a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am not ignoring you Iambiguous, I just have limited amount
of time today....

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... 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....

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)

but there are other possibilities besides economically, what job should I have?
we can discover our possibilities in sports, ARTS, reading, writing, imagination,
and fantasy.....what is needed is less focus on making our lives about
the creation of wealth/profits that never go to us, but go to those who
own the means of production......

there is nothing to be gained by the average person to engage in the
the economic system of America, capitalism.... unless a lifetime of
working until the body collapses and the soul is crushed, really floats
your boat.. then rock on...….

our possibilities isn't found in the pursuit of wealth or profits,
our possibilities is found engaging in some action or event that
allows us to answer this question of being to becoming... we are
and what should we be..... working 40 hours a week for 40 years
isn't going to answer the question of becoming...what should we become..
the engagement with work only solves the question of, how am I going to eat?
How can I support my family? and that answer can be found in other ways,
other possibilities that lie outside of capitalism... for capitalism has
proven itself to be a failure and we must rethink our economic system....
which is another form of engaging in being to becoming.....

what is more important, the GDP.. the Gross domestic product or
finding the answer to the question, what are my possibilities?
and if you have to ask which one is more important, then
you are in clear need of an reevaluation of values...….

why is the need for goods we don't need to survive outweighs
the question of what is really important in our lives?
we don't need TV's or fancy cars or nice couches for our fat asses to
survive, the basics necessities of life is really quite minimal,
and we can get to understanding what is our possibilities
without the lifetime engagement with capitalism that
destroys our soul and body...…..

that is why ART is so important because it tells us what possibilities exists
for us... we can become brave or strong or smart or loving, values that mean
something far greater then just our engagement with our job/work and
we can become those values through our engagement with ART.....
we can see what is possible through ART..... and we can see what is
possible through sports, where we can see how strong we are or how brave
we are or how we face adversity in sports tell us much about how we face
adversity in life...….

we must engage in those activities like ART and sports and travel
and learning because they push the being in us into becoming....
and we must, must make ART and sports and learning and travel to
a much higher level of our engagement in life.... much more then
just work/the pursuit of profits... which doesn't engage in
finding our possibilities that we must engage in.....

what about our other possibilities, such as religion, philosophy,
history? more about that boys and girls later...

I must get ready to go to that body destroying/ soul crushing
job.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so given the questions of existence, what am I to do?
what should I believe in? how should I act? what should I hope for?

Now these important questions of existence, questions we face once we are born,
these questions can be expanded to include us... what are we to do? what should we
believe in? How should we act? what should we hope for?

for example, the question of, how should we act? Is really a political and
moral question. the begining of political science begins with a question,

what is my relationship with others? we are individuals who live and die within
a complicated social context.... I am born and I am faced with the question of
how do I act with my sisters and brother? our parents dictate our actions
and behavior we have with each other.....and then we enter school
and we discover other complicated behaviors that our classmates have...
and all the while we have teachers who watch over us and dictate our
actions and behaviors we have toward each other......and we
act and interact with each other, this behavior is both individual
and is collective/social...….it is a very complex series of rules we
learn in order for us to engage with each other.... you can touch people
in certain places and you can't touch them in other places,
you can say some things to some people but not certain things
to other people...and sometimes the rules we play by, are
vague and incomplete....and then we enter adulthood,
where we should have learn societies rules by now.....
and sometimes, we have some who don't understand the rules
and why there are so important for us to have rules...…

in fact, we could call political science and morality, the rules we
collectively decide to live by....the question becomes this,
why these set of rules instead of another set of rules?
society/the state seems to take the easiest road of actions,
in other words, society choses to follow the path of least resistance...
put into place the rules that will get the least amount of resistance.....

so the individual question, what should I hope for? collectively becomes,
what should we hope for? indeed, what should we hope for?
this idea of what should we hope for, becoming a religious question
as Kant understood it, doesn't seem to make sense because of the vastly
different understanding of the religious that each of us has...…..

so what should we, collectively, hope for? this is political science.....
which is guided by history, philosophy, economics, biology...…
history tells us what previous people tried and we can see their
success and/or failure written in the history of said people....

one thing there is not, a universal understanding
of what it means to be human and we don't have
a universal rule book that can guide all of us....
why not? because universal rules can only work when the
situation is equal for everyone, universally. When the environment
is the same for everyone, then and only then can a universal rule book
be applicable...…. we cannot expect the rules for one group, say an Eskimo tribe to
be the same rules as people living in New York or even a tribe living in Africa.
different environments require different rules for human beings...….
if I were to move to the frozen tundra of the north and live with the Eskimo's,
the rules of behavior would be different for me, then if I stayed here in
sunny California....or the rules would be different if I moved to say, New York,
or if I moved to London..... and yet, we run into a interesting thing, human beings
are human beings the world over... we have the same needs, wants, desires, hopes
as all other human beings...…but given different environments, different possibilities,
we must change our behavior to match the different environments, the different possibilities
we find ourselves in......this suggest a certain malleability of human beings.....

we can adapt and change given the different situations and circumstances and
environments we find ourselves in....

so this question of "what can we hope for" can and does change given the
different situations and environments we find ourselves in.....

so it seems to me that what we might be looking for is not the changing,
adaptable part of us as human beings, but we are looking for the
permanent fixtures of human existence and by that I mean,
what exactly does it mean to say, human being? is there some
permanent, fixed aspect of being human that we can point to and
say, yes, yes that is a human being.

does the question of "what can we hope for" change with each changing
situation, with each new environment? or does the question of "what can
we hope for" remain the same for us individually and collectively?

the fact that I have all questions and no answers doesn't really help me...….

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have rules, given by ism's and ideologies and those rules
are valid as long as the situation governed by the ism's and ideologies
remain the same...… once the situation changes, the ism's and ideologies
meant to be rules for that situation, the rules, ism's and ideologies are
no longer valid... those rules, ism's and ideologies are meant for
certain conditions and situations, once the conditions and situations change,
the ism's and ideologies are no longer valid....

and that is where we are now... we have ism's and ideologies that were
created for another time, other situations and conditions and those conditions
and situations no longer apply and thus we are living with rules that no
longer apply to our current situation....

we must change and adapt our rules to fit our current situation and conditions,
our ism's and ideologies must change to adapt to our new needs and situation.....

"what should we hope for" changes because of our changing situation.....
"what we should hope for" it is not fixed in time and space...and we must
change and adapt our understanding of "what we should hope for"
with a new understanding of "what we should hope for"

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

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...

It is also the question of probabilities. It is far more probable that we will answer the question "who am I?" in a particular manner given the particular historical and cultural contexts into which we are born. And given the particular confluence of interpersonal experiences, relationships and access to ideas that we encounter on our one and only entirely unique trek from the cradle to the grave.

Thus when a particular individual reads this...

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....

...they will react to it from a particular point of view rooted in the manner in which I construe "I" here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Instead, what you provide us with [in my view] is another "general description" of the possibilities/probabilities that those at one particular juncture of the political spectrum will react to very, very differently from the reaction of those at other junctures.

Thus, from my frame of mind, nothing really changes with respect to the arguments made by the liberals and the conservatives regarding Trump's agenda. One side is right from one side, while the other is right from another side. It's only a question of the facts that can be agreed upon.

You have your view of capitalism, others have their own. Then what? Most of course are able to "think themselves" out of the hole that I am in because they have convinced themselves that their value judgments are just enough in sync with the "real me" in sync with "the right thing to do" that they don't experience being fractured and fragmented much at all. They might come to change their minds about one or another issue, but only because they have come closer to the truth.

And that [psychologically] is what is most at stake here for them. Not whether they are right or wrong but that they are convinced that, above all else, there is a right and a wrong.

Thus your own sense of this revolves around a particular set of political prejudices predicated on a particular set of assumptions about human interactions:

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)

And on and on.

This seem reasonable to you. Okay, but the libertarians and the boys in the boiler rooms have their own set of assumptions. And that's before we get to those 1% that care only about sustaining their own wealth and power. Do you honestly imagine those who own and operate the global economy from New York, Moscow and Beijing give a shit about what "the people" living paycheck to paycheck think abut all of this?

In my view, you are not really addressing the points that I make here regarding "I" as an existential contraption. Instead you provide me with your own existential assessment of the man that you have become -- given the points I make in my argument.

The bottom line is that I have a great deal of respect for your contributions here at ILP. You are clearly compelled to think about all this in a way that goes much deeper than most.

But I have simply come to different conclusions regarding the existential relationship between "I" and "out in the world". In particular regarding the world of conflicting goods at the intersection of identity and political power.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I thank you for your kind words... I cannot say if I "think" deeper
then most, but I can say that at least I attempt to think about
things that should matter to people...…..and I respect you for your
attempts to get to the heart of what it means to be human....

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...….

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...…….

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...…..

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...…

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....

but then, I discovered that assumptions/ism's were a burden as they
are artificial and can be constructed out of anything...…

now I am trying to reorganize my life without any set of assumptions or
ism's/ideologies that most people/ society has...…….

how do we live without a set of assumptions or without an ism's or ideology?

that is the question I am trying to understand right now...…

at no point do I believe any particular set of assumptions is "right" or "true"
or even real...…. to my ever changing way of thinking, the battle is not
to find the "true" assumptions but the battle is to learn to live without
assumptions/ism's and ideologies...…

so to answer your question, I am 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
with "reality" with some set of liberal ideology, but I am not.... I am attempting
to understand outside of a set assumptions or ism's....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so given what I just wrote...I am not objecting to
capitalism based in ideological grounds, I am objecting
to capitalism based on the damage that capitalism
has done to both people and the planet earth...

I stand witness to the nihilism of capitalism based
on my own experiences with capitalism....
my experiences of 40 years with capitalism that has
left me with pain all over my body and a soul that
has been crushed...…

I am not objecting to capitalism based on some far off
idealistic assumptions... every single day, I see the damage
of capitalism as given by the news, given by the ever growing
pursuit of profits/money, by the people I talk to every single
day whose lives have been altered and not for the better by
the pernicious influence of capitalism...….

I am also attacking democracy based not on ideological grounds,
but on how our democracy has been hijacked by the wealthy, for
the wealthy and of the wealthy...…

I can see this ever single day by just watching the news...….

my understanding of modern day America is driven by
the world I see and not by the ideological ism's and biases
that I was born into or have developed in the years after I
began my reevaluation of values...…….

and that is where I am really going.... instead of
our evaluation of the world based any given set of assumptions or
based on ism's or ideologies, I say we try something different....

let us evaluate the world based on values....let us adapt values
like love, justice, honor, peace and use those values to judge
and understand the world...now we don't need ism's or ideologies
to adapt values..... we can assume the value of love without any reference
to any sort of ism or ideology or bias or myth or superstition...…

we can adapt values without any recourse to ism's or any set of assumptions..

why love? love is a positive value, a value which we know from personal
experience that love can grow, love can bring out the best in us, love
can be used to reach greater heights then we thought possible.....
love binds us and love is creative and love enriches us.....
so we can adapt love as a value through which we can
understand the world...…..

we should we use hate as a value? because hate is a negative,
destructive value... hate cannot help people, hate cannot create,
hate cannot bind us or unite us...…. hate can only destroy.. it cannot build....
that is why we cannot use hate as a value from which we understand the world...

if I use justice as my lodestar, then every action of mine is focused upon
reaching justice for myself and, and others.....justice is simply equality....

and if we reach justice, that is positive and we can build upon justice to
reach even greater heights of our possibilities...……

and that is the point.... our values can lead us to discover possibilities
that we never thought about...… I dream of a society where every single
person is equal, politically, socially, economically...…….
I dream of a just society....

but Kropotkin, what are we suppose to drive for if we are equal?
our inequality creates possibilities for us..... no, no it doesn't.....

our inequalities denies possibilities to millions.. because we
use money as a means to judge the value of people instead of using
values to judge people..... profits as a means of judgement means
we don't need to be good or honest or just or even free as long as
we have money, we are gold... which denies the possibilities
of human existence and having money means it doesn't matter if
we are good or just or honest or loving... money as a value denies
human beings and their values.... using money as a value for human beings
is outright nihilism.....it is a denial of human beings and their values.....

if we judge people based on values, we are no longer practicing nihilism,
for we are not denying people or their values.... we are judging
people based on their values....and then we discover that if we
have values instead of money, we no longer even need to judge people....

our values speak for themselves as we allow our values to speak for us...…
if I am just, my justice will speak for itself...…..

so Kropotkin, what are we to drive to if we are simply about values?

I say unto you....we discover what our possibilities are outside of
society's set assumptions...… we don't need society to tell us what is
possible or what is not possible...… we judge for ourselves what is
possible.....we no longer have a set assumptions telling us what
is or isn't possible..... we have values.....

but Kropotkin... what values should I hold?

and therein lies one of the questions of existence.....

one of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence..

What values should I hold?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Not that this has anything at all to do with what I have
been writing about... but, thinking about the analogy of
the watchmaker being the example of the universe...
the universe is created by god because it is so similar
to a watch...…

the problem with that understanding is that it assumes the
universe to be like a watch...a built thing like a watch
but the universe can be explained without any recourse to
a watch analogy because the watch is a mechanical thing
whereas the universe is a natural process taking billion of
years to develop.......given enough time and energy,
you can explain every single thing in the universe in terms
of a natural process like evolution or other forces like gravity....

the equation for the universe goes something like this.....

energy which is a force like gravity or evolution EF....
.....matter/ M.... time/ T.....

so you have EF + M + T = our current universe...…

the two sides must equal each other or be fairly close...…

the universe is simply an equation and we have to figure out
the nature of the equation...…..

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

ok, we have these questions of existence,
what should I believe in? what should I do?
what should I hope for? as examples...…

and we have the Kantian question of freedom...
(god, freedom and immortality)…..

but as we have understood it, we are determined
by various forces, both natural... evolution and gravity among those
and manmade forces of ism's and ideologies such as capitalism
and democracy..... leaving modern man with very little room for
freedom...……

within the Kantian/Kropotkin questions mentioned earlier,
we can find our freedom by asking and then answering those
fundamental questions of, what am I to do? what values should I hold?
what should I spend my energy on?

the question of freedom can be answer in answering those questions
within the Kantian/Kropotkin questions.....

by answering the question, what am I to do? I explore my freedom...
in answering the question, what should I believe in? again, I
explore my freedom...…

by escaping ism's and ideologies of society and asking, what values should I hold?
one escape the determination of society and explores freedom.....
with ism's and ideologies and prejudices and myths and biases
and superstitions, society attempts to determine what is possible for
an individual, what is possible for an individual...…

one can escape that determination by leaving or walking away
from ism's and ideologies by answering the question, what values
should I hold? and then living life with those/that value.

freely chosen values which represent who I am.... become who you are
by choosing values which are you... if you are peaceful... choose peace
as a value and then live within peace and judge everything via the value
of peace...…….if you are about justice.. choose justice as a value and
then live and judge with justice in mind.....

that is the freedom that is possible for us..... by choosing our values
and then living those values... not ism's or ideologies, but values.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Now one might say, Kropotkin, it doesn't matter what values you choose,
you have no way of deciding which values that exist, exist within
a certain context.... in other words, choosing values are simply
arbitrary... and values are simply arbitrary values that cannot
be justified....you cannot defend choosing justice as a value because
justice is simply something that you pick because of your political/economic
understanding of the world..... you had no choice in picking justice
because of your specific world view that is the result of your place in the
socio-economic world...……. in other words, I picked justice because
of my specific socio-economic standing in the world.... if I had
another socio-economic place, I would pick other values...…..
a dubious idea... but nevertheless a possible idea...…

our chosen values are not necessarily the result of our socio-economic place
in the world, the values we pick can be chosen for other reasons besides
our socio-economic place in the world...…….

I choose the values I choose because they are what I want to become.....
I want to have justice as my guiding principle because I think justice
is a value that is worth holding onto... now one may object saying, that
value of justice is simply an arbitrarily chosen value, chosen because of
your socio-economic place in the world..... or we can choose values
because they are values that represent who we are or who we want to be....
not necessarily because of our socio-economic place.....

choosing a value isn't a bad thing nor does it mean anything more then
a chosen value..... or own individual "contraption" can allow us to
escape and choose values of our own choosing...… we don't have to
be held hostage by our own values or our particular position in life or
our socio-economic place in the universe.... we can simply choose values
outside of our own individual understanding of the world because
that is the freedom we have.... we don't have many other freedoms....

I can escape my own individual, particular understanding of the universe by
choosing values that lie outside of my particular place in the universe...

we are not held hostage by the ghosts of the past which determines us
yes, we cannot fly or we cannot turn into horses or run faster then
a lion... but those are determined by evolutionary forces that we have
no control over and by natural forces we have no control over.....

we can grow and change and become and adapt..... we do this all the time
in many different and diverse ways..... we can become something other
then what our particular station in life is currently...……. we are not
determined by the confluence of our individual circumstances.....
the "I" that is Kropotkin isn't fixed by his circumstances or his particular
childhood or past... it is changeable and adaptable …………..

we can rise above our current situation in life regardless of that situation....
but I cannot hear again... that is a natural influence, a natural event
that has determined my life... but given that, I don't have to be forever determined
by that event... I can rise above it.. it is me, but I don't have to let that decide
who I am or what I can become......what my possibilities are, are not determined
by my hearing loss or my particular socio-economic status right now.....
but by the choices I make.... by the possibilities I embrace.....by the values
I choose...…yes, we are determined but we can choose freedom within
that determination of forces like evolution and gravity and forces like
communism and capitalism..... we can choose values that allow us to escape
those forces that determine us...……

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have people like Schopenhauer who thought the universe
was not "rational" and thus not understandable and we have
people like Plato who believed that the universe was rational
and thus understandable.......but both are wrong.....

the universe is or isn't rational because the universe just is....
we human place values, terms on things like the universe.....
the universe just does its thing and then we call that some value or
term..... good and evil... just terms to describe the universe... while
the universe is.. just is.....

Think of a tree.... any tree will do......

and think of all the connections that tree has.. connections to the ground,
connections to the air and animals and to us......but from the tree or the earth's
prespective, the tree just is... and while it is connected to the whole... that isn't
the point of the tree... the tree just lives and does it thing and it is we humans
that create the names and functions of those connections that tree has....
the tree doesn't know or care about its name or its functions, the tree just
does its thing... the rest is irrelevant.....it is humans who classify and name
and creates graphs about the tree but all the while, what does the tree do?

we can follow a drop of water as it flows from one enviroment to another,
from one event to another and we can see the connections that the one drop
of water becomes and we see the inner connections that fill our world....
but from that one drop of water prespective, it doesn't matter.... that
one drop of water is just doing its thing.. the rest is irrelevant.......

the water lives without ism's or ideologies or without prejudice or myths or
superstitions... because those are all human creations.... with nothing to do
with that drop of water or that tree.....

does an external reality exists? yes, of course it does...but outside of
human beings, that reality just is and has no values or terms attached to it....
no values or terms like good or evil or just or loving or honest or misguided.....

life just is..... and then we humans spend our time declaring that "is" as being
something... no, it just "is".....and we need to just "be"... but what does that mean?

what does this "is" or "being".... exactly mean?.....

the question of human existence isn't about the "is" or the "being" of human existence...
the question of human existence is the ever changing, the becoming of humans.....

for human beings, there might not even be an "is", a "being" present for us...
for everything in human existence is about becoming... we know that cells in
a human body die off and get replaced, some cells last only days and others last
for a human lifetime..... my body and your body is in a constant state of
of cells dying off and being replaced at a rapid pace throughout our lives.....
the "is" that is us, changes quite often over a lifetime...…. we continue to
become......the "is" that wrote the first sentence of the post has already changed....
so tell me, with so many changes going on, how do I know when I am "being" or "is"?

for that "is" "being" can only last for a split second and then cells die and are replaced....
every single second is another second hurtling us toward death..... we have only so
many seconds of existence and then existence is over for us... the only real being we ever
have is the final state of being, death.....that is the only time in our life that
we stop becoming...…..and even then we still are in a state of becoming...
our bodies and cells and muscles all begin to decay and that is just another state
of becoming.....

so tell me..... what are you in a state of "is" or a state of "being"?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so after working till midnight last night, just woke up
and see a text message from the wife, she wants me to pay the American
express bill, we get into a texting discussion about that bill and other bills,
about which to pay and how much.....I am working at 1:00 this afternoon till
10:00, so I have that on my mind........ now given all this, all I wanted this
morning was to contemplate my existence and instead I get all this extra stuff
to think about....and therein lies the problem of human beings...... how can we
think about what matters, what really matters if we engage in the daily crap we
are forced to engage with, the paying bills and discussions about paying the bills
and the exhaustion from working and dreading going to work because after I get off
of work at 10:00 PM tonight, tomorrow, I have to be back at work at 8:00 AM...
which means I get exactly 10 hours off before working again....
which is typical of the crap you face when working in retail.....

which leads us back to how am I to engage
in the things that really matter like understanding the questions of existence.....
and working out the values that I should live by......I am not a man of Leisure like
Mr. Derleydoo.... I must engage in the menial crap of life in the modern age
and how can I engage in my life if I am being crushed in body and soul with
the modern life?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so after several brutal days of work, I finally have the day off
and my body hurts, really hurts and I can't help but wonder.....

I look over at my book case and see my copy of "Howl" by Ginsberg
and see my copy of "Leaves of grass" by Whitman and I see two different
Americas.... Whitman wrote in his preface something no one would have
written in the last 75 years in America.....

"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have
probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves
are essentially the greatest poem."

compare that to "howl"....

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix...……………"

two minds, a hundreds years apart, looking at the same America...
which America was "real"? both, one or none? Howl written in the
few years before my birth is another story of America... but today,
60 plus years past and how would the story be written today?

Looking at my kitchen table where I have books piled upon it...
(and my wife absolutely hates it) and I see Schopenhauer's
"The world as will and representation" and I see "the philosophy of
Schopenhauer" by Magee....

I have two separate and distinct viewpoints of the world...
the poetic and the philosophical......Once again, I look at my
bookcase and I see a couple of biography's of Marx and the autobiography
of Goethe, "Poetry and truth" and we see two more visions or
viewpoints of the world...….

and each viewpoint is right... each viewpoint can say, yes, I hold the truth
to be in poetry and I see the truth in philosophy and I see the truth in
what others say about us and I see the truth in we write about ourselves....

and on my kitchen table lies volume 6 of the Routledge history of
philosophy "the Age of German idealism" and in my bookcase I see
Copleston "A history of philosophy" covering the years after Fichte....
two distinct and separate histories of philosophy and which is right?
or is being right even the point?

and I try to find a common truth....

I cannot...…

each genre covers its own vision of event regardless of the event....

it has been said, the past is prologue to the future...
but which past? which past is the prologue and which
past is the dead end? I try to see my way clear into the future
by reading and I try to see the future in "Howl" and in "Leaves of Grass".....
two poems written a hundred years apart and what poem will be written
in 2050's that follows up "howl and "leaves"?

"Poetry and Truth" by Goethe.... poetry and truth..... isn't that the
way..... we speak the truth when convenient and hide behind the poetry
when it can carry us past the truth...……..

what is the poetry in our lives... and what is the truth?

unraveling that can take a lifetime...…

so after days of brutal days of work, I finally have the day off
and my body hurts, really hurts and I can't help but wonder...…

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Just read “Howl” while sitting in
A bar waiting....waiting for the Warriors to
To play, waiting for sanity to come back
To America, waiting for corporate america
To complete its takeover of us all.....

I sit here waiting for some sort of sign, a
Sign of things to come......

And my beer arrives... a sign indeed but only
A sign of here, now....waiting indeed for the silent
Of what to come....waiting....

[Peter Kropotkin]

As I wait, I wonder....is the god of
America moloch or is the god of America
Mammon?

K

[Peter Kropotkin]

the writings of Ginsberg and Whitman leads one to
wonder if it is possible to write an "epic" poem
about America anymore.....

I have made it clear that my concern is not about America at large,
but about our own individual understanding of who we are and
what is our possibilities and I stand by those concerns but I have
been forced to consider the state of America as defined by those
two writers.....

America was a growing and dynamic country in the 1850's when
Whitman began his "Leaves of Grass". The industrial revolution
was about to explode upon the American scene and change the
country forever whereas Ginsberg writing a 100 years later, found
a completely different country.....

America by the 1950's had gone though multiple wars, the Civil war
and both World Wars and the Great Depression.....and industrial
revolution had completely change America...…

but it wasn't the external changes that had changed, it was
the internal changes... the way we saw ourselves and
the individual role each of us play within the larger society
we call America. Whitman saw a positive America and
Ginsberg saw a negative America and each was right....

and now 60 years after Ginsberg, what do we see?

I see something that neither Whitman or Ginsberg saw...

I see a country that is living in fear....

we have lost our way and it frightens us... driven us to
elect fear mongers like IQ45...….driven us to attack the
very principles that made America the once shining city on a hill....

we have sold out our values and principles and honor in some
failed attempt to alleviate our fears...

Whitman was building our values and Ginsberg question those
values and today, we have abandon those values...…

now some might say that the values of Whitman which
are the values Whitman worship.. are not values we cannot
live by anymore, perhaps, perhaps...

and the values that Ginsberg questioned have been abandoned
but why? today, today we worship Mammon and all that
is implied in that worship......and fear has driven us to adopt
that ism and ideology....today we are not the brave, bold
fearless people of Whitman era.....

we have fears and those fears lead us to demonize others and
their values...for it takes courage to allow others just to be
themselves and for them to follow their own road and ism's
and ideologies...for tolerance is about the strength to allow
others to be themselves.... for if we are secure in the
truth and strength of our values, we have no need to
attack or demonize other people, other values....if one is secure,
really secure in one's values, then you have no problem in allowing
others their understanding of the world....tolerance is about having
the strength to allow others to be... fear is attacking others because
our faith in our values isn't strong enough to allow dissent....

and this new America where we don't have the faith or
courage to allow others their views, is a America of fear,
a America that doesn't have values of strength or courage enough
to others to be...….

but all this begs the question, how do we overcome fear?
How do we become the values we proclaim ourselves to be?
How do we stop being afraid and start living and allowing others
to just be?

the strength to overcome fear is tough to find, but
not impossible and how does it begin?

I am strong enough to allow values that I don't believe
in or approve of..... we begin by trusting our values
and allowing them to be challenged by other values.....

for example, those who spend their time attacking
Sharia laws, pretending that Sharia laws are here in America
in parts of some city....lie not from strength but lie from
weakness and doubt...… a truly brave person, a courageous person
doesn't need to lie about these things.... because so what?
if you have the strength of your beliefs, the strength of your
values, then what do you care about other people values or beliefs?

a brave person has the courage of their convictions and needs
not worry about others......that strength is on display in Whitman...
he has enough strength of convictions that he doesn't need to attack
others values, other beliefs...…He simply celebrates the courage of his
convictions and the convictions of his fellow American's.....whereas
Ginsberg questioned those convictions of Whitman, but offered no
values to replace the questioned values......and today, we live in fear
of those whose convictions are held more deeply then our convictions.....

so how do we rise above fear and celebrate the courage of our convictions?

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

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...….

Yes, that is a general description of how it works. Now we have to explore how in particular our own individual "I" here is the embodiment of that. And then examining what "for all practical purposes" the implications of that might be regarding our own value judgments. For example, do I go too far in one direction while others go too far in another?

The Amish however reflect a particularly extreme example of how an objectivist frame of mind is embodied. Not only do they predicate their values on a God, the God, my God, but virtually every aspect of their lives is then anchored to this God.

As long as they steer clear of the "English", they are able to go about the business of choosing behaviors in the is/ought world as they do in the either/or world. There's a proper place for everyone and everyone is in his or her own proper place. And that means always thinking and feeling and saying and doing the right thing. For the Amish, as with other objectivists [God or No God], my point revolves around their need to anchor "I" psychologically to an overarching belief about that which is said to make life both meaningful and purposeful.

And then in how comforting and consoling that must be.

But this part...

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...…….

...is considerably more problematic. Particularly in what is often referred to as our "postmodern world". That which we are indoctrinated as children to believe will almost certainly bump into conflicting narratives. And just at a time when, as young adults, we tend to become increasingly more autonomous in our reaction to the world around us. New experiences, relationships, books, movies, art, politics, religion and on and on and on. And it is here that I tend to focus in more and more on the manner in which I construe "I" to be an existential contraption rooted in a particular confluence and conflagration of all the vast and varied factors we may well have access to. Including all of those we never have access to. "I" here is not just the embodiment of the life that we live, but the lives that we never live as well.

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...…..

I understand this. And it is of course no less applicable to me. To all of us.

But [from my frame of mind] it doesn't change this:

1] that all of this unfolds in a particular historical, cultural and experiential context
2] that new experiences, relationships and access to ideas are always there able to reconfigure how you think about yourself in the world around you.

The point isn't what you grow into an adult believing but all of the actual existential factors that predispose you to. And then, once you recognize this, is there a way [using philosophy, science etc.] to come up with the optimal or the only rational manner in which it is said that reasonable and virtuous men and women are obligated to, say, react to Donald Trump. There are clearly facts that can be established about him. For example, that he lies and lies and lies and lie and lies and lies. But this is simply rationalized away by many who embrace him because the policies themselves are always what count in the end.

Then the part where once again you note for us the actual trajectory of your actual life.

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...…

But my point is that those who embrace values at odds with your own here can note the same thing about their own lives. Things happened to you that precipitated points of view. Things happened to others that precipitated a different set of values.

Then what?

How here in a philosophy forum are we to deal with that? What makes this particular thread of yours interesting is that an attempt is made to intertwine the political animal and the philosopher king. I have just come to construe that relationship differently.

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....

Again, I don't have access to a "who I am" as others do. Not in the is/ought world. If I am basically an existential contraption there how can "I" not be encompassed in turn in an existential hole?

Somehow you are able to think yourself into believeing that your own values are less fractured and fragmented. And [here and now] I am not.

It's the assumptions we seem compelled to take our political leaps toward that [to me] are largely [profoundly] problematic.

But then...

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

This seems beyond reach of me. Not while I'm down in the hole. In other words, the point you raise here is, to me, just another assumption. You are still confronted with those newspaper headlines that scream for a reaction such that "I" is either more or less intact -- more or less convinced that it is in sync with the right thing to do. Here you seem considerably less "broken" than I am. But that too is ever and always subject to change in a world awash in contingency, chance and change. And for both of us.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am not ignoring you Iam, but I have other fish to fry today....I will
get back to you.....

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?

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...….

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....

so much of our interactions with each other is based on perceived
social status.....with wealth being the primary indications of the
social status.....

now the interesting thing here is because we own a condo and
some rental property, we have a net worth over a million dollars,
but the wealth is in property, not in cash.. and I would bet that
a good deal of the time, given the average customer in my store,
we have a greater net worth then a lot of my customers, but because
of my job, checker, I am fairly low on the social status level, so
that the next brick in the wall... the job or career of people also
decides the social status of people...and people react to me based
on job or career.... social status....instead of who I am.....

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...….

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...…..

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...….

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

We see that "morality" is a set of values or principles
that we use to decide upon how we act and interact with
others.... but we do not act or interact with others
in a vacuum, in other words, we exist within a society,
a state, a culture...….. we do not operate
independently of the society we live in.... we act and interact
within a society, a group of people...…

the social rules we all live by are, as noted are not listed
or written down anywhere, but most people understand the
rules we live by... adults don't beat up children or old people,
that is against the rules because children and old people are
unable to defend themselves... and that rule is codified in
laws which help protect children and old people.....

but we also have unwritten rules like you don't yell at children that
aren't your own....that is the parents job to correct a child, not a stranger...
and most people respect and understand that rule... but I have seen the rule
broken and the person who yells at children for being children isn't legally
punished but is socially punished..... we have collective rules we follow,
rules that are enforced collectively...….. for we operate within
a society and for that society to function, we must have rules for
our own actions and interactions within society, with other people.....

but let us take one case and explore what exactly does this mean.....

IQ45 has publicly stated "I could stand in the middle of 5th Ave and
shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters"...….

the rules are quite simple in a society, we cannot commit violence
against people for that damages society, private violence against
people, a private individual committing violence against another
private individual, harms society.... that is quite clear in our
dealings with people......individually and collectively...…

but that leaves us another question... the question of justice...
and what is justice..... equality..... to be just, we must be equal
in our interactions with others... we cannot treat one individual differently
then another individual and still be just.... but in my previous post, I noted
that we treat each other differently based on perceived social status.....
and that is not being just..... to engage in justice, we must treat
every single individual equally and without bias regardless of any
social status we or they have...………..

so we have morality which is "a particular system of values and principles
of conduct especially one held by a specified person or society" but is morality
where we have a set system of values/principles, and justice "which
is the equal treatment of people" ……….

what is the relationship between morality and justice?

I don't see a particular conflict between justice and morality....
for we can treat people equally and still have a set system of
values and principles...….for as long as we act upon our set system
of values and principles equally, we are being both just and moral.....

if we treat people as we want to be treated, then we are acting
morally.... and just.....

so I wonder, what set of values and/or principles do you have,
so you can be "Moral"?

and are you just? do you treat people equally?
regardless of social status or regardless of the situation?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us approach this from a completely different angle.....

ART...…..ART: Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating
visual, auditory or performing artifacts, expressing the author's imaginative,
conceptual idea's, or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their
beauty or emotional power...…

Art can be considered a skill or craft and/or art can be considered
to be an exploration of the artist imagination...…..

but does ART have any connection to such concepts such as
justice or equality or morality?

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

justice: the idea that we treat everyone equal before the law and, and
the way we treat other people, equally regardless of their social status.....

with ART, we can see the use or the value of having a system of values
and principles of conduct...…… ART can give us an examination of how values
and principles can operate in our life.....ART can show us how a system
of values/principles functions in life...……

we often see the "hero" who has a "moral" compass, a set of rules which they
follow and we see the "Villain" who has no moral compass, no rules by which
they follow...…...we often see in ART the actions of the "Hero" as they engage
with the "Villain" who has no set values or principles to follow...….

Look at the Hero's of modern times, Superman for example acts with a
moral code, a set of rules and principles which he follows.... and the
"Villains" usually are only interested in money and/or power and has
no set of rules or principles that they follow...……

But we have more ambiguous hero's like Batman who seems to
seem to have a less rigid moral stance then Superman..... Batman seems
to bend the rules and principles of the moral code to suit his actions...…

So are you more like Superman or are you more like Batman in regards
to your set of rules and principles which you follow?

as most people have no real set of rules or principles that they follow,
most people act in an ad hoc manner in which they simply act without
any given rules or principles...….. each action is taken in the moment
and not taken by any set of rules or principles.....so we act and interact
with our fellow human beings moment to moment instead of
acting upon any given rules or a set of principles...…..

ART gives us examples of how we can behave or act morally in a given
situation or how we can not act or behave morally in any given
situation...….

so morally, who is a better example of action, superman or batman?

so given our understanding of justice, which is equality, who practices
justice better, superman or batman?

and then relate that to the actions and behavior we engage with every day....

do you act morally or do you engage with people with justice, equality?

compare and/or contrast your behavior with superman or batman...…..

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

after several ugly days of work, I finally am on vacation....
9 days off.... about fucking time.....

so, I am listening to music this morning... I tunes and I go onto the
store part and I come across a new album by Ludovico Einaudi..
"in a time lapse"... as per my usual habit, I go into the comments
parts as I listen to the music... most like the album.. but a few,
said the same thing... the music was repetive and minimalistic...boring.....
and the album is a waste of time...... as I am listening to it..I find
the album is minimalistic but I like that...as for repetive and boring...
I disagree.... I found the album interesting and very much worth listening to....
but here is the interesting thing.. the very thing that the commentators were
objecting to, were the things I liked about the album.........
I didn't find the album repetive...it had some very interesting idea's.....
but as I listened to it, I realized I understood the album because I listen
to a lot of solo piano and a lot of new age music.... My ears/ear.. is attuned
to this type of music....whereas other people might thing it is boring and repetive,
I can hear the vast differences between the pieces... I have the ear to listen to it...
whereas others might not be ready to hear this type of music....
and so it goes for other aspects of our lives... sometimes we are ready to
hear or to listen to music or advice or movies... and sometimes we are not ready
to hear or to listen to music or people.... I hear Einaudi music because
I have been listening to that type of music for years and it is very familar
to me.... I have the ears for it and I am ready to listen.....

whereas some people aren't ready for it or can't hear it... it is not
a right or wrong type of thing but more of a I am ready to listen to it thing....

When I was younger, people would give me advice and I thought the advice was
not much or even stupid... but the truth was, I wasn't ready to hear that advice...
I wasn't able to hear it until I grew older and had the ears and wisdom to hear
and understand the advice...…… so when people write stuff or you hear stuff
and you might think it is useless or bullshit.... perhaps the truth is you aren't
ready to hear or read that stuff and the truth is you might never be ready to
hear or understand that person's truth...…..it happens.....

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.....


Kropotkin

[derleydoo]

"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....."

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]

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?

Rules of behavior that revolve first and foremost around subsistence. We tackle conflicts relating to wants only after we have first come up with the least dyfunctional set of behaviors that revolve around needs. Sustaining our survival itself.

Historically however there has always been a general tug of war here between those who focus the beam more on obtaining the power to enforce particular sets of behaviors and those who are more intent on establishing which behaviors ought to be enforced.

The murky intertwining of moral narratives and political [economic] might. And here [it seems] you have those who basically embrace one or another rendition of materialism, and those who embrace one or another rendition of idealim. With or without God.

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...….

From my frame of mind all you are providing us here is an existential snapshot of how your own particular "I" has come to construe interactions of this sort. Bob may or may not have an inkling regarding what you are trying to convey. He may or may not see these social and legal distinctions as you do. This [in my view] is embedded subjectively in dasein embedded out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.

The point is this: can those who think of themselves as philosophers hear your description of events, Bob's description of events and the descriptions given by others intertwined in your day to day encounters with customers and come up with with an optimal set of reactions to an optimal set of behaviors in the "best of all possible worlds"?

Same with this...

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....

How are these individual reactions not profoundly intertwined in the manner in which I construe an assessment of the "self" here as an existential contraption accumulating a particular set of value judgments in a particular is/ought world?

There are facts that we can all agree on regarding a specific woman wearing specific clothing having a specific sense of her own social status coming from a specific class.

So, what can philosophers tell them about the obligation of all rational women regarding these things? Of how all rational men are obligated to react to them in turn? Yes, it is our perceptions of these things that precipitate behaviors that precipitate consequences that [can] precipitate conflicts. But how are these perceptions not in sync with the manner in which I construe the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of my "self" from the cradle to the grave? In a world deluged with contingency, chance and change.

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...….

Yes, but the actual lives that we live can be [are] embedded in sets of circumstanmces so vast and varied that most of us can't even imagine what it might be like looking at the world as so many others do.

We talk about all the different combinations of moves that are possible in a chess match. But what is that next to all of the many, many, many different social, political and economnic permutations possible in regard to human interactions on the board of life.

Our individual perceptions of what it all means may in some respects be all but inexpressible.

That's why so many of us here are more inclined to encompass it all in "general descriptions" like this:

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...…..

What is missing here is an actual context. Actual individuals coming into conflict given very different perceptions of the same set of circumstance. How ought the context to be grasped? How ought the conflict be resolved?

And, here, at ILP in particular, what is the role that philosophy can play in pinning that down? And, just as crucially in my view, what may well be beyond the reach of philosophers? From whatever "school of thought" they are inclined toward.

Instead [in my view] the discussions tend to revolve more around what I construe to be generial descriptions encompassed in a world of words.

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...…

From my own frame of mind, morality is situated out in a particular world at a particular time given conflicting perceptions of particular sets of circumstances.

What you have come to see as "firming up" your reaction to Trump and his policies is pretty much what the conservatives have done in turn. You just start with different assumptions regarding the human condition. Political prejudices born from the values that you have accumulated given the trajectory of your actual lived life.

[iambiguous]

"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.

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]

"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.

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.

[iambiguous]

"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.

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.

Sounds good. I too have nothing but the greatest of respect for Peter.