a new understanding of today, time and space.

K: if you are part of a system, any system, and the system is not correctly working,
not functional, then you are part of the problem…and therein lies part of the problem…
the need to escape responsibility for a dysfunctional system…oh, its not my fault,
its the other guy fault we have a dysfunctional system… it is never MY fault…
is the modern cry of denying responsibility…leading all the way to a president
for whom it is never his fault for anything going wrong… taking credit for success,
even when it wasn’t his actions that lead to success, to refusing responsibility for
anything gone wrong…refusing responsibility is the modern blame game and
part of the reason for our system’s problems…

I am in part, as much as anyone, for our systems continued failure as you
are part of that failure…until we learn to take responsibility for our actions,
or inactions as the case may be, we are going to continue to fail…

it is childlike to refuse to accept responsibility… that is what children do…
its not my fault says the child who just broke the vase on the table…
accepting responsibility for our actions is being an adult and we need more of that…
being adult…I too have played the, its not my fault game and that doesn’t
lead to a more successful person or a situation, system…

you see the dysfunctional situation in Washington DC and part of that lies
in the fact that no one takes responsibility for it… who is going to be an adult
there? as far as I can tell, no one…and therein lies the problem…

Kropotkin

You are wrong, sooo wrong.

I am not of this world, they are not me and I am not of them.

It is a conspiracy against me,

Back when I was politically correct, i would try to advocate peace and get on the news to create better world, But whenever i got on the news they censored me and cut the livestream. It is a conspiracy against me You are not allowed to talk unless you are a slave automaton of the “agenda”.
all news is controlled like george orwell 1984. this is a freedomless era of sheep, cucks, and the delusional.

we have no say what happens in washington dc, i did not vote for trump or hillary, I tried my best to stop the masses of mindless idiots from voting for them, but it was no use. it is as impossible to stop a moving train by standing in front of it as it is stop a mass of idiots.

Peter Kropotkin: better human beings make a better human society…
and therein lies the problem today… we aren’t better human beings
and it shows in the society today…

K: and here we ask ourselves what makes a “better” human being?

in terms of systems, it is simply this, that which makes the system
be more ordered and that which makes the system less ordered is
bad, not good… it is in terms of creating order in a system that
we must understand good versus evil…but does that mean
we “always” look to create order in any system? No, we must allow
dissent and disorder in any system…the question becomes,
how much disorder can we allow in the system?

for example, the resist movement today against 45…
this is clearly a movement creating disorder and yet, yet
it is quite necessary and needed…sometimes the path to an
ordered society lies in disorder…the route of 45 has lead to
an even greater disorder in society…he has created a very disorder
society and a very unjust and unequal society… by doing so, he has
limited freedom for all us…so we must protest even if it means
a disordered society because in the end, we are fighting for a just
and equal society whereas he is not…and that makes all the difference
in the world…disorder to create a more just society, a more equal society
is the path to a society that is more ordered… for a society that is ordered
must be just and equal and free and 45 opposes a just and equal and free society…
so we must, must dissent and protest even at the cost of creating more disorder
in society…because in the end, 45 disorder is far greater and more damaging
then our disorder and dissent…we are the lessor of two evils and hope to return
to an ordered society whereas 45 doesn’t care about an ordered society…
this is the difference between the resist movement and 45…
we want a return to an ordered society and he doesn’t…

Kropotkin

let us look at one aspect of system…

does a system require metaphysical aspects to it?

In other words, do we need god to make a system work?

No, not at all…having order in a system has nothing to do with god…
we can look at a system and think about it, imagine it, work with it,
without any recourse to a metaphysical notion…

we can begin and continue any explanation of a system, be it a natural, mechanical and
biological and never have recourse to any metaphysical need for an explanation of
or about a system…

this is important because it means we don’t need to need to include
god or any other metaphysical explanation in our understanding of any
system…we just need to understand the relationship of a system
within itself and a system relations with other systems…a understanding
of relationships have no need to include god or any metaphysical explanation
of the universe, man or government, economics, etc…all of which are systems…

Kropotkin

No shit, this is what I’ve been saying since 5 years ago, with my DNA machine thing, but as usual, society ignores me and then eventually catches up to me and steals my old ideas and markets them as their own.

That’s very simplistic view dude. Again, society lags behind me, steals all of my ideas, and lets random politicians be leaders instead of me, half-assing my ideas and not fully understanding or implementing my ideas, then wonders why its a shit world. Meanwhile I get no credit recognition or fame for any of my hard work.

Satyr explains chaos very well. The difference between CHAOS and ORDER is CHAOS is a system which is so convoluted that you cannot reliably predict the outcome using conventional algorithms. Order refers to a predictable, simplified system.

CHAOS IS NOT INHERENTLY EVIL, ORDER IS NOT INHERENTLY GOOD. REMEMBER THAT. If we have an order where the goal is to give ourselves shitty food, that’s not good is it. Order means evil done more efficiently, or good done more efficiently. Chaos means its a random grab bag, you get a 50/50 chance of good or evil. Order means your guaranteed to get whatever, whether or not it is good or evil.

But as usual society will lag behind me, steal my idea then market it as if it was one of their own.

as I continue my research into 17 century philosophy,
one of the main questions asked was this, how do we
know what we know? How is knowledge possible and what
are the limits of this knowledge? Descartes is all about this…
to make knowledge certain, was one of the goals of the 17 century…

and yet, this flies into the face of being human…

we exist in a state of being without knowledge all the time…
we can never have any knowledge of the future, this uncertainty
drives many… we fear the future because we aren’t certain about
future…we are afraid, not knowing, not being certain…

we cannot have knowledge about the future, we cannot be certain…

if life has three parts, then we have no knowledge about one part, the
future… but what about the past? can we be certain about our knowledge
about the past? I have “knowledge” about the past, about people, places, events
times, and in talking to my sister about my “knowledge” about the past, I have learned
I am often wrong and sometimes drastically wrong about my “knowledge” about
people, places, events and times…

for example, I would have bet the family fortune that my mom grew up on a farm,
for that was my knowledge about my mom’s past and yet, when talking to my mom,
I learned she never lived on a farm… so where the hell did I get the idea, “knowledge”
that she grew up on a farm? my knowledge about my past is shaky at best,
I really can’t be certain about anything that did exist, my knowledge about,
the past, I can’t trust…I may just as wrong about the past as I am about my mom
growing up on a farm… I am uncertain about my information about my past…
because my “knowledge” about my past may be misremembered or misinterpreted
or just plain forgotten… I wouldn’t be the first person in history to rewrite
my history to match some idea or ideal about myself…and this is why we
cannot trust our own personal history… we cannot be certain…

so we have the past be in doubt as well as the future…

that leaves us the present and the present has its problems…

I may think I have a perfect and wonderful marriage and
yet, my wife may not think so and she is planning on leaving me for
a circus clown… I cannot be any more certain about the present
then I am about the future or the past…

we exist in doubt and uncertainty and we lack the knowledge
to dispel that doubt and uncertainty… we cannot make knowledge
certain despite Descartes attempt…

so we do we do in the face of this uncertainty about our knowledge?

we live with it, just as we always have… we cannot be certain about
our knowledge of ourselves or of the universe…for facts can change,
which changes our knowledge of the universe. So we can never be sure
about our knowledge of the universe. Our pursuit in finding certainty
of our knowledge is doomed to failure and that is alright…
we can have knowledge, but we must assume that the knowledge we
have of the universe is flawed and uncertain…

this leads us to the idea that we must embrace uncertainty
and doubt and that we can’t be certain about anything and
say, that is ok…

doubt, uncertainty, chance, probability, chaos, these are the real
options in life, in the universe…

our attempts at certainty and fixed knowledge and the removal of
doubt is just our vain attempts to find certainty in an uncertain
universe…the ism’s and ideologies and paradigms and attempts
at human systems are all an attempt to create certainty in our lives…

Kropotkin

human beings are social creatures, we are animals that go about in packs…
look at how we house ourselves… we don’t live, for the most part, apart
from each other, no, we live in houses very close to each other…and we live
in condo’s and apartments in which we live in very close proximity to each other…
in my condo, my neighbor’s door is about 9 feet from me…and that is farther
apart then some places I’ve seen…

we live close to each other and we spend our days in constant contact
with other humans… we lunch with each other and go out at night with
each other and we go to bars to mingle with each other…
in fact it isn’t healthy for humans to isolate themselves from other humans,
to maintain our mental health, we must stay in contact with other humans…

and our social structure is built to keep humans in contact with each other…
we have bars and shopping malls and resorts and restaurants
and events like musical and sporting events where we hang with 20 thousand of
our best friends…

our political structure is about the contact we have with people…
a democracy is about people deciding their fate together… together
is the key word…

the reality is, we are but a step away from the bee’s and ants in their social structure…

not only must our political structure mirror our social structure but our economic
structure must mirror our social structure…and capitalism doesn’t mirror
our social structure… it is too individualist… every man for himself is not
the way or means of the human being… we sink or swim together as a species
and our economics must reflect that… that is why communism as a economic
system is a better fit for human beings than capitalism…and that is why democracy
is a better fit for human beings then a dictatorship or any top down political structure…
our political and economic structure must, must reflect the reality that is the human being…
and we are a social, pack animals that must operate within and as a group…

the lone wolf idea of the human being is simply a myth and sometimes, sometimes
I admit that the social aspect of the human experience gets a little tiring and that
is when the lone wolf idea has appeal but the reality is, we exist as the founding fathers
said, of the people, for the people, by the people and this is just more then a political
expression… it is a motto for all human beings… we exist of the people and we exist
for the people and we exist by the people… for human beings, there can be no other way…
it has been said that the worst fate is to die alone and that in a nutshell is the human
experience…we live together and we die together and we must coexist… together

and social, communal experiences are what define the human being and our
political and economic structures must reflect that and that is social and
communal social structures like communism and socialism
are the answers to the question as to, what political and economic structure
must human beings have…

Kropotkin

so in light of what I have said about systems and what I have
stated about human beings being social creatures, we can, perhaps,
now understand the danger of IQ45 has done as president…
he has sacrificed the health and welfare of people by undermining
Obamacare and he has done it in the name of money…

what greater crime can be done? putting money over people’s lives…
he has also damaged the social, political and economic structure,
the very systems we humans, as social creatures need, he has damaged those
social structures in ways that should horrify any thinking, feeling person…

look at Puerto Rico and see what damage has been done and what
little the U.S and IQ45 has done to repair that part of the United States…
and all in the name of saving money…to have money as being
the decider of people’s fate is nihilism… we are social creatures
and we as social creatures have, as part of the human experience,
emotions and part of our emotions is empathy…and where is the empathy
for the citizens of Puerto Rico from IQ45 and the GOP…do they lack
this basic human emotion for our fellow human creatures?

this idea that we are social creatures, that we cannot exist alone,
that we must, MUST have our fellow human beings to survive and to
flourish and become something better then ourselves…must drive
all our idea’s about our social and economic and political structures
and it must drive our responses to our fellow human beings…
we are connected to other human beings, whether we admit it or not,
we are the same regardless of race, creed, color, nationality…

to ignore our fellow human beings is to ignore the fact that we are
are social creatures…and we must, must connect with our fellow human
beings to not only survive but to maintain our humanness…
recall that humans that go without contact with other human beings,
like in solitary confinement have mental issues…
and babies that don’t have physical contact with other human beings, die…
to be a human being is to be part of and with and of people…
of the people, for the people and by the people…
every action we take must be with this thought in mind…
we are social, pack animals and we must our decisions with
this in mind…

Kropotkin

as I read what I wrote, my thinking is clearly in line with the
English moralist of the 18 century, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
and Butler but without the belief in god…it is interesting that
philosophy gets recycled over and over again and old wine gets
pored into new skin…

Kropotkin

butler and Shaftesbury were opposed to Hobbes idea that the beginning
of philosophy is in man’s self interest… self love and egotism is the
beginning of philosophy for Hobbes… we act in our own self interest
but, but this is more of a theoretical idea instead of a practical idea…
for we have plenty of examples including ourselves as parents and our
parents having to sacrifice for us and we for our children…
we see examples of people acting in the best interest of others
instead of themselves from the Priest? or perhaps it was a Rabbi,
not sure, anyway of volunteering to take the place of a person to
be killed in the death camps of Nazi Germany…to task of
helping others even to the point of our determent…
plain old human kindness to others is one example of
how self love, self egotism is not the only path for human beings…

we must place self love, egotism and self sacrifice and love of others
as part of, part of the human experience…not as the whole thing…

at different times in our lives, in our experiences, in our daily life,
we must act upon and know the difference between self egotism
and the acting upon the self sacrifice and love of others…

we are social creatures and this shows when we act for others,
instead of our own personal interest…

this self sacrifice and self love is also a part of, part of being
human…it is in our experiences and our personal knowledge
that determines if we understand the difference between the times
we must act selfishly and the times we must act for the betterment
of others…the times, the experience at the time, the moment determines
if we need to be selfish or altruist and we need to become more
aware of that difference when it is time to be selfish or altruistic…

as we are social creatures, we need to become more altruistic
because we can only succeed if our pack, our species, our group succeeds…
we cannot succeed alone and altruism is one path for our group, our
social group of human beings to succeed…

Kropotkin

the above post shows us the failure of believing that
one reason is the driving reason for our beliefs/ thoughts/behavior…
for example, I pointed out Hobbes and his belief that we are driving
primarily by egotism…we make all our calculations based on
our egotism, what is best for me? the Buddha thought that
the basis of life was suffering and the Declaration of Independence
was about “life, liberty and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS” with the
pursuit of happiness being the goal everyone thinks of…
I spend my days pursuing MY happiness and screw everyone else…
the Greeks thought that it was knowledge that drove people…
and the medieval man thought it was the pursuit of god that drove
people…

the failure here is not the idea’s but the idea that it is ONE sole reason
that drives us… we are a complicated bunch and what motivates us
is different for each of us, but also what motivates us changes, not only
over the years but over the year, month and yes, even the day…

situational ethics is not just for breakfast anymore…

we change depending on our situation…and what drives us changes
depending on the situation…we might be driven by knowledge or suffering
or egotism or love or our happiness, again depending…the thing about
being human is we cannot react to every situation the same…
we must respond differently to every situation…

so to understand the animal called a human being…
we must understand that there is no one driving force
in our lives like suffering or the search for knowledge or
the pursuit of happiness… but we are a mixture of each
depending upon the situation…

Kropotkin

in reading such writers as Hobbes and Butler, they often use the word,
nature, as in “human nature” and the overall idea of “nature”…
As in, man is a part of nature, but that leaves us with this idea of
nature and what is nature?

as it is good to start somewhere, I am going to start with a definition of
nature…

Nature: 1. the essential quality of a thing; essence 2.inherent tendencies of a person
3. kind; type. 4. (a)the physical universe. (b) {sometimes N-}the power, force etc.
that seems to regulate this. 5. the primitive state of humans 6. natural scenery…
by nature naturally; inherently…

so human nature is, perhaps, the essential quality of a thing; its essence…
or perhaps it is the inherent tendencies of a person?
this definition doesn’t really seem to answer our question…
as to what is nature?

perhaps as a thought experiment, we can call nature, a system…
we are inherently a system that lives within a system that exists within
another system and so on and so forth… there doesn’t seem to be an end
to the number of systems we can belong to… we can be classified as a
biological system and part of the natural system and different
parts within each…

so depending on how you classify human beings, we can be in a number
of different type of systems…or we can be part of any number types of
natures…

however to classify human beings the same way as say the solar system
in regards as to having or being the same type of system, can lead us astray…

we operate differently, as a system then the solar system operates…
and yet, we come from the same matter as the solar system, we are composed
of the same matter as the solar system…these differences complicates
our understanding of what is nature/systems…

we exists as a system which means we are within nature, our bodily functions
are nature, as we come from a long, billions of years old, line of biological
creature’s… the one cell amoeba of two billion years ago is the father of
all life on planet earth and every biological creature since comes from
that one cell amoeba… and that is part of our nature and the nature of
all life on earth… part of the essential aspect of biological life on earth…

so we can say that, nature for all life comes from this long ago
one cell amoeba… our essence…we are biological, not metaphysical…
this is our nature…and yet we exist as all life has existed within an
environment, another aspect of nature, with system upon system
being the land, sky, sea, air, plant life, animal life, all acting and interacting
upon each other… systems engaging with each other… this is nature…
and we are just another system engaging with other systems like the land,
sea, sky, air, plant life…etc. this is nature…a complex interwoven,
interdependent cycle of systems acting upon other systems… and this
is also nature…nature is our lungs breathing and our heart beating
and our blood circulating and our muscles and sinews and all that
makes up the human animal…

if you try to isolate nature into component parts, you fail to see
the essential aspect of nature which is connection between the various
systems, which is nature…nature is our essential operating system…
of which is also part of our essential operating systems of land, sea
and sky, air, so on and so forth…nature is within us and outside of
us…

Kropotkin

Hobbes was the first British empiricist which meant that
he thought that we receive our knowledge through the senses…
that there were no innate idea’s from which we received
information about the world, we received our knowledge through
the senses, vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell and from these senses
we understand the world…but he was skeptical and by that he meant
the ancient idea whereas our senses are unreliable and not to be trusted…
so what does the modern age do that the ancient age was unable to do?

the modern age creates tools that aid in our senses ability to gather knowledge…
we have tools that aid in our vision, telescopes and microscopes and
aids for our hearing like radio telescopes…
we use such aids for our own personal use like glasses and hearing aids…
as I use both, I can tell this, the act of using tools like this is they distort…
for example, my hearing “hears” a noise and then it interprets it,
these tools we use to aid us, stand between us and the event they
are used for…I don’t hear noise directly, I hear the hearing aid
understanding of the noise…to state it slightly differently,
the hearing aid mediates between the noise and me…
tools are like that, they mediate between the event and
the person using the tool…
now one might think the difference is slight, but is it?
once again, in my experience, we have to think about human communication…
communication is not just the words said, but HOW the words are said…
you can have one sentence mean different things by how you say that sentence…

for example, take the sentence, you agree with me…
can be taken several different ways depending on the inflection
of the voice and the context of the sentence…

you agree with me? can be a straight forward question…

you agree with me? you dam well agree with me or I am firing your happy ass…

you agree with me? agree with me so we can convince the boss of this idea…
the target is the third party, not the two having the conversation…

and I am sure there are other ways this sentence can be used…

so what does this have to do with hearing aids?
I can hear the words, you agree with me? but I don’t often
hear the subtlety in the way the sentence is asked…
and sometimes the question asked is about the subtlety in
the question…sometimes the hearing aid won’t catch the
subtlety in a question, the inflection in the question and so
I misunderstand what is really being asked… do you agree with me?
oftentimes is not about whether you agree or disagree but is about something
else and that something else is hidden in the subtle way a question is asked…

the use of tool to expand our senses means we aren’t getting the sense results
directly from the source to the senses, but that the tool used mediates between
the event and the senses… we are one step away from direct experience of the event
we are trying to experience… so understand that the use of tools, to understand
experiences are not direct understanding of that experience, the tool mediates
between the event in question and the senses…

is this true of all tools? I would say yes, we don’t pound in the nail with our hands,
we use a hammer and that hammer mediates between the nail and our hands…
is this true of the tool we call “logic”? Once again, I would say yes…
we use logic to mediate between the event in question, say, math
and our senses… we experience math differently because we use
logic to understand the math… we experience math second hand, as it were,
the logic mediates between the math and our senses…

but what does this mean? what does the understanding, that when we use
tools that we then don’t experience the event directly but we experience
it second hand through the use of the tool…

I am not sure…

Kropotkin

the second thought I had last night was this, modernity as we know
it, is what?

we exist in a far different world then say, Hobbes… who lived before
this notion of modernity… how is modernity different then what
Hobbes felt…

there was a cohesion to Hobbes world that doesn’t exist in our world…
the cohesion was not in technology or the political sphere, but
in the cohesion of the information he received…the information flow
that he received is vastly different then we have now…and much
more cohesive then what we have now…
the knowledge that flowed to Hobbes was from the church, religion,
the state, be a good citizen or else, and from the university, in which
the information was in the form of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism
or in Scholasticism…which combine in some form, the two, either
Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism…think of Aristotelianism as a school,
and Neoplatonism as a school and Scholasticism as a school,
the number of such schools were basically three… almost all information
was coming to Hobbes from these three schools…and recall that
Scholasticism was in some parts, a combination of Aristotelianism or
Neoplatonism… so in effect, you had two schools…

the point of modern revolution was that our information coming to us
in the form of science was challenging these two schools because
the information we were receiving was different then the two schools
had taught… we see from Kepler that the sun was the center of the universe
but the two schools didn’t teach that… how does one put information into
a school of knowledge if the information contradicts the information of the
school? If the knowledge of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism is wrong,
and you only have two schools of thought, where would you put this new information?
You have to create a new school of thought that can understand and accept
the new information…so the era between Kepler and Newton was an attempt
to create a new school of thought that better understood the universe then
Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism…today we think of Aristotelianism and
Neoplatonism as philosophical systems, but they were also physical
descriptions of the world… if you wanted to understand how the physical
universe work, how the sun and earth and planets and stars acted,
you studied Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism in the middle ages and into
the age of Hobbes, this was true…but modern science
changed the way we understood how the universe worked
but we have to store that knowledge into some unified system
in which to understand it and to teach it…
so from Kepler to Newton was the search for a new school
that was needed to explain the new understanding of the universe…
So Hobbes answer was Empiricism, we understand and interpret
the universe through our senses and we reason from
the information gained from our senses to create a new
understanding of how the universe worked…

but what in gods name does this have to do with Modernity?
Everything…

the schools that arose from our new understanding of the universe,
empiricism and the enlightenment idea’s, which was a theory of thought,
and also such idea’s as the beginning of classical liberalism, all flowed
from the new knowledge that came from science… and not from the
study of the old forms of knowledge, Aristotelianism or Neoplaonism
or Scholasticism because they had a flawed understanding of
how the universe worked…

so these new schools flowed nicely until roughly, 1900
and then came the beginning of modernity… but why?

what happened in 1900? ah, Mr. Einstein happened…
and in 1905 published 4 papers which radically changed our
understanding of how the universe worked…
and that new understanding didn’t fit into any of the old
paradigms of empiricism or the enlightenment theories
or classical liberalism… so we once again, just as the Europe of
the years between Kepler and Newton, didn’t have a school able
to understand or to teach the new understanding of the universe,
we don’t have a school of thought in which to teach the new
understanding of the universe…that is the role that the thinkers
from Descartes to Leibniz played, creating the new systems of thought
that accommodated the new understanding of how the universe worked…
the 100 years from Descartes to Leibniz created the new systems that
existed until 1900, roughly 300 years… then Einstein happened…
but who were the creators of the new thinking? Ah, we begin
to understand the creation of modernity… Nietzsche was the first,
and perhaps the only one, who tried to explain the new world order,
the new understanding of how the world worked… he saw, as no one
has seen, that the new understanding of the universe, meant systems building
like the one that Hegel and Kant tried, no longer works…the new understanding
of the world meant that we cannot understand how the universe worked
via building a system, because we began to understand that a system
cannot hold all the information necessary to properly understand the
information we had gathered…we cannot build a system to understand
the information we have gathered because no system we built,
would be able to have all the information we need to understand
how the universe worked…so if you can’t build a system like
Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism or Scholasticism that allows one
to understand and teach that system, how do you now understand
or teach it?
and this fundamental understanding is the creation of what we
call modernity…we don’t have schools of thought like Aristotelianism
because no school of thought is possible given the new understanding
of the universe…so we have this flow of information, this massive
flow of information and we have no way to logically place it into
a school of thought or any type of system in which we can then
use to understand or teach…we have no way to place the
new information into context in which we can understand it…
we have 8 million people living in New York…
that is not information we can place into some system
because it can’t be placed into a system and thus we
have such random facts, which by their very nature are changeable,
and we can’t really do anything with them…we can’t place them
into some school of thought like Empiricism that would put that
information into context, because we have no such school of thought…
and thus we have modernity… which is the inability to create
a logical system of context in which to understand idea’s or facts…
and thus the need of philosophy to create such a logical context or
system in which to understand idea’s or facts…
we need philosophy now, more then ever because this
state of modernity will continue to exist until we create this
context or school of thought in which we can then begin to
understand and teach…

Kropotkin

When reading everyone from Descartes to Leibniz, you see that
they are all searching for certainty… certainty of knowledge, certainty
of information… they all assume the certainty of god, but that is
an assumption…

but what is really needed is not certainty for there is no such thing…
we can’t be certain about anything, but I say, so what!!!
what does it matter that we can’t be certain about something or anything…
the real search is not for certainty because we will never find that,
no the real search isn’t even for knowledge because knowledge/facts
change all the time…8 million people live in New York city, but that
information changes all the time, and we can never be certain about the
actual number because it changes all the time…

no, the search is for the understanding of relationships between us and
the universe and the relationship between us and that tree over there
and our relationship between me and you… the real search is for
the understanding of relationships in the universe…
what is our relationship to this tree or the state or to justice…
those are the real questions to ask…

not to engage in attempting to create certainty with god/religion or
to the state/US or our certainty of understanding with ism’s or ideologies…
no, those false searches cannot lead us to certainty because we can never
be certain about anything, but we can, can understand our relationships
with the state, religion or isms’ and ideologies…to have certainty
is vastly overrated, but to have an understanding of our relationships
with others and those items previously listed such as god and the state,
that is what should drive us, not a futile search for something that
can never happen, like a search for certainty…
we must stick to that which can exists and not search for that
which doesn’t exists, like certainty…

Kropotkin

how are we to live?

Part of the human answer is in politics and political ideologies
such as democracy and monarchy and fascism… as they are all
part and parcel of the answer of, how are we to live…

as we have had so many different political answers to the question
of how we are to live, clearly there hasn’t been one answer that has
been able to solve all the problems presented by human existence…

the question of how I AM TO LIVE is clearly tied
into the question of how WE ARE TO LIVE…

Marx AND Adam Smith thought man was an economic being…
Plato thought man was an political being…
and most philosophers thought man was a moral being…
So what are we? Are we economic beings or political beings or
are we moral beings?

part of the confusion lies in the fact, that we are part economic, part
political, part moral and how do we understand what each aspect means
to each of us and to us collectively…how does one create a theory of
“how one is to live” when each of us is part of those three things, economic,
political and moral…therein lies the confusion… we really can’t build
or create a theory of man until we decide what we are… are we political
or are we economic or are we moral?

the question of who we are lies front and center at the morass of
our world today…the religious believe we are moral and act upon it
thus we have the religious wars of today and the businesses and government
acting as if we are economic beings and the political attempts to mediate between
these two plus more…

the complication from not understanding if we are moral or economic or political
has created, in no small part, the mess we have today…

for if we look into history and see past civilizations and cultures,
they, the Greeks or Egyptians for example, knew, absolutely knew who
they were… and the Medieval man had a very clear notion of
who they were and what there place in society was…
it wasn’t even a question to the person of the medieval age…

even into the age of Enlightenment, people still had a very clear
understanding of who they were… the idea’s of the Enlightenment,
of progress and reason and denial of religion, were all based on a set
ideal of who we were and who we were trying to be…

and all that changed with the 20th century, with modernity…
we no longer have any sense of, who a human being is…
Marx attempted to create an idea of who we are and the Nazi’s
did the same and we have Darwin saying something else
and Nietzsche saying something else…and they are all right and
they are all wrong…but in what parts are they right and in what parts
are they wrong is the very stuff of our investigations into who we are
and how are we to live…

if man is a political being, then we can live in a certain way and
if we are an economic being, then we can live in another way
and if we are moral beings, then we can live in another way…

once, Goethe wrote that he had “two souls in my breast”…
two souls, god, I wish it was that simple… we are a many soul beings,
we human beings…think of all the virtues we human being can be,
both good and bad and we, each of us, is every one of those possible virtues
and we exhibit those virtues every single day…
every virtue is another possibility for us… another
course of action…The Greeks believed in arête, which was
excellence and the Greeks practices that possibility every single
chance they had… in warfare and in playwriting and in speeches
and in philosophy and they held competitions in an attempt
to discover their arête, their excellence…we have no such
similar thing…and I suspect we are the worse for it…

so how are we to live really depends on who we are
and we moderns, we have no idea who we are or what
is possible for the human being…and that is the real
nature of modernity… we don’t know who we are and
how we are to live…

Kropotkin

if you think about it, the vast number of religions, of
religious ways we can think about ourselves, the number
of religious answers to the question of who we are and how
are we to live is vast… we have hundreds, in fact thousands
of religions… and each of them with a different idea of
who we are and what are the possibilities of being human…

the very fact we have so many different religions, so many different
possibilities is bad for us because it says, we have no idea of who this
human creature, this human being is and so, we have many, many
different answers in the form of many different religions…

if we begun to truly understand who we are and what are our possibilities
that we won’t need or want so many different religions… if we knew
who we were, we wouldn’t have so many different religions…
maybe 5 religions at most… but we are confused and that confusion
spills into the many different religions as well as our many different
political ideologies and our many different economic systems that
we humans have had over the last million years…

once we become clear as to the real nature of the human being,
we shall not need so many different political ideologies and so many
different economic systems… one system will be fine because we will
know who we are and that knowledge makes all the difference in the world…

if you want simplicity in your world… find out who you are and what
is your place in the universe… that will bring you simplicity and
peace of mind and then, then help answer the general human question that
is present within all of us, who are we and how are we to live…

Kropotkin

I spent most of yesterday going over this thread and rereading
my posts in it and I find in this thread, I have covered most of
traditional philosophy…I hope to continue this…

there are two schools of thought… one says we have innate idea’s,
the other says we get all knowledge from the senses. Plato believes in
innate idea’s with his eternal forms and Hobbes and Locke and Hume believe
in empiricism which is we gain knowledge from our senses…

one idea is Tabula rasa… the mind is a blank slate without rules for processing data,
and that date is added and rules for processing are formed solely by sensory experiences…

so far so good, nothing new here…we react to events from the sensory knowledge
we have gained… this sensory knowledge can be from any source that is within
our sensory perception, seeing, hearing, taste, smell, touch… we learn from those
sensory experiences…but what if we have a feedback loop of sorts…

we have our sensory perceptions we have built up over the years and through
them we have some sense of the world… this theory is a inside out looking at
the universe…we gain knowledge from our senses and then we look at the world…
but what if we react to events outside of ourselves which creates the sensory
perception’s… for example, it is the events outside of us that creates the
sensory perception’s…for example, I walk into a table… by walking into the
table I learn that the table is hard and will hurt if I walk into it… the event of
walking into the table “teaches” me a sensory perception…sensory perception is
active, not passive… watch a young child, maybe one or two years old…
they will grab everything… that is how they “understand” outside events,
by experiencing them… the event of grabbing something, say a ball for example,
is a learning experience… they learn about round or color or textures when grabbing
a ball, grabbing a tennis ball is a different event then grabbing a baseball and is a different
event then grabbing a golf ball, the experience itself will become new sensory experiences
for the baby…from a child’s standpoint, there is no real difference between
a golf ball and a grape… they can’t tell the difference until either being told
or they experience it for themselves…the physical act of grabbing the golf ball
creates new sensory information… thus it takes two to tangle… you need both
the event AND the sensory knowledge…if there are no outside events, there
is nothing to get sensory knowledge about…there is an interaction going on
between outside events and sensory knowledge…a dance as it were…
one needs the other…as there is not innate understanding of the world,
we gain knowledge of the world through our senses and then we use that
limited sensory knowledge to gain more knowledge of the world through
interactions with events which increases our sensory knowledge which allows
us further understanding of outside events which increases our sensory knowledge
and that dance back and forth between outside events and our senses creates
our knowledge of the universe…a limitation of senses limits our understanding
of events which limits our knowledge of the universe… I can’t hear high pitch
noises like Violins and flutes and certain telephones and some women’s voices…
as I cannot experience those noises, those outside events, I have limited knowledge
about them… to increase my knowledge/understanding of those high pitch noises,
I wear a hearing aid which increases my sense of hearing… I can experience
the event of high pitch noises with my hearing aid but without it, I cannot…
I couldn’t even imagine what high pitch noises sounded like until I wore a hearing aid
because I can’t experienced it without a hearing aid… the event creates
new knowledge, new understanding of the universe… as long as I can experience
it in some fashion through my senses…quite often when checking at the store,
I will vaguely hear something but because I can’t place it because of my hearing,
I don’t know/understand what that noise could be… it might be a phone or a balloon
popping or coins going into the coinstar machine…until I am able to
create some understanding or to say it another way, a connection between
that noise and what is the cause of that noise. I cannot understand or
grasp that noise until I understand the event that created the noise…

it is not enough to sensory experience an event, one must
connect in some fashion with the event to be able to have
knowledge about it…it is about creating a relationship between
the noise and the event that allows me to understand or experience
the event… it is an active process between the event and the sensory
understanding of the event…an event occurs and I must use my senses
to be able to have knowledge about or understand that event…
and my past sensory knowledge aids me in my understanding
of current or even future events…if someone is about to pop
a balloon, I have experience that in the past and so I know what
that will sound like and I can react accordingly…my previous
sensory experiences helps me to understand current events like
a balloon popping or about to be popped…this back and forth
between events and our senses is what helps create
us as human beings because we are, in part, not much more then
the accumulation of prior or past events…those events help create
the person we are today and our senses however limited they are,
help shape who we are by the information we receive from our senses…

Kropotkin

in light of the previous post, we understand such concepts
as justice and equality in terms of our sensory experiences…
I have experience injustice and inequality and so I have experienced it
through my senses… I have also read about injustice and inequality
so, I can compare my experiences of injustice and inequality with others…
this comparison allows me to further understand injustice and inequality…
then I can compare other events of injustice and inequality in terms
of my event and thus I can better understand such concepts…this is
the rational, active understanding of the universe… by understanding
experiences, mine and others, I can gain a better understanding of
the universe…

so we have added comparison to sensory experiences that helps us
to better understand the world we live in…

if I compare events that are considered unjust, I can get a better
understanding of what is injustice…

once again, it is through outside events that we gain an understanding
of our universe… the role of the rational mind is in comparing
those events…but the mind isn’t passive, it is active…
from these events of injustice, I can make a judgment about
the nature of injustice…so some combination of sensory
events and active rational comparison, for example, we can
gain understanding of the universe… there are other tools
with which we can understanding of the universe beyond
comparison, such as logic and math and geometry and science which
also use examples from which we use our senses to gather knowledge
of the universe…

we have a sensory perception such as hearing something and we
can use our tools of comparison or logic or math or science
to gain knowledge of that event…we have a large variety
of tools in which to understand sensory knowledge…
we see the sun rising and setting… what tool would you use
to gather information about the sun rising or setting?

Science would be the best tool as science has created a
well documented and well understood theory of why the
sun seems to rise and set…we have a sensory experience
and we must use our rational thought to best understand
that experience and we must use our rational thought to
find/seek the best tool we need to understand that sensory
experience…

it is as we grow more experience with experiences, we
discover that the number of tools we have to understand those
experiences grow…once again, the dance between events/ experiences
and our sensory tools, sight and so on, continues…

Kropotkin

let us take an example of some event…

we are sitting in a car somewhere and out of the corner of my
eye, I see a moving yellow shadow… now my experiences
might suggest that the moving yellow shadow is a lion…
but and this is important… we might react to the shadow
in a fight or flight reaction… we flee but we don’t know
exactly what we are fleeing from… we react from instinct,
not from any knowledge or experience of that yellow shadow…
we are animals and like all animals, we are instilled with a billion
years of instinct… not rational, not experienced reaction to events…

now many people/philosophers believe we go toward pleasure and avoid
pain… but doesn’t this idea of pleasure and pain come from instinct…
for example, sex and wanting sex is not a rational thought, but an instinctual
reaction…billions of years of nature programed the sexual urge into animals,
of which we are one such branch… pleasure of sex is from instinct and not
any rational thought… we don’t need to think about or have a rational
thought about sex to want sex… we simply desire it… we want that pleasure
even though intellectual it might not be the best idea… pleasure and pain
are instinctual events… the rationalist or philosopher believe we should
be rational about sex and we should engaged in rational thinking about sex…
but sex itself is instinct, that pleasure is instinct and it is only with a great
deal of thought or self control that we control our sexual instinct…

the drive toward pleasure or away from pain is driven by instinct…
we reach out and grab something… it might be a pillow or it might
be a nail, if it is a pillow, we might continue to grab it, pleasure,
but if it is a nail, we instinctually move away from it… rational thought
has nothing to do with this…

this idea of instinct is missing from thinkers such as Hobbes,
Locke, Hume… they take pleasure and pain as rational experiences,
whereas pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences…
the trick we must learn is to turn instinctual experiences into
rational experiences… we must overcome our instincts…
thus turning an instinctual experience into a rational experience…
and this is the call of philosophers since Socrates…without
using the words instincts…this is what they are saying…
pleasure and pain are simply instincts at work and
philosophy and society and the law and religion all
say that we must rationalize our instincts, instead of
reacting instinctually, we must use rational thought
for our behavior instead of instinct and we must
use rational thought in pursuit of pleasure and pain instead
of instinct…this is how we overcome instinct… with
rational thought… we overcome and this is in part what
Nietzsche means when he refers to overcoming…
becoming who you are…

pleasure and pain are instinctual experiences which we must
overcome by rational thought…

Kropotkin