a new understanding of today, time and space.

one of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions is:

How does one gain “inner peace”?

that they are many, many possible means of human pursuit is
clear… for example, many have suggested that the answer to the
question, What am I to do? has to do with seeking pleasure or perhaps
avoiding pain or as the Buddha suggests, trying to eliminate suffering…
or as the founding fathers suggested, seeking “happiness” whatever the
hell happiness is…

does one gain “inner peace” via these possible methods or does
one gain “inner peace” by another means?

I would suggest that finding “inner peace” by those society’s goal
is a failure… for example, does a wealthy man have “inner peace”?

I have known many a wealthy person and believe me, they do not
have anything resembling “inner peace”…

I would suggest that the search for the modern ism’s and ideologies
requirements of wealth and fame and titles and promotions, do
nothing for one to gain “inner peace”…

but asking to gain “inner peace” as a goal, avoids the real question
which is this, is “inner peace” really “what I am suppose to do?”

is that really what “I am supposed to do?”…

are the questions of existence really answered by seeking “inner peace?”

at this point in my life, I have contentment… is that enough?

did I do anything extraordinary to achieve “contentment?”

no, not at all… I simply accepted that which is… I am old…
and at some point in time, sooner then later, I shall die…
I have accepted the things that the Buddha said caused suffering,
sickness, old age and death…and by accepting them, they haunt
me no more…

did I need to search the universe to reach this level of understanding?

Nope, I simply accepted…nothing more……

am I happy? I have no idea… but I don’t think happiness
is really what life is all about anyway…

why am I a philosopher?

because I challenge the basic assumptions of modern America…

the search for, as our founding fathers put it, “the pursuit of life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t what should motivate us…

nor should this search for the modern “rewards” be the point…

the modern rewards one might seek is fame, wealth, titles, promotions…

But Kropotkin, if you remove or eliminate these things, what else is there?

what else should we be engaged with if not the pursuit of wealth or fame,
or titles or promotions?

the Kantian question: “What am I to do?”

try as one might, you can cannot escape this existential question of
existence…

“what should I hope for?”

is there a god or heaven or hell or angels or sin?

no Virginia, there is no evidence of any kind that
there is a god or heaven or hell or angels or sin…

why rely on unproven statements…

But Kropotkin, all statements are unproven…

the Kantian question: “What can we know?”

How can I know the “truth?”

what truth is, is found in our diverse and varied understanding of
the world… what “truth” there is, is different because our
viewpoints are different…… “What can I know?” is different then “what can
you know?” because we have diverse and different viewpoints……

my truth is different then your truth……

because my viewpoint is different then your viewpoint…

So, What am I to do?"…….

But Kropotkin, you are offering your “truths” as the “truth”…
no, no I am not… I am simply offering you one possible truth…

But Kropotkin, you are contradicting yourself……

good…

for the truth is only found in the contradictions of life…

Kropotkin, you make no sense…

and so what?

life doesn’t make sense… that is the real truth of existence…

I offer up no answers… I only offer up questions…

Kropotkin

double post… apologies

do we follow such people as the Buddha and Schopenhauer by
thinking that the only way to stop suffering is to end desire…

but desire, the wanting of something can’t be all bad…

I desire love… and love is one of the essential aspects of
life… without love, life isn’t worth living… but I desire…
and to desire is to suffer… or is it?

I also desire knowledge… is the pursuit of knowledge, also
the cause of suffering?

some knowledge is, in part, going to cause suffering…

the one I love, loves another… that knowledge will cause
suffering…….

but not all knowledge causes suffering…

I can “know” things and not face suffering…

the knowledge of my impending death can cause suffering…
but it can also cause contentment because I cannot under
any circumstances, stop my impeding death… I must, must,
accept my impeding death, be it one year from now or 30 years from now…

I don’t believe that suffering is caused by desire… it depends upon what
is desired and what is the knowledge gained…

I believe the desire for wisdom, although it may cause, may cause,
suffering, in the end, the wisdom we gain outweighs any suffering we might face…

desire is a tool… and just like any other tool, how you use it, will decide
upon the amount of “suffering” one faces when using that tool…

logic is also a tool as is math as is any discipline as history or economics
or philosophy or political science… its use will determine its fate…
and our suffering…

does desire cause suffering?

it depends upon what you desire and how
you what means you use to gain that desire…

Kropotkin

as I work in a grocery store, my hours got crazy busy,
I shall be back in a few days, maybe mid-week…

Kropokin

:text-bravo: :text-thankyouyellow:

Heroes, one and all! [-o<

K: thank from your very tired friend…

Kropotkin

I am back earlier then I thought because of an illness…
I was really hot and was sweating at work and my breathing
became difficult and those are classic CV symptoms… so immediately left work…
I saw my doctor and she sent me to the hospital for test…it turned out to
be an infection…for which I am taking antibiotics… but nothing serious like CV…

but I have a couple of days off and… here I am…

Voltaire once wrote in his Dictionaire Philosophique:

“Everything is governed by immutable laws… everything is prearranged…
everything is necessary effect…”

this type of thinking is Newtonian… classic thinking of the universe
as being a watch and god is a watchmaker…

and even Einstein believed in this type of universe… “God do not play
dice with the universe” or the universe isn’t ruled by chance…
and yet, modern science, from the theories of evolution to
quantum mechanics suggest that the universe is ruled by
nothing more then “the toss of the dice”…evolution
has as it basis, probability/chance………

how do we reconcile the idea that the universe has laws,
basic laws which cannot be violated, Gravity for example
and still have a probabilistic universe?

This is the basic scientific question of our time…
how do we reconcile a watchmaker universe with
a universe that is probabilistic?

let us take entropy for example…

entropy is a basic fact of the universe… but entropy is a law, yes,
but it is random in its actions…we cannot escape entropy but
we cannot predict or know in what fashion entropy will work…
we can of course know how entropy works when we drop ice into
a warm glass of water… that is basic entropy at work…

but let us take the entropy in our bodies… that is random…
the way I age is the function of several diverse actions…
both from my actions, eating or exercising properly and from
outside sources like air pollution and the type of work I do…
and from my inner, bodily functions like the way my cells
operate which is independent of my voluntary actions and
the outside sources like pollution……

I cannot predict how my body will engage in entropy, which is
to say, how my body will age…I look very young for being 61…
and yet my inner “body” has some issues… bad back, bad knees,
bad hips… I am clearly aging… or engaging in entropy as it were…

I cannot predict how my body will function in a year or two…
I can tell you it will be worse or rather said, it will become
more entropic… going from order to disorder……

and at some point, it will become so disordered, I will die…

but how do we reconcile the human entropy with the universal
laws of gravity?

remember, even a watch suffers from entropy… going from order
to disorder… just very slowly…and that is another little brick in the
wall… the rate of entropy is different for different bodies, be it
biological or mechanical or natural…… biological being human bodies,
mechanical being cars and natural being the solar system…

so let us take the current crisis as a study in entropy…

we have ordered systems, be it economic or political or
social… what the virus has done is slow down the or stopped
the amount of order within those systems… when the
medical system is overwhelmed as it is right now,
it moves from being ordered to disordered…when the
economic system that the right wing loves so much, becomes
disordered by everything shutting down, then the system
becomes disordered…

we can see entropy at work in the world today when
various systems become disordered from the effects
of the CV…

that is entropy… when a system goes from ordered to disordered…

it will take energy… in the form of actual energy, to types of energy
which is time, money, effort, and the participation of people to
reengage, to take a disordered system/systems and move them to order…

and so once again, how do we connect the universal laws of
such theories as gravity to entropy?

one might suggest that even such theories as gravity isn’t immune
to disorder and entropy… perhaps gravity itself is slowly
and slowly enough for us not to be able to measure it, perhaps gravity
itself is engaged in entropy… it slowly grows less… perhaps we have less
gravity now then we did a million years ago… in which case, at some point,
because we don’t have the knowhow or technology to repair it,
gravity itself becomes disordered… and becomes more chaotic…

we might have less gravity and thus the laws of the universe might not
be universal and constant… they too suffer from entropy… the movement from
order to disorder…in which case the universe itself will some day simply
die from too much disorder… just as our bodies eventually die from
the transition from order to disorder……

I have heard scientist talk about the end of the universe in which
the atoms, the very atoms themselves no longer bond because of
disorder and that is the end of the universe…… when the universe
can no longer have enough order to maintain itself in a cohesive manner,
that is the universe itself becomes disordered, entropy will one day
win out and rule the universe…

so the very laws we see as universal and unchangeable are really just
at a temporary state of seeming to be universal………we just aren’t
able to detect or measure the rate of entropy in the universe yet…

and according to science, it doesn’t exists if it can’t be timed, measure,
weighed, or scanned……….but how do we time or measure or weigh
or scanned a process that is always in process or happening?

every single system in the universe has a different rate of entropy…
a different rate of disorder going on within that system…

my rate of decay or disordered into old age is different then your rate
of disorder and decay… we cannot time or measure or weigh that…

so the problem still stands… how do we reconcile the different rates
of disorder and decay in the different systems?

Kropotkin

Hi. Mr. K here is something gravitation that might ignite a connection of Newton with a metaphors of Einstein:

Oh Gravity,
Take me with you
Void me of all emotions
Oh Gravity,
Let me free
Detach me from these strings
Break the chains that bind me
Oh Gravity,
Help me forget
Give me a moment of peace
Oh Gravity,
Devour the melancholy in me
Drown me in your emptiness
Oh Gravity,
Put out the fire in me
Erase the darkness within me
Pull me away from these shadows into the world of light
Oh Gravity,
Let me sink
Let me disappear
Oh Gravity,
Take me away from here…

Post script: my first job in LA was a bagger in Safeway, then during the union strike, I became a butcher trends -. Could not stand the cold! But I stuck with it until the strike was over.

let us say I am familiar with Safeway… down south
it is called Vons… and leave it at that…

Kropotkin

it is our rate of understanding of entropy that also changes…

when I was younger, say 40, I could tell I couldn’t do the things I did
when I was 19 or 20…but it didn’t dawn on me that that was entropy or
as we humans call it, old age. Now that I am 61, it is quite clear
I am well in the midst of entropy or old age…

my understanding of who I am/was and what my place is/was,
has changed as I have gotten older…

if I try to explain to a 20 year old, what it means to get old,
they would have no idea because they don’t have the
experiences or knowledge to understand me…

but if I explain what is love or what is some bodily need, they
would understand because it is something they have knowledge
of or have experienced themselves…

to most people, what I write is gobbledygook because what I write
is outside of their knowledge or experience…I seem to be really dumb
or quite obscure because what I write doesn’t fit into most people experiences
or knowledge ……. but no matter how I try to reduce it or bring it down to
earth, until they experience it, people will never get what I am trying to say…
and that is ok……

my knowledge and experiences are just that, mine…
and I don’t need or require that you understand that knowledge
or experience…just as you don’t need me to understand your
knowledge or experience…

but I can get you to reexamine and reevaluate what you believe in
and what you take to be “your” values and biases and superstitions
and prejudices and indoctrinations………are your values and understanding
of the world really “yours” or do you hold those indoctrinated values of
childhood given to you by your family and the state and the media and
the church?

that is really the choice I am giving you…what are your values
and are they really your values or have you simply carried on
those childhood indoctrinations?

a good, a really good example of someone who has never examined
their values is IQ45… he still lives by and understands the world by
his childhood indoctrinations…indoctrinations of family and state
and church and social groups and society…….

I began my reexamination of my values because of the contradictions
I discovered between what I was told and what I found out about the world
was… I found that my indoctrinations of childhood and my experiences
of the world were different…and by examining my own values, I could
reconcile those contradictions between the theory of my indoctrinations
and the reality of my life…… I fashioned my understanding of the world,
based on my experiences of the world instead of the indoctrinations
I received as a child…

I reexamined my values given to me as a child and found them wanting…
those values were unable to offer me an understanding of the world
that matched what I found on the ground, in reality…

and so I had to adjust my values to match the experiences
and reality of what I found…

I was told about god, but in my experiences, I found
I had no need for god… the belief in god didn’t help me
with understanding my own possibilities or my reality…

it interfered with it and so I became an Atheist because it
better matched my experiences and understanding of the world…

I adapted my values to match what I experienced and saw in the world…

the disconnect people feel in the world is because their childhood
indoctrinations don’t match the reality, the experience they find
in the world…the disconnect is between their childhood indoctrinations
and the reality on the ground… but they don’t reexamine their values
because that forces them to admit that, possibly, their understanding
of the world is wrong… and we hate to admit we are wrong…
that is human nature…

Kropotkin

ok, further thoughts on entropy…

being and becoming…I have noted this before…

what is being?
and what is becoming?

perhaps, perhaps being is the current situation, whatever that is
and becoming is the effects of entropy on being…

In becoming, we are engaging in entropy unless, unless we manage
to increase the energy input into becoming…

we become and that takes energy if there is no increase in energy,
then all that happened is entropy has taken place and the journey
from being to becoming is simply the journey of entropy…

so we have a diagram::::being-----entropy… becoming…
that middle part entropy is the journey from being to becoming…

thus there is not really any being, we are always in the process of
becoming which is entropy…the journey of order to disorder… unless
we find energy to put into that journey in which case becoming
is something other then just entropy… perhaps an equation

being = entropy + energy = becoming

in my own personal entropy, old age/becoming…
it doesn’t matter how much energy I put into my body,
entropy, which is the case of going from order to disorder,
will continue in my body which is the classic definition of
growing old, going from order to disorder…

I’m going from being, my current state to becoming, my future state,
and that will be determined by entropy…

Kropotkin

hang in there… spitballing right now…

we have a couple of different theories to combine, somehow,
first we have the previously mentioned chaos and entropy
and we also have self organization…

I believe that we can connect these two idea’s…

the act of self organization is well known in biology and chemistry
and physics and other disciplines…
definition of self organization is:

“self organization, also called, (in the social sciences) spontaneous order…
is the process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions
between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous
when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent”

so, we have social systems that have entropy… for example, we
can list churches, systems like the Catholic church having lost
energy… going from order to disorder…losing energy…

Now as Nietzsche noted, this loss of energy has lead to a situation,
best remarked by the notion, “GOD IS DEAD” and what does this mean?

the energy that we used to put into religion which was a means of
organization, a means of understanding “who we are” and “what we are
supposed to do” “what we are to hope for”

in other words, the Kantian questions… what does it mean to the
questions of Kant if there is no organizing principle like religion?

the religious question is a question of morality… ethics…
how are we suppose to act in regards to our fellow human beings?

and if we act “properly” then we get a ticket to heaven, but what if
there is no heaven, then what? what becomes the criteria for our
interactions with our fellow human beings if there is not god?

and this was the question that Nietzsche tried to work out…
what is ethics, morality if there is no outside organizing
principle like religion or the church?

Here lies these question of self organization… under what principles
do we self organize under, in regards to ethics or morality?

that is where we have been, as human beings, over the last 120 years…

if we do not organize with religious principles, then what principles
do we organize with?

and the answers offered so far have been nationalism or other such
anti… ism’s like anti-Semitism or anti- humanism or anti-…whatever…

in other words, the answers have been the rise of the prejudices
and superstitions and biases and habits and indoctrinations
of family, state, church, media…

the attempt to self organize has been done with the prejudices
and superstitions of people…not with any sort of rational,
logical attempt…… the philosophies of the 20th century like logical
positivism and phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy
and Neo pragmatism have all been attempts to create a self
organizing system for society within philosophy itself…

but the attempts failed because philosophy itself has
withdrawn from the concerns of the average person…
Philosophy has reduced its own area of expertise into
small, narrow fields of specializations… with few ever
reaching beyond their own field of specialization…

so the question still exists, under what guiding principle do
we self organize if we have removed the guiding principles
of religion that has served as an societal organization pattern
for centuries?

Liberalism and conservativism has been offered up as
possible means of self organization within society…

the basic idea of liberalism has come from the
historical period called the “Enlightenment”
and conservativism has been basically “anti-Enlightenment”

the liberal ideals of tolerance and the sovereignty of reason,
and the use of knowledge as a guide and progress and fraternity
and the political ideas of constitutional government and the
separation of church and state are all ideas from the Enlightenment…

think of them as self organizing principles………

under what principles shall we self organize under?

that is the modern question……

if we remove the religious question from the mix and
Nietzsche did remove it, “GOD is still dead”

then what shall be our organizing principles?

so said another way, upon what principles shall we
expend energy upon? that is entire question of
what it means to engage in organizing principles,
the use of energy in our engagement with our
chosen organizing principles…

as human beings, as any system goes from order to disorder,
going from being to becoming, to the basic fundamental
process of the universe, which is entropy, how do we
engage in such a way as to maintain order in our chosen
organizing principles… instead of disorder, we must choose
and practice putting energy into any chosen system if that
system is to remain in order, being…

so, ask yourself, what organizing principles shall we
organize under?

how shall we self organize?

each of us is an individual atom… how do we
as individual atoms, become organized enough to
grow into something bigger then just an individual atom?

we know that as individual atoms, we cannot survive…
think of Hobbes and his state of nature: ……“the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”…

so we must engage with or have some sort of organized
society which engages in our mutual protection…

the conservative argues that we need less organization,
less energy and that excess energy is put into
our own personal enrichment, but the liberal
who understands that we cannot succeed by our
own efforts knows and understand that we
must join together or die separately…to steal a phrase…

so we need to see society as a means of self organization
and a means of using energy to promote our general
welfare…

Kropotkin

so given the last post, how are we to understand
the 20th century?

the two world wars, the rise of various right wing ideologies,
the holocaust, the dropping of the atomic bomb,
various local brutalities such as pol pot and Stalin and Hitler?

we can account to them the loss of any sort of positive
self organization principles… in other words,
they, the dictatorships of the 20th century as
attempts to self organize by anti-enlightenment
principles…principles such as tolerance
and the use of reason and self government is
against the values of the anti-enlightenment
dictatorships……

conservatives devalue, demote the enlightenment
and its values…

the 20th century could be considered to be
a battle between forces fighting the battle
between the enlightenment and anti-enlightenment…

which self organizing principles are we going to engage with?

and the question is also asked, why? why engage with
the enlightenment over the anti-enlightenment?

which organizing principles should we engage with?

conservatives fight a rearguard action against
the logical political and social steps of history…
and by that I mean, humans have gone from
family to small groups of families, to small villages
to small towns to city/states to every larger and
more sophisticated political and social systems…

and this growth is a logical progression because
of the ever increasing number of human beings on planet earth…

we cannot, cannot maintain order with the amount of
energy given to a small village that is needed for a
large country…in other words, to maintain society
and the state requires an ever increasing amount of
energy to maintain a balance…… order takes
a lot of energy to maintain… and if we take
away that energy, then we begin the slide to
disorder…entropy begins its work…

so the amount of energy to maintain a village, is insufficient
to maintain a large city or a large country…

and that is where conservative go wrong…… they are about
denying large social structures the energy needed to maintain
order and by denying that energy, they are pursuing disorder
instead of order…….

to say, we must have a government small enough to drown in
a bathtub is to say, despite the fact that we have large
number of people, we can maintain order with a small amount
of energy… and this is clearly not true…

the larger the system, the greater the amount of energy
is needed to maintain that system… we cannot
in the name of conservativism, deny that energy because
to do so will cause the decay, the disorder and final collapse
of that system…

to be anti-enlightenment is to be against the better angels of our
nature…love, hope, honesty, charity, justice are values that
are denied by the anti-enlightenment crowd…

the anti-enlightenment crowd favors emotions, feelings,
intolerance, bigotry, hatred, nationalism, anti-Semitism,
anti-humanism…

which leaves us the question?

are you a liberal or are you a conservative?

and what values do you value?

and what energy will you place into those values?

Kropotkin

what other self organizing principles do we have?

any ism or ideology is a self organizing principle…

for example, capitalism is a self organizing principle
Catholicism is another self organizing principle…

we have had some self organizing principles fail,
for example an failed economic system was
Mercantilism…two fairly successful economic systems
were Feudalism and the hunter/gatherer system……

these are economic systems, we also have
political self organizing systems such
as democracy and monarchy and dictatorships…

the ones that survive are the ones that can hold and maintain
enough energy to avoid sliding into disorder…
at some point, every single human self organizing
system has failed due to the lack of energy going
into that system… energy is transferred into another
system or is dissipated into the air…

we call this dissipation, this loss of energy,
well actually, we don’t seem to have an
a name for the failure of political or economic
systems by the loss of energy enough to keep them going…

we should however begin to name this loss of energy into
social, political or economic systems…

for example, the fall of Rome was really a loss of energy…
that energy that was used to keep Rome an empire,
began to go to Christianity and that loss lead to the failure
of Rome… and the rise of Christianity…
want to understand social, political and economic
systems, then understand how energy drives
them and when energy leaves them…

success and failure comes from the level of,
or the amount of energy a system has…

American is going to fail, at of right now, because of
the energy that is needed to keep America going,
is going into such silly things as nationalism and
other such negative systems… as anti-Semitism
and anti-humanism…….

energy is defined in both energy, time, money, effort
and enthusiasm about the system in question…

put your energy into hating people and intolerance
and bigotry and prejudice, you are taking energy
away from America… it is as simply as that…
and every bit of energy that is taken away from America,
is one step closer to disorder and chaos and the final
dissolution of America…

MAGA isn’t putting energy into America… it
is about hate and negative energy toward others
that aren’t you or believe in what you believe in…

every single person who wears a MAGA hat is
engaging in taking energy away from America
and putting it somewhere else…toward
the dissolution of America…

so where do your loyalties lie?

with your prejudices, bigotries, hatred, anti-humanism
or do your loyalties lie with reason, tolerance, justice,
hope and love?

Kropotkin

after a nice walk with the wife…

the future of philosophy lies in the next philosophy…
which is to say, what is after the Enlightenment-
anti-enlightenment philosophy?

where do we go after this?

I don’t see academic philosophy having an answer because they
are involved in the narrow, academic specialties of their profession…

and I don’t see politicians becoming involved in the creation
of the next set of ism’s after the enlightenment… anti-enlightenment… battles

it seems to me that the next period of philosophy that comes about
will have both the enlightenment/anti-enlightenment theories
mixed together…

However, I could be very wrong and the next philosophical
stage has nothing to do with either the enlightenment/anti-enlightenment
arguments…

but philosophy does seem to flow from one stage to another in
a coherent fashion…

Descartes flowed from the rise of science and the attempt
to fix the range of knowledge, the theory of epistemology,
took hold for 200 years…which was the point of Descartes…
to understand what we can know and not know…

but our questions have moved beyond simple knowledge
and what we can know and not know…

we have passed on to the other side of epistemology
and moved into the understanding of what it means to
be human without the self organizing principle of religion…

what other self organizing principle/principles can we use to
self organize?

beyond the obvious political/economic/social systems of
capitalism or communism or Catholicism or
democracy or dictatorships or monarchy or……

we need to explore our possibilities in some other
political/economic/social system beyond, or outside
of our current systems…

we have a new world and a new world requires, demands a new
political/economic/social system…

and what will that new system be?

and what possibilities will it explore?

the battle between the enlightenment
and the anti-enlightenment forces needs
to move to a new battle ground…

and how do we know this?

because we are stagnate, fixed where we are right now…
and this stagnation is draining energy from us and our
current systems…

we must put our energy, time, money, effort into
a new system that will engage all of us into
a new understanding of what it means to be human
and what are our possibilities…

so, what is after the enlightenment?

answer that and you are on the way to becoming the
next Nietzsche…or Plato or Spinoza…or perhaps Kant?

Kropotkin

what I have right now is images and nothing
more then images…

the universe is expanding away from itself
the galaxies are moving further and further
away from each other…

there is no central point from where we can fix reality from…
every single point is just as valid as any other point…
how does one mark any given point in the galaxy?
as every single point is no different then any other point…

is not our ideas and thoughts and feelings have the same
thing… what is the center of our reflections?

my thoughts and feelings and emotions and rationality
don’t have a central point within me… they are all defused/spread out
around me… I cannot pinpoint where exactly my feelings are nor
can I pinpoint where my rationality is nor can I pinpoint where my thoughts
are or where they go after I have them…

I can point to some general region of my brain and say, here, here is rational
thought… here is logic and thoughts… and then point to another part
of my brain and say, here, here is my emotions and here is my feelings…

there is no center to who I am, just like there is no center to
the universe… all points are equal in the universe…
and all points are equal in our understanding of who we are…

where would I find values inside of me? what values are central values?
what values are all the other values circling around?

second image is if the holocaust is an illness, what illness is it,
and what is the cure?

what happened to make the holocaust possible?

what actions or events or historical motion allowed the holocaust
to happen?

in other words, could the holocaust have happened because the
industrial revolution occurred?

did the loss of religious values directly lead to the holocaust?

think of history… we have a flattening of values… equality is
a denial of one of the most important values in history…

the Greeks felt that there was an hierarchy… some were above,
some were below… Nietzsche values were of the aristocrat…
the higher, but what if the political revolution of equality leads
us to the exact same place as the universe… where we cannot tell
what is the center of universe because everything is equal distance
from every other place… there is not center in the universe…
and if we have political equality, then where is the center?

I see no difference between the current political, economic, social
systems and the fact that the universe has no central point to refer to…

given our current political, economic, social systems, which one would
I or could I refer to as a central, most important one… I cannot look
at our various systems in this manner… all systems are equal in
there value, in their importance… I cannot choose one system over another
and say, this, this system is easily the most important system in
the universe…I look at our political, economic and social systems
and think of the universe…there are all circling around each other
with no one system being the center… or being the “main” system…

perhaps that was the point of the holocaust… to create a center,
a point where we could begin to measure everything from…

we could create a hierarchy by declaring Jews or Mexicans or
blacks as subhuman… and that makes us, human… we have found
our center… and it is on the back of others… but once again,
we have no way to understand what race or what creed or what color
makes it the center… we are still engaged in trying to find the center
of the universe and one doesn’t exists…….

I cannot find any means to declare the white man superior or the black man
inferior or the Mexican, a evil hombre…what values could I use to
make such an judgement?

as every value exists equal to all other values, there is no center of values,
then how can we declare one particular values as being prime, the center,
the most valuable one? we can’t… we cannot HONESTLY create
an understanding that would allow one to judge one value as higher then
other values or how one race is value higher then another or how one religion
is value higher then another… what criteria would, could one use, again
honestly?.. I don’t see any way or means to be able to judge or rate
something higher then another…the universe all over again……

let us say, somehow, you were able to find the exact center of the universe,
it would last for a second and then the movement of the universe would
change the spot that is the exact center of the universe… it never stands
still, it is always moving…

and I see 7 billion human beings being no different then the galaxies or
planets where we cannot tell which one is where… what is position when
everything is constantly moving? what, where is the exact center of
human existence?

does it lie in you or in me or in the orange village idiot…

I cannot say, which human being is the center of all human beings
any more then I can comment on the relative location of
galaxies… you say the next galaxy is 2 million light years from us…
and in that direction… but what is that direction given we cannot tell
up from down or left and right in the universe… we cannot tell what is
up and down or left and right with human beings, with ism’s and ideologies,
with values…

the best metaphor for human existence…
not the central metaphor, but the best metaphor for
human existence is how we cannot find the center of
the universe… we have no sense of direction in the universe…
because which way is up, which way is down, which way is left or right?

and that was lost during the various revolutions,
the scientific, the political and the philosophical and the industrial
revolutions of the last 500 years……

the rise of ism’s and ideologies come from our being unable to
make sense of what is up and what is down and what is left and right…….

you can not more tell me where the center of the universe is, then
you can tell me the center of human existence or the center of values
or the center of who you are…

we have no up and down or left and right………

now what?

Kropotkin

Nice bit of “poetry” but you should realize most of it is make-believe.

K: most everything we humans engage with, is make believe…

Time, money, social systems, ism’s and ideologies,
prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, work……

remove the make believe out of human existence
and we have virtually nothing left,

Now what?

Kropotkin

Remove the make believe and there remains only first person subjective experience in the form of a person and that which the person experiences, the only aspect of existence that appears or manifests, and the only form existence has ever assumed.

finally a day off…

and what shall we talk about today kids?

Science Fiction…I was watching Star Trek, Picard… a good show,
BTW and I was enjoying it and I thought about it, why, why
do I like sci-fi?

because Sci-fi is about big ideas… life, death, what does it mean to be
alive, both for humans and other species that are found in Sci-fi…and
all kinds of really big ideas about existence…

where else are you going to get the big ideas of existence
outside of Sci-fi?

the second Trek series was the next Generation and it used the
android Data to explore “the human condition”… Why did Data
want to be human when he was, in every way, superior to human beings?

The next Gen showed us that the real strength of being human was
in those things that we cannot measure, weight, time or reduce to theorems…

it is in love and hope and charity and seeking justice that made us worth
emulating…

and it is also our ability to make a leap of faith or to have intuition about
people and events…

our intuitions are as often wrong as they are right, but, we can
have them and they hold as much validity as any other means
of understanding that we might have……

quite often we hold assumptions and presumptions and beliefs
that we cannot in any way, shape or form, be able to justify
in any type of rational, logical manner but we can still have these beliefs…

for example, love… we cannot under any circumstances be able
to justify love in any type of rational, logical fashion…

love isn’t rational, love isn’t logical, love can’t be measured or weighed
or timed… and yet, people will go to the ends of the earth, and beyond,
to find love…love which is something we cannot define or understand,
and it drives much of what we do in life…

I am a human being and much of what I do is driven by my need
for love and my need for knowledge… I want to know, well, everything…

I don’t care about money and I don’t care about material goods and I
don’t care about cars, in fact right now I don’t even own a car…
and I couldn’t care less about “status” symbols, I don’t own a watch…

so what do I care about? My books, all 5000 of them… that is literally
the only material objects that I care about…my family is biological
matter………

in my books, I can find the big questions that is mirrored by
sci-fi… what are we to do? what should we hope for?
what can we know? what should our values be? what should
we use our energy on?

I agree with sci-fi that we should go out into space…
one more grounded might say, but Kropotkin,
we have so many problems on earth, we can’t afford to
go into space……

I say unto you, we cannot afford to put all our marbles in one basket…
we must go into space… we have no other choice… and what we will find,
oh, I wish I could live a very long time just so I could see what we find in
space… otherwise, I have no desire to live forever……

I have a burning desire to see what is out there…
I am sad that I am alive during the start of the space exploration…
for I would want to be able to go out there and see what is there…….
I would wish to be alive in the future to be able to see what lies out
there, beyond our own planets…

and part of my wonderlust is sated by reading sci-fi and watching
Sci-fi… and I wonder about the big ideas that sci-fi brings to my
attention…….

what it means to be human? what is the nature of reality?
what is the point of existence if not to explore our universe?

the big questions are the only questions, at least to me,
that are worth asking…….

Kropotkin