a new understanding of today, time and space.

let us try a different tack……

let us state, He is an American.

now, what choices are supposed to be available for an American?
and how do these choices suppose, supposed to making an American
a “superior” possibility?

the one choice that is available for an American is to vote…
but, we have the GOP trying and succeeding to voter suppression…
we have massive gerrymandering that makes voting unimportant…
we have admitted GOP attempts to influence the census to
change voting to favor them…we have massive GOP attempts
to misdirect voters into failing to vote or to vote on the wrong days,
we have the collective attempts between Russia and the GOP to
change and influence people via social media…

and in the midst of all this voter fraud and intimidation,
what are the choices to vote does one have when there are massive
voter fraud schemes against the average American voter?

so, what other “choices” do we have as Americans?

We are supposedly the greatest country on earth and yet,
we have massive income inequality in which 40 people owe
as much wealth as 3.5 billion human beings……

income inequality isn’t a sign of greatness, having people who
must work 3 jobs to survive isn’t a sign of greatness,
Walmart paying people such low wages that they must go on
government programs like WIC and EBT… at work, in my very
large grocery chain, we have workers who are so poorly paid,
that they must use EBT, food stamps, to survive……
please feel free to describe how that is American greatness?

the base of Maslow hierarchy, is the basic level of human needs,
food, clean water, warmth, shelter, clothing… how is denying
that basic level of human needs, a sign of greatness?
as a liberal, I have included education and health care as part
of the basic needs of all human beings… as the politicians
like to point out, all American’s have access to health care,
but what access means is, you have access if you can pay for it…

a few years ago, I was force to have part of my colon removed,
over a 4 month period, I spent a total of a month in the hospital,
at a week at a time, the total cost of the entire procedure was
roughly 360,000 including a one week stay that cost over 120,000 dollars…
I could have spent a week in Hawaii in the most luxurious hotel
eating in 4 star restaurants every night and still have spent less money
then that one week in a hospital…

I had insurance for this, but insurance only pays 80% and thus our portion was
20% of the total, so our portion of the bill was 72,000 dollars…
can you afford to shell out 72,000 dollars for medical costs?

how is that cost, which every year bankrupts millions of Americans,
part of American greatness? Part of American’s choice?

What other choices do we specifically have as American’s?

well in many states, the choice of having an abortion is dropping.
several states are down to just a couple of providers for abortions…
that choice, that distinctly American value of choice, how is that
found in regards to the choice for an abortion? if we limit or end
the choice of abortion, then how does choice become an
American value?

if one argues, by ending choice, ending abortion, we save the lives of
the unborn, we are pro-life… but pro-life ends at birth, we see this
everyday, when we reduce aid to mothers and their children…
that moral document called the Budget, every year we reduce our
assistance to families and children and senior citizens…
we cannot call ourselves pro-choice if we prevent families
from feeding their children… if we prevent families from
engaging in the basic function of the family which is to
meet the needs of children, to meet the basic needs of human beings
in regards to Maslow’s hierarchy… if we fail to help families
feed or clothe or shelter or educate or to give proper health care,
then we are not pro-life… we are only pro-life as long as the possibility
exists for the unborn, but not for the born… once born, you are on your own…
and that is not pro-life……

so the GOP is actively engage in reducing the choices of American’s…
in health care, in education, in feeding families, in voter rights,
in clean water… so how does being an American suggest that
we somehow have greater choices when we clearly don’t have
the choices we had 10 or even 5 years ago?

I am old, I have seen how America increased the choices in voting
and in health care and education during the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s,
but the war of the GOP has been on reducing those choices, the cultural
wars of the last 50 years has been also a war on American’s choices…
at every step, reducing the choices American’s have…

how does that suggest or imply that being an American
as being part of the greatest country on earth?

we have made choice as one of the highest attributes of being American
and yet, we have spent the last 50 years reducing the average American’s choices…

is the greatness of America really reduced to how many cereals are on the supermarket
shelf or how many different types of cars we can buy?

and even then, at the GOP likes to say, we have access to, but that just
means we can have access to if we can pay for it… so we have our beloved
access to the many diverse and different material goods offered by American
capitalist… if we can afford it………

so, the vaunted distinct American greatness of choice is really just a lie…
because greatness has never been about or found with one’s choice of a material
object… in other words, we don’t think of greatness in terms of buying something…
Lincoln wasn’t great because he could buy something like a new carriage…or a
new couch…or as IQ45 suggested, when George Washington could buy a new
airplane…….greatness is a function of how values are put to use…

and values cannot be bought or sold or traded…

Lincoln was great because of the values he held and
all great human beings are great, not because of what they
could buy or sell, but in terms of the values they held
and practiced…

we value Gandhi and MLK or Jesus, not because of what they could
buy or sell but because of the values that they preached and practiced…

and America greatness is not a function of buying or selling anything,
but of the values that we American’s preached and practiced…

and that is why America’s greatness is no longer… because
we only preach and practice the buying and selling of material
goods… values like honesty and justice and hope and peace are
not only devalued but actively discouraged… values which is what
makes greatness, true greatness possible, are denied, devalued…
which means America practices, with great vengeance, nihilism…

any time people and their values are denied, devalued…
that is nihilism… and that is the true legacy of the modern
GOP… it preaches and practices nihilism…

in the last election, the GOP made their slogan,
MAGA, Make America great again……

instead the GOP is preaching and practicing nihilism
and greatness can never come from nihilism……

so the vaunted choices of American’s is a lie…
the real value of America is the only
choice left to American’s…

nihilism…

Kropotkin

the question becomes this: it is not a question of what I know,
but a question of, what am I to do?

but perhaps, perhaps the question runs deeper then that…
perhaps it becomes a question of the values we use when
we act upon the question, “what am I to do?”

I can do something, say, get married… the act of marriage
is a good action… but the real heart of the matter lies
within the values I have used to engage in marriage…
am I marrying because I love the other person, or
am I marrying the other person because of perceived
value gained by marrying that person. Let us say, I marry
because the other person family has wealth and power…
I married because of the value to me that the other family
has money, power, prestige…love is, at best, a secondary
consideration to marriage given the wealth gained by marrying
into this family…so, what values are exposed when I marry for
possible money and power vs marriage with love? to marry because
of the wealth of the family brings us different values then to marry
because of love…

when we commit an action, regardless of the action, what values
presuppose that action? when we act, what values underline
that action? when we make a choice, what values underline that choice?
If I were to help an old women cross the street, what values underline
my helping a old women crossing the street? quite often, the values prompting
an action are vain, selfish, “modern” values. I helped that old woman cross the
street to confirm my vain belief that I am a “good” person…Or perhaps
I helped that old women cross the street to impress someone, a girl perhaps…

another example of vanity is the drive, the action of becoming a
manager in a store, or becoming an corporate executive…

the vanity of thinking I am the only one who can “lead” the store or
the corporation…

think of how many actions you have done because of vanity?

of course one doesn’t think this way. We always think our motives for
actions taken or not taken, we think our motives are far purer then they actually
are. Rare are the times when we acknowledge our “true” motives for actions taken,
even to ourselves. to take an extreme example, very extreme, if I were to rape
a woman, I would find excuses to free myself of any culpability of such an action…
my motives for such an heinous act would be to blame the victim, she was asking
for it, I couldn’t help my self, she was wearing clothes that forced me to rape her…
anything, any excuse to absolve myself from my horrible action of rape…

my motives must be pure in my eyes… thus I blame any other party available to
absolve myself from crimes committed… I have committed actions that are
by any standards, horrible actions, but to preserve my vanity, my ego, I must
find blame everywhere else besides the one place where blame resides, me…

thus we can now see evil in action… an evil person wouldn’t care if their
motive are pure or not, they simply act regardless of any pretense of
motives… a true psychopath wouldn’t even acknowledge that their actions
were horrible or wrong… a true psychopath like IQ45 isn’t even aware
that his actions are a violation of human standards of decency…
and IQ45 followers also are so caught up in their own personal attempts
to sanitize their motives for hatred and anger and greed and lust,
that they can’t see the idea that actions like concentration camps are
wrong or why concentration camps are inherently evil……

the followers of IQ45 must maintain the fiction that their motives
are pure, authentic, unclouded… to be able to maintain that fiction,
they engage in wild and implausible thoughts that the other, in this
case, immigrants, are subhuman, not normal, rapist and killers…
by this fiction, followers of IQ45 can maintain the fiction that
they are patriots and exemplary American’s………

these “patriots” are convinced that their actions are purely in defense
of “America” but their evil actions really exists because they are
unable or unwilling to examine their own motives as to why they
want to dehumanize other human beings…

for to dehumanize, to negate other human beings and their values
is nihilism…………followers of IQ45 are practicing nihilism…
the negation of human beings and their values…

any practice of negation or dehumanizing human beings occur,
that is nihilism… thus we have seen large scale nihilism occur over
the last 120 years… World War One is a large scale
practice of dehumanization and negation of human beings and their values,
capitalism is another example, the concentration camps of the Nazi’s is
another example of the negation and dehumanization of human beings
and their values, World War 2 is another example of the negation
and devaluing of human beings and their values…the entire cold war
is one long act in the dehumanization and devaluing human beings…

communism vs capitalism is simply two “opposing”
ism’s that devalue and dehumanize human beings and their values…

it really falls down the fact that the leadership of the two
“opposing” ism’s are at war because the ism’s and ideologies
of both devalue and deny human beings and their values…
there is no difference between the two ism’s which suggest that
they are at war due to their competition to export their brand
of nihilism under their leadership… their motives are once again
pure, at least to themselves, but their real motives are grounded
in envy, hate, lust, power, but to mask their motives, even to themselves,
they hide behind such lofty words as patriotism and nationalism and
dialectical materialism… but their motives, hidden even from themselves
is about the lower, base instincts of human behavior…
the lower values which drives the negation and devaluation
of human beings and their values…
and not the higher level of human behavior, the level of
love, peace, charity, justice, values which uphold and supports
the affirmation of human beings and their values………

the will to an ism is to be able to negate and deny
human beings and their values… this ism allows one to deny
and negate under the aegis of the ism/ideology…

we take actions and we may or may not create values in support
of that action, but we certainly create motives that to us anyway,
are pure and honorable……….

so look to your motives for an action… do those motives hide
and distort your values or do your motives explain
and uphold your values?

questions we must ask ourselves.

Kropotkin

let me tell you a story:

once upon a time, there was a man……

but as with any story, it really doesn’t begin once you are a man,
it really begins, individually, once you are born…

a man is born… into a certain set of assumptions, and ism’s
and ideologies, prejudices and superstitions… to name a few
things this man, this child was born into…to believe in a certain god… this god was
name Elohim or perhaps it was Johovah or perhaps it Allah… it is so hard to
keep track of the one god’s name when he had so many different and diverse
names… anyway, this family indoctrinated this child into their family religion…
and they indoctrinated this child into the state ism for political understanding
and they indoctrinated this child into an economic understanding…
they indoctrinated this child/man into a political ideology called
Unum hominem democractiam…and the economic ideology was
called Unum hominem capitalismus…

the family believed very fervently in these state religion/political ideology/
economic ideology…and so they taught this young child/man all about
these political and economic wonders that so dominated the world…

the young man grew up as young men do, and he was a feverent
believer in this political and economic belief systems…

we might ask ourselves, why did the man believe so strongly in these
systems? because no other system was taught to him… it was all he
knew… and when all you know is one thing, you believe fervorently
in that one thing…for not to believe in the only system offered to you,
is nihilism…

as this fine young man grew into adulthood, he soon became aware of
small failures in the systems he was taught, both in the economic
and in the political system, these small gliches shouldn’t have happened
if, if the system was a good as everyone had said it was…

if the economic system was as good as everyone said it was,
why was there people starving on the streets and why were there
children being homeless on the streets…

he asked the wise elders and they said, these people who were
starving and homeless… it is their own fault they are in poverty…
they don’t work hard enough to support their families…

the young man thought about it…… how is it possible that all these
people, millions of people didn’t work hard enough… I have seen them
working, they seem to work very hard… they suffer from having the lowest
jobs in their society and by doing so, they are paid very low wages……

it seemed to the young man, that the problem laid with the wages offered
to these people, not that they worked hard…

when he asked the elders about this, to a person, they denied this
was true… each one swore, swore upon their very gods, that the reason
people were homeless was because they were lazy, good for nothing bums…
they starved because they were far too lazy to work…

but the young man had seen these so called lazy people work very hard,
very hard for pennies… while these elders seem to have no wants…

he asked all the wise people he knew and they said, the elders were special
people who because they were special, they were privileged and had no wants…

this young one asked, so these elders worked hard for their money? why, yes,
all the wise people said… but when this young man sought to confirm the
fact that the village elders were hard workers, he found out that every single one
of them had in fact inherited their wealth…

they were wealthy from birth… they didn’t have to work… but this young man
was confused… these people had wealth handed to them, and yet, millions of
people were not handed wealth and suffered from it…how was this fair?

and so he asked the wise people, how was it fair that some inherited wealth
and other go without and all from being born into the right family or wrong family?

Life isn’t fair… that is what he was told… so, if life isn’t fair, then
perhaps those homeless people were handed an unfair sentence of suffering
in the streets because they weren’t born into wealth… it had nothing to do
with the amount of work they did, they simply weren’t born into the right
families? “oh, no, they didn’t work hard enough was the answer about the
homeless in the street”… but you said, life was unfair… how is it fair not
to be born into the right family? and the final answer came as final answers
always come, you are too young to understand… you are too naïve… childish…
you are unable to comprehend the complexities of civilization…….
so said the elders to this young man……….

but this young man understood…….

so the young man being determined to understand why, relentlessly
began a search into why this society lacked charity and compassion for
the people and children living in the streets……

as the years passed, the young man became as young men do,
an adult…… so this man was told he must contribute to society,
he must get a job, he must pay for his own way…….

but why? I am searching for understanding of why society
cares so little for the disadvantaged living in that society…

and the young man was berated about how he owed society for
his excellent childhood… owed society… but society apparently
doesn’t own anything to these homeless people or to any disadvantaged
people living in that society…individuals owed to society but
society didn’t owe to people… how exactly did that work, he wonder?

and so he began to ask people…of why we owe to society but society doesn’t owe to us…
and a few, ok, none wanted to answer his question…….

why won’t people engage in some understanding of the society they live in?

why do we owe to society but society doesn’t owe to us?
a simple enough question, but one no one wants to answer……

so to understand your story… ask yourself, why do we owe society
but society doesn’t owe us?

thus ends some of the young man’s questions…for now

Kropotkin

one fine day, our young hero was drafted to serve…

In the martial society such as he lived in, this was a high, great
honor… to serve with honor… to exhibit great patriotism was the highlight
on any man’s life…to bravely defend one’s society… there was
no higher call to duty…but, but if the young man had a duty to
the state/society, then what was the duty the state offered that young man?

What were the obligations the state had to that young man?

if we return to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we see that
the lower level of needs, the physical needs are not guaranteed
by the state… the budget which is a moral document can change
the number of and amount derived from civil programs to feed
and house and clothe the less fortunate within that society…

in other words, the state might, if convenient, might guarantee
the physical needs of the disadvantaged or might not, depending
upon the state/government desire to do so……

conservatives read the manifesto of the government to mean
that only safety/security is guaranteed by the state/government…

of course that is a selective reading of the governmental manifesto…

Wait, wait, what governmental manifesto are you talking about?

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general welfare, and security the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, to ordain and establish the Constitution for the United
States of America”…

The constitution is quite clear, “to promote the general welfare”
and “insure domestic tranquility”…………

both of these points say to us, we must in order to promote the general
welfare and insure domestic tranquility, we must ensure the health and
general welfare of the citizens of the United States…

and the only possible means of doing so, is to ensure that the
needs of the citizens are met… that the physical needs of
the people, food, water, warmth, shelter, education and health
care of the people are met…and we also must engage in
the next level of needs of the people, security and safety…
and we do so, with the military and police and the national guard
and firemen… so it is clear that we have engaged in meetings
the needs of the people in regards to the level of safety and security…

we must now engage in meeting the people lower needs, the physical needs,
with government actions… not when the government see’s fit, but
at all times, with all available resources, with all available attention…

in fact, the government first duty is to ensure that the needs of the people
are met, especially in regards to the lowest level, the physical needs of the people…

now that are some foolish people who claim that by meeting the needs of the people,
we are somehow creating entitlements generations… these conservatives point to
so called “welfare Queen’s” as evidence to this………it is well known that
people see what they want to see… if you want to see “welfare queen’s” then
that is what you will see, if you want to see something else, then that something
else is what you will see……

we have an obligation as defined by the constitution, to engage in promoting
the “general welfare” and to “ensure domestic Tranquility” and we do so by
engaging in meeting the needs, the physical needs of the people… regardless
of our personal ism’s, ideologies, prejudice, superstitions and biases……

it is not enough to engage in personal achievements and personal goals,
we must engage in promoting the “general welfare” and “ensuring domestic Tranquility”
but we don’t have to do so by personally manning the food kitchens… although that
would be nice, no, we have government and government acts in our behalf to
engage in programs and daily events that would take up too much of our time…
thus we have government to deal with policing the state and picking up
our garbage and teaching our children and fixing the roads and
taking care of our sewage…… that is the role of government to tend to
tasks that individually would prove to be impossible, but collectively
we can manage to accomplish…………

and we engage in this collective action, with the hallmark of
civilization, taxes…we cannot have civilization without taxes…

and taxes are another obligation we have to society, and society/state
in return takes care of, manages the tasks listed above in our name…
if government fails in it task to take care of the “people’s business” then
we have an mandate, an obligation to remove that government and replace
it with a government that engages in the people’s business,

“WE THE PEOPLE in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty”………

The constitution itself commands us to promote the general welfare,
and by that we must ensure that the people have their physical needs met,
that we ensure the higher need of security/safety are met…
but and this is important to note, as we move higher through the
hierarchy of needs, the less the government has to engage in…

the government cannot engage in promoting the higher levels of needs,
love/belonging, esteem, and the highest level of Self-actualization…
for those needs are personal goals, needs and can only be met individually…

but the government can make sure the conditions are suitable to people to
reach their higher level goals… by guaranteeing the lower levels needs of
people are being met, we can help them engage in their own struggle to
reach their higher level of goals……. or to put it another way, a man cannot
climb to the roof of his house without being sure, absolutely sure the house
is built strong enough to allow him to climb to the roof…the government
can ensure that the foundation of civilization is strong enough to allow
people the certainty that they can attempt to climb to the top of their
abilities…to reach their higher level of being human………

that is the real goal of government… to provide a base strong enough
for people to allow people the ability to reach their own personal goal…

if we have an obligation to the state, then the state has
an obligation to us… and we must have the dialog as to
what exactly is our obligation to the state/society
and what exactly is the state/society obligation to us?

and we must spell this out in specific terms and cases…

we must know where we stand in regards to the state/society
and the state/society must know exactly where we stand in regards
to it.

Kropotkin

all that constitutional bullshit is rhetoric too vague to pin down. for example, what does ‘promote the general welfare’ amount to? should i have one TV, two TVs or three TVs?

imma tell you what needs to go down in order for this thing to work. as long as you have three branches of a government that is not also in control of economy, those three branches will forever be corrupted by the plotting of the free market. when those knuckleheads wrote all that ambiguous shit up, they were under the impression that man was inherently good/fair and that they ought to give this big idea put forth in smith’s ‘wealth of nations’ a try now that they finally broke free of the european monarchies. but when they designed the government they had no idea the invisible hand would be just that, invisible, and that there would be nothing to prevent the nefarious manipulation of these three branches of government by the free market monster three hundred years later.

marx knew all this shit though. you can’t have a division of ‘state’ and ‘business’ without the latter corrupting the executive, legislative and judicial branches. our constitution was a document that was obscure enough to distract the people from this fact.

we have all kinds of relationships… I have an ongoing
engagement/relationship with my wife and my daughter,
I have different roles in each relationship, but they are
relationships… I have an ongoing relationship with
those at my job… I have a different relationship with them
then I have with my wife and my daughter… I have a different
relationship with the manager then I do with the supervisors
and a different relationship with my fellow employee’s…with
each person I have a different relationship…a different interaction with
each… based upon my role and based upon their role… a boss/manager
has a different interaction/relationship with an employee then with
a fellow manager…

to a great extent, our roles determine our relationships…
different roles demand different relationships…

but we each have a relationship with the state/society…
and depending upon our role, we might have an active, ongoing
relationship or a very passive relationship…for some, basically paying taxes
and that is the extent of their relationship with the state/society…

and some believe that we have a relationship with the metaphysical,
we might name those metaphysical relationship, god or some higher
power…

I don’t believe in god or jesus or mohammed or allah or any sort
of metaphysical power…… so I don’t have a relationship with
the metaphysical, again, metaphysical means beyond the physical…

I engage with the physical, that which can be seen, heard,
tasted, touched or smelled………

but, I am engaged in a relationship with idea’s…….
what does it mean to be human? What am I to do?
What should I hope for? What should my values be?

idea’s exists somewhere between the metaphysical
and the physical… I cannot see or hear or touch or smell
or taste the values I adhere to… but they aren’t metaphysical
values… they don’t exists “beyond the physical”
as metaphysical values……

the value of justice exists as a real world value with real
world applications… I can turn that value into a physical
value… by my applying values into concrete situations…

if I treat two people unequally, I am not treating those
people… justly… for justice is the application of
equal treatment to people regardless of who they are,
regardless of their race, creed, sexual orientation, or color…….

I can apply values physically… I can apply a value like
love physically…thus values, despite their existing
as abstract idea’s, can be used physically within the
relationships I have or will create…….

in my relationship with my wife, I apply the value of love
and with my daughter, I also use the value of love, but
a different types of love…

we apply values to our relationships… I value honesty
and so I apply that value to my relationships…
I use it at work with my co-workers but less so with
management… because management is consumed
with the nihilism of the pursuit of profit… where
I am negated and devalued……. I cannot use the value
of love or honesty when I am being negated, both physically
and in values…….

who I am and my values are negated by such a nihilistic ism
as capitalism and so I am not predisposed to engage with love with
those who would negate me………

I react to my being negated with rival hate and anger and
other such petty, negative lower level of human engagement…

the nihilism that society/state engages with, damages my relationship
with the state/society and those who are charged with maintaining
the capitalistic state in business and corporations……

am I alone? no, million too are disconnected, alienated from
the state/society…how do we recover that relationship
between the state/society and myself when we have
this alienation problem between myself and the state?

perhaps by clearly defining the roles we have, between the
state/society and myself………

we need to define and clarify the role, the relationship between
individuals and the state…….what is my obligation to the state/society
and what is the obligation the state/society has to me………

we may be able to solve the relationship problem we have
between the state/society and the individuals within that society/state
by clearly understanding what is expected from each…….

perhaps… perhaps…

Kropotkin

K: not only do we have relationships with people and idea’s but
we have a very clear relationship with the past…

for who we are today, both individually and collectively,
are the result of the past and the interactions of
both people and ism’s and ideologies…
this interaction, this relationship that those in the past had
with each other dominant even today…for example,
the event called the “American Civil War” is an relationship
that still influences us today…over 150 years later…

and we also have one more relationship that should be high on
anybody’s understanding of relationships… and that is our relationship
with the future…what we do, how we do it, how long we do it,
who we do it with, and why, we interact with others, influences the
future…the past and the present interacting, creates the future…

whither you have one or two or three TV’S, depends on what influence
you wish to leave into the future…by conserving resources, we
profoundly influence the future as does laying waste to what
resources we have today influence the future…

our actions today influence what kind of future our children have…
we have a relationship with the future and we help determine
that future by our actions today…

my wife and I have a goal, which is to leave our daughter the condo
we live in and that goal is going to impact her life… that goal will
influence her life… perhaps we can leave the condo to her, perhaps
not, it all depends on events that occur today and events that will occur
tomorrow… we have a relationship with the present, today and perhaps that
relationship will change in the future, which means our present goals
and possibilities might also change…

all of life is a series of relationships, some permanent like family and
some not so permanent, TV’S and couches and cars……

I believe that values are a permanent relationship……
values like love and justice and hope and peace…
I believe that these values being permanent, (but the
meaning of justice, hope, love and peace… change
over time… what was justice to the Greeks, what is treated
equally in relationships, has changed from the Greeks to our time…
(the value of human life has changed, recall that the Greeks had
and valued slavery… slaves… and that is not justice, not being
treated equally, but today, at least in the west, we don’t condone
slavery except in terms of capitalism… but that is another story)

when Plato asked, what is justice? he answer was and will be different
from our answer and why? because we live in a different time, a different
place with a different environment and different values……….

But the word justice still exists because we can have a relationship with
justice, but as every relationship is different from person to person and
society to society, we exists in a different place in regards to the concept
of justice…

we can exist within different ism’s and ideologies differently…
in other words, we can exists within an ism of capitalism if, if
we can have another formula of success which is not the accumulation
of wealth, but the advancement of who we are and what is possible for us…

Kropotkin

Kierkegaard lays out three ways of life:

one possible form is long out of date but is of interest to
us…living life “aesthetically”…

what exactly does this mean? living life as an art project?

perhaps, but it could also mean trying to find the beauty in our
everyday life……. the “modern” world has dismissed or banned
aesthetics from our life but why? because it doesn’t create profit
unless it is sold and we cannot sell the aesthetic or the beauty
that exists or is created in our lives…….

to live aesthetically means to seek out and behave
with beauty in mind………

we don’t do this… we are literal creatures, we modern human beings,
the modern pursuit of profits and money has overwhelmed our engagement
of a search for beauty in our lives…

when walking in a forest, (and who does that in this modern age)
when walking in a forest, do you seek out beautiful scenes…
do you look for the momentary beauty of the sunlight poking
it way through the leaves on the tree’s?

do you notice the grace of the flowing river as it glides past
the towering tree’s?

if you seek or find beauty in your life, you are an
aesthetic…

and that is one possible response to the question,
“what am I to do?” or perhaps the answer to question
of finding beauty might lie in the question,
“what am I to hope for?”

who seeks out beauty in this modern age, an age that can only
buy or sell merchandise, not to seek beauty…….

do you read a book and cry over the beauty of it?

I have…

do you see a picture and fall in love?

is you heart moved when exposed to beauty?

Your heart, not your dick or cunt, but your heart?

to seek out beauty, one must practice stillness
and quiet… and who in this modern age, knows
what stillness and quiet are?

it is said, that life is wasted on the young…….

as it beauty, for the young don’t have the patients to
seek out and explore what it means to have or to hold or to
see beauty…….

we seek out form, not function…

for our pursuit of beauty isn’t about function…
it is about the form beauty takes…
and that form is all around us… if we only had eyes to see
and ears to hear and touch to feel…

for beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder…
it lies everywhere, you just need eyes to see
and there it is…….

to live life aesthetically, one needs to forsake the modern world
of production and consumerism… all one needs is the stillness
of the heart and eyes to see, ears to hear…

and in regards to Maslow hierarchy of needs, where does the
aesthetic reside?

why, the top and final platform of human existence…
in self-actualization………when we engage in our lives
as a work of art, life creating beauty in its existence…

my life as a work of art, as a work of beauty…

that is the aesthetic… seeking beauty as well as
finding the beautiful in our everyday actions and
our everyday existence…

so, did you live an aesthetic life today?

did you seek or find beauty today?

or did you live a modern life, rushing from place to place
without noticing anything in your life?

seeking beauty means you must stop, pause, reflect…
for those moments when beauty reveals itself to you…

did you see any beauty today?

Kropotkin

the last post spoke of one of the possibilities in our live
which is to live aesthetically, living life with the goal, the
pursuit of beauty being the point… seeing beauty, finding beauty,
living beautifully…

today we ask about another possibility: that is living life
ethically…and how do we define ethics?

Ethics are a system of moral principles and a branch
of philosophy which defines what is good for individuals and
society…

a major question in ethics is this, can we live ethically without
a fear of consequences? In other words, right now we live ethically
because we have a fear of being punished, either by the state or by
god or both………

but can we live ethically without any fear of punishment?

IQ45 has publicly stated he could shoot someone on fifth Ave
and his followers couldn’t care less… in other words, his
actions won’t be punished by his followers…
and as the justice department has declared that a sitting
president cannot, cannot be charged with any crime, essentially
the president of the United States cannot be punished for
any action he might take… think about this, he is above the law
and cannot be held accountable for his actions, any actions…

is he still acting ethically?

but a secondary question might be this, is his actions taken for
the good of America? One might take the actions of IQ45 and account them
as lawless and a danger to America…….

recall the definition of ethics" Ethic are a system of moral principles
and a branch of philosophy which defines what is good
for individuals and society…….

can we honestly be able to state that IQ45 shooting someone on
fifth ave constitutes a moral principle that is good for individuals
and/or society?

I don’t see any possible way we can twist his actions of shooting someone
to be good for an individual or society…

outside of a “look ma, I’m above the law” sort of thing,
there is no way I can spin shooting someone on fifth ave as
being good for either an individual or a society……

ethics is supposed to be a rule of law, a system,
and within that system, must be a consequence for actions taken or
as the case may be, not taken…….

justice is when rule of law is practiced equally and without
favoritism to someone because of race, creed, color, wealth,
or sexual orientation…….justice is a rule of law, a system that
is equally and fairly administrated……

so the practice of ethics is somehow connected to justice…

when ethics is practice fairly and equally, that is justice…

now we reach the tricky part, making an brilliant observation
as to what constitute being “good” for an individual and society?

we know that from an understanding of systems, that anything
that disorders a system, creates disorganization, chaos, entropy is
by definition, bad for a system……

so good for an individual and systems is actions that allow a system to
be organized, efficient, effective……. so order within a system is
good and disorder within a system is bad……

under that understanding of systems, we can say with reasonable
assurance that IQ45 shooting someone on fifth ave would create
disorder and chaos within our system…because order can only be
maintain if, if all parts of the system function as they are supposed to…
if some parts of the system has gone rogue, that puts the system in danger of
collapse… and what is a rogue? an dishonest or unprincipled man…

that seems to clearly define our president… a dishonest and unprincipled man…

and dishonest and unprincipled actions put our system in danger because
systems, any system cannot function properly if part of that system isn’t
acting within the normal guidelines of that system………

so we return to our original question…

how do we live an ethical life and is an ethical life
even worth the effort?

Kropotkin

an ethical life is one that increases order into a system
and an unethical life is one that increases disorder, chaos into a system…

under that definition, do we need the fear of consequences to motivate
us?

the problem lies with system thinking is that people don’t even think or
realize that they exist within a system… we have a political system,
an economic system, a family system, an educational system,
every aspect of our life belongs to one system or another and
within several dozen systems all at the same time…

we can have one system demanding that we must increase
efficiency within one system and by doing so, we increase
inefficiency in another system…an example of this is
the economic system in its demands for profits/money
and this single minded pursuit by business creates
disorder and chaos within the family system for example…

families as with all systems must be maintained… and if
we are always attending to economic business, then how
can we maintain our family system?

this conflict between systems is the basis of conflicts
and disorder within the world… at some point,
one must decide which system you are going to focus
on…devote your time, effort, energy upon…

when people say, we must find balance between our
work life and our personal life… what they are really saying
is we must find balance between two competing systems,
work/business and family/personal……

so given our knowledge about systems, which values better
improve the efficiency of and the increases the order of a given
system?

values that increase the order within a system is values we want,
and values that increase disorder within a system must be discouraged…

so what values increases order within a system? positive values like
love, peace, charity, hope…

and then clearly values that creates disorder and chaos within
a system are negative values like hate, anger, lust, greed, violence…

we can work with values to improve any given system…

and then act of ethics means to improve our social, political, economic
system with an understanding of what it means to be human
and by acting ethically, we increase order and avoid disorder/entropy

we can see how by acting ethically, with principles that increase the value
of people by values of love, peace, hope, justice, charity, we improve
and better maintain the human system we live in, the family system is
made stronger by love and peace and justice and the political system
is made stronger by love and peace and justice and the economic
system is made stronger by those positive values of love and peace……

values are directly tied up into acting ethically…
and acting ethically increases the amount of order, structure,
harmony of any given political, economic, social and family systems…

symmetry is a sign of an orderly system and orderly systems is
the goal of what any system attempts to achieve…….

the greater disorder and chaos and disorganization a system
has, the greater chance a system will fail

so to act ethically is to increase order and symmetry
and pattern into our many diverse systems…

by acting ethically, we improve our lives by improving the systems
we live in…….

how is that not in our best interest?

counter argument:

we live in an too organized world where our personal nature is being
ground out in favor of cookie cutter individualism… the move toward
globalism is an attempt to create a monolithic system which tells us
the answers to our Kantian/Kropotkin questions, “what am I to do?”
“what should I believe in?” “what values should I hold?” “What should I
spend my energy on?” We live in a world that treats us as impersonal
numbers…I am not Kropotkin… I am 9444266…and that is how
the big corporation I work in see’s me… I am measured, timed, devalued,
told what to say, where to stand, how to act and if I fail to do as I am told,
I am charged with the greatest crime in the modern world, insubordination…

counter/counter argument:

I understand as well as anyone the dangers of the modern world and it
fixation on profits… but that is the answer, if we devalue the search for
profits, we devalue the organization principle upon which our modern is
based on, the search for profits……… if we prevent the notion that
globalism is about profits, then we can use globalization to increase order
and stability in the world…

globalization can become a tool to increase order and stability in the world
without, without becoming a threat to who we are as individuals……

remove profits from globalization and globalization becomes a force
to improve the various systems we live in and that is after all the point
of life… to work toward greater order and stability and away from
disorder and chaos and entropy…

Kropotkin

and we reach the third sphere of Kierkegaard which is the
religious… and I stand on less firm ground because I
am not religious… I have spent most of my adult life thinking
that people who were religious were deluded or insane or
were so simple as to not grasp the complexity of modern life
and need the simple/religious to get through life…

well, I have soften my stance in my old age…
(old age turns even the most radical among us, into moderates)

I can see why people could turn to the religious as a possible response to
life, just as I can see why people would turn to the aesthetic as another
possible response to life and just as I can see the ethical as another response
to the myriad sides of life…

As I have grown older, I can now see why people might turn to the religious…
when I was young, I was certain… for the young, the world is black and white,
good vs evil, up and down… I am unable to see the world in such stark terms
anymore… the world is shades of gray and of different degrees…

I doubt my every thought and every action these days…
I am uncertain about everything in my life…so, I cannot
discount the religious life, just as I cannot discount the
aesthetic or the ethical life that one may choose…

the religious life means to devote one’s life to the religous
proposition that god is everything and we are merely
pawns in the great game of life… pawns of god…

as one who is incapable of “bending the knee” I cannot
in good conscience bow down to god…

in the religious, one must, must give oneself entirely to god
and obey all precepts of god, just as Abraham was willing to sacrifice
his son, Isaac, because it was the command of god…

in the book of Job, Job was tortured in an attempt to get him to
forsake the lord and he passed the test and was rewarded…
but what sort of god tortures a person, just to see if they pass
a test? that is not a god of love or a god of peace or a god who
honors the highest level of human behavior………

that is, in part, why I cannot honor god…for if god existed
and he brought about such evil, evil as torture and suffering
and old age and death, why should we honor and obey such a god?

if man, man brought about such things as torture and suffering, then
man can redeem man by abolishing such barbaric actions……

we cannot change or create change in god, but we can create
change in human beings and that is why I believe in human beings…
because of the choice we have in what kind of human beings we can be…

if we are the children of god, we have no choice, no options outside
of heaven or hell… and one choice is no choice at all……

but if we are the children of man, we can choose as to what kind
of people we are to be… we have the choice of rising to the higher
level of human behavior and the higher level of being human…
or we can sink to the lower level of animal behavior, of anger
and hate and greed and lust………

we can rise or we can fall…or, or we can fall into the middle
which is we human beings are, a combination of the higher level
of human being and the lower level of human nature……

I cannot attribute to divine power the lower level of human
existence, the animal side of human nature…for what father,
and I am a father, wants their children to remain in the lower
level of instincts and animal nature?

I cannot in good conscience “bend the knee” to god……
for it is far easier for me to hold to man as being the
architect of human suffering then to hold to some divine power…

and if human beings have a choice between good and evil, then
we are just as likely to choose good as we are to choose evil,
all we need are reasons to choose good over evil…
and so we can point to a system understanding of
nature and we can see that by acting “good” we
improve and advance the cause of our various systems
that we have as human beings………

by being “good”, we increase the cohesion and dependability
and permanence of any system we are part of…

and by being “bad” we destabilize and disorganize
and create chaos within any given system…….

the battle we fight outside of us, is the battle against
entropy…we fight against randomness and disorder in systems…
and we engage in the battle for order and stability and predictability…
all boring terms I agree… but necessary for us to provide the necessary
grounds we need to engage in our own personal battle to become more
human… a stable and order society allows us to become human, all too
human………

we need a stable and ordered society for us to have the ability to
become who we are… in a disordered society, we cannot grow
to become who we are because we are too busy just trying to hold serve…

if we are too busy trying to gain the basic necessities of life,
to be animals in attempting to find food, water, shelter
warmth, clothing, and then all we are animals…
but to engage in the higher level of engagement with
what it means to be human, means we are already supplied with
the basics of life along with other physical needs as an education
and health care…

this fulfilling of the lower needs allows us to work on becoming
more human, fulfill the higher levels of human nature…….

I reject the religious because it takes us away from our task, our
real task of becoming human,

but as I have said, I have mellowed in my old age…
and I no longer completely reject the religious in human
existence…

but what is the religious?

I have no fucking idea…

and so I cannot comment on K. vision of the third
level of human existence, the religious…

Kropotkin

So Kierkegaard saw three possibilities for human existence,
the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious…

these three ways of existence, of possibilities are K. way
of understanding what is possible for human beings…

in reality, we are a combination of all three and in other ways,
we are none of these possibilities…

are there are other possibilities as example of being human?

yes, look at the night sky and count the stars…

and as many stars as you can count, lies the possibilities
for human engagement, for human possibilities of the ways
and means for human beings to engage in the world…

and how do we decide between all these choices?

for some, we decide by the values we choose…

the values determine what possibilites exists for us…

so, what is possible for you?

your values decide your possibilities…

Kropotkin

it is not enough to have the courage of our convictions,
we must have the courage for an attack upon our convictions…

Nietzsche…

LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP…

SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK…….

we must have the courage for an attack upon our conviction…

so, when they shout… SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK, SEND HER BACK…

where is the courage for an attack upon their convictions?

LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP, LOCK HER UP…

they don’t even have the courage of their convictions…

for racism and sexism and homophobic remarks don’t reveal
one’s convictions… they reveal one’s prejudice and one’s bias
and one’s indoctrinations… and they are not convictions…

they are the lower instincts of the human being, the animal part
of the human being…for racism and sexism and homophobia
are not convictions… they are the lower levels of bias and prejudice…
where hate and anger and greed and lust resides…

LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK, LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK…

they reveal nothing more then ignorance of what it means to be human…
and an inability to become more human because if all you hold true is
bias and prejudice and sexism… you aren’t human…you are animal…

you have sunk to the lowest depths of what it means to be human if
all you can shout is…

LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK, LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK……

if all your focus is upon the lowest instincts of being human…

so far, you have failed in the basic level of being human…

because being human is compassion and being human is love
and being human is peace and being human is justice
and being human is charity and being human is choice……

if all you can shout is…

LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK, LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK…

that is childlike… and so simple as to insult an 8 year old child…

to shout…

LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK, LOCK HER UP, SEND HER BACK…

it isn’t intelligent, it isn’t Christian, it isn’t Buddhist,
it isn’t religious, it isn’t American, it is the highest level of being an animal,
the lowest level of being human…….

it isn’t even on level of having convictions… convictions at least have
some adult level of understanding, but to shout one’s prejudice
and superstitions isn’t adult…

the real problem I have isn’t the ignorance of these people, but
the silence that has followed…when listening to criticism of
these ignorant people, one only hears crickets…….

that bothers me more then actual fear and ignorance…

Kropotkin

and what does the above post have to do with the three
Kierkegaard spheres of life, the aesthetic, the ethical
and the religious?

why everything…

to shout LOCK HER UP and SEND HER BACK is a choice,
an ignorant choice, but nevertheless, a choice…
a choice not to pursue the aesthestic or the ethical or
the religious, but a choice to pursue ignorance and
prejudice and bigotry…the instinctual level of human existence…

a choice to engage in the aesthestic or the ethical or
the religous means we reject such calls of prejudice those chants
display…

but one might argue that the chants reflect the will of the people
to follow the law… a dubious argument at best…
because to proclaim the law as a sign of morality,
(and it is morality we are talking about, not the law)
if we use the law as morality, then we can say that legally,
legally, we can defend slavery and concentration camps, both
here and in Germany in the 1930’s…if we mean legally, we
can defend Jim Crow laws and we can defend women as property,
and we can defend torture and we can defend the restriction of rights, property,
and freedom for white men only…

the law is not the place to expect morality… it is simply
a tool to maintain property and power by those who can afford it…

Kropotkin

to be a witness unto religion is to bear witness to the
truth of the religion………

it is not unlike a witness in court who by their testimony,
give truth to a court case…

I saw, bear witness, to the fact that John Doe shot
Soren Kierkegaard dead in the morning of July 19, 2019…

however to “witness” something I must have direct knowledge
of the act in question…I cannot bear witness to an action
to which I did not directly see, hear, taste, touch or smell…

Thus I cannot bear witness to the death of JFK or MLK as
I didn’t personally witness it…

now, the question exists in which how can people bear witness to
the acts of god/Jesus?

Many people attempt to be witnesses for god when in fact they haven’t witness
any acts or actions of god………

to bear witness means to become personally involved…….

I can bear witness to the conditions to which I personally can vouch for…

so, K. attempts to bear witness for Christianity which he can see, hear, touch,
taste or smell… but he cannot, cannot bear witness for any type of being referred
to as god… as he hasn’t any personal, bearing witness to god……

for K. the question was simple, how to be a Christian in Christianity?

for K. Christianity had lost touch with what made it so appealing
and spiritual… Christianity was one of the many mass movements
in which people were instructed how to be Christian…they were told
what it meant to be Christian and what was the proper response they
were to make when it became time to bear witness to Christianity……

to be a modern man means one is classified, timed, weighed, measured,
numbered… turned into a commodity… and K. saw that Christianity
was no different…the mass man, the modern man is force fed
with ism’s and ideologies and biases and superstitions and habits,
or said another way, modern man was programed……….

and it was no different in Christianity…….
and this is most notable where the state runs
the religion, imaginatively called, the state religion…

In Europe, it is quite common that the state runs religions
as part of the state organizations like the IRS. or the State Department…
and it is in Europe, where religions are dying… connection?

I would say yes, when the state runs the religion, it takes the faith
out of religion… it is no longer about bearing witness and it is about
performing the state mandated functions of a church…

mass produced faith no longer brings about mass produced faith…
faith is individual and personal and it bear witness to something…

but, but what happens if there is no god that allows one to bear witness to?

what if there is no such thing as Jesus… how do we bear witness to something
that doesn’t exists?

and here is where modern religions has floundered for decades if not for centuries…

we want to believe but what if there is nothing to believe in?

in our pursuit to create the mass produced man, we have left man without
anything to believe in…for what can you believe in if everything around you
is fake, mass produced, obsolete within months if not weeks or days……

what can we believe in if we don’t have anything to believe in?

some might say, believe in god/jesus… but that ship has sailed…
and some might say, believe in ism’s and ideologies like capitalism and
communism and Catholicism… but those ships have sailed…
some might say, believe in man, but how can we believe if
we don’t even know what exactly we are believing in?

what is this creature known as man?

can any of you say for certain, what is man?

and how can you believe in man if you don’t even know
what man is?

so I ask you, what can you bear witness to?
what can you state is the truth about man?

what do you have direct knowledge of, to be able to bear witness to?

so, friend, what do you bear witness to?

Kropotkin

Peter, good analysis on the side of witnessing a drama or a tragic comedy of huge proportions.

In Christian terms . the life of Jesus sets a good example by which such went down two fold.

In his trial, the old forms of trials can still be recalled, the traditional witnesses for his defense and prosecution. It is written that power corrupts. What were the power a which did infringe on certain , even then existing eifjys by which both could testify to?

Now an innocent man , a good man, can stand on his own without witness, in fact , too many times, moat times , good man are poor in spirit, and can not claim any witnesses against procedural efforts to indict him.
He has long ago been abandoned for his poverty, his self constructed poverty, and it bore him down nevertheless, so that any possible witnesses he may have called upon, abandoned him out of fear. Among the disciples, the one moat loved, as well.

He had to , as now, the good man to St and upon the only witness he ever needs, that for which the devil himself , standing on a high hill to barter away his soul for any worldly values imaginable.
He could not. Ah yes the temptation was near unimaginably and overwhelmingly near impossible to deal with, the devil is a.clever bargainer, they are ones very hard not to deal with . pushed to the limit when legitimate bribes expire, come the volumes of ever increasing threats to demean the value of self sacrifice.

No Peter , You are right, the good man will, if ever be is able to overcome that force, which is invaluable, beyond the last vestiges of good and evil, to love even that which persecutes the supreme value that can not be ,
…on yes even that force at the last stand by the last man, try, This Man, to simulate in his desperate effort to buy IT from him like a commodity, and if IT can’t be bought then it will be attempted to be stolen.

So who can bear witness?

Why anyone calling upon that which is it’s own guarantee, who is who He is, and then the deal will defeat him who calls the debt, for a deal that was shady to begin with, a deal using the child in man, a child who attempted the task of David, a child against the goliathan evil of barbarous misgivings.

No this time though , who will know the day of his coming, he will work it differently, he will overcome those )who here with have abandoned him with misgivings.

as I think about it… who among you has tried to lead an ethical life,
who among you has tried to lead an aesthetic life and who among you
has tried to lead an religious life?

now some foolish ones might jump up right now and say, yes, yes
I am trying to lead an religious life……….

and you are lying to me and if you actually believe it, you are lying to
yourself…….

saying one is a Christian doesn’t make one a Christian……

have you actually acted as Jesus called for?

have you understood what the parable of the Good Samaritan actually means?

if you had understood it, truly understood it, then you wouldn’t be
defending IQ45 and his assault upon Christian values……

it doesn’t matter if we are children of Mexico or children of
Spain or children of Syria… according to Jesus, we are all children
of god… and if you are Christian, then you see all human beings as
children of god… regardless of where they came from…

it doesn’t matter if they broke the law entering this country and
and it doesn’t matter if they love people you don’t approve of
and it doesn’t matter if they worship different gods then you do
and it doesn’t matter if their skin color is different then yours……

if you attack immigrants as law breakers, then you have missed the
entire point of what jesus said……. you are not Christian…
simple as that… lie to yourself as much as you want, but
the truth is plain to see… if you hold being an American higher
then being a child of god, then you are not a Christian
and if you want to “SEND HER BACK”, you are not a Christian,
you aren’t even a good American………

we must ask ourselves, what is our priority?

Do we stand with those who proclaim that “America is white”
and deny our humanity and our Christianity…

do you call those from Mexico as “subhuman” then you are not
a Christian and you deny the higher calling………

you must ask yourself, in what order do I live in?

for example, do you think of yourself as American first?
or do you think of yourself as white first?
or do you think of yourself as Jewish or Christian or Islamic first?

when I try to prioritize my own understanding of who I am, what do
I list first, American, white, Californian, male, heterosexual,
atheist, worker, consumer, honest, just, loving, SF giant fan,
baseball fan, a thinker, a reader, owner of 5000 books,
father, son, brother, husband, checker,

I can list hundreds if not thousands of ways to identify myself to others
and to myself… but which identity do I list first?
which of my many identities do I consider to my first, primary
identity?

for at various times, I am one or all of these roles. I can be
a husband and a checker at the same time, so what role, do
I prioritize as being my primary role, my primary role in life?

do I at any point think about myself as leading an aesthetic life?
or do I see myself leading an ethical life or perhaps a religious life?

no, for those aren’t roles, they are a way of life, not just a role…
and that is missing, I am not supposed to be my roles, I am supposed
to be involved in a way of life… for I won’t always be a store checker,
but I can lead an ethical life no matter what else happens…
to lead an ethical life means it doesn’t matter if I am an American
or white or heterosexual or a father or a son… leading an ethical
life means leading an ethical life regardless of what roles I may
be playing at the time……

if I am leading the religious life, then it doesn’t matter that I am
American or white or heterosexual or a father or a son, I am devoting
my time to being the best Christian I can be, and that means not
treating people as an means, but treating people as a ends…
as god’s children… all people regardless of who they love and
where they come from and the color of their skin… for if any of that
bothers you, the color of their skin or where they come from or if
they are immigrants, then you are not a true Christian, you are not
a follower of jesus…….

for jesus it doesn’t matter what the color of our skin and it doesn’t matter
where we come from and it doesn’t matter if we are immigrants,
we are still children of god… and so if you deny a person due
to such matters, you are not a Christian and you need to stop lying
to yourself that you are a follower of jesus……

for jesus didn’t care about the color of one’s skin and he didn’t care
about where you came from and it didn’t matter if you are an immigrants…

they say, god’s love is universal… so why isn’t your love universal?

and so I say unto you, you are not a Christian unless your love is
universal……….

so If you want to live the religious life, then do so, and if
you want to live the ethical life, please by all means do so,
and if you want to live the aesthetic life, do so…

now comes the $64,000 question, are there other options
do live beside the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious?

are we missing some other ways of life, we could be living,
that isn’t just about playing the roles of our lives?

as we search into our lives, the lower level, the shallow level is
the roles we play, our being a checker or a husband or a father or a consumer,
but we can find on the next level, our living life ethically,
aesthetically, or religiously? the next step to take is to attempt
to live life by these ways of life……

and then we reach the next level, which is what is the highest step of life?

we have our roles, then we have our way of life, be it ethical or aesthetic,
or religious, but is there a next possibility?

once we begin to understand our life as a way of life, is there a next step?

I have no proof of it, but I believe that yes, there is something beyond
living life as a way of life, just as I believe that living our life as a way of life,
is the next step beyond the role playing we do……

living life as a possibility, not as a certainty…

I do not have precognition into the next step of humanness…
but that is what we must begin to look for, the next step of
possibilities for human beings…beyond our roles and beyond our life
as a way of life, what is the next step?

Kropotkin

I am reading Kierkegaard “concluding unscientific postscript”
and I see a connection between what he says about Christianity
and what we have today in regards to “America”…
and our belief in America…

K. writes about faith and what it means to have faith in Christianity,
and I see us, Americans, having the same “faith” in America that
christians have in Christianity…

let us take christianity first, we see many followers of christ, for that
is what belonging to christianity means, being a follower of christ,
and I see how many proclaim themselves to be christians, follower of
christ, but when I see their actions or more correctly their inactions in
regards to say, the concentrations camps we have and the mistreatment of
illegals in this country, I see how the alleged followers of christ suddenly
abandon their religion, their Christianity, to support IQ45 and is immoral
and unchristian attack upon immigrants and people of color…

If you are a Christian, you are a Christian regardless of political
attacks or agenda going on… one’s Christianity should exist
past any political activity…

in other words, crimes that violate Christian ethics, should be condemned…
we should be hearing from Christians about the crimes against humanity
committed by IQ45 and his followers from a Christian standpoint…
and we don’t…yes, the pope has condemned IQ45 but has the Catholic
church in America followed the pope in condemning the unchristian
treatment of illegals in America… No, I haven’t heard the
catholic church in America as condemning IQ45 in the vocal way
the pope has condemned him……

nor have I heard the average church goer condemned IQ45 for
his vile and unchristian assault on immigrants and their children…

in other words, we have a disconnect between the proclaimed
beliefs of the catholic church for example, and the silence
from the church condemning IQ45… it isn’t enough for the pope
to condemned IQ45 but every single church goer must do the same if
they really, truly believe in the gospel as the word of god…

now we lay this religious part down to attend to the political
aspect of belief……

just as Americans profess believe in god/Christianity, they profess believe
in the American ideal and what America stands for………
and yet, when push comes to shove, the average American has
been silent in the crimes against humanity committed by IQ45 and
his followers…… isn’t the constitution enough basis for us to condemn
IQ45 just as the bible is enough basis to condemn this most unchristian
like person, IQ45…….

WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL…

these words is the heart of the American experience, is the heart of
what it means to be an American and yet, in our dealings with
the immigrants and their children, we no longer believe this to be true…
we accuse the immigrants of crimes and thus give us an excuse to
mistreat and abuse them and create concentration camps……

but what about the statement that we hold “all men as created equal”
oh, we don’t really believe in that because these immigrants aren’t
Americans and only Americans deserve to be “created equal”……

suddenly we are face with the exact same situation that we face religiously
and we now face politically… we pretend we believe the words, the word of
god and the word of our founding fathers but when push comes to shove,
we abdicate our both the religious and the political beliefs…….

we say we are religious but we certainly don’t act religious
and we say we are Americans but we certainly don’t act that way……

our words and our actions no longer meet………

we claim to hold the ideals of America has being the highest
political ideals and yet we fail to exist on those ideals…

those vaunted political ideals are really just ideals that
we can take or leave as the situation, as we subjectively
decide upon………

you cannot be an American and refuse to believe in or accept the
ideals of what it means to be American…

“we hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

this is the foundation of everything it means to be American
and if we only hold this ideal when it is convenient, then
we are Americans in name only……we pretend to be Americans…

just as the Christian who fails to act upon the Christian ideal
isn’t really a Christian… it is only by acting upon the ideals of
our faith can we say, “I am a Christian” or “I am an American”

we claim to be Christian and we claim to be American but
we don’t act upon those values which define the
Christian or the American……….

if we are silent during the confinement of human beings, regardless of their
nationality, then we are not Christians…….a confinement due to
bigotry and racism and intolerance… if we do not condemn the
racism and bigotry and intolerance, we are not Christians
and we are not Americans…… for the words that are the centerpiece
of the American existence is quite clear,

“we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

bleat all you want about how you are a Christian or bleat
about your patriotism, but if you fail to act Christian
or American, you aren’t either……

the words and the actions must match… and right now, the words of
the Christian/American fail to match the actions of the Christian/American…

but most Christian and Americans are too smug and secure in their beliefs
to understand what I am saying… they are convinced of their righteous
and their certainty of going to heaven, both religiously and politically…

they have no doubt and that is the failure of both the modern Christian
and the modern American… they have no doubt………

the world and America specifically, would be far better off if
we had doubts as to our moral and political positions in the world…

we are so certain we are right, both religiously and politically…
and that certainty has lead to the crimes against humanity that
we are committing today……………

is isn’t enough to hold to the certainty of our convictions,
we must be strong enough for an attack upon our convictions…

Nietzsche…

Kropotkin

if we don’t practice what we preach, are we what we preach or
are we what we practice?

to be a Christian, one must practice Christian values
and to be a American, one must practice American values
and to be a philosopher, one must practice philosophical values
and to be an Buddhist, one must practice Buddhism values
and to be a …………, one must practice those values…

if we preach ourselves to be “pro-life” then we must practice values
that are actually pro-life… not just life until it is born and the all bets
are off… no, if we are to preach something, we must live it…
we must act upon it, we must engage with what we proclaim ourselves to
be, be it Christian or American or philosophical or French or …………

too many, far too many proclaim themselves to be of this value until
it is time to practice that value and then silence… no action to practice
that proclaimed value…

it is this disconnect between our words and our actions that
lead many to proclaim our hypocrisy and if we don’t back up our
words with relevant actions, then we are hypocrites…

and in America today, thy name of hypocrisy has a name, it is called
the GOP…

Kropotkin

the question of what it means to be human revolves around
the question of human nature……

what is our nature? we are animal, that much is clear
and we share much with our animal brethren, but
to be human, fully human means we can grow into something
else…animals are relatively fixed in their possibilities…
a dog cannot act or be anything other then a dog…
a dog is limited by it nature to act only as a dog could…
bark, sniff other dogs buts, walk about in a circle before
crapping, a dog can only be a dog, nothing more…

and being human means we share many animal traits with dogs,
and cats and birds and fish and elephants and………

but our programing is far more open then animals are…
we don’t see an end to the human possibilities of
what we can do… we do see a limit to the possibilities
of dogs… dogs cannot rise above their programing and become
something more then a dog… but we humans, we can rise
above our programing as our programing isn’t as set as dogs
or animals programing is………

we have no limits in our programing… and how is that programing
done? Evolution of course… we have adapted to the environmental
conditions of the time and in doing so, we have been programed
by generations of human beings evolving into what we call human…

to be technically correct, we are nature’s fuck up… for all other animals
have limited programing which forces other animals to be limited in
their possibilities…a dog cannot be anything other then a dog
and a cat cannot be anything else and fish cannot be anything else but
a fish……

but human beings, we don’t have the limits imposed upon our human
nature that other animals have……

yes, we can be animals and many human beings choose to do just that,
simple animals who stay within their limits…….these humans are concerned
with the simple matters of the lowest level of human existence…
the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy, which is the pursuit of food,
water, shelter, warmth, medical care and education……

included in this pursuit of the lowest level of being human is the
pursuit of wealth and materialism… for all these people are concerned
with is the accumulation of goods, wealth… that is the bottom level
of Maslow hierarchy of goods… for the accumulation of goods cannot
be accounted for in any other level, the accumulation of wealth isn’t
about safety/security although many claim it is…you can be safe
and secure without wealth or material goods, in fact, one could make
the argument that by the accumulation of wealth and material goods,
because of the greed and lower level/animal pursuit of goods, people
who accumulate wealth are often less safe and secure… and they realize that
fact by securing themselves in well fortified mansions in isolated area’s…
like Woodside or Atherton California…very wealthy area’s near me…

in fact, the primary concern of wealthy people is to protect their wealth,
keep their wealth safe and almost every action the wealthy take is done
in regards to this basic problem of protecting their wealth…….

one could say that wealth forces on to exist on the primary
level of human existence, which is the lower level of maslow’s pyramid……
one’s wealth doesn’t allow one to attempt to rise above the pyramid,
into the other facets of human possibilities…if you are so worried about
losing your wealth, how can you begin to rise to the other levels of
human existence? we have the lower two levels which are
physical needs of the lowest level and we have safety needs,
which are the two levels that the wealthy reside on…
the safety needs are personal security, employment,
resources, health and property… we can see how the wealthy
focus there time on the lowest two levels…which doesn’t allow
time/energy to focus on the other, higher levels of human possibilities…

the love and belonging level, friendship, intimacy, family, sense of
connection is the third level of human needs…

the fourth level is the esteem level, respect, self-esteem, status, recognition,
strength, freedom…

Maslow considered these levels as deficiency needs, these needs come
from inborn human needs… from the negative needs, not the positive needs.

the fifth level is the first where we no longer operate from
needs and we operate from a place of power, of strength…
and that is the self-actualization level… which is the desire to become
the most that one can be…

this is where we must go to, all humans must rise to this level, to
become human, fully human…and this level is no longer about us
being just humans/animals…this is the level where we become fully human
and that is why this is the hardest level to reach and why we must make this
level our goal, both personally and collectively…….

because this is the level where we discover what it means to have a “human” nature…

to reach this level means we have risen above our programing which was programed
by the millions of years of evolution…… and that is what it means to be human…
to rise above the animal nature within us and discover the human possibilities
that lie within us…to rise above our programing and become more then just
human/animal…….

so what does it mean to have “human nature”… it means
we are not limited by our programing and we can rise above
it to become human, fully human…not just to be human/animal…
which is a very low goal to aim for…

Kropotkin