overcome those values by a reevaluation of values… of finding out
what values are really your values and not indoctrinated values of childhood
and then becoming who you are…which means become those values you
have reevaluated… if you are indoctrinated with “american” values of
martial values and a concern with security and in your reevaluation you
decide your real values are values of justice and hope and love…
you then have reevaluated your values and now you must live
your life with the new values, become who you are by living
your life with your new reevaluated values… and we haven’t even
done this basic step and thus we are unable to see our way to
any type of solution that will solve society issues/problems because
we are still back with our indoctrinated values and any solution we then
come up with will simply be ad hoc solutions because we haven’t
become who we are and thus we are alienated from, disconnected
from our real values… instead of doing as we do now which is
follow our indoctrinated values which have no point because
those indoctrinated values cannot answer for us or suggest to us
any solutions to our current problems…so to make this clear…

as a child of three, I was indoctrinated with values that are meant to
solve my three year old problems… I am now 60 and those values meant
to solve my problems of three, my indoctrinated values, cannot even begin
to solve my problems of my being 60… my indoctrinated values are not capable
of solving my current issues/problems… I must have values that are relevant
and current to solve my 60 year old problems and issues…

that is the same thing within society… we must have and use values that
are current and relevant to our issues/problems at the time…
indoctrinated values of childhood work in childhood, but as we grow
they become less and less effective as solutions until one day, they
no longer work as solutions and we must adapt change our values to
match our current age and situation in life and we have to do so individually
and collectively………that is why we are alienated and disconnected from
ourselves and society because we are using childhood indoctrinations to
solve adult problems and issues…….

Kropotkin

so let us continue our understanding of our possibilities…

when conservative demand a capitalistic, past solution to
our modern problems, they are demanding a childhood
solution to our present age problems……

when someone defends capitalism as it stands today,
as a system in which private greed and individual
goals are somehow meant to solve the societies problems,
the so called hand of god, that is meant to somehow in
some way that has never been explained, to make society
work… then are using a childhood solution to an adult problem

for as adults, private greed doesn’t solve or help our modern
problems/issues… for greed and anger and hate are childhood
solutions to problems… in other words, capitalism is a childhood
answer to adult problems… capitalism worked when we
were in that situation, with those experiences, but today,
we have adult problems and capitalism with its emphasis
on childhood solutions of greed and the every present cry of
the child… me, me, me, me, me, me…no longer will work
as an adult… we cannot say, me, as an adult… we say, we
and that is an adult solution… and so we must address our current
problems/issues with adult solutions and as capitalism is a childhood
answer, we can no longer go with that solution… as adults we
find that engagement with other human beings, cooperation
is the adult solution to most of our problems, issues…
and so to understand that in adult terms, we must no longer
use childhood solutions like capitalism to solve our problems/issues…

we must use adulthood solutions and that means we must cooperate
and work together, so the adult solution to our problems/issues is
really socialism/communism… we must work together and in doing so,
we can together to solve our problems… the political and economic
system of adults is not capitalism but socialism/communism…

so anyone who says, MAGA, make America great again, is using
childhood solutions to solve adult problems/issues…

we must find and use adult solutions to our adult
problems………and using solutions from the past, our childhood,
is no longer possible for those solutions were right for that time
and stage of development, but that time, that age was 3…

we are now adults and we must use an adult solution which is
not the indoctrinated solutions of childhood which is great for
solving the problems of children… but we are no longer children…
and children solutions will no longer work for us……

we don’t need to MAGA, make America great again…
we need to discover new solutions that make sense with
our current problems and issues… and childhood solutions like
MAGA and “follow the past” will no longer solve our problems/issues…

to be a conservative and demand the past solutions to current adult problems
is to demand we use 3 year old solutions to solve adult problems…
and my 3 year old solutions cannot and will not solve my adult problems/issues…

so, we must consider adult solutions to adult problems and socialism is
the best one we can use because it is adult in it a solution
that is adult, working together and planning together is what
adults do… we aren’t just about our own personal goals, for an
adult, it is us, not me………… and socialism is us and capitalism is me…

Kropotkin

as is my habit, I usually stop my reading and writing in the afternoon…
So I was just watching CNN killing time before the Warriors play in
an hour and I see this news report saying that there is some sort
of town hall meeting in which Sen. Warren will announce
several policy programs that she will institute as president…
for example, she wants to break up tech companies and have
universal child and health care… which are fine policies but
and this is important, they seem to be ad hoc suggestions that
have no overall vision or goal to reach… they are individual, separate
policies that have no relationship to each other… there is no
plan or a unified plan to overcome our problems… just individual
policies that exist isolated from each other…and therein lies
the problem……. we have seen this movie before and it has lead
us nowhere because to be effective, you must have an overall
plan or a goal for us to reach for individual policies to work…

what is the overall plan of Sen. Warren? I doubt she could even tell
you and that is the problem… what is the vision and how does
the individual ad hoc suggestions help us reach that vision?

if you look at the past and see the great human beings, they all
brought to the table, a vision, a goal they want to reach…

look at the people running for president and not one has a overall
vision or overall goal that they want to reach… it is simply ad hoc
suggestions that are simply band-aids on our problems instead of
a philosophical underpinning that allows one to achieve a goal or reach
a vision…we must have this philosophical underpinning of where we are going
and then and only then, can we begin to describe our plans for reaching our goals…

in other words, we have a vision and then we think about what it takes
to reach that vision/goal… for example, we want to eliminate poverty…
what changes do we need to make in policy and in our viewpoint of the world
do we need to reach our goal of eliminating poverty… we have a goal
and then we find the actions to take to reach that goal… Sen. Warren
has the actions to take but do they reach a goal or achieve a vision of
tomorrow? She has never vocally said out loud what is her philosophical
underpinning or what vision or goal she wants to achieve…
the goals or vision determines the actions to be taken………
and as we cannot see the vision, we cannot see if her actions will achieve
those goals or the vision…

Kropotkin

ok, we have a vision…
and we decide that our vision is MAGA, “make America great again”
so, how do we create policies, decide upon actions that will make
America great again… However, my own vision or goal is to make
America the greatest country on earth…that is a subtle difference
between making America great again and making America the greatest
country on earth…

so how do we go about making America the greatest country on earth…
by what means or actions would we take to make America the greatest country
on earth?
First of all, we have to understand what it means to be the greatest country
on earth… by what standards will we use to reach our goal of being the
greatest country? by standards, I mean, are we to use such standards
as economically or socially or militarily or some other standard to decide
upon that will make us great…… so, we might say for example, we are the
greatest country on earth because we have the greatest military on earth…
thus using military strength as the criteria for being the greatest country
on earth or perhaps we might us the economic standard, we are economically
the greatest country on earth… but are those really standards we should use
to judge if we are the greatest country on earth?

let us look into history… we see that the Athenians were the greatest
navel power on earth and by that, they achieve their greatness but
you must note that Athens only achieve their greatness for a very short
period of time, about 100 years… not much greatness…

so we try the economic standard for Athens to be the greatest country
on earth………and once again, we can say Athens was the greatest country
for only a very short time…so by using those two standards,
we see that using the economic or military standards for greatness
leads us to see that greatness on those terms has a very short existence…

let us examine Rome… Rome was the leading economic and military power
in Europe… the greatest country on earth but the fact is that Rome
was the greatest power for a relatively short time, maybe 500 years
and then it completely collapsed…… trying to tie greatness of a country
into an economic or military power has it limits because a country
can achieve greatness for only a short time before it falls back to earth…

let us look at how we might achieve greatness in America…we must look
at other countries, compare and contrast, and see what seems to make
great countries… and we look at Europe and we see that the most successful
and stable countries in Europe are countries that don’t have very big
income inequality… everyone is roughly in the same middle area in wealth…
you don’t have great wealth and you don’t have great poverty………

and by looking at other countries in history, you see this too is a factor…
income inequality is a sign of a country that might be great for a short time
but income inequality brings about instability and chaos… for example
Athens during its greatness didn’t have tremendous income inequality…
it certainly did have income inequality but it wasn’t to the extent that America
is today… Rome had real problems within its society because of its
income inequality and one can make the argument that what finally destroyed
Rome was its income inequality… the wealthy and churches didn’t pay taxes
and the tax burden grew too great on everyone else to allow Rome to survive…
a lesson for modern times……

and when we look at other “great” countries we see similar stories,
of temporary greatness either militarily or economically but
not long lasting at all… and we see this too with America…

now this leads us to another question, is greatness really a function
of military or economic strength? I don’t think so… I see greatness
coming from having our individual members of society being as strong
as possible… and thus we must be achieving goals as eliminating poverty
and income inequality… citizens must be roughly equal… justice which is
equality must be the driving force of any society striving for greatness…
not military or economic strength.

let us look at individuals that have been “great” and we try to see what made
them great…… we begin with Jesus… Jesus didn’t have either economic or military
greatness… he was a poor man who message, in part, was that for people to reach
heaven must not be rich, they must give away their wealth to achieve heaven…
and he had 12 apostles and at most he had maybe 150 people within his circle
who paid any attention to him… the greatness he achieved had nothing to
do with wealth or military…… Martin Luther… he had neither wealth or
military strength… and yet, he was great and changed the world in a dramatic
and profound way without the usual trappings of wealth or military…

Gandhi, he too was a poor man who preached peace and nonviolence…
and he too changed the world… Martin Luther King, poor and peaceful…

we see individual greatness doesn’t need wealth or a military behind them to
achieve greatness… greatness isn’t about wealth or about the strength of any
military behind them……… so why should we make greatness about wealth or
the military when we see individuals being great without any wealth or military
to back them up………

we need to redefine what greatness is to include what is actually greatness,
not wealth and not military… but purpose in life, a vision……

and understanding of what it means to be human and what it means to
become who we are… that is greatness…that is a goal devoutly to
be reached…did Shakespeare have wealth or military to achieve greatness?
Now some did reach greatness by the military, Caesar and Napoleon and Alexander the great
reach greatness by military means… and look at how they ended… none of them
had a particular dignified ending… you can include Hitler or Stalin and see what
havoc did they achieve… millions dead and fated to be hated till the end of time…

we must reevaluate greatness to be something besides wealth or military because
neither path is the path to greatness… real greatness is written not by wealth or
the military but by a goal, a plan, a vision of what we are and what is our possibilities…

Lincoln was great not because of wealth or the military, but by a vision…
Einstein was great not because of wealth or the military but by a vision…
Newton was great not by wealth or the military, but by a vision……
Hawkins was great not by wealth or the military but by a vision…
Socrates was great not by wealth or the military but by a vision…
philosophers and thinkers and scientist are great not by wealth or
the military but by a vision………

we must follow greatness by following a vision, a goal and not by
embracing wealth or the military…… we want to be great or if
we want a country to be great, we must embrace a vision or a goal,
not wealth or the military………

reach for greatness…

reach for a vision……

Kropotkin

let us continue on about greatness…

We have spoken about Athens but let us further understand it…

we often consider the greatest explosion of creative thought to be
Athens from roughly 480 BC to about 380 BC……
it wasn’t wealth or the military that drove this unprecedent creative
explosion…we remember Athens because of its buildings, the philosophers,
the ART, the many first that Greece founded from math to science to history
to philosophy…

we turn to the renaissance and we see the same thing… an explosion
of creativity that has enthralled the world since… and that creativity had
nothing to do with wealth or the military…you cannot attribute genius
to wealth or the military…….and genius is greatness and that has nothing
to do with wealth or the military……. so, we cannot continue to define
our country “greatness” with wealth or the military because greatness is not
found there…

we can and must redefine what greatness means and then act to reach
for greatness… the theory tells us the actions… as theory is
the underpinning of actions…… our modern world is built upon the
underpinning of the science that drives the technology and the machines…
without the science, the underpinning, we cannot create the technology or the
machines………

what is the underpinnings of our modern world?

what are the philosophical idea’s that give our world its shape?

we have the religion/theology of Mammon….

we pray to this god all the time… this religion is a nihilistic one,
it negates people and their values… it is the religion of the GOP and
IQ45…Money above all else… that is the GOP mantra……
money above people and their values…….nihilism… pure and simple…

no, our philosophical underpinnings cannot be a nihilistic one……

we must have as our philosophical underpinning a hopeful,
positive philosophy…… we must begin by acknowledging
our addiction to this ideology of materialism…….

then we must place people and life above materialism or money…
and for many, many, this will be hard to do because they have lived
with their addiction for so long that changing will be hard to do…

we can do worse then replace our addiction with a pursuit of greatness…
we can begin to replace nihilism with creativity by building, creating art,
engaging with love which is the basis of all creativity…… the overflowing of
the heart is the basis of all ART… this overflowing can be one of the many
emotions we human beings feel, from sadness to anger to hate to love to despair…
our heart overflows and we must release it, express it and ART is the means we
use to bring the heart back into moderation…think of a boiling pot, without
a valve to release the steam, the pressure within the pot grows and grows until
it becomes dangerous… we release the steam from the boiling pot and there is
no danger to us…… the human heart is the exact same thing as a boiling pot…
we must release the steam or we get burnt when it explodes……

one might say, Kropotkin, you are talking about several different things,
what exactly are you talking about? I say unto you, no, no, I am talking
about the exact same thing when I talk about greatness and nihilism
and ART and releasing steam from the human heart… they are just different
sides of the human experience…we cannot separate out who we are into
distinct and separate parts… we are one and the same… and the myriad of
feelings and thoughts and instincts that drive the human soul, all come from
us, the human being… and we must learn to harness and love all aspects of us…

we can only reach or achieve greatness once we learn to become who we are,
and learn what are our possibilities… for art and greatness and love and
becoming all rise from our possibilities…… and possibilities means what is
possible for us to become… it is possible for us to find greatness within us
and it is possible for us to become great artist and it is possible for us to become
great human beings, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King………for love and greatness
and hope and our possibilities are all found within us, within who we are……

our philosophical underpinning is simply a statement of what we believe is
possible for the human soul………

Kropotkin

one way to think of modernity and people in the past, people like
my made up Frenchman name Rene… look at Rene… he was a farmer,
a church goer, catholic, he existed under the Ancient Regime, the political
and social system of the Kingdom of France for 500 years……

but how many different roles did Rene have to play? very few… farmer,
churchgoer, taxpayer, possibly husband and father…

now let us take Kropotkin for example, he is a worker thus must present one
face to the management or as I have recently noticed, be banished…
another role is husband and father and we have taxpayers just as Rene did,
but we have many different and diverse systems in which we play our roles
and each system requires us to play a different role…we are a consumer, voter,
citizen, sport fan, participant of such internet games as presented here on ILP,
with each system comes a different role, a different Kropotkin…

I act and interact with hundreds of people every single day… I probably meet and greet more
people in one month then Rene has met in his entire life…

and that too is part of the difference between the modern and the world before
1789…

the grounds of our existence is different then the grounds of existence for
Rene and everyone like Rene who lived before the French Revolution…

think of a farmers life and then think of your life… a vast difference and
one that marks the difference between modernity and the past…
our basic existence is mediated by all the science and technology and
machines we use every single day and Rene existence was about the fields
he was working on and the seasons that affected his crops and animals and
birds that might eat his crop and saving his soul from everlasting damnation…

none of Rene concerns are our concerns because we exists in modernity
and Rene did not…….

Kropotkin

we have so many assumptions that we live under…
for example this idea of American greatness or American exceptionalism
which is America is great by being virtue of being America…this hubris
is a path to failure… for with any person, group, city, nation, we must
work every single day to become great, greatness is not handed to us,
it is worked for every single day…sports teams don’t just rest once
they have won a championship, no, in fact once you win a title,
you have got work even harder to maintain that title because
everyone is gunning for you…if America is exceptional then we must
work every single day to remain exceptional… the same is true of American
greatness… but I return to an earlier point, what makes America great?
how are we to define greatness? we just assume that we are great without
actually understanding the basis for our greatness…

and the same lies true for the greatness of our values… what values makes America
great? can we even define those values? Can we point out people who follow those values?

the problem is we assume so much in regards to what America stands for
and what being American actually means………If you are a white nationalist,
I would maintain that you don’t stand for American values because documents
like the declaration of independence stated things like this: “All men are created equal”
it doesn’t say, all white men, it says “all men” thus the color of one’s skin is irrelevant
in regards to the statement in question…and we have clearly expanded the
statement to include women, so the statement in question is really this:

“All human beings are created equal”

and they are… to attempt to negate people based on the color of their skin
or their religion or their nationality is an attempt to deny the founding fathers…
you cannot claim to be a patriot and still try to negate human beings based
on their skin color or their creed or their nationality…

and this the problem with white nationalist like the ones who exists on ILP,
they are nihilists, they negate people and their values and that is nihilism…
nihilism is not positive as it engages in negative values and negative instincts
like hate and anger and greed and lust among others…

and those who negate people because of who they love or their social or
economic or political beliefs are nihilists… if you negate someone because
they are gay or they believe in socialism, you are a nihilist…….

IQ45 is a nihilist because he negates which is to say he is racist
and bigoted and sexist and anti-sematic……… he negates people
based on race, color, sex, even if they are handicap… that is nihilistic…

now one might say, it isn’t nihilistic because we bigots and racist and sexist still
hold values… really, what values would those be?

I suspect the bigots of the world don’t even have a coherent understanding
of what they value because that would require some thought as to what they
believe and their negative beliefs/instincts are really emotional reaction’s to
the world, not a rational understanding of the world…I believe that the bigots
of the world can’t even logical state what is their core beliefs because that would
mean they would have to think about their beliefs and for the bigots and racist
of the world it isn’t about thinking, it is about how they feel, their emotional response
to people…….

again, for the instinctual people of the GOP/right wing, it would require some attempt
to think about their beliefs… but to put it bluntly, their negative/instinctual
beliefs are really assumed beliefs because they have never actually given any thought
to the nature of their beliefs…and we return to the many assumptions that
we live under………….

Kropotkin

in trying to understand our modernity, I was thinking about the
ism’s and ideologies that we have and then comparing/contrasting
our current ism’s and ideologies with ancient ism’s and ideologies…

for example, we have two prominent ism’s that are THE 20the century
ism’s, communism and capitalism………

but as I have previously laid out, both ism’s are less path to freedom and
more a path to our enslavement… by that think about capitalism…
I have laid out in great detail how capitalism is nihilism…I am not free
in a capitalistic society because I am simply a small and insignificant pawn
in capitalism…my role is simply to create more profit so that those who own
the means of production can get wealthier… I am means to greater wealth
and it is not my wealth that is increased… in my 40 plus years of working,
I have nothing to show for it outside of a body and soul that has been severely
damaged… because of the pain I suffer from working, I need pain pills
and sleeping pills to go to sleep… I am in pain every single day and that is the
result of my working for 40 years… my soul was crushed years ago…
and for what, I cannot retire… the various economic downturns have left
me with no money saved up…I cannot quit my job, I cannot afford it,
I cannot go anywhere else because no one will hire me, I am too old…
I am a victim of capitalism as are millions of people who suffer under it
damaging affects…and why? because it is said that somehow under
capitalism, the “hand of god” will benefit society… in 40 plus years, I
have yet to see how this “hand of god” of capitalism has benefited society…

but communism has the same problem of the individual being merely a
helpless pawn while communism with its historical dialectal materialism
that operates above us and controls us in a soulless relentless fashion…
we have no personal determination in either capitalism nor in communism…
we are simply ships that bob above the seas while the sea of capitalism and
communism try to sink us and with no care as to who we are or whither we
have consented or not… and I think that is the real problem, we have no
control or say over either capitalism or communism… an small example,
is my recent transfer to another store… I wasn’t asked, I wasn’t told about it,
I was simply transferred without any consent or approval by me… and that in
a nutshell is capitalism…actions taken about my life without any input
from me… and that is also communism… for we have no input
into the forces that dominate communism, the dialectal materialism…
where we are simply crushed under the wave of historical forces that
we have no say or control over……

and that is the failure of ism’s from Catholicism to Hinduism to Islam to
really any religion and to the ism’s of the economic and political…
we have no freedom and no say over our fate in ism’s and ideologies…

the Enlightenment and Kant basic point was that we needed to
become free of authorities that would tell us to do, like the bible
and god and Aristotle and the Church…… but what the enlightenment
never saw was that we cannot be free of the ism’s and ideologies
long enough to engage in what Kant called “Sapere Aude”…dare to know…
we cannot think for ourselves because we are trapped within ism’s
and ideologies that so completely dominated our lives……. we are
simply pawns to the final goal of these ism’s and ideologies…
pawns to god, pawns to capitalism, pawns to communism, pawns
to religion, pawns to the economic and pawns to the political…

so I would guess the real battle is to become who we are and
by doing so, hopefully… maybe, become free of these ism’s
and ideologies that have collectively crushed and destroyed
our bodies and souls…………

so the question becomes, how are we to be free of those ism’s and
ideologies that have trapped us within the complete control over
our lives… where we have no control and no say over our lives…

does the modern vision really mean to recapture our voice
and to recapture control over what it means to be human…

we are not, as religion and politics and economics and ism’s all say,
we are not disposable pieces that can be discarded, once our
role of enriching the system without any benefit to ourselves,
happens……

I am a human being and I demand that I am treated with respect
…and what gives me the right to make such a demand?

I am a human being and that is enough to demand to be treated
not as a ends to such means as in profits or a pawn in historical
dialectical materialism… I have value for myself, in myself,
and by myself…this is a radical call… I have value, not just
as a worker or as part of an ongoing struggle for the classless state…
as my call for an escape from ism’s and ideologies really is a call
for all… recall your Marx… he said,

“Workers of the world, unite”

but we are not just workers as seen by Marx, we are human beings…
we should unite but not as workers or as citizens or as mere pawns
in a capitalistic system or tools of god to create the final state
of heaven on earth… under Catholicism, we are just disposable
tools that simply act for god to bring about this end state… what
a sad commentary about the role of humans… we have no value
outside of bringing about Armageddon…

if you want to be free, truly free… you must become free of ism’s
and ideologies that tell you who you are and what is your role
in the specific ism or ideology…

but how are to achieve this state of being free of ism’s and ideologies
that so dominate our modern life?

the first step, as always, is to become aware of our current status
of simply being pawns or tools of the ism’s and ideologies that
currently exists… we have no other purpose in life except
to fulfil our role within the specific ism and ideology…

but I say unto you, no, a thousand times no…

I have value outside of and beyond the role of pawn
and tool of the dominant ism’s and ideologies of the 21st
century………

the modern goal of humanity is to become free, to escape the bonds
of slavery of the current ism’s and ideologies like capitalism and communism
and Catholicism and of any religious, social, economic or political system
that desires to crush me in the name of that ism or ideology…

the path to freedom is to become free of ism’s and ideologies…

but one may ask, without ism’s and ideologies, how are we to know
what our values are, how are we to know how to act or how are
we to know what is important in life?

or said another way, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions
of “what can we know” “what are our values” “what can we
hope for” “what should we do”… ism’s and ideologies
can answer those profound questions but ism’s and ideologies
answer those questions by enslaving us into those ism’s and ideologies…

we are no longer slaves to ism’s and ideologies that demand
to control us, leaving us without any say or control over our very
nature, over our lives………

the next revolution is to free ourselves from the dehumanizing
and nihilistic ism’s and ideologies that control our lives……

“Human beings of the world, unite, for you have nothing to lose but your chains”

Kropotkin