this question of discovering who we are can only begin once
we have committed the greatest sin in the modern world,
insubordination to the authorities…questioning the authorites…
and that occurs once we have doubted and challenged our
childhood indoctrinations…if we accept our childhood indoctrinations
of what a human being is, be it greed or be it martial or being it
belligerent, then we still haven’t begun the process of becoming
who we are, of knowing thyself…
society/state has declared that “man is…” and until we
begin the process of knowing thyself, the statement “man is…”
becomes the standard by which we know ourselves,
we cannot know what is possible for us human beings…
it is about discovering what is possible for human beings, not
already knowing our possibilties… for that is what happens when
the society/state proclaims “we are…” it implictly denies any other
possibilities for human beings…
so when we state that “greed is good” we proclaim the
rightness of capitalism, the correctness of capitalism…
there is no possibility for growth in understanding if
we simply accept the society/state version of
what human beings are and are not…
hence the denial of anarchism as a legitimate possibility for
human beings and the denial of communism as a legitimate
possibility of what human beings can be… for those ism’s
do not fit into the current understanding of human beings
as proclaimed by our reigning religion, capitalism…which
proclaims greed as the one and only possibility for human beings…
to accept capitalism as our god, we explicitly deny any other
possibility for human beings… hence we deny love and hope
and charity and justice as possibilities for human beings…
only those values which fit into capitalism is allowed, accepted…
and denial of those capitalistic values is insubordination, the great
modern crime………and to deny capitalism is heresy and traitorous and
un-American and un-patriotic… for capitalism leaves only one choice
as a possibility for human beings, greed…
and it is far easier to go down in finding our possibilities then going up,
thus reaching for negative values of greed and hate and anger and lust
is far easier to reach then the positive values of love, hope, charity, justice
and so capitalism seeks the lower values of being a human being……
to destroy is much easier then to create and so we hold those
negative values higher because it is easier to destroy then to build
and/or create……
in other words, nihilism is far easier to achieve then positive values…
and we are a nihilistic society/state… positive values are hard to
reach, hard to achieve, hard to emulate… who holds positive values?
why the great creators of art and science and philosophy……
that is why Goethe is valued… because he is against negative
values, against nihilism and that is why positive writers are valued…
because they don’t negate…so who preaches, teaches, values
positive values that are against the sign of our times, nihilism?
anyone who can say yes and mean it……
that is why Nietzsche is valued and why
Spinoza is valued and why Marx is valued…
not because they said no, but they also said yes…
and this is why we value Gandhi and MLK and
other modern anti-nihilist… like Da Vinci and Goethe,
Michelangelo and Van Gogh and Raphael…for they
proclaimed yes, and created and engaged in finding their
possibilities…it is the yes they pursued… not the negative,
the nihilism of their times…the ism’s and ideologies that
demanded nihilism as the cost of belonging to society……
we human beings are social creatures and we want to belong,
even if it cost us our souls… and that is often the cost of
being social beings, we sign away our souls in exchange for
a sense of belonging to the group/society…
we accept the current nihilistic ism’s and ideologies that
negate and deny who we are… and negate our values
and we accept in hopes of belonging… to escape
any disconnect, any alienation we might have toward society/state…
to belong is often a greater driver of our actions then any specific
value we might know…such as greed or hate…
for what has been inbreed and indoctrinated in us since the beginning of time,
conform, integrate, obey, don’t rock the boat, play the game… and if we don’t do so,
then we risk the possibility of not belonging any more… becoming alienated,
disconnected from society/the state…
and there is no greater risk for a human being, then to be disconnected from
or alienated from society/state…
to begin the process of knowing who we are, of knowing thyself, risk
the possibility of becoming alienated from or disconnected from society…
and that for social creatures like ourselves… is the most dangerous thing
possible…………so, it is a risk to know thyself… but I believe the risk
is greater if we don’t make that attempt to know ourselves………
to awaken to what is our childhood indoctrinations is a risk
but if we don’t risk knowing ourselves, our true selves, we risk
something greater, a failure to become who are are…
Kropotkin