Peter Kropotkin wrote:
As existence creates its own questions, who am I? what am I to do?
what should I believe in? what should I hope for?...…..
we understand life as a question of becoming...… in other words, I
am born a baby, what is my next becoming? why infant, then toddler,
the child, then teenager, then young adult.......you see the ever present
becoming in growing up..
Today we are... tomorrow we will be....
but what will we be?
and that is the question of possibilities...
Peter Kropotkin wrote: every single human being is in
a state of flux, from being one thing to another, every minute is another
movement of being to becoming.... to finding our possibilities.....
but the problem in our going from being to becoming is we think in terms
of economics, of what should we do, in terms of a job or career or profession.....
but that becoming is a small part of who we are.... our possibilities are far
greater then simply what job should we have?.....how do we support ourselves
has less significance then what should I become? the values we have and then
values we should have is another question of possibilities, of being to becoming....
we have these values, should we hold other values and why?
I am and I am becoming...….should be part of the question of existence
and the question of values is partly about this becoming.....
what are my possibilities? I can become a doctor or a lawyer or
a cop or a politician or a checker in a grocery store but what other
possibilities exists for me, outside of what my job is?
for example, does being a checker preclude me from being a nice person,
a mean person, a loving person, a funny person......the search for
profits has devalued human values like justice, truth, love, peace and
hope..... it doesn't matter in my job if I am nice or kind or smart or
evil.. as long as I make profits, that is my only value at work.....
there are no other possibilities inherent in my job.....
but how do I engage in finding my possibilities if my worth is
measured in terms of making profit? Let us take the political....
Peter Kropotkin wrote: one man, one vote is the basic, fundamental principle of democracy,
but that principle has been subverted by money which has bought
our elected officials from main street to Pennsylvania ave in Washington DC.....
Money has corrupted our entire electoral process, so how can I find my possibilities
given money has corrupted our entire political process?
and economically, the lie that anyone can "make" it given they work hard,
there is millions upon millions of people working hard, very, very hard and
they are still making minimal amount of money... for most Americans,
they are three paychecks from being homeless.... how is that square with this
idea of working hard and "making it"? the average median income was $56,516...
and these people work very hard for that money... the mean household income
was roughly $79 thousand dollars a year.....
(the median means the amount
which divides the income groups into two groups, half above that number
and half is below that number and the mean income is the amount
obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number
of units within that group.... so in the median income group.. half of America
is below $56,516 and half is above that number, so roughly the monthly income
of those who are at $56,516 is $4,709.. or roughly $1,200 a week and missing
three paychecks is roughly $3500.... and that is the breaking point of most
Americans)
Peter Kropotkin wrote:
let us try this...……..every society, every culture, every family,
has a set of assumptions.... the assumptions I was born into
were about how America is the greatest country on earth, capitalism
is what makes America great and democracy is the best thing since slice
bread and that there is a god...….
when we are born, we are born into a set of assumptions.... and those
assumptions are codified into ism's and ideologies.....My parents were moderate
democrats and I was born into that set of assumptions...now someone who is born
into republican household will be born into a conservative set of assumptions....
and being white and male, I was born into the set of assumptions of white males....
we cannot escape being born into a set of assumptions, the British have their set
of assumptions and the French have theirs and the Russians have their assumptions
and so on and so forth.... within each society, we have separate and diverse
cultures... in America for example, we have the Amish, and they have their own
set of assumptions which exists within the larger set of assumptions of America....
Now at no point can we say, this set of assumptions is right and that set is wrong.....
we simply have no way of knowing which set of assumptions are the right set of
assumptions... now the Amish for example have their set of assumptions and it
seems to work for them, but those Amish assumptions don't work for me, does
that make the Amish assumptions wrong? Not at all... it simply means those
set of assumptions are not for me,... now I have called these set of assumptions
that we are born into, childhood indoctrinations...….
Peter Kropotkin wrote:we are indoctrinated with the society's/family/state assumptions....
and we call them our own because we have no other context to compare
those assumptions/indoctrinations with...….. ism's and ideologies are great as long
as we don't compare them to other ism's and ideologies....my brother studied
economics at the University of Chicago just after Milton Friedman had left... he would call
me and ask me about communism and it's economics because at the University of
Chicago, they wouldn't teach anything at all about any other form of economics
outside of capitalism.....so I would fill him in on communist economics...…
and other forms of economics....the university would teach the students the
basic assumptions of both academics and the society...…….
Peter Kropotkin wrote:so we are born into a set of assumptions and those assumptions are taught to us...
as ism's and ideologies, myths, biases, superstitions and prejudices...….
and we grow into adults with some or all of those assumptions intact...
for me, I lost the belief in god quite young, before high school....and perhaps
even before middle school...….but I still believed in some of the basic assumptions
of democracy and capitalism and the exceptionalism of America...…..
Peter Kropotkin wrote:but as I enter my adulthood years, I began to notice that the advertising
of those assumptions didn't match the reality of those assumptions....
I discovered millions of people were poor and starving and barely able
to survive...… and at no fault of their own.....I was radicalized by the
election of Ronald Raygun…. I slowly became an anarchist...….
being a young lad of 21, I wanted to change the world... to make it
a better place... with my own set of assumptions that I was coming
into...….I outgrew my childhood indoctrinations and discovered a new
set of assumptions that I adapted as my own...…….
after many years of being an anarchist, I slowly began to
lose my faith.... I wasn't changing the world and it seemed
that no matter what I did, the world wasn't going to change its
basic assumptions.... which in reality is what I was fighting..
not the society, but the set of assumptions that our society had.....
it took me a while to understand the difference... when we charge after
those windmills, it is the assumptions we are fighting...…
Peter Kropotkin wrote:today, 40 years later, I have a set of assumptions that more closely match
who I am, my assumptions don't match the society assumptions... said
another way, my ism's and ideologies don't match society ism's and ideologies....
Peter Kropotkin wrote:so to answer your question, I a
m not engage in any particular set
of assumptions, I am attempting to engage with "reality" whatever
the hell that means, by understanding "reality" outside of any set
of assumptions or ism's/ideologies.....so it may seem like I am engaging
Peter Kropotkin wrote:
as noted, we act and interact with other human beings... this interaction
is called "morality"....upon what basis should we interact with people?
or said differently, what are the rules we should engage with in dealing with
other people?
Peter Kropotkin wrote:let us say, I run into someone named Bob and because Bob pissed me
off, I beat the shit out of him...… but this scenario doesn't give us enough
information to actually be able to judge or understand it...…
from a legal standpoint, it doesn't matter if Bob and I had other dealings
with each other which has lead to the bad blood between us...…
or it shouldn't matter that Bob is 6'5 and I am 5'8 or that Bob is
4'5 and I'm 5'8...…… from a legal standpoint, the particulars are
irrelevant... a fight broke out and someone must be punished
for that transgression.... so we have crimes against the law....
but we have our daily interactions between each other.....
and though those daily interactions rarely ever reach a legal
standpoint, a fight or some violence between each other,
we have these interactions between each other which is
really the basis of our rules of engagement with each other.....
I deal with rude, mean customers all the time... but their being
assholes doesn't reach the level of a crime, a legal matter...
but it does matter in our day to day engagement with each other.....
the reason they are so rude and mean is because they don't consider me
to be an equal... why be nice to someone who is below you in social status..
this is the basis of much of our interactions with each other....
the same rude asshole who is mean to me will suddenly
become nice when face with someone who is a doctor or
a policeman... why, because those are considered "higher" social status...
we place ourselves into imaginary social status... if we make X amount
of money or have a higher status job, we are of X social status....
but the rules for this social status is not written down anywhere, it is
not discussed or even acknowledge by people...….
Peter Kropotkin wrote:let us look at one part of this equation... women...
women don't dress for men, women dress for other women...
but why Kropotkin? it doesn't make sense for women to dress for other
women.....women use clothes and jewelry to establish social status...
when I look at a woman, I don't notice what the maker of the dress is or
who makes the purse or what kind of jewelry she has, but other women,
will know this and that is how women mark social status...
my wife grew up in a very wealthy town and she can instantly spot
women with money.....and she can even tell if the money is new money
or old money or if the women is pretending to have money....
Peter Kropotkin wrote:the way we react to people is part of the biases and myths and
prejudices and superstitions we grew up with, the indoctrinations
we were raised with....in other words, we judge people based on
our childhood indoctrinations.....and for most people, it is an
unconscious reaction to the people we deal with on a daily basis
and based upon how we were taught as children...….
Peter Kropotkin wrote:so not only does our childhood indoctrinations teach us our ism's
and ideologies but our childhood indoctrinations determine
our daily interactions we have with other people.....our morality
as it were...….
Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong
or good and bad behavior.... a particular system of values and principles
of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.....
we can now see that the distinction between right and wrong is
not based on any given principles but were taught to us as children
within our childhood indoctrinations....
we don't have a set of principles upon which we use to decide our
"moral" values or how we choose to act in our daily interactions with others...
we use a ad hoc basis for our interactions with others..... in other words,
we act and interact with others, not based upon any given or set principles
but we usually react to others based upon our childhood indoctrinations.....
and not on any set principles we might have created over the years.....
and we react to others based in our perceived social status we have in
relations to each other....
so we have legal restrictions which help determine our relationship
with each other and we have self guided, usually childhood indoctrinations
which also guide us in our relationships, our interactions with each other.....
so my reactions and interactions to other people, what some people
might call "morality" is really just a complex series of inner
reactions to others based on a perceived social status and
childhood indoctrinations...…..
Peter Kropotkin wrote:However, it is not based upon some set of values
or principles that I have worked out myself...…..
and for morality to be morality, we must have set
of values or principles that have been worked out
to actually be "morality"...….
we don't have values or any set of principles to guide our actions
or our interactions with each other... we have some sort of
ad hoc interpretations of how we interact with each other
but those interpretations are wildly different based on how
we are doing that day and not on any set values or principles....
I don't know if this makes any sense at all to you, but it makes sense
to me...….. we react to each other, our moral interactions to each other
are not based on some set of rules or principles but change every day
because they are not based on any set of rules or principles.....
and until we firm up morality based on a set of rules/values and/or
principles, our moral judgements are simply made up every single
day, ad hoc as it were...…
derleydoo wrote: "so perhaps when we read stuff by someone like iambiguous… it isn't
lame or stupid.. perhaps we just don't have the ears to hear it or
the wisdom to understand it...….never be too quick to judge other people
words... they might actually know what they are talking about....."
derleydoo wrote: My theory has it that Iam picked up his hoist tendencies whilst serving in Vietnam. He often makes reference to the Here and Now. You know what I mean!
iambiguous wrote:derleydoo wrote: "so perhaps when we read stuff by someone like iambiguous… it isn't
lame or stupid.. perhaps we just don't have the ears to hear it or
the wisdom to understand it...….never be too quick to judge other people
words... they might actually know what they are talking about....."
On the contrary, over and again I have pointed out on various threads that my own assessments here are no less existential contraptions. And I am no more able to demonstrate that they reflect actual wisdom than others seem able to demonstrate that their own moral and political narratives reflect it.
There is a very, very important distinction to be made here between those things that we think that we know what we are talking about and accumulating enough actual evidence to in fact demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to believe it in turn.
I just make a further distinction here between the objective relationships in the either/or world and our subjective/subjunctive reactions to those relationships when they precipitate conflicting goods that precipitate conflicting behaviors.derleydoo wrote: My theory has it that Iam picked up his hoist tendencies whilst serving in Vietnam. He often makes reference to the Here and Now. You know what I mean!
Hoist tendencies?
The "here and now" is crucial to me because given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information/knowledge/ideas, "there and then" might find us arguing from a very different perspective.
As for Vietnam, you bet it was a crucial turning point in my life. Which I try to convey here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
How about your own existential trajectory? Anything we can learn from that?
derleydoo wrote:iambiguous wrote:derleydoo wrote: "so perhaps when we read stuff by someone like iambiguous… it isn't
lame or stupid.. perhaps we just don't have the ears to hear it or
the wisdom to understand it...….never be too quick to judge other people
words... they might actually know what they are talking about....."
On the contrary, over and again I have pointed out on various threads that my own assessments here are no less existential contraptions. And I am no more able to demonstrate that they reflect actual wisdom than others seem able to demonstrate that their own moral and political narratives reflect it.
There is a very, very important distinction to be made here between those things that we think that we know what we are talking about and accumulating enough actual evidence to in fact demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to believe it in turn.
I just make a further distinction here between the objective relationships in the either/or world and our subjective/subjunctive reactions to those relationships when they precipitate conflicting goods that precipitate conflicting behaviors.derleydoo wrote: My theory has it that Iam picked up his hoist tendencies whilst serving in Vietnam. He often makes reference to the Here and Now. You know what I mean!
Hoist tendencies?
The "here and now" is crucial to me because given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information/knowledge/ideas, "there and then" might find us arguing from a very different perspective.
As for Vietnam, you bet it was a crucial turning point in my life. Which I try to convey here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
How about your own existential trajectory? Anything we can learn from that?
With respect to PK, I shall respond in a separate thread.
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