a vision of where we are right now...

[Peter Kropotkin]

now this may seem to be coming out of left field, but
in fact, this thread is a direct line of sight with my other
recent threads... and I include it here because it is
an engagement with political philosophy, which lays
within the confines of philosophy...

my recent attempts to get the reader to think about
the problems and issues of the day is really an attempt
to get you, the reader to see that we are in fact, in
a time of crisis....and part of the solution lies in
the field of political theory/politics...
but no solutions can be found if we don't or can't see the
issues or problems facing us...

or said another way, millions lack the vision to see that
we are in crisis....ask a MAGA believer, what is the issues
facing us today... and you will get conspiracy theories
like the "Stolen 2020 Election" but that isn't reality....
these people believe a false narrative designed to make them
act, think and believe in a certain fashion....
even the Pro-Trump OAN network recently admitted
that there was no fraud in Georgia in the 2020 election
after extensively pushing that claim...
how are we to get to the truth of a situation if millions
believe in lies?

and In fact, I would suggest that a major part of the crisis
in America lies in the false narrative pushed by the right wing...
so until we can agree what the real problems or issues are,
we cannot unite to overcome those problems.....

one of the fundamental functions of the state is to seek out and
administer justice....and I have argued that that a fundamental
aspect of justice is the concepts of equality... Justice requires
that the administration of the state requires all persons be treated
equally... if we limit one group from voting but allow other groups
to vote, that isn't equality, that isn't justice.. but the GOP is
in state after state, attempting to limit voting rights to minorities..
and that isn't practicing justice.. but why would the GOP try to limit
an entire group from voting? The announced theory is the lie
that the 2020 election was stolen... and now we see how
false beliefs can lead us into taking away fundamental rights
from entire groups.... now the conservative will continue to
engage with their belief in the false narrative of the stolen
election, but miss the larger picture of the damage that false
belief has done to American democracy....and so we will do
what the conservative has failed to do, which is see America
political theory in a larger sense, not in a limited form,
the false narrative of the 2020 stolen election...

but the big picture....

and focusing on the false narrative of a stolen election,
means you are not focus on the overall picture..
which is the past, present and future of America...

What is the America you want to see in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years
or even in a 100 years?

and how does focusing on a false event like the pretend stolen
election of 2020 helps us see what or where we ought
to be in 5 years or 20 years?

I would argue that because we have lost our bearings, as described
in another thread, means that we are unable to see where
we are, right now... and if we cannot see our present,
accurately, we cannot have any hope of seeing our way into
a future for America....and as I have suggested, that the
right wing focus on culture war issues has clouded our vision of
past, present and future... if we are fighting the past
culture wars, how can we begin to engage in what our vision
of the future should look like?

and part of the reason we are confused about the past,
present and future, lies in our inability to overcome
our childhood indoctrinations, prejudices, biases, and habits...
because we haven't overcome those childhood prejudices,
and become aware of what OUR TRUTHS are, many people are still
living with beliefs and dreams and hopes of their childhood
indoctrinations...

now at this point, one might say, you have brought out several points,
and I have, but each point is connected to each other point...
the points I bring up are simply different aspects of the
same issues.. many cannot see the current crisis because they
have not freed themselves from their childhood indoctrinations...
and because of their childhood indoctrinations, these people
cannot see the past, present or future with open eyes...
all they can see is their childhood indoctrinations,
and they can only believe, act, move within those
indoctrinations.... their vision of reality is skewered
by their childhood indoctrinations...

if your vison of reality is skewered by indoctrinations,
then how can you see our current reality honestly
and with an eye toward finding solutions to our current problems?

or said another way, if all you see is a hammer, then
all solutions look like nails...whereas we to expand
our vision beyond everything looking like a hammer....

a political solution to our problems/issues is not possible
unless our problems can be seen by both sides equally...
and that isn't possible right now if one side can only
see conspiracy theories and culture war battles...

until they look up from false theories to an honest look
at the numerous crisis facing us today, we cannot find
any solutions to our problems...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

ok, let us look at one aspect of what I wrote about,
what do we want to see happen in the next 20 years
in America? what future do we want to see?

I want a just future... in other words, we treat everyone
equally.... that unlike current America, we don't have
a two tiered judicial system... we have one system of
justice for the wealthy and powerful and another for
the poor/minorities... the wealthy can simply buy their way
out of justice... they can simply break the law, pay a few bucks
and be on their way.... with no consequences for their actions......
and does the conservative even notice this in the judicial
system? how can they if they are focused on conspiracy theories
and culture wars battles? Which is the point of those conspiracy
theories and culture war stuff...to focus the conservatives on
something else besides this question of justice... if you hold
that gays are the problem in our society today, then you will miss
the real problems of justice, income inequality, climate change...

now one may argue that the rich and wealthy have always gotten
away with "Murder" and that may be correct, but that
doesn't make it right or something that we should ignore because
it "has always been that way.'".... and that is the point of
examining our values..... not only to understand what we
truly believe in, but to free us to make decisions as to
what actions we can and will make to create a better future....

now one may ask, what does a "better" future look like?
and bingo, we have the right question.. what does
a "better" future look like? instead of a focus on phony
culture wars, we can engage in seeking the answer to
the question, what does a "better" future look like?
and that answer is found in imagination... we can use
our imagination to see what kind of future we want,
individually and collectively...by using our imagination,
we can see what possibilities are the possibilities
we want and don't want... I want a just future,
and so, I use my imagination to see what possibilities
are available to us that will allow us to find a just future...

focusing on conspiracy theories and culture war stuff isn't
about seeking out our possibilities about the future...
what is possible in the future? we can imagine a future
where justice is done and we, all of us, is treated
equally.. regardless of wealth, fame, titles, and position....

justice is being equally treated in schooling, jobs, education,
the legal system, politically, socially, morally and philosophically...
a world where the police treat blacks and whites equally,
that is justice and something that we should be engaged with,
not phony boloney culture war crap or fake election junk....

that is the vision or using my imagination to see.. what possibilities
should we be engaged with... not dead-end culture wars that
do nothing but lead us the wrong way to an understanding of
what future we should be engaged with...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so in the future we imagine, we must also
engage with what values do we hold in this future?

in my last post I argued for justice, justice being the
value we seek to create the future we want....
but there are other values we can seek to create
the future that we imagine...
what other values can we imagine in this future we want?

I have argued for love as one such value...
and one might say, Kropotkin, why love?
love is a positive value, the gaining of love,
means we can move past it in a way that negative values
cannot...

I love a women.. it could be a man or a women loving another woman...
it isn't about who is doing the act of love, but about the act of love itself...
and what do we gain with this love? it meets a couple of different needs,
the physical need for love and the psychological need for love,
it gives us validation, companionship, esteem... and one might say,
but love fades.. it does, do I love my wife is the same intensity as
I did years ago, No, but I have something better, something that
is built upon firmer foundations then just love itself..
unlike many people, I actually like my wife... a rarity indeed
and I trust my wife... we have built a home and that is worth
all the money in the world... love built that home...

now let us take hate, a negative value and one that UR has
argued for ...does hate build a relationship? does hate build
a home? Does hate build trust or friendship? just on a personal
level, love build a life and hate does not....for that reason alone,
we seek love and not hate.... the values we seek should not only
reflect who we are but who we want to be... now take that into
the future.. both individually and collectively...

what will build a better state, society, culture and civilization?
well it isn't hate.... so that is why we should seek love as a value
we can imagine in the future...taken in isolation, we might not
see love as a possibility for the future, but if we see love
in the past, present and future.. we can see love as a value
that we should seek today and tomorrow...

I can imagine love being the guiding light in a future,
as I can imagine justice being a value we should be
seeking in the future...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

any inquiry into political theory or political philosophy,
must begin with an understanding of needs... both physical
and emotional, mental and psychologically....

existence is really nothing more than a search for our needs....
in this understanding Marx was right.. he wrote,

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"

but this requires us to understand needs and what they are...
do we "need" the trinkets of the western world,
wealth, fame, titles, power..... no, not to survive,
no we don't... and I for one, would suggest that the need
for fame or power or titles stem from the ego...
and ego needs stem from a deficiency, not from strength...

and therein lies my formula.. (to steal a phrase),
my formula for existence...

we should act and need from strength, not from weakness...

so instead of seeking our need for love from weakness,
we should seek love from a place of strength...and
a place of strength is where we think, believe, and act
with an understanding gained from a reevaluation of values...
instead of acting, thinking and believing from values, ism's
and ideologies indoctrinated into us as children...
we act, think, feel after a full understanding
of the Socratic application of his maxim, ''Know thyself''

why is seeking, pursuing the need for ''love'' or ''justice''
or ''knowledge'' or the other needs we have, is so important?

my life, for example, has been one where I have not pursued
money or power or titles or fame, those particular needs
are not important to me, at all, and to other people,
those values are a matter of life and death....

I have spent my life pursuing knowledge and wondering
what it means to be human? If I were to name the value
that has driven my life, it has been curiosity... what does
it mean to be human? why these values and not other values
curiosity specifically about philosophical questions...
not necessarily about science per se but social,
political, economic, and philosophical questions...

one could, if so desired to, might suggest that my need
comes from the fact I was born with a hearing loss,
my search for knowledge could, could come from
the fact I have spent my time seeking an answer as to why,
me and why a hearing loss, or not...
or perhaps one could say I wasn't born fully ''human'' with my
hearing loss... there are all kinds of possibilities in regard to
my lifelong pursuit of knowledge, hearing loss or not....

the vast majority of people just spend their days struggling
to meet their needs without thinking about why those needs
and not other needs? These people have no sense of history,
no sense of the past, present and the future...
no sense of thinking about where they have been and where
they are going, either individually or collectively.....

these people spend their days in situational ethics or
ad hoc solutions about who they are or what does it mean
to be human...there is no attempt to become a unified whole
as a person.. instead each day is treated as a separate entity,
each day has a separate day instead of being part of the whole
that is our lives... today isn't a separate event in my life,
it is part of a much larger coherence that is my life...
we fail to see our lives as a unified whole.. instead each
day is an isolated and separate event with no connection
to what has gone on before and what might/ought to happen
tomorrow...

this connecting of our lives, from past present to future is
needed if we are to unify and connect our lives into a whole
experience...

and the beginning to understanding us as a whole, begin with
us understanding our basic needs and how that defines
us as human beings.... it is our needs that connects us,
not our history or jobs or possible future, but in that

I cannot meet my needs without your help and you cannot
meet your needs without my help... and in that statement
lies the entire history of the human race.. it is the reason
for marriage, the family, the city, the culture, society,
and civilization... the best way to meet our individual needs
is through the uniting of all of us into particular organizations..
be it the state, the family, the culture, are all organizations
created to help us meet our individual and collective needs....

when we say, this civilization is in crisis, what is really being said is,
this civilization is in trouble because of a crisis in needs....
some aspect of needs isn't being fulfilled and that crisis
must be addressed in some fashion...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so what is philosophy?

it is an attempt to answer a need, either individually or
collectively... the need to understand the questions of
philosophy... is a quest for understanding our needs...

for epistemology is the need to understand knowledge,
the limits, the scope of knowledge...

and in Ethics, the need we have to understand
how we should treat others, individually and collectively....
what is morally right is a need we have because
we are social creatures.. we cannot survive on our own,
we must have social intercourse with other human beings
we must act and interact with other human beings,
for it is a fact that human beings that are isolated from
other human beings, in solitary confinement for example,
have greater social and mental issues then people who
regularly interact with people...that is a fact....
so, we seek solutions to how we are to act and interact
with people....

Aesthetics is the seeking of beauty and human beings
have a natural love of seeing beauty.. we love seeing
a beautiful sunset or a beautiful person or a beautiful
painting... but we have learned in the last 200 years to
see beauty in our everyday lives.... we can see beauty in
the mundane aspects of our daily existence...
we can even see beauty in what was once considered to
be "ugly" Andy Warhol in his Art of "seeing" cans of soup
as being beautiful.... and that is the key word, "seeing"
for it is in "seeing" or thought of another way, vision,
of reality can make something as mundane as a can of soup,
to be beautiful... seeing beauty isn't a physical act, it
is an act of vision... of understanding....

philosophy can be thought of a "seeing" or having
a "vision" of what it means to be human...

and in seeing what kind of role that needs have in our
understanding of what it means to be human...

and that "seeing", that vision of what it means to be human
can be found in our seeking morality or beauty or in
our understanding of the limits and scope of knowledge....

philosophy is a "vision", an understanding of what it means to
be human....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one way to think of needs and society/state is
that a "disordered" state, a state in chaos, means
that it is much harder to have our needs fulfilled in
an disordered or chaotic state... our needs can be best fulfilled
in a ordered, smooth, functional state rather than a
anarchist or chaotic state.. this is one of the reasons,
one of many, that I left anarchism.....

so when the MAGA crowd calls for chaos, they are
making it much harder to the rest of us to achieve our
own personal goals, which is just another way of saying, needs...
now should we have a "fully ordered state" which is another
way of saying, a dictatorship? no, too much order leads
us to seeking chaos, disorder because human beings do
have a need for chaos and disorder, but not too much
chaos and disorder, just the right amount of disorder
and chaos...for that chaos and disorder is really human
beings practicing freedom and free will... and in practicing
freedom and free will, a certain amount of disorder and chaos
will ensue... a totally structured life is a very boring life
and a very stifling life...a totally structure life is a suffocating
life.. a confined life... and those who lead that sort of
suffocating and confined life can and will rebel against that sort of life...

and why does the conservative advocate for a order, structure
society above all else? because it fits into their needs for
safety/security and their fear of everything..... if you fear
everything, then you want a safe and ordered/structured life...
In my own life, I like a bit of chaos and disorder, whereas
my wife, not so much... my side of the bed looks like a
tornado hit it, and my wife's side is immaculate... you can tell
when I have been at the kitchen table, there are books
and pens and food wrappers all over the table...when my
wife is there, the books and notebooks and pens are gone,
and it is one clean spotless table... neither side is right or
wrong, it is just the way we personally like it... I have no
problem with chaos and disorder...in fact, I think a little
chaos and disorder is good for the soul, whereas
a very structure and clean existence is not as valuable....

thus I have no problem with BLM but I have a real problem with
the Jan 6 2021 insurrection attempt... the goal, the point of
each is quite different... one was an attempt to overthrow the
government and the other an attempt to make people aware
of the systematic racism that exists within the judicial and political
systems...motive matters..... the BLM movement was a little
bit of chaos and disorder, the Jan 6 attempted overthrow of
the government was a very violent attack, a large scale
attempt to chaos and disorder to bring about certain results...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and let us look at two ism's and their attempt to
order or to chaos...

capitalism is greed, avarice, gluttony, selfishness
and those traits lead to a disordered world, a chaotic world.
and we see that in our world today...the pursuit of capitalism
is the pursuit of disorder and chaos...it pushed individual needs
before the collective needs... and that drive is what creates
chaos and disorder in our world...to seek my needs before your needs
is to invite not only chaos and disorder, but conflict and violence/war....

but communism, the path of the collective, is to hold to
order and unity...to think of the all, the others, the collective
before myself and my own personal needs is at the heart of
communism....the needs of the one, are they greater then,
or outweigh the needs of the many or of the all?

as I need the collective, the state to reach my own personal needs,
I must take into consideration the state, the collective, if I am to
meet my own needs.....

the failure of communism lays in its failure to leave some
room for disorder and chaos, the need for freedom
and the expression of free will....in any society, of any kind
involving human beings, there must be room for our own
expression of free will and the action of freedom... the real
surprise of communism is not that it fell, but that it took so long
as it denied a role for free will and the action of freedom...
it denied the role of chaos and disorder in society and thus was
doomed from the start....

and the failure of capitalism is its failure to
think about the whole and the need for order
and unity....

so the "truth" lies somewhere in the middle, as it usually sits....
somewhere between capitalism and communism..... between a order state
and a disordered state....



Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so let us think about this some more.....

in seeking justice, we are actually seeking order,
structure.. in our society and the state...

for the pursuit of justice, the pursuit of equality is
one such path to order and structure....if we are all treated
equally, then we have an ordered society, an ordered state...
the path to an ordered, structure state is by the state
engaging in justice for all, not a two-tiered system judicial
system, as we have today....one system for the wealthy,
famous, powerful and the second judicial system for
everyone else... that path leads to chaos and disorder....
so we must seek, and so, it is written...

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility...."

to seek a more ordered union, to establish justice and insure
domestic tranquility... we unite ourselves into a political bond...
we unite ourselves seeing that our needs for justice and freedom
and domestic tranquility, that is common to all of us, is met...

we seek order and structure to better able us to achieve our
own goals of meeting our needs, whatever needs they might be.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

as everything human.. the society, the state, civilization
is part of the natural order and that falls into
aspects of science that we call entropy... left to their own,
everything tends toward disorder and chaos...
the fundamental battle in the universe is between
order/structure and disorder/chaos...

order/structure is toward life and chaos/disorder is
toward death... that is the definite understanding of
all existence...are we moving toward order or are we
moving toward disorder?

that is the basic question of existence....
and everything in the universe faces that one question,
order or disorder....

what side are you on?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we can judge people, leaders, followers and anyone in-between
by how they strive for either order/structure or disorder/chaos...
thus we can judge Biden and Obama as better people, leaders,
presidents by their efforts to seek order and structure..
and we can see the failure of IQ45 and Bush Jr. and Raygun,
by their failure to engage with order and structure...
their failure in seeking chaos and disorder has
weakened America.. and which is why I say that
Raygun, Bush Jr. and IQ45 are among the 5 worst leaders/
presidents in American history...

the true leaders lead us toward unity, order and structure..
Gandhi, MLK, FDR are considered to be leaders because
they sought order and structure over chaos and disorder...

so, to be a leader.. one seeks to build order and structure in
the state, the culture, and the society....

and to be a failure is one who seeks disorder and chaos....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and surprisingly enough, there is an aesthetic aspect to this...

recall your recent past, the failed IQ45 years...
IQ45 had no aesthetic sense, no sense of
the beautiful, no sense of the moral either but let
us remain on the aesthetic for now....

everything he did was ugly, horrid, unseemly, grotesque....
there was no sense of style or beauty or grace in anything
IQ45 did... every single successful president in American
history, has some style and grace to him...from JFK who
did have grace and style to FDR who also had it...to
Obama who had style and grace to spare..

I would even go so far to suggest that for one to be successful
in life, requires one to have some style and grace within themselves...

this sense of living "beautiful" is part of why some people
are successful and some are not....

living life has very much an aesthetic value to it...
living life beautiful is part of a life well lived...
and part of having a successful life...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have a question of rights in this country...

we have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
but these are not our only rights...we have the right to education,
to food, to water, to shelter and health care.... in other words,
the basic right of human beings is to their fulfillment of
their needs.. and all human being have that right to fulfill
their needs... and we cannot legally deny those rights to
people... so, rights are inherent in all human beings...
and so rights are universal.. enjoyed by everyone...

the real question begins when one set of rights have a conflict with
another set of rights.. political theory is really the working out of
the conflict of rights...who is right, who is wrong and why?

the entire judicial system is a conflict resolution devise...
if there were no conflicts, we wouldn't need a judicial system....

so the battles in America are really conflicts of rights...
my right vs your rights...so the so called "culture wars" are
really a battle over rights...as is abortion, and capital punishment,
and property rights and overpopulation and income inequality... so on...

so let us think about rights and the conflicts of those rights...

American's have the right to make their own choices... that is
the entire point of having a democracy... to make our own
choices as to how we are to be governed... and the principle
offered to protect those choices is given in the principle
of

"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

but when people actually attempt to seek their own happiness,
being gay or trans, their rights are negated and denied...
if the basic right of American's is "the pursuit of happiness"
then there is no basis for denying the "right to pursuit
happiness" in being gay or trans... what rights are being
violated in someone else pursuing their own happiness in
being gay? Do I have the right to tell you who you can love
or marry, in your own pursuit of happiness? and If I can
deny your rights to be married, it calls into question
the entire proposition of the "right to pursue happiness"

if others can tell me how I am supposed to pursue happiness,
then I don't have choice and one of the points of the
America experiment, is this freedom of choice which is
mandated in the Declaration of Independence and
the Constitution...if we have the right to pursue own
happiness, then we have the right to be gay or trans..

now one might say, we have the right to our own space
and decide under what conditions we may want to live in...
but that is a real stretch of what rights are... and not
really about the choices we can make... I can choose to
hold certain values.... and I have a constitutional right to
those values, but on what grounds do you have to deny me
my rights? my right to vote for example, my right to pursue
my own happiness, my right to make my own choices...

for if you can deny me my rights, I can just as easily deny you
your rights... I can demand that unmarried people not be
allowed to spend the night together in a hotel room because
it violates my rights... the right most likely given is religious
rights... the right to practice my religion as I see fit..
but how does that right interfere with my rights to spend
the night in a hotel room with as a unmarried person with
another unmarried person? how does my being in a hotel
room with an unmarried person interfere with your rights?
and therein lies the question... how do my rights to choose
interfere with your rights, when my choices are to
whom I love, what my sexual choices are, what kind of
sex I wish to be... I don't see how it is any of your business
who I date, love, married or what sex I am... in my pursuit
of happiness, as defined by the constitution, I am free to
make those choices.. as you are free to make your own choices...
with no interference from me or anyone else...

or to state this another way, the conservative attempt
to force everyone to live as they do, violates the constitution
and the basic right of everyone to live as they so desire,
as is constitutionally mandated.. as it is written,

"the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

how can you legislate what or how is "my pursuit of happiness"...
and to do so, means that you have violated the spirit and letter
of the constitution....and my own rights as defined in the constitution..

or to say it another way...

" We the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,
and provide for the common defense, promote the general
welfare and SECURE THE BLESSINGS OF LIBERTY to ourselves
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution
for the United States of America"

and how do we secure the "blessings of liberty" within the laws
we create? by allowing us to engage in what we deem to be
in our best interest, to seek the blessings of liberty...
and that blessing is to make our own choices, who we love,
who we marry, what our sexual orientation is.. are choices
we can make without, WITHOUT any interference from
others because these choices are our pursuit of happiness

there is literally no way that my choice of a sexual partner
can interfere with your rights of the pursuit of your happiness...
as is my choice of who I marry and as to my choice of
my sexual nature...these basic rights do not and can not
interfere with your constitutional rights.. if I were to
physically attack you, yes, that violates your rights to
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
but engaging in my own life, making my own choices
as to what is my happiness, is not and can not be
of any interest to you.. because it doesn't interfere with
your choices or your rights... they are two distinct and
separate matters... my choice being gay or marry a gay person
or being trans.. these choices are choices I make to fulfill
my constitutional right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

as I have been quite happily married for almost 27 years,
I am not interested in being gay or being married to a gay
or being trans... I am not interested in these pursuits,
but if those people rights are being violated, then
my rights can also be violated... and that is my
concern...... my rights to "Life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness" is only secure if your rights
to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
is secured...

and that is my interest in the matter..
to ensure my own rights as they exists in the constitution...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the conservative believes that rights are akin to
the right to property, money, status...
whereas the left believes that rights are not only
an engagement with the right to property,
but the right to choose my own values..
to be gay or trans or marry gay are values..
and the right denies those values...
but the right misses the point..

it isn't just property rights that are "sacred" but personal rights
that come with an understanding that my rights include
my choices as to who I love, who I pray to, who I marry...

the right makes the assumption that property rights,
rights of money, supersede personal rights like who I love...
which is just another example of the right failing to understand
what rights actually mean... the idea of rights is really about
making choices... I am free to make certain choices, that is my right,
an idea the left supports but the right does not... the choices
allowed must fit into a certain parameters for the right..
you are not free to choose your sex, you are not free to
marry who you want, you are not free to make personal choices
because it violates what the rightwing believes is "right"...
and that assumption is based upon religious values, not political
value or cultural values or philosophically values...

but isn't religious freedom one of the founding principles
of this country.. in fact, that Mayflower was a ship
engaged in seeking religious freedom for its passengers...
and the entire focus of America until the American Revolution
was this question of religious rights, not political rights...

to force me to live under your religious principles is a fundamental
attack upon my own rights to seek the "pursuit of happiness"
as I see fit? and the rightwing attack gay rights and gay marriage
and trans rights as a question of religious rights... it can't be
under political rights or legal rights because we are, as the law says,

"We the people"....... not we the married or we the heterosexuals,
but "we the people"... the question of rights must be viewed in
terms of that question "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
what violated my life? what violates our liberties, and what violates
my "pursuit of happiness".... we can view the constitution in
terms of how every question is focus on this matter of
the rights and violation of those rights in terms of,

"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

so, in case of abortions, how does preventing abortions
engage with this primary question of "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness?"

to prevent me from having an abortion, prevents me from
my right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"...
preventing me, or anyone, the right to an abortion, that is
an egregious attack upon my own right to "life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness"

and how does the right argue this, by saying the fetus has
greater rights then women do... the fetus rights overwhelm
the women's right to 'Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"...

how can something that isn't even a sentient being, a being that
isn't even self aware, have greater rights then a women
who is sentient and self aware?

if one class has greater rights then another class, that is
unjust, unequal.. if whites have greater rights then blacks,
that is unjust/unequal.. and denied by the constitution...
so how does the class of fetuses, have greater rights then
the class of women? that is by all accounts, including the constitution,
is unjust/unequal....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

now one may argue that a fetus has the same attributes
of sentience, of awareness, that the mother has,
but that is patiently not true... the fetus, by all
scientific accounts does not feel pain until the 24th week
or 5 and half months...and that a baby born has no sense
of awareness until 15 to 24 months... the baby/fetus lacks
sentience and awareness until long after conception...
to say, a fetus is life at conception is to paint life/fetus
as life, no different than a tree or a blade of grass or
an ant and no different than a blade of grass or an ant...
and we have no problem of any kind stomping on a blade
of grass or an ant..

in fact, I would suggest that implying a fetus is equal to a blade
of grass, is to take away the specialness of a fetus.. a fetus
cannot survive outside the womb until 23 or 24 weeks, which is
the same amount of time for a fetus to feel pain.... and basic
awareness takes until after the fetus is born...again around
15 to 24 months...

so to equate a fetus with a human being requires us to
ignore science and allow a fetus traits that a fetus doesn't
have... sentience, awareness, viability outside the womb....

so in thinking about matters as they are now, we can conclude
that abortions are not acceptable but actually necessary for
the health of the mother... there is a long history of abortions
for the health and welfare of the mother... and once again, we
see how what looks like absolute laws are really just ad hoc solutions,
or situational ethics.... abortion to save a mother's life is not murder,
it is a situational decision to save a mother's life.. thus we can see
how abortion can only be called murder, when it is situationally
needed upon... for preventing abortions and allowing capital
punishment is just situational ethics at work... the situation
dictates the ethics one is to use....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us return to an earlier idea, that of order and disorder...

to force people into an action, to use coercion as a means
of action, is violence... and forcing women to have children
against the women own wishes is violence, coercion...
and does this state violence or coercion led us to
order or disorder?

I would make the argument that forced women to have babies
that they do not want, will lead us to an increasing of disorder..
the reason is that to engage in their own "life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness" women will have to violate
the law... and that increases disorder in the state...

to allow abortions and gay marriage and trans rights increases
the order within the state.... for it gives those who have been
discriminated against previously, the gay and trans, the
ability to further engage within the state... in other words,
we have an increase in participation in the society, the state
by those who are now including into the rights that others already
have....to increase participation of people within that society/state
increases the order within that society/state.... If I have a say
in my life, involving my happiness, I am now Bonafide member
of society and as such, I will have a greater say in my own,
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in which I now have,
will increase my participation into that society/state...

and the increase participation the members of a state/society,
will increase the amount of order within that society... for
a society/state increases it order with increased amount
of energy... and if we reduce "citizens" with less rights,
why would they be invested in what happens within that state/
society? the increase in order and disorder are directly related to
the energy that is put into a state/society or how much energy
is taken out of a state/society.... you want a better run society?
then increase the amount of energy going into that state/society...
to increase order, one must increase energy...
to have increase in disorder, one only needs to remain with
the status quo...to have disorder within a society, just keep the amount
of energy going into a society, static, unchanged...for every
organism requires more and more energy to hold to just status quo...
the body natural function, and by body we mean any organization,
is toward disorder.. and the only way to hold off disorder, to
remain within order, is by an increase in energy...and within
a political state, the only way to increase order, to increase
order, is by increasing the amount of people within that state/
society...and in our case, that means giving people rights that
then allow their inclusion into the political, social, cultural
and philosophical universe...

and this is what states and societies have done...
going from families, to tribes, to small cities, yo
city/states like Athens to ever larger and larger political
organizations... this is to increase the number of people within
a state/society which also increases the amount of energy going
into a state/society and that increases the amount of energy going
to a state/society... that increased energy is the increase of
order and structure within a state/society...

to hold order within a state/society, requires an increase
in the amount of energy that state/society receives...

you want order within a state/society... you don't need god or
some sort of vanity worship of god, you simply need to increase
the energy going into that state/society....

state/society/civilizations rise and fall on the amount of energy
going into and out of any particular state/society/civilization..

so the real question of politics and the state is, how do we increase
the amount of energy, via by people power, to increase the
order and stability of a state/society?

that is literally the only question of politics that we need to
engage with...how do we increase the amount of energy into a
state/society?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if we rethink this idea of state/societies in terms of
energy coming in, which is order, and energy going out,
which is disorder.. we can now see why the Catholic church
survived during the middle ages and why the Roman Empire fell.
there was greater energy going into the church then there was
going into the empire.. more people were excited by the church
and express that excitement by putting energy into the church
and the Roman Empire lost order by fewer people putting energy
into the empire... every empire has a greater amount of energy
going into that empire then the other state/societies around that
empire... thus we can now see why the British took over India,
the enthusiasm of the English people was greater than the people
of India and that energy of the English people is all it takes
to allow England to take over India...

this theory also explains why the west outlasted the Russian
Empire... there was less enthusiasm in Russia which meant
less energy for Russa and there was greater enthusiasm
in the west..

you want to see where the next superpower will come from,
just look for that nation that has greater energy, enthusiasm for
its institutions, laws, justice system.. and you will see where
the next superpower is going to be...

it could have been China but because of the Chinese attempt
at dictatorship and coercion, we can see that China will be
a minor player in the next world order until they bring about
universal participation in China...

and you can see where the energy is low within countries,
China, Japan, Mexico, England, Spain, and the U.S...
and it will remain low until we increase the participation
of people into the justice system, it's laws, it's institutions...

increase American participation into it activities,
and we will return to superpower status....

and to increase American's participation requires we
increase people's rights and obligations in America....

increase America's energy by increasing the rights of people..

built it and they will come...to steal a phrase...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if I were in charge, I would do this to make America
"better".. I would have everyone, everyone, write me a letter
saying what it would take to increase your participation
in American democracy... for that is what it will take to
return America to being a superpower, the hard work of
everyone... so I would ask people, what would I need to do to
increase your participation in American democracy?

the basic survival of America will come down to
how much people energy can we create in
America? that is the cheat sheet into
American survival.... how do we increase the energy
going into America? people power energy, not machines
types energy...

what would it take for you to become engaged in American
politics? Perhaps we could start with this, if you vote, you
get an automatic $ 200 dollar tax break... increase the
participation of Americans into the American process is the key to
becoming great again....

So, what will it take for you to become engaged with the American process?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

there are several questions within existence...

there is a religious question, how am I to be saved? what
must I do to be redeemed? how do I reach heaven?

and there are political question, and the primary political
question is this: how do we maintain order given that
all institutions/ organisms must over time become
disordered.... entropy works on all institutions/organisms...
they tend to become disordered given time...

so how do we keep order given that all institutions become
disordered in time?

and here we see the GOP/MAGA types bringing about disorder
and chaos into America... the path to order is to create
and maintain institutions that help maintain order...
institutions like the IRS, the FBI, the Judicial system,
the police, congress, the CIA.. the creation of these
institutions are meant to maintain order.. for that is
the basic point or reason for political systems
to maintain order...

and how does the GOP/MAGA crowd help disorder and chaos,
by attacking these institutions, sewing mistrust in the institutions
meant to maintain order... so if the MAGA crowd achieve their
goal of sewing mistrust in the Judicial system, the court system,
then we have an increase in disorder in America... and for
every institution that the MAGA crowd creates misgivings about, it brings
about greater and greater mistrust of that institution.. which
fuels disorder and chaos in America.... you want order, you have
to maintain confidence and trust in the institutions in
America.. the FBI, the IRS, the court systems, the congress,
the presidency and the president himself.......

creating skepticism in American institutions
creates disorder and chaos... it cannot do anything else...

thus the MAGA/GOP crowd is creating mistrust and disorder
in America by impugning its institutions...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

ask a MAGA/GOP type, what political institution should or
can we trust? and they will say, none.. we cannot trust
any political institution nor can we trust the media
or science, or medicine, the CDC... the question
becomes does the GOP/MAGA person trust
ANYONE OR ANYTHING?

and the answer becomes, no... and that is well on its
way to disorder/chaos

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

without order, what exactly do we have?

we have Hobbes "state of nature"

where "life is solitary, poor, brutish and short"..

and that seems to be what the GOP/MAGA crowd is aiming for,
a life within a "state of nature"...where we have a

"War of all against all"

and that state of Nature is not a happy place, for anyone...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us look at the mechanism of order as offered by
the GOP/MAGA crowd...

they deny fealty to the state, they deny fealty to the institutions
of the state, they deny fealty to science, medicine, history,
to isms like communism and liberalism... so, I ask, what
exactly does the GOP/MAGA crowd actually hold fealty to?
or said another way, what brings about order in a GOP/MAGA
world? What beliefs or values should we hold dear as values
worth living for, as least according for a MAGA/GOP person....

outside of worship for IQ45, I don't see any such fealty to any
cause, person or ideology by the MAGA/GOP person....

that is their sole belief, that IQ45 can walk on water....

they have no other beliefs or values that they hold dear...

hence, the distain the MAGA/GOP person hold for others....
and their hatred of being "woke".. it stems from the fact
that "woke" people don't acknowledge the wonder and greatness
of IQ45....I don't believe IQ45 can walk on water and thus
I am a heretic, to the way of thinking in the MAGA/GOP crowd...
I am "woke" which is another word for heretic, traitor, commie scum,
Un-American.... the MAGA/Crowd holds to religious beliefs as the
divinity of IQ45 and by denying that, I am attack, stigmatize,
labeled and threatened....the MAGA/GOP beliefs in IQ45 are religious
beliefs and failure to belief in that faith is branded heretics....

that is their answer to order and disorder... order comes from
belief in the divinity of IQ45 and disorder comes from disbelieve
in the divinity of IQ45....

it is a rather simple ideology... but hay, that is all they can do,
as they have rejected rationality, logic, science, medicine,
history, the institutions of America... there is nothing else to
believe in....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

it becomes clear that the point of, the reason
for government is to have order in the society,
and without government, the people fall into
disorder and chaos... but, and this is important to
note, that too much order is also bad... as illustrated
by the book, "The uses of Disorder" by Richard Sennett...

within human beings, there is a strong streak of chaos
and disorder...as is illustrated by the "Purge" movies....

we cannot hope to hold people to very strict practices for
very long... they will rebel....
this is why trying to achieve a "religious" life as inspired
by the American puritans and Calvinism, is doomed to failure...

the political belief of Anarchism is based upon this very human
need to rebel and find/create chaos... the young, for the most part,
gravitate toward this chaos and anarchism, and as we get older,
we tend to gravitate toward order and stability...... I see this
in myself as I have grown older... and the odd thing is that both
the young in seeking anarchy and chaos and the old seeking
order and stability are both right.. there is a human need
for both at different times in our lives... and our political
understanding must adapt to both needs... toward order
and/or toward chaos....

women tend toward order and stability, I suspect that is due
to the fact that to raise children, it is easier to do so within
order and stability and less so in chaotic and unstable times...

so what do you favor, order or disorder?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Machiavelli wrote (in the discourses)

"Human appetites, are insatiable, for by nature,
we are so constituted that there is nothing we cannot long for
but by fortune we are such that of these things we can attain but
few. The result is that the human mind is perpetually discontented"

and right there, we see how the drives of human beings toward
the trinket of existence, force us into being "perpetually
discontented" for to seek wealth and fame and titles,
only brings about this "perpetually discontented" feelings...

for therein lies the modern discontentment of existence
that surrounds us like a fog...but this is not a new
phenomena.... for therein lies the essential point of the Buddha...
and every reformer thereafter....

but if we want order and stability, we must learn to
minimize our drive toward the trinkets of existence...
for one who seeks wealth before all other options,
means he will overturn the very order and stability of
a state, society, a civilization so he can get what he wants....

his needs become greater than the societies needs,
thus we become a danger to the state/the society at large...
we cannot allow individual greed and the drive to obtain
money/fame/power to overcome the order and stability
of the state.. the many needs are greater than the individual
needs...


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the problem with an engagement with ism's and ideologies,
is that one "see's" the problems through the lens of the ism,
the ideology... and as people see the political problems through
the lens of ism's and ideologies, they misread, mistake
the problems of existence....for example, the modern
problem of ethics.. what does it mean to be ethical when
"god is dead" and we have killed him? on what standards, do we
now base ethics upon? Many people around here have stated
that abortion is "murder".. ok, on what standard do you base that on?
How do we know that abortion is murder? For the term "Murder"
requires us to understand what murder is, ethical/morally, to
be able to define what murder is and how do we know a certain action
is ethically, morally wrong.... how do we "know" murder is
ethically/morally wrong? What epistemological evidence do we
have to know that murder is morally, ethically wrong?

we hold certain values, ethical, moral values but I hold
that those values are not universal values, but the values we hold
are ad hoc values, situational ethics values....

that there is no universal, applicable to all people, ethical and moral,
values...

so I hold that the last 200 years has been an attempt to replace
the universal values of religions with such ism's and ideologies as democracy,
nationalism, racism, and Trumpism.. to name a few ism's meant
to replace the old failed religious values...to give our lives value and meaning...

we seek something, anything to give ourselves, our lives some meaning
and purpose.... but these chimerical values of seeking wealth, power,
fame, titles, fail to give our lives any sort of meaning or value...

so to replace the universal/values that is applicable to all,
what ad hoc, situational values do you seek?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us think about life and the ism's and ideologies
we hold as we think of games we play....

Right now, the NBA playoffs are going on... we have basketball,
a game, so how is one way we can think of basketball...

as a game, which it is.. what makes a game? the rules...
basketball has certain rules that are only found in basketball,
and those rules exists because basketball has a certain set
format... it has a large round ball that can be bounced..
on a floor that allows it to bounce.. the very nature of
the how basketball is played dictates some of it rules....
you cannot carry a basketball, where as in other games,
you can carry the ball, American football for example or
baseball...but in football/soccer you can't carry the ball....

most games are played on grass, but not in basketball..
within each game come a certain set of rules...
and the game itself is defined by its rules... without those
rules, basketball is just become a random event with no
point to it... you try to outscore the other team by making
the ball go through a hoop.. and you defend your hoop with
a defense meant to prevent the other team from scoring...

now over the years, the rules governing basketball has changed..
what was once legal is not and what was once illegal is legal....
there is quite of bit of "wiggle room" in basketball..
in other words, the rules are not absolute... the idea
of penalties in basketball is where a lot of this "wiggle room''
exists... for instance the difference between a charge call
and a block call comes from the exact same event.
the charge is called on an offensive player
and the block call is a defensive call... play to play, it seems
that there can be vast interpretation between a charge and
a block call.. there is that "wiggle room" in calling penalties...

and within certain aspects of basketball there is no "wiggle room"
for example basketball is a very time based sport....a quarter
in the pro's is 12 minutes.. the length of the game is set at 48 minutes,
there is no ''wiggle room'' but if the score is tied at the end of 48
minutes, there is overtime, more minutes added to the game...
but all of this is set out in a rule book that anyone can look up..

now apply all of this to political theory.. political theory is
simply a rule book applied to our political systems
but political theory is theory and politics is the rule book
applied to society every day...so what is democracy then?

It is political theory until we see the specific rules
governing the population...what specific rules are applied
to specific people in specific places and specific times, will
tell us if what we see is actually a democracy...

so we have the theory and then we have the specific rules....
the Soviet Union called itself a "democracy" but the rules
made it clear it wasn't in any way, shape or form, a democracy...

there was a massive split between the theory and the actual
rules...and that alone spelled the fact that the Soviet Union
was doomed to failure... for any society to function and work,
there cannot be a divide between the theory of that society
and the actual practice of that society...
the difference between the theory of that society
and the actual rules...if basketball decides to change
the rules to allow people to carry the ball, it is no
longer basketball, it is something else...and we have to
understand basketball in terms of the new rules...

so if we call ourselves a democracy, and yet we legally prevent
people from voting, we no longer have a democracy....
we are something else... if the idea/ the theory of democracy
is that people have the choice to make their own decisions, to
decide what rules they are going to play under, and if we no longer
allow people to vote, to make their own choices, then
we are no longer a democracy.... if I am no longer in
control over my own choices for what I want to see happen
in the future, then we no longer live in a democracy...
and this is what we see in America today...

if the big corporations and wealthy individual make the choices
by virtue of bribing public officials, then they make the choices
and I do not... let us at least have the decency, the courage to
call America what it is, A corporatocracy, an oligarchy.. not
any different than what Russia is today..
if the people no longer can choose their own path, they no
longer live in a democracy...

one of the points of a game is to ensure that all players of that game
must play by the exact same rules... if we allow some players to
have a different set of rules because of whatever reason, we no
longer have an equal or fair game. that is the state of America today,
we have a set of players who have a different set of rules then other
players....the rules is set up so some people can play by different rules
than other players... that means because of the rule changes,
we are no longer playing the same game... for a game is defined
by it rules...and if some people have a different set of rules, then
the game itself is different... we can no longer call this game
basketball or a democracy...

so political theory is the abstract of the rules and politics
are the actual rules as is played by it participants......

so we must study both the political theory to understand
the general nature of the game and then we must study
the rules as they are set up to understand the exact nature
of the game and how it is played... so political theory is one
aspect and politics is another aspect of the game...

Kropotkin