a new understanding of today, time and space.

it was really ugly hot today around here…86 at 6:00 pm…
and it is suppose to be hotter tomorrow…

that is my reality today…

given what I have written earlier, how can I find out who I am, given
the parameters of American ideology…how can find out what am I supposed
to do given the values of what it means to be an “American”?

nationalism is suppose to be one of the premier isms/ideologies of our day…
and it has been since the Germans discovered nationalism as one of the means
of a platform for people to exist within…

instead of being Prussian or Bavarian or lower Saxony or perhaps
Catholic as in Bavaria or Protestant in Prussia, you could unite the various
people into being “German”…to discover nationalism in Germany meant
you could unite the people under a banner that didn’t create an US vs THEM…

and given the time period that this was first shown by Fichte, around 1800,
the idea of nationalism has grown in every country because it is a useful tool
to unite people under… another step along the path from one to a family to a tribe
to many to all…a platform to unite people under…

but to my eyes anyway, the call to nationalism has played out…and
one of the reasons is the very deliberate attempt to mark out citizenship
by various means to be very exclusive… only whites are accepted in this
new version of nationalism, blacks and minorities, are not accepted into this
idea of nationalism… but nationalism to be effective, must include everyone,
regardless of race, creed, color, sexual orientation or it is not truly nationalism…

you are part of America unless you are black or a minority or a women or
gay…this attempt to make nationalism very specific and a very limited
attempt to keep America for one group only…

an attempt to create a platform must include everyone…

the Catholic church calls itself catholic because the word
“catholic” means universal…it was for everyone who accepted
the word of Jesus…if you accepted, you were included into
the platform regardless of whatever other identity you might hold…
it didn’t matter to the church if you were a slave or a women or
gay or a Barbarian… that was irrelevant to the main question of
the Catholic church… Do you believe?

where the church began to go wrong was when it decided to
separate out aspects of the church… only men could be priest
and men who weren’t married… by such exclusions, the church lost
it’s universal appeal…universal means everyone… but not if you exclude
some for being a women or men for being married…

once you begin to exclude, you begin to lose your foundation of
a platform…and once again, we see the value of inclusion…
and see the harm in exclusion… intolerance is the opponent of
a universal platform…

a platform that limits like a white only platform cannot succeed because
of its exclusions…the way forward, the path into the future must
be toward a universal, a catholic platform…as we have traveled as
human beings toward a more universal platform for all human beings…

from one to a few to many to all…

and this journey is not only a political and social and
and economic and social, but it is also true of platforms…

Karl Marx wrote about socialism… at first it was a few who were socialist,
then more and more people became socialists…the journey of one, to few,
to many and then to all, still holds true…

Christianty journey is also another journey of one, to few, to many to all…

every single platform we call ism or ideology is an platform which goes from
one to few to many to all…

that is the journey we too must take if we are to become who we are…

we too must follow the path that we have followed as human beings since
the beginning of being human…

the human journey is not an individual one, but a collective one…
and until we understand that, we won’t be able to get anywhere…

but the question revolves around not only our individual path but how we
as individuals, become part of and work with the collective…

we can no longer be indifferent to alienation and discontentment…

because being alienated and discontentment is not only bad for
the individual but it is bad for the society, state, culture and community…

the path forward for us as human beings and as a state, culture, society
and community is inclusion, acceptance of everyone regardless of
what platform they might be part of or believe in…

we cannot reach the next goal of human development until we
begin to hold to inclusion and universality and faith in
all, all human beings… regardless if they hold to our beliefs in
god, state, morality or history…

one family, one tribe, one country, one society, one world…

that is the path of what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

Perhaps we have look at this all wrong…

we have failed to properly understood what it means to be human…

how we should see life is a journey, an Odyssey…
both individually and collectively…

let us look at the original Odyssey… Odysseus or Ulysses made
the gods angry and in there anger, they decided to punish Odysseus
with an additional 10 year of journey after the Trojan war…

the entire goal of the Odyssey is to reach home…

how do we reach home? that is the question isn’t it?

some have said, home is god or heaven or piece of mind or salvation or perhaps death…
the Buddha said that salvation is found once you have reach nirvana…which is the
negation of all desire, wants, needs…every single religious leader has made such
suggestions of getting home, from Jesus to Mohammed to Confucius…

have you found salvation? or have you found home?

we see Odysseus face a series of challenges on his journey home…

can we adapt the Odyssey to our own journey home?

as human beings, we face a two fold seeking of home,
personal and collective…

let us see what possible journey’s home we have found?

we see in modern ism’s and ideologies, the pursuit of wealth
and the pursuit of titles and material goods and fame…

how do these pursuits allow us to reach home?

the journey we have made collectively has been from animal
to animal/human and the journey we are attempting is to
become human, fully human…

what can free us from this Odyssey, this journey?

Odysseus finally reached home…

for him, it was a physical place… but is the journey, our
collective Odyssey really to reach a place? I don’t think so…

to me, it seems to be a collective viewpoint that allows us peace of mind…

I have had real epiphanies over the years and once the realization was made,
I viewed the world differently and I was sated, satisfied, at peace…

until I grew unhappy with that answer and needed to find another…

we discover new antinomies, which drives our search for some clarity on the matter…

our journey’s aren’t just physical journey’s… they are mental, emotional,
psychological and philosophical…

we can be at “home” and still have a mental or emotional journey we must take…

our Odyssey isn’t over once we reach some peak of wealth or titles or fame…

the human journey is not only from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human…

the human journey can also be the journey we take in fulfilling our needs, going from
meeting our need for food, water, shelter, education, health care to meeting our
need of security/safety and the love/belonging and esteem…

we take many types of journey’s in our life…I grew from baby to toddler to child to
teen to adult to middle ages and now to old age… that is one such journey we take…

If we fall to understand that life is an journey, both an individual and a collective journey,
we fail to see what life is…

the question of existence is a question of a journey that we make…

in whose footsteps should we follow in our journey?

is a journey to fill our material needs, to be wealthy and own 3 houses
and 17 cars really a journey that will fill us with home? the journey to
possessions is the journey of every more material goods, with no end in sight…
in our search for wealth and material goods, there can never be enough…
we always must have the newest, latest thing… there is no end in our
materialistic journey… it doesn’t have an ending place…

let us look at the people we put up statues to…

what sort of journey do they deem as best?

the internal journey… not of body, but of soul, of spirit,
of becoming within…

Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, MLK… they didn’t preach the journey
of the body, they preached the journey of the soul, of the spirit…

the question becomes, what is home and how do we reach it?

Kropotkin

Okay, then how would the philosopher/ethicist demonstrate that these things are necessarily immoral? In a No God world. From my frame of mind, your frame of mind has acquired a set of political prejudices that divides the world up into “moral” and “immoral”. But this is something that I have come to believe that you have come to believe – re dasein – are basically existential contraptions. Subjective/subjunctive leaps of faith.

In other words, how are behaviors shown to be inherently good or evil? Where’s the argument for that? And where’s the demonstration of this argument such that all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational, are obligated to agree?

Where’s the argument that makes the amoral personal agenda of the nihilist, narcissist and sociopath go away?

After all, down through the ages there have been those who not only embraced your “evil” acts as legal, but rationalized the laws themselves as reflecting moral behavior. Some even included a God, the God, their God in defending them.

In other words, basically, others are obligated to “define” a “human being” as you do. Then if they choose behaviors that can’t be squeezed into your own definition, they are being immoral.

As though the conservatives and those who act out your own “evil” behaviors can’t come up with their own assumptions regarding what it means to be a human being.

As though philosophers and ethicists are then able to come up with an airtight ontological and teleological assessment of the “human condition” wholly in sync with your own political prejudices.

Okay, sans God, what is that argument?

Instead, in my view, you iterate your own political prejudices. Prejudices that I have thought myself into believing are less the components of philosophy and more the components of the points I raise in my signature threads.

To wit:

And, by definition [yours], the conservatives have absolutely no defense against these assumptions. Meaning that their own set of assumptions are ipso facto [u][b]wrong[/u][/b].

And on and on. Only this time [in my view] all the more abstractly:

This all “clicks” in your head, when, in turn, in your head, you zero in on any particular context. But from my frame of mind this sort of “intellectual scaffolding” is no less available to those who find your own assessment of “good” and “evil” behavior as appalling to them as you find theirs.

But, but, but: Unlike “me”, you both are able to embody the gratification of knowing that at least you are right and they are wrong.

What neither of you grasp then is what it might be like to be someone like me. Better even to be proven wrong about “good” and “evil” than to conclude that both are basically just social, political and economic constructs rooted in an unimaginably complex and convoluted intertwining of genes and memes embedded in historical, cultural and experiential contexts ever and always evolving and changing over the centuries.

At least you’re not that.

as usual, thanks for your thoughts and I shall answer when I have
given them some thought…returning to work after 2 weeks off,
so I hopefully will have an answer by Wednesday or Thursday…

Kropotkin

these questions of existence are all tied up into each other…

the journey or Odyssey of us human beings can be seen
as an type of seeking…what are you seeking?

the Kantian/Kropotkin questions are some of our “seekings”
Who am I? what am I to do? what should I/we hope for?

the journey home, be it a physical home or far more likely,
a spiritual home…a place where I am not, not disconnected or
alienated…I have always in some fashion or another felt disconnected
or alienated from people or some ism or America…

I have a home… with a wife who loves and I love… a daughter who loves me, most of the time,
and who I love…

so my search for home isn’t a physical one, it is a search for home in a mental,
emotional, psychological or philosophical…

using the tools of either religion or philosophy or science or thinking to find my home,
my spiritual and emotional and political and philosophical and psychological
home…

I am disconnected, alienated from people because of my hearing loss…
I may not ever be able to connect to people in this fashion until my hearing
gets better, not possible, or people learn to deal with hearing impaired or deaf people…

am I a “unified” person? no, and that may also be a disconnect for others…

is home being a “unified” person?

perhaps… perhaps…

we human beings are on a journey of sorts, we have questions that allow us
to understand what we seek, and we have tools to help us engage in
this process of existence…life is a process…

with certain idea’s about what it mean to be human within that process…

what we know to be true is that we human beings are social creatures
and we cannot survive without others… to be disconnected, alienated
from people is one of the harshest conditions we face as human beings…

and one of the tools we have to connect with people is our ideologies
and ism’s…

the ism of communism is simply an ism that connects people into some format
that allows them to engage in the pursuit of our needs and desires…

Marxism is an materialistic ism, dealing with needs and desires…

but Marxism doesn’t answer the needs of our inner self, the emotional
and psychological, mental needs of existence… that is why Marxism has failed, so far…

does Marxism ask about love or belonging or esteem or security/safety needs?

no.

capitalism deals with material needs, couches and money and cars and houses…
but does capitalism deal with love or belonging or esteem or safety/security needs?

no.

does a religion like Catholicism deal with material needs like food, water, shelter, education?

no.

and that is why religions like Catholicism failed…

we are applying half answers that might solve the physical needs or answer
our emotional or psychological needs, but not answer both needs at the same time…

we are dealing with incomplete isms and ideologies that only answer part of the
human condition… either our inner or our outer condition…

how can we feel at home if we only answer part of our requirements, either
our mental/emotional needs or our physical needs…

home is where our needs and desires and urges are met…
both our inner needs of emotional and psychological needs
and our outer physical needs of food and water and shelter.

and our desires which aren’t our needs, are also met…

by what tools and process do we have that can answer our
questions that we seek answers to…

who am I? what tools or processes we have can answer that question?

I also have my physical needs that need to be met and so we have a lot going on
as human beings… we are on a journey in which our physical and emotional
and psychological needs and desires must be met and our need for home found…

how do I answer these often conflicting and sometimes damaging needs and desires that make
finding home, impossible…

Kropotkin

having modem problems, lets see if this makes it…

this question of, who we are?

and this question has been answered in a variety of ways…

religious, political, scientific, philosophical……

take the scientific for example, the question of, who are we,
was answered by science as, we are machines… and that was
taken from what science reported… man as machine…
following the idea of the universe as machine…

think of the solar system… that is, to one’s eyes, a machine like…
think of the clockwork way in which the solar system worked…

and clockwork was the operative idea… one cannot
underestimate the importance that clocks held for over 400 years…

man as a clock was the fundamental idea of what a human was…

this idea was challenged by the Romantic era…

then we reach one of the fundamental ways man saw man…

with Darwin…

with Darwin, man suddenly was face with man being a biological
being…no longer was the idea that man was a clock… but human
beings are biological beings that live, die, breath, eat, shit, fuck
and all the things that biological beings do…

how special can human beings be if they are biological beings?

no different then cats or dogs or bunny rabbits…

we still haven’t come to grips with man being a biological being…

the old idea that human beings were not just biological beings,
but we were spiritual beings…in Star Wars, Yoda talks to Luke
about this saying,

“not this crude matter are you, but luminous are you”.

or something like that, it has been a while since I’ve seen Star Wars…

the bottom line is that we are crude matter…we are physical beings…

that is the lesson of Darwin…and now that is how we see human beings
as physical beings…we are animal in form… but as noted,
we are something else inside of us…

are we spiritual beings?

Kropotkin

the next issue becomes Freud…

what Darwin did for the body, Freud did for the mind…

Mentally, we become what we became physically,
the mental equivalent our bodies…

mentally, we eat and drink and shit and fuck, just
like we do physically…

there is no difference between the human mind and the human
body…it is animal, just as our bodies are animal…….

and we still haven’t come to grips with that…

so we have possibilities…

one is we are animal… mentally and physically…

the other possibility is that we are animal, in body anyway…
but we don’t allow the body to control who we are…

we rise above being just a physical creature… like a dog or a cat…

and we discover what it means to be human, both physically
and mentally…

we don’t need to be animal and allow our needs and/or desires to
rule us… we can overrule our needs and desires… and by doing so,
we become human…we must still eat and drink and have shelter
and need education… but those needs aren’t what drive us…
and we have mental and emotional needs and desires, sex and power
and lust and the need for safety/security…and all the other emotional
needs we have… but we don’t have to allow them to control us…

I am human and I am in control of my needs and desires and wants…

the needs and desires and wants, they don’t control me…

if I have the bodily need of sex, I don’t have to allow it to control me…
I control it and I decide the manner of sex I will get…

sex is a biological need… and so we must answer… but we can be
in control of that need, it doesn’t control us…

and we must be become aware of that… if we control our needs
and desires and wants, then we are being human, not just animal/human…

and so we meet Freud… he made us aware of our mental and emotional
needs and desires and wants…and they are no different then our
physical needs…

we can fall in love and we can meet our emotional and physical needs
that love brings us…

no longer do we need to be passive in our reaction to emotional events…

we can go out in front of our emotional and mental needs…

everyone desires, needs love… that is both emotionally and physically…
but we can understand that need and desire… we can be out in front of
that need and desire… we can…

I too was once, passionately, wildly crazy in love…
and I was, on more then one occasion, out of control…
so I understand the intensity, the emotional grip of
love…it is a hard thing to be in love and not have
it reciprocated… been there, done that…

but I would have been better served had I been able
control the whirlwind……

I was not always the in control person I seem to be…

it took years of training and practice to achieve some
emotional balance…

and that is the key, once again, keeping things in balance…

emotionally, mentally, physically, psychologically…

balance is the key…

Freud and Darwin showed us the underside of being human…

now we need to overcome that dark underside and learn
to hold ourselves in balance… to become human, fully human

requires us to rise above being just animal… or even being
animal/human…

the next step requires we become more balance to achieve
our next goal, not our final destination, but the next goal of
becoming human, all too human…

Kropotkin

let us take this understanding of a journey,
as Odysseus took his journey…

His goal was to reach home, Ithaca. Let us see what goal
can we reach. In other words, given our ism’s and ideologies,
what goals are we striving for?

Capitalism: the make money… the journey is to make money.
but what the final goal? the only possibility in capitalism is to make
money and then more money…there is no final goal in capitalism…
either you are making money or you are losing money… that’s it…

people who have made a lot of money, they don’t seem to
retire… they go on making money… Warren buffet is still at it,
at 89 as is the remaining Kock brother…at 84…

the only wealthy person who seems to have retired is gates…
all the others seem to keep at it… long after us common people will have
retired…Henry ford was still president of ford motor company at the time of
his death at 83…

so if there is no goal in capitalism, how do we know what we are working for?

money? if there is a more piss poor reason to keep on working beside money,
I haven’t seen it…to spend one life working for money, colored pieces of paper?

is that really the journey of the human race?

the journey for money doesn’t have any interest in the values
of being human, money has no interest in love or peace or honor
or justice or even the negative values of lust or hate or greed or anger…

the values which make living worth living, have no meaning in a universe
that is money driven, or said another way, the pursuit of money isn’t
the point of our existence…

not sure about that? let me ask you, given a choice between
love and money, what would you pick? most people would pick love
and the choice isn’t that hard to make… and love is the right answer…

for what has more value, money or love?

so at the end of the day, love has more value then money…
and love makes life worth the effort… you might say, but making love
the answer still doesn’t have a goal…you get love all your life and that
doesn’t change… there is no final goal…just like money…

no, no that is wrong… love is a connection between two people…
it isn’t a material object, it doesn’t have anything to measure…
you can’t weigh it or measure it or time it or put a price upon it…

so what other journeys might we make that is worth the effort?

the religious journey… to be saved, to reach heaven…
that journey has a goal, one that can be worked on our whole life…
isn’t that a journey worth taking?

the goal there is a mystical one. Maybe there is a god or there is heaven,
maybe not… one cannot ever know…you must assume that there is a god,
there is a heaven…you are guessing that there is a goal, a god, a heaven…

for some, that is enough, to hope, to have faith that there is a god,
that there is a heaven… faith, to have hope in god or in a heaven
isn’t enough for me… I must see something tangible to reach…

I hold for wisdom, knowledge… I seek wisdom… to spend my life
seeking what it means to be wise… to understand the values that
are important and what values aren’t worth the effort…

but Kropotkin, there aren’t any goals listed there…you simply seek
all your life…but what am I seeking?

not something material, or of short term, but something that is lasting
and can be taught to others… if they are willing to listen…

if you are to spend your life in pursuit of something, what would
that something be?

if life is a journey, then what are you journey to?

what is the goal? what is the purpose of our journey?

Kropotkin

I came across in my reading the other day, this thought…

there is no such thing as individual ethics, ethics can only
exists within the confines of a group, city, polis, family,
state or civilization…….

if there is morality, it must exists within the confines of a larger
group of people, of which you are just one person…

we don’t think of ethics as being a collective matter, but it is…

but think of all the other things that are collective in nature…

society is collective in nature, ethics, our collective goals,
our safety and security, meeting our needs… food, water, shelter…

so the question becomes, how does the individual, me, fit into
the collective, society…….

and what is the exact nature of our relationship between the collective
and the individual?

think of political theories… they are seeking to understand
the relationship between the individual and the collective,
politically…think of Hobbes or Locke…

think of economic theories, they are seeking to understand
the relationship between the individual and the collective,
economically…think of Marx or Adam Smith…

how do you fit into society?

if you are feeling alienated or disconnected, from society, what is
the reason, and what is the solution?

think of that alienation or disconnection as being a sickness, an illness,
how would a doctor go about treating it? what is the cure for being
alienated or disconnected from society?

think of how the industrial revolution alienated, disconnected
people from society…… think of how the political revolutions
from the American revolution to the French to the Russian revolution,
alienated and disconnected people from their… what? are people alienated
because they are outside of the norm or are they alienated/disconnected
because they feel they have no place or home within the
current political or economic institutions?

don’t discount this alienation/disconnection from society…

think of those who have created art, science, political thought,
philosophical or religious thought because they were alienated
or disconnected from their society…….

we must have a certain amount of alienation/ disconnection from society
so that the artist and philosophers and scientist and thinkers have
room to become who they are…… Jesus is Jesus because he was
alienated/disconnected from his current society…

every great thinker and artist and writer, has been alienated from
or disconnected from society… think of Da Vinci or Spinoza
or the Buddha… all alienated and disconnected from society…
Nietzsche or Kierkegaard wrote what they wrote because they
were alienated and disconnected from their society…

so we can not prevent alienation and disconnection from society
and I’m not we would want to given the great thinkers who
have created because they were alienated and disconnected…

so, once again, we are face with a problem… so how much control
does society have over the individual?

too much and we stifle creativity and genius,
too little we unleash chaos and disorder…

and once again, we reach the point where the answer is
the middle, the equation… too much on either side is
bad for both the individual and for the society……

so what ails our society and what is the cure?

Kropotkin

from Hegel through Marx:

“Hegel standpoint is that of modern political economy.
He grasps labor is the essence of Man-as Man’s essence in the act
of producing itself; he sees only the positive, not the negative side
of labor.”

“That labor is the essence of Man”

any causal reader of mine will know that I disagree with that
statement…for if labor is the essence of man, that leaves out
possibilities like love, justice, hope, peace among others…

we don’t find out who we are in our means of production…

we find ourselves in the values that we promote and follow…

our economic self is certainly an important aspect of human existence,
that cannot be in doubt, but the “essence”?

that discounts the religious, the political, the social aspects of
human existence……

and once again, I point to the equation as being primary…

we can have our economic self, but we must also have
our political and social and religious self to maintain
our balance…we cannot focus upon one aspect of being
human and call that primary or the “essence” of Man…

we are, social beings, if there was an “essence” to human beings,
that would be it, far more then any individual aspect like the economic
or political or social or philosophical…

nature via evolution has created within people, our need to be
social before all other aspects… the economic and political
and religious and philosophical, are all aspects of the social
nature of human beings…

we cannot engage in the economic or political or religious
or philosophical without some social aspect…

take religion for example, it isn’t enough for human beings
to believe in god… we must engage socially with that…
hence we have people going to church, synagogues, places of
worship… even though religion proper is one person’s engagement
with god… we turn a private matter of engagement with god into
a social event…that is the nature of our being social………
we take private matters and make them social…

our engagement with values isn’t a private one…
it requires a collective understanding of values…

as pointed out before, we don’t have individual ethics,
we have collective, social ethics, we have morality that
is social and collective… morality isn’t about one person’s
morality, but about one person morality within a group,
society, tribe, nation, or state…

morality is a social endeavor… the collective working out
of what is ethics and morality………

those who protest our current stay at home orders are actually
saying that their individual values are more important then
our collective values and they are completely wrong…

ethics and value and rights must be seen in regards to
the collective rights and values and morality of everyone,
the collective……

the working out of individual values and rights and morality
cannot be an individual engagement… it must, must
be done within the context of the group, society, the state,
and the civilization…

but we can work out our individual values that we hold and then,
then apply them to our collective nature……… I hold to love
and peace… so what I am working out is that relationship
I have with the state in regards to my own values of love and peace…

I believe and I believe I have shown that love and peace are
values that promote order… whereas violence and anger
and hate give rise to disorder… violence and anger and hate,
brings about an increase in entropy in society…

if we want society to succeed and progress, we must
have order and within that order, we can meet our
needs and desires and wants…

within disorder and chaos, we cannot be able to meet our
needs and desires and wants… it is too chaotic
and disorderly to be able to meet our needs

and we tie into the need to be social with our
human needs and desires and wants…

we cannot achieve those needs and want and desires
without a cohesive and functional society, state,
and collective………

I cannot get fed without everyone working together and
you can’t get feed or have your needs met without a functional
society…

within a chaotic and disorderly society/state, the basic
needs, wants and desires of people fall to the wayside because
we are so focused on the bottom bracket of just meeting our
needs, food, water, shelter, education, health care…

those basic needs demands a working, functional society to
be achieved…

to state that the “essence of man is labor” is to dismiss
the basic needs and desires and wants of human beings…
but it isn’t enough to reach those basic goals…

we have to rise above reaching the basic’s and try for
the higher emotional needs of love, belonging, safety/security,
and esteem…

Freud and Darwin have shown us that we are animals,
and we must reach our biological needs, but we have
to meet our emotional needs, desires and wants……

Darwin spoke to the physical side of man,
Freud spoke to the emotional side of man…

and just acting upon the economic side of our nature will not
answer both our physical and emotional needs……

just being labor isn’t enough to meet our physical or emotional
needs…

I labor every single day, it doesn’t meet my emotional needs in any,
way, shape or form… I work to put food on my table… that is all
labor does for me… it doesn’t answer my emotional needs,
desires or wants… it doesn’t even reach my need/desire to retire…
I have worked for over 40 years and I am unable to retire…

meanwhile my soul, my body is being destroyed because
I only serve the basic goal of profits and money…
that has nothing to do with my needs, desires, hopes,
or wants… I am a tool to make profit… nothing more……

and that dehumanizes me… negates me into being a thing,
not having any value as being human…

that is the final point of being labor… it dehumanizes one into
being a thing without having our own personal needs or wants or
desires being met…

being labor alone means I am not only being negated but
I am being alienated and disconnected from society, the state
and myself…….

to say, that man is an economic being is to deny the other,
more important aspects of being human…….it denies
love and justice and peace and hope and charity…

and those values must be connected to our social, collective
being… it is all connected… our individual needs and wants
and desires along with our collective needs and wants
and desires……

the one individual need demands, demands a collective
response…

we exists as our individual self, but we must also
fit into and be part of the overall society, collective
aspect of being human… we are social beings who
must work our individual self into a collective
setting…

Kropotkin

This act of attempting too fit our own viewpoints,
our own ideologies, our own idea’s into what the society/state
believes is of fundamental importance…

Now what this means in practical terms is this:

I am born and then I am indoctrinated/educated with the values,
prejudices, superstitions, biases, habits, bigotry and a mindset of
what the society/state believes to be important…

when I reach a certain age, I begin to doubt those indoctrinations…
quite often around high school or for some, a little earlier and for some,
a little later, collage perhaps…

I may reject some indoctrinations, I was indoctrinated with the judgement
that there is a god… because of my understanding of the universe,
I come to reject that indoctrination… I believe that there is no god…

a revaluation of values that occurs to most people… but I hold that
some indoctrinations are so imbedded, that we miss them in our
initial revaluation of values… we might miss the martial nature of
the American society/state… we still hold to martial values of America…
exhibited for example, when we see ads or commercial celebrating
American “hero’s” which are always soldiers and seaman of the armed forces…

America is great because of its military prowess… and we have this
unseen ideology that permeates our society, infecting people into thinking
that greatness is achieved by force of arms… it is not…

greatness is not an act of war, it is a state of mind…

“we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”

that is greatness…how we view ourselves and how we view others is
a sign of greatness…

I hold to values of peace and love and charity… my society, my state holds
to a viewpoint of martial values… how do I fit my values into this
society/ state viewpoint? I am alienated/disconnected because my own
personal values are in conflict with the society/state values…

how do I overcome?

a society that holds to martial values cannot, cannot last or survive for long…

it cannot because of the lessons learned during the Peloponnesian War…

Athens extended itself too much in its attempt to gain or influence more
territory…its attack upon Syracuse Sicily, was a bridge too far and lead
Athens to be destroyed… we too are holding unto land very far from home
and we are being bleed dry by this conflict… we are not going to die by some
massive attack upon America, we are simply going to bleed to death by
a thousand cuts…a war here, a war there, troops being sent here, there,
everywhere…time, money, effort, energy and lives are being lost in
some vain attempt to be a “superpower”…

so, how do I reconcile my alienation/discontentment with the reality
that is America today? we have two possible options, fight or flight…

I stand and fight for what I believe in or I flee… to some
place where I wait out my remaining years reading, or watching movies,
or drinking myself to death or some other engagement with things that
occupy myself while I escape into death……

the state/society holds to a set value group and I hold to another
set value group……… how do I reach some sort of compromise between
the state/society and myself? Is compromise even possible?

so, how do I integrate into a society/state that holds to different values
then myself?

I am one, but the path is not just about I, but the path is us…

so how do I achieve us, given we hold different values?

Kropotkin

I thought this the other day……

the social nature of existence…….

my existence is not defined by I, but it is defined by us…….

we don’t exists individually, we exists socially… within multiple
groups, multiple associations… family, work, school, church…

for example, my relationship with god is personal, individual…

and yet, I go to church, a social association… why does my own
personal engagement with god require me to go to church?

it is because we are, by our own software, given to us by evolution,
that we engage socially…we are programed to engage with other
people… so we go to movies and hang out in bars and go to
restaurants and pray in churches…human beings must have,
must have contact with other people… it is forces upon us by
evolution and our software…

so existence isn’t a personal, all about me existence… it is all about us…
who we are, not who I am……

all those things we consider to be important is important because we
are social creatures… does history have any value when you take out
the collective us? is there an individual ethics? is there any value
to concepts like justice, honor, peace, love, charity… without other people?

so the question of, how do I fit into society/state/culture? isn’t just a
random question… it is the fundamental question of our own personal
existence… for existence isn’t a matter about me, it is about us…

so, how do I fit into society?

the question isn’t, how I do I navigate existence?

no, the question is, how do we navigate existence?

Kropotkin

Okay, then how would the philosopher/ethicist demonstrate that these things are necessarily immoral? In a No God world. From my frame of mind, your frame of mind has acquired a set of political prejudices that divides the world up into “moral” and “immoral”. But this is something that I have come to believe that you have come to believe – re dasein – are basically existential contraptions. Subjective/subjunctive leaps of faith.

In other words, how are behaviors shown to be inherently good or evil? Where’s the argument for that? And where’s the demonstration of this argument such that all men and women who wish to be thought of as rational, are obligated to agree?

Where’s the argument that makes the amoral personal agenda of the nihilist, narcissist and sociopath go away?

K: we must start from the starting point of the nihilist, narcissist and sociopath.
and that starting point is all three believe that the world begins and ends with them…
see Herr Trump for a true sociopath, narcissist and nihilist… he has no idea that
there are human beings outside of himself…he has no empathy, no compassion,
no insight, no rapport or affinity for anyone else on planet earth…but these
things, compassion and empathy and rapport are the basic fundamental
aspects of human existence…look at the people you have known in your
life… the people who seem to be complete human beings are the ones
who have compassion and empathy and a connection to other human beings…

over my lifetime of 61 years, I have dealt with some who were sociopath and
narcissist and nihilistic…they were unable to connect with other human beings
on a basic human level…they lack the software, the programming that other
human beings have…we don’t react to people rationally, we react emotionally,
instinctually, from the gut, as it were…the sociopath, narcissist, nihilist is
unable to do that…sociopaths, narcissist and nihilist are an aberration,
defective, an abnormality… and because they are who they are, they
wouldn’t even care to be called defective or an aberration because
to understand that basic concept would require them to become aware of
others… and this they cannot do…

in other words, you cannot make sociopaths, narcissist or nihilists
understand… they are too far gone… like IQ45… rational or even
irrational arguments won’t work with him or them…

they are a lost cause… think of the terminator, Arnold played…
think of his emotional range… that is exactly the emotional range of
these people we are talking about…and they cannot be argued with or
reason with or guilted into an emotional response… don’t bother…

as for what is moral and immoral? I have defined moral has being
the ability to meet our needs…our basic needs of food, water,
shelter, education and health care…… these are our basic needs
and they must, must be met in order for us to survive…

and any attempt to deprive people or persons of these needs,
that is immoral…if children are starving in Chicago, that is immoral…
and why are these children starving? I would hold to the fact, in part,
to people like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, who hold wealth of hundred of
billions of dollars……if 90% of the American wealth is held by
400 people, as is the fact, then how are we suppose to feed the lower
90% of people? Income inequality is one of the prime movers of
what I would consider to be immoral… the inability of people
to meet their basic human needs of food, water, shelter, education,
health care…

what is moral? the ability of people to meet their basic needs…
what is immoral? the prevention of people meeting their basic needs…

as I have pointed out, we human beings are social creatures… we
cannot exists or survive by ourselves… we must have others to aid
in our reaching our basic needs, both physical… food, water…so on
and our emotional needs of love, esteem, safety/security, belonging…

one could make the argument that the rise of the state/government/civilization
rose because of the increased need of people to meet their basic needs…

in other words, the family meet our needs, until it didn’t, and
then we grew to tribes, and that worked until it didn’t,
then we, to meet our needs, grew to cities and towns…
and that meet our needs until it didn’t, then we grew into
nations and states… and that will hold until our needs grow
and we must expand our political and economic infrastructure to
meet our needs, both physical and emotional…and soon, we shall
need to meet our needs by expanding our political and economic structure
to a world wide state/civilization…that is the pattern of growth
so far…

to be human means to be social and part of something…
be it a crowd or a group or a society………

you keep bringing everything back to some individual context,
whereas I am taking it to a social, society context……

we are only human beings in context to others…

in other words, we cannot become a human being without others…

but that also means we can damage the souls of human beings
by our immoral actions, or by hurting or damaging people…
you want moral people, you need to treat others morally…

we can create moral people by our moral actions……

human beings learn best from our experiences…
if our experiences are moral, then more then likely
we too shall be moral…….morality is learned from others…
that too is the lesson of a society…… we teach…

what lessons are you teaching others right now?

now one might say, Kropotkin, you are hitting several different
areas, but I say unto you, no, each area I talk about, learning, needs, society,
desires, teaching, morality, experience, is the same thing…

you break it out because it is easier to think about when it is broken down
into separate area’s… but that simplifies it too much…

life is complicated and some of it can’t be broken down into
nice, neat compartments……

Kropotkin

one of the most interesting things to ponder is this
idea of nature…

read about what philosophers and thinkers thought about “nature”
before Darwin……

From the Enlightenment to Marx, everyone wrote about “nature”…

but in reading their thoughts about “Nature”, at least for me,
its very abstract… Nature is this or that… but it doesn’t seem
to have anything to do with human beings… nature exists outside
of human beings… it is something that we watch or observe or
try to emulate… but nature isn’t something that is within us
or about us……

the thing about Darwin is that he brought nature into us…

nature wasn’t something outside of us, it was us, inside of us,
it was us…

we see animals and we think that they exists outside of us
and the fact is we are animals, writ another new species of
animal…

if we are nature and we are, then if we destroy nature,
we are destroying ourselves…simple as that…

if we act in such a way that animals go extinct, then we
ourselves get a little bit closer to extinction…….

the lesson of Darwin is this, man is a part of nature
and as such, we must exist within nature… if we destroy
nature, we are destroying the environment in which we live…

the lesson is, we are nature… and as such, we must
begin to engage with nature as a partner, not as a
a force to dominate and destroy, but as a part of nature…

Darwin put man back into nature… and we still haven’t understood
this lesson…… our philosophy and thinking and understanding still
hasn’t caught up with Darwin……

and little less with Freud… Freud brings home the lesson
that human beings are creatures born within and living within
nature……. our environment, be it family or society or state or
our political and/or economic systems, help create who we are…

our nature is defined by the systems we choose to exists under…
because those systems create the environment we live under……

we exist by reacting to our environment… that is basic evolution 101…

the environment creates the type of people who live within it…

both physically and mentally/emotionally/psychologically…

we respond to our environment… and that response is
what create human thinking, emotions, mental and physical
response…… if it is cold, then we respond by dressing warm
and adapting cold weather thinking… Recall, I was born in
Minnesota and I know that because of the environment, it being
cold for 6 months of the year, we think about things differently…
then they do here in California… the environment itself creates
the form of thinking we do… here in the Bay Area, it rarely ever
gets down to 45 degrees and that is really cold around here…

in Minnesota, 45 degrees in the winter is a rather warm day……
and we react and think about “nature” differently because of the
difference in the weather…

nature influences how we think about life and who we are
and what we can become…

the environment, be it weather or our political system or
the economic system or the media, can influence how we
think and feel about what it means to be human…

capitalism, the environment we live under, is negative…
it dehumanized, negates people and their values,
and we change to adapt to this negation in our environment…

we adapt by believing the negation of us by our economic
and political system…….we react by confirming
the negation of who we are, by acts of violence
and acts of depravity… we can kill without remorse
because our environment encourages that lack of remorse…

when money become more important then people, we value
money before people… we can accept killing people for their
money because we value money more then people…

the environment allows this… the political and social
and economic system, our environment tells us that
money has more value and is worth more then people…

thus violence against people is not only accepted, but encouraged……

we live in a martial society, that is the society of America, in which
we think in terms of military values and the values of the military
is of or appropriate to war or warlike… we accept violence
as part of being human… and we shouldn’t……

we accept the proposition that our environment is violent
and warlike and so we must be violent and warlike……

but that is a reaction to our environment, which has nothing
to do with who we actually are…our environment is nature……

to those who see nature as being warlike or a war of all against all,
has learned the wrong lesson from nature…….

in fact, nature operates by cooperation far more then a war of all, against
all…

you can this cooperation everywhere you look in nature and you can see
it everywhere you look in human society……

in fact, an environment where all is at war, with the rest, cannot survive,
the environment would destroy itself if it were true…….

the notion of the “survival of the fittest” is simply a misinterpretation of
what actually happens in nature… more animals survive by cooperation,
then they do by “war” with its neighbors……

the grass and tree’s and birds and bee’s and plants all survive by cooperation with
each other instead of battling each other…

animals and plants and tree’s, each occupy different levels in which they
don’t go to war with each other, they cooperate with each other…

the world gets by, by cooperation… and not by violence or attacking its
neighbor…….

the way to survive as human beings is to be a part of nature,
not by being at war with it…for we are part of nature…

and that is the lesson of Darwin…

and what of the remaining lessons of Freud?

next post…

Kropotkin

we have in America today, and in the world, a
despair, a melancholy about the world and ourselves……

how are we to be saved?

I would suggest that to be saved, is as always a communal, community,
an event that needs the polis to achieve……

we find salvation, not as a individual, but as part of the group…

salvation is found in becoming more human, not less…

of going forward, becoming human, is the path toward salvation…
to becoming human… that is our salvation……

look at your dog or your cat or your bird if that is the case…

look at them… truly see that dogs and cats and birds cannot,
be anything more then dogs or cats or birds… it is impossible for
them…they have reached the height of what is possible for them…
their very own nature has no where else to go… they cannot grow
or become anything else…

we can… we have traveled from animal to animal/human and now we
must take the next step of becoming who we are, which is human…
this doesn’t mean we reject or deny our animal side of human existence,
no, we simply have control over our animal side of us… we will still
need to eat and sleep and drink water and have shelter, fornicate
and shit… that is the animal side of us and we cannot deny or do anything
less… but we can rise above our animal nature and become human…
we can control our animal side and allow our human nature to
dominate who we are…

think of addiction… think of how an addiction can control someone’s
life to the point where all they do is attempt to feed that addiction…
every waking second is an attempt to feed their addiction…
that is not human, that is animal… they have no control over
what they think or what they do… they are controlled by their
addiction… that is not human… to be human means to be
in control over our thoughts and our actions…

and then, and then we can begin to overcome our animal nature…
which is being unable to control ourselves… being animal means
being unable to control who we are… to be addicted for example…

to meet our basic bodily needs is just the first step of becoming
human… we must also meet our emotional needs of
safety/security, belonging, love and esteem…

to achieve that then means we are about to become human, fully human
where we now are at the point of self achievement… we seek out our
possibilities and attempt to achieve them…if we are painters, we
become painters, and if we are philosophers, then we become philosophers…

and if our possibilities is to run a 4:00 minute mile, then that is how
we become more human… by seeing and then achieving our
possibilities of being human…

we have a path, a journey, of becoming human…
and that we means we are more then just
trying to achieve our basic needs of food, water, shelter……
or even trying to achieve our emotional needs…

to become human requires us to overcome and grow
and become who we are…….and this is by achieving our
possibilities…….

and the journey begins with knowing thyself
and beginning the process of examining one’s life……

“the unexamined life isn’t worth living”

Kropotkin

we exist in a world with ism’s and ideologies……

we are born into a world with ism’s and ideologies
and we are then indoctrinated into these ism’s and ideologies…

so far, so good……. and because most people fail to
hold to the principle of knowing themselves
and doing an reexamination of values, most “people”
hold to the values and ism’s that they were indoctrinated with…

in America, we are indoctrinated with the value that “America” is
the greatest country on earth… we are indoctrinated with
“nationalism” as a value…from my dictionary:

Nationalism patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts.

an extreme form of this, especially marked by a feeling of
superiority over other countries.

advocacy of political independence for a particular country…

We in America hold to the second definition: an extreme form of
feeling of superiority over other counties…

Nationalism in America is overlaid with prejudice and superstitions
and biases… nationalism is held by those who believe in the
superiority of the white race… hatred of others is a prime example
of this nationalism…hatred of Jews, blacks, women, liberals, to be specific……
at least in America……if you are different from me, you are the other…
US vs THEM… I have rejected this viewpoint for a wide variety of reasons…

however to be clear, we must reject nationalism for another reason…

nationalism is a battle that was fought a long time ago…

in other words… nationalism as an ideology was for another
time, another environment… it was an answer that was right
and appropriate for another time and place…

but our environment today isn’t about nationalism…
we are in a post-nationalistic environment…

nationalism was an answer to a question a long time ago…

it no longer answer our questions…it no longer fits into
our environment…nationalism is fighting a war that was long ago won…

“tale of an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”

and lost in that sound and fury is the real question of our time…

how do we fit into the state? as individuals, how do we fit
into our current state? how do we fit into our society?

state and society, for now, we shall take as separate entities…

I am an individual… I hold certain values and rights…
how do I fit into a society that may or may not accept those
values and rights?

how do I fit into a state, our modern police state, that is determined to
measure me and time me and hold me accountable but not to hold
the state just as accountable… we have a double standard in America
today… the middle and working poor are held to one standard and
the wealthy and powerful are held to another standard
and the state to an entirely different standard……

if I am to be held accountable, and I have no problem with that,
then everyone must be held accountable with the same relentless
quest…and we can clearly see the question of accountability being
of two different standards in America……

how can I fit into a society that hold me accountable and doesn’t hold
others accountable for the same actions?

we have justice denied which means we don’t have justice at all…

and that is a big problem in America today……

and how do I fit, as an individual within that injustice?

how do I begin the process of holding people to justice,
as I am being held to justice?

as noted before, justice is the exact same thing as equality……
to hear one word, justice is to hear another word, equality…

so how do I fit into a country, as an individual that doesn’t practice
equality… given that equality is the basic principle of our country…

“we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”

“man is born free and yet, everywhere he is in chains”

if I am born free and equal, how did time make me unequal?

by what principles have I become unequal? and thus can be
treated unfairly, unjustly?

justice/equality cannot be defined by wealth or titles or fame
or position…… no, justice must be justice regardless of wealth,
title, fame or position…….and so, how do I fall into a category
that allows me to be treated without equality?

the question, the modern question is one where,
we try to understand how we fit into society, where we can
still be individuals and yet, meet this question of being a part
of society……

if by principles, I become alienated from society, why must
the society principles become the only value that is accepted…….
why am I discounted from society because I hold different values
then the society holds to?

how do individuals fit into society?

and how do we understand that relationship between society
and individuals?

Ibsen and Kierkegaard both thought the “crowd was untruth” but
that just isn’t so… the individual as well as the crowd
can hold to untruth… but how do we understand this “untruth”?

by what measurement can we measure “untruth”?

what do we mean by “untruth”? and what can we do to return us
to the “truth”?

if I hold to my “truths” and that no longer allows me to belong
to the “crowd” then who is right, the crowd or me?

if I am alienated from society because of the values I hold,
then who must change, society or me?

so what is the relationship between individuals and society/state?

Kropotkin

in the midst of working several days in a row…

I have been accused of being a “communist” ……

but what am I actually attempting to do?

am I attempting to change society to fit or match some rational
ideals?

No, not at all…I do think society should be changed, but
how, how we change it makes all the difference in the world…

the American revolution succeeded whereas the French and
Russian revolution failed. But why did the one succeed and
the other two fail?

and given the fact those two failed, it would also suggest
that any attempt to radically change society will also fail…
but once again, why?

the American revolution wasn’t about changing society…
the structure of American society remained the same for a long
time after 1776…

and if you look at both the French and Russian revolution, the change
was in large part structural… the changing of the institutions that
people lived under…society dramatically changed in the 10 years
from the end of the respective revolution, French and Russian…

but the American society didn’t radically change after the revolution…

it was a political revolution that America created…

the French and Russian revolution tried to radically change
the institutions and method of people’s lives after the revolution…

the 10 years after the French revolution, France was a completely
different country…by 1799…

and think of Russia after the revolution… so 1928…
Russia was a completely changed country after the revolution…

but America was not completely changed after their revolution…

life pretty much went on as it had the years before
the revolution…

one could argue, that the America we know, didn’t come into being until
after the war of 1812…

but given all this, I don’t believe that revolution is the way to go until,
and this word until is very important… until their is a change in the mind
and heart of people……. if we don’t have an understanding of what being human is
and if we aren’t able to make sense of what our goal is, we cannot conduct any
type of revolution……. the true beginning of any, any revolution begins in the
minds and heart of the people…

the true revolution begins once we engage in Socrates two sayings…

“to know thyself”

“the unexamined life isn’t worth living”

the revolution of the state, society, culture, can only come after, after
we have engaged in our reevaluations of values…

the first step toward a reorganization of society begins with a
reorganization of the mind/heart……

the making of a better society beings with one person engaging
in a reevaluation of values…

one might proclaim: the world sucks… and it will continue to
suck until you, yes you engage in some sort of examination
of yourself that allows you to be clear on what it means to
be human and what is the goal/point of being human……
and what values are the values we are going to live by……

until we get individually right, we cannot get society right…

so when I say the revolution is to become who you are,
I mean that literally… to reorganize the world, we have
to have an engagement with who we are and what it means to be us…

and I can hear the negative ones, shouting, but Kropotkin,
I am right, it is all those other fools who are fucking it up…

every battle, every revolution, every war begins with one person…
and their engagement with who they are…

you want peace in the land… begin with finding peace within
you… what values are really your values?

you can’t control the others, the “fools”, but you can control you
and your engagement with who you are…that is all you can control…
and that is how we find peace and love and harmony in the land…

one person at a time… until there is a overwhelming mass that
will suddenly become one…

the cliché that is true, is the cliché that says: be the change you want…

and it all begins with an engagement with yourself…
and who you are…and what your values are……

the path, the journey to change the world is actually
an easy path/journey………. just become… go from being to becoming…

and what should I become? that is the question…….

to know what to become, you have to know who you are…
to know thyself………and then engage in a reevaluation of values…

the road, the path to a new society, a new state, a utopia… begins
with you and an examination of who you are…

Kropotkin

after several brutal days of work, I’m finally back……

I still have two more days of shit ahead of me… but what can you do?

as I am making this up as I go along, hang with me……

the question, perhaps the ultimate political and social question
is, what is the relationship between the individual and the society/state?

we see clowns walking around today without their mask, saying their
“rights” outweigh my right to being protected from the virus………

what height of stupidity are they reaching for?

but this brings to mind this question of the relationship between
the individual and the society/state?

perhaps we should start even more basic. Perhaps we should start
with the principles of philosophy…

for example, the Greeks thought the goal of life was to reach
“Arete”… which is excellence… everyone should attempt to
reach their excellence… and this was the driving goal of Greek
society for centuries…

The Chinese thought the goal was the “Dao” which is sometimes
thought of as a path, a guide, conduct or direction…

Follow the path of Dao and that lead to success, both individually
and collectively…Dao was thought of as an ethical/moral way……
the way to behave in society…

you hear another Chinese thought, which is harmony…

how do we achieve harmony, both as an individual and collectively…

we have another Chinese word, Ren… which can be translated as
humanity or benevolence…which is the Confucian virtue denoting the
good quality of a virtuous human when being altruistic. Ren can be thought
of as a normal adult’s protective feeling for children……

it is considered one of the means for a “good” king or leader to rule…

to achieve Ren, is the goal of a moral leader……

now each of these thoughts are not specific actions by themselves…

they are consider ideals or concepts in which people attempt to reach
to become moral people……

Perhaps we could rethink ethics and morality into terms similar
to Ren or harmony or arete or the Dao?

dinner is served, will write later…

and an excellent dinner it was…

as noted in an earlier post: there is no such thing as individual ethics,
ethics can only exists within the confines of a group, city, polis, family,
state or civilization…ethics… morality is based on a collective basis,
not an individual basis…

so in regards to ethics/morality, what is the relationship between
the individual and the society/state?

and another question: what is of greater value? the individual
engagement with their soul or the laws and institutions that we
know quite well here in America and the western world?

if one makes the argument that the society is ill and sick, what
are possible cures, more laws, more legislation, stricter adherence
to the legal and bureaucracies of the state or more engagement
with getting people to uphold the laws themselves?

and that is done by getting people to take the path of harmony
or Dao or Arete or Ren……….

you also have this question of science, of entropy…
everything is about entropy… which is the natural decay
everything piece of matter within the universe… everything
is in process and that process is going from order to disorder…

the final stage of entropy in a human being is by so much
disorder occurs that the body no longer functions and death occurs…

every question of morality and ethics must take into account
entropy and the movement, path of matter to go into decay/disorder…

as harmony and Dao and Ren bring energy into people and institutions,
the opposite of entropy… so, we can see how if we follow
a method, a path such as harmony or Dao, we can achieve
balance and keeping the equation equal…as I have argued for…
and this balance/harmony allows for the path of humans and
institutions and all things human, kept into balance which means
entropy cannot enter the equation…

the inflow of energy must equal the outflow of energy…….

keeping to the path or methods of the Chinese or the Greeks, Arete,
we can keep the equation equal, energy = loss of energy… the two must balance…

and I have defined equality as justice… the two are equal…
to have justice, we must treat everyone as equal………

think of money as energy… we must hold money in balance as we do
with energy…… to hold the equation…

too much money on one side of the equation sends the equation out of balance…

we have income inequality and that sends the balance of our equation out of control…

the equation of existence requires that we have just as much coming in as we
have going out… this is true of the body, this is true of justice, this is true
entropy and disorder, to hold balance means we must have equality of
going in as we do going out…………

being poor in America means you have less coming in then going out…

and that imbalance, disrupts and disturbs people…

if some/few are super wealthy, then most people are without wealth…
there is only so much wealth to go around……

the equation is off and by being off, we have entropy… more energy
going out then coming in…….

and all of this, is one, this is not a few separate thoughts,
but one thought about several different aspects of the same thing…

ethics, morality, income inequality, justice, entropy, the equations of life,
energy, matter, the way, Arete, Dao, they are not distinct and
separate entities… they are different aspects of the same idea…

human existence is a path, a journey… but where are we going to?

what is our destination?

we can have the same destination and still have different ways of
achieving those goals… some take their time when traveling
and some speed march when traveling and some take different approaches…

the path/journey is find our own path to the collective goal we have…….

I can bring in more energy into society and thus fight entropy…

I can find my own journey into bringing energy into the systems
we have…we don’t have to have the exact same method of bringing
energy into the system thus equalizing it… keeping the equation…

that is the path… how do we prevent entropy death of our society/ state/
civilization? many different possibilities exists… and we can mix and match
our findings…

ethics and morality is just another path, method of keeping energy into
the system… preventing entropy…

so in the end, we find our ultimate goal… preventing entropy from
destroying our society/state/ civilization. that is the goal…
how do we achieve it?

Kropotkin

so as noted above, we have vastly different possibilities as to
how to achieve our goals…….

we have methods like Dao and Ren and Harmony…

we have philosophies like Stoicism and existentialism and
positivism, analytic philosophy and poststructuralism…for example…

and we have specific philosophers we can follow like Kant, Spinoza
and Nietzsche…

we have ism’s and ideologies like capitalism and communism and
Catholicism…

and we have religions like Catholicism and Buddhism and
Islam…

pause for a second…

and back…

so we have the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

what am I to do? what should I believe in? what can I know?
what should my values be? to what should I put my energy into?

and the above list offers us possibilities…….

so, I ask myself, what should I believe in?
and the above list will offer me answers…

I can believe in Catholicism or I can believe in philosophy
or I can believe in capitalism…….the list is practically
endless…every single ism and ideology is a possibility for
us to believe in…

the question, what am I to do? also has endless possibilities…
I can spend my life engaging in religion or philosophy
or engaging in capitalism or eat, drink and be merry for
tomorrow I die…

the problem comes with the fact that people really don’t make
a choice…they simply fall into some indoctrination of their
youth and without any conscience choice, they simply follow
those notions we were indoctrinated with as children…

and that is what I am fighting against… the idea that we must,
must simply engage with what we were indoctrinated with…
with no choice given… you have a choice… you simple
won’t engage with your choices…

maybe what you are to do is engage with Buddhism or
perhaps with religion or perhaps with the way, the path of Dao…

people simply rush into their life without making any choices…

they allow their childhood indoctrinations to guide them…

and why?

because they didn’t have the courage of an reevaluation of values that
told them what they really and truly believed in… and not just
the stuff we were indoctrinated with…

I was indoctrinated with the idea that America is the greatest country
on earth… but we have failed that concept because
as any athlete will tell you, you are always working hard,
very hard to maintain that level of excellence… sports titles
are won every years and every year, you have to work harder
and harder to maintain that level of excellence…

and what does that have to do with America the Great?

because we don’t, won’t work every single day to hold
on to our excellence… a goal once achieved must be
worked on every single day to maintain… we refuse to
work on our excellence every single day and thus we
are no longer the greatest country on earth…

titles like that have to be worked for and we simply live
off the title that was achieved by those in the past,
not by us… until we achieve excellence every single day,
we are not the greatest country on earth…

so what ism or ideology will help us achieve our goals?

depends upon the goal, now doesn’t it?

now personally, I am not going to be defined by the supposed
greatness of America, I am going to be defined by who I am
and what I am reaching for…

you woke up today… and what was your goal for the day?

to simply be alive in the evening?

that is aiming very, very, very low……

why not attempt to reach for the stars and attempt
the impossible…

when history or philosophy books are written, I want
to be listed as one of the best philosophers who ever lived…

I want to be listed as equal to Kant or to Spinoza or to Nietzsche…

so I work every single day to achieve that goal…

and I work hard… every off hour I can spend, I spend it thinking
or writing or reading…I want to achieve excellence in being
a philosopher…

that in part, what drives me to engage in the way I do……

a day not spent in philosophy is a wasted day…
and lately because of work, I have wasted a lot of days recently…

so in the above list, I am engaging in philosophy,
not in ism like communism or Catholicism…
and I am not engaged in Dao or Ren or Arete
or any of the hundreds of possibilities that we call
isms and ideologies in which we can engage with as human beings…

and what of the other Kantian/Kropotkin questions like
what shall I believe in or what shall I spend my energy on?

we can search the above list and then apply energy into
our chosen picks… be it a ism or ideology or religion or
philosophy or being in the Dao or Ren…

the list is almost to big and so we fall back into the
safe, known of our indoctrinations… and thus we
miss an opportunity, a chance to become who we are…

I am not saying pick this path or this road, I am saying
make a choice… be who you are…don’t let your indoctrinations
decide for you, who you are……

we can be in the Dao or be a catholic or be an existentialist
or engage in communism or capitalism or Buddhism…

the point is to make a conscience decision to become who you are…

and that will only happen with some hard and sometimes
unhappy decisions… but make it happen instead of letting it
happen to you…be the change you want to be…

Kropotkin

survived… I worked 9 days with only 1 day off in between and
that off day, I spent on the couch sleeping from exhaustion…

so we have two possibilities… one possibility is that we find
our meaning, point, reason for existence within us and the other
possibility is we find meaning outside of us…

we discover who we are and what we can become…
going from being to becoming…as an internal discovery…

the other possibility lies with the external goals… our engagement
with ism’s is one possibility… being a good conservative is one such choice…
or being an anarchist or being Catholic or being Buddhist or a communist…

you find meaning and purpose in some assigned goal…which
is found in following an ism or an ideology…

it is not an either or situation… you can be a good Catholic and still
engage in your inner possibilities…the highest role model that existed
in America, for decades, was that of citizen… being a good citizen
was considered to be the height of what it meant to be human…

America first…be a patriot… America is number one……

jingoism at its best……

and IQ45 and his ilk still hold to the superiority of America over all other…

look at how IQ45 has called Mexicans, bad hombres and subhuman…

the negation of others who are not Americans…US vs Them…

you see this played out every day in America…

the white woman who called the police on black man in NY…
the other day… she lied to the police about him threating her…
she was trying to weaponize the police against a black man…
and why? because he was not “US” in being white…

this is what happens when you create an US vs Them attitude…

to be a “good” citizen means to negate others who aren’t America citizens…

to hold “White Privilege” is an US vs Them…

but is that really the path, the way to our engagement with the world?

and tell me, how does this make us better, as human beings?

Holding to being a good citizen or holding to “White privilege”?

what is really called for is an reevaluation of what it means to be human…

to begin the external or internal examination of what route to take,
requires, demands us to understand our starting point……

every decision we make to be good citizens or to hold to being
Catholic or to be communist or to be capitalist, requires us
to begin at the start and understand what we are, right from the start……

I am Kropotkin… and what do I believe in? I am a social creature,
I must, for both my mental and physical health, engage with other
human beings…that is the start of what it means to be human…

as we discovered during our self isolation, that we cannot, cannot
engage in true self isolation… for we are then denied what it means
to be human, truly human…contact with other human beings is essential
to what it means to be human…

so the Kantian/Kropotkin questions, what am I to do? what should I
believe in? what can I know? are really questions like this…

what are we to do? what should we believe in? what can we know?

so my possibilities aren’t really about me, but they are about us…

so we have dual questions of existence, how can I be a good Catholic?
and what is my relationship with other Catholics or the church or with god?

we have singular relationships like our individual questions about what it means to
be human… as one…what am I to do?

and we have complex questions of what does it means to be human, collectively…
what are we to do?

every singular question, what am I to do? also has a collective question,
what are we to do?

note, that I am not asking as a white person, or as a man, no, I am
asking a question of everyone who is human, what are we to do?

every question we have, must engage in both our individual selves
and our collective self…

so this question of what is possible for me, is also a question of
what is possible for us?

it is no longer enough to ask, what can I achieve?
we must ask, what can we achieve?

both questions must be asked…as individuals and as part of
the collective…

thus we cannot, as of now, engage with political philosophies
like anarchism because they fail to answer the questions of
us…we must ask questions that engage all of us…

but this then suggest that our political system, must engage
all of us… thus we can then rule out such political systems
as monarchy or autocracy or corporatocracy… because those
political systems don’t engage with us… they engage with a
small number of people who rule in our name… but to become
human, fully human, we must engage together… all of us…
as one…democracy is the only real answer to what political
system we can have because it is about us, and not about the “I”…

and this suggests our economic system also… and that isn’t
capitalism because capitalism is all about income inequality…
and income inequality isn’t about us, it is about a few becoming
wealthy off the work of millions………

our political system and our economic system must mirror what it
means to be human… it must be about all of us…
and not about the one… but it must be about the many, us…

communism/socialism must closely mirrors what it means to be
human far more then capitalism……

just as democracy mirrors what it means to be human, in
making decisions about our own lives, together……

it is this relationship between the individual and the collective
that matters…

it makes a difference in my life if you can’t, can’t meet your
basic needs of food, water, shelter, education, health care…
if your needs are met, then I can go about meeting my needs…

and we are physical beings, animals in form and we must
meet our bodily needs… and the best way to accomplish that
is by our collective efforts… we and not me…

but as human beings, we have emotional, psychological needs as well…

and we must engage in those needs as well, needs of love and belonging
and safety/security…

and those needs can only be met within a collective relationship…
it take us to meet those emotional needs… we need each other
to reach our emotional needs…

so our real possibilities lie with a more personal understanding
of what we individually need and what we collectively need…

it is this individual and collective possibilities that we need to
work with and understand…

so we no longer must engage with isms and ideologies
and labels like Catholic or communist or capitalist that
we must engage with but more importantly we must
engage with our human nature with an engagement with
ourselves as individuals and as a collective, us…

Kropotkin