a new understanding of today, time and space.

M: Except the future is waning as the past becomes a programmed method , to forget.( and. consequently revised) History really became dead , bit it shouldn’t have, a Titanic revival of. " Never let go!"

K: everything that is today, came from the past… our language, our history,
our philosphy, the very words we use and the blood in our body, all of it,
comes from the past… if we understand correctly, we are the past/present,
again, one word… and our engagement is take that past/present and
intentionally work out our possibilities as human beings…it is this
intentionality that I am attempting to bring out…
we must engage with intentions to create our future…

because we think that the past, present and future are three different
and distinct things, but that is false… if I am to engage in my possibilities
with intentionality, then I am engage with the past/present/future…one word…

it is a viewpoint difference…we understand our viewpoint to be different,
from the past but the past is our viewpoint because everything we are is
past/present… I cannot think or act without some influence from my past,
be it the indoctrinations from my childhood or my choices I’ve made in the past,
or the influence that society/state has made upon me or even something
as basic as my education or lack therein… or in my case, my hearing loss…
which is a past event that has greatly decided who I am today and what is
possible for me into the future…I cannot understand who I am today without
some understanding of my hearing loss… it made me who I am today…
but I didn’t let my hearing loss define who I am, I decide who I am
and that is intentionality at work… when I self identify, I don’t
self identify as a hearing loss person… I just happened to have a hearing loss,
but that fact doesn’t create my identity… just as I am heterosexual, that fact
doesn’t create my identity… nor does being white or an American or a husband
or a father, son, brother, uncle create my identity…

I am who I am by choice, by intentionality, not by any accidental trait or
accidental happening…

it is important to understand this intentionality… we intentionally
create who we are by our values and our actions… and if your values
or actions are unintentional, then who are you? if you allow accidental
traits to define you, then chance or randomness is how you have defined
yourself……

it is by this intentionality that we become who we are…
we no longer allow random choice to define who we are…
we engage with who we are by our values and choices…
not by accidental actions or behavior…

Kropotkin

so what is part of the human condition?

our engagement with past/present/future… one word…

our engagement with the human condition is in part
our engagement with who we were and who we are
and who we want to be… the values we inherited
and the values we intentionally have chosen after
we beging with our intentional exploration of who we are…
to know thyself as Socrates proclaimed to be the primary
human activity… then once we know ourselves, we can take
the next step which is an reevauation of values, which is to
understand what values we have, have been indoctrinated into us
by the family/state/society/media/church and then decide if those
values are really our values… American is a martial country,
a country which has made war the primary activity of its
existence… America has been at war over 93% of its existence…
is that the value you want to hold? I say no… we should engage
with peace with as much vigor as we have used for war…
my values are not warlike… unlike America…

so, I understand myself and I have reevaluated my values and see
that America’s values aren’t my values and so, I take the next step…
which is to have an engagement with the values that are me
and become who I am…it is this becoming our values is that
a step that is most important… if we are peaceful creatures,
then our values must reflect those values… becoming who we are…
then we reject America’s values of war, martial values which make
violence and war a priority……. which values are your values?

it is only by a reevaluation of values that we can become who we are
by choosing values that represent us, not just accepting the already
indoctrinated values of childhood… which may or may not be us……

so part of the human condition is to engage with values that represent who
we are, not the values that we were indoctrinated with…that may not
be who we are……

and that only comes from intentionality… of intentional taking the path
of knowing ourselves, of a reevaluation of values and of becoming who we are…

Kropotkin

I have worked out two distinct and separate idea’s…
one is ambiguity and the other is intentionality…
is there a connection between the two?

to refresh our memories here is a definition of ambiguity:
the quality of being open to more then one interpretation;
inexactness……

and what is intentionality? that is the act of choosing between
two or more possibilities… we pick one possibility out of many choices…

and how do we pick one possibilities out of many choices?

now that is the trick and we have many choices…

we can be rational, logical, musical, random, going by gut feeling,
picking by which value/values you agree to, community values,

the path to making choices is as many as there are tree’s in
Yosemite…

so we have ambiguity and we have intentionality…

we can limit the amount of ambiguity, perhaps never eliminate it,
but we can limit ambiguity by our use of intentionality…
especially in our personal lives… we can use intentionality
to decide between our possibilities…

let us take some possibilities and see how intentionality works…

when meeting people, I have several possible ways to greet them…

because of ambiguity, each method of greeting people is fraught with danger…
most people when greeting new people go very polite and kind and basic…
nothing too complicated or scary… hello, how are you?
now I have meet people for the first who have treated me like
the son they lost… and it was embarrassing for they overreacted to a simple
greeting…with intentionality we can basically decide to greet people
with one greeting and one greeting only… we limit the amount of
ambiguity by limiting our choices…

that is the value of intentionality… we use intentionality to limit
the amount of ambiguity in our own personal lives…we use intentionality
to limit the amount of choices, the amount of possibilities we have in our life
and that limitation reduces the amount of ambiguity…ambiguity which is limiting
the number of possibilities or interpretations we have internally……

this explains why people intentionally make the choice to make such ism’s
and ideologies their primary possibilities… in other words, to avoid
ambiguity… people make the choice of being nationalist or MAGA or
making their primary identity as being gay… taking one single isolated
trait of theirs and making it the primary trait that defines their lives…
it reduces the ambiguity in their lives by reducing the number of possibilities
within their lives…the greater the number of possibilities… the greater the
amount of ambiguity we have in our lives…

ambiguity is driven by the number of choices/possibilities we have…
the less choices/possibilities the smaller amount of ambiguity…

ambiguity scares, frighten people because it is so open and untamed
and with so many possibilities that people don’t know how to make a choice
between all these possibilities…people are afraid of having too many choices,
possibilities because the right path becomes obscure when we have too many choices…

say you are walking in a forest and you come to a clearing where there are
three paths to take…how do you choose which path to take?
what if the possibilities were greater then three, what if there were
a dozen possible paths to take? this ambiguity, the possibilities are,
for most people overwhelming, how can you choose between so many possibilities?

so we use intentionality to limit our choices, our possibilities…

we decide to only take a path that leads toward the sun or we decide
to take a path that leads downhill or to take a path that is easier then
the other paths… that is intentionality…and we reduce ambiguity
by creating some sort of plan or deciding ahead of time what we are going
to do if given these circumstances… but to be honest, life isn’t really about
set pieces like plays we watch but life is more like the improve theaters that
we might know the overall theme but within the piece you have room to
improve, make it up as we go along… but that allows ambiguity if we must
make up our lines as we go along…

so the question really becomes this,

how much ambiguity are you willing to have in your life?

what possibilities, choices are you going to make and what
possibilities or choices frighten you the most?

Kropotkin

as it has been pointed out numerous times, we can
separate out the many and profound differences between
the modern age and the medieval times…
whereas the medieval times were one of unity…
there was a complete unity between the ism’s and ideologies
of the medieval times with the way people lived and died…
you knew where you stood by your occupation and by your education
and by where you sat in the church…there was very little ambiguity
because they was very litte choices, very little possibilities for people…

it is said that there were three classes of people in medieval Europe…
and the three classes were those who prayed, those who fought
and those who worked… that was the entire list of possibilities
in the middle ages…your choices was limited to those three choices…

and the ism’s and ideologies of the age promoted those three classes
of people…for those who worked, their highest aspirations were
not of doing something else or becoming something else because
that was impossible… if you were a peasant, you were a peasant
for life…you had no other possibilities or choices…so your highest
goals in life was to one of the elect and go to heaven…
what other goals were possible for someone who was a peasant?

there was no ambiguity in one’s life because there was no choice in
one’s life…

you knew where you stood in the scheme of life, you knew exactly
your place in life, your entire life would be spent within 50 miles
of your place of birth and you would be doing exactly the same thing
for your entire life… there was no other choice…

the medieval age was one of unity in languages, opportunities,
possibilities and choices…….

compare that to the modern age… where we have discord, division,
separation, multiplicity, complication, convoluted lives…….
we are not in unity, we are entangled in every which way…
we have choices and possibilities and opportunities galore…

and we are alienated and disconnected in a way that our middle age
brethren never was…

the unity that once was is gone replaced by a multiplicity of mind,
soul, body, society, state, church, species and culture…

I have not come to praise unity… but to speak of our multiplicity…

Goethe once wrote, “alas, I have two souls in my breast” and
Goethe was one of the most unified people who has lived over
this modern period…since the French Revolution…or the industrial
revolution, depending on which one you “blame” for our multiplicity…

I have not come to praise unity but for the acceptance of multiplicity……

I am a father, husband, son, brother, uncle, worker, philosopher,
consumer, producer, reader, democrat, radical, communist…
and you too play many, many different and diverse roles…

and I say unto you, don’t search for unity, revel in your multiplicity…
accept and cherish the many possibilities that is you…

don’t seek the “real” you… seek the values that revel the
you…… and then become the person that your values reveal…

you might say, Kropotkin, that doesn’t make any sense…

of course it doesn’t, it isn’t suppose to make sense…

but go with it anyway………

I am Kropotkin… on any given occasion I can be whomever
I need to be… I am not limited, but I am open to my possibilities
that are inherent within me…….a moment arises and I can respond
with any number of possibilities that exist within Kropotkin…

if I were to sloganize this, I would put my slogan as this:

think locally and act globally…

think locally… engage in who you are without worrying about
the global implications of your thought process…

but act globally which means you act in terms of doing what
is best for the future, individually and collectively…

think locally means you think individually, for who you are
and what it means to be you…and exploring your possibilities

act globally means you act in a collective which is past/present/future,
one word………

we humans have an individual aspect and, and a collective aspect…
and we must engage with both sides of who we are…

individually, we must begin to know ourselves, then have a
reevaluation of values, a reexamination of values and then
we must find “our” values and then become who we are
by becoming the values we have chosen…

collectively, we must act globally… our engagement
is with passing to our future generations a better world then
we inherited…….we are accountable to the future for our actions…
and we take actions that then allow us to engage with ourselves
locally, individually…it is a loop where the collective makes
it possible for the local, individual to engage in their own
beliefs or actions…….

we think of the individual and the collective as being two
distinct and separate things, whereas they are really two sides
of the same coin and then soon, we are ready, they will become
the same thing…… just like the concepts of black and white, right
and wrong, up and down…….concepts that began as two distinct
and separate concepts and then become two sides of the same coin
and then become one and the same…….if you have read me since the
beginning, you have seen that this is a common recurrence in my writings…
two distinct and separate concepts that become two sides of the same coin
and then become one and the same………

soon, we will not discuss the individual and society as two, distinct
and separate concepts but as one and the same thing…

that is the unity we must be working toward…

Kropotkin

let us continue our current theme of unity…

we have perhaps two such themes that have dominated
human kind since the beginning…one is rationalism
and the second is irrationalism…

if you are looking for examples, our current age, our time right
now is in the grips of irrationalism…the Enlightenment was an
age of rationalism…the declaration of Independence is an enlightenment
document…and if we look at history, we see that human beings
especially in the west have gone through ages of rationalism and
ages of irrationalism…we can say that science is rationalism
and religion is irrationalism… so any age that is religious is
an irrational age and any age where science dominated is rational…
so the ages of religious wars are irrational ages…

and we have figures like Descartes who lived during an age of religious wars
was fighting the irrational tendency of his age with philosophy which was
rational…philosophy is an attempt at being rational…

so we kinda have the parameters of what is an rational age
and what is an irrational age…

we see that the last two hundred years, or the modern age,
has been an very uneasy mix of both rationalism and irrationalism…

the most scientifically advance country in the world, Germany,
was the country that allowed the holocaust…this sort
of contradiction is what is so confusing about our understanding
of rational and irrational…

in thinking about it, the irrational stems from our million years
of evolution, the instincts are irrational… the instincts are about survival
at all cost and that lies beyond the rational into the irrational…

so our fight for rationalism is a fight against instinct and emotionalism…

we are the product of a million years of evolution and instinct, it is
a hard fight to win given that irrationalism has had a million years
head start…

but the real question is not about this fight to the death between
rationalism and irrationalism… but about unity…

in my language, rationalism is the human aspect of us and irrationalism
is the instinct, animal aspect of us… I am human and so I believe
that rationalism is the higher path and will lead us to becoming
more human… but I cannot, I cannot dismiss irrationalism and instinct…
so the problem of irrationalism cannot be so easily dismissed…

we are born of irrationalism… love is irrational, however if we think
of marriage and family as an economic solution, then marriage becomes
a logical and rational solution to a problem…depends upon how we
think of love and the family… if we think of it one way, it becomes a rational
and logical solution, if we think about it another way, it becomes an irrational
possibility for us…

we think of rationalism as being one, totally separate issue
and irrationalism as being a totally separate issue…
but, but depending on how we thing about it,
it becomes two sides of the same coin
and if we think about it long enough, it
becomes the same thing…

rationalism and irrationalism is two side or two aspects
of the same thing…and the commonality between the two is
greater then the difference between the two…

rationalism and irrationalism are possible solutions
to problems we face as human beings…both offer us
solutions to the problems of being human… we need both
because sometimes, sometimes the solution to our problem is
being rational and sometimes the solution is being irrational…

as noted before, love is irrational… and our anger toward
any injustice within a political system is irrational and
and our anger toward the mistreatment of human beings as
in IQ45 crimes against humanity with his concentration camps
for children… this anger isn’t logical or rational, it is
irrational as is the anger of those who proclaim themselves
Christians and yet, strive, yes, even cheer this crime against
humanity… these deplorables are deplorables by their being
driven by irrational beliefs and hatred against those who don’t
deserve such hatred…misapplied anger as it were…

our age is full of irrationalism with anger and hatred and greed
and lust and all those negative instincts driving the irrationalism…

so what is the solution?

do we make some sort of heroic efforts to make everyone
rational?

no, no, a thousand times no…

we do something better and stronger and more lasting…

we take two distinct and separate states like rationalism
and irrationalism… and we then make them two sides
of the same coin and then, and then we make them
the same thing… there is no difference between
rationalism and irrationalism…

why is there no difference between rationalism and irrationalism?

because they come from the exact same place, human beings
and they share the exact same role, as means to solve
problems we face as human beings…

the human condition requires us to answer the questions of human
existence with both rationalism and, and irrationalism…

we must unite, bond the two together for us to become
human, fully human…

for the human being has a million years of instincts behind them,
we cannot without severe consequences dismiss those millions of
years of instinct and emotionalism and irrationalism…we simple cannot…

but we can learn to control and we can learn to
use those very useful instincts to help us become better human beings…

it isn’t enough to conquer our irrationalism… we must learn to
control and place those instincts into some context where
they are a key part of how we behave and act and think as human
beings…

it is in the unification of rationalism and irrationalism that
will create far better human beings…

we have far to go, and the journey is long…
but we can and we must learn to use both
rationalism and irrationalism if we are to
better engage as human beings…

Kropotkin

theologians and scientist and philosophers are always
looking to find some overall, theme or some complete
unified theory of everything… they search far and wide
for some means to have a unified theory of everything…
see Einstein for examples…

but what needs to be unified isn’t some outside theory,
some theory outside of us… what needs to be unified
is that which is within in us…

to answer the question of the human condition is to
answer by unifying the different aspects within us…

or said another way, to unify the heart and mind…
not by one controlling the other, but
by understanding, by allowing the heart to lead when
it is necessary for the heart to lead and when it
is necessary for the mind to lead, we allow it…

this requires some judgement, this requires for us
to have the wisdom to know when it is time
to think and when it is time to feel and when to
act upon the right thought or feeling at the right time…

the art of wisdom is to know when it is time to
act upon our brain or when it is time to act upon our heart…

that is one of the main examples of wisdom…

when do we think and act upon that rationalism
and we do we feel and act upon that irrationalism…

and over the course of our lives, sometimes it is necessary
to act upon our thoughts and sometimes it is necessary
to act upon our irrationalism…

sometimes it is not just a week to week thing, but
sometimes it is an minute to minute thing……

at some moments we must act rational
and at some moments we must act irrationally…
within minutes of each other…

do we have the “wisdom” to know when it is time
to act rational and the “wisdom” to know when
it is time to act irrationally?

both have their place, at the right moments…

but how do we identify which moment requires us to
be rational and how do we know when to be irrational?

experience and wisdom… which might be the same thing…

experience may be said to be the irrational and wisdom may
be said to be the rational…

we use both in combination to discover what is required at
what time in our lives…

so, part of the human condition is to understand
the role of rationalism and irrationalism is in our lives
and to act upon that knowledge……

the human condition is, in part, the rational and the irrational ……

and we must learn to use both, or one or the other, when appropriate…

Kropotkin

we see within philosophy proper, this battle
between rationalism and irrationalism…

we can count as the rationalistic philosophers
as Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz and Kant
and Hegel and even Marx…

and we can run that into the 20th century…
with Popper and the logical positive and analytical
thinkers and the mathematical philosophers like Russell
and Whitehead and Cassirer and Wittgenstein…

but we have had a counter philosophy which is what existentialism
is…think of an equation where both sides must be equal…
and existentialism is an attempt to make both sides equal…
the head and the heart…

so we have such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche
and even Dostoevsky…who place the heart with equal level
as the head and some, some even put the heart above the head,
Kierkegaard for example…

these philosophers attempt to equal the equation, to
make the equation in human beings of head and heart, equal…

as for me, I am a child of the existentialists…
and yet, and yet, I believe in rationalism…

so my battle is to find some commonality between these
two opposing, but not opposing aspects of life…

how do I find some means of keeping my personal equation
between, rationalism and irrationalism, balanced?

when I find that answer… and the search has taken me a lifetime…
I will be able to enter the next phase of my personal journey to wisdom…

Kropotkin

so we have philosophers of the 20th century describe
the human experience as ambiguous and absurd or
authentic or inauthentic along with confusion and angst
and dread………we see in these words, the effort to
balance the books… to keep the equation in philosophy,
equal… and we must do the same…

it is one sided to hold for the heart or to hold for the head,
we must find an equation that answers for both…

that answer lies however within each of us…

if we begin with the heart, we must balance the books
by giving equal existence to matters of the head
and if we begin with the head, we must balance the books
with equality to the heart…

and once again, we find ourselves with Socrates… in beginning
we must first begin by knowing ourselves… that is first of all,
discover if we are beings of the heart or the head…
so in addition to beginning the personal journey to becoming
ourselves by learning what those values are that were
indoctrinated into us as children, we must also learn
see ourselves as children of the heart or the head…

it is a more complicate matter to become human, fully human
then to simply grow old…

to become human requires patience and time and wisdom
and understanding and the willingness to challenge our
inherited notions of who we are and what is possible for us…

for the point of being human is to explore what is possible
for us and part of those possibilities is found within the
understanding of the complexities of being human…

to understand the highest aspirations of being human as
being only a scientist like Einstein or Newton is to miss
what it means to be human… but to understand
what it means to be human as a poet is to also miss
the possibilities within us…for it is possible
for us to unite the two aspects of being human within us…

Goethe for example is one such example of this uniting of the
two possible aspects of who we are…the scientific and the
artistic… the heart and the head…….

the battle out there is nothing compared to the battle within us
to create, to discover what it takes to unite the two sides,
the head and the heart, within us…

the battle to be human is the battle to create an equation within us
that unites the head and the heart…

Kropotkin

it has been suggested that the point of, the meaning of life is
to find happiness or to discover knowledge or to seek beauty…or
as the Buddhist might say, to avoid suffering… to seek enlightenment…
as the point of, the meaning of life…

but such single purpose seeking seems to avoid the equation part of life…
as life is nothing more then an equation…head = heart…
E = Mc2…we see that in thinking of life as an equation allows us
to see that we must unite, understand life as an equation between
the head and the heart…

the battle between being human is not a battle between science
and religion but a uniting between the two… making the two separate
and distinct issues as one……

mono thinking such as life is a search for happiness or that
life is a search for enlightenment or that life is an search
for material goods is simple a search for failure because
we cannot, cannot understand life as a seeking of one, single
solitary issue…… life is about combining multiple issues into
an equation…… good and evil, right and wrong, up and down seem
to be single, divided issues but in fact, they are not only two sides
of the same coin, but they are the same thing…

it is easier to us to think about such matters in terms of
single approaches but that would make the issues, mono issues…
good is not good without evil and evil requires good to make sense…
you must have one to make sense of the other……

the question of existence, the human condition is not about mono issues,
like good or evil or right or wrong, the head or the heart…
but some understanding of what the head means to the heart
and what good means to evil or what right means to wrong…

we are creatures that can create poetry and science and technology
and mathematics and art and chairs and TV’s and cars and
find the time to populate concentration camps and
kill millions because they don’t hold the same beliefs as we do…

so, who are the “real” human beings?

all of us, poets and scientist and prison guards and musicians
and serial killers…for each of those words, represents a possibility
of being human…

so what possibilities are you trying to reach and why?

Kropotkin

so we can see from all of the above is that
as we are now in a romantic, heart, irrational
time… we will inevitable turn to rationalism,
to the head and return to the equation…
the equation must, must remain equal…
and if our time is irrational,
then we must return to rationalism to balance
the equation…so, at some point in the future,
time unknown, we will return to balance
and return to rationalism……

every age is a battle between rationalism and irrationalism…

the french revolution began with rationalism
and ended with irrationalism…
as did the russia revolution…
as will our current age…

Kropotkin

do I offer a new vision of man?

do I offer a new Weltanschauung of who we are?

or is the new boss the same as the old boss?

do I offer a new vision?

yes, I believe so because after the last 200
year of nihilism, I offer up something beside nihilism…

the way to overcome nihilism is through an reevaluation of values
that we have…our current values are thoroughly nihilistic because
they are values which dehumanizes and devalues human beings and their
values…

capitalism and communism and Catholicism are all nihilistic values
because they deny and devalue human values…

enter those truths and abandoned all hope of being saved…

the path through redemption lies with the undertaking of values,
not ism’s or ideologies…… find your truth in values…

accept love as your value or accept justice or freedom
as your value/values… just don’t try to find the “truth”
in ism’s and ideologies… the 'truth" doesn’t exist there…

just as evolution has changed all of life but in small and
barely noticeable changes in traits… we can change the world,
not through big and noisy, dramatic changes… we can simple change
the world by each of us engaging in our overcoming… our engagement
with discovering who we are and then reevaluating our values… rejecting
those values which we were indoctrinated with and then replacing, if necessary,
with value that are actually values we really hold…

as a an American, I was indoctrinated with certain values such as
in how America is the greatest country on earth and
how capitalism is the greatest invention since sliced bread
and the martial values of war which has been the staple of this
country since its inception…
and the virtue of representative democracy… which isn’t representative
and it isn’t democracy…

my growth as a human being came from my being able to overcome my
childhood indoctrinations and coming to my own values and my own
understanding of who I am… my own world view is
supported by this overcoming………

I am something new… I am not who I was yesterday because I hold
new thoughts and new values and that allows me to have, to hold
a different Weltenschauung then I did yesterday…

my vision of man is one where we no longer seek out and praise
nihilistic values like the value of becoming who we are by the
purchase of material goods or with the worthless value of money/profits…

a rejection of modern values but not a return to ancient values such
as offered by the Romans or the Greeks…

we must find new values to match our new situation…
values must evolve to adapt to the everchanging conditions
we find ourselves in…

we no longer need to use fixed values that has been already santified
by the past… they were great values for that time and place and
those conditions… but we live in a new era and a new time with
new conditions on the ground…

what is the old saying? adapt or die…
yep…

the path into the future lies with the rejection of the old values…
even if they SEEM to hold the answers we seek, because we are not
living in those times, we cannot use those answers to solve our new,
modern questions…what it means to be human cannot be answered
with the answers provided by the Greeks or the Romans or the Chinese…
they can certainly be a starting point of what we seek but a starting point
only…I cannot see myself as the ancient Greeks did or as an ancient Roman
did or as someone in the middle ages because my questions are different
then their questions and thus my answers are going to be different…

the questions of modernity isn’t to be solved with ancient answers written
in ancient books with ancient idea’s…

to be an “modern” man means we cannot answer our questions with
limited viewpoints of what it means to be human… in other words,
we cannot proclaim ourselves as democrats or homosexual or nationalist
and think that is some answer to the question of modernity…

those viewpoints only offer us a narrow and limited viewpoint of what
it means to be human… we must, must broaden our understand of what
it means to be human by searching the whole broad spectrum of possibilities
instead of clinging to one or two small possibilities like being a nationalist
or being a Christian or being a homosexual as being the only answer to
the question, who are you?

nor is the answer found in such mono thinking as in thinking the
point of life is to escape suffering by becoming enlighten…
no, we are not so limited as to be defined by just suffering…
or by being defined by greed or by being defined by just hate…

the human possibilities are wide, very, very wide and we
must include all those possibilities into what it means to be human…

to intentionally explore our possibilities is one understanding of
what it means to be human… am I Christian? I can only know that
by exploring that possibility… am I a philosopher? I can only know
that by exploring that possibility…am I a homosexual? that possibility
has never appealed to me, it doesn’t turn me on, as it were…
so, I don’t need to explore that possibility…
but it might appealed to you and that is your right to explore as you wish…
and how can I deny that to you which I don’t deny to myself…

I leave open the future possibilities of becoming a conservative, of
becoming homosexual, of becoming Christian… possibilities that as of today,
I deny, but I can’t say with absolute certainty that I might continue to reject in
the future…those possibilities exists……

who are we? that is found in exploring our possibilities of being human…

Kropotkin

the ilp stream of kropotkin consciousness thread.

you know what you have to do, pete. you can’t continue avoiding it forever.

podcast.

after several days of work trying to kill me, I survived…

the question I will attack today is an old one,
a church father name Tertullian around 200AD…
first brought this question up…
and the question was reduced to a formula:

Jerusalem vs Athens…

now what on earth does that possible mean?

each city represents a different aspect of the human being…

Jerusalem is the city of faith, of revelation, of irrationalism… of faith…

Athens is the city of reason, of rationalism, against faith, science…

this theme of reason vs irrationalism has a long history…

many writers have written about it… from Leo Strauss to lev Shestov
to Reynolds and Shapiro to Dostoyevsky and Voegelin……

each of these writers approached the problem of reason vs faith/irrationalism
differently…

I wish to tie it a bit further back… we humans are plagued by our instincts,
we fight a daily battle between our rational side and our instinctually side…

I suggest that faith/irrationalism/revelation/instincts is a biological, evolutionary
solution to some of the vexing problems of being human……

I would also suggest that reason is a very recent addition to the human family…

this would suggest that human beings aren’t rational creatures at all,
but we are irrational, instinctual creatures who is finding our way to
being rational…first came the instincts/irrationalism… then much later
came the rational side of us…

millions, if not billions of human beings are still in the irrational, instinctual
development side of human progress…while millions, but far, far less then
the instinctual side are the rational, logical thinkers…the battle of the
20th century has been between those are irrationalist and those who are
rationalist……we may be able to make a case that with the arrival of the
enlightenment, making for the first time a case for rationalism, that
the war undeclared between rationalism and irrationalism became
overt and out in the public…

while it seems that the two are fighting a war to the death, the real issue is not
a fight to the death but a battle to a formula… where we equally use
rationalism and, and irrationalism/instincts on a equal basis…
for example, let us take love… rationalism cannot ever, ever
understand love… under no circumstances will rationalism ever
understand love…it simply cannot… our instincts from which
love comes from, it understand love…so much of who we are
as humans come from the irrational, instinctual side of us…

so our formula will go something like this:

rationalism = irrationalism…

they are not enemies but partners, much needed partners
in our struggle to become human, fully human…

so I believe that irrationalism, faith, instincts come from our
evolutionary beginning… and as society became much more complex,
we needed to become rational to cope with or to understand society…

under evolutionary pressure, we were forced to develop rationalism, logic,
science…….

we are problem solving creatures… that is the basic function of being human…
and by having instincts we solve one problem and by having rationalism
we solve another problem… and then when we connect the two into
one harmonious family, we will have solved a third problem…

and with each new problem must come new solutions…

we can understand the last two centuries as being a war of rationalism
vs irrationalism… the Nazi’s are prime examples of irrationalism……
as is any type of prejudice and/or bias or superstitions, myths,

the enlightenment for the first time, brought to the forefront
rationalism…and science which is brought into the forefront
starting in the enlightenment age is rationalism…
now one may argue that science/rationalism has been at work
for 200 years before the enlightenment… yes, but that rationalism
didn’t become part of the public arena until the enlightenment…
science/philosophy/rationalism before the enlightenment was
strictly an engagement between a very small number of men…
it wasn’t a public dispute, it was argued between a very small number
of people whereas the enlightenment brought this quiet affair into
the open, into the public eye…….and think about the history of
Europe since the beginning of the enlightenment…
we had the American revolution, the French revolution, the industrial
revolution, multiple wars and civil wars, World war one and two,
the holocaust and the atomic age…….quite a record of events for
only 200 years…and this came to be because the bringing into
light the battle between rationalism and irrationalism…

we cannot, we must not ever allow one side or the other to win the war,
we must engineer a union between rationalism and irrationalism.
we must find an equation that gives free reign to both as needed…

it is my contention that instinct/irrationalism comes from
our evolutionary history and that reason came about because
instinct wasn’t able to solve certain problems that arose,
the rise of rationalism is the rise of a solution to certain problems
of human existence… the very fact we have a large and complex society
tells us that reason has been relatively successful in its tasks of being
able to allow human beings to work together… working together as we do
is a logical, rational thing to do……….love is a irrational/instinctual thing we do…….

the quest of human beings is to rise to become the best human beings that they can be
by finding the possibilities that allow them to become who they are… we use possibilities
to discover what is the range of human possibilities…in other words, we use
running, the possibility of running to discover what we can achieve as runners…
how far can we push ourselves in an attempt to become better runners…
how high can we climb the mountain, how far can we travel, how many
experiences can we have which we then use to understand what is possible for us…

we must push ourselves if we are to discover what it means to be human…

and we use instincts and reason to push ourselves into a state of being
better humans… I would say, I believe that reason is
the higher angel of our existence but others, others might claim the
highest state of being human is the instinctual/irrationalism part of us…

I think instincts has taken us as far as instincts can take us, as far
as irrationalism can take us… we must engage with rationalism to
take us to the next stage of being human… and then we can return to
an engagement with our instincts… making rationalism
as much of our life as instincts/irrationalism is a goal certainly worth
exploring………

Kropotkin

we have two distinct and separate issues facing us…

first we have the human condition, the human drama that
is our lives. Where we face questions of existence that
every single human being must face of birth, life and death…

the inherent questions of “what am I to do?” “What should I
believe in?” “what should I hope for?”…

and we have the second issue of the interaction between the single
human being and society/state…

the questions of the personal, private interaction we have in
our quest to answer the Kantian questions of “who am I?” etc, etc…
which is played over our lifetime in what we do and what we believe in…

and the second aspect of our relationship with the society/state…
and oftentimes the question of society/state requires us to diminish, if not
outright deny our own personal answers to the Kantian questions…
“what am I to do?” gets coopted by the society/state in its desire to survive…
my own personal answers to the questions of “what am I to believe in” gets
answered by the society/state…

society/state denies my own answers to who I am by the state passing
laws, fixation on morality, clinging to prejudices/myths/superstitions/habits…

in other words, if my own personal answer is to love someone of my own sex,
the society/state denies me that option because my own answers are
antithetical to society/state own myths, prejudice/superstitions, habits…

who gets the final say? in a nutshell that has been the question of
this ongoing battle between the individual and the society/state…

so we have multiple things going on which oftentimes makes it hard
to understand what exactly is going on………

in terms of the question of rationalism vs irrationalism, then
these questions become even more difficult……

now notice that it is the rationalist that don’t have a problem with
same sex marriage or abortions or other questions of morality…

it is the irrationalist that have a problem with their prejudice and
superstitions and habits that doesn’t allow them to accept gay marriage
or abortions or other questions of morality……

this is the quite clear contrast between rationalism and irrationalism,
between Jerusalem and Athens…

for the irrationalist, the sky is always falling because someone is not
obeying the laws of god, someone is defying god and that will bring
upon the people, widespread and complete disaster to the whole society…

this call to irrationalism, to engage with Jerusalem as a ways or means of
engaging in life…this often becomes a life and death matter for those who
follow Jerusalem because they see others as somehow destroying their way of life…
for denying their possibility for entering the kingdom of god…as if that is the
only thing that matters… no one on planet earth is as important as their
reaching heaven… a rather nihilistic viewpoint… deny others their
values because it might interfere with your own pursuit of certain values,
which might get you into heaven…not only nihilistic but selfish and petty…

if I could, I would demand that god takes me to hell if, if he would
allow everyone else the chance to go heaven…and I will expand upon that
later…

and we have the second brick in the wall which is our own actions and
interactions we have with society… it is not only between oneself
and oneself that we must engage with, but we engage with our self
and society/state as well…

how do I fit into society/the state?

and how do I fit within the state/society in regards to this question
of rationalism and irrationalism?

there are times when we must, must engage with the state
directly and straight up… which means we follow the rules,
we practice “state” morality even if it clashes with our own
standards of living…in short, we become “good citizens”

and their are times when we must, must engage with
direct opposition and direct civil disobedience to the society/state…

today, right here and right now, is a time of direct opposition to
the state/society… the value being promoted by the state lead
by IQ45 are in direct violation of values I consider to be important…

where I believe that justice and freedom are the most important values
one could have within a society, IQ45 and his deluded followers have
values that are antithetical to what I consider to be the values that
I want the society/the state to follow…

my problems with democracy have been often stated, but my answers
isn’t less democracy like IQ45, but my answers is more democracy and more direct
democracy… less of the representative democracy and more direct
involvement by the people…which is in direct conflict with IQ45
and his followers…

for me, the one of the answers to the human condition is
for us human beings to have greater involvement with our lives
and to have a greater involvement with the society/state……

it is this engagement with the society/state that helps define who
we are… recall the Greeks… they thought that the only way for
human beings to develop into better human beings was by the influence,
impact of the polis, the city…to the Greeks, the path to becoming
human, fully human was by living in the polis and by becoming
rational… but as Nietzsche noted, they also had a place for
irrationalism that we haven’t found a place for…

we can account for rationalism and we can account for
irrationalism but we cannot, as yet, engage with both
of them on a equal basis… the entire 20th century was
an engagement, a battle between rationalism and irrationalism…

recall that the age of enlightenment, the 17 and 18 century,
were ages of science, rationalism, of measurement and curiosity…

whereas the 19th century was an age of romanticism, where
the emotions/feelings were all important…

and the 20th century? that was an age that tried to somehow unite
these two modes of life… and the 20th century was an extremely
violent age that tried to pay homage to both rationalism and irrationalism…
we have World War one and two, the atomic bomb, the Holocaust,
the cold war, dramatic advances in science and technology,
the 60’s with all its upheaval and protest…so, can we somehow
separate the last 119 years into some separation between rationalism
and irrationalism? no, no we cannot…the last 119 years have been
a very uneasy mix of rationalism and irrationalism… with IQ45 being
the latest episode of irrationalism, not the absolutely last, for nothing
is ever the absolutely last, life goes on… but IQ45 is about irrationalism
and is against anything rational or scientific or logical…and it is
our duty as Americans and as human beings to bring back the equation
which dominates our lives… we must have balance between rationalism
and irrationalism… the equation must be equal between rationalism and
irrationalism…we can write out this equation a couple of different ways…

rationalism = irrationalism

but we can write out this…

rationalism + irrationalism = being fully human…

so we are left with several issues, one of which is the
relationship between the individual and society/state…

and no one answer will suffice because the relationship between
the individual and society/state is always changing and adapting…
depending upon the environment and situation and conditions
on the ground…at times, we must be good citizens and other
times we must oppose the society/state… it depends upon what
is happening in any given situation……

there is no fix answer to the question of when we must be
good citizens and when we must oppose the society/state…

my own inclination as a philosopher and as a human being,
is to stand in opposition to the society/state…

I feel to be a good human being requires me to be a “gadfly”
to the society/state……

and all the great philosophers stood in opposition to the current,
prevailing tides of the time……. and as I must stand in opposition
to the current, prevailing tides of our times…

Kropotkin

we have a wide description of human beings…

Homo…

for example, homo faber: working man… by this we mean
that human beings are creatures that work…

we also have Homo Ludens: the playful man…
we can describe human beings as creatures that play

and we have other descriptions of human beings…

one of the descriptions given is Homo Economicus:
which is human beings are economic creatures…
and in that description we find both Adam Smith
and Karl Marx…

and that has been the description of human beings in modern times…

and if we were to describe human beings in the medieval times, we
would have said, Homo Religiosus… the religious man…
and for a thousand years, human beings in the west, were understood
to be religious men…the truly religious men of our age has
been men like Nikos Kazantzakis… men who searched for god all their
lives…see his “Report to Greco”……but men like this have been far
and few in between… most modern hero’s have been men like
Carnegie and Rockefeller and bill gates…not religious types and
certainly not creative types… homo creativus………
who stands in higher repute, Andrew Carnegie or someone like
James Joyce?

as for other types of human beings, we have homo politicus, man
as a political animal… coined by Plato…

as for me, I don’t believe in homo… man, human beings
are much more then just one type of description…

we can choose to engage with our own possibilities…

as for rational man or for that matter, irrational man…

means we define human beings in a certain fashion…
but that fashion isn’t really defined…
for we each of us, is some mixture of rational
and irrational…

my hope is that people at least take the time to
understand and think about who they are and if
they are rational or irrational…

as I am a rationalist, I prefer rationalism…
but that doesn’t make it right, just my preference…

but I see that irrationalism does have its value…
for example in understanding and defining love, for
example………being rational won’t ever be able to understand
or define love…being in love lies beyond rationalism…
and any attempt to define love in terms of rationalism will fail…

Kropotkin

Again, in my view, you are making these ponderous “philosophical” distinctions between the rationalists and the irrationalists. As though, for all practical purposes, the rationalists are expected – obligated? – to share your own moral and political prejudices. While the irrationalists [of course] are all in Trumpworld.

And what on earth does believing in a God that gives you Commandments on this side of the grave and grants you immortality and salvation on the other side of it have to do with nihilism? Even as it is generally understood. Religion is basically the opposite of nihilism. Nihilists make the assumption that human existence is 1] essentially meaningless 2] ends in oblivion and that 3] “in the absence of God all things are permitted”.

There are no rational and irrational value judgments. There are only particular values that, over the course of living your one and only unique life, you have come to embody existentially.

But that is just my own subjective/subjunctive “I” grappling to understand the things that I choose to do given the components of my own moral philosophy.

And, yet, in my view, it is in understanding the self here as I do that the objectivists are most apt to fiercely reject. After all, what if it actually is applicable to them too?

K: ah, we are making assumptions… I stand with Nietzsche in the fact that I
am against nihilism… I do believe that there are values but not in the way you define it…
I don’t expect that rationalist to believe in my version of rationalism…my vision,
my understanding, my viewpoint is far more shades of gray then black and white…

I believe in a shades of gray universe…black and white doesn’t exists within my
viewpoint…you can be a rationalist without believing in a single thing I believe in…
rationalism isn’t about having specific viewpoints, or believing in specific
idea’s…rationalism is more about the method, the way we view the universe……
and not about the specific idea’s we might hold…

for me, I really don’t care what you believe in because I am still seeking
what I need to do, or what I need to believe in or what values I should have…

and in defining my values, I can then go out into the universe and discover
what is my place in the universe…I go from inside out instead of outside in…

my values derive from what I believe in, not what the society/state believes in…
and this is quite often why the society/state and I are in conflict…
you believe that I am proscribing some set of values for rationalist to follow
whereas I am simply laying out the possibilities for one to believe in and, and
if you wish, you can engage or not engage with those possibilities… for it
doesn’t really matter to me if you do or if you don’t…

I lay out my argument for the values I believe in…
that doesn’t mean that I expect or even want other rationalist to
believe in what I believe in…you think I am laying out a course
of action whereas I am merely attempting to get people to think about
what it means to them…are you an rationalist? are you an irrationalist?

the question I ask is about what are your choices, what are your
possibilities? here is my choices and here is why I choose these values
or these possibilities………my goal is simply to get people to engage
in what is possibly for them, not to engage in what I have chosen…

if you reevaluate your possibilities because of something I wrote,
then my efforts have been rewarded… it doesn’t matter to me
if you then choose to follow me or not… for me, the exploration of
who we are is more important then the actual choices made……

my question is not, you must follow me into rationalism…
no, my question is, are you a rationalist? and if so, why?

the question of engagement is a personal, private one…

do you engage with who you are? are you living with values
that were indoctrinated into you as a child? have you begun
the exploration of who you are by knowing thyself? and have
you begun an reevaluation of values by which you find out which
values are really your values and have you become who you are
by incorporating those discovered new values into who you are…
have you become who you are by becoming those values?

those are my questions… not if you hold specific values or have a specific
understanding of the universe…are you a rationalist or an irrationalist?

that answer is yours and your alone… what you do with it is your choice…

I merely suggest that one possibility is to be a rationalist and here is why…

I am merely offering choices/possibilities… not definitive answers to the questions
of life…

what do you believe in and why?

that is my question…

Kropotkin

for me it is the questions we ask, not the answers we find…

who are the greatest thinkers and scientist ever?

think about it… we have Socrates and Einstein and
newton… it wasn’t about the answers they gave, but
the questions they ask, that made them so influential,
so respected…….

and for me, it is about the questions we ask, not the answers we get…

Kropotkin

we must rethink our beginning place for philosophy…

we exist within a Darwinian universe…

thus we have a place to begin……

the beginning of human existence is when life itself was created,
all those billions of years ago…we are the children of all those years
of evolution…thus we are animals and as such, we are simple the latest
of the instinctual creatures…and that is the second point…

we are first and foremost, creatures with instincts…
reason comes later…

thus the Greeks are wrong… we are not rational creatures,
we are irrational creatures who struggle to become rational…

the value of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and of Socrates himself,
is that for very first time, in the west anyway, is our engagement with
rationality… before that, we engaged with instincts, with irrationalism…

but with instinct, irrationalism… it can only take us so far…
as we developed far greater and more sophisticated society/state,
we could no longer depend upon instinct to guide us… the Greeks
turned to rationality to explain and explore the world… with the Greeks
we have the process of inquiry… which is the base word of history, philosophy,
math, the disciplines that we associate with the Greeks……. but think about
that word, discipline… in the dictionary it says this

discipline: the practice of training people to obey the rules or a
code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience…

as our society/state becomes more complicated, we are ever more in
need of discipline in being able to hold and maintain structure and
discipline within society…… in other words, we need to be rational to
be able to keep the society/state stable and working…

instinct/irrationalism cannot exists within a society/state because
it becomes to chaotic and allows entropy to come into play…

one of the definitions of entropy is this:

lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder…

we learned to be rational in order to prevent this decline in order
within the society/state…

for a society/state to exists and thrive, not descend into chaos or into
further entropy, we cannot allow instincts, irrationalism to exists…

if we explore this idea further, we can see that idea’s like tribalism
cannot succeed because tribalism is too small a notion to allow society/state
to succeed… in other words, our state is far to large to allow simple tribalism
to succeed…the idea of a tribe can only work on a small, limited scale
and modern society/state of millions, indeed billions cannot function on
a tribal scale because it cannot hold the weight of all those millions/billions…
tribalism is simply a too small scale system to work in modern society…

we have a conflict in modern society… we have people demanding
tribalism when the system of tribalism simply cannot handle the
sheer number of people we have in any given society/state…

and what tribalism am I referring to?

the tribalism of nationalism and the white only movement
and American first, those tribalism are simply too small to
engage properly with the sheer number of people we have…
even a state like California could not sustain tribalism because
it excludes far too many people…….the path into the future is
a path of inclusion and tribalism cannot adjust to this inclusion…
tribalism is all about exclusion…how can I say this?
why the sheer number of people in any society/state we have in
the modern world…

it is by rationalism and not instincts that we learn discipline and
to maintain order and not descend into a gradual decline into
chaos and disorder…

now think about another possibility… the Jews and their
central, core belief that obedience to the law is the
main, core aspect of their religion…

first, last and always… obedience to the law is the Jewish message…
that obedience is simply another means of maintaining discipline, of
not descending into disorder…it is rational to obey the law to avoid
disorder and chaos, in both society/and the state and within a religious context…

and what is the Christian message? obey god or suffer in hell forever…

and once again, we have as a message to obey, to have discipline to
maintain order………to avoid disorder and chaos…

with each example, we see how the goal of society/state is to
maintain order or to avoid disorder and chaos…

instinct and irrationalism doesn’t do that… instinct and irrationalism
increases disorder and chaos within a system and as the system
increases in size, the greater the need for discipline an order
a system needs to hold it shape…to prevent disorder and chaos…

for the larger a system, the greater its energy needs to maintain that
system…in other words, a system with 25 people needs X amount of
energy to maintain, as time increases and the system grows larger,
we must increase the energy needs of that system…….

in our current, modern systems we need to increase our energy needs
substantially to maintain order and avoid disorder an chaos…

instincts and irrationalism takes energy away from our current systems
and allows a greater increase in disorder and chaos…

but at some point, disorder and chaos will bring its own energy into
the mix which means that we cannot discard disorder and chaos
because of the energy that they bring into a system…

think about it this way… as your days pass into weeks and months,
sometimes we need some disorder and chaos to bring energy into
our lives………we need to liven thing up to increase our energy needs…

but not to liven things up… just a bit to shake things up…so as always
there is an equation, a balance to maintain to keep a system running…
we must balance our need for order and the energy disorder brings in…
for the name of the game within any system, be it biological, mechanical,
natural, the name of the game is energy… how much energy a system
needs to maintain order and prevent disorder and chaos…

so, the next question becomes, how much energy does our current
social, political systems need to maintain themselves?

so the next starting point of philosophy is a question of
energy, of how much energy is needed to maintain
a system or how much energy is needed to avoid disorder
and chaos?

the next point is this question of balance or of holding equations…

we must think about life, our life and every life/system in terms
of the balance/equation it needs to hold its form and function
without a descent into disorder and chaos…

the questions of philosophy change if we think of philosophy in
different terms then what we have in the past…

if we think of philosophy in terms of the new starting points
of philosophy……

Kropotkin

in thinking about our “new” starting points,
where should we begin?

is man the measure of all things?

should the starting point be nature?

removing all “doubtful” things as Descartes did, doesn’t seem
to help our cause…

is the starting point religion? or science? or philosophy? or nature?

we have science which has over the last 119 years turn from
being solid, secure, stable or said another way, mathematical…

we have enough science to suggest that the universe isn’t as firm as we were
lead to believe…

most of modern science has been or has become a study of probabilities…

evolution is about randomness and chance and probability…

quantum mechanics is about probability, randomness, chance…

two of our major scientific theories have chance, randomness, probability at
the heart of the nature of their theory…

a simple look at human existence tells us a similar story…

one man lives and another dies as a measure of chance or randomness…

as I review my life, I see how chance and randomness has played a key
role within my own life… because I was accepted at one job and rejected
at another, purely by chance, has made all the difference in the world
to my life…

the fundamental factor in my life has been my hearing loss…
and that was random as hell… my older sister was told not to
go over to a neighbor’s house to play because the children
had measles and my mom was pregnant with me…she went there
and I suffer a hearing loss because of it… you can’t get much
more random then that…

and all our histories, personally and collectively, are littered
with stories about the random nature of the universe and our interactions
with this randomness, chance…

I may be stuck down with an heart attack today, or I may choke
to death on my lunch…an random, chance occurrence that
ends my life… or I may spend the day reading and watching tv…

there really isn’t any rhyme or reason to our lives and the events
that happen within our lives…randomly I might find a letter
from my wife which suggest she is having an affair… my life is
torn apart by a random, chance event as finding the letter…

this randomness of our lives is mirrored by our collective
randomness… on TV, at this very moment is the hearing where
they are talking to the guy who deals with whistleblowers…

how random is this entire issue? how it came about?

the whistleblower themselves, he or she, felt that the
matter they were talking about wasn’t being taken seriously
and so they went out and tried to interest the media, into
engaging in this issue… and suddenly… boom, someone notices
and this whole thing begins…

we see the present and how random the present is
and we really see how random and full of chance is the future…

and this is why we have conservatives fixated upon the past…
the past is secure and solid and fixed…this fixation on the past is
one method of dealing with the nature of chance and randomness in
our lives…the fixation is a coping mechanism to deal with
ambiguity of the present/future…ambiguity that arises from
the many possibilities that we each have in our lives…
my life has possibilities like right now, I might go to the fridge
and get something to eat or maybe not…

these choices, possibilities are oftentimes overwhelming
and quite scary……. conservatives are people who are overwhelmed
by their possibilities or choices and they retreat into the past to escape
the possibilities, the randomness of their lives……….

conservatives are always saying, things were better in the past…
but why where things better in the past? because they
were known things, it seems like, but only seems like, that
choice, possibilities weren’t there in the past…
there is no ambiguity in the past because it is already written…
it cannot be changed… choices, possibilities, randomness doesn’t
exist into the past because it is already done… already completed…

that is what conservatives want, which is why they are against
freedom and choices…… because they are afraid of the possibilities
and choices available…

the young embrace their choices, their possibilities and they seem
to relish chance and randomness… as I am old, chance and randomness
is no longer my friend… I don’t handle chaos and unpredictability very well
anymore… it is a function of being old… and I am old……

to fight for freedom means you are fighting for chance, randomness,
unpredictability… the right to freely choose your possibilities and choices…

to fight for security, safety means you are fighting for less choices, less
possibilities… when fighting for security, you are trying to remove
chance, unpredictability, randomness……

that is why the old fight for security and the young fight for freedom…

it suits the way they understand and approach possibilities and choices …

and so to return the matter at hand…

where do we start? How do we begin to understand our place
in the sun and what we are to do? or what should we believe in
or what are we suppose to hope for? or what should our values be?

it is all so random and full of chances and possibilities…

which choices and possibilities to you believe in?

Kropotkin