a new understanding of today, time and space.

That makes a sort of pseudo-sense (‘pseudo" in the sense that external world neurons, as they are composed of something other than subjective experience cannot know or anticipate anything as they, not being made up of consciousness are as conscious as a brick) when it comes to their formation of the experience of the future five or ten minutes from now (although one can make the argument that the process of perception in terms of the brain copying the dispositions of the external world as it assumes "now’ does not borrow from the past as past experience ceases to exist with every passing moment and the brain only receives and copies the external world as the external world forms its present in sensory terms), but past-experience-borrowing does not follow if in the future one experiences something one has never experienced before.

If the past ceases to exist with every passing moment then the future can never exist either except as an imaginary state
And so all sensory experience can therefore only occur in the present which is also in an ever changing state of existence

Well, the subjectively experienced doppelgangers of states of the external world that no longer obtain cease to exist (in the mythology that the brain creates consciousness and that consciousness can come into and go out of existence).

The external world, meanwhile, according to the mythology that it and the objects it atomically “Play-dohs” into consists of physical energy which, according to the 1st Law of Thermodynamics cannot come into or go out of existence, must always exist and is only able to change into non-conscious, non-brain-generated forms of past, present, and future.

Shit I’ve had experiences with a hippocampus myself. 'bout twenty years ago me and a buddy drove to Greenville for some party his girlfriend was invited too. She was a student at ECU, and let me tell you… I’ve never seen so many fat girls in one place at one time, as I did on that campus. It was unbelievable dude.

(this fuckin guy)

I see what you did there.

Strange, one of my favourite jokes now requires more thought about the punchline than it used to. You’ll understand soon. I blame internet porn tbh. Anyway.

There was this guy, he’d been married for umpteen years and if they were honest, some of the magic had worn off. They hadn’t had sex in months. One night he comes home and his wife opens the door. He looks at her in a way he hasn’t for a long time. “Let’s go upstairs” he says. His wife’s eyes light up and she says “ok, let’s go.” They go into the bedroom. “Strip” he says, he’s never been so masterful before. ‘This is just like 50 shades of grey’ she thinks as she throws off her clothes. She’s naked, he comes closer. “Now, do a handstand.” Channeling her highschool self she tells him to grab her legs and does a perfect handstand in front of the mirror. He walks behind her, and pushes his face between her legs. She gasps in anticipation.

“The guys at work are right, I would look good with a beard.”

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, "It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.

I like these original takes on matters and I thank you for them…

When last seen, I was in the process of understanding
being and becoming in terms of thermodynamics…
entropy to be exact…and process is a good word to use…

being is a process as is becoming…….

and being isn’t just being… we human beings because of process,
are always, always in some change or another… we aren’t fixed…
physically anyway… our bodies because of processes that have existed for
billions of years, continue to change us physically…whether we are aware of
it or not… we age is one such process… and what is aging? it is simply the
process of entropy at work in our bodies… our bodies become disordered
as we become older…and that disorder is shown by my inability to
run as fast, or to lift as much or my lack of endurance…
my body is decaying and that is entropy at work…

we can never really just be… being is just a momentary stop in the
ever ongoing process of entropy… we are always becoming…

at some point, my body will become so disordered, that I will
naturally die of old age… death is human entropy taken to
its logical end…

at most, at most, we can only slow down the process of entropy…
if illness or accidents don’t kill us, entropy is sure to…

so physically, human process is simply entropy working on our bodies,
making it disorder… aging…and there is really nothing we can do about
entropy… the attempt to make us “ageless” is a futile attempt because
we cannot defeat physics. We cannot end something that is built into
the universe… we cannot end something that is part and parcel of
the universe…there is matter… stars, planets, comets, galaxies and entropy…
there is energy and there is entropy…

any description of the universe that doesn’t include entropy isn’t
really a description of the universe…

and so we return to becoming…in human beings… physically,
becoming is really just more and more entropy,
disorder in the human being…is aging…

so when we refer to becoming in human being it cannot be
something physical because that is aging and then death…

no, becoming refers to something that we do emotionally,
psychology, mental… it is growth that is inside of us…

when we understand human beings have gone from animals, like dogs
and cats and birds and cows, to being animal/human… that isn’t a
physical change we are referring to… the human structure hasn’t changed
much in a million years… we are referring to the changes within us…
what has change internally that has allowed us to go from animal to
animal/human? we have done something other animals haven’t done,
which is rise above instinct… we aren’t ruled by instinct… we can
react outside of our instincts… we have a third choice, outside of
fight or flight. and that third choice is a human choice…

and we want to continue our growth from animal to animal/human to
becoming human, fully human and that means we grow enough to
rise above instincts, all instincts……… we make choices based not on
any instincts, such as to mate or to hold to hate but we can rise above
our instinctual nature and make our choices as human beings…
with rational, logical or even just common sense…

when we rise above instincts, that means we rise above violence,
for violence is an instinctual matter, we rise above petty bickering
about land or money or material goods or ego…

we do what is right because it is right according to matters above instincts…
we do what is right not because our instincts told us, but because it
becomes the right thing to do…and that “right” thing to do, is
situational ethics… and dependent upon the situation, we may
save ourselves and again, we may sacrifice ourselves…
there is no universal ethical requirement like Kant’s duty…

but we can see how our understanding of matter like entropy
can lead us to make ethical choices… the universe is
engaged in entropy… we are part of the universe and thus
we too, are engaged in entropy…all that changes is the size…
we are small and we can see entropy happening to us, if we look,
every single day, whereas we cannot see within the stars and galaxies,
entropy, but it is there… just as surely as it is within us, entropy
exists and influences the stars and planets and galaxies and the
universe…

so how are we to think about entropy and say, ethics?

the question of entropy is a question of disorder, things naturally
become disorder unless enough energy is put into the system to
maintain order…

to hold order within a system, is a question of energy being put into
that system… as disorder is natural, entropy is natural, by doing nothing,
the disorder within that system will increase, that is the law of nature, of
entropy…to maintain a system, we must not only keep enough energy in
the system to maintain that system, but because entropy naturally
increases as time goes by, we must increase the amount of energy
that goes into a system…

a practical demonstration: your car…when we buy a new car, it needs
are basic and minimal… you put into it the right amount of gas and
the right amount of oil and watch the tire pressure… basic stuff every
single car needs… as the car gets older, the car needs more work,
more energy, more time to keep it running… that is entropy…
the car is aging, it is becoming more disordered…the car begins to
leak oil and doesn’t work as well, despite changing parts…
the car is engaged in entropy just as we human beings engage
in entropy…at some point, even with care and new parts and
a lot of mechanical work, the car won’t work as well as it did
when it was brand new… and then at some point, the car
is so undependable that you start to think about getting rid of it…
it become so much of an time consuming, gas guzzling, money eater,
that getting rid of the car becomes the best way to save yourself
time, money, effort… that is entropy…you already know
what entropy is……. and that there is no getting around
entropy……

so the question of ethics in a system becomes a question of
maintaining energy in a system… how do we keep the system
running? that is what social systems and political systems
and economic systems work on… how do we keep the system running?

and if the system is sucking up so much energy, time, money, effort,
perhaps we should think about replacing that system…

and that is where we are in regards to the economic system called
capitalism… is it worth the trouble to keep that system working?

that there comes a time in every systems life that entropy becomes
so much of a problem, that is it cheaper to dump that system then
try to keep it going, just like a car…….are we here with
not only the economic system of capitalism, but perhaps we are
also here with the political system, democracy?

has that “car” done all it can?

an understanding of where we are at, will help us engage in
some REAL dialogue about where we are and where we want to be…

Are our current systems no longer energy efficient enough to allow
them to continue on?

Kropotkin

we can see this lack of energy and effort by our elections…
we only had, roughly, 57% of eligible voters vote in 2016…

just as we put energy, money, time, effort into things that
we want to save/preserve/keep… if only slightly more then
half of all possible voters vote, then perhaps the current system
isn’t worth saving?

people putting their time, money, effort, energy into things that
they want to keep, if they don’t, then the answer become quite clear…

what is the solution?

Kropotkin

a little something different today…

I sat down to write something, perhaps profound, probably not,
but in any case, I was sitting down and I noticed that the stock market
dropped, and dropped big. The Virus that has everyone in California in a panic,
isn’t going anywhere and is dramatically increasing…

this is a case where the real world has intruded into my
philosophical speculations……

I can’t say I’m scared or worried, but I am concerned…

when I go to work later today, I will be facing customers that
are wearing mask and gloves and are panic buying things like
water and rubber gloves and toilet paper…

I rationally know that my chances of getting the virus is small and
my chance of death is really, really, really small………but that is intellectually,
emotionally, I am not as secure about it… but that the thing about the emotions,
they often overwhelm our rational, logical side…and this is why we are still
animal/human instead of human, fully human…

we still lead with our feelings/instincts about things instead of rising above
our feelings/instincts and being rational about things…

I am a healthy man, abet an older man… my preconditions are not
of the lungs or heart, but of the back and knees and hips… and so, my
risk is low… and I must lead with that… not with my emotions/feelings/instincts

I can logically think about my chances of getting the virus
and conclude even in my very public job where I deal with
hundreds of people a day, my chances are slim of getting the virus…

but what of the other matters, the stock market crash… I can do nothing
about that… what little I have to retire on is most likely going to take
a major hit, but I cannot do anything about that…I can only deal with
me and my reaction to current events… I cannot control the oil war currently
going on and I cannot control the stock market and I cannot control the Coronavirus…

all I have is me… and I must respond to this very real crisis in a human
way, not with instincts or feelings or emotions, but with an understanding
of the situation at hand… I must be rational and pause and reflect at
every action I take or don’t take, as the case may be…

I must act within the possibilities for me… I cannot influence matters
outside of my control…I don’t need to panic at that… I just need to
know what I can control and what I cannot and deal with what I can control…

my wife is home sick today, just a plain old flu, took her to urgent care
last night, so I have another brick in the wall today…but do I
need to be panic or be overwhelmed? no, I must do what I can with
what I have… nothing more is needed…

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
we have in science certain idea’s and one of those idea’s
is the three laws of thermodynamics…

the three laws are basically laws of energy…

I don’t care too much about the third law but the first two,
especially the second law is of great concern to me…

the first law states simply that there is X amount of energy in
the universe…that can never increase or decrease…energy moves,
but it doesn’t increase or decrease…

we know this from Einstein when he made matter and energy
interchangeable… they are different forms of the same thing
and so, that matter and energy can change form, from matter to
energy and back again… but the amount of energy/matter doesn’t
change…the overall amount in the universe is the exact same as it
was in the beginning of the universe and will be the exact same at
the end of the universe……

that the second law is simply a comment about energy itself…
that energy spreads out… and that spreading out is entropy…
when energy is collected and used, it is in some form or another…

think of firewood…we have some wood… it has X amount of energy.
it is matter and matter and energy is the same…

so let us burn that firewood… the amount of matter/energy remains the same
after we burn that firewood… we feel the change in terms of heat… that heat is
the same amount of energy as the firewood…there is no difference…

so what about entropy? Entropy is simply the leveling out of that energy…

if we have a glass of hot water and then if nothing else happens, the
temperature of the glass water will slowly go down from hot to warm to room
temperature…that temperature drop is entropy… the dissipation of energy,
is entropy…I am old… just turned 61… old age is the action of entropy…

it is about the amount of energy I use… I cannot lift heavy things like
I used to… that is entropy… I am weaker, not as strong, I cannot run as fast,
nor walk as long as I used to…even thou I still eat food and drink water
and I average around 5000 steps a day, the amount of energy available to me,
is lower then it used to be…

ever buy a box of crackers and ate one and it was stale… that is
entropy… the box was sealed up and nothing impacted on the cracker
from the outside, but it was still stale… that is entropy at work…

I hate cleaning… left to me, our house wouldn’t get clean…
but I have noticed that when we go on vacation, say, 2 weeks,
we might have left the house spotless, no dust, no mess of any kind,
and yet when we return home, the house was a dusty and smelled funny
and it wasn’t as clean as when we left it… that is entropy…the movement
from order to chaos… by the dissipation of energy……it takes energy to keep
a room clean and if we stop putting energy into cleaning a room, it will
get dirty… that action of getting dirty is entropy…to keep a clean room requires
energy…to maintain order requires energy…

my wife and I will go out and happen to see young couples with children…
we have agreed to the fact that we don’t have the energy to contain
children from being chaotic… to keep children in order, requires energy…

that is why we leave the raising of children to the young… they still have the
energy to maintain order…

now any system to maintain itself requires energy… think of your body as
a system… if it is not feed, it will run out of energy and eventually die…
we must have energy in our system to be able to maintain it…

this is true of any system, be it natural, mechanical or biological……

our biological system demands energy to maintain itself… as all biological
systems must have energy to survive…

now the forms of energy might be different between the systems, but
the basic idea is the same…for example, a car is a mechanical system…
it doesn’t run on the same energy basis that a biological system needs…

a car requires gas to have energy… there is no difference between gas for
a car and food for a person or animal… it is the exact same thing…
energy… it might take a different form, but it is still energy…

remember Einstein, that matter and energy is the same thing…
gas as matter and food as matter is the same thing… energy for
a system…

and every thing, every thing is part of a system…
from our bodies to political systems to mechanical systems
such as cars and solar systems as our solar system is a system…

now look up system in the dictionary: a system is a set of rules,
an arrangement of things, or a group of related things that work toward
a common goal… an example of a system are the laws and procedures of
a democratic government… an example of a system is all the organs that work
together for digestion…

so, as we all, every single bit of matter or energy is part of a system,
then the trick is to understand systems as philosophy……

so how is virtue, as an aspect of an system, how does virtue work?

that is a philosophical question… what is the relationship
between virtue and any discussion of systems? how does virtue
work in regards to a political system? or how does virtue work in
regards to an economic system? we cannot take advantage of virtue
in regards to a mechanical system because virtue has no relationship
to any mechanical system such as cars… we cannot connect virtue
to mechanical systems nor can we connect virtue to our solar system…
it simply doesn’t work…

but can we connect virtue to biological systems as the human body?

K: I am adding something I thought of this morning as I rush to get
ready to go to work…

the increase in Entropy is really about efficiency… my body is less
efficient as I grow older… the cars we drive around become less
efficient as they grow old…one way to think of entropy is to
understand it as things becoming less efficient…
at some point, my body will become so inefficient that it will cease
to work, just as at some point, my car will become so inefficient
that one morning, it will fail to start and you need to get a new car…

so entropy is the loss of efficiency in any system… we in America
see this entropy in our political systems, they have become less efficient,
there is an increase in entropy in America’s political, economic, social
systems, there is a loss of efficiency in America systems……

the only way to combat that is by an increase in energy into the various
systems…we must increase the systems energy, but how?

we can increase a system energy by putting in increasing time, money, effort
an energy…we can limit the amount of entropy in any system by becoming
more efficient and/or by putting increased time, money, effort into
said systems…

by getting more people to buy into our political, economic, social systems…
that buy in increases our political, economic, social systems efficiency with
an increase in effort put back into a system… any increase in time, money, effort
spent improves the efficiency of a system…

but what is true of large systems, is also true of small systems…
we see this is true in cars and in people…if we put more effort into
being moral, we limit the amount of entropy in morality…and we become
more efficient…

think about it…

Kropotkin

If as I have suggested, institutions and government
and society and political systems and economic
systems are feed by like a car, like a human being, then
what is this magical food/energy source?

these institutions are fed by the energy, effort,
time, money we put into these systems…

at one time, belief in certain religious systems were prevalent in
the world… for example, certain parts of the ancient world,
believe in Apollo and Aphrodite and Ares and Zeus and Hera
were the religious icons of the Greek world…But ask yourself,
what happened to these gods and goddess?

they died from a lack of energy… they were no longer being fed
by the energy, passion, time, effort and money of the people…
they died an entropic death from a lack of energy…

for a belief system to maintain its coherence, it must have a certain
amount of energy going into it… without that energy going into every
system, it eventual dies… the Roman and Greek and Egyptian belief
systems all died an entropic death by losing too much energy…
not enough people believed in and support those belief systems to
allow them to survive…

belief systems like cars and people require energy to maintain itself…

government is no different, if we deprive government its energy, it
dies…if we take away our allegiance from government and take
away our energy and time, money, passion and our involvement
in government, it dies… simple as that…

why is American government in so much trouble today?

enough people have taken their energy, time, money and effort
and put it elsewhere…not into government, but into something else…

take the cult of trump… that energy, time, money and effort
put into the Cult of trump has damaged America…

I would call the cult of trump a energy vampire… it takes real energy
and effort and time and money and sinks it into something wasteful
and worthless… it takes energy away from the important matter like America
and it fuels trump/IQ45… which is a waste of energy…because it doesn’t
help our government or our society or our state or our political or economic
systems…that is where our energy, time, money, effort, should be…

we can save that in which we put our energy, time, money effort into…

so if we put our energy into democracy and freedom, that is what we can save
and promote and it becomes “the value system” by which we decide all other values…

Nazi’s rose because people put their energy, time, money, passion and effort
into the Nazi’s… if the people had put their effort, time, money, passion into
the government it would have survived and flourished and become the government
that people need and want…the energy you put into something helps
decides if that something lives or dies… so by participating in our capitalistic
system, by putting energy into capitalism, it survive and flourishes…
take energy away from capitalism and it dies………I must admit, taking
away energy from a political or economic system isn’t very flashy or
dramatic or even very radical… killing a political system slowly or
a economic system slowly is the best way to go about it though…

because that slow death allows a new system to form and become
our new reality…a new reality we support by energy, time, money,
effort, passion…it is a quiet, merciful death that I want for the
tyranny of economics in America… the full on tyranny of capitalism
and the corporation that dominates and compromises America to
the point of extinction…

in order to save ourselves and we must, must kill capitalism…the
sooner, the better…

one only needs eyes to see, to see what a complete and total disaster
capitalism has been to the natural world. we have driven entire
species to extinction in order to fulfill our need for wealth and material
goods…we have brought upon ourselves climate change to have
a nicer car or a bigger TV set or a slightly longer couch…

what we have done to the environment to further our economic
system is something that future generations will hate us for…….

we have sacrificed the future to fulfill our present needs of money, profits,
material goods… and I was going to write a “dam shame” but that isn’t
violent enough to condemn what have done to our one and only planet…

our greed and lust and ego have conspired to severely damage the world…

our values, our negative values has done this…

our negative values put into our political and economic
systems has done irreversible damage to the world…

one the animals are gone, we are gone…

one might say, Kropotkin, you are being overly melodramatic…

I say, you haven’t faced the truth… you are willfully ignorant
of the plight we have put ourselves in…

let us imagine two possible situations…
let us say, I am right… then we must do everything
we can to mitigate our current damage to the world…
if I am right, we don’t have much time…

let us say, you are right… then we aren’t pressed for time…
we don’t have to act right now……

the problem is if we don’t act, we are doomed…
we must act as if we don’t have any more time…
not only to save planet earth, but to save ourselves…

recall our work on systems… that which survives is the
system in which we have put our energy, time, money,
effort and passion into…… we, ourselves, determines
which systems survive and which systems die… by
the placement of our energy, time, money, effort
and passion…

and that is why we must, all of us, become involved into
our systems… the more people who engage in our
political and economic systems, the more likely our
economic and political systems survive…

so, you are important, you do have choice, you can decide the fate
of the America society and the fate of the world by your decision
of which political and economic and social system you care to put
your time, money, effort and passion into…….

the average citizen becomes relevant again…
by their choice of which political and economic
and social system we choose to live by…

Kropotkin

I have only a very short time before work…

I have been trying to make philosophical sense of all the world’s
madness of late…

I see now that it isn’t really possible at this time……

Why?

think of it this way, it is hard to make sense of a storm when one
is in the middle of that storm…we cannot make sense of an experience
while in the middle of it… take WW2, those 5 years, were fairly lean on
philosophy because of the war experience… before and after, a whole lot
of philosophy was done, but not really during it…

it is very hard to make sense of an experience while in the middle of it…

and I see this today… I am having a hard time processing the various
shut downs and cancellations of, well everything right now…

the immediacy of experiences prevents one from being able to
make sense of, or to be philosophical about our experiences……
that takes time and distance from our experiences…….

this is why philosophy doesn’t work during an immediate experience,
one must pass through the experience and then, and only then can
we make sense of it…

so we can only make sense of coronavirus once the dust has settled
and we can see what massive changes it has brought about to
our country and all around the world…

I suspect this coronavirus might become one of the most important
events in human history… it might impact us in ways that we
can’t even imagine right now… I am of the opinion that
the coronavirus is now, is far and I mean far more impactful
then 9/11 ever was…… we may see a dramatically different
US and a far different world after this virus is done…….

but let us hold judgment and understanding until after this event
has played out and then and then we can become
philosophical about the coronavirus…

Kropotkin

and in continuation of the latest post, the fact that we
philosophers cannot make philosophical judgments during
an event, for example, we cannot make judgements about
the Coronavirus until all is done and then and only then
can we make some judgement about what happened……

it was the same during the second world war, philosophers could
not make any judgement about the war or the holocaust until the
events/experiences were over………

but that leads to a point about philosophy itself…

it requires reflection and the leisure to allow reflection
and patience to try to understand all the aspects involve…

reflection takes time… modern society is about instant fulfillment
and philosophy cannot operate under instant fulfillment…that is
why philosophy/philosophers take their time and make judgement about
things, months, years and even decades after the events/experiences……

why philosophy still hasn’t even come to grips with 9/11 yet…
and this virus? perhaps years will pass before we can have
a grasp about what really happened during this epoch changing
time period…

to be truly “philosophical” a person must be patient and not rush
their understanding of what an event or experiences meant…

we must take our time and fully work out what we are
exploring… not rush into it… even if it takes years to
fully work out, whatever we are working out…

those who rush to judgment… are not philosophers…

take your time…and philosophize at your own pace…

Kropotkin

so, we have a crisis on our hands… California has
basically shut down… not my work, but so many people
and children are at home right now… and the number
is in the millions here of people staying home…

what should be the “philosophic” response be?

why should people even turn to philosophy in this time
of crisis?

why should people engage in philosophy?

instead of say, religion or science?

how would I convince an average person that an engagement
with philosophy would be beneficial or helpful or even wanted?

I have laid out three possibilities, science, religion or philosophy…

science is a tool, a very useful tool, but nevertheless just a tool…
science can explain the how something works, but not why something
works… science can tell us the earth is 93 million miles from the sun,
and science can tell us that we live, planet earth, in that
zone where life can be created and exist… good stuff, but
can science tell us what does it mean that we exist and why?

we have religion that can be used to create meaning in our lives,
but religion is deterministic, which means, we don’t have free choice
in religions…god created the heaven and earth, god created
heaven and hell, we have angels and demons and we have sin which
according to the Christian religion, all people have, not much choice
there…note that it doesn’t leave much room for human beings when
this is god doing everything and creating everything…

some religions are as deterministic as Christianity, but even something
Buddhism where the goal is to escape being reborn, which people have
no control over, we continue to be reborn until we become “enlightened”
and at that point, we overcome being reborn… as if being born is
such a terrible thing… life itself is something worth escaping from…
because in this life, we suffer and the point is to escape suffering,
so what if we suffer… that is the price of existence and a price, I for one,
am willing to pay…

yes, religions give us why, but are they answers that offer us something
like free will or escape from determinism?

religions take responsibility out of our hands… and place it somewhere
else and that is to my mind anyway, unacceptable…

only philosophy can offer us some answers, however, I am not sure
philosophy will offer us solace that other possible solutions might offer us…

let us explore philosophy as one possible answer… however that must
occur later as I am late for work…

Kropotkin

we have the Coronavirus, hereby called CV and we
have to create some sort of response to this CV…

what responses are possible for us?

my last post was about Philosophy and so that is where
I shall start… Philosophy and CV…

how do we create a philosophical response to CV?

we first of all, explore the traditional areas of philosophy…

the 5 main fields of philosophy…

Epistemology: the study of knowledge, how can we know what we know…

Metaphysics: the study of “reality” that is beyond the scientific or mathematical
realms…

Ethics: the study of moral values…

Logic: the study of right reasoning…

Aesthetics: the study of art and beauty…

There is no obvious point of contact between philosophy and
CV in any of these area’s of study…

perhaps let us try this, what are the various schools/branches in philosophy?

we have, in the 20th century, various schools of thought, such as phenomenology,
existentialism, logical positivism, pragmatism and linguistic turn for examples…

can we find some sort of connection between CV and these branches/schools of
thought?

right off the bat, we can eliminate certain schools, logical positivism
and linguistic turn for example doesn’t apply to our question of what is
our approach to CV……

and we can reject phenomenology as well…

so we are left with pragmatism and existentialism…

pragmatism considers words and thought as tool and instruments
for prediction, problem solving and action and rejects the idea that
the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.

existentialism is the tradition of philosophical enquiry which takes
as its starting point the experience of the human subject, not merely
the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human being……

it seems to me that we could combine the two… we can be
practical and problem solve with some thought about
what we need to do to be safe during this crisis…

but we can also work out the acting, feeling, living human beings
that we are…

The Buddha began with the notion of suffering… we all suffer with
sickness, old age and death… but I say unto you, I don’t see sickness,
old age and death as suffering… I see them as part of the human experience
and necessary parts of the human experience…

we are biology beings… and as such, we are subject to the
trials and tribulations of biology beings… we get sick, we grow old
and we die… that is not suffering, that is existence…part of what
and who we are…

one such response to CV is simple, it is part of existence…
we get sick and it is part of our experiences…that doesn’t mean
we go out and get ourselves sick to experience, no, but it does mean
we don’t have to become fearful or frighten by sickness………

we have forgotten that sickness is a fundamental aspect
of existence. We will get sick in our lives… and there is no
getting around that

the act or our being is about an equation…one of the basic definitions of
life is this: homeostasis which is the tendency toward a relatively stable
equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by
physiological processes…our bodies balance out… that is one working definition
of good health…out bodies have balance, balance in eating and exercise
and weight and work and play and activity and resting and intellectual thought
and physical action…the path to good health is through having balance
in our lives…being sick throws our balance out of whack… we are now
unbalanced… that is being sick…and to return to balance, we
must overcome our illness… we rest, we drink plenty of fluids,
we don’t exert ourselves…we take whatever pills or medicine the
doctor orders and we follow their orders…

now at no point have we gone outside of the human experience…
part of human existence is to maintain balance and failing that,
we become sick… this is not rocket science people…

the seven characteristics of life includes:

responsiveness to the environment;
growth and change;
have a metabolism and breathe;
maintain homeostasis;
being made of cells; and
passing traits onto offspring;

we simply accept the fact that we human beings will get sick…
we simply understand that getting sick is part of the gig of
being human and biological…

we don’t have to go out of our way to become sick although
some people do in fact, go out of their way to become sick…

our current and present response to CV is simply this…
we try to avoid it as best we can

and that being sick is a part of life… an unhappy but also
unavoidable part of life… so what is our philosophical response to
CV?

Next post

Kropotkin

this is the next post…

I think that the reason we have such issues is that we take our
positions ad hoc… which is to say, we make it up… unions, um,
I think that union are good or unions are bad… and we hold
individual, separate idea’s about people, events, idea’s…

instead we should hold a unified, whole complete picture
of who we are and what is out possibilities……

so, what is your response to the CV?

If we ad hoc it, then we have a hard time trying to work it
into our philosophical understanding of the world…

but, if we have a comprehensive overall, way of life understanding
of the world, then we can tie CV into that overall system…

let us take an example, Epicureanism: the system of philosophy
based on the teaching of Epicurus, and the greatest good is to
seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility,
freedom from fear (ataraxia) and absence from bodily pain (aponia)

we use Epicureanism as our way of life, as our base understanding of
the world…it is easy to then create an understanding of CV into
an already existing system……as we try to avoid illness and avoid
passing that illness to others, so they can avoid pain, we can follow
the current recommendations of the state or the doctors…

we only have a hard tying new ideas and thoughts into
a patchwork of idea’s and thoughts and maps that we
have of the world and the universe……

in other words, our very beliefs are a patchwork of ism’s
and ideologies and habits and superstitions and prejudices
and biases…… we don’t have unified, overall “way of life”
thinking about who we are and what is the world and what are
our possibilities…

our idea’s and thoughts are a patchwork of various assorted
mix of ism’s and ideologies and prejudices and habits and biases and…

Why?

because most of us have never actually worked out what we really believe in…

we still hold to the patchwork of indoctrinations that we received as children…

indoctrinations we received from the family or the state or the media or
religion or socially…

our personal belief system is a patchwork of various mishmash of wildly different
idea’ and ism’s and ideologies…

there is ‘no rhyme or reason’ to the collection of beliefs we hold about
the world… we don’t have a unified, coherent belief system about the world

we don’t have a “way of life” understanding of the world…
everything is ad hoc…

this explains the wildly diverse and often contradictory beliefs we hold
both individually and collectively…

if you have a unified, coherent belief system which you practice
as a way of life, then it is easy to have a philosophical response to
CV or to respond to an ever changing environment or to think
about different idea’s or ism’s……

the problem lies within our failure to hold to a coherent,
unified belief system which we then practice as a way of life…

it isn’t about CV being the problem, it is about how we respond to it…

you can hold to a coherent, unified belief system and still be able to
adapt to ever changing conditions that life presents to us…

our philosophy, our history, our economics, our various responses
and understanding of the world is ad hoc… stitched together from
various sources and held together by duck tape and hope…

this is true individually and collectively…

and how can one respond philosophically to CV when all our
understanding of the world is stitched together from various
diverse sources?

what beliefs do you hold?

are they a coherent, unified whole?
or are they stitch together from wildly diverse
sources? are your beliefs ad hoc?

Kropotkin

so given my last post, what is Marxism?

an attempt to create a unified, coherent picture of
the world and our place in it… both individually and collectively…

and what is Socialism? an attempt to create a unified, coherent picture
of the world and our place in it.

and what is capitalism? another attempt but a failed one… failed?

why is capitalism a failure? because the key factor in capitalism is
this idea of the “hand of god” that somehow steers the system correctly…
this hand of god, the market forces, is a “Deus ex Machina” and nothing more…

the “hand of god” is a contrived plot twist that allows the system to
exploit and dehumanized people and their values……

as exhibited by our current economic situation…

we have the concept of supply and demand…
thus when we have many workers, wages go down,
but when we have few workers, wages go up…
and in our current economic situation… (well before CV blew up
the economic world) wages didn’t go up in the way it ought to have if
supply and demand were truly the way the system worked…

wages went up modestly when they should have gone up quite fast to
reach the supply and demand part of the American economy…

supply and demand doesn’t work in regards to wages and thus supply
and demand as a theory doesn’t work, and yet we still believe…

our ad hoc belief system has a hard time keeping up with
the current situation…beliefs, once believed in, become
hard as a rock part, of our belief system…

we hold our beliefs even in the face of evidence that disproves
that particular belief……. we are human in this way…

and this is true of beliefs we were indoctrinated with as children…

we have a young kid who is transitioning from male to female at work…
his name is Thomas but now he wants to be called Jazz… I am having
a very hard time making the adjustment… once I learn someone name,
I have a hard time breaking away from that name…being old means
we don’t handle changes well…

but that is different then holding beliefs… Thomas or Jazz doesn’t
impact my belief system…it is a temporary matter what he/she calls
themselves and I don’t really care…because it doesn’t impact my life

whereas holding a belief and finding that belief is wrong or misguided,
is impactful, very impactful in one’s life…and potentially life changing…
whereas learning to call a person Thomas or Jazz isn’t life changing for me…

however from Thomas/Jazz viewpoint, being called the right name does
have an impact… life changing? I couldn’t say… but it is impactful…

and that is the next point, viewpoint…some people are willing to go to war
over oil or resources or ism’s and ideologies but not everyone is willing to
go to war over the same thing… different viewpoints allow us to
take actions over different things… whereas some things don’t move me,
they might move you… I can’t say…

but if we hold different diverse beliefs, then at times we might go to
war over something and other times we might not, depending…
our belief system being ad hoc, will often then lead to us taking
actions at different points… we might fight at one point being called
a jerk, whereas at another time, we laugh at them for calling us a jerk…

our responses to events, people, ism’s and ideologies is wildly
different because we have ad hoc beliefs and ad hoc beliefs
don’t remain in one place…they are every changing and moving…

and so one day, we might be moved to action and another day, we might not…
depends on our mood and that is because we don’t hold to beliefs as a “way of life”…

beliefs for the modern man is simply what is convenient at the time…
not being for use yesterday or tomorrow, just useful today…

and we cannot build a coherent, unified belief system if our beliefs only hold
true at some points but not at other points…

so what is capitalism? it is a ad hoc understanding of how the world works…

Kropotkin

and now something completely different:

I was reading about Hypermodernity on Wiki and I came across
something that struck me…

Here is the first line of the thread:

“Hypermodernity (supermodernity) is a type, mode or state of society
that reflects an inversion of modernity in which the function of an object has its
reference point in the form of an object rather then function being the reference point
for form.”

Now look at the opening paragraph… what is missing?
and why is the thing that is missing is the problem with
modernism and philosophy.

Kropotkin

and I at this moment reading on Wiki about modernism and
it has the exact same missing item…

see for yourself…

then tell me, what is missing?

Kropotkin

It is because of a failure to account for the transvaluation inherent in the way the object is constructed: as construed.
transcendentally, or reductivelly,

K, how are things in the market, are lines long, are people impatient and panicking? Does that make Your job any more stressful? Here in Los Angeles its like a nightmare, I can not find potatoes or rice, !