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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
the main task of the Christian, therefore, was not to
deal with science, politics, the worldly life: his task was to
prepare for citizenship in the city of god…heaven……
this was the voice of Augustine………
and what does Kropotkin want?
for people to retreat into themselves and understand
who they are and what it takes to become who they are…
and then, and then to return to the earth…
it is not enough to retreat into oneself and hide…
unlike the Romans who retreated into themselves
and hid for a thousand years…
the entire point of going from being to becoming is to
understand what is next…
it is not enough to engage in finding one values if one doesn’t
then act upon those values… but the first thing is to
understand who we are… what does it mean to be human?
and once we achieve that, then and only then can we
return to the world and find our selves in our actions…
in other words, we must know who we are before we
can act…
to withdraw is only the first step… to return is the second step…
and in our return, we can then understand what it is we need to do,
what we need to do to become who we are… individually and
collectively…for it about us individually and collectively…
take the exact same step as the Cristian and seek some
answers and when one has answers, those answers don’t lead
to heaven or leaving the world of the living, but the answers must
lead us to actions and the land of the living…
silence and contemplation are only the first steps…
becoming is the second step…
don’t make the same mistakes which sank the Roman empire…
retreat, to never come back…
retreat in preparation to come back with the answers to
the questions that plagues one mind…
what are we to do? what should we hope for?
what can we know? what values should we have?
upon what should we spend our energy on?
what does it mean to be human?
the average Roman was engaged in escaping accountability and
responsibility… that is why the city of Roman times after 400 AD,
depopulated… everyone was trying to escape instead of
trying to stop the fall of Rome…Christians escaped into their
religion and the wealthy escaped to their country estates
and the rest did what they could to avoid accountability
and responsibility…
I see the exact same pattern going on today…… everyone
is trying to get off the hook, everyone is trying to
avoid accountability and responsibility for who they
are and avoiding accountability for their actions………
blame the world, blame the parents, blame society,
blame the economy, blame the liberals, blame
the conservatives…wake up, wake up from
your sleepwalking…
Kropotkin
a slightly different path today…
not an individual one, but a collective one…
I was born an American…I have not live in any other
country… I was indoctrinated in the myths, prejudices,
superstitions, biases, habits of America at the end of the 1950’s.
Growing up, I was told being an American meant something…
you stood for something… your values are the highest values
of anyone… past and present……
me and millions of other baby boomers were given the sanitized
version of what America is…what it was and what it stood for…
it was recited to me, as part of my heritage, that all men are created
equal… and yet at the exact same time, black Americans were fighting to
be treated equally, to be allowed to vote equally, to be allowed to marry
equally, to be allowed to sit in diners and restaurants equally, to be educated
equally………
we had a line, a demarcation line between the words and dreams we used
and the reality at the time……. our words did not match our reality……
we said, all men are created equal… and yet, men, black men were not
treated equal and we did not treat women equal and we did not
treat sexual orientation equal and we did not treat religious affiliations
equal………
this gap between the reality and the words was unspoken
and unnoticed………
every civilization has a gap between its dream, its words
and its reality…
the high sounding words of America clashed with the reality
on the ground in America…….
if the difference is to great… we get events like the 1960’s…
our mighty words clashed with the reality on the ground
and the young revolted against this hypocrisy…
we, baby boomers have had many opportunities to revolt
against the hypocrisy of the last 40 years and yet we,
failed to do so… that is to our eternal shame……
today, we have a MAGA revolt… attempting to return
America to its previous greatness… and the failure lies
not in thinking to return America to its greatness, but
in thinking that bigotry and intolerance and greed and lust
is/was America’s greatness…as if America was its lower,
negative values……. it wasn’t…
the ideal of America as being “a city upon the hill” meaning
that America is a beacon of hope throughout the world,
has been lost… because that “beacon of hope”,
lies in our vision……
JFK spoke of that “city on the hill” on January 9, 1961…
……“today the eyes of all people are truly upon us-and our governments,
in every branch, at every level, national, state, and local, but be as a city
upon the hill- constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust
and their great responsibilities.”
and “their great responsibilities”……
we ask to be rewarded by our actions and our beliefs without
any corresponding awareness of our “great responsibilities”…
we are divorced… words and actions no longer match…
we ask for great rewards without any responsibilities…
name me a person who itemizes what it means to be an American…
tell me that person’s name who has judge what a human being is…
in our great pursuit of the empty goal of titles and wealth and power
and fame, we have forgotten what it means to be human and we
have forgotten what it means to be an American… we have no such
ideal guiding us as to what our “trust and responsibilities” are today…
there is no such mission statement as to what it means to be
an American or what it means to be a human being today…
we are rudderless because we have no map, no guide to aim us to
become better Americans or better human beings……
even the last slogan, “if they go low, we go high” leaves us
without any knowledge of what going high means in practical
terms…what is our standard going to be if we “go high”…
it is an empty promise because it doesn’t have any sort of
practical information as to our final goal… or what it
means to be an American or to be human…
we have to spell out in in no uncertain terms what it means to
be an American and what it means to be human…
and I want that accounting to be the high end of our
possibilities, the positive nature of what it means to
be an American or a human being……
not the low end… so to go low means we are/practice
injustice or intolerance or anger or hate or lust or greed…
I want any accounting of what it means to be human, to be on the
high end of what it means to be an American or to be an human being…
so, I want that accounting to be about love and justice and peace
and charity and honor and hope… you say, it is impossible for
us to reach those lofty goals… I say unto you, we must make
our goals to soar into the sky… to be much higher then we think is possible…
we must reach for the sun… and if we burn up, I have no problem with that…
to fail to reach a lofty goal is worth the effort… to succeed to reach a lowly
and mundane goal is worthless and insignificant…
it is only by aiming for the stars, can we claim to be human beings…
to be an human being, we must reach for justice, we must reach for love
and we must reach for peace and hope and charity…… set the bar extremely
high for us to reach becoming human, fully human…
to be an American, we must set the bar high, extremely high…
to reclaim our prior vision of being the “city on the hill”, we must
reclaim our moral high ground by being just and being love
and being hope and being peace and being charity…
to find out who we are, we must set the bar at the highest level
we can and then reach for the stars…
injustice will not be tolerated… intolerance will not be tolerated…
denying hope will not be tolerated…denying peace will not be tolerated……
torture and lying and being petty and denying people their fair share is no longer
to be tolerated…
we either reach for the stars in our word, in our actions, in our behavior
or we set aside our leadership of the world… and let others take over…
either we become better or we simply stop pretending that we have any moral
high ground left………
if they go low, we go high, but let us demonstrate what it means to
go high, let us enumerate what it means to go high, let us record
what it means to go high… let us hold ourselves to standards that bring
us to being better Americans and hold ourselves to standards that bring
us to being better human beings…
let us rise up and not down……… which means we have to have some
understanding of what it means to be human…
Kropotkin
I have been criticized by some because I don’t offer up
answers… or I don’t take my idea and bring them down to
earth… but you have mistaken me for another……
I am not offering up any answers… I am asking questions…
my agenda, such is it were, is about getting the reader
to engage in the questions I ask…… I have no illusions that
I am the sole provider of all answers needed… I am not…
the challenge I provide is simply a challenge for readers to engage
in some understanding of who they are, in light
of the Kantian questions……
are you engaged in becoming?
if not, why not?
are you engaged in exploring your possibilities?
if not, why not?
if you are not engaged in knowing thyself,
why not?
Socrates said, an unexamined life is not worth living,
are you examining your life?
if not, why not?
personally, I don’t care if you are or not… and I don’t care
about the answers you give because the fact is, I won’t ever
hear them…
are you engaged in lying to yourself about knowing thyself, or
lying about examining your life, or are you lying to yourself about
exploring your possibilities, I won’t ever know, but you will know…….
never underestimate the human capacity for lying to oneself…
and there are a large number of reasons that people lie to themselves…
fear, shame, horror, doubt, dishonesty, anxiety, panic, revulsion, ego,
faintheartedness… these are some of the reasons people lie to
themselves…
if you cannot be honest with yourself, you certainly can’t be honest with anyone else…
so instead of challenging me, heal thyself first…….
and people will assume I am talking about someone else, but I am
talking about anyone who is willing to begin the process of becoming…
honest with themselves…
life is a process… we see this every single day…
what process are you engaging with today?
be honest…with yourself at least…
Kropotkin
As I have noted from time to time above on this thread, one of the benefits [and psychological consolations] of being a moral and political objectivist is that even when your own idealism is stomped on by “the system”, you can still take comfort in knowing that at least you are right and they are wrong.
For example:
nytimes.com/2020/04/08/opin … e=Homepage
‘Bernie Sanders has ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, which is a tragedy, because he was right about virtually everything. He was right from the very beginning, when he advocated a total overhaul of the American health care system in the 1970s. He remains right now, as a pandemic stresses the meager resources of millions of citizens to their breaking point, and possibly to their death. He was right when he seemed to be the only alarmist in a political climate of complacency. He is right now that he’s the only politician unsurprised to see drug companies profiteering from a lethal plague with Congress’s help. In politics, as in life, being right isn’t necessarily rewarded. But at least there’s some dignity in it.’
This was precisely my own frame of mind when Nixon defeated McGovern.
And this is precisely the frame of mind I no longer have access to “here and now”.
‘A member of Congress for nearly 30 years, Mr. Sanders has been bitingly frank about the way that money strangles American democracy. Rich individuals with a vested interest in defanging egalitarian politics donate to campaigns, PACs, universities and think tanks in hopes of purchasing lawmakers’ loyalties and rigging the legislative process in their favor. These oligarchs — the Koch brothers, the Mercers and Michael Bloomberg, among others — exert control over our politics that far exceeds the one vote accorded to each citizen.’
Here there are facts able to demonstrate the extent to which objectively this is true. But where are facts able to establish that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to think about them as Sanders does? And that’s before we get to the “show me the money” nihilists who own and operate this political economy. For them morality revolves almost entirely [and cynically] around “me, myself and I”.
And where is the philosophical argument [in a No God world] that irrefutably/necessarily rebuts that?
Also, it’s before we get to the components of my own nihilistic morality: dasein, conflicting goods and political power.
It’s not that I take any pride or pleasure in viewing the world around me as I do. It’s that “here and now” – philosophically or otherwise – it still seems to be the most reasonable way in which to think about and deconstruct the human condition.
K: for me the most important part of your post, is the very last paragraph…
for you it is “still seems to be the most reasonable way in which to think about
and deconstruct the human condition”
You believe that your “method” is the best way to deconstruct the human condition.
and within what you believe and hold to be true, you are right, for you…
as for me, I dislike the very notion of “deconstructing”…it is nothing more then
a snapshot of that very moment… for we are ever changing, ever evolving,
even if we don’t feel it or see it…my body is going from a state of order to
disorder…even if I don’t see it or hear it or feel it… when my body reaches
a certain level of disorder, I die… simple as that…deconstruction takes a person,
place, thing and reduces it to its basic, simple elements… but that deconstruction
doesn’t take into account the processes of human existence…
just as we humans are changing every single second, our society, the state,
our various systems are also changing…different rates of changes for each different
system…but all of them going from order to disorder unless, unless we increase
their energy level, which stops the entropic, order to disorder, process…
I don’t usually think in terms of “method”. I think in terms of entropy
and systems and energy and being to becoming…….
and that seems to me to be the “most reasonable” method of thinking
of the human condition… but once again, it comes down to what each of us thinks,
feels, wishes for… my existential situation is different then your existential situation…
neither one is bad or good or any other “Moral” judgement, we might make about
the human condition/ existential situations we face in our existence…
it simple is…
the question for me is being… what are we?
to becoming… what am I to do?
I am engaged in the process of human existence which means I
believe that human existence isn’t a static, immovable object…
I believe the human condition is one of motion, processes, action…
to deconstruct is to miss the motion of human existence,
the existential aspect of human existence is movement,
action, process… going from being to becoming…
I am trying to catch the part between, between being
and becoming… I don’t focus on being and I don’t focus
on becoming, I try to catch that part in between the two…
and I am failing miserably… but I wouldn’t expect anything less…
we, each of us, approach the matter of understanding differently,
there is no right or wrong, good or evil… it is simply, for us,
a question of process… given our past, our experiences, our
education, our present age, our place, we understand
and answer, even to the very difference of what questions we ask,
is inherited within who we are…
I am Kropotkin… with a past and experiences and of a certain age,
and because of these and other factors, education for example,
I approach questions and answers differently then you do…
my indoctrinations of childhood were different then your
childhood indoctrinations and my experiences of overcoming
those indoctrinations were different then your experience…
at best, at best, all I can do is argue for a certain viewpoint…
one that seems to me to be a viewpoint that allows us to
increase our energy into various systems…… and given my
understanding of systems, I see that as being the highest value…
but you, given your past, present and possible future, might disagree with me…
and that is certainly your right to disagree with me… in fact, I would
worry if someone actually agreed with me 
so, continue on… it isn’t our specific points that matter, that we engage
with the in-between being and becoming that matters…
Kropotkin
now the next part or aspect of my understanding lies
in the concept of needs and desires……
for example, we act from our needs and desires…
motion is from either needing or desire…
I say, I need food, and I actually need food,
wanting food isn’t a desire, a choice, I must have
food or I will die…
but I might say, I need a couch… needing a couch isn’t really a need,
it is a choice…I need a couch really means, I desire a couch…
it is a choice… I don’t need a couch to survive… it is a choice
much of our actions come from this need or desire…
but we have confused need and desire…
one might say, I need sex… but the fact is, you desire sex…
it is a choice and thus is optional…you won’t die if you don’t get sex…
most everything single thing a human does is based on either
need or desire…in fact, need or desire drives everything we do…
but we can’t tell the difference between a need and a desire…
hence, therein lies the problem, perhaps the major problem of
humanity…our inability to see the difference between need
and desire…
earlier in our existence, up to perhaps the first world war…
we could see the difference between need and desire…
see this difference between need and desire in the
document of the “declaration of independence”
“we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are
created equal”
is that a need or is that a desire?
“that they are endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
life is certainly a need…no choice… but liberty and the pursuit of
happiness? these are certainly not, not needs, for we can live without
liberty or the pursuit of happiness…so, this idea that we “need”
liberty or the pursuit of happiness is false… they are desires…
nothing more…we can continue existence without liberty or without
happiness… we have a choice…but we have no choice in our need
for life…
for that need is hardwire into us by evolution… we cannot escape
our need for continued existence, life…
so where does that leave the other two desires, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness?
I would argue that liberty or as we moderns might say, freedom,
is a necessary part of process of becoming…to go from
being to becoming requires freedom…we have choice in
who we become… we have no choice in the operation of
entropy which takes us from order to disorder……
we can fight entropy, that is a need, again hardwire into us
by evolution…existence requires energy… that is a basic
component of existence, energy…and to become “who I am”
requires energy… I must devote resources to becoming “who I am”…
and becoming is about us fulfilling our possibilities……
the stage of self-actualization is a choice, not a need……
the stage of bodily needs, the lowest level of Maslow
pyramid, is the primary need of human beings… we must
have food, water, shelter, education, health care to survive…
we have a need for love, but it isn’t a bodily need, but we
have a need for esteem and safety/security and love, but those “needs”
are emotional, psychological needs… which to a human being is
as important as any bodily need…
to reach my full potential as a human being, I must have love,
I must have esteem, I must have safety/security…
to achieve my self-actualization level, I must fulfill my lower needs,
be it bodily or psychological…
so, the Buddha is wrong… we can have desires as long as we
can tell the difference between our desires and our needs…
I desire information, that is a desire, not a need, but
much of what I do is driven by my desire for information…
and I must have love, that is a basic psychological need of human
needs… that is not just a desire… but a emotional need which
is just as necessary as any need for food or water or shelter…
the goal is to become self-actualized… which means I attempt
to fulfill my possibilities, to fulfill my potential as a human being…
desires and needs are engaged with to reach my final goal of
self-actualization… I desire to become self-actualized…
which is a worthy goal and a worthy destination…
so needs and desires are just steps along the way to reach what
we really should be reaching which is to become self-actualized……
so, we can desire and we can have needs as long as we put them into
context as steps to the final/ultimate goal of self-actualization…
I don’t need to negate or extinguish my needs or my desires…
I can use them as steps to the real goal…
as long as I can tell the difference between my needs
and my desires, I should be ok… but I have to
keep myself in check or perhaps better said,
I must keep aware of my needs and what are my desires…
these ongoing battle between needs and desires, has lasted
the entire human existence… what do I need as oppose to
what do I desire? individually as well as collectively, we must
become aware of the difference between our needs and our
desires…do we really need to invade Iraq? or do we really need
to have troops in countries like Afghanistan?
no, we don’t need it at all, but we desire it… to
maintain our desire for power and wealth and
fame… but to survive, to survive as a need, do
we need troops in Iraq or Afghanistan?
NO, no we do not…
this need to excise power is really desire and ego,
not a bodily need like food or water or shelter…
we can better understand more of what we do if, if we
can better keep track of our actions in terms of ego/desire
and needs……
war is ego/desire… we don’t need to invade others to allow us to
physically survive… we do so from ego/desire…
peace is a choice and done so from need… we need peace to
be able to achieve our goals of self-actualization, both individually
and collectively…
can we survive without peace? as we can see from history, take the
Greek Peloponnesian war for example, that war so weakened
Athens that it fell… war continued is an recipe for disaster for
any city/state/nation… because it weakens a country to the point
where the country/state/city can no longer function…
if we want to achieve our needs, not ego/desire of war, but
our needs for bodily and emotional needs, we must make choices
of peace… not war……
the goal becomes self-actualization, not to achieve “life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness”…
and this new goal forces us to reevaluate what it means to be human,
forces us to reevaluate what it means to be an American…
we are and we must become…….
we have needs and we have desires……
let us reevaluate what both mean…given our goals…
Kropotkin
I have given the term “nihilism” a definition…
the negation of human beings and their values…
but let us continue this thought in slightly different form…
Aesthetic values such as beauty, love, form, content, harmony,
to name a few aesthetic values………
do these values have any “value” or purpose or meaning in our modern world?
I would say no… the modern world isn’t interested in beauty or love or harmony
or form… by negating these values, the values of aesthetics, of beauty of love
of harmony, we negate human beings…
our lives seem empty and barren because we have negated aesthetical
matters like love and beauty and harmony…
when we are reduced to life without any aesthetical value, then
we need to replace those lost values with something…
thus we rush into conspicuous consumption… to replace our lost
aesthetical values…that is why modern life, modern society
dislikes aesthetical values…… because by living life aesthetical,
we live with those values… in other words, instead of seeking
material goods, we seek aesthetical values… which isn’t about
money or the commerce of America… the GDP…
the search for beauty or harmony or love isn’t about the materialism,
the accumulation of wealth that America is so fond of…
beauty is its own reward… harmony is its own reward…
love is its own reward……… we don’t need to spend tons
of money to discover love or beauty or form or content or harmony…
the aesthetic values… aren’t found by using wealth…
they are found by a search and a creation of…
that is why we don’t have any use for aesthetics…
that is why society is so against beauty or harmony or
love… you can have those without wealth or spending money…
aesthetic values are values whose qualities pleases us and satisfies us…
but you can’t make any money off of aesthetic values which is why modern
society is against and opposes aesthetic values……
the goal is to be rich, not to find beauty…
and that philosophy negates the best of who we are as human beings…
we find ourselves best when we seek aesthetic values like beauty
and love and harmony and form……
I am at my best as a human being when I am seeking aesthetic values like
beauty… love…harmony…
and that has nothing to do with the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation
of titles or the number of summer homes we have…or the promotions we might
receive…………
we should be seeking aesthetic values instead of seeking the accumulation
of wealth or the accumulation of power…
when I am seeking aesthetic values, are we engaging in needs or are we
engaging in desires?
I would say, I could live without beauty or form or harmony…
but my life would be meager and insubstantial…barren and unproductive…
sparse and sterile………any one of these definitions would be enough to
give you an idea of how our society, by excluding aesthetics values, is found
wanting…….
is life worth living without aesthetics values?
values like beauty and form and content and harmony give our life meaning
and purpose…
we have forgotten that…….
but it is not too late to engage in the proper study of life by engaging
in a study of the aesthetics values…
Kropotkin
Here and now, I believe that “I” – mine, yours, theirs – is constructed/fabricated historically, culturally and experientially out in a particular world. Through our indoctrination as children and as the embodiment of uniquely personal experiences, relationships and access to ideas as adults.
Then it becomes a matter of distinguishing those parts embedded in the either/or world – the parts applicable to all of us – and the parts embedded far more subjectively/subjunctively in the particular moral and political prejudices that we come acquire given the manner in which our lives can be very, very, very different.
For example…
There are the biological and demographic and empirical facts embedded in the coronavirus pandemic. The stuff that doesn’t change no matter what your moral and political prejudices are. But those moral and political prejudices – red state? blue state? liberal? conservative? – have a profound impact on how to one reacts to the pandemic in terms of establishing rewards and punishments for particular behaviors.
All I do is to point that out and then to suggest that in a world of conflicting goods, philosophers seem unable to reconcile these differences. Let alone able to resolve it all as philosopher-kings by providing the world with the most rational and virtuous behaviors of all.
So, given that assumption, I suggest further that the “best of all possible worlds” would be for the liberals and the conservatives to forge a reaction to the pandemic that revolves around “moderation, negotiation and compromise”.
Which of course any number of objectivists will scoff at.
Instead, in my view, your assessment of all this stays up in the clouds that I construe to be “general description intellectual constrptions”.
To wit:
Okay, so make this point to the conservatives here at ILP. See how they react to it. Then, in regard to the covid-19 calamity, see how far you are both willing to go when it comes to coming up with one or another “for all practical purposes” rendition of the “best of all possible worlds” right here and right now.
What moderating, negotiating and compromising are you willing to consider?
Whereas my own “I” here is still no less “fractured and fragmented” given the arguments I make in my signature threads. In this thread in particular: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
From my frame of mind, to suggest that “it isn’t our specific points that matter” is to miss my point entirely. Out in the world where actual sets of behavior are chosen those points are often all that matter. And it is the behaviors that we choose that precipitate actual consequences.
But how are those specific points rooted or not rooted in the manner in which I construe “I” here as the embodiment of dasein?
IAM, I am not ignoring you, I just have other fish to fry at
this moment…
Arche: foundational…
the Greeks used the word Arche at first, as “beginning”, “origin”, or
“source of action” later the Greeks expanded its meaning to include
“first principle”, or “element” and by extension, it may mean,
“first place, power”, " a method of government" “empire, realm”,
or “command”……
that is the basic search of human beings…to discover or find out
what is our “beginning” or “first principle”…what is foundational
about being human…
many different and diverse answers have been offered…
love, life, hope, death, the pursuit of happiness, justice,
pain, avoidance of pain, drinking, sex, pursuit of money,
money, fame, wealth, power, material goods, knowledge,
god, the search for god, rock and roll, violence,
murder, crime, hate, fear, greed, lust… all have been offered
up as possible answers to the question of what is foundational
about being human……and so many more answers have been offered up…
to make a list of all the possible answers to what is foundational about
human beings could take up dozens if not hundreds of pages…….
one might suggest needs… that we human have needs is what is
foundational about humans…
one of the best answers yet…
but even this answers doesn’t cover what is foundational about human beings…
for we could include art, beauty, aesthetics, symmetry, form, function……
and for some, we could include knowledge like history, science, philosophy,
social science, economics…
and for some the foundational aspect of being human lies in
ism’s and ideology like capitalism and communism and Catholicism
or Buddhism or any other ism or ideology……
and for some, the foundational aspect of being human lies in
the superstitions, biases, prejudices and habits of human
beings…
the problem lies in the fact that all these answers could be
foundational aspects of human existence and, and none of
them could be………
we just don’t have a sense of what is the foundational
aspect of being human…
and perhaps the answer lies here… we don’t have a sense
of the foundational aspect of being human because there isn’t one.…
perhaps, perhaps no matter how hard we search or how long we search,
we can never find a foundational basis of what it means to be human…
and perhaps that is both our greatest strength and our greatest
weakness…
as our strength, it allows us to be adaptable to changing
environments and situations…
as our weakness, it doesn’t allow us to find a home… it is hard
to be human and not have a set, solid place to affirm our
humanness…some foundational aspect of being human that
grounds us…… we might not have that…
in some ways that is what is lacking in the “modern” era…
we lack some foundational aspect of being human that allows
us to become grounded… to have a solid sense of who we are,
individually and collectively…to have a foundational understanding
of what it means to be human… we are lacking that……
to understand it slightly differently… human beings need to
have a sense of who they are and where they came from…
we need a home for our understanding of what it means to be human…
human beings need, need to feel at home… and when we don’t feel
at home with either ourselves, our family, our society, our state,
we feel alienated, disconnected, apart, separate from both ourselves
and the source of our discontentment…be it society, or state or
ourselves…
if there is a flaw in Maslow, it is here… his failure to include
our innate and sometimes fatal need for home………
perhaps, perhaps that is our foundational piece of existence that
we must, must attend to… home……. for without a sense of home,
who are we, exactly?
I can’t say……
but perhaps not, perhaps there is another foundational aspect that
defines us as human beings…….
once again, perhaps not…
and that is why we feel so lost in this modern age?
we don’t have a foundational aspect of who we are,
we don’t have a home for what it means to be human…
we cannot become human unless we know what being human means……
what is the fundamental, foundational viewpoint of human existence?
what does it mean to be human?
what is the home, the foundational aspect of being human?
is it love or is it hate or is it hope or is it god or is it life or is it………
I don’t know and you don’t know and that is the problem…
we don’t know… and we are lost without that knowledge…
so what is the foundational, fundamental property of being human?
Kropotkin
so we might adjust our previous question to this,
what is the foundational, fundamental question,
of the state? which is to say, what is the foundational
question of government, what is the primary question
of human existence in regards to how we order ourselves?
for politics is a question of, how do we order ourselves?
do we have rule of one, or a few or many or all?
and how do we pay for this rule, be it one, a few, many or all?
how do we organize ourselves?
and is organizing ourselves really that important?
the only way to answer this question is by understanding what it
means to be human………
in other words, we cannot, cannot create a functional, working
government unless we know what is foundational about human beings…
that is why government/ isms about government fail… because they
haven’t yet understood what it means to be human… they haven’t
found the foundational/Arche point of being human.
and if, as I have speculated, perhaps we don’t have a foundational
aspect of being human, in which case, we can never have a
government that will succeed because a successful government
can only work if there is an understanding of what it means to be
human…….
what is the fundamental, foundational point of human existence?
this is the question that needs answering… not how much in taxes do
we pay or what is proper defense budget, but what is the fundamental,
foundational point of human existence?
and we can build a government, build a society, build place for
human beings to exist within if we know what it means to be human…
as I cannot personally confirm to anyone, including myself, that there
is a fundamental, foundational meaning of being human, I cannot
consider myself as being at home in the universe…
and this is in fact true…… I am alienated from, disconnected from
society and the state because I don’t feel at home within the society
or the state…………
every single day, every day, I ask myself, is this all there is in life?
is there anything else in existence beside what I see or hear?
and the answer so far, so far, is I can’t see anything that lies outside
of the nonsense that is existence today…
I search for some fundamental, foundational viewpoint of what it
means to be human… what is the center of human existence?
and the best answer I have come up with is… home……
an answer I wouldn’t have given 20 or even 10 years ago…
is home the right answer? I don’t know… I might never know…
it might be the right answer for me, but not for thee…
so, we seek two different types of answers, one, what is the
fundamental, foundational understanding of what it means to
be human, individually, and the second, what does it mean to
be human, collectively………
and perhaps the conflict between individual human and society, lies
in the fact that our individual answer isn’t our collective answer…
and that the two answers, individually and collectively are two
distinct and separate answers…
and so the two aspects of human existence, individually
and collectively, clash, conflict with each other…
I don’t now because I don’t know the answer to the question,
what it means to be human?
either individually or collectively…….
I wish I had an answer, but I don’t……
as usual, I only have questions, no answers…
Kropotkin