a new understanding of today, time and space.

[promethean75]

my question is offered up for you...to get you to question your
basic principles, to question your beliefs, to question your ism's,
prejudice, superstitions, myths and habits

My answer: You better ruuun. Run fast for your mother, fast for your fahTHA. Run for your children for your sisters and buuraTHAS. Leave all your love and your longing behind, you can't carry it with you if you want to survive. The dog days are ovaaHUH... the dog days aaare duhhuun....

[Peter Kropotkin]

my question is offered up for you...to get you to question your
basic principles, to question your beliefs, to question your ism's,
prejudice, superstitions, myths and habits

My answer: You better ruuun. Run fast for your mother, fast for your fahTHA. Run for your children for your sisters and buuraTHAS. Leave all your love and your longing behind, you can't carry it with you if you want to survive. The dog days are ovaaHUH... the dog days aaare duhhuun....

K: ok, and moving right along.... I have been trying to connect western philosophy
with eastern philosophy...….for example, the Vedic philosophy/religion that came
before the Buddha, was very concerned with what we would understand as
the pursuit of knowledge, what is knowledge and how do we know it?
In the west, this was the dominent philosophy from Descartes to Kant...
roughly 250 years......we have the Buddha who was concerned with
suffering, which in the west came into focus during the existentialism
period during the 20th century....and we have the ideas of values...
the Buddha doesn't really mention values per se nor does Socatres...
the first person who seems to place values at the forefront of their thinking
seems to be Jesus....

and we, our modern times seems to have forsaken values......
such a shame really.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

in randomly reading the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy"
I came across the entry for Isaiah Berlin...…

This entry had several interesting idea's taken from Berlin's thinking.....

Are values "found" or are they "discovered"
are values discoverable "out there" as ingredients in the universe....

or are values human creations and derive their authority from this
fact? are values like freedom found within the human being or derived
from something else?

are values "subjective" or "objective" which would suggest that subjective
values are values found within us or objective which would suggest that values
are found outside of us?

is freedom an "objective" or an "subjective" value? does the value of freedom
come from the necessity of human nature or does it arise from individuals?

did the Athenians understand freedom the same way we do because
human nature is the same and as such, every human being can find
the value of freedom within their own soul or, or do we
understand freedom through a different lens then the Greeks,
which suggest that freedom is not a universal value.. it is not inherent
within every human being...…...different values for different times
based upon the needs of the individual/society at the time.. and that is
the subjective value at work...…

are values situationally derived, every situation demands different
values and that changes across time...…. or is Gandhi right?
Love is a eternal value, a objective value that exists in every
human being across every time period?

confusion arises because we haven't learned to understand values
in their historical context...is Jesus talking about love the same
way as Gandhi and the same way as Tolstoy talks about it?
and the same way we currently think about love?

how exactly are we to understand values?

what is love, freedom, justice, peace?

how are we going to understand these values?

subjectively or objectively? or as both subjective and objective
which is situational values...…

Berlin also spoke about pluralism values vs mono values....
Berlin rejected any attempt to understand the universe
by any monotheist value or one method of understanding
the universe... He would have rejected Spinoza for
offering up a single viewpoint of the universe.....

we understand pluralistic values as a western
tendency to tolerance of values as being an essential
aspect of the inheritance from the Enlightenment.....

those who reject the Enlightenment program reject
tolerance and pluralistic values.... these rejecters
of the Enlightenment are supporters of a mono value.....

this is an authoritarian vision of values....
one value fits all...…..and the authorities
tell us what that value is...… usually the value chosen
is obedience, usually...…..and usually the values chosen is objective value

for subjective values are subject to being chosen by anybody and
the authoritarian wants to be the one to pick the value to be
in effect for that society...….thus the tendency in authoritarian
society is to preach objective values and to give that objective value
some validity in either god or some historical understanding...
the Stalinists made "dialectical materialism" their value to be
their objective value and no other value was tolerated.....
and as the Stalinists were the only ones allowed to interpret
"dialectical materialism" thus they picked the value to be
be honored within society.....

and although we in America proclaim our society as being tolerant,
the value that has dominated America is Martial value,
we give priority to security and defense and soldiers and policemen....
as indicated by that moral document, the US budget in which
the dominant value is military, defense, security...….

in America we have been at war 222 years out of 239 years
of American history... we have been in peace less then 20 years
of our entire history.....

in other words, the greatest threat to peace in the world is America...
and that is our value, war and violence....

are your values, mono or pluralistic?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so let us attempt to problem solve with values, be it
mono or pluralistic values...….

let us take this mono idea that god is everything...
every path runs through god and all we have to to do is
to trust god.......so in regards to a problem like say,
global warming.... the answer for a mono thinker is to
trust god..... for with mono thinkers, there is but one
path, one vision, one solution....now this is true of any
mono thinkers be it communist or be it a born again Christian....

now for a pluralistic thinker, there is more then one path,
more then one vision, multiple solutions, multiple possibilities....
so let us try the problem of global warming with someone
who is a pluralistic thinker....you try to depend upon god,
but it seems to a pluralistic thinker that the solution to
global warming can involved trying several different paths,
solutions.. for no one path seems to offer us a silver bullet
of a solution for global warming.....

so it seems that in regards to problem solving, pluralistic
thinking would better be able to solve problems then mono
thinking. so let us continue this thought... what of value conflict,
two values conflict say, liberty with equality/public order or
mercy with justice, love with impartiality/fairness.....
we can have conflicting values, freedom vs security....
is a common conflicting value in America today...
we have many who with mono thinking have
endorsed security above freedom...

but let us take a closer look at this....
we cannot judge between the two values as
far as taking one over the other... both values,
freedom and security have useful value to human beings...…
we need both, but in conflict, which one should we choose?

mono thinkers on the right have picked security
as their guiding value... again see that moral document,
the US budget, and see that the value prized most in that
document is security....

but pluralistic thinkers will accept the need for security, but
also accept the need for freedom and love and possibilities
and other values...…. in other words, pluralistic thinkers
accept more then one possibility, more then just one path, more
then just one vision, more then just one solution.....

that enables pluralistic thinkers to cast about for multiple
solutions for every problem...it has been my experience in life,
all 60 years, that solutions are often found within different, diverse,
possibilities of life....mono thinkers cannot see outside of their own
path to see different solutions to problems..... in other words,
pluralistic thinkers seen to be better able to find solutions to
problems because they have a wider field of solutions to work
from....

if there is one thing we can learn from evolution is this, one of the major
traits that allow species the chance to survive is adaptability... those who
can adapt, survive..... mono thinkers have less adaptability then
pluralistic thinkers because there is only one solution for a mono
thinker.. and that isn't adapting.....

so one of the basic skills of being human is problem solving,
we are forced to problem solve all our lives...…
"what am I to do?" "What can I hope for?" "What should my values be?"

those are problems and mono thinkers might believe that "what am I to do?"
the only solution is the religious one, which is to worship god and obey god,
prepare the soul for heaven...… and how does that one path solve
the problem of overpopulation or pollution or global warming?

so let us return to the conflict between security and freedom.....
let us face the fact that no matter how we try, we cannot
be 100% secure... it is an impossibility to be totally secure,
look at America today, even with all these attempts to force
security, we are less secure today then we were two years ago...…

and let us address why we are less secure, guns..... pure and simple,
we have conflated the gun culture in America to the point,
where gun advocates want guns in the hands of everyone in America...
this supposed to increase security......and everyone being
children and those with mental issues and basically anyone over the age
of 10...……….

this has quite clearly allowed guns to fall into the hands of violent
right wing domestic terrorist.... think of the shootings that have happened
in schools and public places, in which the GOP is quick to proclaim these
people as having mental issues but in reality they are white, right wing
domestic terrorist..... anyone who kills for an ism an ideology is
a terrorist... thus anyone who in the Incel culture who kills in the name of
that ism is a terrorist.....acts of violence committed in the name of an ism
or ideology is by definition, a terrorist....but what about those who are
violent or kill in the name of money...…. they too are acting from an ism,
an ideology, the materialistic ism of capitalism which prays to mammon
and worships money/profits...……..they too are terrorist for they have
committed violence in the name of a failed ism...….

and the solution to terrorism? as we have already mentioned,
security cannot be total, we cannot be completely safe and secure
from our domestic terrorism problem...……

but we can find other solutions.... allow people the
freedom to engage in ism's or ideologies... but we take away
the means of committing massive violence... that means gun control....

the solution to gun violence is to lessen the amount of guns in
America... but single minded mono thinkers cannot
grasp that solution because in their mono thinking
guns is a means of security....but guns and more guns,
decreases the safety, security of everyone involved.....
the mono thinking that guns protects people is leading to
a decrease in security and safety in the America society...…
but mono thinkers are unable to see, think that way....
they are fixated on their one and only path, their only
solution....whereas pluralistic thinkers can see, think
of other solutions that will in fact make America safer.....

but mono thinkers, in their set mono thinking are unable to see any
other path besides the path they are set upon.....

so to engage in the conflict between values, we must
engage with pluralistic problem solving, not mono thinking
about the conflict between values.....we must be adaptable
and flexible in our thinking about values.....for values are
situational values...… like situational ethics, different values/ethics
are required during different times and different situations.....

our values can certainly give us some base line understanding of
any situation, but sometimes we must use different values
for different situations.....

there is no firm, set rules for engagement with values, just as
there is no firm, set rules for situational ethics...……

but in our actions, let us engage in the higher values in our
engagement with situations...… we can have the higher values
become our guide to any situation.... so we can use love or hope
or justice or peace or equality to guide our actions... just as we
can avoid the lower values in situations.... anger, hate, lust, greed,
fear...…..

so that is our guide, we can use any number of higher values to
engage with a situation instead of using the lower values...
that means we can decide upon several different values to
work out an situation....so we are not committed to any one given value,
but we are committed to using the higher values to explore solutions
to any given situation....that is pluralistic thinking... we don't commit
to any one higher value, we simply see which higher value will work in
a situation.. meanwhile avoiding lower value solutions to a problem...……

thus we avoid the mono thinker solution to any give problem is with
a lower value solution... thus he answers a situation with fear or with hate,
and that is how a mono thinker reacts to a situation.. with only one value..
whereas a given situation may require multiple possibilities of values.....

so we find our multiple possibilities within the higher values of human existence
and not in the lower values of human/animal existence......


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

while thinking about it, even Buddhism is mono thinking,
given the goal is to relieve suffering, all of life is suffering..
and yet that isn't true....life has multiple possibilities including
happiness and love and beauty and peace as well as the lower
instincts of the human being, anger, hate, violence, fear, greed
and lust, to name a few......so to single out suffering as our main
form of human existence is to simply ignore all our other possibilities....

possibilities that are multiple are pluralistic possibilities and must
be worked out as pluralistic thinking.....and not mono thinking...….

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Ok, let us take another question which the Buddha tried
to answer.... can life be ultimately satisfying?

Given the Buddhist understanding that suffering is the key part
of life... can life be ultimately satisfying given that we are always
in a state of suffering?

Kinda depends on how you define "ultimately satisfying?

I think you need to remove the word "ultimately" because
that word doesn't really mean anything in this context...
so, the question now is, "can life be satisfying even with the suffering?"

and the answer is quite clear, yes... life can be satisfying even with
the inevitable suffering..... we all suffer and so what?

it is the price of admission to this play called life.....

we can bond as human beings over our shared suffering..
for I too shall be born, grow old, become diseased and die...
we share our sufferings... plays and movies and books
are made in which we share our suffering and in sharing
we reduce the grief because we know that our suffering is shared
and that comfort us...it gives us solace when we
can share our burden and cry together...…

recall the basic fundamental fact of human existence, that we
are social creatures and we don't and can't exist independently
of other human beings.... my burden is your burden and your burden
is my burden.... for we suffer, just at different times...
and that is both the curse of and the benefit of being human beings....

think of the great suffering we face and what we have done with
that suffering is to create great ART.... every piece of art stems
from suffering of some sort....

by creating art, we overcome suffering... and overcoming is part
of the human gig... at every level of a human's life, we overcome...
and one of the means of overcoming our pain and sorrow and suffering
is to transform that pain and sorrow and suffering into art.....

we release the burden by making it into something tangible and real...
and that lessen the burden of our life... it is taking something felt
and intangible and turning it into a physical presence which frees us
from the weight of the suffering....that turning it into the physical, that takes
suffering out of our body and puts it somewhere outside of us...….

the art, become a physical embodiment of our pain and suffering....
and it becomes separate, apart from us...…

thus we don't have to remove or attempt to remove suffering..
we can simply transform it into something useful and thus becoming
free of it...…..

pain and suffering can become a source of strength and wisdom by
us overcoming the pain and suffering with art or some other
act of turning that pain and suffering into something else.....

suffering is not the weakness that the Buddhists proclaim it is,
suffering can be overcome into strength and wisdom and courage
and fortitude and toughness and energy....

or we can allow suffering to become the lower instincts of hate,
anger, fear, greed and lust...…

and that becomes the question, do we turn our inevitable suffering
into something positive or into something negative?

do we overcome suffering or do we allow suffering to dominate our lives
by turning to the lower instincts to redeem our suffering?

I know what direction I want to exchange my suffering into, but do you
know what direction you want to exchange your suffering into?

positive values or negative values?

your choice....

Kropotkin

[Dan~]

Pain does not make life any less or more valid.
Pain is a mechanism, not an ideology.
Buddha didn't seem to know this.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Pain does not make life any less or more valid.
Pain is a mechanism, not an ideology.
Buddha didn't seem to know this.

K: quite observant Dan... yes, pain is a mechanism we human use to
teach us about ourselves and the world.... pain is an evolutionary
product.... we stay away from painful things, for example, we see bee's
and we have learn to connect the bee's to pain and so we stay away from them....

pain is an mechanism but feelings have been turned into ideology...
guilt for example is one of the driving forces of Christianity...….
(one of my younger sisters is a born again christian and guilt was one of her
driving forces to become Christian.. a fact I'm sure she would deny)

as far as pain making life valid or not, I can only say that pain is certainly
one of the driving forces of human beings... we strive very hard to avoid
pain, well most of us, some take pleasure in pain and not just sexual pleasure,
pain reminds us we are still alive..... at times, we need
pain to wake us up from our walking dreams of working and living.....
we are sleepwalkers, that might be the definition of our time as a
human being and pain wakes us up from this sleepwalking, we spend our
days doing.....

and what did the Buddha know and when did he know it?
sounds like a future impeachment trial of the Buddha...…

actually that is not a bad idea, put the religious types, the Buddha
and Jesus and Mohammed on trial ...let them defend themselves
from their crimes of waking people and forcing people to confront themselves.....

yes, that should be a crime.... waking people up from their sleepwalking
and forcing them to take a hard look at their lives...…. god forbid, we
actually take the time to take a long, hard look at our time on earth...

to force people to ask the existential questions about themselves...

"What am I to do?" or "what should I hope for?" or "what values should we hold?"

how dare the Buddha wake me up and force me to try to make sense of my life..
I was perfectly happy just drifting along, engage with only my pursuit
of finding my happiness.... never asking is, happiness really the goal I should
be pursuing?

who does he think he is?

who do you think you are.. once you have been awoken from your walking dream?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

a new problem:

how do we get human beings who are involved in their own little world,
engaged in their private search for happiness which quite often means
the private search to fulfill their desires, it is money or material goods or
homes or cars or TV's sets...

the search for happiness is equated with the fulfillment of desires,
and in the west, that desire is for material goods/wealth.....

and how do we get those fixated upon achieving their desires to
exists peacefully within a society? where in the desire
to fulfill your happiness can come into conflict with the society's
need for order. how do we get people to give up their selfish needs
to engage with what society needs? Let us take taxes for example,
people see the taking of taxes from a selfish desire to keep money as long
as possible in their own hands....those who oppose taxes see this issue from
a personal need to have money so they can engage in their desires to
happiness...….and by paying taxes, the money they want to engage in their
own form of desire for happiness, that money is taken from them...…

so how do we get people who are engaged in their own pursuit of
happiness, which usually involves money, to engage with the state, to
become willing participants within the state, thus compromising people
ability to pursue their own understanding of happiness....

"the social contract" by Rousseau is one such attempt to get people to
engage with the state even though it might be against their own self interest
to do so...….the state becomes the higher goal for the people to reach which
means that the people freely will walk away from their own attempts at
happiness to serve the state... this idea of a higher cause has been the
working theory of how we get people to forsake their own selfish engagement
with the fulfillment of their own desires...

another attempt to get people to freely deny their own pursuit of happiness
is another example of the "higher cause" theory which is the reason
that religion is tied into the state... the French revolution was a classic
example of turning the people need for a religion on a religious basis
to having the state replace the religious pursuit of god into a secular
pursuit of the goals and functions of the state...… instead of religion being
individualist, we have a collective religion of the state in which we pray
to the state....this attempt to transform the religious into the
same feeling about the religious into a state worship is quite
evident in America today..... every single Politician today ends
their speech with the exact same words, "god bless America"

that is an attempt to turn our religious feeling toward god toward
an religious feeling toward the state... to pray to a higher power,
replacing the church with the state as the higher power...….

this, in part, is why the religious right has mixed feeling toward the state....
they can feel that the worship that should be directed toward god, in their minds,
is being directed toward the state... and the continuous demand for a more religious
country but in reality that is really about the demand to make god the subject of
our prayers and thoughts, not the state.....

it has been said, the goal has been for the last 200 years to find some method
of taking the religious feeling toward religions and god and find some way to
redirect that toward the state.... hence we see Marx making such an attempt,
turning the feeling of religiousness we have into the same feeling toward the state.....

a secular religion as it were with the state being the divine power being prayed
to and with money also being prayed to..... think of the father, the son, the holy ghost,
where we pray to the father, played by the state, the son, played by money,
and the holy ghost is capitalism....

we have a new trinity... a secular trinity to which we can pray to and worship
as divine.. just transform the feeling we have to god, toward the state/money.....

and this attempt to transform has been going on for hundreds of years and
we see it every single day in America..... we see IQ45 being the new god
and all should hail this god, at least according to the radical right wing...
replace god with IQ45..... that is the agenda going on today.....

but one wonders, how could this take place?

the answer is actually quite evident.... once a commitment to
a prior ism or ideology is lost, then it can be replaced by another
ism or ideology.... for example, Christianity couldn't have done what
it did in ancient Rome without the fact that people no longer
believed in or could commit to the old gods... that gave Christianity
the chance to replace the old pagan gods... when people no longer believe,
they turn to new religions to replace the old religions.....

in other words, people in America has lost their faith in god, religion,
the state.... and they are trying to replace that lost faith with a new faith,
a new religion with the worship of a supreme leader who replaces god....

we have lost our high moral ground and we feel it, and so we are trying
to replace it with something else...…

"what should we believe in?" another Kantian/Kropotkin question..
being played out in the streets of America today... should we hold firm
to the old gods, the old ism's and ideologies of democracy and freedom
and liberty... or should we abandon the old gods for the new gods,
dictatorship, security, certainty...…

people must have something to believe in and this is why the attempt
to find a new religion comes into play... replace the church with the state.....

"so what secular religion should we believe?"

our 21st century problem....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

just allowing my mind to ramble, I was thinking about the fact
that the U.S has been at war 93% of the time since 1776, or
222 years out of 239 years...… and that fact got me to thinking,
about what it means to be in a democracy while having gone to war
93% of the time? as for the UK, since 1707 which is when the union
began, it is almost impossible to tell how many years of war because
the UK too has been in constant war.... for example, during Queen Victoria reign,
in those 64 years, the UK fought in roughly 230 wars.... every single year of her
reign was involved in some sort of conflict....

so given that the two leading constitutional democracies in the world have
constantly been involved in wars over the last 200 years, what does
it say about these countries that they require to be in war...
recall the basic premise of the American "experiment" is that the the power
of the goverment derived their consent from the people... did the people
actually given their consent to be in continuous wars over the duration of the
last 200 years?

is it the mark of a constitutional democracy to constantly be at war?

I am haunted by the words in the Declaration of Independence:

"...... that to secure these rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness)
Governments are instituted aong Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed__that whenever any form of government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter
or to abolish it, and to institute new government laying its foundations
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness......…"

if our democratically elected officials keep taking us into war, perhaps
that government has become destructive and we the people, have the right
to alter or, or abolish it and institute a new government that will engage
in such principles that will keep the peace and engage in our happiness....

to engage in constant war over our entire history is not conducive to the
safety and happiness of the people in question.....

the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan reminds me of nothing more then the
foolish Peloponnesian war Athens fought when they sent an expeditionary to
attack Syracuse Sicily which depleted the resources of Athens and brought about
its fall.....

we too are wasting resources in a foolish and unnecessary war across the world
and the end result will simply be the destruction of America just as the final
result of the Peloponnesian war was the destruction of Athens.....

As a democracy, are we so committed to war or should we try a different
tack and pursue peace with the same energy we have pursue war over
these last 200 years.

must democracies have wars to even exist? this seems to be the lesson
of the last 200 years of our American democracy.. to survive we must
engage in wars of all kinds, is that the reason for our existence?
to engage in wars? I found it really hard to believe that the only
way democracies can exist is by engaging in wars...…

when the very basic point of democracy is to hold certain principles
in common... we hold these principles in common with our fellow
citizen... we voluntarily agree to these principles and we agree to
obey the law and suffer the consequences of disobeying the law...

democracies exists because we commonly agree to consent...
and yet we seem to be unable to come to some sort of agreement with
other countries or peoples which has lead to the constant wars of America....

"we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal"

if this is true, then why the constant wars? I would suggest another factor
is involved besides the consent of the governed... and that is
our foolish belief that we are somehow special as American's.....
and this American exceptionalism allows us to act as we please with
no possible consequences for our actions...….we are not inherently
different then other countries.. for we have proven that by our constant
warfare over our entire history.... we don't have a unique mission to transform
the world because we have forsaken our principles by our actions over
these last few years, invading countries that had nothing to do with 9/11,
suspending constitutional rights in some vain attempt to secure our safety,
which does nothing to secure our safety... our sense of our history and
our mission gives us some superiority over all other nations....
and yet, we have engaged in the practice of torture of prisoners in Iraq
and we have systemically stripped people their right to vote and
we have elected a president who violates every single decent
rule of being a human being... we now tolerate lies from the president,
we now tolerate sexism and racism in America, the KKK is on the rise,
radical nationalism is on the rise, all the lower values are the ones we
now celebrate... not the values of the "better angels of our nature"

we celebrate the lower values of hate and anger and lust and greed
and violence by our silence to those who practice those values...
we cannot be silent to those who engage in the debasement of American
values...……..

"we the people in order to form a more perfect union"

we the people... we the people must fight for the
rights and values of our democracy... but that leads us
back to the constant wars of America.... so we are left with
a quandary... a question...… which America is the "real"
America? is our America, the America that is the shinning
city on the hill or are we simply the country that has spent
our entire history engaged in wars?

what is our "real" morals and values?

are we really so debased that we must fight war after war after war,
or do we practice what we preach and begin the long struggle to find
"peace in our time" and not only peace in our time, but peace for all time.....

that very contradiction that lies in the heart of America,
must be engaged with, understood, before we become the latest superpower
to collapse under the weight of our own contradiction...…

are we a peaceful nation or are we a warlike nation?

are we going to bow down to the lower forces of our nature or
are we going to rise to the better angels of our nature?

are we going to practice what we preach or
do we continue to engage in hypocrisy?

which America do you want?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

The question we philosophers and scientist and thinkers face are
rational questions... but how do we, the rational thinkers face the
quite human problem of irrationalism?

politically, the left accuses the right of irrationalism and the right accuses
the left of extreme rationalism,

this is an example of this question of rationalism vs irrationalism....

it has been called on occasion, the Athens vs Jerusalem problem....

to simplify the debate, it goes like this....

the citizens of Athens begin with the Socratic notion of true knowledge begins
when we admit we know nothing....

while the citizens of Jerusalem believe in the humble obedience to the
revelation and the word of god.....

faith vs science...….

this is the shorthand of this debate... faith vs science.....

the left is about the evidence and the right is about the faith.....

but this debate runs deeper then just simple politics....

the Kantian/Kropotkin questions offer us another example of this....

"What can I know?" vs "what should I believe in?"

we on the left see the danger behind extreme faith, the fear
and hate and anger... the lower notions of our instincts

the right see's the danger of extreme intellect....the coldness
and heartless actions that come from only operating from the intellect.....

the right accuses the left of acting without a soul and the left accuses
the right of acting without intellect...…

and yet given the current reality, who is behind the concentration camps
of children and the demonization of immigrants and the demonization of
any who hold different ism's or ideologies or look different or love different?

the right has forsaken their compassion and love for fear and hate...
so the right has forsaken not only intellect, but has forsaken
the ideals of Jerusalem... following the laws of god...…
for Jesus was quite clear about the ideals in which mankind must
follow to follow in his footsteps.....

in his parables, the parable of the good Samaritan tells of a man
beaten and robbed, left half dead by the side of the road...
first a priest and then a Levite come by, but both avoid the man,
finally a Samaritan happens by the traveler, well the Jews and
the Samaritans despise each other but the Samaritan helps the
beaten traveler....and the question is asked, "Who is my neighbour?"

the religious question.... who should I love? the right has forsaken this
parable in favor of hate and fear and anger.... values which are specifically
rejected by Jesus.....and who has risen to accept the challenge of
the good Samaritan? certainly not the right, but the left...………

and does the left act from belief in Jerusalem?

No, we hold no such belief...…. and yet, we are acting,
may I say it, irrationally..... we hold this belief to be
self evident, "that all men are created equal"

and we then connect the ethical behavior of human beings
with the political beliefs...… justice requires that we
treat everyone equally.... another ethical belief become
political...…

the right holds to the laws.... we must obey the laws,
recall the right used to hold to the value of the "law and order"
party... that was how Nixon got elected.... by proclaiming the
GOP was the "law and order" party....the right would advocate
that one was required to obey the laws, be it the laws of man
or be it the laws of god.... and yet, we have a gutless coward
president who proclaims himself above the law and he is supported
by the right in his lawless reign as president.....

if the right has forsaken its values... the belief in obedience to the law
be it to man or be it to god and if the right has forsaken Jerusalem,
and has forsaken Athens, then what exactly does the right hold as truth?

for today, we are faced with the crisis of irrationalism....
when the right has adapted the cause of irrationalism
but not the values of Jerusalem.. for those values are
obedience to the law and the right has forsaken those values....

so we have two distinct and separate values at work here...
the values of Athens, rationalism and the values of Jerusalem,
the cause of obedience to the laws of god.... the left is of Athens....
and because of the failure of the right to commit to the laws
of Jerusalem, the left has taken over the value of compassion
and love but without, without any obedience to god and his laws.....

we have accepted the value that "all men are created equal" without
recourse to religious ideals and this is the path into the future.....
we can hold to the parable of the "good Samaritan" without recourse
to holding any belief in god.....holding religious values without
any religion...… a secular value system in which the dignity of man
is value because he is a living, breathing member of life.....
and that is the value to which we must aspire.....

not engaging in the highest belief in human beings as members
of a tribe or a city or the color of their skin or any arbitrary
values system...….. in other words, you are part of the club
by simply being alive....by being alive, you are valued...

regardless of how different you look or who you love or
how many legs you have... Life is sacred regardless of what that
life looks like...…. and we understand sacred, not in terms
of any given god or religion but we understand sacred
as in being life......

one might proclaim the left of hypocrisy because of the abortion issue
but the left is far more consistent then the right on this issue.....

one of the primary issues facing us and the one that is neglected by
the right is the issue of the quality of life.... I don't hold to eternal life
because I don't think that by extending one's life you gain any quality of life...

and for me, it isn't the length of life that counts, but the quality of life...
it isn't about numbers, how many people there are or how long they live,
it is about people's quality of life.....if we run short of resources, then
our quality of life becomes impacted and for me, that is far more important
then how many people live to be a 100 or how many millions of people live
to be a 100....

I am not interested in how many people find god or how many people
discover religion, but in people's quality of life...

if we shift our values to include the quality of life, much of what we do
seems to be wrong...…….and quality of life issues are not just Athens or
Jerusalem issues, but both of their issues.....

we can count quality of life issues to both Athens and Jerusalem...
this is in part, why I think the retirement age should be much younger then
65..... I am old and I am discovering that because of my physical infirmities,
I am already limited in what is physically possible for me.... to wait several more
years to retire means, I will be unable to engage physically in the activities
that I would want to engage with when I retire...….. even now, travel is
getting harder to do as I age...……

my quality of life has decreased because of my physical issues and will
continue to decrease as I grow older...…...that is the sad truth of
growing old... one's quality of life decreases every year due to
physical and mental issues...…..

if we were to judge life based on the quality of life, then
billions of people have a terrible quality of life...
for we have massive poverty and poverty impacts their quality of life...
we can no longer judge human existence based on the high quality of life
that some or a few have... we must judge human existence based on
the quality of life that the majority have..... and I believe that
the majority of people have a limited quality of life because of such
ism's and ideologies as communism or capitalism or Buddhism
or Catholicism...… I belief that we should judge the quality of
people life based on the quality of life... the idea of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs is an excellent place to start...where we
judge the quality of life based on meeting certain human needs..
such as the bottom need which are the physiological needs,
food, water, warmth, rest... and the next step of the needs
is the safety needs, security, safety...
then the next step is belonging and love needs, relationships with
family and friends....
then the next need is the esteem needs, prestige and feeling of
accomplishment and the final stage of human needs is the
self actualization needs achieving one's full potential including
creative activities...…..

today, we are failing in even being able to have people reach the
first stage of their needs which is the physiological needs of
food, water, warmth and rest and education...we are failing in
those basic necessities, little less reaching any other stage
of human needs...…..

and what of the quality of life needs which I have stressed?

I believe that to reach one's quality of life, we must actively
engage in the idea of income inequality... we must reduce
income inequality to reach our overall goal of increasing the
quality of life for everyone.... that is in part, why we must
understand what goal we want to reach... because the goal
dictates the means of how we reach our goal.....

and to improve our quality of life, for everyone, means
we must think about how we can increase everyone
quality of life....and the reduction in the income inequality is
one such path to a better quality of life for everyone.....

the goal dictates the path taken....

what goal to you want dictates the path you take

and what goal do you want?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and so, in an attempt to further understand this
idea of the "quality of life" we try to focus on
what the left see's as quality of issues.....

we see in addition to just putting food on the table
and clean water and shelter, but we see quality of life
issues in education and medical care....

as someone who has dwelt with medical issues all my life,
from hearing loss to multiple surgeries, I can attest to the fact
that part of the quality of life is good health...and during my last
health issues, my medical bills ran to roughly 360,000 dollars
even with medical insurance, our part of that bill was over 70,000 dollars...
we received medical bills for a couple of years after my 3 surgeries and
a roughly 4 separate week long hospital stays......and how those immense
medical costs impacted our quality of life cannot be underestimated.....
we were able to pay those bills but just barely.. and what of families or
individuals who cannot afford to pay those medical bills? they are forced
to declare bankruptcy and ruin their financial life.... and why? because of
unavoidable health issues.... the left see's health as a quality of life
issue and it is...we see the medical needs of people as being as important
as putting food on the table or getting clean, drinkable water or finding
shelter...…

and the other quality of life issue we see is education...…… one of the goal's
of human being is to discover their possibilities, to discover their potential
and one of the major ways to discover our possibilities or potentials is by
education.....but to force people to go into debt to discover their possibilities
is simply wrong... to force people to limit their quality of life to discover their
possibilities is cruel and unnecessary.... we can do better and we must do better...
so we include medical care and education into the lower physiological needs of food
and water and warmth and rest.... and the right does not...…

the right denies that people even have the possibility of quality of life because the right
is willing to deny people the basic needs of life, food, clean water, shelter... little less the
basic fundamental needs of education and medical care....

and the right does so based on ism's and ideologies like capitalism and religion....

but if the question of Jerusalem is to obey the word of god/religion
then the right must obey the values of Jesus in terms of loving thy neighbor or
following the 10 commandments... thou shall not lie, thou shall not kill,
thou shall not covet...whatever.....

and the path of the Buddha is also the path of thou shall not covet..
for it is desire, that is part of the reason for suffering in the world
on the Buddha road to understanding... it is desire that leads us
to suffer and by not coveting, more easily can we achieve our
victory over suffering and find the path to salvation and god.....

the road for Jesus and the Buddha is the same road.... and the path
to a quality of life is the same path...for it is by desiring our own
wealth and our own happiness that we increase income inequality
which decreases the overall quality of life for human beings and other
life on planet earth......and we must be mindful of the quality of life
for ourselves and for other life on planet earth...….

for part of the equation of life must include an understanding
of the quality of life for all concern.....

does some action of mine improve or decrease the quality of life
for people and life? that must become part of our equation for
our own personal actions and beliefs...…

hence we include education and medical care in our understanding
of human needs and include education and medical care into the
bottom run of our needs... the basic and lowest level of Maslow's
hierarchy of needs....

so make every valuation of life and every action based on some
understanding of the quality of life for yourself and/or other people.....

that is one path.... that there are other paths is clear...

so what path of understanding are you taking?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

perhaps, perhaps the question of America is not a political question
but a religious question...…

the overall understanding of history since the 1500 or the modern era
is the transference of faith from the religious/god to the
secular/nation/nationalism.... we have seen this played out in the history of
America since 1776.... the attempt has been to transfer the allegiance of its
citizens from god/religion to the state...…. this attempt of transference of
allegiance has been the history of the last 500 years....

the problem of faith has been a long one in western civilization...
and the problem with faith is simply this, what happens when one
loses faith? we have seen this loss of faith in America for decades...…

but what will/should replace our faith in America? the answer has been
some vain attempt to replace that lost faith with a return to the faith
of our fathers, a return to faith in god/religion....

but as some has noted, you can't go home again...…

how shall we replace our faith in country?
we have gone from faith in god/religion to country...
Marx made his famous attempt to replace faith in god/religion
with faith in dialectical materialism.....with faith in the impersonal
forces of history.. all you have to do with stand with this mystical force
of history and you too will be saved.... for Marxism is simply a secular
faith... as has been long been noted by just about everyone.....

the question of modern society is simply a question of "what shall we believe?"

"what shall WE believe?"

it is a collective question of what the many should hold sacred.....

I cannot hold to any sort of metaphysical belief in some god or religion
but I also cannot hold to any sort of metaphysical belief in America...
which makes me the real atheist.... one can deny god and religion
in America today but deny to deny the highest belief possible which is
in the divinity of America and you have committed the greatest act
of heresy known to the modern world.... that is the faith of the secular
world... where one can deny god/religion with less consequences then
denying one's faith in America... for denying the greatness of America
means the risk of being called un-American or being called a traitor or
being called an deserter or a deceiver or conspirator a "Benedict Arnold"...
and in the modern world, those names are worse then committing any
sort of religious heresy which gets one excommunicated from a church...
defy the American faith and one can get jail or shot or hunted down like
an animal or threatened.....

the greatest crime in the modern world is insubordination
and denying the greatness of America is the greatest act
of insubordination known today...…

which, in part, shows us the weakness in modern man
in the modern political world...… for if one believes,
truly believes, then the comments of a non-believer shouldn't matter,
but because the faith is so weak in America that any, any denial of the greatness
of America is grounds for an attack upon the negator of America greatness...

we have suffered the loss in god/religion and now we are presently
suffering the loss of faith in the political realm, in the greatness of America...
and in what shall we believe in after the loss of belief in god/religion and
loss of faith in America?

shall we return to some sort of faith in some ism or ideology or, or shall
we engage in some honest reflection into the nature of faith and what we
should be holding belief/faith in.....

what do you hold faith in and conversely, what should you be holding faith in?

"What should we believe in?"

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I have over the beginning of this thread, engaged in various
idea's and one of the those idea's is the idea that everything,
life, objects, the planet, indeed the entire universe is transitory,
temporary.... and that we humans are just as transitory,
including our souls... there is nothing that is permanent,
everlasting in the universe...…

that can be understood in another fashion..... we are born,
we live and we die.... the thing that happens between birth
and death can be understood as a process....at every moment of
our existence, we are in the process of change...physically, I
am a different person today, then I was 20 or 15 or 10 years ago or even
a year ago.... that movement from birth to death is a process and everything
is a process... the earth changes yearly, weekly, daily and even by the minute or
the second... as does everything changes.. now some change takes a long time...
change or process isn't uniform or happens at the same rate.... My rate of
change is different then another persons which is different then the change/process
of things like the sun or the earth or water or rocks.....

things look permanent because their rate of change is very slow, almost
undetectable, imperceptible to human's senses...…

but the change/process is there even if we don't see it...…

and we must engage with this process even if we cannot see or understand
what the process will bring us to...….

now we have Buddhism in which the primary fact of existence is
suffering... but understood correctly, suffering is simply another
aspect of the process of life... to live is to suffer... simple as that.....

so we don't need to overly emphasize suffering as a key or essential aspect
of life... life means suffering.. so move along and accept this suffering
as part of the gig of being human...…

it is not escape from suffering that we must attend to, we cannot escape
suffering.. but we must engage in the process...… that is the one truly
universal event of existence... the process... now for everyone and everything,
the process is different... for humans, our process is different then dogs or
cats or elephants or rocks or the planet earth or the sun or even the universe.....

evolution is the story of the process of life and geology is the process
of the story of the earth and psychology is the process of the mind,
and history is the process of how humans engaged with each other and
how we asked and answered various questions of human existence...…
and philosophy is the process of understanding the basic questions of
existence like the Kantian/Kropotkin questions...….

there is no objective point or place in the universe because everything in
the universe is part and parcel of change/process.....

we cannot write an objective history of anything because everything
is in process/changing.... the only question becomes changing from something...
to something......we humans are in the process of change from something to something...
we are born... that is the starting place but only in a fairly modest starting point
because the story of life, the story of every single human being has a beginning back
when life itself started.... you cannot state that, for example, Kropotkin's story
solely began when he was born...no, my story can be run back into time, to
the beginning of human beings and even before that to the fall of dinosaurs and
the rise of mammals and even further back to the rise of life on earth.....
and as my story, my personal story goes back to the rise of life on earth,
frankly, my story goes further back, to the creation of the solar system
and even further back to the notion that our solar system isn't the first
star to exists in this spot... we were form from an exploding star, a supernova
that happened billions of years ago in this spot and even before that,
our story can be told as the big bang...………. we are made up of
atoms and if there is one thing, that has existed since the beginning of time
and will exist to the end of time, is atoms.... but atoms don't have any form...
the just float aimlessly in the universe and are given form by the forces of
the universe, heat, light, gravity...…...it is by the force of gravity, that
combines the dust of the supernova that helped create our current
solar system.... we are process brought to life..... and the
process that help create us is the forces that were created by the big bang...

the four fundamental forces of the universe which created us is,
the gravitational force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force
and the strong nuclear force.....

and those forces worked on individual atoms helping them to
combine into such things as stars and planets and humans and cats.....

is it possible that there are other forces besides these four basic forces?

of course, in fact, I would suggest that there are other forces beyond
the four elementary forces we have right now...…

so, as we engage in our understanding of the processes that have
created us and our world, we can engage in an understanding
of what really matters... and that is the processes that
exists in the universe..... it isn't about the final goal or the beginning that
matters, but the current forces that we are part of, that drive the various
systems that we are a part of.... our understanding of systems is really
an understanding of the forces that move and drive the systems in our life....

be those systems biological, mechanical or natural.....
biological is the biological systems like human beings and dogs
the mechanical is cars and airplanes
and the natural is the solar system and the planet....

and we can see/understand systems as the embodiment of
processes at work...…

to point this into some perspective, it isn't about the beginning or the end,
but about the process at work at any given time...……

Marxism is about the process that happens in human society
and religions are about the process that happens in a theological sense
and science is about the various processes in a natural sense..
we see biology as a study of the process of life
and we see astronomy as the study of the process of the stars
and we can relate every single discipline to the study of
some process or another that our senses can find or discover....

experiences that we have... they are simply another example of
engaging in the process of human existence... we relate experiences
in terms of the process of being human...…

nothing, but nothing stays the same, nothing is permanent
but everything is simply just a stage of process....

going from one place to another... and does that process have
a plan or is engaged in intelligent movement from one step to another?

no, as evolution is a process but a random process...
but we humans can engage in processes as intelligent
change/process...….

as evolution is a process that changes... but we humans can
take process and intelligently change it.....take
politics for example.... that politics is a process cannot be denied,
but we can engage in politics with specific and rational changes
that improves our existence....

so by understanding process and systems, we can engage
with certain process and intelligently adapt and change
systems/processes to improve our lives...…

and that understanding processes is called...… philosophy....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Blessed are the peacemakers...Jesus....

and who do we, as a country, bless?

certainly not Jesus... for we have forsaken his message....

so, who do we bless?

I have been to Washington DC... and what statues or moments do
they have there?

why they the Washington monument and the Lincoln Memorial,
along with the Vietnam memorial and the Jefferson memorial.. the FDR memorial
along with the American veterans disable for life memorial....and look at the
connection that all these memorials have?

Why, each of them is about war.... we have plenty of wartime moments
and each city or state around the country has plenty of wartime memorials....

but very little about the peacemakers.... where is the MLK memorial in D.C?
I didn't even know that there was one until I looked it up... its in the West Potomac Park,
next to the National mall...……

so think of the other blessed peacemakers in America?

where are their statues and moments?

Can you even list 10 peacemakers in American history?

and that is the problem.....

we can list the men of wars and see their moments
but who has advocated for peace? who has been the peacemakers
of America?

for a country that has been in conflict over 90% of her history,
we could use someone who has advocated for peace, instead of war...…

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I have been trying to think of some American peacemakers
and not many names have come to mind...…

we celebrate war hero's with movies and statues and streets
named after them...…

but why war instead of peace?

Why does America engage in war rather then peace?

As we clearly don't give a shit about traditional religion
or theology like Christianity or Catholicism... because we don't
follow or obey any type of religious precepts... love your fellow man...
in America love thy fellow man as long as that person is white, Anglo-Saxon,
wealthy, American.... a poor person of color who loves differently isn't loved
and isn't even welcomed into this country...… the parable of the good Samaritan
is rewritten to include only those who fit a certain criteria and fit into certain
prejudices and habits and superstitions and myths...…

so why is war so favored over peace?

the bottom line of favoring profits/money over people's life....

as money is our true religion, our true god...… that is the goal to achieve,
certainly not God's word or to become a better person....

to reach the holy land and become a better person...

that is clearly un-American....why reach heaven when I could have a
BMW or a second vacation home in the Hamptons.... that is the priority...
not achieving some phantasmagoria of heaven or improving oneself....

thus we reach why America would rather have war instead of peace?

the pursuit of profit... the nihilism of money over people.....

peace would require that we put people ahead of money/profit and
god forbid we ever do that.....that would cost us our bonus money.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if humans have a superpower, it is the amazing act
of denial.... what me, I never did that.....

there are those who read the last post and think, nope, not me,
I believe in god and I will go to heaven.... even though you have
never given a second thought to the real meaning of religion
or what it means to go to heaven or even becoming a better person....

the parable of the good Samaritan is something other people do,
not you... but that infinite practice of denial allows you to escape
responsibility for actions, taken and not taken...…..and therein lies
the human capacity to avoid taking responsibility for our actions or inactions...
our superpower as it were...…..

I am saved without doing anything or believing in anything.....

the power of human self deception cannot be overestimated....

we deceive ourselves all the time over many things, great and small.....

to dress this up a bit.... we are engaged in self deception to avoid taking
responsibility for our actions and this self deception is allows us to
behave inauthenticly…...without any thought to our real selves...
we say one thing and act another way.....

and example is "I say I am Christian" and yet I want those who bring food and water to
immigrants in the desert to be punished.... to be punished
for acting Christian......that is what that amounts to.. to be punished
for acting upon the words of Christ...for being a good Samaritan...
one should be punished...

that is being inauthentic.... your words fail to match your actions.....
and that is what denial brings us to... being inauthentic to who we
really are.....

the amazing superpower of people will mean they will never be able
to connect my words of engagement with who you really are and
what you claim to be......

and this inauthenticity we have individually, also exists collectively...
we American hold ourselves to be that shining city on the hill,
a beacon of light and goodness for the entire world to see and emulate...
we have failed that test, time and time again over these last 20 years..
when we torture people, when we put children into concentration camps,
when we punish people for being food and water to immigrants in the desert....

we are no longer that shining city on the hill, that is a beacon of hope and
light for the world to emulate....and yet, we still believe that we that
city on the hill... the power of denial is America's greatest superpower...…

and until our words and actions match, we shall be lost, alienated,
disconnected from ourselves and the world...….

what are you words? and do your actions match your words?

that is the great question of our time, both individually and collectively....

Kropotkin

[promethean75]

you're scaring me with all this buddha and jesus talk, pete. it's a sign of exhaustion and surrender. i seen it before, many times. you gotta believe me when i tell you the only reason that shit has stuck throughout history is because it proved to be useful by those in power in their efforts to make the ruled class more manageable. all religions, from paganism to monotheism, emerge from within a practicing caste system in which the governing political structure overseeing the material relations between people has taken, and preserved, the form of a exploitative hierarchy. for the greek peasant working a farm twelve hours a day, the opiate was a friday night dionysian festival where he could get drunk and dance around naked with the aristocrats that got rich off his labor (class divisions were temporarily suspended for such festivals). a little catharsis to keep him happy. for the american grocery store produce manager named pete who works eight hours a day, the opiate is critically rethinking the role and purpose of guys like buddha and jesus. what you want is a substantial raise, dude... not salvation. same thing with the greek guy. but these sonsabitches have made you believe that there is something more to life and that rather than take up arms against em, you could just as well settle back in your chair with a good book on eastern mysticism and/or professor so-and-so's introduction to the life and works of jesus christ.

you need to stop asking what jesus the spaced out hippy would do and start asking what kropotkin the anarchist prince would do.

[Peter Kropotkin]

you're scaring me with all this buddha and jesus talk, pete. it's a sign of exhaustion and surrender. i seen it before, many times. you gotta believe me when i tell you the only reason that shit has stuck throughout history is because it proved to be useful by those in power in their efforts to make the ruled class more manageable. all religions, from paganism to monotheism, emerge from within a practicing caste system in which the governing political structure overseeing the material relations between people has taken, and preserved, the form of a exploitative hierarchy. for the greek peasant working a farm twelve hours a day, the opiate was a friday night dionysian festival where he could get drunk and dance around naked with the aristocrats that got rich off his labor (class divisions were temporarily suspended for such festivals). a little catharsis to keep him happy. for the american grocery store produce manager named pete who works eight hours a day, the opiate is critically rethinking the role and purpose of guys like buddha and jesus. what you want is a substantial raise, dude... not salvation. same thing with the greek guy. but these sonsabitches have made you believe that there is something more to life and that rather than take up arms against em, you could just as well settle back in your chair with a good book on eastern mysticism and/or professor so-and-so's introduction to the life and works of jesus christ.

you need to stop asking what jesus the spaced out hippy would do and start asking what kropotkin the anarchist prince would do.

K: you misunderstand me on so many levels, one has to be patient with my answers....
I am engaged on several fronts here...

I am challenging the great America problem of how our words and actions don't match..
we have become alienated, diconnected from society and ourselves because of this
diconnect between our words and our actions.. I am guilty, you are guilty, we are guilty...
individually and collectively.. our words don't match our actions and that is a real problem....

second, exhausted? surrended? Not at all.. I have simply shifted my focus onto other
matters...matters that should matter to you....

third: I am speaking of the things that mattered to Kropotkin, anarchist prince...
he wrote about decentralised communist government based on mutual aid, mutual
support and voluntary cooperation..he advocated peace.. anarchism has two
differnent and diverse schools of thought, one, the violent school.. overthrow
the government by violent means... and violence has never accomplished anything....
but the other school of anarchism which flowed from Jesus is the non-violent
anarchism that has been followed by Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Gandhi, MLK among
others... I am walking in their footsteps.. following the path of non-violence
to accomplish societal change by changing the minds and hearts of those within
society....you want to change society.... begin by changing yourself...
match your words with your actions...begin to think about how to better yourself..
think about what it means to be human.... begin to investigate the Socratic
method of "know thyself"...…...ask yourself about your values and are they
they values you need to become yourself...and become the values you are..
match your words with your actions.....

that is the heart of and the meaning of my questions.. I have not gone south
or have surrender.. I am simply asking my usual questions from a different
standpoint....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

it is late, although not 3:00 AM late,
and I am tired and I hurt to the point of not being able to
sleep....so here I am...…

In thinking about my exchange with Promethean, he wondered if
I had "surrendered" or was "exhausted" because I had shown weakness
in expressing the desire for peace or love.... we have become such a
martial society, that calling for peace is considered a sign of weakness
or having "surrendered"...real men don't call for peace, we use terror
and violence to uphold the peace.... peace based upon the use of violence
or the potential use of violence... think John Wayne.... the very definition of
an American.. and a user of violence and intimation to enforce the peace...…

to think a man weak because he calls for peace... is that what the
American definition of a man is, one who uses violence or has
the potential of violence? if one proclaims for peace, is he less of a man?

a peace based upon violence or the threat of violence, isn't really peace,
it is the absence of violence with the threat of violence always present...

that isn't peace...……

according to 75, I must be weak or have surrendered or am exhausted
to want to call for peace or to call for love... it is just another
way of saying, what a wuss... he wants peace and love, instead of
what "real" men want, which is the threat of violence or violence itself.....

How do we understand what it means to be a man or an American
or a human being, given that some expectations for a man, involve
violence or the threat of violence...…. and apparently, our
expectations for an American also involves violence.....

but given that America is a violent society with our being at
war over 90% of America's history, we are a martial society...
one that is comfortable with violence and with the threat of violence....

and what of Men like Gandhi and Jesus and MLK, who have declared for
peace and love? are they not men because they call for peace and love?

to proclaim a man's role is a violent role is to make men a myth, a stereotype,
a prejudice...…. a "real" man doesn't engage in peace or call for love,
no, a "real" man engages in violence and the threat of violence....

must we understand men in terms of our lower animal instincts?

the lower instincts of violence and hate and anger and lust and greed....

are these "men's" instincts?

we can and must learn to engage as people in those higher instincts
of love and peace and hope and charity.. not because they are male or
female instincts, but because they are the higher human instincts...
our better nature or our better angels as it were...…

and in doing so, we are not engaged in "Male" or "female" traits,
but in human traits and with human instincts...
being male or female no longer matters if we engage in
the higher instincts of love and peace and hope and...…

it is enough for us to find our higher human self instead of becoming
a better man or a better women...….

Kropotkin

[promethean75]

because of this disconnect between our words and our actions.. I am guilty, you are guilty, we are guilty...
individually and collectively.. our words don't match our actions and that is a real problem....

for some, it is because their words do match their actions that they become so alienated and estranged from society. others, who neither have to say or do anything substantial, remain in a trivial tedium by comparison. for such people, matching or not matching words to deeds is of no great consequence and hardly noticeable at all. but all this is relative, though; i don't mean to depreciate the importance of people saying what they mean and doing what they say... only that for most people, this wouldn't prove to be a great discrepancy. if words and deeds are trivial and insignificant, what matters whether or not they match? see what i mean?

and here again:

you want to change society.... begin by changing yourself...
match your words with your actions...begin to think about how to better yourself..
think about what it means to be human.... begin to investigate the Socratic
method of "know thyself"...…...ask yourself about your values and are they
they values you need to become yourself...and become the values you are..
match your words with your actions.....

regarding myself, there is such a beautiful irony here that i don't want to touch it.

what if a fellow came along who had not only found that violent disobedience to the state was necessary and warranted, but that such violence would also achieve more in correcting the negligence of the state than any peaceful reform ever would... and even by accident? lol @ that irony! what if an anarchist fellow, who had no interest in 'bettering' the state, took to his personal revenge against the state (as a result of some betrayal at the highest level) which incidentally resulted in affecting greater change than would those deliberate actions of the peaceful (who were not betrayed) ever would? the former, completely indifferent to the effects of his deeds for the whole of society, happens to accomplish by accident as a result of his own personal war, what the latter, who makes a genuine concerted effort to change society, fails to accomplish because of the impotence of their deeds. is this not a glorious irony, bro? shirley you see it. one does with a trifle concern and with half the effort, what the other sets out to do, but fails, with the greatest of concentration and twice the effort.

for the former, what he accomplishes amounts to an effortless favor... to throwing a few scraps to the people; your war is not my war, and what i do is not for you, but my victory will incidentally be your victory too. take whatever you want when i'm done here.

if one proclaims for peace, is he less of a man?

absolutely not, provided that he was capable of and prepared for war... that he actually was in danger of war... that he had something to lose. only under these circumstances can the resolution to be peaceful have any substance or currency. i'm afraid that too often those who call for peace are incapable of anything else... and then demand to be noticed for their virtue. ha!

"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." - nietzsche

[Peter Kropotkin]

because of this disconnect between our words and our actions.. I am guilty, you are guilty, we are guilty...
individually and collectively.. our words don't match our actions and that is a real problem....

P75: for some, it is because their words do match their actions that they become so alienated and estranged from society. others, who neither have to say or do anything substantial, remain in a trivial tedium by comparison. for such people, matching or not matching words to deeds is of no great consequence and hardly noticeable at all. but all this is relative, though; i don't mean to depreciate the importance of people saying what they mean and doing what they say... only that for most people, this wouldn't prove to be a great discrepancy. if words and deeds are trivial and insignificant, what matters whether or not they match? see what i mean?

K: you offer me no examples of people who words and actions match and still are
alienated from society AND themselves.... for that is a part of alienation, alienation from
oneself... not just society......and how would you be able to know if people's words
and deeds are trivial and insignificant? from your standpoint? from whose standpoint?
everyone believes their words and actions to be of value and significant... who are
you to tell them otherwise?

and here again:

PK: you want to change society.... begin by changing yourself...
match your words with your actions...begin to think about how to better yourself..
think about what it means to be human.... begin to investigate the Socratic
method of "know thyself"...…...ask yourself about your values and are they
they values you need to become yourself...and become the values you are..
match your words with your actions.....

regarding myself, there is such a beautiful irony here that i don't want to touch it.

75: what if a fellow came along who had not only found that violent disobedience to the state was necessary and warranted, but that such violence would also achieve more in correcting the negligence of the state than any peaceful reform ever would... and even by accident? lol @ that irony! what if an anarchist fellow, who had no interest in 'bettering' the state, took to his personal revenge against the state (as a result of some betrayal at the highest level) which incidentally resulted in affecting greater change than would those deliberate actions of the peaceful (who were not betrayed) ever would? the former, completely indifferent to the effects of his deeds for the whole of society, happens to accomplish by accident as a result of his own personal war, what the latter, who makes a genuine concerted effort to change society, fails to accomplish because of the impotence of their deeds. is this not a glorious irony, bro? shirley you see it. one does with a trifle concern and with half the effort, what the other sets out to do, but fails, with the greatest of concentration and twice the effort.

PK: once again, you spin tales in the air without any examples...as I was anarchist for
many years, of the non-violent variety, I have learned that violence isn't the answer
to what ails society.. over the last 200 years of violence against the state, exactly
how many times has violence been successful in generating change in the state?

75: for the former, what he accomplishes amounts to an effortless favor... to throwing a few scraps to the people; your war is not my war, and what i do is not for you, but my victory will incidentally be your victory too. take whatever you want when i'm done here.

PK: if one proclaims for peace, is he less of a man?[/quote]

75: absolutely not, provided that he was capable of and prepared for war... that he actually was in danger of war... that he had something to lose. only under these circumstances can the resolution to be peaceful have any substance or currency. i'm afraid that too often those who call for peace are incapable of anything else... and then demand to be noticed for their virtue. ha!
"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." - nietzsche[/quote]

PK: ahhh, a Nietzschian... now this hot mess makes sense.... my first
philosophical position was as a Nietzschian... oh, how I loved to dream that
I was the ubermensch and how far above the herd I was... and as I grew older,
I realized that had Nietzsche lived long enough, he would have
rejected his entire philosophy as childish drivel....

the urge to violence is the urge to obey the lower, animal instincts....
to destroy is the instinctual urge of a child in the throes of those animal
instincts, nothing more...it is easy to destroy and commit violence...
it is the natural, instinctive action that we all have.......

the reason Jesus says, "blessed be the peacemakers" is because
to seek peace means you have to rise above your natural instincts
of violence and destruction........to seek peace means you are becoming
a human being, not an animal with animal urges/instincts.....

to seek peace means you seeking cooperation and participation and
collaboration and reciprocity..... you are seeking the higher creative
level of being human.....a man seeking recompense in violence
is not a man at all, but an animal on two legs.....

we humans, we are far too comfortable and at ease with our violence,
we must turn to becoming just at ease and as comfortable with
the higher levels of being human and that means becoming
comfortable with peace....the path of peace is the path to
order, unity, love, unity, concord...…..the path of violence is the
path to discord, disharmony, disorder, harshness, disorganization,
confusion...……..

we cannot achieve peaceful order from violent means....

as a man, I am learning to become comfortable with peace...

I have learned that if I engage in violence, then I engage with my
lower, instinctual, animal self... I forsake my higher human level....

It isn't a question about Nietzsche's babbling about those without claws...
for if one lives in a peaceful world, claws aren't needed....

seek peace and love with the vigor that others seek violence

blessed are the peacemakers....the ones who seek peace and love....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

to continue on.....

look at our economic system, capitalism.... it is a martial version of
our political system... which is war by other means.... capitalism is
about economic warfare... it isn't a peaceful system of economics..
it is about conquering the enemy by economic means....

"to the victor, goes the spoils"

and the spoils in our martial economics is profits/money....

and thus we see that our entire way of life socially, economically,
politically is one of warfare, violence, anger, greed, lust... the
lower human instincts....

to hold to the anarchist economics of cooperation, mutual aid,
voluntary means of political system....is to hold to the higher,
human level of organizing a system.....

people hold to systems as being like social darwinism.. which
is the survival of the fittest system of economics, political,
social systems.. but is a system of the wealthy/powerful holding
all the cards, really a system which brings about the greatest good
and value for all people? No, no it doesn't..... it certainly benefits
those in high places but doesn't do jack for anyone who isn't
strong or wealthy or powerful.....

I hold that a system that doesn't benefit all, doesn't benefit anyone....

either we are about all the people or we are about none of the people....

competition isn't the answer to our problems, but cooperation is
the answer...

we cannot hold to martial values be it socially or economically or
politically..... the only possible answer lies in this particular statement...

"We the people in order to form a more perfect union...."

competition or social Darwinism or surrender to the values of
animal instincts cannot aid or help "we the people"...…


the values we hold as a people, martial, violent values no longer
have value in this modern world.... they had their place and use
at one time, but that time has passed... we must adapt and change
with the changing situation we find ourselves in.....

and today, we find ourselves in a cooperation, mutual aid part of
human existence... perhaps tomorrow in another situation and
place, we find ourselves in a martial, violent place and we must
react with the appropriate response.... but not today.....
we must react to each different situation with the necessary
response....

you cannot answer different questions with the same answer....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

ask yourself, what is religion? what is philosophy?
what is science? what is history? what is economics?

they are means of understanding the world around us
and by understanding, we can then create our response
the world... if we see the world as violent, we would react
violently, but if we see the world as being peaceful, we
react peacefully....

our political system, our economic system are violent,
cruel, vicious systems.... and thus we react to the world
in a violent, cruel, vicious way....
but, but is the world really violent, cruel, vicious?

No, no it isn't....

and that is the great paradox of the modern world.....

we are reacting in the wrong fashion to our world....

we are mistaking perception for reality.....

is the world a violent, cruel, vicious world?

Only if we make the world a violent, cruel, vicious place....

we are the creators of our own world, we are the creators of our own
values, we are the creators of our reality...…

take control over your own reality, take charge of your own values....
become your values...….

if you take control over your reality and find it a violent, cruel, vicious
place, then you have been taken in by your own lower level instinctual
values... the animal values that we all have... if you see the world as
being of peace, love, charity, then you are following the higher values
of being human, not the lower values of being animal....

Kropotkin

[Meno_]

Peter,


Nietzche was either an inadverdant mimic, or was capable to transcend that and reindulged in an ironic way to express his overvaliation referentially, to give the impression that he was the shaker and mover, but in actuality holding to the contrary: begging for a Devine reappearance, to save himself through his conscience.

He was really seeking to scare people as to what Dostoevsky meant by proposing what would happen if He did reappear, he would be crucified again.

Historical determination can not possibly not recure, it is implicit in the mind's harmony, but not explicit in the mind's eye.
I know this may not appear as comforting , but the cruxifixtion's metaphor extends the irony You pointed out, by leaps and bounds, that only miracles can evoke.

Therefore , the focus should be on ideas that do the right thing, rather then accept the face value of a washed out materially returned ironic
Intent to will a manifest power of acquiring value in terms of the substance of said material.

Nietzche must have known that this contradiction would have the forceeable sacrifice through the depths of the underworld , through which he needed to travel, whereby everyone who believed in Him, mist see the depth looking back .
He knew this scintilla of a spark of an eigenblick, would be and must be the price by which the Father's ire be resolved.
This certainty is hotly contested,to this day, and maybe AI at one point can .

I am with You unavoidably, to correct what o really suspect as an injustice pf historical misinterpretation.

Don't hold it against me, at.one point You gave me carte blanche to post.
If You disagree with this assessment , I will delete it , or, let it stand as a testament to a differing interpretation .