a new understanding of today, time and space.

it is our rate of understanding of entropy that also changes…

when I was younger, say 40, I could tell I couldn’t do the things I did
when I was 19 or 20…but it didn’t dawn on me that that was entropy or
as we humans call it, old age. Now that I am 61, it is quite clear
I am well in the midst of entropy or old age…

my understanding of who I am/was and what my place is/was,
has changed as I have gotten older…

if I try to explain to a 20 year old, what it means to get old,
they would have no idea because they don’t have the
experiences or knowledge to understand me…

but if I explain what is love or what is some bodily need, they
would understand because it is something they have knowledge
of or have experienced themselves…

to most people, what I write is gobbledygook because what I write
is outside of their knowledge or experience…I seem to be really dumb
or quite obscure because what I write doesn’t fit into most people experiences
or knowledge ……. but no matter how I try to reduce it or bring it down to
earth, until they experience it, people will never get what I am trying to say…
and that is ok……

my knowledge and experiences are just that, mine…
and I don’t need or require that you understand that knowledge
or experience…just as you don’t need me to understand your
knowledge or experience…

but I can get you to reexamine and reevaluate what you believe in
and what you take to be “your” values and biases and superstitions
and prejudices and indoctrinations………are your values and understanding
of the world really “yours” or do you hold those indoctrinated values of
childhood given to you by your family and the state and the media and
the church?

that is really the choice I am giving you…what are your values
and are they really your values or have you simply carried on
those childhood indoctrinations?

a good, a really good example of someone who has never examined
their values is IQ45… he still lives by and understands the world by
his childhood indoctrinations…indoctrinations of family and state
and church and social groups and society…….

I began my reexamination of my values because of the contradictions
I discovered between what I was told and what I found out about the world
was… I found that my indoctrinations of childhood and my experiences
of the world were different…and by examining my own values, I could
reconcile those contradictions between the theory of my indoctrinations
and the reality of my life…… I fashioned my understanding of the world,
based on my experiences of the world instead of the indoctrinations
I received as a child…

I reexamined my values given to me as a child and found them wanting…
those values were unable to offer me an understanding of the world
that matched what I found on the ground, in reality…

and so I had to adjust my values to match the experiences
and reality of what I found…

I was told about god, but in my experiences, I found
I had no need for god… the belief in god didn’t help me
with understanding my own possibilities or my reality…

it interfered with it and so I became an Atheist because it
better matched my experiences and understanding of the world…

I adapted my values to match what I experienced and saw in the world…

the disconnect people feel in the world is because their childhood
indoctrinations don’t match the reality, the experience they find
in the world…the disconnect is between their childhood indoctrinations
and the reality on the ground… but they don’t reexamine their values
because that forces them to admit that, possibly, their understanding
of the world is wrong… and we hate to admit we are wrong…
that is human nature…

Kropotkin

ok, further thoughts on entropy…

being and becoming…I have noted this before…

what is being?
and what is becoming?

perhaps, perhaps being is the current situation, whatever that is
and becoming is the effects of entropy on being…

In becoming, we are engaging in entropy unless, unless we manage
to increase the energy input into becoming…

we become and that takes energy if there is no increase in energy,
then all that happened is entropy has taken place and the journey
from being to becoming is simply the journey of entropy…

so we have a diagram::::being-----entropy… becoming…
that middle part entropy is the journey from being to becoming…

thus there is not really any being, we are always in the process of
becoming which is entropy…the journey of order to disorder… unless
we find energy to put into that journey in which case becoming
is something other then just entropy… perhaps an equation

being = entropy + energy = becoming

in my own personal entropy, old age/becoming…
it doesn’t matter how much energy I put into my body,
entropy, which is the case of going from order to disorder,
will continue in my body which is the classic definition of
growing old, going from order to disorder…

I’m going from being, my current state to becoming, my future state,
and that will be determined by entropy…

Kropotkin

hang in there… spitballing right now…

we have a couple of different theories to combine, somehow,
first we have the previously mentioned chaos and entropy
and we also have self organization…

I believe that we can connect these two idea’s…

the act of self organization is well known in biology and chemistry
and physics and other disciplines…
definition of self organization is:

“self organization, also called, (in the social sciences) spontaneous order…
is the process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions
between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous
when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent”

so, we have social systems that have entropy… for example, we
can list churches, systems like the Catholic church having lost
energy… going from order to disorder…losing energy…

Now as Nietzsche noted, this loss of energy has lead to a situation,
best remarked by the notion, “GOD IS DEAD” and what does this mean?

the energy that we used to put into religion which was a means of
organization, a means of understanding “who we are” and “what we are
supposed to do” “what we are to hope for”

in other words, the Kantian questions… what does it mean to the
questions of Kant if there is no organizing principle like religion?

the religious question is a question of morality… ethics…
how are we suppose to act in regards to our fellow human beings?

and if we act “properly” then we get a ticket to heaven, but what if
there is no heaven, then what? what becomes the criteria for our
interactions with our fellow human beings if there is not god?

and this was the question that Nietzsche tried to work out…
what is ethics, morality if there is no outside organizing
principle like religion or the church?

Here lies these question of self organization… under what principles
do we self organize under, in regards to ethics or morality?

that is where we have been, as human beings, over the last 120 years…

if we do not organize with religious principles, then what principles
do we organize with?

and the answers offered so far have been nationalism or other such
anti… ism’s like anti-Semitism or anti- humanism or anti-…whatever…

in other words, the answers have been the rise of the prejudices
and superstitions and biases and habits and indoctrinations
of family, state, church, media…

the attempt to self organize has been done with the prejudices
and superstitions of people…not with any sort of rational,
logical attempt…… the philosophies of the 20th century like logical
positivism and phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy
and Neo pragmatism have all been attempts to create a self
organizing system for society within philosophy itself…

but the attempts failed because philosophy itself has
withdrawn from the concerns of the average person…
Philosophy has reduced its own area of expertise into
small, narrow fields of specializations… with few ever
reaching beyond their own field of specialization…

so the question still exists, under what guiding principle do
we self organize if we have removed the guiding principles
of religion that has served as an societal organization pattern
for centuries?

Liberalism and conservativism has been offered up as
possible means of self organization within society…

the basic idea of liberalism has come from the
historical period called the “Enlightenment”
and conservativism has been basically “anti-Enlightenment”

the liberal ideals of tolerance and the sovereignty of reason,
and the use of knowledge as a guide and progress and fraternity
and the political ideas of constitutional government and the
separation of church and state are all ideas from the Enlightenment…

think of them as self organizing principles………

under what principles shall we self organize under?

that is the modern question……

if we remove the religious question from the mix and
Nietzsche did remove it, “GOD is still dead”

then what shall be our organizing principles?

so said another way, upon what principles shall we
expend energy upon? that is entire question of
what it means to engage in organizing principles,
the use of energy in our engagement with our
chosen organizing principles…

as human beings, as any system goes from order to disorder,
going from being to becoming, to the basic fundamental
process of the universe, which is entropy, how do we
engage in such a way as to maintain order in our chosen
organizing principles… instead of disorder, we must choose
and practice putting energy into any chosen system if that
system is to remain in order, being…

so, ask yourself, what organizing principles shall we
organize under?

how shall we self organize?

each of us is an individual atom… how do we
as individual atoms, become organized enough to
grow into something bigger then just an individual atom?

we know that as individual atoms, we cannot survive…
think of Hobbes and his state of nature: ……“the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”…

so we must engage with or have some sort of organized
society which engages in our mutual protection…

the conservative argues that we need less organization,
less energy and that excess energy is put into
our own personal enrichment, but the liberal
who understands that we cannot succeed by our
own efforts knows and understand that we
must join together or die separately…to steal a phrase…

so we need to see society as a means of self organization
and a means of using energy to promote our general
welfare…

Kropotkin

so given the last post, how are we to understand
the 20th century?

the two world wars, the rise of various right wing ideologies,
the holocaust, the dropping of the atomic bomb,
various local brutalities such as pol pot and Stalin and Hitler?

we can account to them the loss of any sort of positive
self organization principles… in other words,
they, the dictatorships of the 20th century as
attempts to self organize by anti-enlightenment
principles…principles such as tolerance
and the use of reason and self government is
against the values of the anti-enlightenment
dictatorships……

conservatives devalue, demote the enlightenment
and its values…

the 20th century could be considered to be
a battle between forces fighting the battle
between the enlightenment and anti-enlightenment…

which self organizing principles are we going to engage with?

and the question is also asked, why? why engage with
the enlightenment over the anti-enlightenment?

which organizing principles should we engage with?

conservatives fight a rearguard action against
the logical political and social steps of history…
and by that I mean, humans have gone from
family to small groups of families, to small villages
to small towns to city/states to every larger and
more sophisticated political and social systems…

and this growth is a logical progression because
of the ever increasing number of human beings on planet earth…

we cannot, cannot maintain order with the amount of
energy given to a small village that is needed for a
large country…in other words, to maintain society
and the state requires an ever increasing amount of
energy to maintain a balance…… order takes
a lot of energy to maintain… and if we take
away that energy, then we begin the slide to
disorder…entropy begins its work…

so the amount of energy to maintain a village, is insufficient
to maintain a large city or a large country…

and that is where conservative go wrong…… they are about
denying large social structures the energy needed to maintain
order and by denying that energy, they are pursuing disorder
instead of order…….

to say, we must have a government small enough to drown in
a bathtub is to say, despite the fact that we have large
number of people, we can maintain order with a small amount
of energy… and this is clearly not true…

the larger the system, the greater the amount of energy
is needed to maintain that system… we cannot
in the name of conservativism, deny that energy because
to do so will cause the decay, the disorder and final collapse
of that system…

to be anti-enlightenment is to be against the better angels of our
nature…love, hope, honesty, charity, justice are values that
are denied by the anti-enlightenment crowd…

the anti-enlightenment crowd favors emotions, feelings,
intolerance, bigotry, hatred, nationalism, anti-Semitism,
anti-humanism…

which leaves us the question?

are you a liberal or are you a conservative?

and what values do you value?

and what energy will you place into those values?

Kropotkin

what other self organizing principles do we have?

any ism or ideology is a self organizing principle…

for example, capitalism is a self organizing principle
Catholicism is another self organizing principle…

we have had some self organizing principles fail,
for example an failed economic system was
Mercantilism…two fairly successful economic systems
were Feudalism and the hunter/gatherer system……

these are economic systems, we also have
political self organizing systems such
as democracy and monarchy and dictatorships…

the ones that survive are the ones that can hold and maintain
enough energy to avoid sliding into disorder…
at some point, every single human self organizing
system has failed due to the lack of energy going
into that system… energy is transferred into another
system or is dissipated into the air…

we call this dissipation, this loss of energy,
well actually, we don’t seem to have an
a name for the failure of political or economic
systems by the loss of energy enough to keep them going…

we should however begin to name this loss of energy into
social, political or economic systems…

for example, the fall of Rome was really a loss of energy…
that energy that was used to keep Rome an empire,
began to go to Christianity and that loss lead to the failure
of Rome… and the rise of Christianity…
want to understand social, political and economic
systems, then understand how energy drives
them and when energy leaves them…

success and failure comes from the level of,
or the amount of energy a system has…

American is going to fail, at of right now, because of
the energy that is needed to keep America going,
is going into such silly things as nationalism and
other such negative systems… as anti-Semitism
and anti-humanism…….

energy is defined in both energy, time, money, effort
and enthusiasm about the system in question…

put your energy into hating people and intolerance
and bigotry and prejudice, you are taking energy
away from America… it is as simply as that…
and every bit of energy that is taken away from America,
is one step closer to disorder and chaos and the final
dissolution of America…

MAGA isn’t putting energy into America… it
is about hate and negative energy toward others
that aren’t you or believe in what you believe in…

every single person who wears a MAGA hat is
engaging in taking energy away from America
and putting it somewhere else…toward
the dissolution of America…

so where do your loyalties lie?

with your prejudices, bigotries, hatred, anti-humanism
or do your loyalties lie with reason, tolerance, justice,
hope and love?

Kropotkin

after a nice walk with the wife…

the future of philosophy lies in the next philosophy…
which is to say, what is after the Enlightenment-
anti-enlightenment philosophy?

where do we go after this?

I don’t see academic philosophy having an answer because they
are involved in the narrow, academic specialties of their profession…

and I don’t see politicians becoming involved in the creation
of the next set of ism’s after the enlightenment… anti-enlightenment… battles

it seems to me that the next period of philosophy that comes about
will have both the enlightenment/anti-enlightenment theories
mixed together…

However, I could be very wrong and the next philosophical
stage has nothing to do with either the enlightenment/anti-enlightenment
arguments…

but philosophy does seem to flow from one stage to another in
a coherent fashion…

Descartes flowed from the rise of science and the attempt
to fix the range of knowledge, the theory of epistemology,
took hold for 200 years…which was the point of Descartes…
to understand what we can know and not know…

but our questions have moved beyond simple knowledge
and what we can know and not know…

we have passed on to the other side of epistemology
and moved into the understanding of what it means to
be human without the self organizing principle of religion…

what other self organizing principle/principles can we use to
self organize?

beyond the obvious political/economic/social systems of
capitalism or communism or Catholicism or
democracy or dictatorships or monarchy or……

we need to explore our possibilities in some other
political/economic/social system beyond, or outside
of our current systems…

we have a new world and a new world requires, demands a new
political/economic/social system…

and what will that new system be?

and what possibilities will it explore?

the battle between the enlightenment
and the anti-enlightenment forces needs
to move to a new battle ground…

and how do we know this?

because we are stagnate, fixed where we are right now…
and this stagnation is draining energy from us and our
current systems…

we must put our energy, time, money, effort into
a new system that will engage all of us into
a new understanding of what it means to be human
and what are our possibilities…

so, what is after the enlightenment?

answer that and you are on the way to becoming the
next Nietzsche…or Plato or Spinoza…or perhaps Kant?

Kropotkin

what I have right now is images and nothing
more then images…

the universe is expanding away from itself
the galaxies are moving further and further
away from each other…

there is no central point from where we can fix reality from…
every single point is just as valid as any other point…
how does one mark any given point in the galaxy?
as every single point is no different then any other point…

is not our ideas and thoughts and feelings have the same
thing… what is the center of our reflections?

my thoughts and feelings and emotions and rationality
don’t have a central point within me… they are all defused/spread out
around me… I cannot pinpoint where exactly my feelings are nor
can I pinpoint where my rationality is nor can I pinpoint where my thoughts
are or where they go after I have them…

I can point to some general region of my brain and say, here, here is rational
thought… here is logic and thoughts… and then point to another part
of my brain and say, here, here is my emotions and here is my feelings…

there is no center to who I am, just like there is no center to
the universe… all points are equal in the universe…
and all points are equal in our understanding of who we are…

where would I find values inside of me? what values are central values?
what values are all the other values circling around?

second image is if the holocaust is an illness, what illness is it,
and what is the cure?

what happened to make the holocaust possible?

what actions or events or historical motion allowed the holocaust
to happen?

in other words, could the holocaust have happened because the
industrial revolution occurred?

did the loss of religious values directly lead to the holocaust?

think of history… we have a flattening of values… equality is
a denial of one of the most important values in history…

the Greeks felt that there was an hierarchy… some were above,
some were below… Nietzsche values were of the aristocrat…
the higher, but what if the political revolution of equality leads
us to the exact same place as the universe… where we cannot tell
what is the center of universe because everything is equal distance
from every other place… there is not center in the universe…
and if we have political equality, then where is the center?

I see no difference between the current political, economic, social
systems and the fact that the universe has no central point to refer to…

given our current political, economic, social systems, which one would
I or could I refer to as a central, most important one… I cannot look
at our various systems in this manner… all systems are equal in
there value, in their importance… I cannot choose one system over another
and say, this, this system is easily the most important system in
the universe…I look at our political, economic and social systems
and think of the universe…there are all circling around each other
with no one system being the center… or being the “main” system…

perhaps that was the point of the holocaust… to create a center,
a point where we could begin to measure everything from…

we could create a hierarchy by declaring Jews or Mexicans or
blacks as subhuman… and that makes us, human… we have found
our center… and it is on the back of others… but once again,
we have no way to understand what race or what creed or what color
makes it the center… we are still engaged in trying to find the center
of the universe and one doesn’t exists…….

I cannot find any means to declare the white man superior or the black man
inferior or the Mexican, a evil hombre…what values could I use to
make such an judgement?

as every value exists equal to all other values, there is no center of values,
then how can we declare one particular values as being prime, the center,
the most valuable one? we can’t… we cannot HONESTLY create
an understanding that would allow one to judge one value as higher then
other values or how one race is value higher then another or how one religion
is value higher then another… what criteria would, could one use, again
honestly?.. I don’t see any way or means to be able to judge or rate
something higher then another…the universe all over again……

let us say, somehow, you were able to find the exact center of the universe,
it would last for a second and then the movement of the universe would
change the spot that is the exact center of the universe… it never stands
still, it is always moving…

and I see 7 billion human beings being no different then the galaxies or
planets where we cannot tell which one is where… what is position when
everything is constantly moving? what, where is the exact center of
human existence?

does it lie in you or in me or in the orange village idiot…

I cannot say, which human being is the center of all human beings
any more then I can comment on the relative location of
galaxies… you say the next galaxy is 2 million light years from us…
and in that direction… but what is that direction given we cannot tell
up from down or left and right in the universe… we cannot tell what is
up and down or left and right with human beings, with ism’s and ideologies,
with values…

the best metaphor for human existence…
not the central metaphor, but the best metaphor for
human existence is how we cannot find the center of
the universe… we have no sense of direction in the universe…
because which way is up, which way is down, which way is left or right?

and that was lost during the various revolutions,
the scientific, the political and the philosophical and the industrial
revolutions of the last 500 years……

the rise of ism’s and ideologies come from our being unable to
make sense of what is up and what is down and what is left and right…….

you can not more tell me where the center of the universe is, then
you can tell me the center of human existence or the center of values
or the center of who you are…

we have no up and down or left and right………

now what?

Kropotkin

Nice bit of “poetry” but you should realize most of it is make-believe.

K: most everything we humans engage with, is make believe…

Time, money, social systems, ism’s and ideologies,
prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, work……

remove the make believe out of human existence
and we have virtually nothing left,

Now what?

Kropotkin

Remove the make believe and there remains only first person subjective experience in the form of a person and that which the person experiences, the only aspect of existence that appears or manifests, and the only form existence has ever assumed.

finally a day off…

and what shall we talk about today kids?

Science Fiction…I was watching Star Trek, Picard… a good show,
BTW and I was enjoying it and I thought about it, why, why
do I like sci-fi?

because Sci-fi is about big ideas… life, death, what does it mean to be
alive, both for humans and other species that are found in Sci-fi…and
all kinds of really big ideas about existence…

where else are you going to get the big ideas of existence
outside of Sci-fi?

the second Trek series was the next Generation and it used the
android Data to explore “the human condition”… Why did Data
want to be human when he was, in every way, superior to human beings?

The next Gen showed us that the real strength of being human was
in those things that we cannot measure, weight, time or reduce to theorems…

it is in love and hope and charity and seeking justice that made us worth
emulating…

and it is also our ability to make a leap of faith or to have intuition about
people and events…

our intuitions are as often wrong as they are right, but, we can
have them and they hold as much validity as any other means
of understanding that we might have……

quite often we hold assumptions and presumptions and beliefs
that we cannot in any way, shape or form, be able to justify
in any type of rational, logical manner but we can still have these beliefs…

for example, love… we cannot under any circumstances be able
to justify love in any type of rational, logical fashion…

love isn’t rational, love isn’t logical, love can’t be measured or weighed
or timed… and yet, people will go to the ends of the earth, and beyond,
to find love…love which is something we cannot define or understand,
and it drives much of what we do in life…

I am a human being and much of what I do is driven by my need
for love and my need for knowledge… I want to know, well, everything…

I don’t care about money and I don’t care about material goods and I
don’t care about cars, in fact right now I don’t even own a car…
and I couldn’t care less about “status” symbols, I don’t own a watch…

so what do I care about? My books, all 5000 of them… that is literally
the only material objects that I care about…my family is biological
matter………

in my books, I can find the big questions that is mirrored by
sci-fi… what are we to do? what should we hope for?
what can we know? what should our values be? what should
we use our energy on?

I agree with sci-fi that we should go out into space…
one more grounded might say, but Kropotkin,
we have so many problems on earth, we can’t afford to
go into space……

I say unto you, we cannot afford to put all our marbles in one basket…
we must go into space… we have no other choice… and what we will find,
oh, I wish I could live a very long time just so I could see what we find in
space… otherwise, I have no desire to live forever……

I have a burning desire to see what is out there…
I am sad that I am alive during the start of the space exploration…
for I would want to be able to go out there and see what is there…….
I would wish to be alive in the future to be able to see what lies out
there, beyond our own planets…

and part of my wonderlust is sated by reading sci-fi and watching
Sci-fi… and I wonder about the big ideas that sci-fi brings to my
attention…….

what it means to be human? what is the nature of reality?
what is the point of existence if not to explore our universe?

the big questions are the only questions, at least to me,
that are worth asking…….

Kropotkin

in the modern world, say after 1500, we have had
several revolutions… so, we have the science revolution,
the political revolution, the industrial revolution…

I am not sure where to put the technology revolution…
is it part of the science revolution or is it its own separate
revolution? don’t know…

and we have what I might call the information revolution…
I can trace this from the rise of the printing press to the computer…
is this a technology revolution or is it is really an information revolution?

if we are generous, then we have had 5 different revolutions in
the last 500 years…

let us take them one by one… the most analyzed of the 5 has been
the scientific revolution… and we can easily see how that has played out…

that revolution has been the one that turned us away from religion…
because only one can be right…

the other revolution that has played out with the scientific revolution
is the information revolution… the printing press has allowed information
to be disseminated around the world and without mediation… which is to say,
you get your information from books without anyone coming between that information
and you…… you don’t get interpretations of what you are reading, you get it straight from
the book…

the rise of the scientific revolution and the information revolution has been
simultaneous…you cannot get one without the other…but the interesting thing
about the printing press, it is a technology revolution…the printing press itself
is a technology advance…so you have three of the 5 revolutions advancing
and driving each other…and this is what happens… you have multiple
solutions reinforcing each other…but of course, each revolution
advances at different times and different speeds…

if we correctly understand revolutions, we can see that they
cannot advance, revolutions, until the groundwork has been laid
out in advance…so to make this clear… you cannot have a revolution
until the mind is ready to accept it… so, the political revolution
cannot occur until we are ready for it…so, the French revolution could
not possible occur until the people were ready for it… we see from history
that the conditions of France were terrible for a vast majority of people…
millions were living in poverty and starvation…

a revolution is a drastic step to take but if one is living in truly
terrible conditions, then what do people have to lose?

the people of France had nothing to lose by revolution…
they were already at the bottom, they couldn’t get any lower…
and that made the French revolution possible…

behind each revolution comes a drive to make it possible…

for example, the scientific revolution had a drive to make
it possible…… and that drive comes from several factors…

you could make the argument and some have, that
the scientific revolution actually began with the
black death of the 14 and 15 century…the death brought
about a change in people’s attitude and understanding
of the world… people believed and yet, millions died from
disease that seemed like a rebuttal to the answer offered by
the church… the black death released people from the
answers offered by the church…….

the church could not offer up any answers as to why
the black death killed millions… believers and non-believers alike…

another solution was needed and thus the road was open to a new thinking
about things…the scientific revolution could not have happened if it weren’t
for the black death of the prior two centuries…of course, recall that
the exploration drive also occurred at this time… the voyages of
Columbus didn’t occur until after the black death… that matters…
and we have the various voyages of the Portuguese explorers…
also after the black death…for example, the first Portuguese explorers
started in 1419…the black death or the Bubonic plague killed
over 75 million people from 1347 to 1351… think about the dates…

we have the various explorers beginning their explorations after that
and then we have the scientific and information revolutions within
a 150 years after that… the plague changed people understanding
of what it meant to be human…it changed how people saw
the world and how they saw religion in that world……

and what else happened after 1350? what began to happen in
Italy starting around 1400? why the Renaissance began… it is no
coincidence that all these things began after the plague…

we can see that the bubonic plague changed how people saw themselves
and how they saw the world… the various revolutions that came afterwards,
also arose from a new understanding of who we are and what is possible…

the political revolution of 1776 in America and the more radical one
of 1789 in France, comes about because people changed how they understood
themselves and the world……

revolutions come about because of a change in understanding…

any change in understanding can later result in some sort of
revolution…the ties that binds is loosened in any sort of radical
change in how we understand ourselves… ties like religion
and political and social… the ism’s and ideologies of society
can be ties that tie people to society and if those ties are
loosened by events like the plague… then we can get revolutions…

so, we have had a radical event of the virus… and the ties that
bind, ideologies of capitalism and Catholicism and communism
and Buddhism and other ism’s and ideologies, those ties
are loosened…for we have now understood that
those ism’s and ideologies have failed us in our time of need…

we see that the marketplace in which we are supposed to have
so much faith in, has completely failed… we have clear cracks in
the economic system of capitalism… cracks that is leading to the
death of thousands…the path into tomorrow is a path of
revolution… we can already see the calls for change, dramatic
and clear change… in both our political and economic systems…

and that is how revolutions begin… with something as traumatic
as CV…that affects millions of lives… here in the U.S, we
have over 150 million Americans with stay at home orders…
California with 40 million alone have orders to stay at home…

we can see the revolution beginning in real time right now…

but let us return to one of the revolutions…

the industrial revolution…

Kropotkin

I am going to examine the industrial revolution in particular…

but why Kropotkin?

because I have called it in the past, a truly horrible event in human history…
but now we shall examine why…

the Industrial revolution came about because of the changes in the
human mind…we became ready for it mentally before it happened…

and what changed? well, as noted, the failure of the prior
ism’s and ideologies to account for the changes in the world…

we had various changes in how people lived their lives and this
impacted how they see the world… we have to have a mental
change before we can see a physical change…

we know, know that the hold of religion on the minds of man,
has been slowly loosened over the years after the plague…

the Renaissance was not a physical manifestation…
it is a mental one, an emotional manifestation…

the Renaissance occurred because we began to think differently
about ourselves…the enlightenment occurred because we began to
think differently about ourselves… every single new phase of human
development occurred because we began to think differently about ourselves…

the ism’s and ideologies that arose after 1500, arose because we
began to think differently about ourselves and the ism’s
and ideologies were attempts to make that different
understanding about ourselves clear…

the human tendency is to isolate and separate the different
aspect of history and then study them, but the fact is,
each aspect of human history is tied into every other aspect
of human history… we cannot understand modern ism’s and ideologies
without understanding the modern revolutions of science and technology
and information and political and industrial………

and we cannot understand each individual revolution without
some understanding of the revolution before and during our time…
every single revolution has answers in each other revolution…

so, given this, what did the industrial revolution specifically cause
us to become… us?

the industrial revolution drove millions off the land and into cities
and factories… and there millions because aware of things
that they have never paid any attention to before…
like time… being a farmer, isn’t about hourly or daily chores,
but it is about seasons and years… it doesn’t matter if it is one o’clock
in the afternoon in farming… but it does matter in the office or in the factory…
the modern world depends upon something that doesn’t exists in real life which
is time……. time is made up… it has no specific location or can be weighed…
it has no physical reality… but our modern world is all about something that doesn’t
exists… time… I wake up at 6:00 o’clock in the morning, I have to be at work
by 8:00 am and I work until lunch at 12:00 and then I return to work at 1:00…
I work until 5:00… then I go home… but show me 8:00 in the morning in reality?
it is make believe, it has no relationship to any real or physical or existing thing…
it is arbitrary and artificial… not existing… and yet we base our lives on something
that doesn’t exists in the real world… time is something that doesn’t exists…

and that is one result of the industrial revolution… we live our lives by something
that has no basis in reality… that doesn’t exists…

so we no longer exist on the land, we have artificial existence in factories
and offices and move about by cars or trains or planes……

I work in a grocery store… my existence is limited by the fact that I
am trapped in a small space in which I then scan items… in my little space,
I can barely turn around without hitting something… that is my work space…
I have maybe a foot and a half to work in… just barely bigger then I am…

that is my work existence…now some here may have cubicles, which
isn’t much bigger then my work space… we went from farmers and hunters
to working in spaces no larger then two feet wide for hours on end…

the physical space we work in, a large sense, determines who we are…

think about that…our thinking about ourselves is determined by
the physical spaces we exist in…….

if we exists in small, cramp physical spaces, that does determine
how we think about ourselves…

so, I am invested into large thinking about the universe…
I am attempting to escape my physical reality of working in a small,
cramp space that one can barely turn around in…

so the industrial revolution by driving us off the land and into
apartments and small working area’s has also determined
how we think about ourselves by our working conditions…

remember, we react to our environment… all animals do that…
that is part of existing… reacting to our environment…that is one
of the basic criteria of living … reacting to the environment…

our physical reality helps decide our mental and emotional
reality…human beings must react to their environment…
we are living beings and that is what all living matter does…
react to our environment as constituted…

so the industrial revolution by its very nature, has helped determined
our mental and emotional landscape of existing…

that is one of the big results of the industrial revolution……
it help changed how we react to our environment…

so this reliance on time by business and the very ism of capitalism,
determines our reaction to our environment… we react to the very
concept of time which is fake, artificial, not existing…
how would we react to something that doesn’t exists has been
fundamental to history since the 1850’s… that is when we
began the move from land to factory… from no time existing to
time being a controlling factor in our lives…

some other aspects of the industrial revolution has been covered very
well by writers like Marx… alienation for example… we are alienated
from who we are by being separated from our work… we don’t work for ourselves
as people did before the industrial revolution…now we work for our corporate
overlords………

try to think of the average farmer before the industrial revolution…
remember the world was rural before 1900… more people lived on
farms then in the cities before 1900… our current urban existence is
a fairly recent event…

so to understand it better…

we are… what our environment is……… we react to our environment
and we respond to and engage with our environment…

it is what living creatures do… and so, you now have a better understanding
of what it means to have the industrial revolution occur as it did…

it changed our environment which meant it changed who we are…

an changing environment means we must change with that environment
or we die… the dinosaurs taught us that…

so think how the industrial revolution changed our environment
which changed how we think of ourselves…

Kropotkin

change of subject…

reading a book, “humanity” by Glover…
and a phrase leaped out at me……

“they (German physicists during WW2 working on Atom Bomb)
were sleepwalking through the moral decisions they had to make.
It was not Moral heroism.”

we face moral decisions all the time… and mostly, we sleepwalk through
them…we don’t actually face those decisions… we pretend…

I have heard some justifications for dropping the bomb on Japan as
“otherwise Millions of American’s solders might have died”

as if American soldiers are worth more then the Japanese
people…what is the ratio: one soldier for every 10 Japanese people…
or perhaps it is one America soldier for every 100 Japanese people…

and quite often we justify moral ambiguous decision by saying,
“better them then us”… as if there is some moral mandate that
somehow suggests that one group of people is worth more then
another group of people… to say, it is ok to put into concentration
camps, children because their parents are illegal aliens is another
moral justification…only “true” American aren’t put into a concentration
camp… only others, illegal aliens are put there… others not Americans,
but others… as if the “Others” have less value then American’s…

since when are we ok with making moral judgements that because
they aren’t “US” that we can think of them as lower then ourselves…
less then human if they aren’t American’s……

or less then us if they aren’t our religion or less then human if they
are of a different race or a different sexual orientation or a different color
then us…

we quite often escape our Moral responsibility by pretending that
we don’t do that, “others” do that…… if I allow people to be placed into
concentrations camps, am I as guilty as those who committed the
actual act?

my avoidance of guilt would suggest that I am less guilty then those
who put children into concentration camps…

are you guilty?

what avoidance of guilt techniques will you use to avoid thinking of
yourself as guilty of allowing children to be put into cages…

but Kropotkin, I didn’t say anything… yep… you didn’t say anything…

if I go around feeling guilty all the time, then I wouldn’t get anything done…

and that is a problem, how?

perhaps you should do less things until you work out your guilt…….

Adam committed the sin of disobedience and for that… all of humanity
is born into sin… we are guilty…

is that the same guilt that we ought to feel when we say nothing and
children are put into concentration camps?

or do we just sleepwalk through another moral decision?

you are guilty…

But Kropotkin, I haven’t done anything…
and you are still guilty……… of doing nothing…

but then there is no possibility of escaping guilt?

Yep………….

sleepwalk through that one…

But Kropotkin, you are also guilty…

Yep………and now what?

Kropotkin

Peter,

So many people believe that they are “the master race”

The nazis and Japanese still believe it to this day.

The Jews believe it.

Jehovas witnesses believe it.

Lots of people believe this.

Trump believes this.

Here’s the deal: these people are scum.

Their lives (ironically) ARE WORTH LESS!!!

I am not here to talk about people but to
pass judgement and to mark all that are guilty…

I see it every day… IQ45 is the best at passing blame and guilt
everywhere but at himself…he is never guilty at anything…
it was the sun or the states or anybody else but him who was guilty…

I am here to tell you… yes, yes you personally are guilty…….

the only thing left is to decide as to what you are guilty of…

as you sleep walk through your moral guilt…….

a child is hungry…actually, many children are going hungry…

so, tell me… how do you escape your moral accountability for that child?

let us count the ways…

that child isn’t my child…
it is the economic system that starves that child…
I have nothing to do with that…
what do I care that a child is starving…
I am just one person……
I exists in the midst of millions of people, why me?
child? what child? tell me who is starving again?
it is everyone’s fault… which is to say, its no one fault…
the President ought to do something about it…
we can’t afford to go into space because we have so many problems at home……
let the parents deal with it, I have my own problems……
if only people cared enough?
it was different when I was a kid…
I don’t have time because of…… (pick your excuses)
the law is morality and the law doesn’t require me to fed that child,
thus I am morally off the hook for that child……
why should I care?
my vacation home flooded… I don’t have time for this…
I’ll only do something if you will and you go first……

these are but a few of the many ways we go about escaping
accountability/responsibility/ guilt for our actions or in this case,
inaction…

we are vastly creative in our attempts to escape responsibility for
who we are and what our actions are…

if a child is starving… you are accountable… you are responsible…
you are guilty…and as if it somehow denies your own guilt… someone will
accuse me of being guilty too…… I am guilty…now what?

we are all guilty… what are we going to do about it?

and for 99.9% of everyone who reads this, they will do nothing…

as they sleepwalk through their own lives, sleepwalk through their own
morality…

the very use of the word, “THEY” will allow most everyone here to escape
their guilt… “they” refers to someone else…not me… I am innocent…

then we have clowns who refer to themselves as libertarians
and anarchist… who claim that society must be destroyed…
but are so silent about the costs to human lives about
such an event… children starving is the least that will happen
when society/civilization ends… but those proud destroyers of
civilization don’t even see the real cost of ending society/civilization…

it is easy, so very easy to proclaim the end of the state when
you don’t have to measure the cost in lives… but of course, those
would be destroyers don’t count lives beaten and destroyed…
it is easy to call for the destruction of everything if you don’t have
to clean up afterwards… or see the destruction first hand… see
the child starving… the nihilists who proclaims that society must be
destroyed… it is easy to call for the end when you sleepwalk
through the costs of such an act…

it is easy to call for radical change if you don’t have to witness it
firsthand or see the hungry children…

and usually, those who call for the destruction of the state, usually
they are the ones who say, they are doomsday preppers who have enough
to outlast the destruction of the state/civilization…… well, isn’t that easy…
you call for the destruction of the state and you don’t even have the courage
to witness your words put into effect… cowards of the highest order… these
so called nihilists………they sleepwalk through their morality thinking that
they are somehow exempt from the consequences of their words…

it is easy to call for the end… if you don’t have to witness it…
or face it or clean up after it… or witness a child who is hungry…

in our modern society, there is more then enough guilt to share with
everyone…

you are guilty and you are so blind, so oblivious, that you can’t even see it…

sleepwalking through your days… thinking that you are morally exempt from
the consequences of yours/our actions……

and as you wiggle your way to some path to being innocent…
tell me friend… how many different excuses did you use to
clear your conscience?

I am not here to take you off the hook…

I am here to put you on the hook…

YOU ARE GUILTY…………and I AM GUILTY…

now what?

Kropotkin

Now one might try to escape their guilt by mental gymnastics,

guilty… nah, I am not guilty because there has been no crime committed…

I say unto you… a starving child is a crime…

but not a legal crime… you might say…….

and thus once again, you sleepwalk through morality…

the law and morality are not the same thing…

what we see as moral is quite often not in the law…

we see slavery as being morally wrong and yet,
slavery was legal…

and we see the Holocaust as being morally wrong and yet,
the Holocaust was legal…

we see Jim Crow laws as being morally wrong and yet,
Jim Crow laws were legal…

homosexuality was consider to be wrong…and the laws confirmed
that and yet, we don’t see homosexuality as being morally wrong…

don’t engage in the fallacy that morality and the law are one
and the same, they are not one and the same…

a child starving is not legally wrong
and yet it is morally wrong……

so…do we place morality as being higher or do
we place the laws as being higher?

what are laws?

they are the prejudice and superstitions and biases
and habits and bigotry of a place turned into law…

which has nothing to do with morality…

and what is morality?

being moral means doing the right thing…

But Kropotkin, how do I know what is right thing to do?

we have many different variations of being “moral”…

and we have every single action of human beings, from murder
to theft to lying to abortion being legal and moral at times,
to being illegal and being illegal at other times…….

a child starving is legal but it is also immoral…
and yet it can be justified by reference to
what nature intended… to god’s silence…
to the laws… to just the way it is…
to the harsh reality of our life… to the
current reality of ism’s and ideologies…

we can justify a child’s hunger in dozen’s, nay, hundreds of
ways… and we can point to all kinds of precedence
and all kinds of laws and all kinds of history
and all kinds of behavior to justify a child being hungry……

murder is the “final” act and yet, we can use dozens, nay,
hundreds of ways to justify murder………

does that “justification” make murder any less of a crime?

it comes down to what is a crime?

a crime is something that violates or denies the
basic needs of life…so, we know from Maslow
pyramid, that we have a bottom, basic fundamental
needs of being human…food, water, education, health car,
shelter… if people are prevented from achieving those basic,
fundamental needs, that is a crime… even, even if it isn’t
a legal crime, it is a crime against humanity…against the living…

we must base our judicial system on our needs……
our basic fundamental needs of existence…

if we are deprived of food, water, shelter, health care,
then we are victims of a crime… ……

this new understanding of what a crime is, might be able to
help us understand the nature of our guilt…
if we prevent people from gaining their basic needs, then
we are guilty……

if a child is starving… then that child is being deprived of a basic need
and we are guilty of doing just that… depriving a child of a basic need…
even if it isn’t legally a crime, a crime against needs is a crime against
human beings……and life…

we must begin to expand our understanding of what a crime is
and what guilt we have for that crime…………

if I prevent someone from reaching their full potential,
I am as guilty of a crime as if I stole their money or some TV set…

a crime is something done to prevent someone from reaching their
needs or their possibilities…

let us think about that…

Kropotkin

now some might say, I have a “need” to rape or to kill…
those aren’t needs… those are desires…and we often confuse
our needs with our desires… I might say, I need sex… but I really
desire sex…you go without sex, you won’t die… if you go without
food or water or shelter or health care, some of those will kill you
and others will harm you… but not having sex?

we must not confuse our needs with our desires…

let us follow this through…

I need safety/security… yes, as a need human beings do need
safety/security… but you won’t die if you don’t get the amount
of safety/security you might desire…

let us look at love… another of Maslow’s needs…

we all desire love… and we all desire to love…
and love is certainly a need but we won’t die if we don’t
get love or are able to love others…

we certainly desire love but it isn’t an essential life or death need…

and we certainly want esteem from others but it isn’t a life and death need…

we have to separate out what we need to physically need and what we
physically desire…

desire isn’t always a need and a need isn’t always a desire…

or put another way… if we can choose to live without it, it isn’t
a need, it is a desire… but if we can’t live without it, then it is a need…

choice… plays a role in our new understanding of right… wrong…
needs and desires…and crime and guilt…

now some people desire is so strong, that they think they will
suffer without fulfilling that desire… like killers who must kill…
that is not a need because they can choose otherwise and still live…

if I allow a child to suffer from hunger, that is not a desire on their part…
and it is a choice on my part…given it is a choice, we can make other choices…
thus by the very nature of choice, we can be “found” guilty…

if I choose to cause suffering, then I am guilty by it by action or
inaction…… we can create all the excuses and rational to excuse our
choice… but if we choose to create suffering, then we are guilty…….

I have prevented that child from meeting their basic, human needs
of eating… and that is by choice, my choice… if I acquiesce to
a system that allows hunger to exist, then I am as guilty as that system…

so, capitalism is guilty of preventing children and adults
from getting their basic needs fulfilled… and that choice,
and it is a choice, is a crime…….

the only path to innocence is by making choices that
involves people meeting their essential needs of
food, water, shelter, health care, education are some
of these basic human needs that must fulfilled…

But Kropotkin, Education? Health care? Your joking, right?

nope, I am not joking…

education is the path to the final step of Maslow Pyramid…
the path to self actualization is through education… to achieve
one possibilities, one potential is by creative activities
and the only path of finding one’s potential is through
education……

I cannot become what I potentially become if I am not educated…

but that brings into question the premise of education…

currently, we in the west, believe that education is only meant to
give people job skills… to find a job… that is the point of education…
and I strongly disagree… the point of education has nothing,
nothing at all to do with job skills… and everything to do with
allowing people the tools to meet their needs, not their desires,
but their needs… to become a fully actualized person requires
an education…not job training…… and the goal of education now
becomes to give people the skills to become who they are…

to become human is the goal of education… not job skills…

this is a radical understanding of what education really is…
but it actually isn’t that radical…

education before the 20th century was to build a “gentleman”,
to be educated meant you knew Latin and you could read
and write poetry and you knew philosophy
and you could paint and you could sing or play an instrument…
that is what being educated meant for over 400 years…

and that is what is needed now… to become who we are,
we must first understand what it means to be human…
and we have no idea because we are educated to get jobs,
not to be human… and that is where education has failed us…

what is the goal of education?

your answer defines what you think is a human being…

so what is the goal of education?

what is the point of human existence?

what is our “need” vs our “desires”?

so many questions and so few answers…

why?

because we aren’t educated to be human…
we are educated to be workers…

Kropotkin

when last seen, I was accusing you… yes, you the reader…
of sleepwalking through your life.

and by sleepwalking, I mean that our entire civilization is bent
upon giving you, the reader, cover so you can escape
any type of responsibility or accountability for your life…
for actions done in your name… for escaping crimes committed
by society and by you, because you are sleepwalking through history,
philosophy, economics and social history…

so, every thing this society does is attempt to relieve you of
any accountability or responsibility for event, places, people,
actions…

think of the modern psychology and the self help books
and the type of books favored by such people as Oprah
and Dr. Phil…they are all meant to give you cover and escape
responsibility for your actions and/or inactions…

every thing done is done to relieve you of feeling guilty or believing
you are being held accountable for anything……

for example… let us take Abu Ghraib… never heard of it…
of course not… actions were done by American soldiers
that you paid for, with the approval of politicians
you voted for, with your tacit consent……

But Kropotkin, I was a child then or perhaps your attempt to
escape guilt is to say, but Kropotkin, I didn’t know about it at the
time… when the news broke… did you say anything?
did you protest? did you do anything at all? of course not…

actions were done in your name with your consent with
your money and you did nothing at all except to sleepwalk
through the entire event…it has nothing to do with me…
it took place thousands of miles away… with the army which I
have no control over… all true… and yet it doesn’t make you
any less guilty…

the entire social structure of America today is designed to
allow you to escape any type of guilt or responsibility
for actions taken by you or in your name…

glance at the books on the NY times Bestseller list…
the psychology books there are there because they are meant
to relieve you of the guilt and responsibility of daily life…
those books allow you, give you cover to sleepwalk through
your own life…

modern society only goal is to allow you cover from your own
actions or inactions as it may be……

we are not encourage or even allow to think about taking
personal responsibility for who we are and what we have
done in our lives…

think about Kierkegaard…

what was his mission?

how to be a Christian in an Christian age?

his context was to make one become responsible for being
a Christian… not in just name or a lip service Christian like
our modern Christians… but a responsible, accountable, Christian who
is held accountable for their beliefs in god…

everyone is trying to escape the weight of or the burden of
being held accountable for their actions and their beliefs…

a man commits a crime… how does he escape taking responsibility
for it? he blames his parents, he blames his addictions, he blames his
schooling, he says he didn’t know, crimes… those weren’t crimes…
blunders perhaps, but certainly not crimes…he says, you can’t prove it…
he gets his lawyers to cast doubts on the policeman who arrest him
and cast doubts on the judge who tried him and cast doubts on
the prosecutor who leads the criminal case…

all this to avoid taking responsibility for actions taken…
and all the while, you sleepwalk through your life
and through your morality…to avoid committing yourself to
a position that might require you to actually take a side…

to commit yourself to a what is morally right?

but one will say, but Kropotkin, what is right and wrong?

and that very question is meant to allow you to escape from
committing to a moral life…

the question is designed to cast doubt on the very
concept of right and wrong…we can’t “know”
what is right and wrong… so let us sleepwalk through
our days…

instead of asking the question, attempt to answer the question…

what is right and wrong?

don’t ask it, answer it… take accountability for your thoughts…
take responsibility for your answers…

but Kropotkin, I might be wrong but maybe I am in doubt as to
the answer…… evasions, sleepwalking through life… that is what
you are doing……….

the answer to the question about what is right or wrong, isn’t out there
waiting to be discovered… it is inside of you……

the burden of finding the truth lies within you… and that is mostly
what we are trying to avoid, desperately trying to avoid… taking on
some sort of burden… of escaping the burden of being accountable
and responsible for who we are and what we might become…

our modern society spends it time allowing you to escape
the burden of existence and I and I want to put that burden
squarely on your back…

I want you to be burden with the weight of existence…

that is the point of existence… to feel the great weight
of who we are and what we might become…

we sleepwalk through the great questions of Kant…

we don’t take them seriously…

we sleepwalk through them…

what are we to do? what can we hope for? what can we know?

we must feel the weight of those questions and feel burdened
by the answers we give…

instead of the modern tactic of escaping our accountability
and responsibility, we try a new tack…

we should take these questions seriously and we should feel the full burden
and responsibility of these questions…

no longer should you sleepwalk through the important
question of “who am I” and “what should I do”
and “what values should I hold” and “what should I spend my energy”

feel the burden… feel the weight of the reality of these questions…

what does it mean to be human? don’t sleepwalk through this question…
as you sleepwalk through every question of existence…

if you don’t feel the burden of existence weighing heavily upon
your shoulders, your back… then you are sleepwalking through
existence…

Kropotkin

what is the value of the existentialist?

to force us to come to grips with the burden of
existence…Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both wanted
to force people to feel the weight of existence…

K. wanted us to feel the weight of existence
as Christians which he felt was the highest form
of existence… whereas N. felt that only the highest souls
could truly feel the weight of existence…whereas I want
everyone to feel the weight of existence, not as Christians,
not as Americans but as human beings regardless of the accidental
traits of existence such as being born American or being white or
our gender or who we love…

we can still feel the weight of existence and still be able to dance…
and laugh and cry and be human…that was the message of Nietzsche…

we can become who we are and still be able to dance and sing
and laugh…

existence is a burden until we come out on the other side…

and by that, I mean that we can feel the weight of existence until
we come to grips with that fact and then we can accept it…
and by accepting it, we are free to accept the burden of
existence and still be able to dance and sing and laugh…

Kropotkin, I don’t know what that means?

so, learn what it means………

become who you are and become what is true of you…

But Kropotkin, what does that mean?

I offer up a story…

when I was young, people told me truths… at the time, I was too
young to understand those truths and the truths seem to me, to
be silly and a waste of time… I was just too young and inexperience
to fully understand those truths… as I aged and became experienced,
those truths, which meant nothing to me for decades, finally came to
become something… not because the truths changed, but I changed enough
to finally, finally become old enough to understand those truths…

truths that seem dumb and pointless are just dumb and pointless because
you haven’t grasp the point of those truths… the failure lies with you,
not with the truths……

I am old enough to finally understand those truths…

one such truth is… the key to any situation is to find out
who has the problem… if someone comes to you and says, fix
this problem… who has the problem? the answer will set you free…

now one might say, even you… I don’t understand what you mean
by feeling the burden of existence… hopefully one day you will…
but Kropotkin, I don’t understand? who has the problem?

the 20th and 21st century has been lessons in trying to escape
the truth, the burden of existence…… by blaming the jews, by
blaming the liberals, by blaming fake news, by blaming everyone but
yourself………everyone is guilty but you……

crimes have been committed but not by you…
you are the only innocent person on planet earth…

lies we tell ourselves that allow us to sleep at night…

99% of you will simply sleepwalk past this entire post thinking it has
nothing to do with who you are…for you are innocent…

Kropotkin