a new understanding of today, time and space.

the question might be asked, honestly, legitimately, why not
embrace hate, lust, anger, despair, greed? why must we embrace
love, peace, charity, justice? why are the values of hate considered to
be negative values?

it comes from the nature of the universe…

entropy is the and I quote:

Entropy a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the
degree of disorder or randomness in the system…

2. entropy: lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder…

hate, lust, anger, greed brings about lack of order or predictability into
a system… anger and hate and greed sucks energy out of a system…
and that energy is needed to maintain order or predictability in a system…

Love, peace, honor, charity, are all positive values because they increase the
energy into a system…when you have love in a system, that system has more
energy… it doesn’t decline into lack of energy or becomes disordered because
positive values invite and creates positive energy into systems……

hate, anger, lust, greed takes energy out of a system… hating someone
takes a lot of energy… lusting after someone takes a lot of energy…
those negative values takes out energy from a system and thus
helps bring about disorder and chaos and randomness in any system which
practices anger and hate and greed…………

that is the legacy of IQ45… his hate and his followers hate and anger and lust
and greed is taking energy out of the system and thus we have increasing disorder
and chaos and randomness in our system, our political and economic system…

love and peace… increases energy… hate and anger… decreases/dissipates energy

pretty much as simple as that……

love and peace and honor and honesty builds up the system…
hate and anger and lust and greed tears down the system…

that is why we must engage with and focus on the positive values
that can be our possibilities…

Leninism failed because it didn’t embrace the positive values…
it embraced the negative values… and this is why negative
energy systems like Nazism and the KKK failed too…

democracy succeeds because it embraces the positive energy of
people… dictatorships fail because they embrace the negative
values of hate and anger and greed and lust…….

we can predict which social and economic and political systems will
succeed or fail based upon the energy they bring into their systems…

and that is why capitalism has failed… it is a negative system which
embraces greed and lust and the avarice nature of the animal/human
in us…

why did Christianity succeed in the Roman times and failed today?

because Christianity offered up the most positive values in the ancient
world, values like love and charity and hope… it brought in energy
and that energy fueled the success of Christianity… and took energy out
of the Roman empire…because the Roman empire by 200 AD was
no longer a positive value system…and with the introduction of
Christianity, in 300 AD, within the Roman empire increased the amount of
energy going into the empire… it revitalized and reenergized
the Roman Empire to last another couple of hundred years…

that is why positive values are so important…

positive values brings in energy into a system and thus slows down
entropy and disorder and chaos within that system……

thus you want to save America? you must, must begin by
embracing positive values and reject negative values…

that is the only path available to America that will allow it
to succeed… increase its energy and reduce the disorder within
our system…

and that is why we must embrace positive values like love
and peace and hope and justice and honesty and charity…

they increase the energy going into a system and decrease
the negative energy which brings about disorder and chaos…

this is true of America and this is true of any political, social,
economic or philosophical system you care to name……

the answer lies in increasing energy… and that is the solution
to what will save America… positive values which will increase
energy to America…

Kropotkin

our question of personal engagement with
with positive values not only includes us personally
but must include our engagement with the society,
state, culture that we live within…

in other words, we must live our values within
a societal system…… we must learn to engage
with our values within the context of the society
we live in…if we engage with justice as one of our values,
then we must learn to include justice in our dealing within
the state or society we live in…

this conflict between an individual values and society values,
has almost been the history of civilization… we see this in
the conflict between Jesus and the state… and we see this
between Socrates and the state……

individual values conflicting with societal values……

if we hold to justice as a value, and the state does not,
how do we resolve this conflict?

that is the real question that has been presented to us…

we see that America, as one of its main values, has force, violence,
war as one of its main values…we know this because in America history,
we have been at war over 90% of its history… that value of violence
and war is at odds with the value of peace and love and other higher
values… for war, violence is a negative value, it is a lower animal/human
value that is destructive, negative… it does not and cannot ever build
a lasting and positive contribution to people…it is negative…
and negative values decrease the amount of energy a society has…

in other words, when we build, we increase energy and when we
destroy, we decrease energy… that increase or decrease changes
or influences the systems we live in…for a system to thrive
and become something more, it must, must have increasing energy
to do so… when it fails to increase its energy, it begins to fail
as all systems begin to fail when the amount of energy is reduced…

that is entropy……. a system can only succeed when it
increases it energy and begins to fail when it loses energy…

this idea of energy is the basis of every single system
we know of… from solar systems to biological systems
to mechanical systems to our bodies……… every single
system ever, has as its basis, the ebb and flow of energy
as its basis…you want to understand the world,
then understand how energy influences the world and
the systems within the world… we must increase energy
for any system to survive and decease energy to
a system to reduce it power and influence…

positive values is one such means to increase a systems
energy and negative values are one such means to decrease
energy to a system…

so, if we can individually increase our energy and thus increase
collectively increase the energy of the systems we live in…

for if we have individual energy to spare, we can transfer that
energy to our collective systems we live in… thus we can increase
the amount of energy going into any system we choose we want by
transferring our energy to a collective system of our choosing…

thus our individual energy can be used to increase and thus
better enable our collective systems to last longer…to survive
longer…

one of the direct questions of existence is, “Upon what do we
expend our energy upon?”

this is one of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

this question of how we use and transfer our individual
energy, whither we use it on personal benefits or do we use it
to benefit the society we live in?

so, what do you spend your energy on?

is it in use of personal or collective systems?

Kropotkin

we must ask ourselves, “what should we spend our energy upon?”

and as we ponder this question, comes another point…

as I search for meaning, for my engagement with myself and the
society I live in, how do I educate myself? in other words, how do
I grow and become who I am? How do I educate myself enough to
know what values, are the values I should engage with?

how do I become educated enough to know that the values I should
accept is love, peace, hope, charity, justice?

by what means do I become educated enough to accept the
positive values?

once again, we begin with Socrates… he said,

“the unexamined life isn’t a life worth living”…

so, we begin there… we must begin to examine who we are,
we begin to know thyself in our pursuit of the examined life…
a life worth living…

we cannot begin as so many here have begun, which is with
certainty… the many here who hold the certainty of truth…
I.E. those who believe that IQ45 walks on water… or that
there is a god or holding to any other belief that
holds to the certainty of truth…

you must begin with uncertainty… I know nothing…
and begin there…

what have I been taught, what beliefs have my society and family
and state and religion and media indoctrinated me with?

if I believe in god, do I believe in god because it was indoctrinated into me?
do I believe in a divine being because my society around me indoctrinated me
into that belief?

that is the process one must begin with in order to examine one’s life…
to know thyself…begins with “what was I indoctrinated with?”
“what values were indoctrinated into me as a child?”

and do I still hold those indoctrinated values?

I begin to examine my life in terms of what values do I hold and
why do I hold those particular values?

“What values do I really believe in?” not just the values I was
indoctrinated with, but what values are really “my values?”

these process is an process of education… educating oneself
to the point of becoming who you are, “who you really are”
“which means what values do you really hold?” not the values you
were indoctrinated with, educated with, but what values are you?

the values of America are the values of violence and war and
inequality… look at our history… we have been at war for over
90% of American history… we have, as our basis, inequality…

first it was the inequality of race… the concept of slavery is
a concept of inequality… income inequality is also a concept
of inequality…our failed justice system is another failed concept
of inequality… justice denied is justice inequality… justice must
be equal or it isn’t justice…when some can escape accountability
for actions taken because of job, title, wealth, power or race…
when justice see’s one as a title or a job or as white or wealthy,
then justice has failed, for justice is simply equality in action…

justice is equality……….

if you are ok with justice inequality, then you do not have the value of
justice as your particular value… you practice injustice…as a value…

and injustice practiced is a negative value…
for it doesn’t increase energy… it decreases the amount of energy
in any given system…… for injustice denied is to take out energy
out of the system for justice inequality creates anger and hate and
despair in those who suffer from justice inequality……. and that takes
energy out of our political and economic system which leads to chaos
and disorder within our political and economic system… entropy
is the scientific word for what happens when we act unjustly
and create anger and hatred and despair in those who are treated
unjustly…….

so how do we begin our own personal educational process?

by beginning with the understanding that we are seekers of the truth,
not holders of the truth… we must begin with an the process of
knowing that the unexamined life isn’t worth living and we must
engage with knowing ourselves, examining our lives to see if we
have been indoctrinated by our society, family, state, religion, media…

that is the beginning… the unexamined life isn’t worth living…and go
from there…

Kropotkin

after working so many long and ugly hours of late,
after work yesterday, went home and slept for over 12 hours…
I really needed that…….

my long and very “unprofitable” hours of late
has gotten me to think… by “unprofitable” I mean,
what exactly was I able to accomplish for me, by
working long, hard, ugly hours?

I made money, but so the fuck what?

if that is all I accomplished, I accomplished nothing…

what is the standard we use to judge our actions?

by that, I mean, how should we think about our actions?

I worked days on end and what did I get out of it?

I am sore and tired and every part of my body hurts…
I made a little bit of money but that will be gone
in a week or two, so, what exactly did I accomplish by
my month of hell?

I wasn’t able to work on that which made me human…
I wasn’t able to make the small steps needed to go from
animal/human to human…I accomplished nothing in the last
month but survive it…

we go to work and suffer through it… work doesn’t bring us
any tangible benefits of making us better human beings…
it just brings in some money that will be gone shortly after
we pay bills and stuff…

work doesn’t make us better human beings… in fact, I would argue
that work dehumanizes us, make us less human and more animal/human…

because think about what it means to be animal?

all animals do is engage in meeting their needs, food, water, shelter…
the basic physical needs that all animals must engage with…

but as human beings, why are we still engaged in such “animal”
practices as trying to engage in the simply attainment of physical
needs? if all work does is allow us to get the basic physical
needs of being an animal, food, water, shelter, warmth…
then we are not living any better then animals… the difference
is how we procure the basic physical needs……

the sole missing step from animal to being human is money…
otherwise their is no real difference between animal and human…

we are forced to seek out on a daily, indeed an hourly basis,
the means to procure our daily bread… we don’t hunt in a forest
anymore…but given how dehumanizing work is, we might as well be
hunting in a forest for our daily bread…….

we haven’t even risen above a basic daily search for our animal needs
of food, water, shelter, education…

how can we say we have risen above the animals if we still engage
in the exact same physical search they engage with, just with different
means…

if we can meet our daily needs without this pursuit of finding them,
then perhaps we can begin our drive to become human, not just animal/human…

in other words, if we can solve the income aspect to allow us the means to
become something greater then just animal/human, then perhaps we
can rise much faster in the real goal of humanity, which is
to go from animal to animal/human to becoming human, fully human…

the answer lies within creating a social and existential concept whereas
we no longer engage in our daily struggles to gain our daily bread, by some
much more equitable system that is practiced by all…

in other words the path to becoming human lies in changing the
economic system from a capitalism system to a much more
equitable system of communism… the goal changes from
increasing our economic wealth which has no benefits outside
of increasing the wealth of a few fortunate individuals and families…

in other words, we don’t put our GDP as the heart of what it means
to be human…the path to becoming human lies in our basic physical
needs being met by an far more equitable economic system which
divides the wealth evenly between all the human beings…
and then they, human beings, can engage in discovering what it means
to go from being animal, to animal/human to being fully human…

the journey isn’t a journey to increase our physical, material needs
of cars or couches or TV’S or an increase in our bank accounts,
no, that path is a false and dangerous one because it leads
to human beings engaging with the base, animal needs of greed
and lust and desire………

we must rise above the animal/human path of that is promoted
by our political and economic systems…… we must take to the
path whereas we aim for becoming human… to rise above our
basic physical needs driving our current political/economic systems…

to become human, we must not engage in just the simple pursuits
of basic physical needs, just like animals engage in simple physical
needs…

no, if we are to rise above being just an animal/human, we must
learning to grow above the petty and unnecessary pursuit of
seeking our daily bread…that can no longer become our primary pursuit
of what it means to be human…… to be, to become human, we
must rise above such animal engagement…… we must engage with
what will make us human, fully human…

and that is a daily engagement with values and what values are we to
become…….

if I am no longer pursuing basic, physical needs like food, water,
shelter, warmth… then I can pursue the higher, human aspects of
existence…I then rise above being simply animal/human and I
can begin to engage in becoming human……

what is the point of being human if we cannot engage with what
makes us human? and being human means we can rise above such
petty needs and desires that make us animal/human…

our engagement must be with human concerns like becoming who we are
and in knowing ourselves and

the unexamined life isn’t worth living……… Socrates…

let us take him at his word and make that our defining principal,

let us take as our motto these fine and important words…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

and begin to examine your life as to what is really important…

and if we are engaged in this daily routine of work as we know it
today, whereas we spend our days in mindless and futile pursuit
of making money to gain our daily bread…
then we cannot, cannot discover what is really important
in being human…

to become human, not just animal/human or even just animal,
but in becoming human, fully human…

Kropotkin

so, let us examine what it means to be animal…
then what it means to be animal/human, then what it means
to be human, fully human…

animal… an engagement with a simple pursuit of our basic needs,
food, water, shelter, warmth, education………

all we do is seek out what our bodies need… the simple pursuit of
our animal needs…and nothing more…we don’t seek out our
possibilities because to be animal is to be without any possibilities…
if we are animal, we cannot, cannot become anything else…
we have fully encompass what it means to be animal…
we cannot become something else… that are no possibilities we can
reach…

animal/human… to be animal/human means we have some possibilities…
we see this in us today…we can become some things, not all things, but
some things… we do engage in the animal aspects of existence by
spending our days in futile attempts to met our daily needs of food, water,
shelter…….but because of the current political and economic system,
we cannot rise above such a petty search for our daily bread……

human… to become human means we rise above our daily search for
our animal needs of food, water, shelter… we no longer spend our days
in pursuit of those daily needs… we spend our days in pursuit of what it
means to become human…we have… we are possibilities incarnate…
the road to becoming human is full of possibilities… and the path of
going from animal to animal/human to human is the path of increased
possibilities for us………. the greater possibilities we can pursue is
the path to becoming more human…I can become a poet, a writer, a thinker,
a priest, a farmer, a lawyer… with each possibility come the higher possibility
of becoming human…… to become human means to engage with all our possibilities,
not just with the basic drive to procure our daily bread, but to become all
that is possible in being human…

the road to becoming human is the road to following our various
paths of possibilities of what it means to be human…

to be human means to engage with our possibilities…
and to be human is possibilities… animals have no possibilities…
animal/human have some possibilities… to be human is to have
all the possibilities available to us…

to explore what is possible for you… is to explore what it means
to be human… possibilities are what it means to be human…

and our current political/economic systems deny and destroy
our possibilities by making what is possible for us, is to be
mindless drones that simply exists to make money…
and that is our sole and defining reason for existence…
and that is denying what it means to be human…

to become something more then just animal/human, you must
begin by making life as something more then just making money…

making life to explore the possibilities within you…

by exploring the values which define us as human beings…

the path is…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

know thyself…

a reevaluation of values which means reexamine the values you have
and the values you should have…

to become who you are… by an reexamination of values, you see that
the values you hold are the values you were indoctrinated with as an child,
and an reexamination of your values will lead you to the real values that are you…

and then become those reexamine values… to become who you are…
by becoming those values which you can totally embrace and become…

I was raised in America… America embraces values like martial values…
and values of injustice and inequality and I was raised with those values…
indoctrinated with those values…

after a reexamination of my values, I discovered I didn’t hold those values

I hold values of justice and equality and love and peace…

I am now becoming my values… I want to exist as values of justice
and equality and peace…

this is the path of becoming who you are…

Kropotkin

upon reflection, I was raised with “patriotism”…

but that value is a false value because it doesn’t include,
it excludes……

the only people who are valued under the guise of “patriotism” are
those who are Americans but I hold to a higher value system which
is the highest value is life… not because of some false and
divisive ism or ideology like religion, but because I hold to
something higher then just mere religion…

life is above some religion or ism or ideology…

I hold to the value that life is the highest value we have…

and what does it mean to be human when the highest values if to
life?

it means we discard such provincial and dangerous values like
America first and we no longer hold to such small and petty ideas
of religion or nationality or race or creed or color…

we hold that all human beings are created equal…
and have the right to pursue that which is most human…
our search for what values we are and then become those values…

it has nothing to do with those petty idea’s of nationality or
religion… but everything to do with what it means to be human…

the pursuit of becoming human, not just animal or animal/human but
human… means we discard such ancient ideas that once advanced what
it meant to be human but those ancient idea’s are to be overcome because
they represent what it meant to be human at one time, but we evolve
and become……… and the next step is to rise above religion, nationality,
race, ism’s an ideologies…… the next step is to embrace being human…
regardless of birth or status or wealth or anything other false
standard we might embrace………

the only standard we must now embrace is the fact that we are human…
and life is the goal above that………. so we no longer think of ourselves
as being American or white or catholic or Buddhist or forgiven or not…

for those are false goals of being human…the next step to is to embrace
being human and becoming more human… which means we no longer self
identify as being such minor accidental traits of being American or being white
or being Jewish…….

we self identify as being human and then the next step is to self identify as
being life… and we think ourselves as being part of being human and we think
of ourselves as being part of life, equal to other human beings and equal to being
life……

the path is to become something more then just an accidental trait
is the path to engage with our possibilities… and those possibilities
are something more then just being an American or Catholic or being
white………. I am more then just those accidental traits…

I am the possibilities of what it means to be human…

find those possibilities and become them…become something
more then just an American or just a white person or just
an catholic…… become human, fully human…

Kropotkin

upon further reflection, which means I thought about it…

If we think that the highest possibility is to be an American or
to be white or to be catholic, then we have reached the highest
possibility for us… if being an American is the highest human
possibility, then if we are an American then there is not place to
go, we have reached the highest possibility of being…
we have no more possibilities to reach…

if we think that the highest possibility is to be white, then if we
are white, we have no other possibilities for us to reach……

we have reach the top of what is possible… and the only place
to go when one has reached the top is down…

no, we must always have possibilities ahead of us…

we cannot assume that by reaching some goal, we have reached
the height of our possibilities… because then we have left
ourselves no other place to go……… if we reach the top,
then where else can we go?

no, we must think bigger then some outdated belief that being
an American or being white is the end all, be all of human existence…

we must think of being an American as being another step along the
way, another step in the journey of existence to becoming something
else…the path of possibility doesn’t end with us being
and American or being white or being catholic, no, the path
of possibility lies beyond our being just an American or just being
white or just being catholic……… no, the path of possibility requires
us to move beyond the mere accidental traits of being an American or
being white or being born catholic…

if we are to grow to becoming human, we must think of being American
or being white or being catholic as just another step along the way to
becoming human…

the course of existence demands that we rise above such
trivial matters as being American or white or catholic…

we rise to our possibilities and those possibilities aren’t just
about the accidental traits we are born with…

they are about the choices we make and the values we become…

be it justice or be it love or be it charity or be it honesty or be it………

those possibilities are what it means to human and above…

for once we become human, fully human, then the next step is
to explore what other possibilities exists for us beyond being just human…

it is the possible growth that matters, not some final, pretend
goal or accidental trait we might have…

that there are always possibilities beyond what we might see or believe in,
gives us some hope to the future…

Kropotkin

the quest is not to do philosophy…

the quest is to be philosophy…

Kropotkin

it is a very weird thing to think about…

I was thinking about our modern age…
and what drives it… attention must be paid to that
which we think about… we go on about certain matters as
if that is the goal… for example, one of the matters of faith for the
right wing is that corporations are more efficient then the “government”
(and any one who has worked in a corporation knows that is simply not true)
and we, as a society, attempt’s to become more efficient…
and we try to become more organized…and we try to increase the GDP
and we engage in all sorts of manners… but and this is the weird part…

we don’t engage in this matter as “I”…we act as if the “I”
wasn’t part of the equation of existence…now we see people
all the time attempting to become more efficient, but that is done
in light of increasing our efficiency within a context of work, family,
a job…

but do we ask ourselves, is efficiency really what “I” want?

what values should “I” engage in? we don’t think of ourselves in terms of
of an engagement with values or finding what is truly important in our lives…

we think of ourselves in terms of some other aspect of existence……

the “I” has disappeared from our thought…

How do I become wiser? Who dares ask this question?

how do I become a better person?

and that question, how do I become a better person, requires
some understanding of what it means to be a better person…
so what does it mean? to be a better person?

no one knows… because no one asks……

as I have made clear, I don’t see any difference between self-help
and philosophy and psychology and history and science and economics and…

they are all different aspects of the exact same question…

who am I? and what does it mean to be human?

so ask yourself, what is the “I” that seems to be me?

I am sad, I am happy, I am feeling philosophical today…….

that “I”…………“I” wake up in the morning and “I” get ready to go to work
and then “I” might read a book and forget about work altogether……

how do “I”, that vision of “I”, how do “I” become a better human being?

what is the path to wisdom for “Me”? that me is really just another “I”…

but now we discover that we have different aspects…

I am, you are, he is
we are, you are, they are…

and then we have the past understanding…

I was, you were, he was,
we were, you were, they were…

and don’t get lost in the tree’s thinking about who we are in
the grammar of existence…….

much of the 20th century philosophy has gone down the rabbit hole of
thinking that we are our grammar and we are our language……

my emphasis is not on the was or am or were…
my focus is on the “I” “We” “you”…

I think we have, at the same time, lost focus on the “I”
and we overemphasis the “I”………

we think of existence as being out there… I am going to
become rich… something out there… instead of thinking of
existence as being in here… How do “I” become a better person?

instead of the doing, we have forgotten the being of existence…

we are so busy doing stuff, we forget that at its heart of existence
is being… I am………not being in the weird ontological method of
Heidegger but in terms of “what does my existence mean”… what does
it mean to say, “I am”………I wish I could make it clearer but the very
question of being precludes one asking easy questions about it……

“I am” we need to ask ourselves, what does it mean to say, “I am”?

we aren’t asking doing questions, I shall mow the lawn today…

no, we are asking what does it mean to exist…

what does it mean to ask, and it is a question, to ask, “I am”………

ponder what it means to ask, “I am”………

Kropotkin

now ponder this…

“I am good”…

what on earth does this sentence means?

the “I” that is good…ummm… what does it mean to be good?

the Holocaust, the defined event called evil, was still good to some
Germans who personally benefited from the Jews being sent
to concentration camps… benefiting individual Germans as the
Jews who were sent to camps left behind jobs, houses, cars…
the individual German who personally benefited by coming into
possession of these jobs, houses, cars…

How can something be evil if people benefited from it?

no, we cannot define something as good or evil because
we have to be able to sort out, in some fashion, what is good
and what is evil and to whom?

we can however understand values… I am love…
we can agree to, even if we aren’t able to define it, agree
to the concept of love… I am love…

love as I have already pointed out is positive because it is a
constructive, a building value… it builds something…

whereas negative values negate, are destructive…
hate cannot build, anger cannot build, greed cannot build…

so we can hold to values that are positive…

so, we can say, “I am good” which is to say, I hold to the
positive values of hope, charity, love, peace, among other values…

to say, he is evil… is to say, he hold negative values of anger, hate,
lust, greed………

now will one or can one say, I am evil because I hold to negative values…

the act of denial is strong within human beings… we can rewrite
history to turn our acts of hate, greed, lust, anger into positive values
by rewriting the rules to what it means to hold positive values… invert
them by saying “greed is good”

whereas we can state that greed isn’t good, it leads us to actions that
are destructive in nature and within ourselves………

ponder what is “good”……

Kropotkin

You mean live a life that would be a storyline Dostoevsky or Kafka would gladly develop into a three part novel series? Well shit man, I’m good then.

K: yes, in a very real way, we create our own narrative…

think of stories we might tell our children or grandchildren about
what our life was like…I can imagine my own narrative when
I talk to my daughter. I skip anything that might speak anything
badly of me and go to the parts that reflect highly of me…

and that is human… to “overlook” any part of the narrative that we might
be ashamed of or feel guilty about…in our minds, we rewrite
history to make us look better…

think of a Nazi concentration guard… what type of history is he going
to tell his children or grandchildren? I doubt he would talk about
his role in the slaughter of millions…

selective history… we do so as individuals and we do so as
a culture… think of the genocide of the American Indian at the
hands of the white population… we decry the genocide of the Jews
at the hands of the Nazi’s and we denounce the genocide of the
Armenians at the hands of the Turkish… but we attempt to
hide our own American history and cover up the fact that we
too participated in a very real, very long genocide of the American
Indian…

we are not innocent of crimes against humanity……

but we like to think we are better then that…

that we are good, honest, peaceful, god loving people……

the positive values…

we don’t admit to or own up to
the negative values that allowed us to slaughter millions…

this is an example of how we use values to write or rewrite history…

in the slaughter of millions, did we use values like peace, love, charity,
hope, honesty? I don’t think so…instead we used values like
hate, anger, lust, greed, vengeance to enable us to slaughter millions…

this is a direct application of values into our actions within our life…

so think of the values the Nazi’s used to slaughter their millions?

you think that the Nazi’s used values like love, hope, charity, honesty,
to slaughter their millions?

is an act of violence an act of love? no, it is of anger or hatred or greed
or lust… but it isn’t an action full of the positive values……

we write our own stories full of the values we want to impress others
and those values are the positive values… think of the person
who writes their values in terms of the negative values like
hatred or greed or lust or anger? you would ask yourself, what
is wrong with this person?

so write your own story but think of the values you use to write that story…

are they positive values or are they negative values?

what values best represent your life?

Kropotkin

mehrwert, Pete… a whole shit load of it. When they bury me they’re gonna etch into my tomb: ‘here lies one surplus-value creating sonofabitch’.

K: and that is one narrative one might create about oneself………

and in your narrative, people will be loudly proclaiming
how you are the poster child of positive values…

yes, I hold narratives of that sort where I am the hero of my stories…

where the people cheer my name and statues get built… yes,
I am familiar with such narratives… but like the song says,
but for now love, lets get real…when I die, at most 10 people
will even notice and within a few months, only a few of those will
remember me… I am realistic… I am old… that is what happens
when you get old… the stories, the lies we tell ourselves become
harder to justify…… as we get older, the inconvenient stuff, the
stories of where we act with injustice and inequality and untruthfulness…
those stories are simply left out of the narrative… we “forget” them…
a useful forgetfulness… I have acted badly to many people… but I don’t
share or recall those stories… I have simply left them out of my narrative…

and to what end? to make me look better to other people?
no, to make me look better to myself… to maintain the fiction
that I am a man of superior values and goodness…

instead of creating a different narrative of my life… I should have
just lived a decent life full of positive values… then I don’t have
to lie or to “forget” my past…

we rarely ever think about the future when crafting our stories but
perhaps we should…as an old person, I wonder about my life
and ask myself, what values should I have engaged with?

but it is a wrong way question… the question should be from
a young person looking toward old age…what values should I hold
that will make me proud when I am old? perhaps I should have asked
that question when I was young…

Kropotkin

Morals or how we should act is often done on a case by case study…

Abortion is bad… unless its to save the mother life…

Murder is wrong unless sanctioned by the state…

stealing is bad unless it saves a life…

smoking dope is illegal until it isn’t…

gay marriage is a sin until it isn’t…

we can find exceptions for every single activity we might think of
as being “immoral” “illegal” “evil”… exceptions abound in our moral code…

but in the case of us individually trying to understand what it means to be
moral… but morality isn’t a private, individual, separate matter…

morality is part of our individual actions, yes, but morality has
a city, state, national implications…… it isn’t very narrowly defined…

and yes, morality has implications for us as human beings…

my individual actions has implications within the city I live in…

I don’t exist alone…if I did there would be no need for morality or laws

morality isn’t a me thing, it is a we thing…

and what is good and bad and right and wrong and evil is tied up
into our collective understanding of what it means to be human…

and that is why exceptions are made in the case of morals…
because there is not one size fits all morality……

morals/morality has a social component… in other words, morals and morality
are often changed or understood in terms of changes in our economic, social,
political, philosophical, historical evolution………or said another way…
how we should act is modified by our social, economic, political, historical,
philosophical engagement with society……

our environment influences our morality……

now we tend to think of environment as being something the air, land, sea,
the environment… but here environment isn’t about that…

when I go to my crappy job, that store is an environment…
you have your set properties, the check stands, the shelfs that
hold the products, you have the refrigeration units to keep the ice cream
and milk cold…you have your movable properties, the shopping carts,
the employees, the products themselves…each item is part of an environment…
and I exist as part of this environment and when you enter the store, you
become part of that environment too…

there are rules in shopping… you don’t take the items without paying for them…
but many do steal… in many ways…both customers and employees steal…

gotta bolt for a few minutes… be back…

Kropotkin

Morals or how we should act is often done on a case by case study…

Abortion is bad… unless its to save the mother life…

Murder is wrong unless sanctioned by the state…

stealing is bad unless it saves a life…

smoking dope is illegal until it isn’t…

gay marriage is a sin until it isn’t…

we can find exceptions for every single activity we might think of
as being “immoral” “illegal” “evil”… exceptions abound in our moral code…

but in the case of us individually trying to understand what it means to be
moral… but morality isn’t a private, individual, separate matter…

morality is part of our individual actions, yes, but morality has
a city, state, national implications…… it isn’t very narrowly defined…

and yes, morality has implications for us as human beings…

my individual actions has implications within the city I live in…

I don’t exist alone…if I did there would be no need for morality or laws

morality isn’t a me thing, it is a we thing…

and what is good and bad and right and wrong and evil is tied up
into our collective understanding of what it means to be human…

and that is why exceptions are made in the case of morals…
because there is not one size fits all morality……

morals/morality has a social component… in other words, morals and morality
are often changed or understood in terms of changes in our economic, social,
political, philosophical, historical evolution………or said another way…
how we should act is modified by our social, economic, political, historical,
philosophical engagement with society……

our environment influences our morality……

now we tend to think of environment as being something the air, land, sea,
the environment… but here environment isn’t about that…

when I go to my crappy job, that store is an environment…
you have your set properties, the check stands, the shelfs that
hold the products, you have the refrigeration units to keep the ice cream
and milk cold…you have your movable properties, the shopping carts,
the employees, the products themselves…each item is part of an environment…
and I exist as part of this environment and when you enter the store, you
become part of that environment too…

there are rules in shopping… you don’t take the items without paying for them…
but many do steal… in many ways…both customers and employees steal…

but the “rules”, the morality of navigating a store aren’t just determined by
an individual, it is decided in part by the store and its rules,
“no shirt, no shoes, no service” is part of those rules and part of the rules
of the store is decided by a sort of group decision within the store…

if someone steal in the store and a customer see’s it, they might
report it, they might not, a complex series of decisions may play
a role in whether a customer will report it or not………

but within a larger group of people, you will have someone report it…

that is the dynamics of larger groups… someone in the group will report it…

and morality is part of all that… it is an ever shifting, ever changing set or
collections of rules, both formal and informal… but it isn’t individually
mandated… rules, morals, morality, laws, customs are all part of a dance
within a dance between individuals and groups, state and culture…
to name a few participants in this ever moving dance we call morals…

there is nothing fixed about it… it isn’t a set group of actions…
it isn’t a final, unchanging method… morals are kinda like human beings…
in the fact that morals are a transitional thing, from one place to another…

so what should our final thought in morality be?

who knows because it is always in transit, going from here to there…
but where here is and where there is, is open to debate…

the evolution of such things as gay marriage and the use of weed
has shown us the temporary nature, the transitory nature of
morals and morality and laws and legal and illegal……

what is legal today, might not be tomorrow and what is illegal
today may be legal tomorrow… but that leaves us another question…

what is the relationship between the illegal/legal and morality/morals?

at every step the road become much more cloudy and disturbed…

and where does one find clarity?

some might find it in the legal system and some might find it in
the religious and some might find it in the historical and some
might find it in the philosophical… where we start all over again…

it is a cycle…that has no end…

Kropotkin

the other day the wife and I went to a museum…
the “San Francisco Museum of Modern Art” or SFMOMA…

we have been there a couple of times before and liked it…

we are kinda museum junkies… every town we go into, we find
a museum to go to…….

anyway, I wasn’t as impressed this time as I have been before…
but it was ok…and as I walked around, I was thinking about ART…

what does ART do for us? what does it mean? why have ART?

ART at least for me anyway, changes our viewpoint, changes our perspective
on the routine of our existence…

we exist within certain daily views and perspectives and routines…
everyday I am greeted with the same faces, the same viewpoints,
the same check stand, the same train ride…there is no variation
or changes in my viewpoint…

ART shakes that up, it shows us something outside of our daily routine,
it allows us to see something new and different and shakes us outside
of our comfort zone…

even if the ART wall is a pure yellow, and we saw that, it shakes us
out of our comfort zone because we don’t see yellow like that…
usually, usually we see yellow in small discrete packages or as part of
some colorful attempt to gain our attention…

the yellow, it doesn’t become a point of object, it doesn’t become
the point of our attention…we see yellow all the time, but
we don’t focus on it or we don’t “see” it for being yellow…
but as part of some larger effort to get our attention…

ART changes our viewpoint in making us see things in a new
and different light then we normally see it…

I think a good way to put it is that ART makes us focus on things we
don’t normally focus on…we don’t focus on or try to see colors
or shapes…… ART forces us to see things… things we see every day,
but we really don’t see…colors and shapes become part of everyday
routine in a way that we no longer see them as distinct and separate…

ART make us aware of things we have lost sight of because of our daily
routine…ART begins at the exact same point as philosophy…

the becoming aware of…philosophy starts at the same point of
awareness…seeing something we have seen a thousands times
before and suddenly we see it in a new light…and this sudden new
awareness allows us to see it in a new way, it now means something different
because we see it in a new light…ART and philosophy have the exact same
starting point…to make people aware of things they have seen before…

and as I have noted before… awareness is the start of everything…

the beginning of wisdom is the being of awareness of what it means to be
human………

to know who you are… to know thyself… the Socratic injunction
begins once one becomes aware… becomes aware of the
existential questions that we face at birth…….

“the unexamined life is not worth living”

the “unexamined” life… to become aware of… that is what the
word “unexamined” means here…if we don’t become aware of our life,
then our life is not worth living……

to become a great person… one must first become aware…

to become a moral person… one must first become aware…

to become a philosophical person… one must first become aware…

to become a religious person… one must first become aware……

to become something more then an animal/human…one must first become aware…

to become aware is the start of everything…

and that is the value of ART… it begins a process of becoming aware……

if you want to find the meaning of life… the first step is becoming aware……

every answer you seek begins with the act of becoming aware……

every question begins once one becomes aware…

Kropotkin

am rereading Hadot’s book “Philosophy as a way of life”

and came across a very interesting paragraph which is, in part,

“All Hellenistic schools seem to define it in approximately the same terms:
first and foremost, as a state of a perfect piece of mind. (wisdom)
From this viewpoint, philosophy appears as a remedy for human worries,
anguish and misery brought about, for the Cynics, by social constraints
and conventions; for the Epicureans, by the quest for false pleasures;
for the Stoics, by the by the pursuit of pleasure and egoistic self-interest;
and for the Skeptics, by false opinions”

so each school was trying to fix or be remedy for our worries, anguish
and misery… which was slightly different in each school, so for them,
philosophy was an attempt to cure our worries and anguish and misery…

and the only way to do that was by living philosophically…so the goal was to
either avoid worry and anguish and misery or to cured of it…

but I wonder… is the point of philosophy to really just avoid or be cured of
worry or anguish or misery? when I hear the word anguish, I tend to think of
the word angst…existentialism favorite word……

to learn to life with or to avoid angst or anguish seems to me to be a
not very lofty goal of philosophy…when I think of philosophy, I think of
rising to some lofty goal that enriches everyone… but here philosophy seems
to be only of value to learn how to manage feelings like misery or anguish or worry…

that is not a very engaging goal to strive for… it doesn’t reach for the stars…
rather it engages with the lower animal/human in us…it has been said
and quite often, that philosophy is simply to teach someone how to deal with death…
a rather limited and unrewarding goal for philosophy…why not be for something instead
of against something… philosophy as situated is against something, to avoid
worry or anguish or misery…why must philosophy take on such a negative role?

I want philosophy to be for something, not against something……

philosophy is a tool and like all tools, it can only be used by someone…
why should we use philosophy as a simple garden variety tool to manage
our feelings? if that is the case, we can simply dismiss philosophy and turn
to psychology instead of philosophy……

is wisdom, a “perfect state of mind”?

I find that rather hard to believe… for example, how does one define
“perfect state” in regards to the mind?

the question for me doesn’t seem to be about a “perfect state of mind”…

that seems to me to be in the future… the search for a “perfect state of mind”
is some future event after, after we have outgrown our animal/human side of us…

we are still attached to our animal side of existence and we must break free to
even begin to contemplate the “perfect state of mind”…

the goal of philosophy and history and economics and psychology is to
understand our current existence of animal/human and what it takes to
rise above that state…… the path has been animal, which we were for millions of
years, then somehow, someway we became animal/human which is our current state
and has been our current state for over a million years… the next step is to overcome
our animal/human nature and become human… which is to say, we overcome our
animal nature… it doesn’t mean we negate or disown our animal nature…
just like the Catholic church tried for over a thousand years…to proclaim
our nature, our animal nature as evil, as forbidden, as something worth
denying……… no, our animal side isn’t about that… it is about overcoming our
animal nature…… we cannot rise to wisdom by opposing our animal nature…

we must become and overcome our animal nature… by that I mean that
we simply accept and learn to control our passions and animal side of us…

repudiation of our animal side isn’t going to work, the Middle ages
is proof of that… we must be in control of our animal side…

I was a young man once… I know the force and power of the passions…
I too fell victim to them, more then once… I have been so angry that
I couldn’t see straight and I too have felt such lust for a women that
I would have done anything to be with her…and hate… I too have felt
hate…a bitter and mean hate toward a family member that lasted for years……
and perhaps still lasts… if I am to be honest…

I have seen, up close, the animal side of me… the out of control
hate and lust and greed and anger and bitterness…….they may not burn
as bright as they once did, but they still burn… I didn’t negate them…
I overcame them… made them part of me… I am, in part, full of the
animal side of passions and emotions and the fury, oh the fury that I have
unleashed over the years…my attempts are to be in control of my
animal side… I attempt to control my anger and my lust and my
greed… I don’t allow them to control me, I control them… at least, I try…

I have quite a temper, it doesn’t unleash often but when it does, get the hell away…

my passions, my anger, my fury can be a tool which I can use to
become more human… becoming more human doesn’t mean negating
or discarding my animal side… it simply means I am in control of it…
it doesn’t control me, I control it…

passion is a vital tool in becoming who we are……. it is passion that
drives so much of human behavior… passion to be the best, passion to
discover, passion to create, passion to enjoy…passion to love…….

we can use our often out of control emotions to reach new heights and new
viewpoints…it is not enough to negate, we must embrace and accept that
which we are… passions and hatred and anger is part of the human experience…

let us make it an unimportant part, let us control our animal side…
let us engage with those emotions, but with purpose and understanding
and control…

overcoming doesn’t mean negating… when we outgrow our childhood
emotions, it doesn’t mean we negate them, we simply outgrew them…
it was no longer needed because we were older and we had different
means of expressing ourselves…that is what I am talking about…
we don’t need to negate our passions, simply to outgrow them and
include them into our new understanding of being human…

think of the tools a baby has, crying and laughing was pretty much it…
as a child we become vocal and loud and throw temper tantrums…
we outgrow the temper tantrums, well most of us anyway, and
we learn a new response to the universe… as we age, we
learn to use our newly discovered tools of reason and logic
and compromise to navigate the human world…….

and so it is with us and the animal side… as we grow older, we
will learn to overcome our animal side just as we learned to
overcome our childhood instincts…….it is time to overcome
our animal side and grow into our next stage of existence…
from animal to animal/human to human, fully human……

from baby to infant to children to young adults to adults to
maturity to senior citizens to old age… we overcome as we age…

to overcome…… as we age…

that is the radical cause I work for…….

Kropotkin

several thoughts today…

so in no particular order:

this idea of becoming human… going from animal to animal/human
to fully human…… I was thinking about Socrates dictum:

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

and for most people, they don’t examine their lives…they don’t
engage in the process of knowing themselves… they simply accept
their parents and society and the church and the media indoctrinations
that occurred when they were young…and they never began the process
of a reevaluation of their values to determine which of their
childhood indoctrinations they actually believed in…

and they are simply living out their lives without any sort of
evaluations or assessment of what they truly believe…

and that living without any examination of their lives means most people
live out their lives as animals… because it is exactly what animal do…
animals don’t reexamine or evaluate or conduct an reevaluation of their
values… animals don’t have values… and people who simply go about their
live without any examination of their values are no different then animals…

is that what you really want out of life? to exist no differently then
the animals because you wont’ begin an evaluation or a reevaluation
of your values… you won’t examine your life… you won’t begin the
process of knowing thyself… you are nothing more then an animal…

animal/human to be exact…to be human… to engage in being human
requires, no, demands that we examine our lives, demands that
we begin the process of knowing ourselves…the path to being
human, fully human requires us to have an engagement with
our values and to know ourselves, to know which values are
really representative of who we are………

if you live your live without any examination of who you are and what
are your values… you are simply living life as the animals do…

being animal/human is not going to get us to final stage of
being human… and then to go beyond being human…

we are simply a stage along the way… from animal to animal/human to
being human…… and the only way to grow is to become aware, to
engage with our values…

the same of an individual is also true of a society…

we, as a society, must not just go through the days without
any thoughts as to what is our values… if we spend our
days in mindless action and gathering our food, our daily
essentials, then we are no better then animals…

until we begin to reflect on what it means to be human,
we are simply animals… animal/human…….

and it would be a sad state of affairs if that is all we ever become…

and we fail to grow into being/becoming human…………

Kropotkin

in reading Hadot, I can see how philosophy has changed…

the ancients believed in philosophy as a way of life…

us moderns starting with the Roman Empire and going into
the Middle ages, began to change philosophy… philosophy in Greece was
about the things themselves… what is beauty? What is truth? what is real?

and then the later Roman period and thereafter became, what did Plato think
about beauty? What did Aristotle think about Truth? What did Socrates
think about what is real?..……

this essential difference is how we engage in philosophy today…

we ask, what did Hegel think about history? What was the point of
the first Critique of Kant? but we don’t ask ourselves, what is truth?
we don’t engage with the fundamental questions as in, what do I think
is beauty? we have a layer of thought between us and the questions
of existence……. we reach topics of engagement about beauty and truth
and love and meaning through other thinkers… we learn about what is
true through our readings of other philosophers… instead of an engagement
with beauty or truth or love or meaning without any mediation of Kant or Plato
or Hegel……… let us return to philosophy without knowing what Kant or
Plato thought about those essential questions……. we can without any reference
to Kant or Hegel or Plato discover what is truth or what is beauty or what is real…

engage in the idea’s themselves without any reference to what philosophers
thought about those idea’s…

that is not to say we abandon the study of philosophy as we have traditionally
understood it, but we use those philosophers and philosophies to enhance our
own thoughts about what is true or what is beauty…….

the other philosophers are simply a means to gather more information about
what is beauty or truth… they are simply more information about
what is truth or what is real……. they are not the authorities anymore…
they are simply resources to use to expand our own understanding of what
is beauty or what is real……

write down what you believe is beauty… think about it…
then use other sources like Kant or Hegel or Kierkegaard to
further explore the notion of beauty…perhaps their thoughts will
provide you with further information that you can use in your
understanding of what is beauty…….

but the key here is not what they think about beauty…
but what do you think about beauty……
to the object themselves…
without any mediation of a Kant or a Hegel or a Plato…

you come to your own understanding of what is beauty…
not what is Hegel’s understanding of what is beauty…

philosophy is taught wrong……

the beginning must be an understanding of the concepts
themselves and then, and only then do we approach what
other philosophers thought about those concepts like beauty or reality…

what is your understanding of beauty? then read Kant or Kierkegaard to
compare your understanding of beauty to their understanding…

the goal is to understand what you think about concepts like beauty or truth,
not what they thought about beauty or truth………

to the concepts themselves…….

Kropotkin