a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Peter Kropotkin]

so the new paradigm is that the president and congress and
the courts work for you... you don't work for them.....

so, when IQ45 said, MAGA, make America great... he was wrong...
completely and utterly wrong (as he is wrong about everything else)

no, that is not the job function of the American government..
to Make America great...no, the job of government is to improve
your life and by doing so, you, the american citizen will make
America great.......... the government doesn't make america great,
the citizens of America is what makes America great......

and by providing support and help and encouragment to the true
boss of America, which is its citizens, American goverenment can
improve its citizens life's and THAT is what makes America great...
the citizens of America is the reason America is great, not the president,
not the congress or the courts or any institution that exists in America,
but the people, that is who makes America great.....

We return to this idea of government of the people, for the people,
by the people..... and that is the only way, the only way you can create
greatness in America.......to make America great again is to
allows the citizens the chance to make America great again...

it is not the government we trust or in god we trust or in our
institutions, but in the average citizen of America that we
give our trust to.......... they are the ones who will make
America great again.........


Kropotkin

[Dan~]

Do you think that civilians are less crooked than governers?

[Peter Kropotkin]

Do you think that civilians are less crooked than governers?

K: it is not in one person that we depend upon but all of us....
a group of people are far more likely to be honest then just one
or two people...…...think about any situation involving a group
and morality..... it is far more likely that a group will engage
in moral acts then just one person...… now, I will grant you that
quite often, groups will commit immoral, unjust actions like
the lynching of blacks in the south during the Jim crow years..
the individual will feel embolden, safe when acting in a mob
as one person in a group committing unjust, immoral acts
they wouldn't have done alone..... but with that said, quite
often, one moral person in a group will often provide moral guidence
for a group to be just and be moral within a group situation.....the
question in a group situation is one of accountablity.... holding a group
accountable just as we hold an individual accountable is key to
keeping a group of people acting just and moral......

(at this point, we don't give an account of what is just and moral because
that could be a 300 page book..... we state that knowing what it means to be just and moral
are known, they are just ignored by people)

I do believe that people can be moral and just when they are being held
accountable for their actions and given this, I do believe that individuals
can be more moral then our "governers" especally when people are being held
accountable, being held responsibile for their actions.......

and in this lies the failure of our "modern" society because we are only
accountable, not just for being kind or nice or having love in our hearts,
but being accountable by monetary standards... having money/profits as
guiding our actions and not the safety and stability of the systems we
belong to.......

in the end, we are all acountable for each other.... that news just hasn't
reached the ears of everyone yet..... but I hope it does reach people soon...

Kropotkin

[barbarianhorde]

I saw more of this thread and only understand now it is a private one.
Sosorry.

K: it is not a private thread..... but I expect the same level of self introspection
that I offer of myself...………. anyone may come or go as they please but here
you must be able to challenge yourself on what your values are or your idea's....

for example, you stated that "its really all baloney our system"

and I then ask, ok you have an analysis of our "system"
what are you going to do with that analysis?

your didn't really have a response..... and because I expect people to
engage, they usually just run away as you are apparently running away...

and that is fine......I don't expect people to hold themselves to the same
high standards I hold myself when engaging in philosophy...…..

what I am doing here, as philosophy is a good as anything written in
the last 500 years...….and as with any good philosophy, it is hard...
to both understand and to engage with...to do philosophy as I have
done it requires commitment and a willingness to engage honestly
with the values and myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions
that we all have.....few want to engage in a real search for the truth....
frankly, it a lot of work and can be on the painful side...….
I have changed my political thought 3 times in my lifetime and
my philosophical thought/stance more then that.....but it takes
courage to engage with oneself and few have that courage....

so it seems that this is a private thread but really it is a private thread
because people lack the courage for an "attack upon their convictions"
and so they run away.....personally, stay or leave, it doesn't changes what
I see as my essential mission which is to explore what it means to be human
and explore what are our human possibilities in the modern age...…

and if I am the only seeker, that is fine too..... I recognize that
my thoughts and my commitment to finding the answers to the
Kantian/Kropotkin questions leave me being a man apart from
society and so be it.....I thank you for your input…

I shall continue on my discovering what it means to be human in
this modern age...….

Kropotkin

I went very deep into that in my first post which you did not answer to!
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=188122&start=1925#p2708744
It was meant as a friendly but tough challenge on what you had said.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I have read the post in question and will respond when I have
a chance but work calls my name for the next two days...

Kropotkin

[barbarianhorde]

I much appreciate it.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Today's Idea is about a misguided idea, happiness.

the Greeks were all over this idea that life was about happiness.
They spent a whole lot of time going over how a man could be happy,
with pleasure, with knowledge, with fame or success.
The medieval philosophers thought it was the closer to god, the happier a person.
We have the declaration of independence saying, Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
But what if they are wrong! What if the purpose of life has nothing to do with happiness.
This pursuit of happiness is another lie used to give us some hope that we will find happiness

I think maybe the secret they were in on was that the pursuit of a big goal makes you happy. So you might as well go for a big goal like Happiness, and it will make you happy to try.

I want to smile in retrospect. So I need to give myself reasons to smile, thats how I live my life so thats my philosophy.

think about it, think about happiness and sadness and all those other feelings we have.
They (feelings) are transitory, very fleeting, they come and go like the wind, never staying too long.
Someone says to you, I am sad because of ....... That event that caused the sadness is also transitory.
I am sad because I lost my job. I am happy because I am in love. I am mad because the Giants lost last
night. Transitory events which lead to transitory feelings. I am sad because I lost my job.... will I still
be sad tomorrow? We don't know, we cannot hazard a guess as to whither we will be sad tomorrow or the
next day or the next day.

You got a better bet at influencing this and not being the sad one the next day too if you pursue happiness with a zeal.
Go out and fish, catch a big one, know what I mean? I mean adventure. Happiness is a secret code word for adventure.

We might still be jobless, but our feelings, changes, transitory.
I have found in my life, when I was happy, I was doing something else, my happiness was a result
of doing something. My happiness was the byproduct of something else. I was happy because I was in love.
I was in love because I was happy, doesn't work that way. Happiness, sadness, anger, are all byproducts
of something else. I was sad because .... I am angry because ...... I am happy because......

External causes can never make a warrior sad. Only a lack of his own will to go out and conquer or stand firm to protect is the sadness of the world which he shares in bad years, meagre years.
William James is all thats needed for happiness control. But happiness is a verb and you can't be passively happy.

Our emotions didn't cause
the event, the event caused our emotions. I have noticed I don't react the same way I used to react.
I recall being very angry after 9/11 and wanting to nuke every Muslim country. The feeling passed quickly

Haha yeah thats what happens. For me it passes but I decide I need some action to counteract this shit.
I feel the need to wash my hands off the evil so I seek opportunity to strike back. This calms my mind. Or heart first, it stabilizes my heart so my mind gets clear.

and I got over it. I remember feeling sick and angry over the various shootings that occurred, Virginia Tech,
and all the others. I heard about South Carolina this morning, it made slightly sad, but I know that will pass soon.
I know, know more senseless deaths and shootings will happen soon because we allow it. I have put
the recent south Carolina shooting into context and have accepted with a sad understanding. It is a wisdom
that allows me to take such sad events and put them into an historical and political context knowing I will
be reading about another such event, tomorrow and next week and next year. All because we are pursing
our "happiness" and allowing guns.

No because education sucks I think.
Of course except Ivy League. But the rest is shit and students take it out on the system.

Life is not sacred, it is a biological event and biological events. don't
rely on emotions such as happiness or sadness or anger. biological events only
exist to exist and recreate. Biology is not about sadness or other emotions, but
about existing and then recreating itself. I don't need to feel sad or happy or angry
to understand my purpose in life is not, IS NOT, happiness, but to recreate, to reproduce
for another generation to exist. If we go extinct, follow the dinosaurs, we have failed in
our biological purpose, which is to exist and to reproduce another generation. All our happiness
and sadness and anger means nothing if we fail in our biological purpose.

For me biological events are often sacred. I don't know anything else so why is it not sacred? You dismiss yourself as unsacred. Which is true, you can do that. Stalin wrote book about that. He was pretty smart if some people don't know. He lured the nazis into the winter and then came out like a boogieman. He was Georgian, a rural romantic almost a gypsie, like Hitler actually. Anyway, acidness is not always given in the minds of humans. But in happy humans I think always sacredness is close by when we sleep.

Gotta trust the wolves.
Dreams are all wolves.

Now recall yesterday lesson, how we exist and we shall always exist to the end of time
because of atoms living on beyond our existence. How do we understand
this with any failure of our biological purpose? This is an contradiction. How do we
handle this contradiction?

Kropotkin

No, we die and are forgotten. But not immediately. We need to be respectful so we get a good grave people don't wanna piss on.
(I dont want to bother you with my beliefs)

K: I recall reading this post and thinking then, as I do now, I did not
see your post as a challenge, friendly or otherwise.......I simply did not
see your post as any sort of attampt to get me to "reevaluate" my thinking....

I saw your post as simply responding with your own thoughts about what I wrote....
for example, one might post, What about god? and the next poster might respond
with their own thoughts about god, but at no point that response includes a
challenge to the first poster to engage in a dialogue about the "fitness" of
beliefs by anybody.......In other words, I didn't respond to your post as
you wanted me to respond/engage to your post because we saw your post differently.....

you saw it as a challenge whereas I just saw it as a personal response to a post of mine....
no challenged was offered and no challenged was accepted... at least in my view......
whereas you might have indeed offered a challenged and I, in your eyes, refused........

these brings up points of communication that often plague communication......

as individuals, we bring our own intrepretations to every aspect of communication....
as I am hearing impared, I intreprete communications different then hearing people
and different then fully deaf people..... I exist between two worlds, the hearing
and the deaf.....as I exists between many other "intrepretations" of the world......

I am not materialistic in the sense of finding my reason for existence
to be the buying and selling of anything.... I don't exist to make money
or to gain the usual reasons for existence, fame... fortune.... power....

I have, for over 40 years, searched for the "TRUTH"...…. but the "TRUTH"
I have found is that we, each of us, find our own individual truths....
I have studied philosophy, science, religion, history, economics,
art and literature in an attempt, perhaps a vain attempt, but an attempt
nevertheless to discover the answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions....

What can I know? what are we to do? ……..

my engagement with the world is different then your engagement
because we exists in different but parallel worlds.....
by that I mean that we exists as human beings with a common history,
with a common biology, within a common ideology.....
but different because our own individual history is different....

I am male, 59, American, white, middle class, hearing impaired, wears glasses,
not traditionally educated but self educated and quite self educated at that.....

whereas your individual history is whatever it is...…..

and because of our mutual shared common history, we can understand
each other, but because of our different personal history, we quite often
misunderstand each other...…….the question of communication is a complicated
one and has been discussed at length for over 2000 years and will continue to be
discussed for another 2000 years because of its nature....

you see a challenge and I simply see a response..... we can see the same
word and interpret it quite differently...……….. that is both the
pleasure of and the problem of communication...……..

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

to return to the problem of the "modern" age...….

I see the "Modern" age as being different then the other ages,
not necessarily better or worse, just different...…

the industrial age and the ensuing technological age
has created a different understanding of the universe then
prior ages....... the ancient world and the medieval world had
different paradigms, different realities, different goals and agendas.....

we see very essential matters like time differently....

a complaint of the Greeks and Romans was that when two
parties agreed to meet, that each party had a different sense
of what time they were going to meet and quite often
it led one party or another to wait a considerable time for
the other party to arrive...... they didn't have clocks as we
have them and so, meeting at 10:00 am as we would meet was
really not possible....the time they fixed was really just
rough guess.... what does it mean to meet mid-morning?
we have clocks and so for us, it is easy to arrange a very
specific time to meet... for them, not quite so easy.....

this one example is just one point how we differ from the
ancient and middle ages...………….

we are human but our individual circumstances
dictate how we see the universe and reality...…

existing in the "modern" age determines that we see
reality and the universe differently then someone from
the ancient world or the medieval world...…
just that fact alone, of when we exist, determines how
we interpret the world...…………

the tools of man also determine how we understand the world...…
for example, if the only tools you have is a hammer, then you
see the world as being one where a hammer pounding something
down is how you see the world.... whereas if you have a nail or
a computer or a wheel makes how you see the world differently.....

if we can only transport ourselves via a horse or a wagon changes
how we see the world as oppose to if we transport ourselves via
cars, trains, airplanes or spaceships...…. the very means of
transportation changes how we see the world.... the technological
aspects of the world changes how we see the world...…..

if I live in a house changes my perception of the world as does
my living in a cave or a yurt, changes my perception of the world.....
we are still human beings but because of our different technologies
and means of living, we have different understandings of the universe
and reality...……….. how we live changes how we understand...….

so as an American living in 2018 changes my understanding of the world then
a person living in a tribe in China understands the world...………..

so when I speak of values, it is really speaking of values
that exists in modern America in 2018...…..

but, but values that have value in modern America 2018,
can have value in modern China because values do have
the ability to leap over technology and science and politics....

for example, we can speak of love as a universal value because
because it can exists independently of the external operations
of the world..... in other words, love is not about technology or
time or the political or social or economic goings on in the world.....
love isn't about those things and can exist in or out of those things...…
love is independent of external matters...….values are independent
of external matters like time or space or the political or economic
or social goings on in the world...………. we can have love in
any form of government or any form of social or economic system....

that is the value of "values" they exists independently of the external
world but they are influenced by the external world.... how we think
of say, Justice, is impacted by the external events of our world, our reality....

thus, IQ45 attack upon basic human equality/justice changes our
perception of what justice/equality is...….. values don't exist completely
independently of our world

WAIT A MINUTE.... WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE...… you said two
completely different things in the space of three paragraphs....
first values are independently of our reality and then
you said values are impacted by the world..... you can't have it both ways,
...……..ah, a contradiction......I am not afraid of
contradictions because I believe the truth, any truth, is
found within a contradiction...……

Kropotkin, you aren't making any sense...….. but I am making sense
if, if you aren't married to or have your understanding of the world
written in stone...…………….. this is a Zen moment...……

the questions and answers of the "Modern" age is found in the contradictions of
the "Modern" age...…… and we are full of contradictions in our
current understanding of the universe, of our reality...………

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one of the "modern" questions is about certainty...…..

what is certain? that has been the pursuit of both science and
philosophy since the rise of science, roughly 1500...….

the Roman/Greek world had their version of certainty...both
operated with the certainty of a fixed and set universe......

the medieval world has their certainty in their belief system in which
the point of existence, human existence was to get to heaven....
the medieval world negated the physical world..... the body was
denied in favor of the soul...and the order of the universe was an
hierarchy... from bottom to top with god being at the top and the pope
next and the staff of the pope next with the kings and royality being next
with the lessor nobality next with the large base of this pyramid being
the large mass of peasants and serfs......

this was the certainty of the middle ages.... and then came the cracks
in this belief system.... we call it the rise of science which has engage
since 1500, the search for certainty.....the same certainty that was felt
during the Greco-Roman period and the Medieval period.....

you can describe the "Modern" era, as a search for certainty......

for example, Marx and Hegel both wrote about how their "systems" were
both models of certainty......and you can see in Kant how he thought his
Critiques, all three of them, were models of certainty in his pursuit to
find certainty in philosophy, especially in his "Critique of Pure Reason"

but we now live in 2018 and certainty is hard to find....... science does
not guarantee the existence of a "certain" universe........philosophy
has its own issues and our political, social, economic and historical
understanding of the world has left us without any grounds for certainty....

I have gone over this ground before but I don't think or see how
an understanding of moving objects that is the bases of Modern
science can help us or aid us in the gaining an understanding of
the world, how the understanding of moving objects can create
certainty in the world...………….the entire theory of relativity is
about a mathematical understanding of the movement between
objects in space with one being stationary and the other moving
whereas the special theory of relativity is about two moving
objects and how we can account for their relationship as they move.....

I just don't see how we can build a coherent system of or a model
of what it means to be human based on a mathematical understanding
of moving objects...…………...that is one of the major problems with
trying to stretch science into philosophy.... science does it thing
which has little to do with any kind of understanding of the philosophical
nature of the world...….

so what is the philosophical nature of the world? Let us remove what isn't
the philosophical nature of the world...……. the movement of the planets,
stars, galaxies and of atoms..... none of this creates any type of understanding
of the human condition, the human problem...…

even if science were to discover what in fact began the universe, it doesn't
change the reality of us being and existing in the here and now.....

the existential crisis of being human does not come from our beginning,
to the big bang, but to the reason for and what is the point of our existence...
I submit that when science does find out the reason for the big bang, it will
not solve a dam thing..... the question of human existence does not
resolve around how we got here but why, why we are here?

we are attempting to find certainty in this question of why we are here, instead
of how we came to be..... (a side note, it would be quite interesting to find out
how we came to be, but it doesn't really change the existential questions of
human existence)…

how does one find the answers to the existential questions of our human existence?

we use our tools of logic and science and philosophy and religion and history..
but the are just tools, a process to discover answers to certain questions...…

this question of certainty looms large over every thing we do and act upon.....

how are we to be sure that our hard earn taxpayer money is being spent
wisely and on things that matter in our lives? that is a question of certainty.....

How can I be certain that my taxes won't go up this year? How can I be certain
that we have a strong enough defense, a military, to protect us?

How can I be certain that I have all the freedom I am suppose to have?

How can I be certain that the laws being passed, benefit me?

How can I be certain that the company I work for won't go bankrupt?
It won't go belly up next year?

the many questions we have of the universe and its nature, revolve
around questions of certainty.... ……

the next stage of philosophy is an understanding of what it means to
exist without certainty......the next great philosophy is a understanding
of how to exist without certainty...…….. how does one "ride" the wave
of uncertainty into the future? the quest for certainty is a search done
by our ancestors...… we "Moderns" have no need of certainty anymore....
because that certainty locks us into actions, behavior, schools of thought,
that are temporary..... we act, think, behave, believe in a temporary
fashion...…… our beliefs as children are temporary... the belief in Santa Claus
is an temporary one.....our childish behavior is a temporary one, our
belief system is a temporary one at every age...…….

at no point do we engage in or with permanent thoughts, beliefs, behavior,
or actions..... so why should we believe in permanence, in certainty, when
clearly at every stage of our lives, we act, believe, think, behave in a
temporary manner.... my beliefs, actions, thoughts, behavior are different
today, then they were 20 or 30 or 40 years and they will continue to change
and evolve as I age... become an senior citizen, just 3 years from now...…

so why should we engage in finding certainty when our very lives change, modify,
develop, revise and turn over as we age...….. I am not the same person, the same
man I was and I shouldn't be......as I age, I change...…..

and this pursuit of finding certainty doesn't reflect this constant
change that we human beings exist in...….

so in the final analysis, finding certainty in a life full of change, temporary
actions, beliefs and thoughts is a foolish task.

we should reject any attempt to spend our lives seeking that which
we don't live our lives in, we don't exist in or with certainty....
so why search for it?

embrace the who we are, embrace or become who we are.....
we are creatures that change, evolve, seek, and engage with
movement..... let us embrace that movement as our existential
core of being human...….. the human being you are at this moment,
that will change in time, in the next 5 minutes you will change in some
fashion... embrace that change.... become who you are... the
human creature is one that is constantly changing and evolving....
become that creature...…..

become who you are


Kropotkin