a new understanding of today, time and space.

Note that I almost never ask “what is reality?” and for the
simple reason that I don’t think the nature of reality really
matters… we exist and matter and energy and time and space
exists… that is reality…… we can work with idea’s like
matter/energy and time/space because they are the reality
that is……… everything in the universe is matter/energy…
time/space…when I doubt, use the simplest explanation to
understand something…reality is and the only thing
we need to do is to react to that understanding of matter/energy
and time/space…

Kropotkin

I can hear someone objecting to what I am saying because
they might think,

“Your thoughts have nothing to do with me or my life.
I am in control of my life”

and I question anyone who believes that they have “control” over
their lives……. for control is the one thing that human beings
don’t have over their life… we live in a connected, global world
where actions in one part of the world affect other parts of the world
and by doing so, affect us in ways we cannot even understand……

so how would we gain control over our lives?

and the interesting question lies in this, do we really need
to control our lives? it is thought that human beings by desiring
things, suffer from that desire because desiring, whatever it is we
desire and we can’t get, causes suffering…… but the fact is we desire
things all the time and because we are not in control, we quite often
don’t get what we desire… I have wanted a Porsche 911 for years,
but I will never be able to afford it… I desire and my desire won’t
be fulfilled, but do I suffer from that? No, I understand reality…
that kind of desire can be of the “it be nice if it happened but”
and we humans live with this sort of desire all the time…and by
understanding our desire, we can control it… or perhaps,
my desire is to date a supermodel… well that ain’t going to happen,
I desire and I know it isn’t going to happen…so am I suffering from this
desire? no, I haven’t lost a second of sleep over this desire,
“it would be nice if it happened but”…………we can control our lives
by having honest expectations of the things we desire… when I was young,
I wanted to be a baseball player and I played baseball for years…
I desired but came to realize I wasn’t good enough… I came to an
honest understanding of reality… and to this day, 40 years later, I wish
I had been good enough, but “it would have been nice but”

we can avoid suffering from our desires if we are honest about
reality and the possibility of achieving those desires……

I would like to be rich, but that option is pretty much off the table,
I don’t suffer because I am honest about the possibility of being rich…

and in that honesty about reality, we have control over our lives…
if we are aware of and honest about our chance of achieving our desires,
then we can be in control, at least about that part of our lives.

but what is required in this honesty is the willingness to accept
the truth about who we are and what is possible…….

and perhaps that is what the real meaning of control,
to accept the truth about who we are and what is possible for us…

Kropotkin

finished two long ugly days, one more to go,
meanwhile I was at work thinking……

what about the people who don’t give a shit about
the Buddha or morality or bettering oneself?

what about Joe blow in Kansas? what does he care about
the stuff we are talking about here…….it doesn’t pay the bills,
it doesn’t give a thrill like watching TV or action movies or
playing video games…Joe Blow has
no idea what we are talking about and he doesn’t care…

what about those billions of people? what we are concerned about
the 99 percent of the human race just doesn’t care about…

I can rant about values and ism’s and justice or the metaphysical
or the questions of existence until I am blue in the face and it won’t change
a dam thing… as long we we have the NBA finals going on and american
football is coming soon and the latest video game like ace combat 7 is available
to play… why would people give a shit about the questions that I feel are
fundamental, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

I would have better luck talking to a wall then trying to convince people
that these questions of existence have any value…

how to get people to look past the most basic level of existence that
people are living at right now? Most people are living as animals with couches,
with no interest in any question that might interfere with dinner…

I have notice something about California which is the remarkable
way people here are so into their own mind and their own
issues that they don’t even notice anyone else……….

People here live in their own minds so much, the outside world
counts for very little… how do we get people to look out again?
how do we get people to see that there is a world out here?
people are so self-involved that to notice the questions of existence
would require a massive change in people’s viewpoint…

IQ45 is just another example of someone who is so self-involved that
he thinks everyone on planet earth is simply staff for him………
and plenty of people here in California is the same way……

how to break that tunnel vision?

questions without answers… as usual…

Kropotkin

I wonder why people won’t look at their life or wonder or doubt
about those questions of existence that I have mentioned…
why won’t people ask themselves about what it means to be human?

fear, ignorance, or perhaps it simply has never occurred to them…

from a society standpoint, it cannot allow large number of people
to engage in those questions of existence because that takes away
people from doing the task that society needs done…
and in the short term that might be true, but in the long
run, I believe an examination of our values, of the questions
of existence, would be beneficial to society…

recall our analogy of before Zen where the mountains were solid, calm,
peaceful, and the sea was flat and motionless and the river ran quietly
in its bank and then during Zen, the mountains dances and quiver and the
sea was violent and the waves danced high in the air and the river overflowed
it banks…… and after Zen, when the mountains were once again solid
and calm and the sea was calm and motionless and the river once again
returned to its riverbank………

if people were to examine their lives in regard to the existential questions
of existence, they would be thrown into the state of being upset and confused
and out of control…….but that is a small price to pay for the understanding that
would come out of an detailed examination of our lives…

I have gone from detailing the conditions of our existence to
to listing why, why we should examine our lives in terms of
the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…indeed, ask
yourself, why should I engage in these questions that will only
throw me into chaos?

Isn’t understanding the value of our lives worth a little chaos?
isn’t find the meaning of our lives worth some chaos?

the road is hard and paved with difficult rocks to walk along,
but that is the point… the path to understanding is hard
and it is painful and it is difficult to bear……….

but look around you… I look around me and I see people
already in confusion and in pain and in doubt… the rise in drug use
and the lost feeling people have is a result of our failure to examine
those questions of existence………

the dogmatic attachment people have to their ism’s and ideologies
stems from their being at loss and alienated from society…
we hold those ism’s and ideologies tight because we have no other
foundations to hold on to…… if we can give people something other
to believe in besides dogmatic and destructive ideologies, they can
begin to set their feet along another path…… the path to values
and wisdom………

our society is at war with each other because we haven’t
really begun to question the basic values of our society which
are crying out to be questioned and doubted……

it isn’t our society at war, but the phony values that cannot
lead us to a better life that are at war……. to find ourselves,
to correct society, we must find the values which best represent
who we really are… both individually and collectively…

the values we currently hold no longer fit who we are… that
is the reason for our discomfort and alienation we feel…
we hold “American” values which no longer fit our circumstances
at this time… we must revise, revisit our values, personally
and collectively to understand “what we are to do?” and
“what should our values be?” and “what we should spend our energy on?”

we are not even in position to be able to ask about those existential questions
because we are so lost in regards to what is really important in our lives…

the nihilism that dominates our lives is blindly us to our real possibilities,
our real choices…it isn’t in the pursuit of our happiness which we have
equated to be the search for money/profits that should be the goal of life…

no, we must engage in the questions of existence to find our meaning, our purpose…

and why are we so afraid to engage in those questions?

we have become paralyzed with fear to the point, of not being able to
confront the questions of “what are we really to do?”…

we have to overcome and that is one of the basic understanding of life…
we begin with knowing ourselves, know thyself, and then we
reevaluate our values and in doing so, we can overcome who we are right now…

the process is always the same… and the beginning point is always the same…

we must become aware…awareness is always the beginning point…

so start there… become aware…

and be truly the ubermensch….for who among the crowd
actually tries to begin the process of becoming who they are?
begin that process by becoming aware…

Kropotkin

I suspect that part of the resistance to awareness comes
from human nature… human beings live with a lot of
denial and downright refusal to begin the quest for
self examination for fear (there is that word again)
of fear of what we might learn if we engage in honest
self-appraisal or self evaluation…people hold certain
“fixed” ideas about themselves and their world…
usually these “fixed” ideas are the result of
the childhood indoctrinations…let us talk about
one or two childhood indoctrinations…
god and the greatness of America……

when we take children to church, even if we don’t say another
word, that experience of going to church, is indoctrination…
any attempt, any attempt to explain to children the universe by
a metaphysical answer, be it god or a higher power, is
indoctrination, simple as that…….

and as for the indoctrination of the greatness of America,
we get that from the media and parents and the official
method of indoctrination which is schooling, education in our
grade schools and middle and high school.

it takes years if ever can we overcome our educational
learning, our official indoctrination from society, about society…

and all this indoctrination feeds us some of our self held notions
that we are fearful of examining… America’s greatness is taken
as gospel, an indoctrination that we don’t examine for fear that
we might be wrong…….

and the problem with this is simple, people hold their self value,
their self worth is tied up in these unexamined notions we have
from our childhood indoctrinations… are self worth is tied
up in the safety of this idea of a god from whom we can be
saved or absolved from our sins and heaven provides us with
comfort and a salve to our souls about any actions we might take…
we can lose the guilt about our actions if we can be forgiven
from god and be allowed into heaven…

to challenge this notion means we might be held accountable
for our actions instead of being given salvation from our actions…

to have a god who can save us, gives us some comfort, it takes
the worry away about being held accountable, personally accountable
for our actions… we simply have to clap our hands and tinker bell will fly
and if we simply accept jesus as our savior, we are saved… a get
out of jail free card as it were. Why worry about any accountability
if we can simply pray it away?

It is easy to have god because you no longer need to take accountability
for your actions… there is no need to become aware of our actions, for
no matter what we do, we can be saved, given salvation for any actions taken.
Say ten hail Marys and your good to go.

self examination isn’t necessary when you have a “get out of hell free card”

other acts of denial is our assumptions is about who we are…
most people assume that they are good honest people without
actually any examination to the validity of this assumption……

another assumption that is taken without any examination of its
truthfulness is the greatness of America…it is assumed that
America is great and it is exceptional…… but no facts are ever
really examined because it is assumed that greatness is
about money/wealth/profits…… we are the richest country
in the world and that automatically makes us great,
the greatest country on earth… but does an high GDP,
Gross domestic product, really reflect “greatness”?

our “greatness” is based upon an assumption about the GDP…

our “greatness” is based upon a childhood indoctrination
and our own personal self esteem is somewhat predicated upon
the greatness of America… if we think America is great, then
we can hold our heads high in the reflected glory of the greatness
of America.

but what if we are wrong about the greatness of America…
what else might we be wrong about our thinking about
who and what we are………

we keep our self worth by our measurement of the things we
hold dear… and what if the things we hold dear, aren’t very
valuable at all? what does that do to our self esteem?

personally, I have been lucky in sports and in my work jobs in that
the teams I was on were always pretty good, in baseball, in track
and in cross-country…… and in the companies I have worked
for were mostly the much better companies in their field…
I worked for a large bookstore chain when it was the king of the hill
and I could hold my head high because of this… my self esteem,
my self worth was tied into the fact that this company was the
king of the hill in the bookstore industry…today, that same company
is poised to go belly up… (although I haven’t worked there in over
20 years)

our self esteem is tied up in the teams we hold dear and the places
we work at and the country we are born in… and this means
to keep our high self esteem, our high self worth, we don’t
engage in any kind of self examination because what we might
find will damage or hurt our self worth, our self esteem…….

we fear what we might find if we engage in honest self examination…
we fear we might not find we are as kind or loving or as smart as we
thought of ourselves as being…

so we are not only fighting the childhood indoctrinations but
we are fighting our self esteem, our self worth when
we engage in any kind of personal self evaluation about who we are……

people have an unrealistic understanding of who they are and what
is possible for them because of our self esteem being tied into
our childhood indoctrinations and our self worth being tied to such
items as god, country and our workplace………

how are you going to escape your childhood indoctrinations,
how are you going to find your self esteem when it is not tied
into god or country or your workplace?

reevaluate what you take pride in and ask yourself,
does my self esteem, my self worth depend on
the value I place on others, be that god, country,
or workplace?

we cannot begin to think of ourselves as being honest
until we can be honest with ourselves………

so what are you in denial about yourself?

Kropotkin

reading from the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy as I often do,
I came across this from the entry about Confucius:

……Confucius finds himself in an age in which values are out of joint.
Actions and behavior no longer correspond to the labels originally
attached to them. “Rulers do not rule and subject do not serve”
he observes………

is this not an accurate description of our age… an age in which
values are out of joint!.. we see people proclaim themselves
Pro-life but that disappears once the baby is born and the real business
of being pro-life actually begins… we live in an age where people
call themselves Christians and yet actively ignore everything Jesus says
in the bible…… while ascribing to the bible every single prejudice
and childhood indoctrination they have which the bible doesn’t even
speak about… so the bible isn’t anti-homosexual but the individual is
and so they attribute to the bible their prejudice and the bible is quite clear
about loving thy neighbor… regardless if the neighbor is brown or black or
yellow or white… to build a wall to keep out immigrants is
directly against one of the key messages of Jesus………and yet these
people insist on their being a Christian………

our words and our actions are not, not in synch and this failure has
caused much of our alienation, our disconnect with society, our separation
from the society…….

this disconnect cannot be solved by building a border wall or banning abortion…

this disconnect lies at the very heart of our “modern” experience and might
be considered the very model of the “modern” experience…….

we cannot heal ourselves until we connect our actions and our words…
if we say we are kind, we must be kind, if we say we are smart, then
we must be smart………this disconnect is just like IQ45 saying his
is a “stable Genius”… and he isn’t either one… stable or a genius…

so are your words and your actions connected?
are your words and your actions, one and the same?

that is why it is important to understand philosophy as we
study it, is different then the ancient method of philosophy which
is to have philosophy as a way of life… it isn’t something that we can
study and then forget because it is “academic” instead of involving
us in our real life…….

we take philosophy and hold it over here and we take our actions,
our morals, our beliefs and hold them over there… and may the two
never meet… we study philosophy instead of treating philosophy
as a way of life and that is why we have, in part, our alienation
and disconnection and separation from society and ourselves………

you want to heal yourself?

connect your words with your actions…

be who you say you are……

Kropotkin

I wonder why we have periods of great philosophers?

for example, we have a time period where some of the greatest thinkers
of the world existed within a one hundred year period…
and why? what was happening that force/allowed all these thinkers
to engage in their thought at roughly the same time…

Confucius: 551 bc- 479 bc
Socrates: 469 bc-399 bc
Buddha: 560 bc-479 bc alternative dates for the Buddha is 480 bc to 405 bc
Heraclitus: 535 bc-475 bc
Pythagoras: 552 bc -496 bc
Sun Tzu: 544 bc- 496 bc
Mozi: 470 bc-391 bc

and before this you have Zoraster roughly from 1500 bc to 1000 bc
and Loazi around 600 bc…

so why? why do we have this explosion of thought all over the globe?

why do we have so many thinkers and philosophers and theologians
from this time period?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: I wonder why we have periods of great philosophers?

for example, we have a time period where some of the greatest thinkers
of the world existed within a one hundred year period…
and why? what was happening that force/allowed all these thinkers
to engage in their thought at roughly the same time…

Confucius: 551 bc- 479 bc
Socrates: 469 bc-399 bc
Buddha: 560 bc-479 bc alternative dates for the Buddha is 480 bc to 405 bc
Heraclitus: 535 bc-475 bc
Pythagoras: 552 bc -496 bc
Sun Tzu: 544 bc- 496 bc
Mozi: 470 bc-391 bc

and before this you have Zoraster roughly from 1500 bc to 1000 bc
and Loazi around 600 bc…

so why? why do we have this explosion of thought all over the globe?

why do we have so many thinkers and philosophers and theologians
from this time period?

K: the above post has gotten me to think about why this explosion of
thought occured at this point in time…One possible reason might
be because the old way of doing things, the old vision no longer fit
the reality on the ground… they were trying to use an old map
for new terrain and that is a recipe for disaster…the old answers of
the gods of the land, sea, and air and sun no longer fit the terrain,
the reality of the times and so people began to search for new answers,
for a new map of reality. Or to think about this slightly differently,
if the old answers were working, then people wouldn’t have bothered to
search for new answers… only when the ism’s and ideologies are failing,
do people begin to search for new ism’s, new ideologies.

Before the listed philosophers were born, the historical context was a different
thing… for example, we know that in Greece for example, there was a long lasting
civilization of which the Greeks cities fighting in the Trojan war were part of…
but within a couple of hundreds years after the Trojan war, Greece was invaded
by Nomads from the North and these people, as yet unknown people, pretty much
destroyed the home grown civilizations of Greece and for a period of roughly
400 years, during a mini Dark ages when Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey…
civilization was dark in Greece…the light of civilization began to creep into
Greece beginning around 600 BC and was in full bloom by 450 BC………

and the same happened to India… there was a well established civilization
in the Indus valley which was destroyed by invading tribes… there was a period
of Dark ages and then slowly, India began a climb back to civilization and this
was documented by the rise of thinkers and philosophers beginning around 600 BC
and went to the Buddha who lived roughly during the same time frame
as Socrates… and I don’t believe that is a coincidence… I believe that the
destruction of the home grown civilizations in Greece and India, force people to
reevaluate and rethink their basic values and beliefs…but this reevaluation
had to wait for civilization to recover to some point where the state was stable
enough to allow such a reevaluation…….this is part of the relationship between
individual and the state… the individual cannot begin their quest to an reevaluation
until the state has stabilized enough to allow such an reevaluation…

You cannot get a Socrates or a Hobbes or a Hume or a Kant until
the state and society are stable enough to allow such thought to occur…

In the Dark ages, the number of great thinkers were few and far in between because
the state and society wasn’t stable enough to allow the freedom to engage in such
thinking…………

so one of the criteria of a Buddha or a Socrates is a stable state/society…
that much is evident… the second thing that must happen is
some sort of overturning of the longstanding ism’s and ideologies
of the past… this overturning can be an invasion or a war or a plague
or some other natural disaster that forces people to reevaluate their
thinking………….

let us look at America right now… we aren’t quite at the point of
an reevaluation because things are relatively good and stable…

but once the forces of darkness that IQ45 represent win the day, that
disaster will force people to reevaluate, rethink the entire ism’s and ideologies
of the day… soon, soon I believe that there will be some rebirth of thinkers
and philosophers in America… because such as rebirth can only come after
“the flight of Minerva” as Hegel called it…….

however even today, people are beginning to question the economic system
that is America… that capitalism is the greatest economic system on earth
is under debate today is a very good sign…….

we are still lacking in thinkers and philosophers who are prepared to
begin the reevaluation, the rethinking of what it means to be an American
and what it means to be a human being……….a thinker/philosopher who
will take the Kantian/Kropotkin questions seriously and reevaluate
the basic questions of existence that, as of right now, are not being
addressed because the system and its ideologies are still functioning
and stable…… once the system begins to develop the problems and issues
of that system, the reevaluation will begin… and we begin to see this
in America with the income inequality being just the beginning of
our decline… does that mean the decline of America is inevitable?
no, not at all. It just means we are beginning to see the cracks in the
wall and we need to address those cracks before they spilt open
the society/state………

Problems like income inequality and overpopulation and pollution
and global warming are visible signs that the current system is
in failure… problems like these problems don’t occur if the system
is working and working correctly… the myriad of issues and problems
of the modern day is a warning, a sign of system failure and we must correct
the system before it crashes down on our heads………failure to address
the system failure before they crash means that we will crash the
entire world because of the interconnection of the world…
one part failing can cause entire system wide failure…
such as a lung or heart failure can crash the entire human system…
whereas if the arm has issues, the human system will most likely be able to
survive… and the U.S is a key part of the entire world wide system
and so if we fail, we take down everybody… that is the nature of the
modern world…….so we must address our problems/issues in a serious
manner and not be a clown like IQ45 who is making a bad situation, worse…

so what you gonna do? are you simply wait and hope the system works
itself out or, or are you going to be active and attempt to
understand and change the system in such a way to avoid a system collapse……

“what am I to do?”…………

Kropotkin

what is true of large scale system, where problems like
global warming and income inequality are a sign of system failure…
are true in a small scale system like the human being…

if you are feel disconnected, alienated, disjointed, separated
from yourself, society or the world… you too are suffering from
some sort of system failure…

the solution, as always, begins with awareness… becoming aware of
being alienated or disconnected from yourself or your society is the first
step of finding a solution…and a possible solution might come from
an honest appraisal of yourself and with the help of the Kantian/Kropotkin
questions of existence………maybe you have answered the question,
“What am I to do?” with the wrong answer and you are doing something
that doesn’t represent your values or your understanding of the world……

It is possible that you answered the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence
with the wrong answers and this has lead you to becoming disconnected or
alienated or separated from yourself or your society/state?

if your values are values of love and peace, then the answer to the question,
“What am I to do?” may not becoming a butcher or a policeman or a soldier…
the answer to your question “what am I to do” means you must do something
that in in line with your values… or you must act within some job or career
with values that are in line with that job… I am not in line in regards to
my values and my job, I think the capitalistic system destroys people,
their values, their soul and yet, I am on the front lines of the capitalism
system hence my great unhappiness with my job… the job and my values
are in disconnect……… and that, perhaps, is the source of the alienation
and disconnect and the separation we feel from ourselves and our society/state…

if my values are values of peace and love and hope, then being in a martial
society like ours, my values are disconnected from the society values…

I am alienated from society because we hold two different and distinct values
which are not compatible… America values and want wars and violence,
and anyone who wants peace and love is in disconnect from that America……

look at IQ45… he is chomping at the bits to get us into a conflict, a war,
with almost anybody who will fight… and he represents a large faction in
America which includes the military-industrial complex which wants
wars to make money… recall if you can, we are still engaged in the longest
war in America’s history in Iraq and Afghanistan… a war you never hear about
but you pay for in taxes… it is those wars that are killing the American economy,
not the so called “entitlement state”………

peace is much, much cheaper, but the military/industrial complex
doesn’t make money in peacetime…….

the very amount we spend on defense and the military becomes
part of our system failure… we spend too much on defense and
not enough on making people’s life better by funding education,
heath services, mental facilities, parks, and the infrastructure……

moderation in the budget is just as essential as moderation in
behavior or drinking or any other activity……

so how are you going about with an understanding of your system?
how do you understand the system in which you live in?

how do you understand system failure in regards to your life?

Kropotkin

How much time do you have?

K: in the course of this thread I have become aware of the fact that
I have no answers, only questions, and when I offer up a question such
as “how do you understand system failure in regards to your life”
the question isn’t for my benefit, because all I have are questions…
so my question is offered up for you…to get you to question your
basic principles, to question your beliefs, to question your ism’s,
prejudice, superstitions, myths and habits…

you should be in the Zen moment where the mountains are shaking
and dancing and moble, where the sea is alive and the waves are the
the only thing one can see and the river has overflowed its river bank…

and once you have resolved your Zen moment, the mountains will return
to be solid and stable and the sea will be calm and peaceful
and the river will return to it banks…

growth, any mental, psychology, emotional growth comes from
the Zen moments that have shaken our world…

that is why one, anyone cannot be afraid of reaching a state that
challenges our intellect, our emotions, our psychological being and
our physical state…the battle is not out there, but inside of you…

that is my problem with most people, they won’t challenge themselves
or attempt anything outside of their comfort zone… for by reaching
beyond our comfort zone is how we become who we are…the path
to wisdom comes after a long road and most people refuse to
walk that road from fear, or perhaps laziness or perhaps they
just lack the understanding what the cost is by refusing to
challenge oneself…better safe then sorry is the path to conformity
and boredom… most people live their lives in quiet despair because
they haven’t challenged themselves or attempted the impossible……

most people would rather achieve a small win rather then risk a
big loss and I think it should be the opposite, risk a big loss
rather then achieve a small win…I would rather be Icarus
then achieve a small win…yes, yes you might fail and so what?
what is the problem with failure? you learn far more with failure then
you do with success…every great person has failed, from the Buddha
to Gandhi to MLK to Jesus, the difference between them and you, is
the fact they learned from their failure………in fact, a rather interesting
book could come from seeing how each of these people learned from
their failure and then rose to greatness…

all I offer is questions, nothing more……

Kropotkin

the basic assumption of religions is that there is some
other reality. Metaphysics is predicated on the fact that there
is some other realty which we must try to return to…Buddhism
and Christianity and Islam and Hinduism and Judaism, all promote
some idea of some other reality in which we live in the lessor
version of reality and heaven or we must reach the state of the permanent
reality, that is the goal…

and yet, at no point has anyone shown us that another state of reality exists…

metaphysics, the reality beyond our temporary, impermanent, transient reality

that there is something beyond this basic reality has never been proven, so
why do we spend so much trying to reach something that doesn’t exist?

what would happen if we just accepted that this reality, this here and now,
is all there is?

to do so would mean that we must take this moment, this here and now,
and infuse it with meaning…… what if this moment, this here and now is
all there is? What a gift…… we can see this moment as the only possible
reality and thus we can give this moment the attention it deserves.
every single moment is the only moment that exists…why waste it with
such frivolous things as addictions to material goods like cars and houses
and TV sets or waste it with a fruitless pursuit of happiness…
searching happiness leads one to pursue a fantasy or a ghost…

the pursuit of such things that might, might lead us to happiness like
fame, wealth, position, power is a pursuit of fool’s gold… it looks promising
but once found, is found to be worthless because it far more transient and
temporary then our bodies…… how many have had fame, wealth, position
and power and they were later left high and dried when the fame, wealth,
position and power was gone……. who can recall the names of the famous
and powerful and wealthy of the 1950’s? Howard Hughes and what of him
for example? He died alone but wealthy… and what of him now?
How did his wealth or power or position help him gain wisdom or happiness?

He died alone and all his wealth and power didn’t prevent him from dying…
he suffered and all that wealth and power didn’t prevent that suffering…
He had diseases and all that wealth and power didn’t prevent his diseases…
he grew old and all his wealth and power didn’t prevent his growing old…

he pursued wealth and power and fame and what did it get him?
a man forgotten………and all his wealth didn’t get him an once of calm or
peace or wisdom or understanding……………

his life was an exercise in the temporary, transient nature of human existence…

he last years were spent as a germophobe and living in isolation in various
hotels he owned… and he was an addict to codeine………

we can find hundreds of examples, perhaps not so dramatic, but
as examples of how the pursuit of wealth and power and fame
are simply addictions and we try to avoid addictions because what
happens if you are an addict? you try to get your fix no matter what
the circumstances… the addiction control you, you don’t control it…
and the pursuit of wealth and power and fame are addictions, nothing more…

so let us return to the moment, this moment, this here…
it is all we have… so what are you going to do in this moment?

why not take this moment and give it the intensity and sanctity that
we give to religion and to god…… simply replace what we feel and think
about god and his love and replace it with an appreciation of the moment…
the here and now should take the place of the hereafter and heaven……
for to spend your life in pursuit of the perfection of the soul is good,
just not in pursuit of something that doesn’t exists, heaven…
the pursuit of finding your higher soul is a good thing,
but don’t expect or even want the saving of your soul…

becoming a better human being who answers to the higher
levels of being human is enough reward… the pursuit of heaven
is simple a waste of time because there is no evidence for heaven…….

become aware of the here and now and that reward will be enough…

Kropotkin

My answer: You better ruuun. Run fast for your mother, fast for your fahTHA. Run for your children for your sisters and buuraTHAS. Leave all your love and your longing behind, you can’t carry it with you if you want to survive. The dog days are ovaaHUH… the dog days aaare duhhuun…

K: ok, and moving right along… I have been trying to connect western philosophy
with eastern philosophy…….for example, the Vedic philosophy/religion that came
before the Buddha, was very concerned with what we would understand as
the pursuit of knowledge, what is knowledge and how do we know it?
In the west, this was the dominent philosophy from Descartes to Kant…
roughly 250 years…we have the Buddha who was concerned with
suffering, which in the west came into focus during the existentialism
period during the 20th century…and we have the ideas of values…
the Buddha doesn’t really mention values per se nor does Socatres…
the first person who seems to place values at the forefront of their thinking
seems to be Jesus…

and we, our modern times seems to have forsaken values…
such a shame really…

Kropotkin

in randomly reading the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”
I came across the entry for Isaiah Berlin……

This entry had several interesting idea’s taken from Berlin’s thinking…

Are values “found” or are they “discovered”
are values discoverable “out there” as ingredients in the universe…

or are values human creations and derive their authority from this
fact? are values like freedom found within the human being or derived
from something else?

are values “subjective” or “objective” which would suggest that subjective
values are values found within us or objective which would suggest that values
are found outside of us?

is freedom an “objective” or an “subjective” value? does the value of freedom
come from the necessity of human nature or does it arise from individuals?

did the Athenians understand freedom the same way we do because
human nature is the same and as such, every human being can find
the value of freedom within their own soul or, or do we
understand freedom through a different lens then the Greeks,
which suggest that freedom is not a universal value… it is not inherent
within every human being………different values for different times
based upon the needs of the individual/society at the time… and that is
the subjective value at work……

are values situationally derived, every situation demands different
values and that changes across time……. or is Gandhi right?
Love is a eternal value, a objective value that exists in every
human being across every time period?

confusion arises because we haven’t learned to understand values
in their historical context…is Jesus talking about love the same
way as Gandhi and the same way as Tolstoy talks about it?
and the same way we currently think about love?

how exactly are we to understand values?

what is love, freedom, justice, peace?

how are we going to understand these values?

subjectively or objectively? or as both subjective and objective
which is situational values……

Berlin also spoke about pluralism values vs mono values…
Berlin rejected any attempt to understand the universe
by any monotheist value or one method of understanding
the universe… He would have rejected Spinoza for
offering up a single viewpoint of the universe…

we understand pluralistic values as a western
tendency to tolerance of values as being an essential
aspect of the inheritance from the Enlightenment…

those who reject the Enlightenment program reject
tolerance and pluralistic values… these rejecters
of the Enlightenment are supporters of a mono value…

this is an authoritarian vision of values…
one value fits all………and the authorities
tell us what that value is…… usually the value chosen
is obedience, usually………and usually the values chosen is objective value

for subjective values are subject to being chosen by anybody and
the authoritarian wants to be the one to pick the value to be
in effect for that society…….thus the tendency in authoritarian
society is to preach objective values and to give that objective value
some validity in either god or some historical understanding…
the Stalinists made “dialectical materialism” their value to be
their objective value and no other value was tolerated…
and as the Stalinists were the only ones allowed to interpret
“dialectical materialism” thus they picked the value to be
be honored within society…

and although we in America proclaim our society as being tolerant,
the value that has dominated America is Martial value,
we give priority to security and defense and soldiers and policemen…
as indicated by that moral document, the US budget in which
the dominant value is military, defense, security…….

in America we have been at war 222 years out of 239 years
of American history… we have been in peace less then 20 years
of our entire history…

in other words, the greatest threat to peace in the world is America…
and that is our value, war and violence…

are your values, mono or pluralistic?

Kropotkin

so let us attempt to problem solve with values, be it
mono or pluralistic values…….

let us take this mono idea that god is everything…
every path runs through god and all we have to to do is
to trust god…so in regards to a problem like say,
global warming… the answer for a mono thinker is to
trust god… for with mono thinkers, there is but one
path, one vision, one solution…now this is true of any
mono thinkers be it communist or be it a born again Christian…

now for a pluralistic thinker, there is more then one path,
more then one vision, multiple solutions, multiple possibilities…
so let us try the problem of global warming with someone
who is a pluralistic thinker…you try to depend upon god,
but it seems to a pluralistic thinker that the solution to
global warming can involved trying several different paths,
solutions… for no one path seems to offer us a silver bullet
of a solution for global warming…

so it seems that in regards to problem solving, pluralistic
thinking would better be able to solve problems then mono
thinking. so let us continue this thought… what of value conflict,
two values conflict say, liberty with equality/public order or
mercy with justice, love with impartiality/fairness…
we can have conflicting values, freedom vs security…
is a common conflicting value in America today…
we have many who with mono thinking have
endorsed security above freedom…

but let us take a closer look at this…
we cannot judge between the two values as
far as taking one over the other… both values,
freedom and security have useful value to human beings……
we need both, but in conflict, which one should we choose?

mono thinkers on the right have picked security
as their guiding value… again see that moral document,
the US budget, and see that the value prized most in that
document is security…

but pluralistic thinkers will accept the need for security, but
also accept the need for freedom and love and possibilities
and other values……. in other words, pluralistic thinkers
accept more then one possibility, more then just one path, more
then just one vision, more then just one solution…

that enables pluralistic thinkers to cast about for multiple
solutions for every problem…it has been my experience in life,
all 60 years, that solutions are often found within different, diverse,
possibilities of life…mono thinkers cannot see outside of their own
path to see different solutions to problems… in other words,
pluralistic thinkers seen to be better able to find solutions to
problems because they have a wider field of solutions to work
from…

if there is one thing we can learn from evolution is this, one of the major
traits that allow species the chance to survive is adaptability… those who
can adapt, survive… mono thinkers have less adaptability then
pluralistic thinkers because there is only one solution for a mono
thinker… and that isn’t adapting…

so one of the basic skills of being human is problem solving,
we are forced to problem solve all our lives……
“what am I to do?” “What can I hope for?” “What should my values be?”

those are problems and mono thinkers might believe that “what am I to do?”
the only solution is the religious one, which is to worship god and obey god,
prepare the soul for heaven…… and how does that one path solve
the problem of overpopulation or pollution or global warming?

so let us return to the conflict between security and freedom…
let us face the fact that no matter how we try, we cannot
be 100% secure… it is an impossibility to be totally secure,
look at America today, even with all these attempts to force
security, we are less secure today then we were two years ago……

and let us address why we are less secure, guns… pure and simple,
we have conflated the gun culture in America to the point,
where gun advocates want guns in the hands of everyone in America…
this supposed to increase security…and everyone being
children and those with mental issues and basically anyone over the age
of 10………….

this has quite clearly allowed guns to fall into the hands of violent
right wing domestic terrorist… think of the shootings that have happened
in schools and public places, in which the GOP is quick to proclaim these
people as having mental issues but in reality they are white, right wing
domestic terrorist… anyone who kills for an ism an ideology is
a terrorist… thus anyone who in the Incel culture who kills in the name of
that ism is a terrorist…acts of violence committed in the name of an ism
or ideology is by definition, a terrorist…but what about those who are
violent or kill in the name of money……. they too are acting from an ism,
an ideology, the materialistic ism of capitalism which prays to mammon
and worships money/profits…………they too are terrorist for they have
committed violence in the name of a failed ism…….

and the solution to terrorism? as we have already mentioned,
security cannot be total, we cannot be completely safe and secure
from our domestic terrorism problem………

but we can find other solutions… allow people the
freedom to engage in ism’s or ideologies… but we take away
the means of committing massive violence… that means gun control…

the solution to gun violence is to lessen the amount of guns in
America… but single minded mono thinkers cannot
grasp that solution because in their mono thinking
guns is a means of security…but guns and more guns,
decreases the safety, security of everyone involved…
the mono thinking that guns protects people is leading to
a decrease in security and safety in the America society……
but mono thinkers are unable to see, think that way…
they are fixated on their one and only path, their only
solution…whereas pluralistic thinkers can see, think
of other solutions that will in fact make America safer…

but mono thinkers, in their set mono thinking are unable to see any
other path besides the path they are set upon…

so to engage in the conflict between values, we must
engage with pluralistic problem solving, not mono thinking
about the conflict between values…we must be adaptable
and flexible in our thinking about values…for values are
situational values…… like situational ethics, different values/ethics
are required during different times and different situations…

our values can certainly give us some base line understanding of
any situation, but sometimes we must use different values
for different situations…

there is no firm, set rules for engagement with values, just as
there is no firm, set rules for situational ethics………

but in our actions, let us engage in the higher values in our
engagement with situations…… we can have the higher values
become our guide to any situation… so we can use love or hope
or justice or peace or equality to guide our actions… just as we
can avoid the lower values in situations… anger, hate, lust, greed,
fear………

so that is our guide, we can use any number of higher values to
engage with a situation instead of using the lower values…
that means we can decide upon several different values to
work out an situation…so we are not committed to any one given value,
but we are committed to using the higher values to explore solutions
to any given situation…that is pluralistic thinking… we don’t commit
to any one higher value, we simply see which higher value will work in
a situation… meanwhile avoiding lower value solutions to a problem………

thus we avoid the mono thinker solution to any give problem is with
a lower value solution… thus he answers a situation with fear or with hate,
and that is how a mono thinker reacts to a situation… with only one value…
whereas a given situation may require multiple possibilities of values…

so we find our multiple possibilities within the higher values of human existence
and not in the lower values of human/animal existence…

Kropotkin

while thinking about it, even Buddhism is mono thinking,
given the goal is to relieve suffering, all of life is suffering…
and yet that isn’t true…life has multiple possibilities including
happiness and love and beauty and peace as well as the lower
instincts of the human being, anger, hate, violence, fear, greed
and lust, to name a few…so to single out suffering as our main
form of human existence is to simply ignore all our other possibilities…

possibilities that are multiple are pluralistic possibilities and must
be worked out as pluralistic thinking…and not mono thinking…….

Kropotkin

Ok, let us take another question which the Buddha tried
to answer… can life be ultimately satisfying?

Given the Buddhist understanding that suffering is the key part
of life… can life be ultimately satisfying given that we are always
in a state of suffering?

Kinda depends on how you define "ultimately satisfying?

I think you need to remove the word “ultimately” because
that word doesn’t really mean anything in this context…
so, the question now is, “can life be satisfying even with the suffering?”

and the answer is quite clear, yes… life can be satisfying even with
the inevitable suffering… we all suffer and so what?

it is the price of admission to this play called life…

we can bond as human beings over our shared suffering…
for I too shall be born, grow old, become diseased and die…
we share our sufferings… plays and movies and books
are made in which we share our suffering and in sharing
we reduce the grief because we know that our suffering is shared
and that comfort us…it gives us solace when we
can share our burden and cry together……

recall the basic fundamental fact of human existence, that we
are social creatures and we don’t and can’t exist independently
of other human beings… my burden is your burden and your burden
is my burden… for we suffer, just at different times…
and that is both the curse of and the benefit of being human beings…

think of the great suffering we face and what we have done with
that suffering is to create great ART… every piece of art stems
from suffering of some sort…

by creating art, we overcome suffering… and overcoming is part
of the human gig… at every level of a human’s life, we overcome…
and one of the means of overcoming our pain and sorrow and suffering
is to transform that pain and sorrow and suffering into art…

we release the burden by making it into something tangible and real…
and that lessen the burden of our life… it is taking something felt
and intangible and turning it into a physical presence which frees us
from the weight of the suffering…that turning it into the physical, that takes
suffering out of our body and puts it somewhere outside of us…….

the art, become a physical embodiment of our pain and suffering…
and it becomes separate, apart from us……

thus we don’t have to remove or attempt to remove suffering…
we can simply transform it into something useful and thus becoming
free of it………

pain and suffering can become a source of strength and wisdom by
us overcoming the pain and suffering with art or some other
act of turning that pain and suffering into something else…

suffering is not the weakness that the Buddhists proclaim it is,
suffering can be overcome into strength and wisdom and courage
and fortitude and toughness and energy…

or we can allow suffering to become the lower instincts of hate,
anger, fear, greed and lust……

and that becomes the question, do we turn our inevitable suffering
into something positive or into something negative?

do we overcome suffering or do we allow suffering to dominate our lives
by turning to the lower instincts to redeem our suffering?

I know what direction I want to exchange my suffering into, but do you
know what direction you want to exchange your suffering into?

positive values or negative values?

your choice…

Kropotkin

Pain does not make life any less or more valid.
Pain is a mechanism, not an ideology.
Buddha didn’t seem to know this.

K: quite observant Dan… yes, pain is a mechanism we human use to
teach us about ourselves and the world… pain is an evolutionary
product… we stay away from painful things, for example, we see bee’s
and we have learn to connect the bee’s to pain and so we stay away from them…

pain is an mechanism but feelings have been turned into ideology…
guilt for example is one of the driving forces of Christianity…….
(one of my younger sisters is a born again christian and guilt was one of her
driving forces to become Christian… a fact I’m sure she would deny)

as far as pain making life valid or not, I can only say that pain is certainly
one of the driving forces of human beings… we strive very hard to avoid
pain, well most of us, some take pleasure in pain and not just sexual pleasure,
pain reminds us we are still alive… at times, we need
pain to wake us up from our walking dreams of working and living…
we are sleepwalkers, that might be the definition of our time as a
human being and pain wakes us up from this sleepwalking, we spend our
days doing…

and what did the Buddha know and when did he know it?
sounds like a future impeachment trial of the Buddha……

actually that is not a bad idea, put the religious types, the Buddha
and Jesus and Mohammed on trial …let them defend themselves
from their crimes of waking people and forcing people to confront themselves…

yes, that should be a crime… waking people up from their sleepwalking
and forcing them to take a hard look at their lives……. god forbid, we
actually take the time to take a long, hard look at our time on earth…

to force people to ask the existential questions about themselves…

“What am I to do?” or “what should I hope for?” or “what values should we hold?”

how dare the Buddha wake me up and force me to try to make sense of my life…
I was perfectly happy just drifting along, engage with only my pursuit
of finding my happiness… never asking is, happiness really the goal I should
be pursuing?

who does he think he is?

who do you think you are… once you have been awoken from your walking dream?

Kropotkin