a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

but Kropotkin, what is the connection between your posts
on entropy and the post about the burden of existence?

everything…

figure it out…find your truths in these posts…

Kropotkin

people don’t seem to understand this basic fact…

we can be autonomous beings while still being part of
society…

we can have both possibilities exists…

the most autonomous being I ever heard of was a poet, scientist,
worked in the government, wrote plays, he was part of society,
the government and the media……

you can be autonomous and still engage with society, with the government,
with the media…

unlike Nietzsche, this person was able to fulfill his possibilities
and be autonomous and still engage with the various aspects
of society/government/ media…

the point is not whither you are an anti-vaxxer or anti-government
or even as many here are, anti-human…no, the point, the goal
is to rise to the point of being self-actualized…

self-actualization can be found in this saying: “what a man can be, he must be”

to be self-actualized means to be able to fulfill your possibilities…
to accomplish what you can accomplish and still be part of a society,
part of the government, part of the media……

to become who you are… being and becoming is the point…

not some idiotic fixation on the alleged new world order that is
trying to take away your rights…

the new evil world order would love you to hold such asinine beliefs…
instead of becoming much more dangerous which is to become
human, all too human… that is the real threat to the evil, new world order…

to become who we are… to self actualize is the real danger to the
new evil world order………

the new pathway to becoming human is quite different then the old pathway…
the old way was about money, power, wealth, fame, to enforce your will on
others…

the new way is about a quiet path to becoming human…
to meet our basic needs, to meet the basic necessities of being alive…
that is the start of the new path… then to build upon that by finding
our safety/security needs, then the path to love/belonging…
then the path to esteem…

then and only then can we become self-actualized… to become who we are…

the road of being human does not lie with power, money, fame, wealth,
material goods…

to become human, the path lies with meeting our needs, of physical
and emotional needs that all human beings have…

that is the path of existence that we must follow…….

and as every path, every journey requires a first step…
let this be your first step… to engage with the burden
of existence……. to be is to be weighted down with
knowledge of what it means to be human… to
honestly engage with the questions of existence…
what does it mean to become?

what are we to do? what should we hope for? what can we know?
what should our values be? upon what should we use our energy for?

We need to be weighted down with these questions of existence…

until we can find an answer, our answer…

and weighted down means, to take those questions seriously…
to ponder what it means to be human…

to question the very basis of our current assumptions
of what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

BTW, person in question as to being the most Autonomous person
ever is………Goethe…

then next is Da Vinci…

Kropotkin

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[comment about comment about summarily deleted post mistakingly placed in wrong thread, summarily deleted]

we can see in our days of enforced isolation, that
we have a problem… not a personal and yet is personal problem,
and not a universal and yet is a universal problem…

we try to find something to do during these long days of
social distancing and we find ourselves doing random,
pointless stuff, just to waste time until we can go to sleep
and begin our random, pointless day all over again…

we find that we used the diversions of going places, of going to work,
of going to ballgames, of going to the store, to mask the fact that
we have no purpose of existence… we use these random actions to hide
the fact that there is no rhyme or reason to our actions………

our empty days reflect the reality of our empty lives…
only now we can actually see the emptiness of our lives,
given how we have nothing to do…

what is the meaning of your life?
what is life purpose?
what gives value to your life?

none of you can tell me because you have no point, or meaning
or values to offer… either to yourself or to me…

you live a barren life, empty and full of despair…

only now you can see it because you are force to sit at home
and do nothing…without the constant activities of going out to eat,
of going out to ball games and without going to movie or shopping…

these activities certainly keep you busy, but do they tell you anything
about what it means to be human? does this busywork tell you anything
about what virtues you should hold or who you are or what should you become?

all this daily busywork is just activities meant to prevent you from seeing
just how empty your life really is… just how devoid your existence is?

there is no plan, no thought as to past, present or future, no attempt to
answer any of the Kantian questions, what am I to do? what should I believe in?
what can we know?

your daily busywork is mean to have you avoid the questions of existence…
your daily busywork is means to allow you to sleepwalk through your existence…

what is justice? who cares if there is a sale at Macy’s… what is true?
who cares if there is a new restaurant opening in town?
what is hope? who cares if there is a new Marvel movie opening
tomorrow?

do you lack a meaning or purpose in life?

How can you tell? you are so busy doing everything in your power to
avoid knowing the truth…by being so busy with… absolutely nothing…

we are so afraid of finding out the truth about our empty lives that we will
do almost anything to avoid learning the truth…….

our lives is empty because there is no meaning or purpose or goal to achieve that
makes life worth living…… we mark time by wasting it doing busy work to avoid
waking ourselves up from our sleepwalking…

we are so busy trying to avoid being put on the spot in regards to
what is the meaning of life, that we no longer even know why
we exists…we sleepwalk through existence……

the great “shitdisturbers” of existence, the one’s that have force us to
reexamine our existence have been Socrates and Kierkegaard
and Nietzsche……

they are there to remind us our existence is empty and void of meaning
because we put our priority in the superficial aspects of existence,
the running around and doing things instead of taking time to
just stop and think about what is the point of existence…

what does it mean to be human? who knows because we are too busy
just being busy doing busywork…

have you ever just stopped… just stopped to think about
what it means to be human? have you ever wondered about
what is the point of existence?

today, right now you can because you are trapped at home, with
absolutely nothing else to do…

don’t think about mankind or the meaning of existence in regards to life,
but reduce it down, what is the meaning of life to me? what is the point
of existence for me?

this virus has created a great opportunity for us to explore
what it means to be human and what is the point of, the meaning
of existence for us, individually and collectively…

but you will sleepwalk through this great possibility by sleepwalking
through this by doing something stupid like binge watching “Friends”
or perhaps “Cheers” or maybe stretch your mind a little bit by binge
watching some sci-fi show……

what are your values?

by engaging in busywork, we can avoid important questions like this…

so, what shall it be?

engagement in what it means to be human or
just busywork to pass the time away…

Kropotkin

And, of course, on a considerably more obscure stage – here – me.

On the other hand, for particular nihilists like me, the assumption is that life is essentially meaningless. In a No God world. Still, existentially, not being in possession of an essential meaning doesn’t make all of the things that bring me pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment any less pleasurable, satisfying and fulfilling.

Here, in other words, philosophy pales next to the actual set of circumstances that you are able to sustain into whatever future you have left.

Instead, the assumption that life is essentially meaningless has become an important factor for me in that it has precipitated a “fractured and fragmented” sense of identity. At least in regard to my understanding of human social, political and economic interactions.

That’s what makes me a shit disturber here.

You know, for the objectivists.

And, as a consequence, the coronavirus becomes just another object lesson as far as I am concerned. It zeros in on just how problematic “I” can become in a world in which “contingency, chance and change” comes barreling in like a bat out of hell.

the ancient answer to finding meaning
and purpose has been religion, the gods…

but what if that message has been played out…

we “modern” are faced with finding meaning and purpose
without the ancient rituals that we have used since
the beginning of time, the use of prostration to signify
the act of submission to a god or to a religion…

I cannot, we cannot bow down in submission because if we are all
equal, if the universe has no center point as science tells us, then
in which direction do we bow to?

but, but if there is no center, no middle point, then how do we
find that which unites us all?

how do we find meaning and purpose if there is no center of the
universe?

this question of finding meaning/purpose in the universe,
lies at the heart of the human experience……

so how do we discover what is the point of existence?

we must search a different direction to understand what
is the point/meaning/purpose of human beings?

I have suggested that we begin with an understanding of what our
values are? that we use values of love and hope and charity
and justice and peace to create meaning and purpose for
us…

I can use love and justice and peace as my lodestar and begin there…

that is my meaning and purpose… by loving and embracing justice
and peace… I make that my meaning and purpose and reason for
existence…

to replace outside values with inner values……. and those inner values
are values of becoming… of going from animal to animal/human to human,
fully human… the higher values that lead us to becoming more human…

those are the values and purpose and meaning of existence that I embrace…

I don’t need or want an external god if I have the values of being human…

or to say another way, by positing the higher values of existence being
the meaning and purpose and point of existence, we rise to the
top of Maslow pyramid… we reach the height of human existence
by our self-actualization of finding our possibilities and becoming,
fulfilling those possibilities, becoming what is potential in
being human… I can be a writer or a painter or
an artist or an runner or a mountain climber… or I can
aim to become the best human being I can be…

from being to becoming…follow Goethe
and work toward our becoming our possibilities…

that becomes what it means to be human…

not one who bows down to god or prostates oneself before
the false god of Mammon… as most in our country do these days…

no, I call upon you to take the unknown journey to becoming
human…

to end this sleepwalking through a life without meaning or purpose
or point…

wake up…

ask yourself…

what is my point? what is my meaning? what is my purpose?

is it really to shop or to go to restaurants or see the latest superhero movie?

I don’t think so……

and you shouldn’t think so either…

so the question I ask now is this…

how do you end your sleepwalking through life?

Kropotkin

K: I agree with you in that life is meaningless and yet, I believe we can
create meaning and purpose… not with any god or religion or money…

but with a new understanding of what it means to be human…

I believe in holding values even, EVEN if those values don’t seem to
have some sort of absolute value… when lost in a forest… and I have been,
sometimes the best plan is simple start walking in a fix direction…
sometimes, you might have a vague clue as to the road or a path,
and so you aim toward that road or path… you don’t know for sure,
but you think, you think it is out there… and so you walk…

that is life…right there… you start walking even if the path you are aiming for
isn’t clear or obvious…I don’t need certainty… I can get by with uncertainty…
because as human beings, we are surrounded by uncertainty…
we can measure our lives by the amount of uncertainty we have…

I say embrace the uncertainty…

my journey isn’t about being “out there” my journey is inside of me…
who I become… who I am… what road will I take…

I believe that Campbells myths of the journey, is just that a myth…
we don’t need to go out and fight dragons or seek the holy grail…

we can journey by an exploration of who we are… the inner journey is
far more important to me, then the outer journey of title, wealth,
power, fame… those are unimportant to me… and a hindrance to
my own journey of becoming…

the battles I fight are battles within me, not outside of me…

for me… the battle you fight is the wrong battle…
personally I would fight and battle the “fractured” inside of me…
and go from there…again, personally, I wouldn’t fight the
“objectivists” ….they have their own battle to fight…
an inner battle………but I am no you and you are not me…

so we fight our own battles…be sure the battle you fight is
the battle you should be fighting…not the battle you think
you ought to be fighting…

Kropotkin

like the Pagan of the years from Jesus to Augustine,
in their search for something to believe in, they
traded their freedom for security…

just as the conservative does today… trading a uncertain
freedom for an even less certain security…

when we rely on “acts” of security like depending upon
surveillance and the police state to keep us “safe”, we fail
to see the damage we do to our souls…

to be human is to engage with freedom, not security…

and those who promote security/safety over freedom
trade away the best of being human for the worst of being human…

the journey from Roman to Christian had its toll upon
the soul of man…a toll we are still paying…

a tax that still holds human beings to security over freedom…

to put heaven above one’s freedom is deny the strength of
being human… which is to change and adapt and become…

the search for heaven is the search for not only certainly but
a search for determination…to follow the laws, is to
accept that we can only travel as far as the laws allow…
which is to say, nowhere…

think of what it means to be Christian or to be Hindu or
to be Buddhist…you are bound to a certain fate…
your choices is limited to one or none…

obey the law of god or be in hell… one choice…

whereas freedom doesn’t set any set course of action…

whereas to be free, one only has to change or adapt
according to the will of the one… change by reason is best,
because to be free to answer to reason, means I control
the change and what change that happens…

to be a Christian means to change only to the demand of god…
there is no choice…and I trade in my freedom for an
uncertain future… that might not exist…I have
one possibility and one possibility only…to obey the laws of god…

but to have freedom over security means I am the author
and creator of change…

and what does this have to do with what I have been talking about?

everything… it is just another brick in the wall…

Kropotkin

Again, from my frame of mind, this is just another “general description intellectual contraption”.

In other words, I would imagine that folks all along the moral and political spectrum could [with the best of intentions] post an assessment like this.

But, then, in having taken the “search for meaning” seriously and conscientiously, the arguments I raise in my signature threads don’t go away. At least not for me.

For whatever reason [rooted in dasein] your “I” seems less fractured and fragmented than mine does here. And [rooted in dasein] it has come to settle down more decisively on the left/liberal end of the political continuum.

Basically, we just don’t see the existential juncture that intertwines identity, value judgments and political economy in the same way.

K: and the interesting questions comes, who is right and who is wrong?

and I would maintain that we are both right and we are both wrong……

as there is no center to the universe, there is no center to the
human being, no place where we can stand and say, this is absolutely
true, now and forever… we cannot find a location to being human…

why? Because we are always in the midst of becoming…

I am at this very second growing old… which is to say, I am engaged
in entropy… my body is going from order to disorder… and when I
am disordered enough, I die…

but I can engage with, I can embrace the disorder and loss of information that
is involved in my getting old, entropy hard at work…

we stand at different places, we have different viewpoints,
but I cannot state as you cannot state, who is right or who is wrong…
I would, in fact suggest that the words, concept of right and wrong don’t
even apply to what we are talking about………

what you would say as fact is fact given your viewpoint, your age,
your education, your background… in other words,
we are as much a victim of our age as the young are victims
of their age…

experience has taught me lessons… lessons that the young
cannot possible know until they are old, like me…

and because I am old, I no longer remember the lessons
of being young…

we are in different places in our thinking because we are at
different places in our ages and experiences…nothing more…

Kropotkin