The question of man, who are we and what is our possibilities…
we have had many different answers…the Buddha said we are about
suffering and some have said we are about self-interest and others have
said we are about god and some have said, we are about the search for
knowledge…
but these are all secondary possibilities…
they are not the primary answer to who we are and what is our possibilities…
the first and foremost answer to the question of who we are and what
are our possibilities is simply this, we are social creatures…
you don’t think about humans alone, no, you think about human in
as they are… in groups or a society or a family…
we do not and cannot exist alone… that is where we must first
start with any understanding of the human creature…
we exist within a group…we are social creatures who need and must
exists within a group…
that is the beginning of understanding who we are and what are our possibilities…
we are group creatures and we can only find our possibilities within a group…
we can only find out who we are by the comparison and contrasting
ourselves with other human beings…we measure ourselves, as it were,
with other human beings… and in that measurement we see, where we are
as human beings…this comparison between us humans is one way
we find out who we are…
bob is a friendly guy…it is only by comparison can we understand that
bob is a friendly guy… we can find out if we are fast or smart or
clever or tall only by comparing, measure ourselves against someone else…
that doesn’t mean life is a competition… competition is just another way
to measure ourselves against other human beings…
let us look at a particular circumstance… what if we all acted
with only self interest in groups… say the family group…
what if families members acted only with self interest…
that family would fail… a group only works when
enough members act within the group context…
take a basketball team… what if every member of the team played
only with their self interest in mind? that team wouldn’t win one
game…for a group, any group to succeed, you must have the group individuals
act with the group in mind… not with every member acting only with
their own self interest in mind…you cannot name me one group
situation where the group succeeds where the individuals members
of the group only have their self interest in mind…
and yet, believers in capitalism would have us believe that
capitalism succeeds because of the individual members
having their self interest fulfilled… why does a rule that
doesn’t work anywhere else, work here?
it doesn’t… … and the failure is self-evident in massive
wealth inequality and the widespread suffering in the
capitalist world…here suffering is not the cause of things,
but the result of things…as suffering is not a cause but
a result…
every team, family, work situation that has more then 1 person,
is a situation where one must engaged in working for the team and not
achieving personal self interest before the team, family or work situation…
we must begin with understanding, that we are social creatures and that
we can only exist within a group situation and in any group situation,
we cannot have members of the group practice their own self interest
before the group because that will lead, sooner or later to group failure…
these are the beginning of the understanding of who we are and what are our possibilities…
so let us look at what are our possibilities…
achieving our possibilities is only possible within a social context, within
a group… we cannot achieve anything within a personal, individual context…
I can only understand how far I have come as a human being within the context
and comparison with other human beings… am I a good person? only comparing myself
to other people can I learn that answer…I am better then some and not as good as others…
I can use the ones who are good people to become my teachers and I can learn to become
a better person using those better people as a model of how to be good…
thus the value of a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi or a Socrates… we can compare
and contrast ourselves with these good people and then begin to understand who we
are and what is possible for us…
I may not be able to run a 4 minute mile, but I can follow Socrates or Descartes
or MLK and become a better person… I can follow philosophy and learn what it
means to pursue wisdom… but it is only in context and comparison that I can learn
who I am and what possibilities exists for me… I can join a team of
people who are trying to discover who they are and what is possible for them…
just another group of humans… and that is all we are and all we can ever become…
group of people… that is the beginning and the end of our understanding of
who we are and what can we become…the group… be it a large group, millions or a small
group, a family… but not individually… we cannot learn who we are alone…
it requires a group, a society, a city, a state, a culture, a team for us to learn
who we are and what is possible…
Kropotkin