a new understanding of today, time and space.

and I thank my old friend for his guidance… after all these years and
he is still steering me straight… thank you…

What are the chances of getting his email address? Guidance? Couldn’t we all use a little guidance? Forgive me, but you don’t write in the style of a man who is rightly guided. Is there a destination? The truth is where you are. Your friend ( the man you see as some kind of guide) should know that. Where on Earth is he seeking to guide you? Beware of men who seek to guide you away from yourself. What you seek is where you are. Tad flowery, but not something your friend can argue with!

If you want feedback, Kropotkin. Some people think the actions of Donald Trump are misguided.

Others think he is 2-1 up on Obama Sin Laden. He only played judge jury and executioner to one.

Donald can sleep well.

Do you think, when he rests his head - all things being connected - he thinks, my actions, my whims, my desires, my orders, led to 59 people being crushed to death. Do you think that he thinks the people on the plane were shot down as a direct consequence of his actions?
Or do you think he thinks… Go on my son, 2-1! Al Bagdahdi - Oh solo mio - hear what I did Melania? Take the piss out of me at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
Don’t be afraid children. It’s a phase we’re going through.

I got your e-mail… no worries…
its all good…

Kant once wrote:

“Reason aspires avidly to universal and necessary truths”

and yet I don’t believe in universal and necessary truths…

I have yet to see one single universal and/or necessary truth…

but I do hold onto reason, within reason, of course ; )

I hold to moderation but sometimes, sometimes…
we must hold to excessive values like love and justice
and hope and honesty……

I don’ believe in moderation in some values… but moderation
in actions……

it sounds like a contradiction and perhaps it is, but it doesn’t make it
less true…

some values that can survive excessive valuation are love, justice,
hope and sometimes even honesty……

I don’t think one can go wrong if we are immoderate in love or in justice
or in hope or in honesty or in charity…

or said another way, you can’t love moderately… or have a moderate justice
or only hope half way… love and justice and hope require, no, demand
a complete usage…with love or justice or hope… its all or nothing…
you can’t go halfway with love or with justice or with hope…

is love a universal truth?.. no, its a universal need…
is justice a universal truth? no, its a universal need…
and the same goes for hope… its a universal need…

without hope, who would get up in the morning?

certainly not me…without love, who would get up in
the morning? not me… and without justice?
hence the appeal of a second life, of heaven and hell
and angels and demons…are these also universal truths?

no, wanting a fair and just life is a universal need… not a truth…

we have to be careful to distinguish between our needs and our truths…

there is no such things as a universal truth, but there is such a thing
as universal needs… among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
even the founding fathers mistook the needs of life, liberty and happiness
as truths…they are only needs…

but reason can sort out between our needs and our truths…

reason can give us reasons for waking up in the morning…

reason can give us hope and perhaps even justice……

but we can never reason our way into love…….

reason can solve our individual questions…

but reason can not get us to some universal and necessary truths…

for the fact is, universal and necessary truths are really nothing more
then wishful thinking……

but the universe is made up of small, individual truths that we hold
collectively…

the democratic party is not a party with universal truths…
neither is the Republican party

the fact is, as a democratic, I hold small personal truths/needs
and millions of others hold very similar truths/needs and combined
we make up the democratic party…….

that is the nature of parties such as the GOP or the dem’s….

it isn’t about universal truths but about who will meet our needs…

and within churches, its not about the universal truths, but
who will meet our needs?

what needs do you have? and that will tell you if you are liberal or
conservative or moderate or anarchist or authoritarian…

your needs dictate your truths…

that is why there is no universal and necessary truth…

Kropotkin

and in line with the prior post, that there is no, no “universal
and necessary truth”……

I offer up the question that Kant asks,

“What ought I to do”?

In Kant, this is a moral, ethical question…
what should I do morally, ethically in regards
to the questions of both existence and actions…

whereas, I have extended the question, “What ought I to do”
into a general question about what we faced with the questions
of existence, “what ought I to do?”… as a overall, general question
about life itself, not just the moral question of Kant…the ethics of Kant…

I see Kant’s question of ethics, morality as being a part of the question of life,
as being inside the question of life…morals, ethics are a part of human
existence, not the whole of human existence… an important part to be sure,
but just a part…

we have a lasting question/problem from Kant which is
this idea of “Autonomous ethics”…

this is Kant’s famous idea of “acting in accordance with one’s moral
duty rather then one’s desires”

the Autonomy ethics in western philosophy, both in ethics/morality and
political philosophy…

“The state or condition of self-governance or leading one’s life according to
reason, values, or desires that are “authentically” one’s own”…

this suggest? that moral requirements present themselves as being
“unconditionally necessary”… the act of demanding “Autonomous”
ethics has disconnected people from the “old style” ethics, which was
tied up in religious precepts “thou shall not kill” type of precepts…

so the question becomes, do we base our ethical judgements upon
A: religious precepts, thou shall not kill… or do we base
ethical questions upon…
B: Autonomous ethics… In accordance to one’s moral duty rather
then one’s desire… but that is Kantian language…Autonomous
ethics is really : Autonomy: "in Western ethics and political philosophy,
the state or condition of self-governance, or leading one’s life according to
reasons, values, or desires that are “authentically one’s own”

so we have two distinct possibilities: one to obey the moral precepts
of some authority… be it god or some other authority like the state…
or two, to leads one own life according to one’s own reason, values or desires.

do we obey the law, be it gods or the state if the law itself is deemed to
be “morally” wrong… in other words, should we obey the law if the law
accepts such morally repulsive ideas as the Jim Crow laws or slavery
or the denigration or dehumanization of a class of individuals such
as minorities or Jews or people of color or the handicap……

should we obey laws that violate our own “morals in regards to
our own reason’s, values, or desires?”

we have a duty to obey, according to Kant, but we cannot obey if
it violates our own morals…

politically, democracy is founded upon the principle of “Autonomous ethics”
which is to say, we lead one’s own life according to reasons, values, or desires
that are authentically own’s own…

we choose our representatives who act in own name to create laws that
fulfill our own reasons, values or desires…

but that is theory, and we know in reality, that our elected representatives
don’t act in our name to create laws that fulfill our reasons, values or desires…

should we then obey the laws even if, even if they are not our “Authentic values”
but someone else’s? Big pharma for example, buys politicians and then writes
laws and creates laws for the benefit of big pharma and not the citizens of
this country…should we obey the law? the violation of our moral precepts
by this engagement that no longer embraces our reason, values or desires…
do we no longer have the “duty” to obey laws if our own personal
reasons, values or desires or our “authentic” selves is violated?

as we have a long way to go in this post, and I am meeting
the wife to go to the latest Star wars movie, I shall leave you with
one specific thought that will be touched on later…

Do we have character traits?..

Kropotkin

I left you with a question…

do we have character traits?

what a strange question……

but not so strange when we consider the word ethics…

the word ethics derive from the Greek and means, “related to one’s
character, or moral nature”……

ethics is found in one’s character, not in outside actions or right or wrong,
but in one’s character or moral nature…

and who among us demand we have a high moral character?

who even ask for us to consider right or wrong?

all I hear are crickets… because people are seeking things outside
of our character, our moral nature…

the pursuit of fame, money, titles, promotions, wealth…
these things have nothing to do with one’s character or moral
nature……they have nothing to do with ethics as defined by the word ethics…

the question becomes, do we practice our “ethics” with the prevailing
historical precepts of religion? “thou shall not kill” “thou shall not steal”

or do we understand our actions in terms of our own personal autonomy?

the state or condition of self-governance, or leading one’s life according to
reason, values or desires that are (and here is the key word) authentically
one’s own…

as the very idea of a political system that is authentic, is one political system and
one political system only, democracy…the state or condition of self-governance
or leading’s one life according to reason, values or desires that are authentic to
one’s own…the other political systems don’t engage in a system that is allows one
to lead one life according to reason, values or desires that are authentic to
one’s own life…

(the very fact that we have very limited autonomy today doesn’t destroy
the argument that democracy is the only form of government that is in line
with the concept of leading one’s own life according to reason, values or desires
that are authentic to own’s own life… if we ban certain things because
of religion, then we no longer have autonomy in those area’s… if we ban
abortion because of religious precepts, then we no longer have any
autonomy in this regard… I have severe back pain, I could really use
pain pills like Vicodin but because of the so called opioid crisis, where
people become addicted to them, I am forbidden to have these pills
even I am in so much pain that sometimes I can’t function because
I might, MIGHT, become addicted… I no longer have any medical autonomy
in this area…my medical needs are dictated to me by others who don’t
suffer the severe pain that I suffer… I don’t have any autonomy…
but its for your own good, one might say, and you know this how?)

that there is “no universal law of nature that defines morals”
is clear…….

so we can use rationality, Athens or we can use faith, Jerusalem……

do we have a state or condition of self-governance, or leading one’s life
according to reason’s, values, or desires that are authentically one’s own
that is living rationally, Athens…

or do we live life using precepts that are handing down by the
authorities, be it the state or be it religion, or be it a single person?

now the question becomes, is there a third path? somewhere in between
these two opposing idea’s?

it is often said that we are seeking something… some people seek
happiness and some seek knowledge and some seek contentment and
some seek materialistic objects like cars and houses and money
and some seek pleasure, some of it moderated pleasure(seek only pleasure but
not any pain and if we overindulge in our pleasures, we might be in pain, so
we should have only moderate pleasure to avoid pain) and some seek pleasure
at all costs…that there are so many possibilities shouldn’t surprise you…
think of the drives that motivate you to act…

and that is part of the equation of motivation… our needs…
we have needs, biological needs in the form of food, water, education,
shelter, health care, and yes, sex…think of our needs in terms of
Maslow’s pyramid… with the needs of a human being driving our
behavior… the lowest level is our physical needs, the next level is
our need for safety/security, the next level is our need for love/belonging,
the next level is our need for esteem… each level is a need, just like our need
for food and water and sex… the last level is the self-actualization level…
where we have passed beyond our needs and we reach the level of
reaching our full potential… where we find our possibilities and we
engage in reaching and fulfilling our possibilities… that is the last level
of the pyramid…until we find the next level…

so how much of our behavior, our actions is in line with achieving
our needs? I would suggest that ethics, our character, lies outside
of our needs…for example, my need for happiness is different
then my character, my moral nature……regardless of my own personal
needs of food, love, esteem or safety… I can still be a moral person,
my character can still be moral…

the question becomes, “to do the right thing”…

must I know what the right thing is before I can actually “do the right thing”
or can I do the right thing without even knowing what the word “right”
means here?

it has been said, especially in ancient philosophy that we must engage
in the “good life”… and then the ancients described the “good life” as
being virtuous… which they also equated with knowledge… to hold
knowledge is to be virtuous… knowledge and virtue were considered to
be the same thing especially by Socrates…if one committed an “evil”
act, it was because that person was ignorant or lacked knowledge of
the right thing to do… good and evil were questions of knowledge…
and to have knowledge was to be virtuous…

next post will go on…

Kropotkin

I limit the length of post to ensure that I can post them…

you don’t often hear the word “virtues” very often…

virtue: behavior showing high moral standards, paragons of virtue

quality of considered morally good or desirable in a person,
“Patience is a virtue” is one example of this…

but how do we get virtues? by what means do we get virtues?

how do we teach morals or virtue as education?

schools don’t teach virtue or morals… schools are only exist
to teach job skills, to create workers, which as nothing to do with
virtue…

one might argue that religion is meant to teach virtues/morals…

but one looks at the hypocrisy of the modern day Christians and we can
see religion no longer teaches virtues or morals…if the words and actions no
longer match, then it is no longer virtue or moral… to be, to have virtue or morals,
the words and the actions must match in a person…

religion is just another failed ism or ideology that litters the modern
day landscape… other failures are communism, democracy, capitalism,
monarchy, dictatorships, autocracies, libertarianism, conservatism, fascism,
and nationalism…to list a few failures…

why have these ism’s or ideologies fail?

because they weren’t tied to some idea or vision of virtue, of moral character…

they operated outside of any consideration of being ethical…

and what is the meaning of the word ethics? The word “ethics” is
'“related to one’s character or moral nature”

to exist within capitalism or communism or democracy isn’t about one’s
character or moral nature, it is about some ism attempting to achieve
something outside of one’s character or moral nature…

the existential question of our modern age, “what am I to do”
has nothing to do with our character or our moral nature
and that is the problem……

we no longer search for virtues but we search for
money, titles, fame, materialism and when we are unable to
fulfill our desires for money or promotions or materialism or
fame, then what is left? we feel the universe is empty or devoid, so
we turn to drugs, sex, TV or false or phony attempts to fill that void
that we were unable to fulfill with our search for money/titles/fame/
promotions/ materialism…

we need to return to a search for values or to ethics…
but without, WITHOUT a return to religious values……
that was the search that Nietzsche engaged with…

god is dead and we have killed him… simple words that
people still don’t understand after a 100 years of thinking about…

we cannot connect ethics, or moral behavior to a religion or god because
we have gone beyond the need for a god or a religion……
we have, like children outgrowing the need for Santa Clause or
the Easter Bunny, we have outgrown the need for god or religion…

that is why the call to return to the religion of our forefathers
is so hollow and insincere… a return to the shallow hypocrisy of
the modern day religion isn’t very appealing to many…

we cannot, cannot find virtue in the midst of the hypocrisy of religion…

let us take an example of modern day morals…

as the movie says, Greed is good…greed is a central, modern day
call to action… but can we base an understanding of who we are based
solely on greed and the Kantian question of “what ought I to do”?

is greed a question of ethics, again, ethics is related to our
character, our moral nature… is being greedy ethical?

no, greed isn’t based upon some autonomous state or condition of self-governance,
or leading one’s life according to reason, values or desires that are “authentically”
one’s life…

done for now:

Kropotkin

let us look a little deeper in this idea of an Autonomous existence…

as noted before, Autonomous ethics…

“the state or condition of self-governance, or leading one’s life
according to reasons, values, or desires that are one’s
authentically one’s own”

as I have noted before, we have been indoctrinated as children…
we are indoctrinated with the values, morality, ism’s, ideologies,
of the state, church, family, media, culture…

to put this into context… we are indoctrinated with idea’s
associated with patriotism, nationalism, race, religion, sexuality…

we are indoctrinated with the notion that for example, America is
the greatest country on earth… to the notion that only white people
are human, we are indoctrinated that there is a god, we are indoctrinated
with all sorts of beliefs about who we are and what is nation and what is
real and what we ought to believe in and what are we to do and what is
worth living for and what is worth dying for……

all indoctrinations, among others, that we are indoctrinated
with as children…

if we still hold those indoctrinations as adults, then I don’t see
how we can be autonomous individuals… because we don’t hold
these beliefs as authentic beliefs, because they aren’t authentic beliefs
if we have been indoctrinated with them………if we hold onto values that
we were indoctrinated with, then they aren’t our values, they are someone else’s
values and we simple hold them…

to have an authentic life, one must hold values that are truly one’s own…
not the values that have been indoctrinated into us, but as we have reasoned
them out…

this is the basis of Socrates saying, the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

because if we don’t examine our lives for those hidden indoctrinations of
our childhood, then we hold onto values, judgement that aren’t our
authentic values or judgements, they are the societies values and judgements…

if we hold values or judgements that isn’t our own Authentic values or
judgements, then we cannot, cannot have or hold any autonomous
reasons, values or desires that our authentically one’s own…

we are not autonomous people if we hold reasons, values or desires
that isn’t our own… but reasons, values or desires that have been
indoctrinated into us………

if we don’t examine our values, our indoctrinated ism’s and ideologies,
then we are not, we are not autonomous people…

if we do not hold an examination, a reevaluation of values, then
we are simply holding values that were indoctrinated into us…
how are we to claim we are autonomous people without
any sort of self-examination?

to know thyself is the basis of being autonomous beings…

if our judgements and values and idea’s are indoctrinated into us,
then we are nothing more then robots holding idea’s and values and judgements
of those who indoctrinated us…

this is the point of existentialism… to become authentic people by
a reevaluation of values… to hold values that are values, judgements that
we, as people believe in, not just values or believes or judgments that were
indoctrinated into us…

so are you an autonomous person?, an autonomous being?

Kropotkin

I have heard, as everyone in the west has heard,
the story of Adam and Eve and the fall of man…

They ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge and was cast out
of Eden…

and to every person born thereafter, was cursed by the “Original”
sin………

and as I have stated, the “Original” sin was the gaining of Knowledge…

this fall of man is a story that has been one of the central stories of western
civilization, for over 2000 years, this story has been one of the focal points of
how we see human beings… as fallen…

but I see a different picture…

I reject the notion that we were once in “paradise” and lost it because
of some “original” sin…

follow the course of history, both individual and collective…

individually, we are born in ignorance, the society then fills that
“Tabula rasa” with information that I have likened to “habit, superstitions,
prejudice, ism’s and ideologies”… for example, we teach children to
believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny…and that “knowledge” has
some value but it doesn’t last very long in a child’s life… at some point,
that knowledge of there being a Santa Clause or an Easter Bunny is dropped…
the child has “real” or “True” information about the universe and realizes that
there is no such thing as Santa Clause or an Easter Bunny…

that becomes a step into growing up… but one could argue that
the lost of the old knowledge is a loss of paradise, we have fallen, so to speak…

but the reality is that we are really becoming… at every step we learn to shed
our childhood habits, superstitions, prejudices, ism’s, bigotries… and at every step
we are becoming more adult like… where we learn new habits, superstitions, prejudices,
isms and ideologies and of course, bigotries…

or we can think about it this way… in the beginning was animal, we were animals…
and over a million years plus, we learned to go from animal to animal/human…

we left the paradise of being simple animals to become complicated animal/humans…
this is the true story of human existence… there was no fall and there has never been
a fall… we have simple grown from being animal to animal/human and slowly
we grow to become human, fully human…

the individual growth of human beings match the growth of the human race…

so I don’t believe in nor accept the idea of a fall or of sin……

I do believe in the growth of human beings from animal to animal/human
and I accept the growth of children from infants to toddlers to children to
teens to young adults to adults to middle age to senior citizens to old age…

at my age, of being a senior citizen, I no longer hold the same beliefs
I held when I was a teenager or young adult or even middle age…

some might say I have fallen or an in sin, but I am simple growing into
something else… and this growth will continue until I die… a simple
movement from birth to death, from animal, of being an infant,
to animal/human of being middle age and hopefully of growing into
an human being by old age……

collectively and individually, we travel the same path… we grow
from birth to death and we grow from animal to becoming human…

becoming a human being isn’t about my physical appearance but about
my understanding of what it means to be human… as I grow less
dependent upon instinct and grow more into a thinking, reasoning being,
I become more human… animals are instinctual creatures, animal/human
are slightly less instinctual and fully human is even less so instinctual…….

to become human, fully human we must grow into something but
we also leave behind… we leave behind not only instinct, but
we leave behind our need for the negative instincts, hate and anger
and lust and fear and greed…

to grow into becoming human requires us to overcome our negative
instincts and become our positive instincts of love and justice
and hope and charity… among the other positive instincts we must engage
with if we are to ever become human, fully human……

what have you done to overcome your negative instincts or what
have you done to become more human?

Kropotkin

the question of Athens vs Jerusalem, of reason vs revelation…

reason vs the voice of authority, which is revelation of the truth…

we still fight this battle when we listen and obey the voice of
authority…for the greatest crime is the crime of disobedience,
of insubordination to the voice of authority…

that was the crime for which Adam and Eve were convicted upon,
the crime that lead to original sin…

it wasn’t gaining of knowledge that was the crime, but of disobeying
god that was the crime of sin……

and the biggest question in many people’s life is the question of salvation…

how am I to be saved? and the answer according to revelation/authority
is to obey… to obey god, to obey authority, to obey the state, if the
question is how to be saved, the answer lies in obedience………

reason, the quest to understand by the light of one’s own reason oftentimes
requires, no, demands, that we listen to the answers provided by reason…
and so we engage in disobedience… the greatest crime of a human being…

salvation is tied up into obedience or disobedience… so the question of
salvation, of how am I to be saved, for me, is irrelevant, unimportant,
unnecessary…… I don’t need to be saved, I don’t need salvation…

to be saved for what? to have salvation requires something to be saved from,
what am I being saved from? Original sin? I don’t believe in original sin…
to be saved from being a human being, well to be honest, I am not a human being,
at least not yet, I am still in the animal/human stage of development…

I strive to become human, not to be saved…

perhaps that is why the religious means so little to me…
the original and most important question of religion revolves
around salvation and being saved……

I am not a fallen man… I am a being attempting to become something
more then what I am…I am attempting to discover my possibilities
and then fulfill those possibilities…what does salvation or being saved
have to do with finding or becoming my full possibilities?

I seek knowledge but more importantly then knowledge, I need
to know what to do with that knowledge…… the fact is, some knowledge
is just not that important… the fact that the earth is 93 million miles from
the Sun is interesting but frankly, that knowledge doesn’t move the needle
in any way, shape or form… the knowledge that I am mortal… now that
moves the needle… death is coming for me… but I then release that
death comes for life… and in fact, to say, death comes for, is rather a lie…

for death is inherent within life… to be alive, to be born is to die at some point…

the one lies within the other…I can no more escape death then I can change my
appearance to a shark or to a dog……… death is simply an unavoidable fact……
and no amount of talk is going to change that…no amount of knowledge is going
to change that and no amount of faith is going to change that fact of my
coming death…to live is to die…simple statement of fact……

that is another reason why religion doesn’t appeal to me… why should I attempt
to have a “second” life or be “immortal”…I have never understood the need to escape
death even by the metaphysical means of religion…

to even wonder about what lies after death takes me aware from my primary
concern… the here and now leading to what I might become…
going from animal/human to becoming fully human…

to be honest, I resent any attempt to take me away from what I see as
my first and primary mission of being, which is to work my way to the
next stage of existence… to find and fulfill my possibilities and to
become fully human…….

anything that takes me away from that, I resent … especially
work or the family when it is time to do the mundane tasks of day to day living…
taking out the garbage or to make the bed or to do laundry (which is what
I am doing right now) I hate that shit because it takes me away from
working out my questions of existence…

but I cannot commit the crime of disobedience… to disobey is to
be without a wife………so this question of the greatest crime of
being human which is disobedience… becomes front and center
in our existence… obedience to the state, obedience to the family,
obedience to the voice of authority… regardless if the authority
is god, the state, a policeman, a judge or society………

and the question becomes… am I willing to pay the price of
disobedience to those of authority and am I willing to be punished
for the crime of disobedience? I was, once a long time ago…
now at my advance age, not so much…it isn’t fear as much
as comfort… am I willing to sacrifice my bodily comfort, for
which I admit I have a fondness for, for the greater question
of obedience… is obeying the state to preserve my own personal
comfort, part of being saved? does my salvation require me to
hold to my principles even if it means quite a personal sacrifice?

or is my being saved, my salvation require obedience to the voice
of authority?

I don’t know…perhaps if I hold to my original stated goal of
becoming… of traveling from animal, to animal/human, to becoming
fully human should take precedence over my own personal salvation or
perhaps, perhaps my being saved, my salvation comes from my
journey of becoming, from animal to animal/human to being human…
perhaps that is how we are to be saved? perhaps our salvation comes
from finding our possibilities and then fulfilling those possibilities…

quite often the journey requires us to simply start walking in some
direction and hope that direction can lead us to some answers…

perhaps… perhaps…

Kropotkin

Existence is questions,
not answers…

so what is your question?

Kropotkin

one of the perennial questions of both philosophy
and of existence, is this question of evil.

what is evil? and how did it enter the world?

for the Religious man, evil entered the world through the
insubordination of Adam and Eve…….

but think about evil… really think about it…

we have evil as being the inevitable actions of being…

suffering is evil and must be eliminated but you can’t eliminate “evil”
of this fashion because this type of “evil” is simply part of existence…

of growing old, of illness, of death and the “evil” of forces like
hurricanes and fire and earthquakes… we cannot do anything about
these matters… evil, true evil requires a choice……. when people
are starving because of human choices, that is truly evil…

think of the things we consider evil that are manmade…
they are evil because of the choices made and choices made
by ego…… it is by an egotistical choices that create evil in the world…

war is caused by the ego wanting something…
ego has driven the immense income inequality issues
that has marred human existence since ancient times…
it was a perennial issue in both Greek and Roman history…

much of history has been driven by the ego needs of rulers wanting
more, and more and more…the ruler might have the biggest
country in Europe but it was never enough… the ego which drives
the need for great wealth and power and land… is also the driver
of evil… for to choice to pursue wealth means that someone else
is deprived of wealth…it is a zero sum game… there are only so many
pieces of the board to take… and if the pieces are in the hands of the few,
then the many go without…

so evil is the choice to enriched oneself at the expense of others…

this enrichment can take many forms…food, water, shelter,
money, titles… in other words, there is only so much of the bottom
level of the needs, of the physical needs that all animals and humans need…
if some hold most or all of the access to the basic needs of human beings
then many go without… this need to dominate the basis needs of people
is ego…

ego is taking as much as possible for oneself as to leave others without…

it is choice plus ego that creates evil……

if you want less evil in the world, then you must remove ego and you
must remove the need to acquire more then you need to exists…

human needs are actually quite simple…we come from animals…
a place to keep dry and warm, food enough to eat, medical needs,
education, clean water, our basic human needs are really quite simple…
the houses we build and the couches and TV’S and cars we acquire are simply
ego… because we don’t need the big houses or seven TV’S or multiple
couches or the multiple vacation homes…

all those extra things are simple ego at work… and
every extra ego driven object we get takes away from another…

Now at this point, some clueless human will shout,

“Kropotkin, if you feel so guilty, then donate everything you own to
charity”…

as if one person can change the cycle of ego that dominates human beings…
even if Bill Gates gave away everything he owned, it would do anything…
because the problem is not only individual, but it is systemic… it is system
wide throughout the entire systems that we human have created…

every single human system has as it basic, ego driven needs that must
be somehow fulfilled at the expense of other human beings…….

capitalism is the poster child of a ego driven system designed to
hoard material for one’s own gratification…for one’s own ego…

political systems are created/designed to cater to ego’s systems…
monarchy, dictatorship’s, Lenin/Stalin communism, and the now corrupted
democracy and Republic of the US.

every single political system out there is one or another version of
ego driven attempt to gain the most material possible even if it
is deleterious to others, millions of other people and animals…

so if you want to know what evil is… it is a choice to
gather to oneself the most material possible even if one
doesn’t need it…

evil is a human choice to practice greed, lust, hate, anger……

and I wonder where we have heard those words before?

Kropotkin

we tend to focus on large scale evil, but evil has a small scale nature to it…

a store manager who transfers people out of his store to other stores to
increase his bonus, not for any other reason but greed did he uprooted
people lives…just so he could make some more money…that is the
classic definition of evil…so evil isn’t about the size of evil, it is the
act itself, regardless of how many are involved…

if you choose to gain money, titles, fame, wealth, promotions over
the welfare of others, that is evil…….

the president who tries to create a war just so he can be reelected is evil…

he is risking people lives just so he can personally benefit… that is evil……

evil is not about sex, religion, color or titles, but evil is about the choice
to damage others just so one can profit…

if you choose to damage others so you can benefit,
that is evil, you are evil………

that is why I consider the GOP as being evil… it is choosing to damage
Americans just to benefit the GOP… that is evil, the GOP is evil…

choosing to damage human beings so one can personally profit…

that is evil…

Kropotkin

evil is about the choices we make……

how do I make “good” choice?

it is the values we become that decide if we are “good”
or “evil”…….

if you choose values that promote and honor people, that is
good values and your choices are less likely to be “evil”

if you choose “evil” values of greed, hatred, anger, lust, dishonesty…
those values are values that create evil…….

it is by the values we choose that helps us act good or evil

the act of choosing is what decides what is good or evil…….

choose wisely…

Kropotkin

it seems to be clear wherever there is “evil” the choice
to put one’s own interest above others to the point of
damaging the others, that there will always be apologist
for that “evil”………

IQ45 has damaged America in his pursuit of being reelected…
the entire Ukraine debacle stems from his choice to put
his reelection above the good of America…

and there is apologist for that…

I can only speculate about people’s desire to be apologist for evil…

but I suspect it gives people cover to engage in their desire to put
their own needs above others to the point of damaging others…

now one might argue that everyone does so, but that isn’t true…

the engagement, the choice of evil, isn’t limited to big acts of evil,
the deaths of millions… evil can be small and limited…

the size of evil doesn’t make it any less evil…and the size doesn’t
excuse people from the act of evil…people defend large evil so
they can commit small acts of evil… putting their own needs above
others to the determent of others, to the damage of others………

evil is the choose to put your needs above others to the damage
of others… you can choose to put your needs above others,
but not at the cost of other people being damage……

so if I want to make my bonus, I can choose to make that bonus,
but when I transfer people out of store to their damage, that is a choice of
evil……

evil is the act of damaging other people to my benefit…….

evil is the choice of damaging other people for my benefit…

yelling at people because I need to feel more important or bigger,
that is evil…….

one might say, that is a awful small example of evil…but that is the point of
evil, it can be a choice of small actions or large actions… the size doesn’t
matter at all…… small evil is just as much a choice as large evil……

it is easy to pretend, to believe that one isn’t evil, but when you make
a choice that damages another to your own benefit, that is evil, abet
a small evil, but evil nevertheless…

we rationalize, justify all our actions in some fashion or another…
believing our actions are not evil is just another rationalization…

believing that a choice of a small evil is somehow justified because it is small,
that is just another form of rationalization…

rationalizing that my act, my choice of evil is what everyone else is doing is
just another rationalization……

to believe that my actions from buying a second car to taking that bonus to
accepting a promotion is without any consequences is false……

every single action has some consequences… just because you can’t see it or
you have rationalized it away doesn’t make it any less true…….

are you evil?

have you make a conscience choice to harm another to benefit yourself?

then the answer is yes, you have make an evil choice……….

and if you live out your life making a conscience choice to advance your needs over
others, to the damage of others, then yes, you are evil……

but don’t worry about it…

you will find some way to justify or rationalize it away……

that is what humans do when faced with the truth about themselves…

Kropotkin

But Kropotkin, what does evil have to do with me?

I am but one person in a large world full of evil and wrongdoing…

my actions are but a small thing amidst the world’s ism’s and ideologies,
superstitions and bigotries that mankind does…

my foibles are minor compared to what I see and hear in the world around me…

and that is the problem… isn’t it?

you see the world as dominating who you are…
and that is a false way to see the world…

we must see ourselves as the be all, end all of
values…

what values that exists within the universe, exists within us…

if there is goodness or evil or justice or hatred or greed or hope or love…
it all begins and ends with who we are…….

I cannot, cannot control the world around me… but I can control
what values I hold……. I can make a choice…….

we humans do not see ourselves as the beginning of good or evil or
justice or ETC… we see ourselves reacting to good or evil or justice…

but we don’t just react to such values, we originate such values…

evil begins with me and good begins with me and justice begins with me……

we don’t hold ourselves accountable for our actions and our beliefs…

we somehow learn to separate our choices of good and evil, hope and justice,
from who we are… we separate our values from ourselves… and treat them
as some separate and distinct values, apart from us……

but we cannot do that…… we are our choices……

“the unexamined life isn’t worth living”

“know thyself”

is two articles of faith with the greatest philosopher
to ever lived…

to accomplish these acts of self-examination, we must first connect
our actions, our choices with who we are……

evil is the choice to enriched yourself at the expense of others…

when we enrich ourselves at the expense of others, we then have
chosen evil… but we don’t think of ourselves that way… we think it
somehow right or due to us to gain at the expense of others…

we choose evil but we then justify it, we rationalize it, we nullify it
with weak justifications like “I was due” or "
“do under others before they do unto you” thus placing every single human
being as attempting to “get” you, so you “get” them first…

my choice to place my bonus before others, is an act, a choice of evil…
and we then find justifications for such an act by saying things like,
“I had no choice” or “the system made me” I must act within the system
that I find myself in, so I can choose evil because if I don’t, I might lose
my job or become less respected…

these rationalizations, these justifications come about because we
hold to ism’s and ideologies that we can use to justify or rationalize our
choices of evil…

I can choose to be evil because that is what drives capitalism…
we can blame capitalism as being the “real” cause of our choices…

but let us return to a previous thought…

autonomous being… if we are to hold ourselves as autonomous beings,
we must then take credit or blame, as the case may be, to make choices
that reflect our values… if I am to be a true autonomous being, I cannot
default to using rationalizations and justifications to maintain my innocence
in any actions taken…I would choose to be good, but the system made me
do evil…

we have so many ways to justify or rationalize our actions and beliefs…

among the many possibilities of rationalization and justifications we use
is patriotism and duty and country and nationalism and Catholicism
and religion and among the many ism’s and ideologies lie many such
justifications and rationalizations for our actions and beliefs…

that is not being autonomous… that is the direct opposite of being autonomous…

if we use ism’s and ideologies to escape accountability for our actions,
then we cannot to be held personally accountable for our actions, beliefs…

and it is all about escaping personal responsibility, personal accountability
for our actions and beliefs…………

that is not being autonomous…….

if I commit a small act of evil, I have still committed an act of evil…
regardless of why or what rationalization I might use and no matter
how small or insignificant my action might be… it is still evil…
if I choose to enrich myself at the expense of others, no matter how small,
it is a choice made…and evil has been done…

I can hold myself accountable and thus be autonomous…

the more I rationalize or the more I justify my actions in terms of
ism’s or ideologies or superstitions or habits or prejudice, the further
I get from myself…

I separate myself from my actions and beliefs by my use of justifications
and rationalizations… this has the effect of separating myself from my actions
and beliefs……. I am no longer in control of my actions if I act from, or make choices
from ism’s or ideologies… in other words, if I must act from or choose to be evil because
that is what is required in capitalism, then I have no control over my actions…
I must conform to the standards of capitalism and I have no choice…
I cannot do any thing else… that is the opposite of autonomous……

the need to conform to the standards and ism’s of a society leads us to
commit acts of evil, large and small, with ample justification and
rationalization from the ism’s and ideology of that society…….

if from my reevaluations I learn I am not a violent person, I am
a peaceful person, that is at odds with an ongoing ism of America
which espouses martial values of violence, the military, of guns,
of war…am I to be an autonomous person and hold to my values or, or
do I conform to the values of America and hold martial values, of violence,
of guns, of war…and do I then use those American values to justify or
rationalize any actions of mind that is of violence or of war?

if I am an autonomous person, I must hold to my values regardless if
they conform to or don’t conform to the values and ideologies of that
society…

most people would rather conform and commit acts of evil,
then be autonomous beings and hold to their own choices, to their
own actions…….

it is easier to rationalize one’s action then to hold to be an autonomous
person………

and so we return to where we started…

I am one person in the midst of a world of evil and wrongdoing…

must I conform to the world or do I hold to my autonomous self
and make choices that don’t require me to escape to
rationalizations and justifications to avoid any personal accountability
for my actions?

so what do you do?

hold to your own autonomous self and suffer from that choice
or do you conform to ism’s and ideologies and suffer from the choice
of committing evil, be it large or small?

for most people, at this point is trying to see some escape from
the possibility of only two choices… they are trying to see some
third choice which allows them to escape from their own accountability…
and be able to blame the prevailing ism’s, ideologies, superstitions,
prejudice, habits for their choices of the actions they commit…

I cannot be held accountable because I was only following
the societies values and ism’s and ideologies and superstitions…

is that your defense for the choices you have made?

rationalizations and justifications… nothing more?

Kropotkin

I can see someone saying this:

I hope Kropotkin has stopped writing about evil…
I don’t want to be reminded of the evil I have committed
in the name of some ism or ideology or some superstition or prejudice…

I don’t want to be held accountable or responsible for my for actions…

and that is the beauty of ism’s and ideologies and superstitions
and prejudices and bigotries…that they allow one to
avoid personal responsibility for actions taken…I was just
conforming to the society ism’s and ideologies…

heaven forbid we commit to the greatest crime against society today…

that of insubordination…….

obedience to society is made clear from birth, my birth and
your birth…

so how do we engage in being an autonomous being if we
cannot engage in anything but obedience to society?

failure to obey is punishable by prison or even death……

so who has the courage enough to become an autonomous person
when the personal cost is so high?

and that indeed is the question?

Kropotkin

do we “live in a universe where evil is a given fact whose reality
cannot be denied”?

and what is evil? evil is nothing more then a choice to
puts one negative values of hate and anger and lust and greed
before all other values or people……

I may put my “solipsism” ahead of my contact with people,
but I am not hurting anybody in the process…
I can make a choice that doesn’t damage anybody in the process…

I can put my needs first but that doesn’t mean I have to
damage or hurt other people…

to achieve my goals without any collateral damage in the process…

evil is a choice…thus it is not a given or a necessity in the universe……

Kropotkin

if we, each of us, is born in original sin, then we
have no possibility to be autonomous…

we must escape out sinful nature, we must find salvation instead
of becoming autonomous beings…

for if we are born of original sin, then the task of being human
is to be saved, but if we are born free of sin, then
the task we face is, how do we become autonomous beings?

Kropotkin

in the case of forcing to choose between Athens (rationalism)
and Jerusalem (revelation) …

one choses based upon which one we bow our heads down to……

but must our choice only be between reason or revelation?

Kropotkin

“Essentially, the intellectual vision aspires to discover, behind living
beings, the eternal and immutable principles which govern the universe”

Shestov

but I understand that there is no “eternal and immutable principles
which govern the universe”…Nietzsche tried to make as the
“eternal and immutable principle” being the “will to power”
and Christians try to make god as the “eternal and immutable”
principle and others, such as scientist try to
make the laws of science, the laws of thermodynamics, for example
as the “eternal and immutable” principles…

philosophers such as the ancient Greeks pre-Socratic philosophers
try to make elements such as water or fire or earth, as the basic
“eternal and immutable” principles…

their questions were questions like: from where does everything come from?
from what is everything created? How do we explain the plurality of things
found in nature? How might we describe nature mathematically?

it is the greatness of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from these
“eternal and immutable” principles down to being about human beings…

his questions were not about what the universe was made of, but what was
virtue and how did the value of virtue influence us as human beings?

that question has nothing to do with prior questions of philosophers which
was about the make up of the universe…then philosophers tried to find
the human answers to the “eternal and immutable” principles…

beginning with questions like, “what are we to do” “what should we believe in”
“what should we hope for” and asking these question in terms of the “eternal
and immutable” principles…“what are we to do” is answered in terms
of some “eternal and immutable” principle such as the eternal worship of god,
or the search for pleasure or the avoidance of pain, or the pursuit of happiness,
or as I said, Nietzsche “will to power”… or Spinoza’s idea that everything was
substance and that substance was god……

the search for “eternal and immutable” principles has dominated
philosophy since the beginning of philosophy……

and it has dominated general thinking… the search for a particular
“eternal and immutable” principle has lead some to nationalism
and patriotism and religions like Catholicism and Buddhism and other
ism’s and ideologies… the indoctrination of childhood is one attempt
to create “eternal and immutable” principles in children which is suppose to last
a lifetime…“America is the greatest country on earth”
is one attempt to create an “eternal and immutable” principle…………

but what if reason cannot get us to some “eternal and immutable”
principle that philosophers and society has been reaching for since forever?

the idea then becomes then reason is folly and worthless if it cannot
reach some “eternal and immutable” principles by which we can
live out our lives………

and if reason fails in this attempt, as it must, then we must, MUST turn
to revelation or religions or god to find an answer to the “eternal and immutable”
principles… as reason is worthless the only other possibility must be
religion……….

but this is based on a false idea that if reason cannot find the “Eternal
and immutable” principles, then reason has no point… but that is simple not
true…the point becomes that we don’t have to have reason find us some
'Eternal and immutable" principles… reason can be used to find us some much
more narrow purpose besides “eternal and immutable” principles…

the fact that there isn’t an “eternal and immutable” principles doesn’t negate
reason… and it doesn’t promote revelation either… it just means that
there isn’t an “eternal and immutable” principles… and that isn’t such
a terrible thing… it frees us to find out what our purpose is without
any grand “eternal and immutable” principles…the bar is just set lower…
so what if there isn’t any “eternal and immutable” principles…
we can still use reason to seek out some other principles by which
we can base our lives upon……

we can still use reason to create guides upon which we can navigate
the terrain of being human……

as I have said, I believe the point of our existence, of human existence,
is to travel from being animal to animal/human to then becoming fully
human… we are at the animal/human stage… and it might take another
million years for us to reach the fully human stage, as it took a million years
for us to go from animal to animal/human……

it is simply a question of growth…of becoming who we are…
of a reevaluation of values where we examine the values we were
indoctrinated with and replace those indoctrinated values with
our own values…the path to becoming human and authentic lies
with our coming to an understanding of who we are and what is
possible for us as humans…

it is seeking out our possibilities that make us human…

reason tells us that…that there is no big, grand, dramatic “eternal
and immutable” principles doesn’t really matter if we seek out what is
possible for us as human beings…

“what are we to do” isn’t some big grand “eternal and immutable” principle, it
is simply a small question of what does it mean to be human and everyone can
answer that question differently because everyone possibilities are different…

“what are we to do”… “what am I to do” is just a relative question, one ask
what can we do together and one asks, what can I personally do?

I would answer the question “what am I to do” differently then you would
because I am limited by certain factors that limit my possibilities…
as we age, our possibilities become limited and then soon turn to only
one possibility which is death…

when we are young, we have greater possibilities then we are old…
that is when you must strike, when you are young and able to achieve
your possibilities, but our modern world is full of attempts to
make you wait to achieve your possibilities…for example, you are
admonish to be patient, to wait your turn… but by the time your turn
comes around, you may not be able to achieve that possibility any more…

reaching heaven is about waiting until the next life, pushing your
possibilities off until the next life… but why what?

capitalism is about achieving your goal, but do your being able
to buy more cars or another house or a new TV really worth the
effort to achieve given the time, effort, money needed to achieve that goal…

reason says no… the basic premise of capitalism isn’t worth the
effort one has to put into it to achieve its goals…

you can better spend your time and effort on other projects that
will far better allow you to achieve your possibilities…

that is why ism’s and ideologies are failures… because to reach
any particular goal of any given ism or ideology requires far more effort
and time then the goal is worth…the point is not to try to achieve easier
goals but to achieve goals worth achieving…using reason to understand
what goals are truly achievable and, and worth that effort and time…

for time is a precious resource for once your time has been wasted,
there is no getting back that time… time might be the most
precious resource on planet earth… it is the rarest resource
we have as human beings… and we only have so much time to
achieve our possibilities… why waste that time with such nonsense
as capitalism and Catholicism which says wait until you can be rewarded…

we don’t have time to wait… we have a limited amount of time in our lives…

don’t wait… use reason to understand and achieve your possibilities…

but don’t expect any such grand notions as “eternal and immutable”
principles…… they don’t exists…

Kropotkin

we are faced with many questions…

what am I to do? is one such question… and that question deserves
an answer but, but is that answer in the form of “Eternal and immutable”
principles? what connection does the question “what am I to do” have
to those “eternal and immutable” principles such as god, or the “laws
of thermodynamics” or the search for happiness or the search for pleasure
or the search to avoid pain?

Perhaps the question “what am I to do” can be narrowed down to this,
“what am I to do” today? or perhaps, “what am I to do” tomorrow?

we don’t need “eternal and immutable” principles to engage with the
question about “what am I to do?”

I can reason it out without any recourse to religion or to an ism or an ideology
or to some “will to power”…….

I can begin by a examination of what beliefs I hold and why do I hold
those particular beliefs? are they really my beliefs or are they the
indoctrinated beliefs of my parents, the society, their religion, the state,
the media…

“the unexamined life isn’t worth living”

we can begin our understanding about “what am I to do” with an
personal self examination about our values and our beliefs…

“to know thyself”

the start of philosophy begins with these two sayings……

not with wonder, not with fear, not with certainty…
but with a self -examination of our values?

the answer to the question about “what am I to do” cannot be answered until
we know what our values our and what we uncovered in our own personal
self examination of who we are……

if I am a being of peace, then I can to begin to narrow down what it is I am
suppose to do…if I am a being of peace, I can turn away from the martial
values of America and turn to the values that best represent who I am…
love, hope, charity, peace… positive values, values that best allow us to
to move from animal/human to fully human……

so ask yourself, how should I begin the process of the examined life?

first ask yourself this, what are my values? are they truly my values or are
they the values of the society that indoctrinated them into me?

examine your values, your beliefs and ask yourself, are they really the values/beliefs
I believe in?

reason is a very good tool here to use……… it won’t lead one to universal/
eternal/immutable principles that we think reason should lead us to, but
reason will lead us to some sort of conclusion to about what we really value/belief in…

begin there…

Kropotkin