a new understanding of today, time and space.

I am a big fan of jazz… I listen to a lot of jazz, (although of late,
I have been engaged with classical far more then Jazz)…
anyway, I don’t listen to recent jazz… I listen to Miles Davis basically,
and one of my favorite albums is “Kind of Blue”…and for many, many
people, this is the greatest Jazz album of all time…and the best selling
jazz album of all time… critics and many people believe that Davis is the
greatest Jazz musician of all time… but, not everyone agrees…
there are some who will list John Coltrane as the best jazz musician of
all time and that the best album is Coltrane’s “A love Supreme”……

and there are some who say its it Dave Brubeck and the best album is
“Time out” and the song, “Take five” as the best Jazz song ever…

now how are we to best judge which music is the best, really is the best jazz
music?

how do we quantify which Jazz musician or the best album or the best jazz song?

what criteria should we use to judge what Jazz music or musician is the best?

Now comes the interesting part, I say that jazz is the greatest type of music
ever created, and some might agree and some, many won’t agree…
and some will say, classical or rock or progressive rock or alternative rock
or country western… yuck…… is the best music ever created…

how do we choose?

because the act of listening to music is subjective… there simply isn’t
any way for us to quantify the best music, genre or album or song or
musician… so how do we make this judgement personally?

it isn’t done on the logical, rational level… music appeals to the
irrational, emotional side of us…… and we judge our music
on irrational, emotional aspects… if it moves us, it is great…
and if it doesn’t move us, it isn’t………

music appeals to that which is inside the soul… when I was young,
I listen to loud rock and roll… that no longer appeals to my soul…
I am an old man… and the music that appeals to me, that moves my soul
is softer, gentler, quieter music…….although I still listen to “the Who”
and other 70’s rock and I still listen to alternative music… but again, these
days, I mostly listen to new age music, classical and jazz music…

but that decision isn’t based upon logic or rationalism…
my decision is based purely upon irrationalism and emotion…

now, I would suggest that much of our decision making process
is done exactly the same way as we choose our music…

when I favor freedom over security/safety… I am making that decision based
upon what feels most comfortable to me, exactly like how I choose
my music upon… my decisions are done irrationally and emotionally…
freedom appeals to my soul much more then security/safety…

and I would suggest that is how people make such decisions…
that it becomes more then just need based, it comes from
what we feel is right, not by logic or rationalism…

people become democrats and cheer for the SF giants baseball team
and march the streets for Row vs wade… not because they are making
logical, rational choices, but because those causes are causes people
desire by irrationalism and emotionalism…

when I fight IQ45… it isn’t done by being rational or logical…
I fight IQ45 because I am against him, emotionally, irrationally…

and people who fight for the village idiot also fight because they
are making their decisions based upon emotions and irrationalism…

now we cannot, cannot escape us making many such decisions
emotionally or irrationally… we are human beings and we
make decisions emotionally and irrationally… that is the
instinctual, evolutionary aspect of being human…

we still operate in decision making with instincts and
emotions developed over the last million years…

but as I have noted before, as the society become more complex
and developed… we can no longer be so dependent upon our
instincts, our emotions to sway us into making our decisions for us…

at what point does the switch need to be make where we begin to
make our decision from irrationally to rationally, from instinct/emotionally
to logical?

I say with the fate of the planet earth hanging in the balance,
perhaps now would be a good time to make our decisions logically,
rationally………

instead of basing our decisions upon our own personal needs and desires,
we begin to base our decision upon what is best for the continued survival
of the earth and the continued survival of the species called human beings…

that we are dependent upon the other living creature that also exists
on planet earth cannot be denied, so we must also take into account
the continued existence of animals/plants/ tree’s… if we are to continue
our own existence…….

we think of existence in terms of the future, not in terms of the past or present…

we make decisions based upon how it effects the future, not how it affects
the present or the past…we can no longer afford to think like conservatives
and think solely of the past or the present……

it is taking into account the future that will allow us to make less irrational
or emotional decisions…

a good rule of the thumb is “we leave the earth in better shape then we found it”

and of course, the question arises, what is better?

better is simply, we leave more possibilities and opportunities to our children
and grandchildren… we leave them with more choices and possibilities then we had…

so if we no longer drive animals or habitats into extinction, that allows our children
greater possibilities, greater opportunities… when we use up resources or
cause the extinction of animals, we reduce choices/possibilities…
if you can’t use something because it is gone, it no longer becomes
a possibility… if I run out of gas in my car, I have lost the opportunity
to go somewhere… I must refill my car with gas before I
can create new possibilities/opportunities…….

the greater the choices, the greater the possibilities…

and to become human, fully human we must understand
how important choices and possibilities are for human beings…

so we no longer drive for the pursuit of happiness or of material
possessions or of greed or lust or anger or hate… those
drives, those passion, those desires don’t improve
the choices or possibilities we human have…

what is the role of human beings?

to engage with our choices and possibilities……
and that is the pursuit we must follow…

not knowledge or wealth or titles or happiness or renunciation of desires…
or even achieving desires…

no, it is the creation of choices and possibilities that become
what it means to be human…………

Kropotkin

let us put this idea of choices and possibilities into some
historical context because to really understand something
it needs to be put into some context…….

during the middle ages, medieval times,
the choices, the possibilities for people were
rather limited…

some have said this that there were three classes of people
in the middle ages…

those who prayed
those who worked
and those who fought…

these were really the only possibilities for someone in the middle ages…
and the vast majority of people were in the “those who worked” category…
the vast majority of human beings since around 10,000 BC have worked
in farming, agriculture…in 2008, the UN predicted that half the world’s
population would live in urban areas, not rural agricultural area’s……

thus from roughly 10,0000 to 2008, the world lived mostly
in rural agricultural area’s farming or having something to do
with farming…those who worked…

and farming is farming and has been farming for over 10,000 years…
in farming, you have an engagement with the land, with the weather
with the seasons and the sun… there is a time to plant and a time
to water and a time to harvest…… as a urban person, I find
rain to be a pest, a nuisance, a annoyance, a problem to my day to day
existence……whereas to a farmer, rain is a vital and essential aspect
of farming… without rain, you don’t have crops… it is that simple…

although the technology of farming has increased since 10,000 years ago,
the principles are still the same… a farmer from 10,000 years ago would
understand what a farmer does today……

this continuity of working, of being in a system that has gone on
for 10,000 years, means we had a system of engagement from
the farmers from past to present…farming is farming is farming…
regardless of the technology being used……

and the vast number of human beings engaged in farming, was pretty much
for centuries, was over 90% of all human beings alive… if you lived,
you basically farmed… and that is continuity that cannot be underestimated…

the other two branches of the middle ages were those who prayed and
those who fought… and they were a small fraction of the population during
any given time…while millions lived on the land farming, hundreds of thousands
lived in the cities or prayed or fought…….

think of the possibilities today… the majority of Americans don’t farm,
they live in urban area’s…people don’t have just three possibilities for them…
to work the land isn’t much of a possibility any more and the number who pray
is small and growing smaller… and given we have a population of over 330 million
people, the number who are soldiers are less then 2 million people including
reserve forces…so less then one percent of our population is those who fight…
and if we include the number of policemen in our country, the number increase
to another 120,000… that is still less then one percent of our entire population…

the single largest number of people working today is in the service industry or
retail……

in other words, we have far greater possibilities then the average person
did in the middle ages… and we have choices unimagined by the average
person in the middle ages…

the average person in the middle ages had only one book available to them
and they couldn’t even read it, the bible… personally, I own over
5000 books and I have read the majority of them…my own reading possibilities
of the number of books I can read is so much larger then what was possible during
the middle ages… the number of books that say, Thomas Jefferson owned was
roughly between 9 and 10 thousand books, in his entire lifetime…
that is the increase of possibilities that I am referring to…
the number of books published each year is roughly around 2.2 million
books…….that is a lot of possibilities…the number of books the U.S
publishes is over 300,000 a year… I suspect that number will increase
over the years…with each book is another choice, another possibility…

think about what all this means…

Kropotkin

so, what does all this mean?

well, the beginning of the exodus from rural, agriculture area’s, from
farming, began with the Industrial revolution or perhaps the French
revolution… they were happening at the same time…the beginning
of the modern age is when the west began to go from rural, agriculture
to the urban modern world……

and what else happened? why the increase in the atomization of human
beings and the increase in alienation of human beings and the disconnect
we have from society and each other and ourselves………

we can draw a straight map that leads from the alienation of
human beings from the reduction of rural/agriculture aspect of our lives…

we lost the continuity of human existence with the rise of the modern,
industrial world…… where we have little or no contact with what
farmers had for 10,000 years with the land and the seasons and weather
and the sun………we lost that…….

hence the rise of our disconnected lives… can we return the genie into
the bottle?.. no, no we cannot……

as profound as the change was from the hunter/gatherer mode of
existence, comes the next phase of human existence… from
the agricultural existence we have had for 10,000 years to our modern existence,
comes the next phase of existence……. the change from agriculture to?

and this is the question that we must engage with…

we have had our first phase of existence, hunter/gatherer to the second phase,
rural agriculture to the third phase of… of whatever we are working toward
now………

and that is the problem…we aren’t engaged with the next phase of our existence…
we are simply walking blindly into the future, hoping that it will all work out…

we must be actively engage with the next phase of human existence,
whatever it will be……whatever we desire it to be……

existence is about making choices and finding our possibilities…

so what our are choices, possibilities going into the future?

and which one shall we choose?

it is not a single, individual choice, it is a collective
and communal decision that we must make about our collective future…

it is no longer about “what am I to do” but “what are we to do”
and it is no longer about, “what should I believe in” but the question
becomes, “what should we believe in” and the question is no longer
about “what values should I hold” but the question must change into
“what values should we hold to”…….

that is the next step… to engage collectively, not just individually…

Kropotkin

now given everything I just wrote…
let us return to this question of experience……

how are we to understand experience given what I just wrote?

each of us experience reality differently because we experience
differently… we have far different experiences because
we have far greater possibilities today…and those possibilities
are what create our modern ambiguities today…….

as a white, male born in 1959 in Minnesota in an
upper class family… my experiences were defined by the who, what,
when, where, how and why of my birth and life…

so my reality is my experiences… and your reality is your experiences…
which is different then my reality…so how are we able to create
a shared reality given the differences in our experiences?

by agreeing to a common future… a future where we both
agree that we should try to engage in and seek out…

it is not the past or present that creates our commonality, but
an agreement to a shared future…I believe in inclusion of
human beings into a shared future… whereas others believe in
exclusion in a single and unshared future…….

but we are existing in a shared reality…

by that I mean, we are not separated by
existing alone, apart from each other…

we have a common future because I cannot
exist without you and you cannot exist without me……

the political and economic and social existence includes
you and includes me… we do not exist separately…
we are dependent upon each other because of the
modern world dependent upon our shared work that allows
the modern world to function…at my work,
in the grocery store, I deal with food that is brought in
from Asia and South America… think of the number of people
it takes to bring in cherries from South America, from Chile specifically…

if the chain collapses somewhere along the line, we do not and cannot
get cherries from Chile… for the system to function, must have every
aspect functioning…that is not opinion but fact… if an airline strike
occurs, the ramifications goes beyond just people being unable to move
about, but food and goods can no longer travel around the world……

the system is very complex and we know from personal experience
that the more complex a system is, the greater the possibility
of a system failure… the greater the complexity, the greater the
possibility of failure… that is the nature of systems……

for a system to operate, to maintain itself, the system requires more and more
energy to maintain itself…not to grow but to simply hold serve requires
an ever greater increase in energy… that too is the nature of systems…

our understanding of experience means we understand that we
are fully involved in a wide variety of systems… we must understand
human existence, both personal and collectively, as being part
of widely different sizes of systems… we can no longer
think ourselves as being alone, apart from, isolated from
systems……

we must begin to make our choices and think about our possibilities
within an engagement with the various systems we are part of ……

every choice I make must be in regard to the system I am part of…

as a father and husband, every single choice I make, must be in regards
to the system I belong to, which is the family system…

the next phase of human existence is about our choices
and possibilities of being within a multiple number of systems…

and as the number of human beings increase, so does the number
of systems increase and the number of people within any given
system increases…….that is a fact of existence……

these are realities that we share and must come to terms with together…

this is another point of our shared existence…… the experience
of being in the shared reality of the many systems we both exist within…

we might not have been born with the same experiences but we do share what
it means to be in the American system and we share a connection being in
the capitalist system and we share being in the same existence of the modern
media and the share existence of our modern society…we might interpret
it differently, but we still share it…

this shared existence within the many systems might help us create
a shared philosophy out of our different experiences……

I have a crappy job and if you do to, we share something in common,
that is an experience we share together…and we can create a
common philosophy due to our sharing a common experience…

it is by our sharing our experiences within the many shared
systems that we can build a shared philosophy…

from the different experiences, we can create a shared
philosophy if we acknowledge that we have the systems in common…

Kropotkin

if we agree to a shared possibility or choice, we
have created a share philosophy……

from individual experiences to a shared agreement…
to a shared possibility…

that is how we go from our own individual experiences to
a shared philosophy…

Kropotkin

ok, so let better understand what it means to
accept or share a common goal or philosophy……

we have a baseball team, we have 25 people with a
wide and varying individual and separate backgrounds or
different experiences…….this team of variously
different people with a various experiences…

what can create a common philosophy or goal?

let us understand that by agreeing to a common goal or
philosophy, that is to win a championship…is to overcome
their individual and separate experiences…

they don’t unite over their widely diverse and separate
backgrounds or experiences, they unite over a goal to
be achieved, a common united theme/philosophy of
achieving a championship…

this overcoming diverse and different backgrounds and experiences
can be achieved by agreeing to a common goal or philosophy…

so if you and I agree to focus upon peace as a goal or philosophy,
we overcome our different backgrounds and different experiences…

if we agree that freedom is the goal to achieve, then we overcome
our diverse and different background and experiences to unite over
a common goal or philosophy……

this is the means by which we overcome our different and diverse
backgrounds and experiences…

Kropotkin

in reading book, I came across this quote from John Dewey:

“The problem of restoring integration and cooperation
between man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives and his
beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his
conduct is the deepest problem of modern life”

another quote from Dewey, same book:

not a important concern…“a theory of values, but a theory of
criticism, a method of discriminating among goods on the basis of their
appearance and of their consequences”

and with this last thought, I am sure that IAM would agree with this…

BTW: the book where I got the quotes is: “Philosophy and the modern world”
by Albert William Levi…the chapter on John Dewey…

Ok, the first quote about the integration and cooperation between
man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives AND the beliefs and the
values and purposes that should direct his life

so for me, it looks like Dewey is saying we have two distinct and
different beliefs and we need to integrate them…we have first of all,
man’s beliefs about the world and the second part is his beliefs
about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct in his life……

so I have beliefs about the world in which I live in…

secondly, I have beliefs about the values and purposes that should
direct my conduct in my life……………

I have stared at these two questions for about 20 minutes and still I
have no real answer, an answer as to if Dewey is right or if the two are
already integrated?

ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Kropotkin

Bro. Dewey was the first philosopher I ever heard of. Back in elementary school we were taught how to use the Dewey decimal system in the library. Rememba that? So I always thought it was ‘dooey’ or something… just part of the decimal name or whatever. One day I was like ‘what’s a dooey’, and Mrs. Carter said ‘it’s ‘dewey’, and he was a philosopher.’ and there you have it; the first philosopher discovered by little promethean. An American pragmatist, no less.

Sigh

Wait wtf. That’s not the same Dewey. It was some dude named melvil Dewey. Jesus Christ Mrs.Carter. and she was even a social studies teacher.

K: I feel for you Pro75… I too have been lead to some “fact” that I took
as gospel and felt…betrayed… when I discovered the truth…

but let us think about this… does the “fact” that it was Melvil and not John
really changed anything… you have lived since grade school thinking it was
John Dewey who created the Dewey decimal system… and once you
discovered the “truth”… what changed? a fact like this isn’t the path to
any sort of wisdom that is needed for us to make judgements upon…
it is simply a fact… and the fact changed and it meant nothing…

we are hung up on facts/knowledge… but at end of the day, do these
facts really mean anything? is your life really complete, now that you know
it was Melvil and not John Dewey who created the decimal system?

I can’t think of any way that the changing of facts, from Mevil to John
can make any difference in your life… and this is the point…
to hold onto facts as some possible guide to what it means to be human
is not much different then the fact it was Mevil and not John Dewey…

and the fact that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun means what
exactly?..it is a changeable fact which doesn’t get us anywhere…
we don’t actually circle the sun at 93 million miles because the earth’s orbit
is an elliptical orbit, not a direct circle… thus we average 92.96 million miles
from the sun and the important word is average… sometime we are closer and
sometimes we are further away…… now tell me this? how does any of this “knowledge”
benefit you in becoming a “better” person or a “wiser” person or how does this
knowledge help you in your quest to understand your place as an individual
in a complex systems that we all live in? what does the knowledge that the earth has
an elliptical orbit tell us about how we stand in relationship as individuals to
society?

we go to school and learn all kinds of “facts” but we don’t learn anything
about what it means to be an individual within a society or what it means to be
an individual and what is the individual’s relationship to society?

the really important questions of existence aren’t answered in school
nor are these important questions even pointed out as being questions or problems…

How does knowing it was Mevil dewey help you to discover your relationship
to society?

I don’t see it and I am guessing you don’t either…

Kropotkin

Politicians like to say they have solutions to the problems of today…
Bernie talks about his promise to end burden of debt on collage students…

ok, let us take him at his word… he is a politician and we should never
take politicians at their word… but let us take him at his word…

let us take Bob… Bob graduated 5 years ago from a university and
has massive collage debt…how do we help Bob?

first of all, we must decide if it is even a problem that Bob has such
a massive debt…for his debt helps keep the credit cards and mortgage
companies in business… to remove his debt means to deprive them of
business and thus they will lose jobs… and we must at all cost maintain
the number of jobs… for that is a fact that we keep on thinking is somehow
important… is it?

but let us think about this in a different way…… we have one person in
financial debt from collage…one individual, hell we can do a million
things to take care of Bob’s debt if we are talking about one person…
Bob…but a problem, any problem grows in complexity with every person
we add to the problem…so, instead of just Bob being in debt, we have
a hundred people in debt in school loans… that number of 100 changes the
equation of what we can do to solve a problem… let us now say that the number
of people that are suffering from school loans are in the millions… the very number
of people in an equation changes the equation…

what we can do for just one person, Bob, we cannot do for a hundred
or a million people…so when some politician says, let us end poverty…
the solution becomes dramatically different with the sheer number of people
who live in poverty who are part of the “problem”.

we can solve Bob school debt problem with one person simply giving
Bob the money to end his debt… or giving him a better paying job,
or to reduce the amount of debt… when the number of people in the problem
is small, the amount of work to create a solution is fairly small…….

but when the number of people involved in the problem is large,
the solution involves more and more and more people until it
involves the entire society… to solve poverty in America will require
the input or the work of the entire society…… to solve poverty
will require the entire society to act if we are to end poverty…

it requires the will and consent of the entire society/population
if we are to solve such major issues as poverty……

and how do we gather such consent?

the only solution is to reevaluate what it means to be as society…
as a society is our goal the capitalistic vision of seeking out
money and property and material goods as we can gather?

is the goal of capitalism really the goal of a society at large?

don’t think of capitalism as a private, individual device,
think of capitalism as an entire societal effort to
achieve some goal…

is the pursuit of wealth and material goods really what a society/state
should be attempting to achieve? if you have read me at all, you already know
my answer…does the fact that America have the highest GDP in the world, a fact,
really all that important?

does this high GDP mean that we are the “best” society in the world?
do we have honest, just, good citizens because we have we have
the highest GDP?

in fact, an argument can be made that by holding to the GDP as
an goal, we actually lower ourselves from being fully human to being
animal/human… we reach down when we make the GDP as a societal
goal instead of trying to make our society just or freer or have more liberty…

the goal we attempt to achieve as a society also tells us what kind
of society we have… if we have a “every man for himself”
society, what does that say about us?

let us take as an example… the Christian society… we hold ourselves
to be Christian so we attempt to create a Christian society…
so, we don’t hold to the GDP as being the objective of society…
we hold to meeting the goals that god has set before us…
we must not break the ten commandments…

thou shall not lie,
thou shall not steal,
thou shall not kill…

let us imagine a society where we keep to the Christian goals…
we no longer hold to the goals of capitalism
which is the pursuit of wealth and material goods…

in other words, we can change the goals and what we are to
pursue by our choices of what our goals is suppose to be…

we don’t have to commit to a society where we attempt to
the goals of capitalism… we can commit to the goals of
achieving a Christian society in which we would make
the end of poverty as a Christian goal…

as we are now a Christian society, we hold to Christian ideals
and beliefs and so in light of these goals and ideals, we change
the point and purpose of society from the pursuit of wealth/material goods
to the pursuit of the Christian goals… which is to find favor in gods eyes…

we can change the very nature of our society by our accepting or rejecting
basic goals… what goals we decide to purse changes the nature and our
understanding of our position and place within a society……

we can just as easily decide to pursue Christian values as we can
decide to pursue capitalistic values or we can change our values to
other values like the pursuit of justice or the pursuit of freedom……

for some reason, we think we are lock into some goals/values that
we cannot for any reason change or remove… we can change our values,
we can change our reasons/purpose to meet whatever challenges or
problems or issues we like to meet…

it isn’t a question of if we can change, it becomes an issue of, do we have
the will to change?

what kind of society do you want to see? which really means, what kind of
values or goals do you want society to pursue or achieve?

and we don’t have to think of society in terms of it being capitalistic
or Christian? we can think of society in terms of achieving other goals like
ending poverty or being just or trying to achieve freedom… which really means
for people to be able to freely choose their religion or their political construct or
for people to freely pursue knowledge or happiness or the renouncing their worldly
desires as the Buddha suggests to achieve enlightenment…

freedom to become who we are… without the society forcing us to
accept the capitalism and the pursuit of wealth as the ONLY possible
choice for us…in other words, we should be free to pursue that which is important
to us… which then suggest that we do give people some basic monetary living
expenses or a basic wage to survive even if they don’t work… this means we would
reduce the national GDP but that comes from a choice we make and not because
of changes we are forced to make……

the basic point is this… we can choose what our role in society is
and we can choose our relationship to society if we decide to make that
decision…… it is about the choices we make… society isn’t set in stone
and unable to change under any circumstances…no, society can and must
change under the influences of our choices we make as individuals…

what kind of society do you want?

decide and then work to make that happen…

it is as simple as that……

Kropotkin

That we come into the world inherently, biologically equipped to feel and to express emotions is an objective fact of evolution. It seems clearly rational rather than irrational to point that out.

But the objective fact that some feel and express particular emotions about the Giants or abortion or Trump, while others feel and express conflicting emotions, is still seen by me to be a manifestation of “I” as an existential contraption rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein.

In other words, if you do in fact root for the Giants, embrace the right to choose an abortion and condemn the Trump administration, that is no more necessarily rational than those who root for the Yankees, embrace the right of the unborn to be brought into the world, and support the Trump administration.

From my frame of mind, using the tools of philosophy, there does not appear to be a way to determine if value judgments of this sort are either rational or irrational. Thus there does not appear to be a way to determine how one ought to either think or feel about conflicting goods of this nature.

Instead, the actual lived lives of particular men and women predispose them existentially to choose where they come down on the baseball and the moral and the political spectrum.

one might even be able to reduce my philosophy to
the choices we make, as individuals and as a collective…

what choices should we make in light of what values we believe in…

if I hold to freedom as the primary values of myself individually and
as a society, then I having to make all my decisions in light of
my choice of freedom as being my value… every decision is
made with the idea of freedom being behind it…….

should we ban porn? that depends upon the choices we make
as individuals and as a society as to what will help us achieve our goals…

if, if we make freedom as our goal to be achieved, then we cannot
ban porn… because it restricts freedom… if we are going to make
a Christian society, then we might, might consider banning porn…

that is what I mean by the goals to be reached, must be reached
by the values we individually and collectively decide upon…

now one might argue that our society is too fracture, so atomized
as to not be able to collectively ever to decide upon a course of action…
as this point we are barely able to get 50% of people to decide upon a
course of action, little less a society to decide upon a course of action…

but I would point out that because it doesn’t seem possible that it means
we don’t attempt something……. I personally, like fighting impossible odds
and causes… I would rather fail battling the universe then succeed battling
some small cause like getting to work on time…….

if, if I had two hero’s, it would be Daedalus and Icarus…
to fail by trying to fly too high… I don’t see that as failure at all…
and after Icarus fell into the sea, Daedalus didn’t give up… he flew on
to Sicily and began the next phase of his life………

it is not enough to just be able to achieve some basic small goals…
we must dream big to achieve our possibilities…….an exploration of
what is possible for human beings will see some failure and that is ok…

it is ok to fail… what are truly important values to you?

it isn’t enough to dream about achieving such values…
we must attempt to achieve those values regardless
if we achieve or fail at reaching those goals or values…

success or failure is less important then our trying to reach the goal
of us achieving our values…

it is not enough to say, I believe in justice… one must
become and act upon justice at all times…every action taken
or not taken, comes from having the value of justice as your guiding
value… if you act, you act upon the value of justice as your guiding principle…

how must I act in this situation? in every situation, with justice in mind…
so, we treat people with justice, and justice means equally,
and so every action is taken by treating people equally…

that is what I mean by acting upon your values…take that value
and judge every single word and action you take and base it upon that value…

and make that judgement be your guiding light even if it is against
the values/goals of your society/state…take your values and judge
the society/state against your values……

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN…

Kropotkin

scientific problems like the theory of relativity…
aren’t philosophical problems like, what does it mean to be human?

to understand the theory of relativity is a good thing, but it doesn’t help
one to become a better person or to understand your role within society…

the how to of science isn’t the why of philosophy…

we cannot take the answers of science or math and try to use those
answers to solve the questions of philosophy…… 1 + 1 = 2 isn’t
a philosophical problem… it is a scientific problem…

thus the centuries long discussion of the extent, the width, the breath
of human knowledge that dominated philosophy from Descartes to Kant,
aren’t philosophical problems but scientific problems…….
how can we know what we know isn’t philosophy…

the philosophical question is this, what does having knowledge tell
us about ourselves individually or our place in society?

the question of what do we know isn’t about us in terms of us
asking, “What are we to do?” or “What values should we hold?”

so we cannot treat philosophical questions scientifically…
we can use science as a possible methodology, being through,
but we cannot use science as a moral guide for in how we
are supposed become human……or upon what basis are we to live
out our lives…“How are we suppose to act with our fellow human beings?”
isn’t a scientific question but a philosophical question…….
and it is important to understand the difference between
scientific and philosophical question…

and what does all this mean? it means we reject most of the last
century philosophy, from Russell to Wittgenstein and to the modern day
last grasp of logical positivism…

in other words, I reject the use of logic as being useful in our understanding
of philosophical problems…the use of logic cannot answer the question about what it
means to be human and what is the relationship between us individually and the
society/state… logic and/or science cannot ever answer that question…
it is a philosophical question and must be answered philosophically…

Kropotkin

the scientific question regarding the “truth” or “falseness” of
something is irrelevant to philosophy…
philosophy isn’t about “truth” or “false”

philosophy is about answering the questions that
face us as human beings, existential questions like “what does it mean to be human”
or “what should we do” or “what values should we hold?”

Kropotkin

I see a dead body of an animal, say a dog… science can tell us how
the dog lived and how the dog died and how the dog impact
the world around it……

I only care about what the death of the dog means to me…
I don’t care about the how, but it care about the why…what does death mean
to me? how should approach and/or understand death?
what does it mean to die? the scientific questions, the facts
are really unimportant to me… what matters is the question of
death, not how the dog died but why…ask yourself, why… not how…

Kropotkin

so after all that, we return to the question of experience…

I am only interested in experience in so far as it tells me
about the why of life, not in the how…

How did life begin? let science go for it…
philosophy only wonders about the why of life…

all questions, all questions must be approached by the very
old journalistic idea of who, what, when, how, where and why…

and philosophical questions are no different…

does life have meaning?

who, what, when, how, where and why…are the questions
one should be asking… how life has meaning?
or where life has meaning? rather strange questions, but
perhaps questions we might want to ask………

perhaps…

Kropotkin

Well gosh I… I guess it doesn’t matter to me if melvil invented that decimal system rather than John. I hadn’t really thought about it until now.

K: what else have you taken for granted?

Kropotkin

rushed for time today…

we have our pursuit of happiness… as one of the goals of human existence…
but as I have found out, sometimes this pursuit of happiness isn’t all
that its cracked up to be…

I attempt to experience happiness by, say watching TV… but after a while,
I get bored, so I try some other experience to find happiness, I paint…
but I find after a while, it is no longer an experience, but rather a chore,
not happiness, so I try another experience attempting to find happiness,
I go to parks and walk but after a while that is no longer happiness,
and I go through experience after experience attempting to find happiness
and after a while with all of them, I get bored or they no longer appeal
to me… that is our search for happiness in a nutshell…we keep trying
new and different experiences, attempting to find happiness and only
discover ennui and boredom and tediousness and monotony…

we cannot expect some experience to be the path to happiness because
eventually it loses its interest…….

but we can search for something else…
and that is kinda the point, not the finding but the searching…
we need to seek something… I would suggest something other
then seeking happiness…

but what?

now some have said we must seek wisdom or knowledge or
god or money or some other goal… but what goal is worth
our time when human existence is so short…

indeed, what goal is worth our effort?

Kropotkin