a new understanding of today, time and space.

there is a strong, perhaps, the greatest need of being human
and that need to create a story, to create a narrative about
who we are and what it means to be human…

Philosophy is simply another narrative about what it means to be human…
and stories like the Odyssey of Homer and Ulysses by James Joyce have the
same story line…and yet are completely different stories…Narratives
about what it means to be human…

In the beginning, there was Socrates and he said, know thyself,
and he saw it was good… and that was the beginning of philosophy…

and it is the beginning of philosophy… to know thyself…
which is a another narrative… a story about oneself…

and we have all kinds of narratives of what it means to be human…
historical narratives and economic narratives and social narratives
and biological narratives… all of these are simply stories about what
it means to be human…

what is the human story? what is the human narrative?

we are born into an already functional and historical world
that has been in operation for 4 billion years… the specific human story
is over a million years old and is found in the long pre-history of human beings…

modern man, human beings that we would identify as human beings only existed
within the last 30,000 or 40,000 years…the end of the hunter-gatherer existence
was roughly 10,000 years ago…the process of keeping records by writing is
only 5000 years old…so between the rise of the cities and the beginning of writing
was 5000 years…… that means stories were verbal, stories to be told over
a stove or a campfire……….

we didn’t write down stories, we simply created or repeated stories that we had
heard in public… within a group… never alone as we do today when we read a book
individually…

the creation of a story, of a narrative was for almost the entire existence
of human beings, has been the art of storytelling for the group of other human beings…

in some sense we still do that when we gather together to watch a play or
we gather together to see a band play or we go out to the movies…

human beings are collectively wired to tell our stories in a public forum…

for almost a million years, we human beings heard stories told around a campfire
and from that comes our need to tell stories…

Socrates said, Know thyself… and thus philosophy was born…

but this question of knowing thyself is really about telling ourselves a story
about who we are… to ourselves…

I am Kropotkin… I was born with a hearing loss… and everything in my life
flows from that basic story, narrative about myself……

Kropotkin is Kropotkin because of his hearing loss… some personal stories aren’t
that simple but mine is…and because of my hearing loss, I had and still have
several social issues that come about from a hearing loss… I have no social skills
because the heart of social skills is communication and I cannot communicate very well…

so my stories, my narratives are not verbal narratives but written narratives…

and my lack of social skill have left me without recourse to a common
human necessity which is we connect with each other, as human beings,
by communication… I have a hard time connecting to people on a personal
level…to most people, they can put themselves within a story about love or life,
by connecting themselves with the story protagonist who is quite often the hero…

I cannot connect with the protagonist…I can connect with the emotions being
expressed but I cannot connect, become one with the protagonist… and I suspect
that failure comes from my lack of social skills… I cannot communicate with people
and that failure leads me to a failure to be able to connect with people in some
sort of social connection… perhaps that is why it is so important for me to
write about or create a social connection that people may feel which is part
of being in a democracy or some other political system…

it has been written that philosophy is really an act of confession…

perhaps… perhaps…

so what are you confessing to when you philosophize?

my confession is to the lack of social skills that prevent me
from making connections that most people might automatically make…and the
source for the lack of social skills come from my hearing loss…

and my philosophy comes from this lack of social skills and
my failure to connect with people in ways that people automatically make…

I philosophize from a lack of social skills…from my hearing loss…

I know myself… what is the basis of your philosophy?

Kropotkin

the original question in philosophy as defined by Socrates is
simple, “Know thyself” and that is our first philosophical
question… to know thyself…

the root word of question is quest… a journey to some destination…
now that journey needn’t be a physical journey of traveling someplace,
although it could be, no, a quest can be mental, emotional, psychological,
religious…

a journey to what it means to be human… for us individually and collectively ……

my journey was, in part, to overcome my handicap, plus part of my journey
was to overcome my lack of formal education… I didn’t go to collage…

my journey was to gain social skills which allowed me to communicate with
others… my journey was also a journey to become self educated…

our quest rarely ever has one destination…no, we often journey to find, to
overcome our humanness…which has many houses…and the battle is often fought
in those many houses… history being one house and politics is another and economics
is another house…

but it isn’t enough for me to overcome my lack of social skills or my lack of
education… I must continue to move past that and learn more…so, I
began my quest to discover philosophy by learning philosophy since the
beginning… my education began as it should, in the beginning which
is Greek philosophy and then onto Roman philosophy… that took a year,
then I spend a year on Medieval philosophy and the Renaissance…

I have spend the two plus years studying “Modern” philosophy beginning
with Descartes… I haven’t even gotten to the 20th century yet and I am
on year 4 of my studies…….I have discovered why philosophy is in its
current cul-de-sac… it has lost sight of what is important about philosophy
which is its place in understanding what it means to be human… current philosophy
is lost in it mindless games in its philosophical schools…

what does logical positivism have to do with our moral choices we must make…
what does analytic philosophy have to do with any of the Kantian questions,
“What are we to do?” or “What should we hope for?”
how does phenomenology or poststructuralism help us become better human
beings? only Existentialism seemed to offer any real possibilities as to
how we are to live our lives as human beings…what we need is to
have a “positive” version of Existentialism… one that negates the
nihilistic isms and ideologies that have dominated our society since
1789 or the start of the French Revolution… the so called “modern” age…

we must overcome the various nihilistic ism’s like communism
and capitalism and Catholicism and even Buddhism in which
those ism’s and ideologies that deny man/human beings as
being something more then just pawns in the great movement
of historical necessity which is communism and Catholicism which
makes us pawns in Gods great game to create the final solution
which is heaven on earth… but man is quite often the sacrificial
lamb which is helping bringing about this "heaven on earth…
any ism or ideology that is willing to negate human beings
and their values is not an ism or ideology that we can abide by…

and so we must overcome every single ism and ideology that
meets with the “modern” approval because those modern ism’s
and ideologies are more then willing to sacrifice individuals in the name
of further progress of the ism’ or ideology………

capitalism has no problem whatsoever to sacrifice
individuals who exists within the capitalistic system for
the sake of money…… this nihilism which is readily apparent
in every single business and corporation in America and the world…is
simply is a sign of the nihilism that commands the world’s leading economic
system… if individuals are destroyed to increase profits is a clear and present
sign of the nihilism of capitalism…

so, we must now find our way to a new and inclusive ism’s and ideologies
that no longer find it necessary to negate the individuals within that ism…

we are the shock troops in the new creation of ism and ideologies
that will hold the allegiance of the coming generations of human beings…

from our battles and engagements will come the new ism’s and ideologies…

the new “religions” of man…

as I have said before, I am only John the Baptist… not the messiah…

I have come to proclaim the upcoming kingdom, not to create it…

it is my question and, and my quest…

Kropotkin

i’d like to propose something a little different, pete. i think before we begin an investigation into what can be known about ourselves, we first ought to examine what it is that would make that possible… or else we might fall victim to mistakes of judgement about ourselves, yes?

the first thing we want to know is what knowing is, because we need to be sure the things about ourselves we come to know aren’t just beliefs, confusions, or senseless ideas. we want to be sure we can’t be mistaken or driven by intellectual flights of fancy when we draw our conclusions from our thinking.

well then what is the medium through which we acquire knowledge. i don’t mean ‘perception’, here. i mean the things that knowledge is originated in and through… or rather the form it takes when it is being obtained. we aren’t asking about the raw data of sense perception because this has no knowledgeable content without the two key features we are looking for here; logic and language.

if you can give me an example of something you claim to ‘know’ without that knowing involving language and the logic that structures it, i shall cease and desist my inquiry at this juncture. if you cannot, then let us leave the ‘knowing thyself’ to the amateur philosophy clubs and those who lack the rigor for such a critically important investigation.

that is, of course, unless you don’t want to know thyself. in that case, you are quite permitted to believe you are a chicken, and a trammel not shall i be to your endeavor.

a couple of thoughts before I go to bed…

first, what you are asking for is epistemology: the theory of
knowledge especially with regards to its methods, validity, and scope.
Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified
belief from opinion…

the age of epistemology or the age of knowledge lasted from
Descartes to Kant…One of Kant’s question which I have mentioned
over and again, begins with: “What can we know?”
but notice, I rarely if ever engage in questions of knowledge,
of epistemology… I don’t believe such questions are very important…
the age of knowledge of philosophy, which lasted almost 200 years,
didn’t come to any sort of agreement to the nature, or scope or validity
of knowledge…… At this time, knowledge/epistemology, has transfer
into science as we see science undertake its investigation into
the realm of knowledge…“What is knowledge and what is it scope?”
is now a scientific question, not a philosophical question…another part of the
answer is that I don’t think epistemology leads us to the questions of what
it means to be human or “what should we do as human beings?”
the age of knowledge is over and I for one, am pretty glad about it…

the second part of my answer is fairly simple…
I don’t believe that the end all, be all, of philosophy lies in
logic or language… neither logic or language can solve the critical problems
of who we are and what is our purpose in life…logic and language game
theories of the last century have proven to be sterile and empty…
they lead nowhere…I don’t need logic or language to understand
who I am… I can sense without logic or language who Kropotkin is…
I put it into words to help others understand… for example, when
I am sad… I don’t use either logic or language to help me understand
that I am sad… I just feel sad… and neither logic or language will
clarify my sadness anymore then that… to explain to you that I am sad,
quite often we don’t even need logic or language to other people for them
to know that I am sad… people can sense my sadness even if I try to hide
it from them… people are very sensitive that way…so are dogs and cats…
you cannot hide emotions from animals, perhaps people but not animals…

But Kropotkin, how can you “know” you’re sad without logic or language?

I think that question answers itself…

we depend far to much on logic and language to explain the basic questions
of who we are and what is possible for us…

logic doesn’t tell us anything and language lies…
the very nature of language quite often leads one to ambiguity and deceit, both
in oneself and to others…

but Kropotkin, how can we understand the process of “knowing thyself”
without logic or language? we can simply look into our actions and our beliefs
and we see if they are in synch or if they are two distinct and separate
things… if they are two distinct and separate thing, then we are alienated
and disconnected for ourselves… we have bigger problems then
any understanding of knowledge that we may or may not have…
if our words don’t match our actions, we are alienated from ourselves…

and at what point does logic or language enter into this self analysis of
knowing ourselves?

if you wish to use logic and language to engage in the process of knowing
thyself, please feel free, but don’t be surprised if that effort fails…

Kropotkin

One often reads on handmade signs, especially during
right wing protests marches…

“America: love it or leave it”

the implication is obvious, first you cannot live in America without
loving it and the second implication is that the sign holder loves
America… more then the target of the sign… and the target of the
various love America or leave it signs is quite often liberals…
once again, the implication is conservatives “love” America more then
liberals…a dubious statement at best…

and several thoughts should come to mind when reading something
like “America, love it or leave it”…

love it… what part are we loving? it is quite clear that there are parts
of America that conservatives hate. If you hate something that is American,
you certainly don’t “Love America”… Conservatives clearly hate anything
that is different then them… conservatives fight for intolerance of
people… for example, conservatives make their intolerance for
gay people well known…conservatives cheered when immigrants
were placed into concentration camps with children being separated from
their parents…the right wing was quite pleased…why?

Because the conservative believes in and practices bigotry and prejudice…

so according to conservatives, to be an “real” American, one must practice
bigotry and prejudice against anything that is “different” from you…

so let us see exactly what conservatives have cheered about IQ45…

He has engaged in bigotry and prejudice against black people,
the handicap, women, Mexicans, several countries in Africa,
homosexuals, reporters, the American intelligence agencies,
and several news organizations… the fake news mantra……

and still IQ45 holds a 90% approval rating among in the GOP…

quite clearly, the conservative base of the GOP approves of
bigotry and prejudice against a wide variety of people
and organizations…so, when a conservative person,
says, to either “love America or leave it” are we talking
about “love” and approving of bigotry and prejudice against
a wide variety of people and organizations?

Is part of the criteria for being an American as conservatives claim, by
engaging in the prejudice against others?

is this engagement with the lower emotions of hate, anger, prejudice,
lust, greed…all part of “loving America”? As defined by conservatives?

as of right now, the right is engaged in a love affair with Putin…
everything Putin does is great because IQ45 is Putin’s lap dog…
does that mean to “love America” requires us to love Russia?

is it also quite obvious that the right wing hates democracy…

the right wing has been actively engaged in denying millions of
Americans the right to vote by “cleansing” voter rolls but
only in area’s that have a black dominated voting area’s or
minorities based area’s… good old white suburbs don’t get
cleansed because that is where the GOP voters are and that is
what this is all about… making sure that people who might
vote against the GOP is prevented from voting…

is this also part of the “love America or leave it” part where
people are denied the right to vote…to vote, which has been
and is now the sole benefit of being an American… we hold that
by being Americans, we shape our future by being able to vote
and “throw the bums” out… but if we are denied the right to vote,
then we are denied the right to be fully Americans… is that the
part I am supposed to “Love it or leave it”…

Preventing millions of Americans from being able to vote? is
that the reason for our “great experiment” in democracy that
the founding fathers engaged in, to prevent people from voting?

no, at every step of the way, the expansion of voting rights have
become the stepping stone to a better America… as restrictions to
voting were lessen, from property rights being the sole ability to vote,
to women voting and then finally minorities being to vote…we have
seen the expansion of voting rights as making America a better place and
now? and now, the right has begun to restrict voting rights in some vain
attempt to hold onto power… is this the America I am suppose to love?

the point of a democracy is to have free and open elections in which
everyone votes… and if we deny this basic American right, then
how are we advancing the question of democracy? the advance of democracy
must be an increase, not in the restrictions of the number of people voting,
the increase in the number of people voting…

so, how else am I “suppose” to love America?

am I suppose to endorse this idea of income inequality?

in other words, part of to “love America or leave it” also
mean I must support the fact that 300 people own
90% of the wealth in this country?

I have state my support for democracy, a political system where the
majority rule… how can I support a system, an economic system where
the vast majority of wealth is held by a very few people… is that
the loving of America I am supposed to do? millions of people live
in abject poverty and a few hundreds live in wealth unimagined…
is that the majority based America that we live in?

oh, Kropotkin, the political system has nothing to do with the economic
system, two entirely different things… really?

the original basis of America was to create a country that wasn’t dominated
by the wealthy few or the autocracy/king…where we were free to
live in a majority based society where we would be free to make our
own decisions impacting our own lives………

but, do we live in a majority based system where we can freely
decide upon our fate?

that is the tyranny that our founding fathers spoke of…

when we cannot freely make decisions about the nature of
and what kind of lives we want… then we do not live in
a American that our founding fathers envision………

if we are held hostage by big business that buy and sell congressmen,
then we do not live in a America that has freedom of choice…
for the choices we have are given to us by those who own
the means of production…in other words, the choices we are left
with in our choice driven systems is simply the choice of what kind
of cereal I can buy or what car can I drive? I don’t have a real choice
in the political system because those who are suppose to represent me,
work for big business because big business buys these politicians for millions…

and my economic choices are limited by big corporations to the choice that
they will allow… I have no choice politically and I have no choice economically…
thus I have no choice… and choice was the basic, fundamental freedom offered
to us in the original system of America……

if we are not allowed to vote and we are not allowed to have abortions
and we are not allowed to have gay marriage… and this is the agenda
of the right, to remove choices, then what exactly are they saying,
“Love America or leave it”… once again they are saying, your choices
are only given if, if I conservative America agrees……
that is what the sign says…

“Love the America that I approve of or leave it”

that is the real message of those handwritten signs at rally’s

you can only love the America I approve of… so says the conservative

Kropotkin

my goal, or I should correctly say, one of my goals, is
to free ourselves of the various tyrannies that exists within
our life…

we have political tyranny that gets all the press, but isn’t
the only tyranny we have, I have mentioned multiple times,
the economic tyranny that we American’s now live under…
and we can have internal tyranny… What’ch you talking about Willis?

Simple, we can have internal tyranny by our being dominated by
internal matters that are limiting…

what do you mean, Kropotkin?

we are, as animals, driven by certain internal matters, I might
call them emotions, we are also driven by intellectual matters,
and we are, as human beings, driven to find our connection to
each other and to the human race… and we are internally driven to
become who we are…human beings have several internal drives working
within them… we have our drive to our basic needs, food, water, shelter,
education, health care… the basic needs of human existence…
the bottom row of Maslow’s pyramid…the physiological needs,
the needs every human being has…then we have the next level of
the pyramid, the safety needs…security and safety…
then we have the next level, the belongingness and love needs,
intimate relationships/friends…
then we the next level, the esteem needs, prestige and feeling of
accomplishment needs…

then we rise above our needs but the next and last level,
the self actualizations needs, achieving one’s full potential,
including creative activities…here, we are no longer about needs…

but we also have internal needs like, “the will to power”
as Nietzsche said…the will to dominate others to our will…
this need to make others subservient to us… this need is strong
in conservatives… to dominate others… this is why politically,
it is more likely that right wing ideologies wind up with dictatorships,
such as Fascism and oligarchies and theocracies…
because of this need to dominate others…

Despotism is more then likely to come from right wing ideology
then left wing ideology…

now one may make a counter argument, but if you actually think
about the nature of despotism and the origins of them, you will see
the right wing nature of most despotism’s…….

so we have needs and we attempt to answer those needs…
but we are quite often held hostage by those needs…
our needs come to dominate our actions… like the man
who needs love and then spends his life looking for love…
even if he finds it, it becomes a addiction for him to search for
love… and that becomes the problem… our needs sometimes
becomes our addictions… we search high and low for something
to fulfill our addictions…emotions can become that sort of
addiction as does physical addictions like drugs and booze……

addictions to something is a tyranny… it demands that we devote our time
and energy to suppling that addiction…so, we must avoid all sorts of
tyrannies, be it external or be it eternal………

and that is part of my agenda… to seek out the nature of these
addictions and allow people to understand them……

it is by understanding that we can begin to avoid our addictions…

to become aware of… oh, that sounds like Socrates decree…
“to know thyself”… yes, yes it does…

we cannot be free if we don’t understand the nature of the drives
that propel us… we cannot begin to discover our way to the journey
to become who we are unless we discover the internal drives that
propel us into action……

every single journey begins with an internal moment, not
an external moment…we say to ourselves… let us go somewhere…
even if it is internally, not externally… let us seek out the drives
that influence and propels me into some sort of actions…

let us begin to understand the internal tyrannies that form us
and drive us… the need to dominate, the need to seek out
addictions, the need to answer internal demands instead of
of understanding those internal demands…

to free ourselves of the internal demands that drive us…

to be in control of our demands instead of them in control of us…

do we need to accept the demand to renounce those demands?

as the religious claims that we must renounce the physical demands of
love and sex and other physical needs we have? Is renunciation really the
only recourse we have to free ourselves of our drives?

I don’t believe so… I believe that we can overcome our physical needs, that
we can be in charge of our needs instead of them being in charge of us…

but it takes an understanding of the nature of our addictions that will
allow us to begin to understand what drives us and why……

I believe we have to work out our internal tyrannies before we
can work out our external tyrannies such as dictatorships, either
politically or economically…we must become aware of what drives us
and why before we can free ourselves of such political and economic
tyrannies that exists right now in the U.S…….

now one might argue that I am not being clear or specific…
but I cannot know what internal drives that are within you…
that creates your internal tyrannies…… I can only work on my
internal drives that create an internal tyranny within me and those
internal drives are different between you and me…….

so what drives you? what drives do you have that
has become your “addiction?”

and how do you free yourself of your addictions?

Kropotkin

as an underlying issue of my writing is simply this,
what does philosophy have to say to people?

what can I say that will have an impact upon people’s lives?

As of right now, I write for a very small, specific group of people…
but what can I say to the wider population of American’s or even
to those outside of America……

Must I tailor what I say to fit into some conversation that people will
understand or should I just say what I gotta say and understanding be damned…

I suspect that my viewpoint is so outside the realm of understanding of
the “average” person that I may as well be writing in Greek……

the “average” person cannot for the life of them, see how the matters I bring up
are even a “problem” in the lives of “average” people…

for most people, the slogan is the message… as Raygun pointed out,

“government is not the solution, government is the problem”

this slogan is the message… any deeper thought into the matter never
comes to mind…all people can or will think of, is how government is
the problem… meanwhile never looking deeper into the matter to see if
this is even correct…the slogan matches people feelings about the matter…

in other words, people were already feel this way, but the slogan puts into
words, their feelings…people were already dissatisfied with government,
but they hadn’t or couldn’t put that feeling into words… the slogan match
their feelings about government…

the struggle to become human, fully human just doesn’t have a fancy
slogan which allows that idea to become part of the cliché of human
expressions…

clichés like “to err is human, to forgive, divine” that expression
has existed since, well forever… and is has become such a cliché that
we forget what it means…

so some clichés are so cliché that we are immune to its effects…

but what has philosophy offered to people that might even be considered
to be cliché? nothing…the impact of philosophy in these “modern”
times is minimal at best…and that is the problem……

the one discipline that people and society needs is unable to minister
to the needs of people because it has become out of touch with what
people need…philosophy has driven itself into extinction because it
has lost touch with what the people need…

and what do the people need?

why some means of being able to steer and direct our lives,
both individually and collectively… and we cannot steer or direct
our lives until we understand it… not in a scientific way, but in a
philosophical way… and that means we not only answer the who, what,
when, where, how, but we must answer the why… the one question that
scientific cannot answer, the why… but religion can answer the why, but
religion cannot answer the who, what, when, where and how…
religion comes from a place where the answer is already known,
the why… but in this case, the why fails to answer the doubts that
fill our hearts……

why do I suffer? believe in god… why must I die? believe in god…
what is the point of, the meaning of life… believe in god…

the problem with religion is that every answer ends with the answer of god…
you can replace every question of why, with the answer of god… question of why,
the answer, god,

the questions of philosophy do not and cannot answer with god…
for that answer is theology and we don’t need any more theology in our
lives… we need philosophy…

philosophy begins with doubt… theology begins with certainty…

I would rather live in doubt then live in certainty…for in certainty
cannot lead us to any new understanding of who we are and what is our point…

for certainty is the beginning of and the end of the process… there is no
other steps to the certainty of god… either you believe or you don’t…

I don’t… now what? that’s it… that is the end of theology…
I don’t believe…

but in philosophy, I don’t believe is the beginning of philosophy, not
the end…so, once again, what do we philosophers have to say to
our friends living a life where they don’t doubt anything…

begin to doubt?.. is that really all we can say to people outside of
philosophy? I would hope we could at least create a really cool slogan that
brought to life, the real message of philosophy…

something a little less esoteric then “cogito ergo sum”…

perhaps we can work on a really cool slogan of philosophy…

Kropotkin

once humans became intelligent enough to recognize death for what it was, and to anticipate there own inevitable death, two philosophical kinds of minds emerged that approached this problem differently. on kind refused to believe it. these were the spiritual philosophers. the other kind figured we might as well enjoy ourselves as much as we can before we die. these were the hedonists. now in order for the second kind to fulfill their goal, they had to remove from their life that requirement which would greatly hinder their pursuit of pleasure. namely, work. the task then was to figure out a way to get others to do your share of the work. but since taking direct tyrannical control over those who you want to do all the work, is extremely difficult (slavery doesn’t go too well), there has to be a better way… a way that would make those others willingly do all the work… and even be thankful for being given the opportunity to do so. it was at this point that the hedonists realized they could use the spiritualists to do this, and the ruling class hierarchy was born. the hedonists then employed the spiritualists to brainwash people into being voluntary slaves. and here we are… several thousands of years later.

i wish there was more to the story, but i’m afraid there isn’t. this entire history of the development of intelligent life on this planet has had this single modus operandi, and nothing more profound than that. essentially a bunch of upright bipedal apes split into two fundamental groups; workers and non-workers. and during the meanwhile all manner of special significance has been given to the species’ existence… as if there ‘was something more’ to its existence that was some great philosophical puzzle to be solved.

the greatest curse laid upon mankind is the requirement of his drudgery to survive. those who escape it are the parasites, and those who do not are the gimps. but there is a third type, the species of the novatore, who like a shooting star passes overhead… above all the insipid noise and chatter of these two apes in their eternal struggle against each other.

“…only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don’t want and I don’t grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism.”

biggs was right. we’re all waiting for godot, but who can do it with the style of a novatore?

“… My motto is: walk expropriating and igniting, always leaving behind me howls of moral offenses and smoking trunks of old things.”

nihilists of the world, ignite!

might I offer up a slightly different theory…

love… the Greeks identified 5 forms of love:
familial love, friendly/platonic love, romantic love,
guest love, divine love…

over history, love has been identified by an generic overall name,
for example, we can see the late Middle ages, early Renaissance period
of chivalric romance/love…and we have the grand romantic stories of love,
Romeo and Juliet and Abelard and Heloise…and we have the very strict rules
of the Victorian era in which romance was strictly guarded… a women could
not see a man without permission…and any visit must be with a chaperon…

various societies have had very strict rules on courtship and marriage
and who could love whom…in most societies, the higher class, the
nobles would never fall in love with someone from the lower classes,
the poor…

and we have Christian love which has been defined as “the love”
and we have the Chinese benevolent love with its emphasizes on
actions and duty… think Kant…

now given this, what are our rules for love and dating?

and why is this so?

Kropotkin

thinking about our “modern” world…

think about our world before say, the French Revolution or the Industrial
Revolution…think about the Art being made, think about philosophy
or science or theology or politics and the “viewpoint” that people held……

In other words, science had one basic viewpoint… Newtonian physics,
Literature had novels that were pretty much following the path of
Don Quixote…published in 1605 and part two was published in 1620…

you had ART which was, in part, painting which identifiable as being
similar to painting done after 1500 to 1880… the art work done in
this time period were variations of a theme…but painting changed
starting roughly 1880…

you have plays which were following themes set up by the Greeks
and Romans…until, 1900 when plays began to change their nature…

the thing to understand is that “Modernism” affected different aspects of our
lives at different rates…

you have viewpoints which exists in time…

…. so, we have the Middle ages viewpoint which is a style
that was about the paths to god…everything related to
some aspect of the pursuit of god… the art, the buildings, the literature,
how one lived……everything was related back to some viewpoint about god…

then we have the changing viewpoint of the Renaissance… in which
the pursuit of god was gradually being changed into an pursuit of
man… “Man is the measure of all things” could be this motto…

and we have a Renaissance viewpoint which is expressed by painting
and Architecture and statues and plays and writings…

then gradually over the years, we have another viewpoint which is the
enlightenment viewpoint…where we have more changes in how we
view paintings and plays and history and Art and statues…

then, beginning with Sturm und Drang… we have the next phase of
viewpoints in literature and music and paintings and plays and Architecture…
which is the Romantic viewpoint which dominated Europe and the
America’s for roughly 100 years… think of it as an anti-enlightenment…
movement…

then roughly 1880 in Art and at different times in different countries and
in different disciplines, we have changes in Paintings and literature
and plays and philosophy and history and economics…

let us take one example… communism… Marx began to write in the 1830’
1840’s and continued into the 1870’s… but his critique wasn’t possible,
his viewpoint wasn’t possible until the material conditions of various
countries had change enough to allow Marx’s viewpoint to become
widespread… what that means is that, the Industrial Revolution
changed people’s basic understanding of what it meant to be human…
Marxism simply wasn’t even viable until the economic and political
changes made it possible…as a viewpoint, Marxism wasn’t even possible
until the Industrial revolution made it possible…

and all of the “modern” viewpoints of Art, Symbolism for example,
wasn’t possible until the conditions on the ground changed…

the philosophy of a time… say, 1700, must match the conditions
on the ground… Marxism just wasn’t possible in the year 1700 because
the conditions that Marxism describes wasn’t created yet…our theories,
our viewpoints must match the conditions on the ground that we see…

so, in science for example, the Newtonian theory of the universe matched
what people saw on the ground…in 1700… it match the various theories
and idea’s that people had about the universe and what it meant to be human…

but if Marxism cannot fit into 1700, it certainly did fit in 1850 or 1900 because
of the changing conditions on the ground that people saw that made Marxism
a better fit for what was the political, social, economic conditions on the ground…

so how did the “modern” world change in terms of viewpoints?

we can see the changes in paintings, Architecture, plays, novels,
and philosophy and politics, all beginning around the 1850 in
politics for example… and in paintings around 1880, and philosophy
in 1900 and science after Einstein in 1905… different viewpoints of
disciplines changed at a different rates in time depending…….

for example, take literature… we can see changes in poetry beginning in
the 1870’s with Arthur Rimbaud for example and the changing viewpoints
in novels and plays… the rise of modernism in novels has been very well
established and easily researched…but we have novel/poems that are the
“stream of consciousness” novels/poems that begin from 1870 on…

those “stream of consciousness” writings are simply not possible before
1870 because of the already established viewpoints that were current at
the time…

in other words, the viewpoints we have are viewpoints that
can only exists during a specific time period, ours……

we cannot hold to ancient viewpoints like the Medieval viewpoint
because those conditions no longer hold… and as our current conditions
change, our viewpoints will change with it…the literature, the painting,
the poems, the Architecture, plays and movies will all change as our
material conditions change…our viewpoints must change with the material
changes we see around us…and our viewpoints that seem to “up to date”
only last as long we remain static in the conditions on the ground…

so, the viewpoints of literature and plays and philosophy and music
and poems are a reflection of the conditions on the ground…
and we see that the “modern” viewpoint starting in 1880’s on,
were reflections of what is going on in society at the time…

and see “modernism” as being mobile and active, variable
and changeable, shifting as being representative of what
the conditions on the ground were……fluid, molten…
a famous saying was this… “All that is solid, melts into air”
and that little saying exemplifies everything we need to know
about our modern times…viewpoints that were solid
and firm, melted under the heat of our modern times…

because of the changing conditions of our times, we no longer
seem to have solid, firm convictions or viewpoints that we
can point to and express our everlasting agreement with…

the diverse and every changing conditions on the ground is reflected in
the diverse and every changing viewpoints of people…

we don’t have a fixed and set viewpoint of say, Liberalism, because the
conditions on the ground isn’t fixed or set… the ideology of Liberalism
requires a set and fixed situation on the ground but we can see that
modernism has turn all past certainties into possibilities, at best, possibilities…

or said another way… our modern life has taken the ambiguity of language
and set its way into all parts of our life… we cannot say for certain that
liberalism is the best way or conservatism is the best way or democracy is
the best way or that communism is the best way because we are now
aware of the ambiguity of liberalism and the ambiguity of communism
and the ambiguity of democracy…with ambiguity comes uncertainty…

and if there is a modern viewpoint, it is of ambiguity and uncertainty
and doubt and puzzlement about who we are and what is our meaning…

“all that is solid, melts into Air”

that is the “modern” condition right now…

and into that uncertainty comes the political drive for tyrants
and dictatorships like IQ45… to remove our doubts and
uncertainty… all we have to do is follow those would be
tyrants and dictator’s……

and is the solution to turn to political tyranny?

no, the solution is to accept and learn to live with
ambiguity and uncertainty and doubt……

for the path to wisdom lies with doubt, not with certainty…

for the certain man never challenges if he is really on the path to
wisdom… having certainty means never having to doubt if
you are on the right path… it is assumed that you are on the right path…

I cannot make any such assumption… you have a set and certain viewpoint,
if you do not doubt, you can only assume that you are within bliss and wisdom…

a set and fixed viewpoint in these modern times doesn’t fit the conditions on
the ground… we have rapidly changing conditions which forces rapidly changing
viewpoints…will we ever have a set of fixed viewpoints again?

yes, but not now… right now we are in an transitional time period between
set and fixed viewpoints… at some point in the future, we shall have
a fixed and set viewpoint, but not today…not now…

soon…

Kropotkin

let us take a specific historical event, the Holocaust…
and specifically, Auschwitz…is Auschwitz even possible before
the 20th century?

No, is Auschwitz possible before World War One?

No, it isn’t…the deaths of millions in a war means that we have
legitimized the deaths of millions by any means…

a war is a set piece of theater… we have two counties by conventional
method declaring war on another… we have rousing speeches and
widespread marches and formal declarations leading up to a war…
see the days before World War One… In August of 1914…

if the deaths of millions is legitimized by war, then the deaths of millions
by other means is perfectly legitimized…

Auschwitz becomes possible because of a changing viewpoint that
makes it possible to condone the death of millions within an ism or
an ideology…we are “freed” to condemn millions to death because
they hold different beliefs, different ideologies then we do…

Was Auschwitz so terrible as to prevent concentration camps today?

No, because we have concentration camps today, right now, in
a America that help liberate the concentration camps of the Germans,
help liberate such camps as Auschwitz…

if we approve of concentration camps because of an ism or an
ideology, then we have no better ground to stand upon then the Germans
who operated their concentration camps on grounds of ism’s or ideology…

America has had concentration camps before today… during the Civil war,
both the north and south had concentration camps… such as
Andersonville… so, why should we be so surprised that America
has such an affinity for such barbaric actions as concentration camps…

America which had its genocide in the decimation of the American
Indians and held slavery as the highest ideal of a civilized country…

an America that had slavery since its first days from colonization…
and nary a word disapproving until after the turn of the 19th century…
over 170 years of American history……

we allowed such barbaric practices because our viewpoint allowed it…
the conditions on the ground allowed it…
we felt is was our “right” to engage in the genocide of American Indians
and our right to allow slavery, the ownership of people as property…

and this right still exists as corporations still own people in terms of
capitalism…if people can be fired for engaging in social media, critical
of the company after working hours, then the company owns our work, our
person…because I for one, cannot make a distinction between the work I
do and my person…… one might say, it is not slavery because you can always
quit, but that isn’t true…to leave the working world, to escape having a job,
is to starve to death and that isn’t a choice at all… we must work to have
food on the table and to have health insurance and to become educated…

in other words, in our viewpoint, to have rights in America, one
must first have a job… a job where it is dictated to us what kind
of shoes we can wear and what color shirt we can wear and
what time we must be at work… then and only then can we expect to
have the right to food and due process and health insurance……

you might say, this has nothing to do with Auschwitz…
wrong… it has everything to do with Auschwitz…
because the reason Auschwitz happened is because of a viewpoint
that made it possible…if in our viewpoint, we think of people as
“Subhuman” then we make it possible for us to dehumanized people…
and that allows us to participate in such events as genocides and
the Holocaust…if in our viewpoint……

because we haven’t understood tyranny as being economic as
we have identified it to be political, we still, in our viewpoint,
we still accept the tyranny of corporations, whereas we might fight the same
tyranny in governments…we are economic slaves… a distinction lost
to many people because their viewpoint hasn’t evolved enough to make
such a distinction…

the current rumbling against capitalism is the start of such a distinction,
that the tyranny of the economic is just as bad and evil as a political tyranny…

what is possible and what isn’t possible for a person and for a society/state,
still comes from our viewpoint that make it possible……

if we separate people into different and distinct classes, we make
such events a possibility… in other words, Auschwitz becomes possible
when we to think of, have a viewpoint of people being different then us…
the us vs them problem… as long as we have an us vs them, understanding
of the world, we shall be capable of the Holocaust and capable of Auschwitz…

Our viewpoint that allows us to dehumanize other people allows an Auschwitz
or allows us to be slaves of our modern corporate world…….

The act of tyranny is simply to have the viewpoint that other people are worth less then
we are……. to negate and to dehumanize people is to allow World wars
and to allow the Holocaust and to allows concentration camps and to allow
Auschwitz and to allow slavery…

if you think that democrats are less American then you, if you think that
blacks are less human then you, if you think that Jews are stiff neck Hebrews…
then you have set the stage for a viewpoint that allows concentration camps
and slavery and Auschwitz…

reexamine your viewpoints… do you subscribe to the point of view that
certain people are less then you? Then you believe as the Nazi’s believed,
then you believe as the slave owners believed and you believed as
the perpetrators of the American genocide believed……

I am better then you…

it is all a matter of a viewpoint……

what is your viewpoint?

Kropotkin

as I quite often come back to a value…
the value of love…

but what is the value of love?

we humans, we are naturally engaged in our own mind…
we are solipsist, narcissistic by nature…

love is one means for us to go outside of ourselves…

by loving another, we actually note that there is someone
outside of ourselves…

for example, IQ45 is completely unable to acknowledge any one
outside of himself… for he is the center of his universe and there
is only bit players within that universe for him…

he cannot love… for if he could love, he would see that there is
another to love… but he cannot even acknowledge that there are
other human beings……. other possibilities to love…

by love, we can acknowledge that there are other people…
and that is the value of love…

now some may say, but I love America!.. I acknowledge that
there are others in America…but those who make love of country
as their central claim quite often limit that love to certain people…

America, love it or leave it…

but that is not the unconditional love I am speaking about…
if you can only love another conditionally, then you don’t love…

and those who make love of country central, will dismiss and deny those
who love differently…

I want to America to become the shining beacon of justice in the world…

but that love is denied because it is a different love then those
who say, America, love it or leave it……

what aspect of America that we are suppose to love as others love it?

In other words, if we are to accept the message America, love it or leave it,
what part are we to love unconditionally?

for I see those who proclaim love of country as central, loving
conditionally………

as I have been married for over 20 years, I love my wife… but
there are things that she does that, well frankly annoy me…
but I don’t love her conditionally… I love her, the good, the bad and
all the rest of her, unconditionally…I love her…and that is more then I
can say for those who proclaim America, love it or leave it… because the love
of my wife is without conditions… there is no love it or leave it… it is simply,
love it…

now some may say, love of wife is different then love of country……

is it? how?

The goal I set for myself is to become the best Kropotkin I can be…
and my goal for America is no different… I want America to become
the best America it can possibly be… and the route I choose for both
follows the same path… to begin by knowing thyself… to see myself
without any prior rose color glasses… to see myself as I am…
and I do the same for America… I try to see America as it is,
not as I want it to be or what I have been told it is… or even
as I need it to be… but as it is…just as I want to see me
as I am…for I cannot understand myself without being able to see
myself as I am…

the evolution of Kropotkin comes with the acknowledgment, the understanding
that Kropotkin is human… and like all other humans, I make mistakes,
sometimes I fail people, even those who I love the most…

I can be very short tempered and sometimes, I am engaged in a world
of my own…in other words, I can be very solipsistic… sometimes, I
can’t see a world beyond my own thoughts… I am engaged with what
I am thinking about and I forget that there is a world beyond my own
thoughts…Kropotkin failings as it were…

I am at peace with who I am but that doesn’t mean I don’t attempt
to engage with becoming a better human being… I can improve myself
and still be at peace with who I am…

I accept who I am unconditionally, but love has shown me that there is a world
beyond of my own unconditional acceptance of myself… I can accept my wife
unconditionally… now, I must learn to accept other people unconditionally…
just as they are… and someday, if I am lucky, I will learn to accept
all people, unconditionally… thus my love grows from one, me, to a second person,
my wife, to a third and fourth, until I learn to love all, unconditionally…

it is a battle between my natural inclination, solipsism, and my engagement with being
human…fully human…and understanding that there is a entire world of human beings
beyond me…and should I ever get to that stage, I must make the next journey which
is an engagement with the understanding that beyond human beings lies animals,
tree’s, birds, grass… that I am one with all life…I may never reach that stage
of engagement, but it is a goal worthy of a lifetime of engagement…

my value as a human being does not need me to have wealth or greatness
or military value or having material goods, but my value as a human being
simply comes from being able to increase my love from one to all…

that is what it means to become human… learning to love others, all others
as I love myself…it is a tall task I have set before me, a task I am sure to fail
at… but even if failure is a certainty, I must try to achieve the impossible…
for we find ourselves in trying to reach the impossible, not in achieving the
responsible, achievable goals…

recall my favorite myth…Daedalus and Icarus…

and I root for Icarus to succeed… to attempt to accomplish the
impossible even if failure is guaranteed… is a goal worthy of
attempting…

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin:

"I accept who I am unconditionally, but love has shown me that there is a world
beyond of my own unconditional acceptance of myself… I can accept my wife
unconditionally… now, I must learn to accept other people unconditionally…
just as they are… and someday, if I am lucky, I will learn to accept
all people, unconditionally… thus my love grows from one, me, to a second person,
my wife, to a third and fourth, until I learn to love all, unconditionally…

it is a battle between my natural inclination, solipsism, and my engagement with being
human…fully human…and understanding that there is a entire world of human beings
beyond me…and should I ever get to that stage, I must make the next journey which
is an engagement with the understanding that beyond human beings lies animals,
tree’s, birds, grass… that I am one with all life…I may never reach that stage
of engagement, but it is a goal worthy of a lifetime of engagement…"

T, I realise you have an aversion to posters putting up youtube videos, etc. - you feel it is laziness. Howwwwwever, given the nature of your (in my opinion) noble aspirations, I thought it fitting to post the following. It occurred to me recently that ‘the song’ could be considered as an anthem for philosophers - seekers! There are countless renditions to choose from - I plumped for Frank, as it includes the lyrics. Of course, in my opinion, I am old romantic!

youtu.be/JjI7VeIA7ZI

pete’s a swell guy and he’s become quite the scholar, hadn’t he?

i told him he needs to start doing pod casts.

That’s a fine idea! Although I’m sure he would say he lacks the knowhow!

K: to Pro75… as noted by Mr. Derleydoo, I do lack the knowhow… but more importantly,
I have a routine in which I write by…I take a couple of hours just to write one post,
and two or three posts, can take all morning…

if I do two or three posts in a row, I am so tired that I need to take a nap…

I am not a verbal person… I am most comfortable in philosophical conversation,
with writing…a podcast wouldn’t allow me to reflect or think about what I am saying…
and to be honest, I actually never know exactly what I am going to write about until
I begin to write…or perhaps, I might have a topic but that will be all I have
and I must work out the rest as I write…….

my mornings are spent divided between reading and writing, when I have a day off…

my afternoons can be reading or dealing with the wife as she comes home from
work around 1:30 in the afternoon… I basically need to be done with my writing
and reading by that time…

right now I am reading a biography of Karl Marx by Stedman Jones…
and I am casting about for the next book to read…

all in all, I lead a boring, routine life and that routine helps me write…

I am either at work or I am at home reading/writing… that is pretty much
what I do…or I watch sports on TV… watched the Warriors win their first
game in the new Chase center last night…I really don’t do anything else…
read/write/watch sports… that’s it…

to engage in podcast would take me away from my routine…
and mess up my flow…

BTW… how are you Mr. Derely… I hope all is well with you…
and thank you for Frank… I have always had a soft spot for
that song, the Impossible dream…to be honest, the only Sinatra song I
listen to with any regularity is “It was a very good year”…
just as the only Rolling Stone song I listen to is “Angie”…

Kropotkin

we have face this question before… of our living
philosophy as opposed to our studying philosophy…

We moderns, we study, we dissect, we measure philosophy…
but we don’t live philosophy…we have on our mantelpiece…
a very nice statue of philosophy… which we gaze at and marvel at,
but we sure the hell don’t bring philosophy into our lives nor do
we live our philosophy…….

our “modern” philosophy is just a showpiece meant to be looked at
and marveled about and that is all…

and that is what is wrong about philosophy…when I begin a philosopher,
I read a biography about them… and the last, the truly last philosopher who lived
philosophy perhaps, perhaps Spinoza and before that, we have to go back to
the Greek philosophers to find a philosopher who lived their philosophy…
perhaps even go back to the foundations of philosophy, Socrates before
we find a philosopher who actually lived their philosophy…I liken this
to Christianity… where we have Christ who lived the true Christian ideal
and everyone after that pretended to live it but in these “modern” times,
people don’t even pretend to live as Christians… they mouth the words
but have no idea of what it really means to be “Christian”………
what it means to live and practice Christianity… to be Christian means to
exist as Christian, to act and be and dream and love as a Christian…
and no one does that and hasn’t done that in a very long time…

and it is no different for philosophy…we mouth the words, say the prayers,
but we don’t exists as philosophers…we don’t live as philosophers…

philosophy in ancient times meant as a way of life, today,
philosophy is simply a course to study which has no bearing on our
day to day lives………… I don’t engage with philosophy as a way of life
and you don’t either… and that is our failure to engage with philosophy,
I mean to really engage with, to live by and if necessary to die by, philosophy……

to live philosophy as if it were our only possibility……

How do we live philosophy?

we don’t even understand the question any more…

philosophy stands over there and we stand over here and may
the two never meet… that is the “modern” stance to philosophy…

we don’t engage with philosophy as a life and death struggle to understand
what it means to be human…philosophy must rock us to our very core
and make us reexamine everything we think and feel about being human…

if philosophy doesn’t rock you, then you are just a dilettante,
an amateur who dabbles in philosophy while waiting for dinner to be served…

Kropotkin

but if you look at America today, you see millions of American’s
simply not interested in what it means to be an American…

as long as we have our dancing shows and sports on TV,
we don’t care how our lives might be impacted by IQ45 and
his attempts to undermine our basic freedoms and to undermine what it means
to be an American…so this is the third instance of people just
pretending to be something but not even putting on a good performance…

we have Christians pretending to be Christian but faced with the real chance
of being Christian, they simply look away… and we have philosophers who
only play philosophers on TV… given these people just study philosophy, but
don’t actually practice philosophy, just like the Christians and those pretending
to follow what it means to be American…

so we have three separate examples in our modern world, where
people proclaim themselves something, Christian, philosopher, American
and at no point do they actually practice what they preach…at no point,
do they engage with what it means for a Christian to be Christian and at no
point do they engage with what it means for a philosopher to be a philosopher
and at no point do American’s engage with what it means to be an American…

let others do the hard work of engagement with being Christian or being American
or being an philosopher… I shall think about the Kardashians or Dancing with the stars…

I shall let other do my living for me…I shall be responsible and middle class
and adultlike while others live for me and think for me and die for me…
I have bills to pay and don’t have the time to engage in what it means to
be human or to be a Christian or to be an American or to be a philosopher…

I will let others do that… while I sit on the couch and watch Monday night football…

Don’t I deserve that after the hard week I put in work?

As if that excuses not engaging in your life and not engaging in what
it means to be human or to be a Christian or to be an American or
to be a philosopher…….

I am reminded of a line from a play…

“as for living, our servants can do that for us”…

as for living, I am too engaged in my solipsism to take the time
to engage with or to understand what it means to be human, or what
it means to be Christian or to be an American or to be a philosopher…

that line should haunt us… I am too engaged in my solipsism to engage
in my own life……

what solipsism engages you to the point of you not engage with your own life?

Kropotkin

as noted before, if you only love yourself, what do you care about
being an Christian or an American or a philosopher or even a human being?

your vision, your viewpoint can only extend no further then your skin…
or in modern American, your viewpoint can only extend as far as your
“smartphone” which does your living for you……. why have servants,
when your cell phone can live out your life for you?

your cell phone is just another addiction which allows you to avoid
facing what it means to be a human being or a Christian or a philosopher…

if we devoted as much time on what it means to be human as we did to
our “smartphones” we would have solve this question of what it means to
be human or Christian or American…

the answer can only come from a decision you make about what is important,
truly important in your life… what do you value?

do you value understanding what it means to be human or an American or Christian or
do you value watching TV or spending time on your “smartphone”?

only you can answer this question…

but why Kropotkin, why is this an important question?

I can’t see what difference does it make if I don’t understand what
it means to be human or to be Christian or to be an American or to be
a philosopher?

I can simply look up what it means to be philosopher or to be an American…
Wiki can answer questions like that so I don’t have to answer it…

and once again, letting others live for you……

the engagement we must have with who we are and what is important
must be as personal as falling in love or suffering a great loss…

we must feel something before we can finally engage with what is truly
important in our lives…is learning who is the masked singer really as important
as an engagement with what it means to be a human being?

if it is, then you have some serious issues because
you can’t even tell what is important and what isn’t…

try it… what is important? what is worth living for and what is worth dying for?

what does it mean to be human? and does that compare to spending the next
ten minutes being on Facebook? or Instagram learning what your bff was eating last
night?

we have forgotten what it means to engage with the real matters of existence…

“what are we to do?” “what should we believe in?” “what should our values be?”…
among some of the questions of human existence that lie just outside of your
viewpoint which only seems to be of your cell phone…

J’Accuse…… I would accuse but people don’t seem to really care about what
it means to be human or to be Christian or to be an American or to be
a philosopher…all that matters is how is Kanye treating Kim…
and who won dancing with the stars and how many pictures you took of
yourself yesterday…

Kropotkin

engaging in philosophy might not any more important then asking yourself,

what is important in my life?

what should I engage with?

what values are my values?

What am I to do?

what should I believe in?

are these questions more important to you then
spending time on Instagram?

if those question are not as important to you?

then why not?

begin there… ask yourself why?

a simple engagement with what it means to be you…

can you even do that?

or is your addiction to your phone or to your TV shows or is your
latest fix on movie stars more important?

and why?

Kropotkin