a new understanding of today, time and space.

some things I never hear from those in power is comments
about beauty or love or passion…

How can we make the world a more beautiful place?

how do we increase the amount of love into the world?

can those values be found in the conservative world viewpoint?

NO, and a thousands times no…

no, because a conservative is about the lower values of anger
and hate and lust and greed and fear… you cannot get to beauty
or love with the values of anger or hate or fear or lust……

the second reason you don’t hear about beauty or love is because
those values are not marketable values… they can’t be bought or sold…
thus they have no value in a marketplace and thus worthless…….

only that which creates profits/money is considered to have value…

to create a more beautiful world cost money… it isn’t of value because it is more
expensive to create beauty then to sell beauty…

and to create beauty requires much more then time or money, it requires
some talent and perhaps, some genius…

as our world sinks to the lowest common denominator, LCD, which is to say,
to create beauty means one must be patient and care… and patience
and care are two commodities that the business world absolutely hates…

it takes too much work to be patient and/or to care…

it is too time consuming and business doesn’t have the time to do things
correctly or honestly or with patience because that takes time…
the only thing of value is to create profits/money… and the less time to do
so, the better…….

so Politicians never talk about the creation of beauty or love because
they take time to develop and politicians are always in a hurry because
they too believe time is money…….

the rush is to get something done, anything as long as it profits
the “proper” people…

but I go along with Da Vinci…he would start a project…
then he would leave it… for days, even weeks… and then he would
rush in and paint a stroke or two on the wall and then leave again…
and once again leaving it for days or weeks or even months…….

it wasn’t about the time it takes to create beauty or art or love…
it is about the time we take to get it right… days or weeks or even months…

you might say, that the creation of a infrastructure, building a bridge for example,
isn’t about creating art or beauty or love… but I say, why not?

you might say, there are budgets and time constraints and we must put
these things up as quickly as possible… and once again, putting
speed and haste and money before beauty or love or passion…

we are in such a rush to get things done we forget
that the things that last, the things that count, take time,
they take patience, they require effort and energy and passion…

who takes the time to create something with patience or effort or
with love or passion… No one these days…….

and why is the things we create and build so crappy these days?

I can only point to what it takes to create something of value
and to create something that will last…because we don’t take the time
and we don’t want to waste time or money or effort to build something right…

the act of creation isn’t a physical act… it isn’t about putting bricks into place
or building foundation walls or paving the streets…

the act of creation is a mental one… the act of creation is inside one’s head…
and that takes time and patience and passion and love……….

things the modern doesn’t have time for any more…

Kropotkin

I would have rather created one great brilliant thing then
hundreds or even thousands of average or modest things…

aim for the sun and if I burn up, so be it…….

I would rather crash and burn seeking greatness and beauty
then find satisfaction in some small wins, small victories…

to seek that one moment of perfection is worth a lifetime of
searching…….

to find 5 minutes of love is worth a lifetime of seeking…

what do you want?

are you simply seeking that which everyone else is seeking or are you
seeking something so rare and pure that only a few are searching for it?

I would rather seek that which is rare and pure and not find…
then find average moments which our day to day lives is filled with…

I would seek the impossible then find the normal…

Kropotkin

that’s a damn good kroquestion and i too am always engaged in an internal battle with myself over this problem. so my situation is this. there is quite a bit of material and circumstance in my life with which i could most certainly make myself a hero if i were to draw what N called that straight line; … a goal, a yes, a no, etc. but here’s the human, all too human problem. when the hero decides to commit to his deed, he forfeits the possibility of some other opportunity that might arise in the future, and therefore makes a gamble. then, he decides to wait… but that opportunity never comes… and he regrets having decided to wait. he repeats as necessary… he ‘puts it off’ again, and again. the hero then finds himself slowly losing his ambition through this eternal ‘putting off’ of the heroic deed, and ends up becoming a remorseful cynic wallowing in his own regret.

one time the old man told me after i got my ass kicked in the fifth grade: better to be a live chicken then a dead hero. what do you make of this, pete? it’s like damned if you do, damned if you don’t. i want to live, but i don’t want to be a chicken. likewise, i wanna be the hero, but i don’t wanna die, dude!

how cruel is my fate… that i’d ever have to make this decision. why couldn’t i just be a normal person with a mundane life and in no incredibly complicated shakespearean situation that calls upon my very soul to face with vigilant courage a truth that might destroy me if i were to demand it?!

tell you what i’m gonna do. i’m gonna make a deal with the devil, bro. i’m gonna forget about doing ‘the right thing’, forget about being a hero… and what i’m gonna do is take compensation for having to do the wrong thing by not doing the right thing. that is, the world is going to pay for my having to sacrifice my honor just so that i might live longer as a chicken. how about that?

K: first things first, Kroquestion? I don’t know what to make of that?

The fact of the matter is we, each of us, want to be the hero of our
dream… I lie awake at night and think of ways to be the hero in my dreams,
yes, even at 61, I still pine to be the hero of my dreams…

but the fact is, the truth is, I won’t be a hero, in my dreams or
in anyone else’s dream…the reality is I am an old man whose
possibilities are diminishing…my dreams of being a hero clash
with the reality that I will never win that Nobel Prize or become
a movie star or win the billion dollars in the lottery or become
the greatest president of America…I dream of those possibilities
but reality says, no, no Kropotkin…and like you, I am left
with reality…my days will end with me never fulfilling my dreams
of being an hero…I never considered being a “dead hero”
I always survived to great applause, at least in my dreams…
but the sad truth is, I will never be given that choice…
of dead hero or live chicken…….

so, I make my stand, not in the choice of being a hero or chicken but
in what type of values I shall stand for…

life is about the choices we make and the amount of autonomy we have……

by that, I mean that to become human is to be autonomous within our
choices… I choose freedom because it is the right thing to do
and I choose the higher values of love and peace and hope and charity
because they are the right thing to do, the right values to pick……. no, I won’t become the
hero of my dreams but I can make the next best choice by choosing
the autonomous values of love and peace and hope and justice and charity…

I can make my road be the road from animal where I have no choice because
I must follow my instincts to animal/human where I have some choice to
become and to the next part which is being human and where I make
the autonomous choices that are involved in being human, fully human…

the more possibilities I can engage with is closer to being human…
the less choices I have is being closer to being animal…

In taking the road from animal to human is the road to the amount
of choices we can make about our lives… the less choices is the animal
path and the more choices is the human path…….

and so by not “doing the right thing” you at least made a choice,
and that choice is following the path from animal to animal/human to
becoming human… it is the choices that we make that decide how far
down the road of becoming human we go……….

will I ever become the hero of my dreams?

No, no I won’t… but I can make other choices that will lead
me to become more human… I can choose to be and I can choose
to become and that is the path to becoming human…

Kropotkin

There is much wisdom in your words, Peter Kropotkin, and I don’t know what I’d do without you.

You’re my sun… my moon… my guiding star. My kind of wonderful. That’s what you are.

K: ok, ummmmmmm, thanks?

Kropotkin

Lol… Prom befuddling KP, with happy ‘wonderful’ feels.

2nd.the motion.

Ok, I’m going to pretend the last couple of posts didn’t happen…

so, I was thinking the other day and I was going to use a fictional
character to make my point when, I realized that a real person would
make the same case as a fictional person…… so, I am offering up
a case to be made for a certain type of person/action……

I have studied up on the Buddha and I noticed that his life was
a normal life for a prince, soon to be king… he was educated and trained
to be king one day, from a young age……

then because he saw the three aspects of life which are the cause
of suffering, sickness, old age and death…he wanted to
eliminate suffering from this world and so he spent time
as an adult trying to understand how to end suffering…

so, you have two aspects of the Buddha’s life, the following the path
that was expected of him as prince, soon to be king… he followed
society’s expectations of what a prince was… just as we follow expectations
of what our role is in society…given our status in the social/economic/political
realm that exists in our respected countries…

and the second path was when he was 29, that is the traditional age given,
that he turned to following the path to enlightenment…

he gave up, walked away from the expectations that he was supposed to follow
of being a prince, soon to be king… he search for enlightenment, which is
something that a prince does not do…he walked away from the expectations
that he was supposed to follow as prince… he followed his own heart, as it were…
and in the end, he found enlightenment and founded a new religion…
which was certainly not the expectations he had placed upon him
from birth…….

we have another person who walked away from expectations and became
something else… We have Jesus… he was born a Jew and he was expected to
live out his life as a Jew… and for the Jewish people nothing is more sacred
then obeying the law… the Jewish religion is about obeying the law of god…

and if we read about Jesus, he lived a typical Jewish life, although we don’t
know what happened between the ages of 12 and 30… but I for one,
am willing to bet the farm on the fact that he lived his life as a typical
Jewish man living in Judah the first century………he worked as a carpenter
and most likely lived at home… with mom pushing him to date and marry
and carry on the family name within the Jewish tradition……
living and working and then finally dying as just another Jewish person
during that time period………

but why he began his ministry, we don’t know… but I can guess…
he had heard stories about his fabled childhood… what person can
lead a traditional, long-established ancestral life that was expected of him,
given the stories of his birth…it must give one pause…

how does one live up to those stories of birth by
leading a traditional, ancestral life?

I for one, don’t know how………

so at some point, he left his traditional, established, sanctioned life
and began a new path… Just like the Buddha… he found a path outside
of the norm, of what was expected of a typical male in his time and place…

He left being Jesus and became the savior…… a path few take…

and what may have drove him to take this extraordinary path/road?

He couldn’t have been happy or satisfied or pleased with his life…
because happy, satisfied, pleased people don’t walk away from what
is expected and/or sanctified by society…they carry out their duties
as is expected of them by society…they work, they marry and have babies
and grow old together and then die… that is the expected path
of people in every society… to follow the established norm of what the
society expects…and to follow the path that every other person follows
and is expected to follow…

But Jesus didn’t and the Buddha didn’t…

and if we carry this to our modern world, we see this of Gandhi… he tried
to follow the path that was expected of him… he became a lawyer…
and tried to follow the expected, social norm that every person of India
is expected to follow… just as we Americans expect people in America
to follow the established norms and traditions of our society……

and we see that Martin Luther King also begin the path of expectations
and soon began to travel the less traveled road… of fighting injustice
wherever he found them and what of his expected path? Of being a preacher
and preaching the word of god? He didn’t really follow that path, did he?

had MLK followed tradition and was simply a preacher who preached in
a church and minister to the needs of his flock… we would have never
heard of MLK… He would have died an old man and well loved preacher,
but he wouldn’t have found his calling in life had he played it safe and was
simply a preacher in a church…

If you name me someone who is famous, I can probably guess that person
became famous not by following the given expectations of his family or
of his society… they probably did something that was beyond, outside
of the expectations that their society and their families had for them……

Greatness is not found in obeying and leading social or family expectations,
but in overcoming those expectations and becoming something different…

Lincoln was a simple country lawyer who could have stayed as a country
lawyer and made a name for himself and some money and he would
have been respected and admired by the people of Springfield ILL…
but he rose above and beyond the expectations of his society and
his family by becoming president………

the path to becoming and to become great, doesn’t lie within
following expectations of society or friends or family…
it is an infinitely harder path to follow…

take another name, an “evil” name, Adolph Hitler…….
his path, the path he wanted to follow was to be a painter…
he tried to enter a couple of schools of painting and was rejected…

How history would have changed had he been accepted and became
a painter……to follow a path that was traditional and accepted by society…
it might have been frowned upon within certain circles, but it was still
an accepted path within society……

but think of his future… where instead he became the “Furhrer”…
that path was definitely not part of the established and socially
accepted path within society… no one grows up with the approval
of society that suggests that they become a dictator…
Hitler traveled the less travel path and created destruction
and chaos throughout the world… a less traveled path…
and without the approval of society…

it is important to note the life path of those who have changed
and created the modern world…they stood outside of the normal
standard path that society “deems” useful and important…

following the traditional, established, sanctioned life doesn’t lead
one to find new paths or to greatness or to becoming…….

it is only by overcoming what is expected and established,
that one can achieve true and lasting achievements
and accomplishments………

to find a role model requires one to find a role model who
overthrew the establish order and the traditional order of things…

be the Buddha and walk away from the traditional and established
existence that is meant for you…… become the Buddha by
engaging in an existence that lies outside of the traditional
and established path of society…

become something more……

Kropotkin

so let us bring this down to earth, as IAM always says…

I, Kropotkin…who would I take as my role model?

who would lead me to the lesser traveled road where
I am no longer following the traditional, established path
allowed by society……

I do lead a well established life where I pay my taxes
and obey the laws and I am a member of a union
and I vote and don’t litter… I am a valued and contributing
member of society…

I have never been in jail and I don’t make waves…

so, at my advance age, who should be the person I follow?

I would think it is clear that I engage with a couple of different people…
one would be Nietzsche, then Spinoza and Kierkegaard…
along with Kazantzakis and Socrates… Pierre Hadot and William Barrett…
with Colin Wilson and Henry Adams…

my spiritual hero’s as it were…

My philosophical journey would have these names within it…

and no one on this list is a “radical” or an “anarchist” or even a “troublemaker”
well except for Socrates…

each of these people follow the rules, were “good” citizens, they participated
within the societies rules… and yet, they reached beyond the traditional,
expected path of a person in that day and age…they explored what laid
beyond the normal parameters of what society expected and had established…

I can be a “good” citizen and still be able to explore what is possible for
human beings to achieve…I can overcome without resorting to any type
of radicalism or extremism…….

the path to becoming human doesn’t lie within the road of living an anarchist life
or living an libertarian life…it just requires us to acknowledge that there is a path
beyond the normal, expected, established path that society lays out for us…

I can achieve without becoming a doctor or a priest or a accountant…

I can achieve by pressing beyond what is expected and demanded of me
by society… I am not going to practice what I did before which is
several years of being an anarchist because that life no longer suits me
in my old age… being a radical is a game for the young… I am just going to
explore what it takes to become human, fully human by laying out the road map
that it takes to become human… to go beyond just being animal or being animal/human…

we seek to become human… beyond the instincts and animal nature that is
the common theme of our society…to rise above the animal nature of
hate and greed and lust and anger and intolerance and bigotry……

to seek that which is fully human by rising above instincts and rising above
hate and greed and lust and anger and intolerance and bigotry………

the path less traveled, as it were…

we have gone from animal to animal/human and now we must finish
the next part of our road by going from animal/human to fully human…

and that path is the road less traveled…

Kropotkin

we shall examine more closely two such “spiritual” hero’s of mine…

We have two such writers who lived roughly at the same time and yet,
have quite different agendas……

the first is Kierkegaard and the second is Marx……

I shall at the outset, make it understood that I was a Kierkegaardian
follower for years and read everything he wrote and was written about him…

I am less so a follower of Marx…

I shall cover Marx first for reasons that should become apparent…

Marx lived from 1818 to 1883…his theory of history was called,
“Historical Materialism” and

“that is centered around the idea that the forms
of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development
of human productive power”

“Freedom is found in the human community, not in isolation”

(italics quotes are found in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy)

for Marx, it wasn’t about the individual, it was about the society at large…
and how we adapted (or didn’t adapt) within society that was the question…

for Marx, it was about the overall movement of history that matter,
the large scale forces of society that moved and change history…
for Marx, the substructure of history was economics, as involving all of us,
that is what matter… the individual was simply a pawn or a toy within the
large scale forces of history……

and we have Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855… who thought the opposite… he was about
the individual, he didn’t care about the large scale forces that dominated
our lives… for K. it was about our own individual choices that matter…

for K. it was about our own accountability and responsibility in making
our own choices, whereas for Marx, it didn’t matter if we were
accountable or responsible for our choices because our own choices
matter little given the broad scope of historical forces that dictated
our lives… dictated our lives politically, economically, socially…
we have very little or practically no choice in Marxist theory…

Marxism is the study of large scale forces that we cannot individually
have any control over…

whereas for K. those large scale forces don’t mean shit… because
K. was only interested in what it meant to be an individual, a Christian,
in our modern world…….

History, so far, has given the nod to Marx for his understanding that
the world is about the large scale, beyond our individual choices
and possibilities, our large scale movement of human beings who are
swept up by historical forces beyond their control…

think of the ism’s and ideologies of our modern age…

democracy, capitalism, communism, Catholicism, socialism…
not one is about the individual and their own individual choices…
each of these modern ism’s and ideology is about the large scale
historical movement of people leading toward some direction.

within these large scale forces, lies the single human being…
a human being made insignificant by the dominate forces of history that
move societies and entire civilizations…

For K. the choice was between an individual and god…
the large scale forces that dominated humankind like
capitalism wasn’t as important as the individual choices we made
in regards to what kind of person we are going to be……

that is why K. writes about morality and ethics and aesthetics and
psychology… these things matter when dealing with the individual…
but they aren’t important when dealing with the forces of history…
what does the force of history care about Aesthetics or morality when
it involves the motion of millions in its impersonal drive to achieve what?
is really the question that Marx labored under… if it is impersonal,
then what could those large scale forces be trying to achieve??

K. was called the first existentialist because he was the first to
write about the individual and their personal choices to be
who they are… we cannot become who we are given the
large scale nature of the human condition as given by Marx…
but we can become who we are given the understanding
by K.

if we are alienated by forces of history, as in Marx,
we have very little recourse outside of changing
the entire structure of man… we cannot become who we are
in a Marxist universe because we are determined by forces
that are too large for any one individual to comprehend or
to large for any one individual to change……

but K. doesn’t have this problem…
you can become who you are by your choices…
I can choose to become because the only choice we have
is between the individual and god… there are no other real choices…

whereas in Marx, you have no choice of any kind… life is determined
for you by the large scale forces that exists…

it is hard to change the nature of things if, as Marx thinks, you are simply
a drop of water in a large ocean…

but if you are a single drop of water, then you can make choices, as K.
works out…

for K. life is about the choices and decisions one makes…
one can become accountable and responsible for our lives…

for Marx, we cannot be guilty if we are simply a drop of water in the midst
of millions of drops of water…

in Marx, we are enslaved within the various ism’s and ideologies
of history…

we are free in K. because we are not enslaved within the various
ism’s and ideologies of history…

and what of my understanding of the universe?

is Kierkegaard right or is Marx right?

I believe both to be right… we do have choices and we can
answer to our responsibilities and obligations of existence
and we are enslaved within the vast forces of historical
existence… of forces that sweep us, to and fro, within
human existence…how do we reconcile our individual choices
as given by K. and how reconcile our choices within
a large scale domination of individuals by such forces
as historical materialism as given by Marx?

they are both right… now what?

Kropotkin

in the understanding of the world, it is clear that
the world is Marxian, not Kierkegaardian……

in our world, beauty is unimportant and love is unimportant
and hope and honesty and charity and all those positive values
have no standing……

as it true in a Marxian world… we are simply pawns or nothing
more the cannon fodder for the universe to use and abuse…

we have no individual value as human beings in a Marxian world…

because we don’t live in a K. world… where we would have
individual value and individual choice and responsibilities…

the question becomes, how do we find balance between the
Marxian world we live in and the Kierkegaardian world we should
be in………

how do we get from point A to point B?

What is the middle ground from where we are to where
we should be?

Kropotkin

existentialism is a movement designed to make the answer
about individual choices and individual responsibilities and
obligations…the modern world is Marxian which is to say,
individual choices and responsibilities are negated by
ism’s and ideologies that nihilistic in nature…

nihilism is the negation of human beings and their values…

I belong to a union where we must, must unite together to
be able to combat the ongoing and ever present
nihilism of capitalism and corporations that slavishly
follow the nihilism of the modern world………

I am given the right to vote with million of my fellow American to choose
the next president and I stand with millions in an all encompassing
political and economic system that doesn’t allow dissent or escape from…

I am part of millions…

and as part of millions of people, how do I find my individual self?

How do I make Kierkegaardian choices of responsibility and accountability
when I stand with millions?

with so many millions, I am just one drop of water in an ocean of people…

and because I stand with so many millions, it doesn’t matter if I choose or
don’t decide to choose or if I stand alone… it just doesn’t matter what choice
I make because it is negated within the millions of other choices……

nihilism is not only found in the negation of human being and their values,
it is found in the modern world of negation by simply being one atom in the midst
of billions of atoms… one atom has no possibility of free action or accountability
because it is just one atom… and the flow of the surrounding forces overwhelm
the one atom…

does a drop of water in the midst of the ocean have any choice?

any choice at all?

I would say no… how could it?

the very vastness of the world denies us any possibility for choices
or responsibilities or accountability…………

as one atom in a midst of billions of atoms… what are my choices?

and thus the rise of existentialism… attempting to create individual choices
and possibilities in the midst of forces that deny individual choices
and responsibilities……

forces like capitalism and communism and Catholicism and
Buddhism and democracy and dictatorships and fascism
and socialism… all meant to deny human beings individual
choices and possibilities………

or to phrase it another way… Kierkegaard and Marx were both right
and K. and Marx were both wrong………

there is a middle way and the modern question is “what is that middle path
between K. and Marx?”

Kropotkin

how are we to find our way clear of alienation
and discontentment given we exists in a world that
has discounted and voided our individual choices
and possibilities?

for alienation and our winter of discontentment rises
from the very fact we are divorced from any possibility of
becoming who we are given the reality we are but a single drop
of water in a vast ocean…

how am I to impact the world around me given I am but
one drop of water?

How am I to influence or change the vast forces surrounding me
when I have no power or influence to create change?

I must turn inward to make any change but in that path lies
the ruin of the Roman Empire… for the empire became
to powerful and didn’t allow for any individual to impact or change
the forces that dominated the empire toward the end and so people
were left with one choice and one choice only, turn inward and work
their own possibilities with god… but in doing so, the Roman empire
was lost because to fuel an civilization requires, demands the energy of
the people to allow it to function… once the people turned inward,
the empire lost their source of power to power it… and the inevitable
collapse was simple a matter of time…

to fuel an civilization or society or a state, requires energy,
and that energy is derived from the people… we fuel
any state, empire, civilization with the energy we give to
that empire… we are the fuel of empires, just like gas is the fuel
of cars and if we deny a car fuel, it will simply stop working
and the same is of civilizations and empires and the state…

the state simply stops working if the people turn their energy elsewhere,
like in finding their own answers or turning inwards… and the new ism
of Christianity allowed people to turn inwards to escape the destructive
nihilism of the Roman empire… the empire collapsed… simple as that…

so we can look forward to a nihilistic state which denies us, or
which negates us a people and our values……
or we can take our energy away from that empire or state and watch
the state or empire be destroyed from lack of energy………

the question of the state or empire is a question of energy…
how do we get people to buy into a certain state that will
allow the state to gain power to rise and become……

if “we the people” refuse to power with our energy, the state,
the state dies…and this is where we are at right now…

the state, the United States of America has by it nihilistic, negation
of people and their values, has forced people to walk away from,
no longer power the U.S with the power of the people…….

the U.S is no longer a viable state because the power needed to
power the state is no longer there because of its negation of
people and their values… why participate in a state that negates
who you are and your values?

a state, country or empire can only last as long as it is power by
the energy and devotion of the people… once the people have
walked away from the state, it is doomed…
and people aren’t just walking away from the U.S, they are running…
and this is shown by the many millions of people who won’t power
the state by voting or espousing values that make taxes more important
then people’s lives…

we, as a country, hold to nihilistic values that put money/profits ahead
of people and their values… and to do so, means that millions of people
will simply walk away because they don’t want to be negated or devalued
as people……

why fight for a country that simply denies or negates my value
as a person?

why indeed?

and so I withdraw my energy from America and with every single person who
withdraws their energy from America, makes America less strong and weaker…
if enough people withdraw their energy from America, America has a country
is done……. but how do we escape from this given that America
hold nihilistic values?

I cannot, cannot hold to being an American if I am negated and
devalued for money/profits… if money/profits are of greater value
then I am, why would/should I give America my energy?

I don’t………
simple answer…

so, America is on the path to becoming a failed empire because it
values nihilism over people and their values…….

and so, I stand, alone, a drop in the ocean… wondering what
should I do? Should I negate myself in some attempt to save America or
do I simply try to save myself and become accountable, responsible to
just me and me alone?

Kropotkin

Yeah, I get this. The global economy is clearly personified by amoral capitalists. With their crony pols in the government, their military industrial complex states and their thugs in the military and police departments. And in an increasingly autocratic world.

And, sure, when your frame of mind revolves almost entirely around a potent combination of “what’s in it for me?” and “show me the money”, it’s moral nihilism all the way down.

But the alternatives you propose are [to me] almost always encompassed in general description intellectual contraptions. And, from my frame of mind, a hop, a step and a jump from your own rendition of moral and political objectivism.

Unfortunately, in either direction, I am no less fractured and fragmented. And, so, not to be brutally cynical about the world we live in today is becoming increasingly out of reach.

Good luck with whatever hope you have managed to cling to.

Unless the autocrats see this as an obvious requirement to retain some measure of essential control, in the , vise of a hidden God.!

both Iam and Meno have interesting if not slightly different takes…

today, I shall offer up another thought…

as I have written that the world is Marxian… which is to say,
we are just as negated under Marxism as we are negated under
Capitalism…and vast forces which we have no control over dominate
us… the Coronavirus begins in China and wrecks havoc all over the world
and we, as individuals, have very little control over what may happen in regards
to governmental responses to the virus or to what the business we work for might do…

when vast forces such as capitalism act, we individually, have very little control over it…

I call that a Marxian world…… but the other choice is a Kierkegaardian world…

which is to say, what happens out there is of far less important then what happens
inside of us… is far less important then the choices we make about who we are
and what it means to be human and what our values are going to be……

To balance out the world, we need to balance out the Marxist world out there
with Kierkegaardian choices…I see this as a balancing act… when the world
takes our control away, we must immerse ourselves in our choices, think of this
like those famous scales of justice… which must balance… if the world goes way
out of line then to balance the scales, we must go the other way in making choices…

if the world makes few demands of us, then we don’t have to go to extreme lengths
to balance the scales…

if the world is moderate, we too can be moderate in our response to the
question, who are you and what does it mean to be human?

if the world is extreme, like it is now and demands all our time, money, effort,
to help maintain the world as it negates and dehumanizes us, then we must react
in extreme ways to deny the world its devaluation of human beings…

this sounds abstract but in my mind it isn’t… I can clearly see how the world
has tried to deny who we are by the demands of the world that we sacrifice ourselves
to create profits/money…

and the world shows us this devaluation every time it places money or profits
or material goods before human beings and their values…

when people demand that we put taxpayers money before
human beings, then we are devaluing people and their values…

when the state places private property before people and their values,
then we are devaluing people… dehumanizing them…

that extremism must be fought… and we can fight back with
Kierkegaardian choices…K. question was this,
how can one become Christian in a Christian world?

He felt that becoming a Christian was an individual choice, made
individually within the confines of our possibilities…

ask yourself, what choices do you make that exist outside of
confines of what society demands? for example, as a young person,
you must at some point decide to “do” something because that is a choice
society demands on all of us… become a “productive” member of society…

if I am asking myself what does it mean to be human and what are our possibilities,
but the standards of society, I am not, not being productive…I am leaching off
of society…in asking personal, individual questions of existence…

Society/state demands that we are productive members of society…
but in that “being productive” we must sacrifice ourselves, out bodies
and soul and that is where I draw the line…I must contribute to society
and that contribution must be in energy and effort and time into creating
profits… and that is the only option available to me…

I have no other value outside of the creation of profits…

and yet I deny this… I can contribute by laying out the ground work of
what it means to be human in out modern age… but Kropotkin, you aren’t
really being a “productive member” of society if you don’t consume or produce
in ways that create profits…and that is a Marxist/capitalist vision of what it means
to be human…

the Kierkegaardian vision of being human asks ourselves, what does it mean to be human?

what are my possibilities? to engage with god is certainly one such possibility
but that is frowned upon within society because it doesn’t create or consume
in ways that creates profits…

to think about what our possibilities are isn’t about creating profits
and that is the question K. asked…

he engaged with one of the human questions and his answer was god…

but Kropotkin, tell us what questions we should engage with?

I cannot… I can only tell you what questions I am engaged with…
each of us come to this individually, with our own questions about what it
means to be human and thus I cannot tell you what questions are yours…

and this choice, this possibilities of choices is Kierkegaardian…to engage
with your own possibilities is Kierkegaardian and not Marxism or capitalism……

and that should we engage with something that doesn’t create profits, is
against the prejudices and biases of our modern age…

Kropotkin

no pete you can’t kick-or-guard against karl because he’s like a UFC grappler… and you’ve seen what happens to folks who fuck with grapplers in the cage.

the whole kierkegaardian philosophical program was a brilliant expression and symptom of everything karl had diagnosed as the psychological basis for philosophy itself. and while karl never denies that european existentialism did ask legitimate questions about the nature of existence, the sonofabitch had enough sense to know the difference between conceptual problems and real, lived material struggle against real, lived material problems, and didn’t waste time fiddling with poetry and creative writing projects. besides, how much of K’s career as a polemicist was directed against the bourgeois and the church? see what i mean? there would be no bourgeois and church if karl were made sheriff from the beginning… and hence, no kierkegaardian philosophical program.

K: ah, you have made my point for me… notice the very words you used…

Marx “had enough sense to know the difference between conceptual problem and real, lived
material struggle against real, lived material problems, and didn’t waste time fiddling with
poetry and creative writing projects”

Marx didn’t care about beauty or love or poetry or anything that actually does give
our life meaning… whereas Kierkegaardian problems are problems about beauty,
love, poetry… in fact, we read Kierkegaard for his thoughts about Aesthetics…
thoughts about the things that Marx never notice or wrote about…

the world would be better off if we engaged in the Kierkegaardian problems
of love, beauty, poems, creative writing projects, Aesthetics… that is why we
read someone like Kierkegaard…

Marx is engaged in economics and certainly doesn’t have time for such
trifles like poetry or beauty… and so is the modern world of capitalism…
it doesn’t have time for anything that doesn’t “contribute” to the GDP or
the Dow Jones…that is the difference between the modern world of Marxism/
capitalism and a Kierkegaard world…….

I think we should engage in art and beauty and love with equal or more fervor as we
engage with material matters of profits and money or perhaps I could be so bold
as to suggest and be very unamerican in doing so and suggest that we should engage
in far less profits/money and far more engagement with art and beauty and love
and poetry and all matters of Aesthetics…

and that is my point…less materialism and more Aesthetics… less marx/capitalism
and more Kierkegaard…

Kropotkin

I think it’s time that you read this, Pete.

Existentialism cannot take precedence in our world any longer. Maybe in the 20th century, but not today. We gotta get our ducks in order so we don’t fuck this thing up. We can’t afford these philosophical distractions anymore, Pete.