a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Kierkegaard once wrote:

"What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do,
not what I am to know....the thing is to find a truth which is for me,
to find an idea for which I can live for, die for"

now which values are worth living for, which values are worth dying for?

ask yourself, is hate a value worth living for, or even more importantly,
worth dying for?

are any of the negative values worth living for? is hate, anger, lust, greed.. value
worth living for? what is the only thing thing that hate and anger bring about?
why, the only thing, the only thing that comes from hate is more hate... and from
anger, the only thing that comes from anger is more anger...

that is why they are empty values, like empty calories... they fill you up but
they don't answer the questions of existence like the positive values...

and what does the positive values bring about? let us take love for example,
what does love bring us? recall our Maslow and his pyramid of needs....
where does hate fit into our pyramid of needs and where does love fit into
the pyramid? Hate doesn't help us get to the psychological needs of safety/security
or of esteem or of belonging... which is really connection... we need to feel like
we belong or connect to other people...

and how does the negative values of hate and anger and lust and greed fill
these psychological needs? they don't...hate just breeds hate and anger breeds
anger... but they don't help one feel safer or be more esteem or to belong/connect.....

but the positive values of love, justice/equality, hope, charity does bring about
our achieving our psychological needs of love, esteem, safety/security, belonging/connection....

when we love we are connecting to other people... when we help bring about
justice, we are connecting to other people...for justice is about equality... we are
equal when we act with justice... and this feeling of equality/justice ties us, binds us
together....in a way that hate and anger and greed and violence doesn't bring about....

for those who practice injustice and violence do so because they don't believe
in either the principle of or the practice of equality/justice.... violence is easy
when you don't hold that others are your equal......

violence is easy when you hold yourself above or below other people....

when we hold ourselves to be equal, then the very act of violence becomes much harder....

so, ask yourself, what truth is my truth? what truth can I live for or die for?

Kropotkin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

no idea is worth dying for, there are things to which ideas refer to and which ideas approximate worth living and risking life for. you do it all the time...There are no great mysteries nor great fantasies; all civilisation that has come into this world was a fruit of labour and of deep, honest and rational thought and of good-will. ORA ET LABORA - PRAY AND WORK.

[Peter Kropotkin]

but it isn't enough to know "what am I to do?" as much
as why that "doing" instead of another "doing".

it isn't enough to just go out and do something, one has
to understand why, why are we doing that something?

what values are we following when we "do" an action?

for every action requires some sort of value to justify or
to make sense of an action......

it isn't enough to be good, one must have a value to follow to make
being good, a 'worthy" effort....

"what am I to do?" is really about finding a value that we use to
explain our actions.. "what am I to do" needs a value to make sense of
that "what am I to do"... if I am going to "act" what values guides my actions...
so, when I act, do I use negative values like hate or anger or violence or lust?
or do I use positive values like love, non-violence/peace, hope, justice, to inform/guide
my actions?


so the "truth" I am looking for is the value/values that guides my actions......

so I am searching for some sort of guideline to guide my actions...

Kropotkin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

Your question is a fools errand.

80 percent of your actions are determined before you are born by your destiny(luck, age you come to live in, the part of the world, the social class) and by your genetic make-up(intelligence, personality and strength of character), already encoded and imprinted on your being seconds after your father impregnated your mother. the rest...is whatever you do with the rational mind the god has given you to differentiate you from the animals, the rational mind, not the free-will as it is often claimed since animals also have free-will but lack the rational agency to discern the truth from the false and the good from the evil. Your rational mind can express that approximate 20 percent of your freedom or be forgotten and thrashed into emotions and passions but that freedom will not be to be something completely else but to use that 80 percent in a way you see rational, to discipline yourself, to perceive evil in your own nature and try to oppose it, to evaluate yourself or others rationally and observe deficient personal characteristics and then decide to minimize them as much as possible etc. etc. in other words...to use your ability to think rationally(to whatever degree you possess it) to 'hone' yourself.

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

as the great Western mind(of the Christian school of thought as opposed to the Platonic idealism)has said:
Ein Mann kann tun, was er will, aber nicht, was er will.
A man can will as he wills but not will what he wills.
of course, Schopenhauer was not a Christian but was empathetic to the Christian morality and the great tradition of thought and knew he was a part of this great civilization of ours.

[obsrvr524]

Your question is a fools errand.

80 percent of your actions are determined before you are born by your destiny(luck, age you come to live in, the part of the world, the social class) and by your genetic make-up(intelligence, personality and strength of character), already encoded and imprinted on your being seconds after your father impregnated your mother. the rest...is whatever you do with the rational mind the god has given you to differentiate you from the animals, the rational mind, not the free-will as it is often claimed since animals also have free-will but lack the rational agency to discern the truth from the false and the good from the evil. Your rational mind can express that approximate 20 percent of your freedom or be forgotten and thrashed into emotions and passions but that freedom will not be to be something completely else but to use that 80 percent in a way you see rational, to discipline yourself, to perceive evil in your own nature and try to oppose it, to evaluate yourself or others rationally and observe deficient personal characteristics and then decide to minimize them as much as possible etc. etc. in other words...to use your ability to think rationally(to whatever degree you possess it) to 'hone' yourself.

Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - "freedom" means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.

so the "truth" I am looking for is the value/values that guides my actions......

You might consider this thread - Wholeness

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - "freedom" means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.
Dont change my words, I said an extent of freedom over yourself, not freedom, and nowhere did I denote that that which is a part of you and out of the control of your will must necessarily be evil or undesired; whatever context you are referring to was not mine.

[obsrvr524]

Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - "freedom" means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.
Dont change my words, I said an extent of freedom over yourself, not freedom, and nowhere did I denote that that which is a part of you and out of the control of your will must necessarily be evil or undesired; whatever context you are referring to was not mine.

Don't change my words - read them.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Your question is a fools errand.

80 percent of your actions are determined before you are born by your destiny(luck, age you come to live in, the part of the world, the social class) and by your genetic make-up(intelligence, personality and strength of character), already encoded and imprinted on your being seconds after your father impregnated your mother. the rest...is whatever you do with the rational mind the god has given you to differentiate you from the animals, the rational mind, not the free-will as it is often claimed since animals also have free-will but lack the rational agency to discern the truth from the false and the good from the evil. Your rational mind can express that approximate 20 percent of your freedom or be forgotten and thrashed into emotions and passions but that freedom will not be to be something completely else but to use that 80 percent in a way you see rational, to discipline yourself, to perceive evil in your own nature and try to oppose it, to evaluate yourself or others rationally and observe deficient personal characteristics and then decide to minimize them as much as possible etc. etc. in other words...to use your ability to think rationally(to whatever degree you possess it) to 'hone' yourself.

K: as this post is less insane then most of your posts, I shall answer it...

I don't hold that we are "fixed" or "determined" as you seem to think.....

even such matters as evolutionary determination isn't as much as we think....

the point I am aiming for is simple, we can overcome our inheritance, of birth
of the situation we are born in, of our current socio-economic class.....
we are not fixed by those things that you believe we are fixed into.....

I am not of who I was at birth.. I can change my thinking to better reflect
who I am... I can overcome....I was born in a very wealthy Midwest family...
and within 10 years was living in dire poverty.... and my situation now is of solid
middle class... but I don't have to hold middle class values....my values reflect
who I am, not my socio-economic situation....and that is the point... I am not
determined, as you hold, by genetics or by my socio-economic situation....

nor am I determined by evolution... I can overcome even evolution.....
by holding to values that overcome evolution.... for example, we have
certain evolutionary beliefs... for example, it is nature to react to certain
situations with violence... but I don't have to react to violent situations with
violence.... if you react to certain situations with violence, that is evolution at work....

we are born with passions, with feelings but we don't have to act or react with
passion or with feelings... we can rise above our evolutionary traits

I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62... as we age, we change and evolve....
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.. at 51/52....

I also hold that the journey as Nietzsche put it, going from animal to animal/human to
becoming fully human.. is a long journey.. going from animal to us today, animal/human
has taken a million years and the journey to go from today's animal/human to becoming
fully human might take another million years.......it certainly won't happen in my lifetime.....

but perhaps in my greatgrandchildren's lifetime might, might begin in earnest, the process
of becoming, becoming human.....of choosing to becoming human......
instead of wandering around in a daze like we do today.......

becoming human requires a choice... and that is what I am saying....

make a choice of becoming.... instead of blindly seeking a way into the future....

we can overcome even evolution to become who we are... which is being human,
and not animal/human......as is the case today....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Your question is a fools errand.

80 percent of your actions are determined before you are born by your destiny(luck, age you come to live in, the part of the world, the social class) and by your genetic make-up(intelligence, personality and strength of character), already encoded and imprinted on your being seconds after your father impregnated your mother. the rest...is whatever you do with the rational mind the god has given you to differentiate you from the animals, the rational mind, not the free-will as it is often claimed since animals also have free-will but lack the rational agency to discern the truth from the false and the good from the evil. Your rational mind can express that approximate 20 percent of your freedom or be forgotten and thrashed into emotions and passions but that freedom will not be to be something completely else but to use that 80 percent in a way you see rational, to discipline yourself, to perceive evil in your own nature and try to oppose it, to evaluate yourself or others rationally and observe deficient personal characteristics and then decide to minimize them as much as possible etc. etc. in other words...to use your ability to think rationally(to whatever degree you possess it) to 'hone' yourself.

Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - "freedom" means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.

so the "truth" I am looking for is the value/values that guides my actions......

You might consider this thread - Wholeness

K: read it and was bored by it...this is stuff I worked out decades ago...

Kropotkin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

???what are you two kooks on about???

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62... as we age, we change and evolve....
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.. at 51/52....

You are the same person...you have just aged...are you ok in your head or what???

[obsrvr524]

K: read it and was bored by it...this is stuff I worked out decades ago...

Maybe that is the key to your conundrum - because it seems clear to me that you haven't (else you wouldn't be asking the question).

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

who are you speaking to???he is no longer here...that person is gone.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62... as we age, we change and evolve....
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.. at 51/52....

You are the same person...you have just aged...are you ok in your head or what???

K: no, in fact, I am not the same person I was 10 or 15 years ago....
you are young and you don't see what the effect of age has on
one's viewpoint in life...as we age, our needs, our values, our
very understanding of life changes....what I thought was important
at age 20 or 30 or 40 or even at age 50.. isn't that important now at
age 61/62...

I am different because just about everything about me today is different....

Kropotkin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62... as we age, we change and evolve....
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.. at 51/52....

You are the same person...you have just aged...are you ok in your head or what???

K: no, in fact, I am not the same person I was 10 or 15 years ago....
you are young and you don't see what the effect of age has on
one's viewpoint in life...as we age, our needs, our values, our
very understanding of life changes....what I thought was important
at age 20 or 30 or 40 or even at age 50.. isn't that important now at
age 61/62...

I am different because just about everything about me today is different....

Kropotkin

are you really 62???sorry for insulting you LOL , maybe you are right, I guess we will live and see.

[Peter Kropotkin]

K:I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62... as we age, we change and evolve....
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago.. at 51/52....[/quote]

P: You are the same person...you have just aged...are you ok in your head or what???[/quote]

K: no, in fact, I am not the same person I was 10 or 15 years ago....
you are young and you don't see what the effect of age has on
one's viewpoint in life...as we age, our needs, our values, our
very understanding of life changes....what I thought was important
at age 20 or 30 or 40 or even at age 50.. isn't that important now at
age 61/62...
I am different because just about everything about me today is different....

P: are you really 62???sorry for insulting you LOL , maybe you are right, I guess we will live and see.[/quote]

K: yes, I turn 62 in less then two weeks.... and I have lived to see it already.. it is in your future
which is my current present... if that makes any sense....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

according to Marx,

"one can look for the origins and explanation of
all intellectual, cultural, and social change in the "material conditions"
of society, in economics rather then philosophy. Ideas alone would not
change the world; they themselves were the product- the rationalization-
of the economic needs and practices of a people"

I am a materialist in that I hold that we do look at the "material world"
and find what we can accept and find what we can change... but and this
is important, human existence is more then our material/economic needs and
practices....it is a part but not the whole... we need to have our psychological
needs met as well as the bodily needs of food, water, shelter, education, health care....

and in that achieving our physical needs we need to engage in the material world,
but that is not the end all, be all.... our mental and psychological needs are not met
in the material world, in material goods as Marx simply assumed....
having a house and sufficient food, water, education and health care does not
hold that our psychological or mental needs are being met also.......

indeed, one might, (and probably should) make the argument that our
materialistic society hinders or obstruct our attempts to meet our mental and/or
our psychological needs.....

an example of this is this search for meaning, what is the purpose of life/existence?

is it really the mindless accumulation of material goods and wealth that does nothing
to help us understand what it means to be human?

we mistake the accumulation of wealth/material goods as a sign that we have
achieved something worth achieving.. reaching the Maslow's pyramid of needs,
both physical and emotional/mental/psychological...... that we might think
that the accumulation of materials goods like cars, houses, couches, TV sets,
might help us reach our psychological needs of belonging, safety/security,
of connection, of esteem needs... whereas it becomes clear if you are accepted because
you have material goods in terms of belonging/connection, or esteem or safety/security,
then will you still be esteemed or have a sense of belonging if you no longer have those goods?

in other words, it is the material goods that has given you that acceptance/belonging,
safety/security, esteem, not anything you might bring to the table in regards to
your intangibles, like your kindness or intelligence or love or hope you bring other people....

it is far, far, far easier to achieve material wealth or become wealthy instead of
becoming wise or hold the other values I have talked about like being just or hopeful,
or kind or accountable or be an artist.... achieving wealth is far easier then
holding onto positive values...... why? because the task of achieving wealth has
nothing to do with the values that make life worth living... gaining wealth has
nothing to do with the value of existence... in fact, being honest or being fair or holding love
is detrimental to the accumulation of wealth...

let us take Bill gates for example... he achieved his wealth by being dishonest to
his customers..... not to pick on gates BTW.. he is just an example.....
pick anyone who is very wealthy and I can show you how they gained their
wealth separate and apart from values we want children to have......

FDR family gained much of its wealth from importing opium from India to China...

this is quite common of the wealthy... they came into their wealth by any means possible,
fair or not...the gaining of wealth was the important thing, not the values that makes
one a "better" person.....

one did not "cultivate" the values that creates meaning and purpose in life.....
values worth living for and worth dying for, values like
like justice or love or hope or honesty.... they are unimportant in the
actual existence of life in which the gaining of wealth is the fundamental
value of existence...

that is the failure of the materialistic view of existence..... it puts
the materialistic ahead of values which don't show up in the box score,
as it were.... the valuable traits that make us human, values like
love and hope and honesty.... people who hold those values are what
make society and the state actually work....or to put it another way
referenced above, it is the little things that allow a basketball team
to succeed and thrive.... you need players who do the dirty work,
rebound and steal the ball and dive to the floor after a loose ball,
things that don't show up in the box score, but are fundamental
to a team winning a game...the team that plays a fundamental
game will win the game over a team that goes for the glory
and everyone tries to be the hero.....

values are like the players that do the little things to win a game....
it much more glamorous to be the player who runs for the touchdown
or scores the points that win the game... it is the player who does the little
things that actually wins the game.... and that is holding values that
help keep society up and functional... not the guy who makes billions
from being dishonest... it is the rest of us who play the game right that
allows the society to function.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

1. Skepticism: a skeptical attitude: doubt to the truth of something....

2.In Philosophy....

the theory that certain knowledge is impossible......

many around here hold to skeptical belief in regards to other people beliefs,
but not to their own beliefs....that is off-limits to skepticism....

now some hold that skepticism is wrong because it can be taken too far..
and then everything, everything becomes suspect....but I believe that
we should hold some skepticism to people, thoughts, places and events.....

we cannot know that the sun will arise tomorrow morning... we are and should
be skeptical of anyone who claims that it is a "certainty" that the sun will rise tomorrow....

we cannot know this......we should be skeptical but we should be skeptical of
anyone who claims to know with "certainty" about anything.... unless you have seen it
or witness it yourself.... if you have "first hand" knowledge about something,
then we can lessen the skepticism...but notice I didn't say stop, I said, lessen
the skepticism.......

we are, at the exact same time, too skeptical and we don't have enough
skepticism.... partly because we hold onto beliefs, ism's, ideologies,
biases, superstitions, prejudice, that we should attack and seek the truth
about, but we are too skeptical of other people beliefs.... we can meet this
halfway.. and research other beliefs as we hear them......not just dismiss them
out of hand..... but as one who is old, we old folks know a thing a two about
failed beliefs.... the passage of time can be marked by the number of our
own failed beliefs in someone, something, and idea or an ism.......
an example for me would be my long time belief in Anarchism...
for almost a decade, I believed.. Oh, I believe with the passion of an
disciple of Christ....

and over the years, I was forced to face the obvious fact about anarchism..
that it was centuries ahead of its time...I could have waited for anarchism to
come to fruition, in a couple of centuries or, or I could engage in something
actually productive and useful while waiting out those centuries...
and so I became a liberal democrat...... not that I believed in it but
that it had a chance of becoming something in my lifetime, I could work it
to the point of becoming something in my lifetime... and anarchism will not
become something in my lifetime...

as one ages, one comes to understand, see, the various failed beliefs that
one has held over the years... the sheer faith I have had in ism's, ideologies,
people, events and idea's... that failed.. and had to be abandoned.....

one could almost write a biography of oneself going by the failed ism's and ideologies
and idea's in ones life.....just as an example, Abraham Lincoln at one time,
was a Whig Politician.. who later became a Republican.....

hold skepticism to an idea, ism or ideology because at some point, you will,
you will lose faith in that idea, ism or ideology..... ...

and falling out of love with an idea/ism hurts as much as falling out of love with
a person.... and for many of the same reasons.......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

boys and girls, the word of the day is
transcendental: which means universal, necessary/necessity....

so take a random list of things and tell me, which items on this
list is transcendental and which items are not......

food...
love....
god....
hope....
faith.....
wealth.....
fame......
knowledge.....
ubermensch....
philosophy.....
science.......
history.......
a turkey sandwich.....
politics.....
evolution.....
music.....
sports.....
play.......
thought.....
action......
color......
toilet paper.....

so which of the above is transcendental and which is not?

Kropokin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

did you type that out yourself?

[Peter Kropotkin]

did you type that out yourself?

K: yep....

Kropotkin

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

i think that the fact that our mammalian brains are limited and the world is evidently so inaccessible and impenetrable to us is transcendental as is the feeling that there might be a super-intelligence similar to ours in the universe as the question of the universes origin is by no means a one that is solved as many cretins and arrogant pricks try to imply and it is perfectly reasonable to suspect there might be a super-being operating underneath it all(although, obviously, not a 'Christian' one, in a sense of a personal God that cares for us). my 'religious' feelings come from reading about space and the universe. all religiosity stems from the awareness of death and passing, mine also, though it is godless and hopeless in this sense.

[Jakob]

Aw.

[polishyouthgotipbanned]

the ginger Jew lunatic from Holland has arrived...we are about to get enlightened in regards to the human condition.