a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

in this piece, I use Wendy as an example… an example
of what not to do…….

in another thread, I accused WendyDarling of being
a bad Christian and a terrible human being…

in her response, she responded with, my post confirmed,
the rightness of her cause and that it confirmed that
IQ45 will win in 2020…

so I accuse her of being a bad human being…
and she doesn’t care…

I have thought about this for a day or two…

and several thoughts have come to mind……

(in no particular order)

it never dawned on her that I might be right…
she is so convinced of her convictions, that nothing,
absolutely nothing will be able to convince her that she might be
wrong… absolutely nothing… she has the strength of her convictions,
but she doesn’t have the strength of an attack upon her convictions…
if one has certainty of conviction, by which they have the “TRUTH”,
there is no need to search any longer… she has the “TRUTH”…
why entertain any other idea’s about life, reality, civilization,
anything… when one holds the truth, there is no room for anything
else…without any doubt, she is convinced that reality is exactly as
she believes it to be… there is no point in thinking otherwise… because
she has the “TRUTH”…and because of this certainty, this “TRUTH”,
then anyone else who does not subscribe to this “TRUTH” is by definition,
wrong…and therein lies the rub…for what is the “TRUTH”?

For Wendy, the truth lies in whatever she thinks is true… there is no
room for dissent or compromise or choice, because there is only the
“TRUTH” and all other thoughts are wrong…

she is an absolute authoritarian…because the only true thing in the universe
is the “TRUTH” in her head……….

we see examples of this everyday…IQ45 only believes the “TRUTH” as he see’s
it… there is no other “TRUTH”…otherwise known as “fake news”

when one holds the “TRUTH” as IQ45 and Wendy hold it, then it is easy
for them to approve the nihilism of our modern age, it is easy to
accept and in fact, instigate the nihilistic practices that haunt our
age…for if anyone who is an absolute authoritarian, it is a very small
step to concentration camps and Auschwitz and the torture of people
to “protect” America… as long as the America being protected is
the one in the absolute authoritarian mind… any deviation from the
“TRUTH” being held in the mind of the absolute authoritarian is
classified as Un-American and unpatriotic and subhuman……

this mindset of the absolute authoritarian allows one to commit
atrocities against their fellow human being because there is only one
truth and one truth only, the “TRUTH” held in the mind
of the absolute authoritarian… any other truth is wrong, dangerous,
un-American………

the next thought was about how I accused her of being a bad Christian
and a worse human being, didn’t care because the confirmed her bias,
her “TRUTH” of herself… which allowed her to declare victory in the next
election…as if the winning of the next election was the only thing that mattered,
not the idea of her being an bad Christian or a worse human being…

her convictions didn’t allow her any room to doubt or to question if
she was in fact right, she had no doubt, no question in her mind
about the rightness of her convictions and thus she was certain
that meant victory in the next election……

as if winning was the important thing and not the idea that she
might have been a bad Christian or a worse human being…
for her convictions keep that possibility at bay… it isn’t possible
for her to conceive that she might be a bad Christian
or a bad human being… that wasn’t possible… and so it was ignored…

the only thing that matter to her, was the certainty of the reelection of
the village idiot…in the mind of such a person, no growth is possible,
no chance of her learning something, no possibility to contemplate
failure or being wrong…

now one might say, oh, I am better then her, but I ask, are you?

do you allow your convictions to decided that you have the "TRUTH,
and nothing but the “TRUTH” as a certainty that cannot be shaken?

it isn’t that she is just wrong (and she is wrong for reasons to be
revealed soon) but that she is unable to even address the possibility
that she might be wrong…can you address the possibility that
you are wrong? are holding your convictions more important then
discovering the truth? for most people of the absolute authoritarian
mindset, holding the convictions, holding the faith, is more
important then discovering the truth… would you rather hold to
your convictions or do you really, really want to discover the truth?

and what of her convictions of the greatness of IQ45?

what has IQ45 done exactly?

has he done anything positive, or constructive, or has he built
anything? no, what he has done is dismantling, destroying,
negation of fellow human beings, he is nihilism personified…
he hasn’t built or created anything positive in his entire presidency…
for to build something, to be creative means you must have idea’s,
patience, understanding, and awareness and IQ45 and his followers
lack all of these positive, higher level traits… they live for
the lower, negative traits of human/animal… they exists on
greed, anger, fear, hate, lust and those are the ideals they promote…
nothing that can be built upon and certainly nothing that would contribute
to the well being of individuals or the collective… for destruction is
the only accomplishment of IQ45 and the only possible reason for existence…
and that is why Wendy is wrong… she actively works for and supports
nihilism which is the negation of human beings and their values…
and that is all IQ45 has to offer, nihilism…….

and that is the reason for the racist, sexist, homophobe… attack upon
anyone who isn’t the “TRUTH” in the minds of the absolute authoritarians…
and that means they attack anyone who is different from them…from fear
and hate and all the other lower level, animal level of human existence…

such attacks are a form of nihilism… the negation of human beings
and their values… if you are sexist or racist or homophobe, you are
being nihilistic… and that is the only value these absolute authoritarians
have to offer, nihilism……

but we come to the real point of my entire piece… is it enough to
hold your convictions or must you engage in some practice of
an attack upon your convictions? as of now, Wendy is beyond help,
because of the faith of her convictions, she is lost…
because of her failure to doubt any aspect of her convictions,
she would suffer a nervous breakdown if she should engage
in a honest understanding of what her values and her absolute
authoritarianism brought about…are you that person whose entire
understanding of self is nihilism, in which the negation of human beings
and their values is the most part of ones understanding of reality?

because she is so far gone and lost in her convictions, there is no
hope in saving her… there can never be any growth, or change
or adaptation or realizing some potential… because of her absolute
faith in her convictions…are you that person?

this isn’t about Wendy because she is already lost, but about those
who might learn to save themselves by admitting not certainty
but by admitting doubt into lives…it is only by doubt that
one can grow as a human being and become a better person…
that is no longer a possibility for Wendy, but you can still
become who you are…

she has no interest in improving herself or in discovering what is the right
thing to do, but you can by engaging in doubt, discover what is the right thing
to do or to improve oneself…………

the path forward is through doubt, not certainty…

are you moving forward? or are you frozen in place like Wendy because
of her convictions which holds one in place?

Kropotkin

I offer specific scientific proof to support my truth found in the “Does everyone agree that Trump is nuts” thread, all you offer is assumptions and accusations. That’s the difference in our truths, mine are backed by observable evidence and yours are not. Prove that any children in the US are starving in concentration camps. Next, prove that I’m a Christian.

K: and missing the point… again……

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

the battle I have spoke of is not out there… no, the battle
we fight is inside of us…are we going to remain lower level human
beings… living life at an instinctual, human/animal level?

your “TRUTHS” are the simple, socialital truths gained by the
indoctrination of childhood and never challenged…

at birth, we are indoctrinated by “TRUTHS” that is the “TRUTHS”
that society deems necessary for us to learn to
help maintain society… and that is the point of these indoctrinatated “TRUTHS”
that they exists for help maintain society, not for your benefit, but for society’s
benefit…

that we are indoctrinated with “TRUTHS” such as immigrants are subhuman,
and they cause crime and other prejudices… among them the notion,
that whites are somehow superior to blacks… that there is no genetic
difference between whites and blacks cannot be disputed… the “TRUTHS”
we are raised with are biased and superstitious and prejudical…
it is the convictions that we have going into our adulthood…
it is these convictions that we must overcome…….
it is easy to convict people via convictions that we have
held since childhood………

for example, the challenge was made to prove that children in
concentration camps are starving…… but that is not the challenge…
the mindset that even allows concentrations camps is the question…
why do you think it is ok to have concentration camps in the first place?
that is a conviction that needs to be challenged and a challenged that
should have been done years ago… this is the point I am trying to make…

it is very black and white to say, crime must be punished… but the real
trick is in the definition of crime… not in the crime itself……

for example, slavery was the law of the land as was women were the
property of men and Jim Crow laws were legal and interracial marriage
was against the law and a women could not get birth control without,
without the permission of a man, be it her husband or her father……

laws of the land isn’t what make a moral proposition… and this the lesson
needed to be learned…it is not enough to say, I believe in concentration
camps for children… which clearly you believe in, but to have an attack
upon your convictions that we need children, children to be in concentration
camps…………

it is the convictions underlying our actions that must be weighed
and measured and understood………

it is not enough even to say, I am against concentration camps for children…
we must understand why, why concentration camps for children is wrong…

I have held certain convictions over my lifetime… I have had at least
5 different philosophical positions in my life and I have had
4 distinct and different political positions in my adult life……
(moderate democrat, very liberal democrat and anarchist and communist/socialist)

but I have been an atheist all my life…but I spend decades searching for god…
in an attempt to understand the truth… in my favorite book, “Report to Greco”
by Kazantzakis… he too spent his life searching for god… in fact,
the important authors in my life were searching for god…… trying to find the “TRUTH”…

it doesn’t matter if the children are eating well enough in their concentration camps
because they shouldn’t be in there in the first place… the search for the reason “why”
underlies or should underlie every action we undertake…

you reside comfortable in your convictions… but you should be in a state of
Zen where your very convictions are in challenge and the mountains are
mobile and the oceans waves are crashing and upended and the riverbank
has overflowed it banks…… and once, once you have overcome, become who
you are, then the mountains become peaceful again and the ocean is quiet
and like a mirror and the river has returned to its banks……

we Americans are far too comfortable with our superstitions
and prejudices and biases and habits… we need to challenge
everything it means to be an American… and we need to challenge
everything it means to be a human being… we must challenge
our very core beliefs… in attempting to overcome our childhood
convictions/indoctrinations……

you need to be asking questions of yourself, am I a Christian?
and what does that mean? am I an American? and what does that mean?
does being an American mean I approve of concentration camps for children?

when you are asking me questions, you are asking the wrong person…
you must be challenging yourself… and few have the courage of
challenging themselves as to their values and convictions……

it doesn’t matter what I believe because I am always in the midst
of challenging my own values and convictions…

what do you value??
what are your convictions?

that is what is at stake………

Kropotkin