a new understanding of today, time and space.

Agreed , but to what extent does our perceptions of the world pre-set, wherein opportuning only limited change?

Since presetting reality subtracts from autonomy and adds to determinancy into any capacity to change? That’s the crux of it, otherwise any real change may fail.

I can get fed up with life and like in the film ‘mosquito coast’ end up in even more unfavorable circumstances then the one escaped from, for individual change is only culpable as getting away from unfavorable ones.

I can go out into the street carrying banners but in most cases it would make little difference.

I think that this idea of why bother to act because it
will not “change” anything is really irrelevant…
It doesn’t matter if carrying banners on the street changes anything or not…
the point is to carry the banners regardless if anyone notices or not…

The point is to become aware and that is the real value of carrying the
banner in the streets. By carrying the banner, you create awareness
in people and the change if any, occurs there… in the changing
of our perceptions…the value of the banner in the street is not
to convince people, but to create awareness, to create an perception…

The change we create is not a physical one, but a mental one…
we become aware of injustice as a mental act, not a physical one…
It is in the changing of the perceptions that create change, not
necessarily in the carrying around the banner…

Does this mean that the world is a mental world?
an “idealist world”?

Not at all, physical matter exists, tree’s, stoves,
cars, plants, dogs and stars all exists…

but what the “meaning” of each of these is the question…
You can view, perceive a dog as an animal or a pet or food
or a working animal or………You can create your own meaning
as to what a dog means…… Most people view dogs as animals,
but that doesn’t mean dogs must be view, seen as animals…
we can view a dog in a wide variety of ways and all of them will be right.

How do you view human beings? Are they evil or good or food or
thought or possibilities or sons or daughters or victims or
godlike? does it matter? You tell me…….

I see human beings as beings that have possibilities…
I see the past, present and future in every human being……

Now you may see human beings differently and that is fine…
does that mean human beings don’t exists because we see them
differently? no, not at all…we perceive human beings differently
due to our childhood indoctrinations and then we view them
differently after we our overcome of those childhood indoctrinations
and we overcome and become who we are…….

think of Dickens “Christmas Carol” Scrooge changed
because his perceptions of the world change, the world
itself didn’t change in any way, shape or form……
How he viewed the world changed and it made all the difference
in the world…… So please feel free to carry those banners
on the street because all you are doing is getting people to
become aware, aware of what injustice is or what hate is or
what is the nature of god is…………

The point is not to change the world but to make it aware…
change will come after awareness happens…

Kropotkin

Again right on, except it has do begin with self awareness then extend to public awareness and the public is very if not impossibly resistant , if it were not the case, we wouldn’t be in the situation that we are in.

if we think of human beings as a means to a goal, such
as human beings only value is to create wealth, human beings
are the means to achieve wealth, then we have devalued human beings
to just being a means to an end, an unhealthy and dangerous way of
thinking about human beings……

the rise of capitalism and the rise of the industrial revolution
came about at the same time, you can make arguments that
one caused the other, but the point is that both capitalism
and the industrial revolution atomized man……. in other words,
human beings were alienated, disconnected from the past thinking
about human beings… human beings on some level were connected to
each other, either by religion or history or associations or economic
means and that connection allowed human beings to be connected
to each other…the rise of capitalism, the industrial revolution
disconnected people from each other, atomizing people into
single atoms floating through the universe with no connection to
each other or to any ism, ideology, bias, superstitions………

in our atomization, we became alienated from ourselves, other
human beings, history, other systems………….

the point now is to reunite ourselves in some way that
connects us or no longer alienate ourselves from each
other or to any ism or ideology or history………

History for example, no longer unites people into a “common cause”
because history has no bearing in a world that is focus on
using people to create profit/money…… how does knowing history
help create profit for a corporation? It doesn’t and so it isn’t valued
anymore and thus we become alienated from history, we are no longer
connected to history, to our past……. and that is where we are now…
alienated and disconnected from history and each other and social structures
like government and other systems because to connect us to any of these
social systems is to reduce or eliminate profit/money and we certainly can’t
have that, can we?

Until we remove the pursuit of profits/money as our primary
function of human beings, we shall continue to be alienated
or disconnected from society, each other, even disconnected/alienated
from ourselves…not until we begin to have a new vision, a new way
of seeing human beings can we reconnect to who we are or no longer be alienated
from each other or society or from ourselves………

How we view ourselves and each other is simply another function of
our childhood indoctrinations… we must overcome and become
who we are which means we will no longer be disconnected
from each other or from ourselves…… we must overcome and
no longer be alienated from each other or our system or our lives……

Kropotkin

Ok Peter.

Lets say such is within the realm of possibility given today’s short comings.

How would anyone attempt to achieve such a goal, in short of a revolution to overthrow Capitalism and institute another from of governance. Communism? (Which has been a trampled upon consequence of socialism, with more than enough certainty that in this respect IT Will Happen Again-because no one understands or, remembers history, and thereby are condemned - to repeat it)

And I wonder why everyone can be so short sighted?

That leaves only one conduit- National Socialism , and that too has been tried.

Can anyone think of anotherr way out except cyber-political necessity? Is this maybe what really is happening right here right now?

Ok Peter.

Lets say such is within the realm of possibility given today’s short comings.

How would anyone attempt to achieve such a goal, in short of a revolution to overthrow Capitalism and institute another from of governance. -Communism? (Which has been a trampled upon consequence of socialism, with more than enough certainty that in this respect IT Will Happen Again-because no one understands or, remembers history, and thereby are condemned - to repeat it)

And I wonder why everyone can be so short sighted?

That leaves only one conduit- National Socialism , and that too has been tried.

Can anyone think of another way out except cyber-political necessity? Is this maybe what really is happening right here right now?

after several ugly days at work, I can finally post…

I am not ignoring you Meno… But I am going in a slightly
different way today…

our word today boys and girls is…

Teleology

is a reason or explanation for something in function of its end,
goal or purpose… It is derived from two greek words,
telos (end, goal, purpose) and logos (reason, explanation)

We humans understand things better when we can create a
story or a narrative about things…so we create stories
about how humans have their goal or purpose in reaching heaven
or avoid hell… that becomes the reason for or the explanation
of why we human exists…….god created us to serve him
and if we fail to obey, we go to hell… that an teleology
explanation for why humans exists, the final goal or purpose
of human beings is how we are to reach heaven or to avoid hell…….

everything is explained in terms of its final goal or purpose…

Before Darwin who published his “On the Origins of Species” in 1859,
it was easy to create a story, a narrative about humans goal or purpose…
and that goal, purpose was the creation story of the bible or the
Buddhist narrative or the Hindu narrative or the Muslim narrative about
the beginning or what was the goal or purpose of human beings…
that was the value of religion… it created an easy to understand
story or narrative about human purpose and human’s goals and purpose…

But then Darwin came along and we are unable to create a story,
a narrative about the goals and purpose of human beings because
Darwin’s evolution, his story or narrative doesn’t allow one to easily create a
a story about the goal or purpose of human beings……

In the last 160 years since Darwin’s book came out, what historically
has happened? You have the full bloom of the industrial revolution
and the events of the 20th century, the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the dropping of nuclear bombs and the Great Depression……

Now can you make a direct connection between the “One the origin
of Species” in 1859 and what has happened since then? Perhaps, but
more as bricks in the wall type of thing…… in other words, as
part of our overall action and understanding of the world and human beings…

This understanding of goal and purpose helps create a better story or
narrative about ourselves and what is our “meaning of life”.

Now Marx in his writings help create a goal or purpose in life
with his theory that the substructure of human beings was
economic in nature and that we are economic creatures…
and his theories was that as we pass through the various
economic phases, we shall reach the end phase which was
the worker paradise, the end of the class structure where
everyone was equal socially because everyone was equal
economically… remember, for Marx everything was
seen through the lens of economics and class structure…
so Marx, in his own way, created a goal, purpose for human beings……
It was Marx that brought about the term, “the end of history”…
that has been the topic of conversation over the last century
and half………

Now compare Marx’s vision with capitalism vision……. There is no
final goal or purpose in capitalism… you just keep buying stuff forever…
Capitalism is an economic theory, just like Marx, but without a goal
or purpose…….Capitalism is the understanding of human beings
through an economic lens… we are seen as economic beings,
just as Marx saw people…the only difference between communism
and capitalism is communism has a goal, a purpose which isn’t in
capitalism………

Let us put this into different context, what kind of story or
narrative would you need to describe capitalism?
No matter what story or narrative you use, at no point would
you be able to come up with a goal or purpose that worked………

Human beings want a story, a narrative about, well everything…
we work best when we have a story or narrative that we can
use to justify our actions or our beliefs…….

so what story or narrative about today, right now, that
you can use to create a goal or a purpose for human beings?

Today, right now, we don’t have a story or a narrative to tell…
we just have policy differences, build the wall vs don’t build the wall…
but those policies difference doesn’t lead us to any understanding
about what is our goal or our purpose as individuals, a people,
a culture, a society or as a nation………

so what story or narrative can we tell that will give
us some sense of not only who we are but what is our
goal, purpose?

It is not enough to say, we must increase our GDP by 10% every year,
we must say why, why do we need to do such a thing. If we were to
understand things in their why, we might be better able to
understand our goal, our purpose……………

Kropotkin

To continue this idea about a story or narrative,
when the Buddha says that life is suffering and the point
is to end the suffering, that is a story, a narrative……
and when it is said that the point of human existence is to
pursuit happiness or to search for certainty or to seek wisdom,
that is a story, a narrative we use to help us understand
who we are and what is possible and what is the goal, purpose
of life…………

Now one of my things is that the search for wisdom begins, not
as the Greeks claim by wonder, but by doubt. I believe the beginning
of wisdom is doubt………… The reason I have a hard time “selling”
this idea of doubt being a major driver of human existence is that
there is not a very good story or narrative about doubt. If I had a story or
narrative about doubt, I could use that to better “sell” this idea of
doubt being a prime reason for our search for knowledge and understanding…

Sometimes the problem lies not in the idea but in the creation of a story
or a narrative about the use of the idea that will allow people to better understand
that idea…sometimes the need for a story or narrative outweighs the
value of the idea even if it is a great idea… without a valid or decent
story the idea becomes far less important…

so sometimes we hold unto stories or narratives even though the idea
behind the story/narrative is not a very good idea…… the narrative/story
is what keeping the idea in play……….not the idea itself………

This is true about capitalism with its fiction about the “rugged individual”
and the Horatio Alger stories that still live on in America…… the stories,
the narratives help keep alive a bad idea…………

Because of its nature, the stories/narrative about capitalism is better
then the stories/narrative about communism…the narrative/story about
political systems is also better with democracy then it is with socialism……

equality/socialism/communism as a story/narrative is less interesting then a story/narrative
about individuals striving for something as with democracy or capitalism……

but does that make the idea of socialism/communism to be of less value because
it doesn’t tell a good story?

We have to become aware of the stories/narratives in our lives because sometimes
we become so enamored with the story, we forget to see the value of the point
or reason of the story…just because capitalism can tell a better story doesn’t
mean capitalism is a better system then communism…….it just means capitalism
has better stories/better narrative… nothing more………

Kropotkin

Human beings react from emotions far more then
they react from logic or reason…….

We relate and connect with other human beings, indeed all life,
on a emotional level…

When I am checking and an idiot is in front of me,
I can just look at the person in back and without any words,
we can, on a emotional level, communicate… I might have never
seen that person before and yet we can have non-verbal
communication by just our body language or facial expressions……

we relate to each other on a feeling/emotional level…
not on a rational level and this is important to understand about
people……… oftentimes the words we use are far less precise and less
accurate then our emotional/feeling we use to relate to each other……

words are more an rational response, we use words rationally
whereas our body language is emotional and oftentimes, very,
very precise……

as we relate to people on an emotional level, this is why stories
and narratives work better for us in the way we understand and
relate to the world…… stories create an emotional understanding
for us that an intellectual/rational explanation won’t create for us…

Why this is true is really irrelevant… it just is……
and we must understand the world in the fashion that
we, by evolution, have come to relate to or understand the world…

look at animals, say when two dogs meet or when to cats meet…
look at the physical language that the two of them react to…
we are heirs to that physical language that animals use to communicate with
each other………… we have learn how to relate to each other and how we
communicate to each other emotionally, with millions of years of
evolution behind us……. it is inherited in us and thus part of our genetic
background, part of our DNA and there is nothing we can to do to change this…

it is by our physical language that we relate and connect to each other…………

someone who can’t read body language is at a distinct disadvantage to someone
who can read body language……

and someone who relates to stories and narratives has an advantage over someone
who cannot relate to stories or narratives………

this emotionalism that connects and allows us to relate to each other is
an very important factor in our relationship to each other… and is quite
often missed by philosophers in their failed pursuit to understand people…

Kropotkin

It is this intimacy of our physical language that allows us
to engage in this communication… again, physical language is our
body language, our facial expressions that I am talking about…

we connect with each other on an intimate level, by either seeing each
other or by being able to relate to each other in some fashion……

Yesterday, a co-worker had an heart attack at work, I was told this last
night when I picked up my paycheck and schedule, my reaction was
different then if I had witness this event in person…we connect on
a physical level, we react with more force if we can see the other person…
it is our physical contact with each other that allows us to relate and
communicate with each other…I would have felt much more strongly
about her heart attack had I seen it and not just hear about it………
I still don’t know if she is ok, but my reaction is because I didn’t “witness”
the heart attack………… our level of relationship is really at the level
of if we can see it… if it is physically present, we have a much stronger
reaction to something instead of just hearing about it………

It is from this physical interaction that we “get” what
ideas really mean… we can have an mental idea of injustice,
but if we witness injustice, we have a much better idea of what
injustice is…… the Greeks were right in thinking that understanding,
wisdom is visual…and that is the problem with America today…
we hear of injustice but we don’t see or witness injustice in person…
and thus we downplay injustice because when it is a mental vision,
instead of a emotional visual reaction to injustice… If I see injustice,
I get mad and upset whereas if I read about it, I don’t get upset or at least
as upset about it…this intimacy of seeing is far more important
then just hearing about things………

This is why when we see plays in person, we react different then
if we just read the play……… Hamlet becomes, has a different feel
to it when seen as opposed to just reading about it…
we relate to it better, we understand it better if we see it, then
if we read it or hear about it………

This is an important factor in our understanding of human beings
and what are their potential, their possibilities…….

Kropotkin

Ok, now its possible to answer Meno….He asks:

M: Ok Peter.

Lets say such is within the realm of possibility given today’s short comings.

How would anyone attempt to achieve such a goal, in short of a revolution to overthrow Capitalism and institute another from of governance. -Communism? (Which has been a trampled upon consequence of socialism, with more than enough certainty that in this respect IT Will Happen Again-because no one understands or, remembers history, and thereby are condemned - to repeat it)

And I wonder why everyone can be so short sighted?

That leaves only one conduit- National Socialism , and that too has been tried.

Can anyone think of another way out except cyber-political necessity? Is this maybe what really is happening right here right now?
[/quote]
K: here is the question of the story/narrative plays into it…
The narrative is that commununism failed and yet, the fact is
that Soviet Communism lasted only slightly less then Athenian
democracy. The narrative however is that Athenian democracy
was successful and the Soviet Communism wasn’t succeful…
but upon what grounds are you going to make that argument?

daughter and wife call my name, back later…

Kropotkin

K: here is the question of the story/narrative plays into it…
The narrative is that commununism failed and yet, the fact is
that Soviet Communism lasted only slightly less then Athenian
democracy. The narrative however is that Athenian democracy
was successful and the Soviet Communism wasn’t succeful…
but upon what grounds are you going to make that argument?

daughter and wife call my name, back later…

Kropotkin
[/quote]
That’s a tough one .
But, here is a go at it:

Athenian democracy was in tune with Plato’s republic, before the sophists grabbed the spotlight.

The foundations did not enter the realm of doubt as we moderns had to learn the hard way with Descartes.
Their doubt was not really posed in the either/or method, they could listen to both , conflict less, their logic did not yet cause civil disobedience and the such, because they still believed in the good of having wisdom.

Then the lights went out and then the darkness of the middle ages were scripted by monks who revised the concept of guilt into their alchemycal formulations .

The doubt became a conflation between the ideal and the real situation, forming a.conundrum, geared for gathering the flock of believers.

The late middle ages and the startup of enlightenment created a huge conflict, socially, starting with the Reformation and the American/French revolutions, and the pover of the new fkind masses had to be eventually controlled.

The either/or problem resurfaced with a.vengeance, and Hegel tried to infuse it with a presumed absolute idealism, while Kant tried to solve the puzzle, finally Marx merely changed the same alchemical formula by renaming spirit by magical conversion into spiritual materialism, which worked for a while, until people began to compare that with other ideologies which promised AND delivered more subter fuses and ‘freedoms’.

Both failing, (falling) the spiritual idea behind the magic of free enterprise, based on the wisdom guiding the efforts of the ‘founding fathers’ makes more sense.then the idea of social raising and responsibility taken by The State. ( The low wages in the Soviet Union made the Father State a pitiable comparative model to Uncle Sam, who was wise and generous beyond comprehension.

A poor free man within a wealthy society is better off then a controlled man , especially where, the societal dictator cam never find the graft, and they again compared it with the wise and compassionate Uncle Sam.

The same Uncle Sam who is complicit in The Revolution, with the Geek Wisdom implicit and the spotless moral compass represented in The Statue of Liberty.

The great doubt of then Great Divide, has not yet, ideologically touched our pristine shores yet, with most of is living in the promise of.Levittown.

K: here is the question of the story/narrative plays into it…
The narrative is that commununism failed and yet, the fact is
that Soviet Communism lasted only slightly less then Athenian
democracy. The narrative however is that Athenian democracy
was successful and the Soviet Communism wasn’t succeful…
but upon what grounds are you going to make that argument?

daughter and wife call my name, back later…

Apparently, my wife’s car was broken into and the window was broken…
We had to deal with that…and now I am back…

When last seen, I was comparing Athens to the Soviet Union…
the length of time for the two is similar, roughly 80 years…
or basically for Athens, the length of Socrates lifetime…

and yet, Athens is considered one of the great success stories
and the Soviet Union which existed roughly the same time length
is not… but why? I have suggested that the reason is the
story or narrative for each one is different…

Like Athens, the Soviet Union had a great empire…
and the ideology of both dominated the known world…

If we consider power as the connection between Athens
and the Soviet Union, then both had a great deal of
power, both internally and externally……

The vision created by both excited the world and many people
came from around the world to be a part of both their vision……

So what is the difference? The narrative of both is different……

For example, one of the great insults of modern America is calling
someone a “communist” and yet, people can’t correctly identify
what a “communist” actually is… they don’t know and they are simply
repeating the childish insults they have heard……

so what we must be aware of is, that the narrative we repeat is often
just a replay of other stories or narratives we have heard…
It may not be the truth because stories/narratives are always
about the truth. The stories we hear are often meant to be
directive narratives, a directive narrative is a story/narrative which
is meant to direct the listener to adapt or accept a certain point
of view…that is the point of the insult “communist”… it is meant
to direct the listener to adapt a certain point of view which is
negative against the person being accused of being a “communist”…

It is all about the perception that is being created… not the reality,
but the perception, the viewpoint that is being created by such
negative language as Hippy, communist, socialist, undemocratic,
against people……

If you listen to someone being called a “Communist” and you
have a negative connotation toward that person, then
you have been brain washed… you have allowed the
narrative or story to influence your perception of someone…
a narrative or story that is meant to influence your perception
negatively about someone. That is the point of the negative
narrative or story about the Soviet Union… it is meant to
influence you into a negative perception of communism…

but what is the truth? you have to research and understand what has
happened. As I have noted before, the Soviet Union was not
a communist society… it was a dictatorship posing as a
economic system……… for communism is an economic system,
not a political system and that is where the failure occurred……
they stretch the economic into a political and it failed for that reason…

Marxism as understood by Marx has never been tried… the Soviet Union
and China and all the other “communist” society, were actually
dictatorship posing as an economic system………

But that is not the story or narrative we hear today…
and that false story or narrative is driven by those
who benefit from the false story or narrative and
and that is the 1% of American society……

it is in their best interest to negate any other economic system
or political system because the 1% dominate our current system
and for them, they want complete control and one way to do
that is to create a narrative or story that negates other possibilities
so that we have only one choice and that choice is capitalism/democracy…

but the problem with that is the entire selling point of capitalism/democracy
is that we have choices but our choices is limited to the cars we buy
or the cereal we purchase, but we have no choice in our systems,
either economically or politically… and thus the system of choice has
no choice when it is about the overall system…………

you have to pay attention to the story or the narrative that is offered,
because quite often the story or narrative is meant to influence you into
a negative belief about something or someone……
the stories or the narrative is quite often is propaganda and that
is what we see today, the narrative of the Soviet Union is
nothing more then Propaganda meant to influence you…….
it was not an economic system but a political system and a
dictatorship at that, but the Soviet Union had nothing to do with
Marx’s vision of how we should exist and how we should spend our time…

Kropotkin

“and yet, Athens is considered one of the great success stories
and the Soviet Union which existed roughly the same time length”

Yes, Athens exists merely 50 times as long as the USSR did.

K: it wouldn’t hurt you to learn a little history…….The Athens that was
the Athens of fame, lasted from roughly 480 BC to 404 BC…The Athens
afterward until the Romans conquered it, was a non factor in
philosophical, social, military history… Hellenism which was
the ism that Alexander the Great carried all over the world, that
was based in both Greece and the Mediterranean world, not just Athens…

Great philosophical schools were established in several cities
around the mediterrianean and Alexanderia was the great
city of knowledge during Hellenism…but Athens was just
another city living off its previous fame, but it had nothing
to offer unlike the time period I am speaking of…

Kropotkin

Americans and their ideas about Europe.
You people really need an education system.

Skepticism: a skeptical attitude; doubt to the truth
of something

2. Philosophy: the theory that certain knowledge is impossible…

The question of Skepticism has been that Skepticism leads one
to nihilism or even worse, Atheism. Being an atheist means
one is lead away from the “truth” of god, with god as being
the definition of truth…

but why this fear of Nihlism? The last century and half has
been a nihilistic age and no one else seems to notice or care…

But can we connect the rise of Skeptism, the scientific age
with the 20th century nihilism? I have stated more then once
that I believe that the rise of the industrial revolution is
a greater cause for our age nihilism then the rise of science…

If Skeptism is the illness, the sickness unto death, then
what might be the cure of this illness?

We must continue to doubt for the path to wisdom lies
along the path of doubt, so what amount of doubt is acceptable
and what isn’t? It seems to me that as in all things, moderation is
the answer to our question of doubt…

I am Skeptical about god and capitalism and modernity,
but must I be so immersed in doubt that I cannot exists in
the modern world of god of capitalism and of modernity?

I am an atheist and yet that fact doesn’t prevent me from
acting and being in the world… we can engage in doubt,
Skepticism and still be able to function in the world…
we can still go to work and pay our taxes and riding the roller coaster at
Disneyland…our doubt, our skepticism must not prevent us from
engagement with the world…… we can doubt and still engage……

as with everything, it becomes a question of our overcoming…
we can overcome, even skepticism and nihilism…… if, if we
remember that it is our engagement in the world that matters,
the skepticism and doubt only provide us with a guide, a map
to the world, doubt isn’t a absolute road to follow, but more of
a guide to allow us to understand the world and ourselves better……

Kropotkin

K: and yet, you still haven’t proven your point or disputed my point…

Kropotkin

I find it confusing that I can “see” or understand
questions that other people can’t even see is a problem…

I find existence itself to be a question, and yet I don’t see
other people thinking it so……

and I don’t understand how people cannot see existence as
a question……. How are we to live? In what should we believe in?
What values are values worth having? and I don’t see any concern
by anybody else as to what I see as vital concerns………

If existence is the question, then what might the answer be?

As I prepare to go to work on one of the busiest days of the year
and I see people running around for no real apparent reason,
spending money on other people with gifts and to show what?
it really is a reflection on those people trying to find the “perfect” gift…
What does all this materialism meant to do? and what does it really do?

existence is the question but where does one go to find the answer?

I have questions without any answers…….

Why don’t people see how the religion of materialism is
negating their lives… and their values

I don’t know how people cannot see the nihilism of our modern age
which is destroying their lives and the human values of love, peace,
hope, charity, justice………….

I offer this as my Christmas message…

This materialism by which we live our lives is also the mechanism
that is destroying our lives and our values……….

is anybody out there? does anybody care?
do you see what I see?

the beginning of finding a solution to any problem is recognition that
a problem exists and today we don’t have any sort of recognition that
an existential problem exists with the very system in which we have
engaged with…we don’t see the nihilism that is destroy who we are
and what is possible…

and so I go to work, and I wonder as I work in the very heart
of our materialism………

Kropotkin

I have often wrote about this question of who we are and what
are our possibilities…but I haven’t address a major point of
being human……

The other day I was at work and a couple I had known for a long while
came in and while speaking to them, I managed to completely and totally
insult them. It was a horrifying experience that should shame and
embarrass my family for generations to come, 6 or 7 generations at least…

Since then, I have wondered about the house beating myself up over this
completely idiotic and incredibly stupid thing I said…My wife has notice
and has commented on how I am talking to myself more these days…
well yeah, I made a complete and total ass out of myself in front of
multiple people and this very nice couple who didn’t deserve any of it…

The question is not what happens when we make a total ass out of ourselves
but the question becomes, what is next? How do I mentally recover from
this… we humans, this is part of being human… making complete and total
asses ourselves… the difference between me and most people is, I do it on a
regular basis…

So they say that confession is good for the soul and I can see how confessing the
idiotic words of mine would be good for the soul, but I doubt this couple
will ever talk to me again and frankly I don’t think they will or should for that
matter………

So I confess my sins but it is not enough to confess one’s soul, we must learn
from our actions…we must come with our flaws to some new
understanding of who we are… and we are flawed creatures…

and that too is part of being human… making a complete and total
ass out of yourself is part of being human…but how do we jib this
with how philosophy has been done for 2500 years? Philosophers
don’t talk about what it really means to be human, they ask themselves
what is the extent of knowledge or how can we deconstruct this sentence
or paragraph and while that may be interesting, it doesn’t speak to the
real question of being human, how we fuck up and how we regret our
fuck up and how do we recover from our fuck up’s………… that is truly
our human mission…… it isn’t just about the pursuit of “life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” that drives us, but the redemption from being
flawed human beings…This is a rather strong selling point of religion and
it addresses this point beautifully…we confess our sins and then
we are forgiven by the point man for the lord… and yet, we are still
flawed beings… being forgiven isn’t enough for us…… we must find our
way to become better human beings………

we confess our sins… and we can think of other examples of
where confession does the soul good… the entire basis of Freud
“talking cure” is to confess to the psychoanalyst……… relieve
your burdens in the “modern” way… without all that religious context…….

we also have the confessions of philosophers like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard,
who also have confess their sins, their “modern” sins to us…….

So how do we transmute our sins, our making complete asses out of
ourselves into an understanding of who we are and what are out possibilities?

How do we overcome ourselves? By accepting or by knowing we will
continue to make asses out of ourselves, for that is being human…

we cannot change that but we can become more forgiving of our innate
instinct to fuck up…….

in the end, all this is to somehow rationalize or relieve myself of
my burden, my weight of asshood from my soul…………

but the real trick is more then just relieving my burden of idiocy from
my soul, I must somehow turn this into something more then feeling
the burden on my soul… I must engage with this in some positive manner…
in some manner that will allow me to come out of this a better person,
a more compassionate person, a person that doesn’t routinely makes
an ass out of myself………….

we must get more from philosophy then the limits of knowledge or
an understanding of the original/first cause of the universe or
how we must read text… philosophy must dare to tread where
psychology now reigns supreme……. for the answer lies in some
fashion where philosophy and psychology combine into a new
understanding of what it means to be human…….it is not enough to
wonder what are the limits of knowledge when we could be asking ourselves
as to why it is important to understand what are the limits to knowledge?

The quest to understand ourselves is as much psychology as it is philosophy……
for we are not just about the limits of rationality that makes us human but
about the parts of us that make asses out of ourselves on a daily basis………

the truth is we can never find out who we truly are unless we engage
in philosophical psychology…… we must understand who we are in terms
of the rational and in terms of the emotional………. we must unite our
search for what it means to be human with a new emphasis on both
our rational and our emotional side……………

as for me, the burden on my soul is rather large and I hope to someday,
find out why, why must I make an ass out of myself?

this is just another step along my path to discover my own
humanness within me……… to become human, more fully human
is to accept this need for asshood that I quite often undertake…

My name is Kropotkin and I can be an ass… it doesn’t make it right,
just understandable………and part of being human is understanding that
I can be an ass as well as loving or kind or nice or………

Kropotkin