a new understanding of today, time and space.

Lol… Prom befuddling KP, with happy ‘wonderful’ feels.

2nd.the motion.

Ok, I’m going to pretend the last couple of posts didn’t happen…

so, I was thinking the other day and I was going to use a fictional
character to make my point when, I realized that a real person would
make the same case as a fictional person…… so, I am offering up
a case to be made for a certain type of person/action……

I have studied up on the Buddha and I noticed that his life was
a normal life for a prince, soon to be king… he was educated and trained
to be king one day, from a young age……

then because he saw the three aspects of life which are the cause
of suffering, sickness, old age and death…he wanted to
eliminate suffering from this world and so he spent time
as an adult trying to understand how to end suffering…

so, you have two aspects of the Buddha’s life, the following the path
that was expected of him as prince, soon to be king… he followed
society’s expectations of what a prince was… just as we follow expectations
of what our role is in society…given our status in the social/economic/political
realm that exists in our respected countries…

and the second path was when he was 29, that is the traditional age given,
that he turned to following the path to enlightenment…

he gave up, walked away from the expectations that he was supposed to follow
of being a prince, soon to be king… he search for enlightenment, which is
something that a prince does not do…he walked away from the expectations
that he was supposed to follow as prince… he followed his own heart, as it were…
and in the end, he found enlightenment and founded a new religion…
which was certainly not the expectations he had placed upon him
from birth…….

we have another person who walked away from expectations and became
something else… We have Jesus… he was born a Jew and he was expected to
live out his life as a Jew… and for the Jewish people nothing is more sacred
then obeying the law… the Jewish religion is about obeying the law of god…

and if we read about Jesus, he lived a typical Jewish life, although we don’t
know what happened between the ages of 12 and 30… but I for one,
am willing to bet the farm on the fact that he lived his life as a typical
Jewish man living in Judah the first century………he worked as a carpenter
and most likely lived at home… with mom pushing him to date and marry
and carry on the family name within the Jewish tradition……
living and working and then finally dying as just another Jewish person
during that time period………

but why he began his ministry, we don’t know… but I can guess…
he had heard stories about his fabled childhood… what person can
lead a traditional, long-established ancestral life that was expected of him,
given the stories of his birth…it must give one pause…

how does one live up to those stories of birth by
leading a traditional, ancestral life?

I for one, don’t know how………

so at some point, he left his traditional, established, sanctioned life
and began a new path… Just like the Buddha… he found a path outside
of the norm, of what was expected of a typical male in his time and place…

He left being Jesus and became the savior…… a path few take…

and what may have drove him to take this extraordinary path/road?

He couldn’t have been happy or satisfied or pleased with his life…
because happy, satisfied, pleased people don’t walk away from what
is expected and/or sanctified by society…they carry out their duties
as is expected of them by society…they work, they marry and have babies
and grow old together and then die… that is the expected path
of people in every society… to follow the established norm of what the
society expects…and to follow the path that every other person follows
and is expected to follow…

But Jesus didn’t and the Buddha didn’t…

and if we carry this to our modern world, we see this of Gandhi… he tried
to follow the path that was expected of him… he became a lawyer…
and tried to follow the expected, social norm that every person of India
is expected to follow… just as we Americans expect people in America
to follow the established norms and traditions of our society……

and we see that Martin Luther King also begin the path of expectations
and soon began to travel the less traveled road… of fighting injustice
wherever he found them and what of his expected path? Of being a preacher
and preaching the word of god? He didn’t really follow that path, did he?

had MLK followed tradition and was simply a preacher who preached in
a church and minister to the needs of his flock… we would have never
heard of MLK… He would have died an old man and well loved preacher,
but he wouldn’t have found his calling in life had he played it safe and was
simply a preacher in a church…

If you name me someone who is famous, I can probably guess that person
became famous not by following the given expectations of his family or
of his society… they probably did something that was beyond, outside
of the expectations that their society and their families had for them……

Greatness is not found in obeying and leading social or family expectations,
but in overcoming those expectations and becoming something different…

Lincoln was a simple country lawyer who could have stayed as a country
lawyer and made a name for himself and some money and he would
have been respected and admired by the people of Springfield ILL…
but he rose above and beyond the expectations of his society and
his family by becoming president………

the path to becoming and to become great, doesn’t lie within
following expectations of society or friends or family…
it is an infinitely harder path to follow…

take another name, an “evil” name, Adolph Hitler…….
his path, the path he wanted to follow was to be a painter…
he tried to enter a couple of schools of painting and was rejected…

How history would have changed had he been accepted and became
a painter……to follow a path that was traditional and accepted by society…
it might have been frowned upon within certain circles, but it was still
an accepted path within society……

but think of his future… where instead he became the “Furhrer”…
that path was definitely not part of the established and socially
accepted path within society… no one grows up with the approval
of society that suggests that they become a dictator…
Hitler traveled the less travel path and created destruction
and chaos throughout the world… a less traveled path…
and without the approval of society…

it is important to note the life path of those who have changed
and created the modern world…they stood outside of the normal
standard path that society “deems” useful and important…

following the traditional, established, sanctioned life doesn’t lead
one to find new paths or to greatness or to becoming…….

it is only by overcoming what is expected and established,
that one can achieve true and lasting achievements
and accomplishments………

to find a role model requires one to find a role model who
overthrew the establish order and the traditional order of things…

be the Buddha and walk away from the traditional and established
existence that is meant for you…… become the Buddha by
engaging in an existence that lies outside of the traditional
and established path of society…

become something more……

Kropotkin

so let us bring this down to earth, as IAM always says…

I, Kropotkin…who would I take as my role model?

who would lead me to the lesser traveled road where
I am no longer following the traditional, established path
allowed by society……

I do lead a well established life where I pay my taxes
and obey the laws and I am a member of a union
and I vote and don’t litter… I am a valued and contributing
member of society…

I have never been in jail and I don’t make waves…

so, at my advance age, who should be the person I follow?

I would think it is clear that I engage with a couple of different people…
one would be Nietzsche, then Spinoza and Kierkegaard…
along with Kazantzakis and Socrates… Pierre Hadot and William Barrett…
with Colin Wilson and Henry Adams…

my spiritual hero’s as it were…

My philosophical journey would have these names within it…

and no one on this list is a “radical” or an “anarchist” or even a “troublemaker”
well except for Socrates…

each of these people follow the rules, were “good” citizens, they participated
within the societies rules… and yet, they reached beyond the traditional,
expected path of a person in that day and age…they explored what laid
beyond the normal parameters of what society expected and had established…

I can be a “good” citizen and still be able to explore what is possible for
human beings to achieve…I can overcome without resorting to any type
of radicalism or extremism…….

the path to becoming human doesn’t lie within the road of living an anarchist life
or living an libertarian life…it just requires us to acknowledge that there is a path
beyond the normal, expected, established path that society lays out for us…

I can achieve without becoming a doctor or a priest or a accountant…

I can achieve by pressing beyond what is expected and demanded of me
by society… I am not going to practice what I did before which is
several years of being an anarchist because that life no longer suits me
in my old age… being a radical is a game for the young… I am just going to
explore what it takes to become human, fully human by laying out the road map
that it takes to become human… to go beyond just being animal or being animal/human…

we seek to become human… beyond the instincts and animal nature that is
the common theme of our society…to rise above the animal nature of
hate and greed and lust and anger and intolerance and bigotry……

to seek that which is fully human by rising above instincts and rising above
hate and greed and lust and anger and intolerance and bigotry………

the path less traveled, as it were…

we have gone from animal to animal/human and now we must finish
the next part of our road by going from animal/human to fully human…

and that path is the road less traveled…

Kropotkin

we shall examine more closely two such “spiritual” hero’s of mine…

We have two such writers who lived roughly at the same time and yet,
have quite different agendas……

the first is Kierkegaard and the second is Marx……

I shall at the outset, make it understood that I was a Kierkegaardian
follower for years and read everything he wrote and was written about him…

I am less so a follower of Marx…

I shall cover Marx first for reasons that should become apparent…

Marx lived from 1818 to 1883…his theory of history was called,
“Historical Materialism” and

“that is centered around the idea that the forms
of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development
of human productive power”

“Freedom is found in the human community, not in isolation”

(italics quotes are found in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy)

for Marx, it wasn’t about the individual, it was about the society at large…
and how we adapted (or didn’t adapt) within society that was the question…

for Marx, it was about the overall movement of history that matter,
the large scale forces of society that moved and change history…
for Marx, the substructure of history was economics, as involving all of us,
that is what matter… the individual was simply a pawn or a toy within the
large scale forces of history……

and we have Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855… who thought the opposite… he was about
the individual, he didn’t care about the large scale forces that dominated
our lives… for K. it was about our own individual choices that matter…

for K. it was about our own accountability and responsibility in making
our own choices, whereas for Marx, it didn’t matter if we were
accountable or responsible for our choices because our own choices
matter little given the broad scope of historical forces that dictated
our lives… dictated our lives politically, economically, socially…
we have very little or practically no choice in Marxist theory…

Marxism is the study of large scale forces that we cannot individually
have any control over…

whereas for K. those large scale forces don’t mean shit… because
K. was only interested in what it meant to be an individual, a Christian,
in our modern world…….

History, so far, has given the nod to Marx for his understanding that
the world is about the large scale, beyond our individual choices
and possibilities, our large scale movement of human beings who are
swept up by historical forces beyond their control…

think of the ism’s and ideologies of our modern age…

democracy, capitalism, communism, Catholicism, socialism…
not one is about the individual and their own individual choices…
each of these modern ism’s and ideology is about the large scale
historical movement of people leading toward some direction.

within these large scale forces, lies the single human being…
a human being made insignificant by the dominate forces of history that
move societies and entire civilizations…

For K. the choice was between an individual and god…
the large scale forces that dominated humankind like
capitalism wasn’t as important as the individual choices we made
in regards to what kind of person we are going to be……

that is why K. writes about morality and ethics and aesthetics and
psychology… these things matter when dealing with the individual…
but they aren’t important when dealing with the forces of history…
what does the force of history care about Aesthetics or morality when
it involves the motion of millions in its impersonal drive to achieve what?
is really the question that Marx labored under… if it is impersonal,
then what could those large scale forces be trying to achieve??

K. was called the first existentialist because he was the first to
write about the individual and their personal choices to be
who they are… we cannot become who we are given the
large scale nature of the human condition as given by Marx…
but we can become who we are given the understanding
by K.

if we are alienated by forces of history, as in Marx,
we have very little recourse outside of changing
the entire structure of man… we cannot become who we are
in a Marxist universe because we are determined by forces
that are too large for any one individual to comprehend or
to large for any one individual to change……

but K. doesn’t have this problem…
you can become who you are by your choices…
I can choose to become because the only choice we have
is between the individual and god… there are no other real choices…

whereas in Marx, you have no choice of any kind… life is determined
for you by the large scale forces that exists…

it is hard to change the nature of things if, as Marx thinks, you are simply
a drop of water in a large ocean…

but if you are a single drop of water, then you can make choices, as K.
works out…

for K. life is about the choices and decisions one makes…
one can become accountable and responsible for our lives…

for Marx, we cannot be guilty if we are simply a drop of water in the midst
of millions of drops of water…

in Marx, we are enslaved within the various ism’s and ideologies
of history…

we are free in K. because we are not enslaved within the various
ism’s and ideologies of history…

and what of my understanding of the universe?

is Kierkegaard right or is Marx right?

I believe both to be right… we do have choices and we can
answer to our responsibilities and obligations of existence
and we are enslaved within the vast forces of historical
existence… of forces that sweep us, to and fro, within
human existence…how do we reconcile our individual choices
as given by K. and how reconcile our choices within
a large scale domination of individuals by such forces
as historical materialism as given by Marx?

they are both right… now what?

Kropotkin

in the understanding of the world, it is clear that
the world is Marxian, not Kierkegaardian……

in our world, beauty is unimportant and love is unimportant
and hope and honesty and charity and all those positive values
have no standing……

as it true in a Marxian world… we are simply pawns or nothing
more the cannon fodder for the universe to use and abuse…

we have no individual value as human beings in a Marxian world…

because we don’t live in a K. world… where we would have
individual value and individual choice and responsibilities…

the question becomes, how do we find balance between the
Marxian world we live in and the Kierkegaardian world we should
be in………

how do we get from point A to point B?

What is the middle ground from where we are to where
we should be?

Kropotkin

existentialism is a movement designed to make the answer
about individual choices and individual responsibilities and
obligations…the modern world is Marxian which is to say,
individual choices and responsibilities are negated by
ism’s and ideologies that nihilistic in nature…

nihilism is the negation of human beings and their values…

I belong to a union where we must, must unite together to
be able to combat the ongoing and ever present
nihilism of capitalism and corporations that slavishly
follow the nihilism of the modern world………

I am given the right to vote with million of my fellow American to choose
the next president and I stand with millions in an all encompassing
political and economic system that doesn’t allow dissent or escape from…

I am part of millions…

and as part of millions of people, how do I find my individual self?

How do I make Kierkegaardian choices of responsibility and accountability
when I stand with millions?

with so many millions, I am just one drop of water in an ocean of people…

and because I stand with so many millions, it doesn’t matter if I choose or
don’t decide to choose or if I stand alone… it just doesn’t matter what choice
I make because it is negated within the millions of other choices……

nihilism is not only found in the negation of human being and their values,
it is found in the modern world of negation by simply being one atom in the midst
of billions of atoms… one atom has no possibility of free action or accountability
because it is just one atom… and the flow of the surrounding forces overwhelm
the one atom…

does a drop of water in the midst of the ocean have any choice?

any choice at all?

I would say no… how could it?

the very vastness of the world denies us any possibility for choices
or responsibilities or accountability…………

as one atom in a midst of billions of atoms… what are my choices?

and thus the rise of existentialism… attempting to create individual choices
and possibilities in the midst of forces that deny individual choices
and responsibilities……

forces like capitalism and communism and Catholicism and
Buddhism and democracy and dictatorships and fascism
and socialism… all meant to deny human beings individual
choices and possibilities………

or to phrase it another way… Kierkegaard and Marx were both right
and K. and Marx were both wrong………

there is a middle way and the modern question is “what is that middle path
between K. and Marx?”

Kropotkin

how are we to find our way clear of alienation
and discontentment given we exists in a world that
has discounted and voided our individual choices
and possibilities?

for alienation and our winter of discontentment rises
from the very fact we are divorced from any possibility of
becoming who we are given the reality we are but a single drop
of water in a vast ocean…

how am I to impact the world around me given I am but
one drop of water?

How am I to influence or change the vast forces surrounding me
when I have no power or influence to create change?

I must turn inward to make any change but in that path lies
the ruin of the Roman Empire… for the empire became
to powerful and didn’t allow for any individual to impact or change
the forces that dominated the empire toward the end and so people
were left with one choice and one choice only, turn inward and work
their own possibilities with god… but in doing so, the Roman empire
was lost because to fuel an civilization requires, demands the energy of
the people to allow it to function… once the people turned inward,
the empire lost their source of power to power it… and the inevitable
collapse was simple a matter of time…

to fuel an civilization or society or a state, requires energy,
and that energy is derived from the people… we fuel
any state, empire, civilization with the energy we give to
that empire… we are the fuel of empires, just like gas is the fuel
of cars and if we deny a car fuel, it will simply stop working
and the same is of civilizations and empires and the state…

the state simply stops working if the people turn their energy elsewhere,
like in finding their own answers or turning inwards… and the new ism
of Christianity allowed people to turn inwards to escape the destructive
nihilism of the Roman empire… the empire collapsed… simple as that…

so we can look forward to a nihilistic state which denies us, or
which negates us a people and our values……
or we can take our energy away from that empire or state and watch
the state or empire be destroyed from lack of energy………

the question of the state or empire is a question of energy…
how do we get people to buy into a certain state that will
allow the state to gain power to rise and become……

if “we the people” refuse to power with our energy, the state,
the state dies…and this is where we are at right now…

the state, the United States of America has by it nihilistic, negation
of people and their values, has forced people to walk away from,
no longer power the U.S with the power of the people…….

the U.S is no longer a viable state because the power needed to
power the state is no longer there because of its negation of
people and their values… why participate in a state that negates
who you are and your values?

a state, country or empire can only last as long as it is power by
the energy and devotion of the people… once the people have
walked away from the state, it is doomed…
and people aren’t just walking away from the U.S, they are running…
and this is shown by the many millions of people who won’t power
the state by voting or espousing values that make taxes more important
then people’s lives…

we, as a country, hold to nihilistic values that put money/profits ahead
of people and their values… and to do so, means that millions of people
will simply walk away because they don’t want to be negated or devalued
as people……

why fight for a country that simply denies or negates my value
as a person?

why indeed?

and so I withdraw my energy from America and with every single person who
withdraws their energy from America, makes America less strong and weaker…
if enough people withdraw their energy from America, America has a country
is done……. but how do we escape from this given that America
hold nihilistic values?

I cannot, cannot hold to being an American if I am negated and
devalued for money/profits… if money/profits are of greater value
then I am, why would/should I give America my energy?

I don’t………
simple answer…

so, America is on the path to becoming a failed empire because it
values nihilism over people and their values…….

and so, I stand, alone, a drop in the ocean… wondering what
should I do? Should I negate myself in some attempt to save America or
do I simply try to save myself and become accountable, responsible to
just me and me alone?

Kropotkin

Yeah, I get this. The global economy is clearly personified by amoral capitalists. With their crony pols in the government, their military industrial complex states and their thugs in the military and police departments. And in an increasingly autocratic world.

And, sure, when your frame of mind revolves almost entirely around a potent combination of “what’s in it for me?” and “show me the money”, it’s moral nihilism all the way down.

But the alternatives you propose are [to me] almost always encompassed in general description intellectual contraptions. And, from my frame of mind, a hop, a step and a jump from your own rendition of moral and political objectivism.

Unfortunately, in either direction, I am no less fractured and fragmented. And, so, not to be brutally cynical about the world we live in today is becoming increasingly out of reach.

Good luck with whatever hope you have managed to cling to.

Unless the autocrats see this as an obvious requirement to retain some measure of essential control, in the , vise of a hidden God.!

both Iam and Meno have interesting if not slightly different takes…

today, I shall offer up another thought…

as I have written that the world is Marxian… which is to say,
we are just as negated under Marxism as we are negated under
Capitalism…and vast forces which we have no control over dominate
us… the Coronavirus begins in China and wrecks havoc all over the world
and we, as individuals, have very little control over what may happen in regards
to governmental responses to the virus or to what the business we work for might do…

when vast forces such as capitalism act, we individually, have very little control over it…

I call that a Marxian world…… but the other choice is a Kierkegaardian world…

which is to say, what happens out there is of far less important then what happens
inside of us… is far less important then the choices we make about who we are
and what it means to be human and what our values are going to be……

To balance out the world, we need to balance out the Marxist world out there
with Kierkegaardian choices…I see this as a balancing act… when the world
takes our control away, we must immerse ourselves in our choices, think of this
like those famous scales of justice… which must balance… if the world goes way
out of line then to balance the scales, we must go the other way in making choices…

if the world makes few demands of us, then we don’t have to go to extreme lengths
to balance the scales…

if the world is moderate, we too can be moderate in our response to the
question, who are you and what does it mean to be human?

if the world is extreme, like it is now and demands all our time, money, effort,
to help maintain the world as it negates and dehumanizes us, then we must react
in extreme ways to deny the world its devaluation of human beings…

this sounds abstract but in my mind it isn’t… I can clearly see how the world
has tried to deny who we are by the demands of the world that we sacrifice ourselves
to create profits/money…

and the world shows us this devaluation every time it places money or profits
or material goods before human beings and their values…

when people demand that we put taxpayers money before
human beings, then we are devaluing people and their values…

when the state places private property before people and their values,
then we are devaluing people… dehumanizing them…

that extremism must be fought… and we can fight back with
Kierkegaardian choices…K. question was this,
how can one become Christian in a Christian world?

He felt that becoming a Christian was an individual choice, made
individually within the confines of our possibilities…

ask yourself, what choices do you make that exist outside of
confines of what society demands? for example, as a young person,
you must at some point decide to “do” something because that is a choice
society demands on all of us… become a “productive” member of society…

if I am asking myself what does it mean to be human and what are our possibilities,
but the standards of society, I am not, not being productive…I am leaching off
of society…in asking personal, individual questions of existence…

Society/state demands that we are productive members of society…
but in that “being productive” we must sacrifice ourselves, out bodies
and soul and that is where I draw the line…I must contribute to society
and that contribution must be in energy and effort and time into creating
profits… and that is the only option available to me…

I have no other value outside of the creation of profits…

and yet I deny this… I can contribute by laying out the ground work of
what it means to be human in out modern age… but Kropotkin, you aren’t
really being a “productive member” of society if you don’t consume or produce
in ways that create profits…and that is a Marxist/capitalist vision of what it means
to be human…

the Kierkegaardian vision of being human asks ourselves, what does it mean to be human?

what are my possibilities? to engage with god is certainly one such possibility
but that is frowned upon within society because it doesn’t create or consume
in ways that creates profits…

to think about what our possibilities are isn’t about creating profits
and that is the question K. asked…

he engaged with one of the human questions and his answer was god…

but Kropotkin, tell us what questions we should engage with?

I cannot… I can only tell you what questions I am engaged with…
each of us come to this individually, with our own questions about what it
means to be human and thus I cannot tell you what questions are yours…

and this choice, this possibilities of choices is Kierkegaardian…to engage
with your own possibilities is Kierkegaardian and not Marxism or capitalism……

and that should we engage with something that doesn’t create profits, is
against the prejudices and biases of our modern age…

Kropotkin

no pete you can’t kick-or-guard against karl because he’s like a UFC grappler… and you’ve seen what happens to folks who fuck with grapplers in the cage.

the whole kierkegaardian philosophical program was a brilliant expression and symptom of everything karl had diagnosed as the psychological basis for philosophy itself. and while karl never denies that european existentialism did ask legitimate questions about the nature of existence, the sonofabitch had enough sense to know the difference between conceptual problems and real, lived material struggle against real, lived material problems, and didn’t waste time fiddling with poetry and creative writing projects. besides, how much of K’s career as a polemicist was directed against the bourgeois and the church? see what i mean? there would be no bourgeois and church if karl were made sheriff from the beginning… and hence, no kierkegaardian philosophical program.

K: ah, you have made my point for me… notice the very words you used…

Marx “had enough sense to know the difference between conceptual problem and real, lived
material struggle against real, lived material problems, and didn’t waste time fiddling with
poetry and creative writing projects”

Marx didn’t care about beauty or love or poetry or anything that actually does give
our life meaning… whereas Kierkegaardian problems are problems about beauty,
love, poetry… in fact, we read Kierkegaard for his thoughts about Aesthetics…
thoughts about the things that Marx never notice or wrote about…

the world would be better off if we engaged in the Kierkegaardian problems
of love, beauty, poems, creative writing projects, Aesthetics… that is why we
read someone like Kierkegaard…

Marx is engaged in economics and certainly doesn’t have time for such
trifles like poetry or beauty… and so is the modern world of capitalism…
it doesn’t have time for anything that doesn’t “contribute” to the GDP or
the Dow Jones…that is the difference between the modern world of Marxism/
capitalism and a Kierkegaard world…….

I think we should engage in art and beauty and love with equal or more fervor as we
engage with material matters of profits and money or perhaps I could be so bold
as to suggest and be very unamerican in doing so and suggest that we should engage
in far less profits/money and far more engagement with art and beauty and love
and poetry and all matters of Aesthetics…

and that is my point…less materialism and more Aesthetics… less marx/capitalism
and more Kierkegaard…

Kropotkin

I think it’s time that you read this, Pete.

Existentialism cannot take precedence in our world any longer. Maybe in the 20th century, but not today. We gotta get our ducks in order so we don’t fuck this thing up. We can’t afford these philosophical distractions anymore, Pete.

K: I thank you for your recommendation of that essay by George Novack….
I haven’t seen it before… it fits perfectly into my way of thinking over this
last year or so and it ties into the latest book I am reading: Order out of chaos,
Man’s new dialogue with nature… by Ilya Priogogine and Isabelle Stengers……

the essay by Novack is about Marxism and existentialism… the
reason that they are diametrically opposed to each other… and why they
cannot be fused into one theory… I have read that essay at least 12 times
in the last day… I have come to think that Marxism and Existentialism can
be fused into one theory… because they describe two different things…

Novack’s essay has this: “For existentialism the universe is irrational;
for Marxism it is lawful”

that in a nutshell describes the two… but it doesn’t mean that they cannot
be fused into one theory…for example, we know that we exists within a
universe that has laws, all kinds of natural laws… we have the laws of thermodynamics
and the laws of gravity and the laws of evolution… we are bound by and created by
various different types of natural laws… but we do have a chaotic universe despite
these many laws that dictate what kind of universe we live in…

we know that evolution for example depends upon chance and probability to
work and we know from such theories as Schrodinger’s cat, for example…
and Quantum Mechanics… the universe despite its “Laws” still has
chance and probability working within it…

we can guess that the “laws” of the Marxist can be applied to humans beings,
largescale and existentialism can be applied to humans small scale…

we can see from the game baseball for example, that there are very defined
rules for the game of Baseball… Baseball exists within these defined rules,
there are 3 outs per side in one half inning and the game lasts for 9 innings
and that only 9 players can play in the field at one time and you only get three
strikes and you are out… and yet, even in a game with such rules as baseball,
there exists chance and probability… hit the ball into the air and there are several
possibilities…hit the ball on the ground and there are several more possibilities…
perhaps the ball might hit a bird or perhaps the ball will be carried by the wind or
perhaps the ball might caught or caught and then dropped… we cannot know in
advance what possibilities will exist during any given play…

and so the same goes for the game of life… we have set rules or laws which
we humans must obey, the law of gravity and the laws of physics… we must obey
those laws/rules or face serious consequences… and yet, within those rules lies
possibilities and chance and probabilities…the human framework
does have rules and laws that must obeyed… and yet we face chance and
possibilities within our lives…there is a set “law” that all human beings must die,
and yet, we in fact, cannot say that rule/law has been absolutely followed in
human history…we don’t know… we can guess or assume but we can’t know…

even within certain “absolute” rules/laws, there lies ambiguity……

I am bound by certain physical, natural laws to be sure, but I am also
bound by certain human laws and rules… but within those laws lies
uncertainty and ambiguity…the law and god says, thou shall not kill and
yet, within that law of god and man, lies a great deal of ambiguity
and uncertainty……….I can kill if I am a police officer in the line of duty
and I face some “risk” and I can kill if I kill in self defense and I can kill
as a solider in the army and there no risk and in fact, depending on
the situation, I can be rewarded by medals or promotions or I can be demoted
or even fired…

we speak of laws and rules as being absolute and certain but the reality is
that the rules of the universe, the laws of gravity for example may be
easily broken if we understood it better…but for now, it is complete and
absolute… for now…….it is the lawful way to think of our natural universe…
just as Marxism is the lawful way to think of human beings… we might be bound
to certain historical laws just as Marxism suggests but that doesn’t mean we
are historically bound to those laws…

for example, the principle of progress that has had so much attention
since the enlightenment… we have clearly progress materially since
the time of pre-history… but it isn’t clear if that rule/law of progress is
really a fixed, certain law or if it is an ad hoc law… just a temporary solution
to a question we have…we may be able to dump the law of
progress given enough time and understanding of our current situation…

as the Marxist suggest, we exists within a certain framework and time period…
we are born into a already settle set of ism’s and ideologies and biases
and superstitions and habits… I was born in 1959 and I was born into a given
set of circumstances in the Midwest part of America…the kids born today
are born into a completely different set of circumstances… and yet, they
are born, as I was, in the United States…the general rules of America still
exists, then and now, we hold that America is the greatest country on earth
and we are still that shining city on the hill… but even the nature of that statement
that “America is the greatest country on earth” has changed… times change
and is that progress? I couldn’t say… what was progress in 1959 is different then
progress today…but the very word of progress hasn’t changed…
our idea of progress has changed and has been adapted into our current situation…

as a rule, progress still exists, it is still a rule and law…but its very nature has
changed…

existentialism and Marxism may just be explanations of the different aspect
of human existence… one discusses the individual aspect and one explains
the rules/laws of existence… both may be right and both may be wrong……

but that doesn’t mean they are completely foreign to each other or they
describe the exact same thing…I think they are compatible and
describe different aspects of human existence……

Kropotkin

we have, as noted, various rules/laws of science…
we have the rules of motion as defined by Newton
and we have the rules of Relativity as defined by Einstein…
both rules/laws are rules of motion… how things move…

but how does rules/laws of motion help us understand what it
means to be human or what our possibilities are?

we have strict laws of motion and gravity but they don’t
help us in our understanding of what it means to be human…

those laws/rules don’t give us the means to know what values
we should hold to or what is our place in the universe……

the law/rules of the physical universe, of gravity and motion
and evolution and thermodynamics do not answer the
Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

How does a law/rule of motion help me to “know what I am to do?”
or how does the law of gravity help me to know “What should I hope for?”
or how does the law of thermodynamics help me to know
“What values should I hold?”

Marxism which is very much about the laws of nature but those laws
don’t offer us any answers as to what it means to be human…
yes, Marxism is “lawful” but that doesn’t answer my questions about
what possibilities should I strive for, what possibilities are the possibilities
that will make me more then just animal/human. The laws of science,
that Marxism so believes in, doesn’t offer me any answers as to what I
should believe in and what I should live for and what I should die for…

just like the laws of man, the laws of society that has left questions of
morality and possibilities to the side… the law of man says that slavery is
legal and women are nothing more then the property of men and Jim crow
laws were legal and that whites and blacks couldn’t marry as recently as 1969…

just because it is legal, doesn’t make it moral or right… it is just legal…
and legal questions rarely ever answer questions of morality and what is right…

just as the laws of Marxism are “lawful” doesn’t make the laws of Marxism
to be laws we should be obeying………

the laws of Marxism may be laws which reflect the many but doesn’t reflect
the one……… existentialism may be rules about the one but doesn’t reflect
the many or all……

it is about the application of the rules which defines who we are…

we must apply the right rules to the right person…

to the one, we may apply existentialism
and to the many, we may apply Marxism…

and thus we can say without fear, that the two, Marxism
and existentialism can be fused, united into one overall rule or rules……

because they apply to different number of people…

Kropotkin

both communism and capitalism are “materialistic” theories which
means they are not concerned with values… but they are concerned with
“real live material struggles” they weren’t concerned with such questions
of love or poetry or truth or Aesthetics questions like beauty…

no, they are down to earth and factual… about the questions of
the bottom of the pyramid, that of how do human beings
engage with the important questions of fulfilling needs like
food, water, shelter, education and health care… important questions
to be sure, but questions of policies… what policies will get people
their basic necessities…and questions like should the tax rate be
23% or 25%?.. are nothing more then policy questions…

and I’m not saying those questions are unimportant, I am saying that
they aren’t the only questions of existence…

I am asking what are the values behind those policy decisions?

we can see very clearly the values questions with IQ45…

he and his followers believe in negative values of hate and anger and fear
and greed and lust and his policies follow those values… he has no problem
locking up children in concentration camps and he has no problem with policy
issues of denying people food or water or any other basic necessity
people need to live…and that denial of basic human necessities stem
from the very bedrock of values that IQ45 and the GOP party holds which
is money/profits are of more value then people lives…

in other words, your actions flow from the values you hold…

we cannot create actions without values behind them…

the Democrats fighting for the nomination are fighting policy
differences… they are not fighting a battle over values…
and that is the difference between the GOP and the democrats……

the democrats are fighting over policy differences…

but in the end, the questions arises as it must……

do you support values like hate and anger and fear and lust and greed?

do you teach your children these values?

do you hold to your daily actions with those negative values?

I don’t and I don’t believe most people hold to those negative values…

but if the democrats want to win, they must clearly and loudly
proclaim their values.

and those values must be of love and hope and charity and peace and justice
and then, then implement policies which exemplify those values…

if we are to become that city on the hill, then we must hold values that
raise us up to being that city on the hill… it is values that determines
if we are that shining city on the hill or if we are just another failing
country……

IQ45 and his followers hold and believe in negative values…
and we must hold to and believe in higher/positive values…

which America do you want? do you want our values to be negative,
values of fear, hate, anger, greed, lust, nihilistic values that deny
human beings and their values? is that the America you want?
is that what being a human being is? a holder of negative values
in which we demand hate and greed and lust and intolerance
and bigotry in our selves and our leaders?

and we must question within ourselves, what values do we hold
and what values ought we hold?

not what actions should we take, but what values we should hold?

Kropotkin

ok, let us try this…

we know from relativity that we “see” events from two different
perspectives… let us take a car accident…if I stand next to the
car accident and you stand far away, because of our “perspective”
we will see different aspects of the car accident…now is there some
“neutral” ground upon which we can see that accident? no, from every
single “viewpoint” lies a different perspective and from each “viewpoint”
give us a "different answer as to what is the truth…

this idea of viewpoint also governs our understanding of the
social, political, historical and philosophical…
from where I stand and my historical background
determines what my perspective is… if I am poor and a minority,
changes my perspective on events, such as something like a tax cut…
or a how judges are chosen…if I am white and middle class, such as I am
today, then my viewpoint, my perspective is different on events like tax cuts…

at one time, my family was so poor, that we got lunches at school,
and sometimes that was close to all I had to eat…that perspective,
that viewpoint changes how I react to the idea of the role of government…

I see government as being a good thing because of my historical, philosophical,
and social history… whereas someone from a different background might see government
as being, as Raygun said, “Government isn’t the solution, its the problem”
where I see government as being part of the solution… but that is because of
perspective, viewpoint, my “historical baggage” of education and family
and life experiences… to say, one is wrong is to say, your “historical baggage”
is wrong… but given we have no one viewpoint from which we can state
unequivocally “this is the truth”…

that is not to say, solutions aren’t available…

we can understand and accept certain “truths” about human beings…

we are social creatures… a human alone is a human dead…we cannot,
cannot survive alone…… we must have help from other human beings if
we are to survive and even thrive…we cannot educate ourselves,
we cannot feed ourselves, we cannot raise ourselves… in the memorable
description of Hobbes, “life outside of society would be solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish and short”.

and he is right… we must, must have other human beings to exist…
from that we can to begin to understand the role of government and society
within our lives…

but Hobbes solution of putting some powerful individual or parliament in charge,
is a personal, individual viewpoint of one such solution to the human condition…

others seem to believe that the “best” government is the least government…

but that solution fails the test of being able to survive and thrive as human beings…

we must have a strong civic structure to survive, but that doesn’t mean we must
have a strong man or dictatorship for this to happen…

a strong civic structure can be a democracy or a monarchy or a
representative democracy… if we are to also include the basic premise
that all people should be able to determine their own past, present and future…

self determination is a crucial part of our human condition…

for if we do not have self determination, we become disconnected and
alienated from our political and social system………

this is quite evident today in America…we have more people not voting then
voting and this is a sign of the profound disconnect and alienation people
feel about our current political system…….

I have played sports my whole life and one of the key factors in
creating a successful team is every single member of the team must
buy into the teams success… if you see a successful team, you have seen
the buy in that every single team member did…….and in America today,
we don’t have the buy in that is essential for our society to succeed…

which is the next point of any political or social system, you must have
every single part of that system buying into that system… think of your body
as a system, for your body to work, every single part or individual system within
your body must buy into your system to work… if your arm is doing something different
then your body, then you have a physical problem and you go to see the doctor to fix that
problem……

so, how do we fix our current system where we don’t have a buy in by our individual
members of our system?

what is the cure to solve our current political and social problem?

the only answer is being everyone into the system… to get a buy in from
everybody, they must be included and involved and they must have
a say in our current system… otherwise, you won’t get a buy in from
people and no buy in means that our system, as all systems that have only
a partial buy in, our system will bleed out energy and eventually die…

as with any system, it must have energy to survive and thrive…
and the more people who disconnect from our current system, take
away energy from our system… if enough energy is taken from our current
system, our social or our political systems, those systems eventually run out
of gas and stop…… and so we must think of people as being part of a system…
some systems we belong to are small, the family system… two people commit into
being a system, we call that marriage, then the two grow with children… my current
family is me, my wife and my daughter… some systems have a smaller group
and some systems have a larger group…I grew up in a large family of two parents
and there were 5 of us… at times, people would move in and then move out…
so the number of people actually living at home would change… the system
would grow or become smaller depending upon factors…

we must make our choices given that we have many diverse and different
systems that human beings live in… we have the family system, the educational
system, the work system, we have voluntary systems like book clubs and involuntary
systems like being drafted into the Army… every single decision we make must
be made with systems in mind… every single individual and every single collective
decision we make…our fighting about how large a tax cut or tax increase doesn’t
actually answer any type of question of how it affects the various systems that
a change in taxes might affect…not one single candidate today is talking
about systems understanding in regards to the choices we make…
and that is my reason not to accept any candidate right now…

they talk about tax cuts and budgets plan and education but they
don’t tie all their babble into one coherent understanding of what
their plans means for the various systems that we inhabit…

if we eliminate student loans, what does that mean for our current
political and economic system? no one ever talks about that…

and as we are connected, every single person on planet earth is connected to
each other… we cannot make any decision without impacting every single person
on earth… every single decision we make individually and collectively impacts
everyone else… that is the systems theory in play… systems impact each other
in vast and different ways…… our thinking must not be ad hoc as it is in our
economic and political decisions made today… we must engage in large scale,
wholesale systems thinking in every single choice we make…

and that is the failure of our political and social systems today…

they act as if they are independent and separate from each other…

they are bound and connected together in ways we can’t even see………

to enter the future, we must begin with an understanding of our current
systems and that isn’t even a thing today… we must do so if we
are going to have any success at all, as individuals, members of a group,
part of systems, world wide…… that is why those who oppose globalism have
failed to see the point… that cannot see how connected and interdependent
we are already……… we are not fighting globalism… we are bringing the next,
logical step in human evolution which is to engage with everyone……

Kropotkin

any existentialist who utters the phrase ‘the universe is irrational’ means to say something about it sucks because he doesn’t like it. mortality, natural disaster, disease, war, famine, poverty, Entertainment Tonight, etc. but all this has nothing to do with ‘rationality’ in the way that the existentialist wants to believe. the universe is no less ‘rational’ because of these things, and its only because the existentialist finds it disagreeable at times that he would say such a thing. this is why existentialism that continues to linger after its done its 19th century work - the death of god, the lack of objective values and ultimate purpose, yada yada - becomes a liability. it encourages ‘wallowing’, and wallowing is precisely what conservatives want/need the working classes to do to slow progress.

for a marxist, all of this process is ‘lawful’ in the sense that it follows a natural order… and the marxist is only describing what’s happening and why it’s happening. it doesn’t say anything about what ‘ought’ to happen… because when you start making claims about what ought to happen, you start inserting values and doing philosophy. and that’s what we want to avoid because when you do that, you become a mouthpiece for a particular set of prejudices and convictions that reflect more about you than the facts about the world. a philosopher loves nothing more than accidentally distorting reality on purpose.

so no, a marxist would never say ‘the goddamn working class should own the means of production’… but what he will say is something like ‘after an extensive analysis of historical trends and the general direction of the course of human evolution and development, there’s a damn good chance the working class will end up owning the means of production.’

now people can do with that what they want - criticize it, lambaste it, condemn it, whatever - but that don’t change nothing and it says more about what a particular person stands to lose than it does about the actual facts of the world. a philosopher will do back-flips to try and convince you that this should never be, but all you’re hearing is a distress call from a person who’s becoming more and more nervous as the world rapidly changes.

anyway yeah existentialism was a critically important stage in philosophy since it demolished damn near everything but analytical philosophy. its purpose was to assist in the deconstruction of ruling-class ideology that has persisted for over a thousand years, and clear the way for radical social and economic change. there’s a pattern to all this, bro. in fact i think i bantered a bit about it in my first or second post here… the progression from platonism to enlightenment realism to structuralism to post-structuralism something something something.

really all that’s left is analytical/structural marxism and nihilism. all the other nonsense has been formally usurped and exists now only in the personal memoirs of forum philosophers and independent authors coming to a bookstore shelf near you (again… and again… and again. i know, right. like give it up already).

Now Pro75, I am going to answer your question? but not really answer
your question…

I have been deep into this book by Prigogine called: Order out of chaos…
Man’s new dialogue with nature…

and one of the topics he deals with is Entropy…and of course this idea
of order and chaos…but the big question he deals with is energy……

let us do a quick review of philosophy and see what has been the deal
with philosophy…

with the “new” science of Kepler and Galileo and Newton,
we have come to learn of new vision of the universe…
a vision where motion, the movement of objects and stars
was the “Scientific” way and philosophy in some attempt to
become more “Scientific” adapted the scientific method…

Socrates would have been rolling around in his grave had he known
this because Socrates whole point was to bring philosophy down to earth…
not to make philosophy scientific, for that was the whole movement of
philosophy before Socrates…to engage in the world scientifically
and see what that meant philosophically…

but Socrates didn’t want to have anything to do with that, he wanted
to bring philosophy “out of the heavens”, not science, as was practiced
by the Pre-Socratic philosophers but about values and the soul and virtue…
Human values, not an understanding of the universe scientifically, but
philosophically…

so, when did Modern philosophy lose it way?

when it became scientific… following the lead of Descartes
and Newton, Hobbes and Locke and Hume……

let science do its thing and that thing is good, make no mistake,
I am not anti-science… However I am for science being about science
and philosophy being about matters of philosophy…

there are many question of philosophy for which science cannot answer for us…

for example, science cannot answer questions of ethics, nor can science answer
questions of Aesthetics and most interestingly Epistemology… the study of the
scope, nature and limits of human knowledge…what did you say Kropotkin?

that science cannot answer questions of Epistemology?

Yep, no matter how big a set of Epistemology answers we get,
we cannot catalog everything… something will get left out of
the question of Epistemology…… we cannot put into a set
everything that is Epistemology… no matter how hard we try,
something will get left out…try putting all the emotions we have
into some set or subset…no matter how many emotions you might get,
you will be missing some… that is the problem with any attempt to list
everything about a certain subject… you can never include everything…

thus all information we have is incomplete… we can never reach the
limits of human knowledge… something will be missed…

so to return to our problem… science cannot answer certain philosophical
questions, no matter how hard we try to do so…

so, science starting with Kepler, became about motion…
read your Galileo and it is all about motion, read Newton
and it is all about motion…a good deal of Einstein is about motion…
the theory of Relativity and the special theory is all about motion…

so, philosophy in its bid to become
scientific, became all about motion…

and questions about motions is great for science, but the understanding of
motions doesn’t answer philosophical questions……

how is the question of virtue, a motion question?

it isn’t…but there is something that might be better suited to
answer questions of virtue scientifically…

and that is energy……

re orientate philosophy to think of questions in terms of energy…….

ah, what the hell are you smoking Kropotkin?

see the next post…

Kropotkin