a new understanding of today, time and space.

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
Goethe often said that Werther must die so that Goethe can live…

and this is the value of the act of creation…

we vent, so that we may keep on creating…

so that we don’t get stuck in some loop that
ties us into that loop forever…

K: and what must you kill that allow you to live?

where do you expend that inner energy that must be used
up or it threaten to destroy us…

remember life is an equation…
and every equation has an equal sign to it…
you must equal out every part or the equation
is unbalanced, it threatens “to fall apart”…
every single system must balanced out or it
eventually fails…

our inner lives is unbalanced… and threatens to
derail our entire society… so how do we regain balance
within ouro current society?

we begin by finding balance within us… we find that equation
that needs to be balanced… we find the truth…
be it philosophy or be it poetry or be it science or be
it religion…

we find values that allow us to recover our balance,
equal our equation…

so, what values or equation is needed to find society’s balance,
to find society’s equation?

we are living the wrong values and it shows in how unbalance
society is right now…….and like any equation, if it is unbalanced,
it threatens to fail, to collapse… and we are at that point right now…

so, how do we find the values that allow society to recover its
balance?

Kropotkin

human knowledge, its scope and limits…
not necessarily the book by Russell, but the actual idea
behind the scope and limit of human knowledge……

our limit of knowledge is really that of the senses…
but we can extend our sense via technological means
by telescope and microscope and radio waves and other such
devices that allow us to “see” or “hear” at great distances…

we can then by use of prior experience, by comparing and contrasting
things, by analysis (which is simple comparing and contrasting)
we can make sense of our new “experiences”…………

but my question is not about the scope and limits of knowledge,
but what the knowledge is and what do we do with that knowledge…
how we got that knowledge is of less importance to me then
what the knowledge is……………science if very good at gaining
knowledge, but not very good at making sense of that knowledge…
science understands the how, but not the why of knowledge…….

for to understand that knowledge requires values……
the why of knowledge is a question of values…

the earth is 93 million miles from the sun…
this is a how…but it doesn’t answer the why of the earth
being 93 million miles from sun………

the solar system is a system and for a system to succeed it must
be balanced and stable……. the planets are in a stable orbit
and thus the system is stable… if one of the planets went rogue,
left its orbit, then the entire system would be in danger because
our solar system is a delicate system of checks and balances
between the various masses, which we call the planets with the sun…

by understand the solar system we can see how a system remains
a viable and active system………. it must remain in balance
and in its equation…………………add one number to either side of an
equation and the equation no longer works and that threatens the
stability of the equation……………….the solar system is no different…….
add an aspect to either side of the equation and the system is no longer in balance

but that is part of the scope and limits of human knowledge…

this look at human knowledge and its scope and limits has been a long
standing aspect of philosophy……………… entire forest have
been ripped up and turned into tree’s so that people can
explain in great detail their understanding of the scope and limits
of knowledge…

I am just not sure it belongs in the front lines of philosophy anymore…….

but what should be in the front lines of philosophy?

what should we give emphasis to?

Kropotkin

I have been working on my study of Kant…
Kant seems to have made his base, his starting
point, space and time……
the question of space and time has confused a whole lot of people
since the beginning of time…….

one question that has been asked and is key to Kant is,
is space real? does space have a physical reality to it?
and I believe the answer is yes…….

space is a physical object like my table or myself……

think about a black hole… where gravity is so strong that
nothing can escape it, not even light…… but can space escape it?
I would say no… if I was able to exist right at the opening
of a black hole and there was no other matter coming at me,
would I feel the, for lack of a better word here, the pressure coming
from space itself? now think of an concept like pressure…
we cannot see pressure but if we were to go on another planet
like Jupiter and be able to set foot on the “ground” (yes, knowing it
is most likely that Jupiter doesn’t have a ground as we know it)
but anyway, if I step out, the pressure would crush me…
and yet, I cannot with my senses detect the presence
of pressure outside of that stuff up feeling we get during
weather changes……… we can’t see it or hear it or smell it or taste
or touch it, but it is there……. we cannot reach out our hand and
touch pressure ……… but during an Hurricane, we can feel with our bodies
the changing pressure… but you can’t reach out and touch it…
it presses down upon you and you feel that pressure, but you cannot
move that pressure away from you……… space is like pressure……
it can press down upon you but you cannot reach out and touch it……
space can be move like in a black hole or with the mass of a large star……

it exists……. we just don’t have the tools right now to measure it or
to touch it…… but we touch it every single day… space can bend
and that bending shows us that space does exist in physical form…….
so what is space made up off? it is a special rule object in the
physical universe? if we have multiverses, then do we have
more then one type of space? I would say yes………

just as we have multi dimensions, we can have multi space……
each dimension can be another type of space…………
we can think of dimensions as another form of space……

do I know this by “intuition”? I can know this by simply understanding
that I exist in one type of space and there is the possibility of another
type of space that can exist…take information we gained via
experience and then extrapolate it to the possibility of
other experiences……………….

now some philosophers would suggest that I arrived at the possibility
of different spaces via “intuition” or a priori……….but I simply
used the space I already know by experiences, and asked,
what if there is another space? That I cannot know by experience,
as of now, but within the realm of possibility I can know by experience at
some later date……………….

let us look at something basic… a triangle…
did we begin to discover the triangle by first knowing
that the sum of the measure of the interior angles of a triangle
in Euclidian space is always 180 degree’s
or did we create or find a triangle and then we figured out that
the sum of the triangle was the sum of the measure of the interior
angles in Euclidian space is always 180 degree’s?

I contend that we had the triangle first and then from there
found out the measurements and not the other way around where
we had the measurements and then found out the shape of the
triangle……… we “discovered” what we know about the triangle from
the triangle itself, we had the experience and then, and then discovered
the information about the triangle…

we experienced the triangle and then found out the information we
needed and the same goes for space…… we experienced space and
then we are finding out the information we need as we go along…

Kropotkin

if I could round up the so called leaders of America into one
room… people like Bill Gates, Warren buffet, Cuban, political
leaders like Obama and Schumer and Pelosi and sport like
Lebron James and Tom Brady, all of them into one room…
Here is what I would say to them…

"here we have in one room, the leadership of America…
and I say unto you… You have failed in exercising leadership in this
dark hour in American history. You have stayed silent while the forces
of darkness have systematically destroyed America in ways that can’t even
be understood. You have stayed silent while the forces of darkness has
promoted bigotry and ignorance and intolerence and hatred. You have stayed
silent because of fear or you share this unAmerican views or you simply
don’t care and in any case that disqualifies you from being a leader.
For having the responsibility of leadership comes the responsibility
of doing the right thing, even if it is unpopular and even if it cost
you money, time, efforts, friends and if need be, your life.

For doing the right thing is what leadership is all about.
You may say, well, these forces haven’t done any real damage.
Then travel down Texas or Florida and see the eyes of children
who have been forcible taken from their mothers and fathers.
Tell me no real damage has been done. But Kropotkin,
they aren’t even American’s. Why should we care what
happens to people who aren’t even American’s?

Leadership is about caring to what happens to all people,
not just people who are white or with money or a specific
color, creed, race or nationality. Leadership is about promoting
the best interest of all the people, not just certain people.
And you people in this room have failed in that.

If you claim to be religious or pro-life, you have failed in that.
For the forces of darkness have promoted not only ignorance
and bigotry, but they have promoted Nihilism. They have
put monetary concerns over human lives. They have put profit
and money over human lives and that is nihilism…
and have any of you spoken out about this?

No, you haven’t done so. You have stayed silent.
And that silence has convicted you of a failure of leadership.
You want the perks of leadership. The money, the fame, the glory,
but you don’t want the responsibility of leadership.
Where hard choices exists and you must decide to fight
for human beings.

The principle of equality requires that people have equal rights
and among those rights exists not only the right to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness, but the right to food and water but also housing
and education and medical care and retirement.

If we prevent people from having any of these rights, then we
are guilty of inequality and injustice. For justice requires, no justice
demands equality. If we fail to treat people equally, regardless of
race, creed, color, nationality, then we are guilty of committing
acts of injustice. How can we call ourselves leaders if we
are guilty of the worst crime of all, that of perpetuating
injustice.

Leadership, real leadership means we aren’t just about
creating profit and loss and who gets promoted and who doesn’t,
but leadership is about applying the values are values
that lead to the betterment of people.

Leadership is about those values of justice and equality
and freedom and tolerance. And we must promote those
values even at the cost of making a profit, even at the
cost of losing our job, and why?

Why? Because those values we live by is what makes life
worth living and worth dying for. Those values are what makes
human beings special. Not accidental traits like being born
white or being born American or male.

No, the values worth living are the value of justice and the value
of equality and the value of love and the value of charity and the hope
those values give people. It is not about the GDP, the gross domestic
product of the products we produce that give us our reason for life,
but the values that we have like love and hope and justice.

And the forces of darkness are opposed to such values like love
and justice and equality. The are not only anti-American but they
are anti-life.

You, the so called leaders have failed in your duties and responsibilities
to stand against policies that are unjust and promoted inequality
and believe in such values as hate and anger and greed.

You have failed and your legacy will be tarnished. For leaders
don’t just wait until the fight reaches them, they act before
the events get out of hand and you, you have not acted or even
said anything and the forces of darkness have been destroying
hope and freedom and charity and justice and tolerance and you have said
nothing, you have done nothing.

Don’t let fear stop you from doing the right thing.

You must act and you must speak out against the darkness that covers
our land with shame and violence and legal inequality.

You have failed. Tell us, what excuses do you offer us for your failure to speak,
for your failure to act.

Kropotkin

Because of the rules, forces at play, there seems to be
a uniformity to human lives, to nature, to reality.

Think of the game of chess. Because of the rules of chess,
there is a basic structure to the game. All games of chess
are similar in structure. The very rules of chess force all the games
to resemble each other. The rules/ structure of chess prevent
any moves that destabilizes the game. You can’t have Kings moving
more then one square at a time or knights moving like bishops.
That would destroy chess as we know it. It becomes unrecognizable,
no longer a game, but a free for all and then chess is done as a game,
no longer played because it has no structure, no rules.

Life has its rules/structure and that keeps life playing by the
same rules and that means life is very similar…

Biologists say life must have certain rules to be considered life.
That structure allows life to succeed because the rules in place
allow life to survive its environment. And that is the point of life,
to propagate and continue, according to the rules, the structure
of life.

these rules prevent, for example, pigs from growing wings.
These rules, allow life to have structure. The pigs must exist in
a certain way because of the rules, they cannot do anything else.
They cannot fly because of the biological rules. The biological forces,
the rules means we humans can only exists in a certain way. We cannot do
anything else. Our lives are structure in a certain way. We are born
and we must have certain length of time to learn the things we need to
learn to survive. Most animals only need a short length of time to learn
the rules they need to know to survive. A lion for example, only requires
a short time to learn everything it needs to know to survive, whereas
human beings need, require, a much longer time to learn the requirement
of survival. This extended learning period is one of the major differences
between human beings and animals. The rules, the structure of being human
is what creates this length of time that human beings need to learn the
understanding to survival.

The rules, the structure of human existence is what makes
human existence so similar to each other. The rules/structure
of human existence has been the same since the beginning of human
existence. Thus we human beings act and think and feel in remarkable
similar ways because the rules are the same for all of us. Just the subject
matter, the ism’s and the myths and biases and prejudices and superstitions
change from society to society. What the stone age child learns and the
Roman child learns and what the modern child learns is different because
the enviroment is different in each society. The same society requires similar
teaching of values and things needed to know to survive that society.
The rules/structure of human existence means human beings has
the same type of existence. We might learn different things, but
our existence is similar. We cannot escape the contraints of of the rules,
the structure of our lives. This is the basis of the idea of innate idea’s.
Because the structure, the rules are the same for all of us,
we have to exist in a similar manner. This makes it looks like
we have innate idea’s but it is the identical rules and structure
of our lives that mean we must have similar idea’s. Not because they
are innate, but because they are the rules. Once again take chess.

You might argue that because the rules in chess are the same,
that the rules are innate in everyone. No, it just means we must
play chess within the bounds of certain rules and if we go out of bounds
of those rules, we are no longer playing chess. It is the rules/ the stucture
of human existence that we cannot change that makes it look like we
have innate idea’s.

Now are idea’s like god, freedom or immortality innate?
No, those are part of the myths, habits, prejudices
and biases and superstitions that we are taught to survive.
The idea of god is not part of the structure needed to survive
biological. it is a social rule, not a biological rule.
thus it is not innate. So how do we begin to respond to
the nature of human beings?

We must follow certain rules/ structures to exists as human beings,
the biological rules, not the social rules and we must keep the two,
distinct and separate. the social rules and the biological rules.
We cannot change the biological rules, but we can change,
adapt, drop or add social rules/ social structure.

Because the environment changes for every person,
the social rules changes. What I do to survive is different
then what you do for survival because our situation, our
environment is different. The myths, habits, biases, prejudices
and superstitions we are taught as children is meant as a guideline
to survival. But people mistake those guidelines as written in
stone and they are not. society teaches certain rules, creates
certain structure because of society need to survive
survive and the rules/structure of society is meant to
allow society to survive. The rules of personal survival is
the same for a society as it is for a personal individual.

so what is next?

Kropotkin

So what is next?

As shown by my thread of the “Suicide of Anthony Bourdain”,
that the reaction to my thread was not about an honest reaction to
his death but an reaction based on the myths, biases, habits,
prejudices and superstitions that people were indoctrinated with
as children. The people reacted in the way they reacted because
they is how they were indoctrinated in childhood…

I was portrayed as being “lacking in humanity” and “patronising”,
but it is not my statement that people were reacting to, but
their childhood indoctrinations…

Their prejudice is that we don’t speak ill of the dead, and we
don’t attack those who have killed themselves…
and we accuse those who do so as “lacking in humanity”.

Now Bourdain is a coward for his suicide but what matters is not
his death but your response to that statement. Am I right?
It doesn’t matter because of the childhood indoctrinations
that one has received…….

One reads of Romans who killed themselves when ordered
by the emperor or killed themselves to escape punishment
or being captured……

It is the same act, but because of the myths, biases, habits,
prejudices and superstitions of the two cultures,
the act, the exact same act is looked upon differently…
is treated differently, is responded to differently……
even the method is different and which method is used
is understood differently…….

so we, because of biological rules, must act similarly.
We cannot act any different biological then we can act.
The biological rules prevent us from doing so.
But the social rules are different and allow us to act differently.

But because of society rules/ need for structure, the society
has rules/structure that society puts into place for its own
survival. We are limited in several different ways…
we have biological rules/structure that we cannot disobey
because to survive we must follow them.
But the social rules/ structure in place for us, can be and must be
examined………

So how do we become more human despite the social structure/rules
that want to limit us to certain roles and actions?

Being limited in such social rules/structure is a constraint against
us becoming more human… why is this important?

Because society must have citizens playing certain rules for society
to survive… if enough citizens fail to play their roles, just like chess
a game, society descends into chaos and no longer functions…….

But those roles, the structure is forced upon us by societies
need for survival, not what is actually best for society or what
is best for the individual, but what is best for society…
and which aspect of society decides? why that is the ones
who own the means of production, the ones who
own…….so it is in their best interest to keep society
and individuals to keep their place, their role within society…….
the ones with the most to lose, are the ones who make the rules
because they are the ones who have decided what has value, something
they have a lot of, which is money. The value of society which is money
is determined by those who actually have money…… not the poor or
the ones who have decided that money is not that important……
This is a cultural decision, not a biological one…
and this is why we must have a reevaluation of values…
our current society, our current culture is based on money
because those who have money have made it so…….

we can change that to where the myth, bias, prejudice
and superstition of society need not be about money,
but about personal growth or about learning who we are
and what are our possibilities………

We are bound to biological rules but not bound to
social rules………and what is best for us socially is not
necessarily best for society………… and we are punished
for not obeying society………. recall, the single worst
crime in western society is disobedience… recall Adam and Eve.

And the pressure society puts on those who disobey…
in my job, I can only be fired for two things, one is stealing
and the other, surprise, disobedience…………

and obedience is taught throughout our society…
think back to your schooling, where disobeying your
parents, teachers, authority figures, the law, means punishment……

in society’s eyes, the greatest crime against society is
disobedience……

but that is a negative… what is a positive that society can teach us?

only by a reevaluation of values can we understand this………

only by a reevaluation of values can we operate society
from an positive values from the current negative values of society…….

only by a reevaluation can we begin to discover who we really are,
not just by the biases and myths and prejudices of a society that
that has only its interest in mind and not your interest in mind…

we must begin to reevaluate to escape the confines of societies needs
and begin to discover our needs, our best interests, our real values, and not
just the values we have inherited from society via their indoctrination from
childhood……….

we cannot become more human biological but we can become more
human based upon a reevaluation of who we are and what are our
possibilities… and we can create new rules, new myths, new biases,
no prejudices and new superstitions that match our current reality,
not just the need of society……….

Kropotkin

human beings are a work in progress which means we
must continuously evaluate where we were, where we are
and where we need to be………

this is called a “reevaluation of values” to understand
this work in progress both, individually and collectively……

Kropotkin

Anthropomorphism: the attribution of human characteristics or
behavior to a god, animal, object. It is considered to be an
innate tendency of human psychology.

Xenophanes said "but if cattle and horse and lions had hands or could
paint with their hands and create work such as men do, horses like horses
and cattle like cattle also would depict the gods shapes and make their
bodies of such a sort the form they themselves have…….

Ethiopians say that their gods are sub-nose and black and Thracians that
they are pale and red-haired"

Even the Jewish god has human traits, god gets jealous demands
that man only worships him. Think of the human traits that the Jewish god
has……… Jealous, anger, love, despair………. we endow not only the gods
with humanness but we endow nature itself with humanness……

we say how nature has been created to serve man… part of the historical
argument for the creation of god has been how nature is so ideal for
man and all the animals………we read into nature, human needs…

reality itself has a human component… Descartes began with his
assertion that all we can know is the “I”… this is a statement
that we can only know ourselves………… not as matter but as brain.

and German idealism beginning with Kant begins with the notion that
metaphysical matters can only be known through human reason…….

space and time is known through human intuition…and the theory that
physical objects can have no existence apart from mind which is conscious
of them……. Kant based on his theory of knowledge, that everything
spatial (space) or temporal (time) is only appearance…this is still
just anthropormorphism even if it is rather complicated…… reality
and nature still just exists from and only from our understanding of it…
thus the famous categories of Kant…everything in reality fits into
one of his 12 categories which are derived from the human mind………

Even the so called object/subject division of many centuries
is really just another aspect of anthropormorphism…….

the very way you understand the universe is based on human understanding
and human needs and human reason…………. the very way you understand
the universe is simple anthropormorphism………………

now, this anthropormorphism which has existed since the day apes,
climbed down the tree and first became human… is this a good thing,
a bad thing or a neutral thing???

should we begin to understand reality, nature by removing the
anthropormorphism that naturally exists within man, or should
we just accept it and move on?

the very way we see and understand reality and nature is based
on this anthropormorphism…. should we do something about it?

Kropotkin

if the way we understand the universe is strictly based on
our mental understanding then even such a matter as god, gods,
heaven, hell, spirituality, even religion is simply a
matter of human construct. In other words, religion
and spirituality is simply another form of
anthropormorphism…………………

we create the gods, they don’t create us…….

Kropotkin

words that show the anthropormorphism of human beings……

perfect, beauty, aesthetics, truth, reality, laws, tree……

for example, does a tree know itself to be a tree or does a tree just exists?

the name is unimportant for existing, living things like tree’s, dogs, cats,
cattle, they don’t name themselves, they just exists……

and show me beauty in nature and it will correspond to some
human attributes…the same for words like perfect
and truth and aesthetics, they exist because humans have so
constructed such words to mean something… they don’t actually
exists in reality………

we need a reevaluation of what reality really is, not just what humans
have anthropormorphise what reality or nature is, but what it really is………

Kropotkin

early morning musings…

let us begin with a rather famous quote:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal then others”

Now this is a rather famous line from Orwell’s “Animal Farm” ……

all animals are equal but some more equal then others……

This is an equation. We have on one side of the equation,
“all animals are equal” and on the other side of the equation,
“but some animals are more equal”………

as is true, all animals are equal… that cannot be denied…
as acknowledged by the “declaration of independence”…
“All men are created equal” but some try to deny this,
some try to claim that some people are naturally superior…
but you have to understand the context of the statement
that “all men are created equal” ………

the statement “all men are equal” is not about some personal
ideal that all men have equal abilities but all men should
be treated equal and have equal rights…it says nothing about
any personal ability but about our rights to equal justice…
and justice is nothing more then being treated equal by the law,
every single person being treated equally with equal rights…

this concept says nothing about a person’s ability…
it says that Einstein should be treated equal to John Doe,
legally and having equal rights… nothing more…

what a person does with those rights and equality is
up to the person…………

so I reject the idea that “some people are more equal then others”

for there to be justice in the land, people must be treated equally under
the law… simple as that…

Kropotkin

now there is some thread in which I am mentioned…
as to having some point of view…

but I wish to clarify what I am doing………

We have is and we have ought………

is, is what is existing right now…
ought is where we need to be…

today is and tomorrow is ought to be…

so what I am presenting is really an understanding,
a vision of where we “ought” to be…
an ought is really about a journey…
we have a begining which is, is…
and we have an destination which is ought…

we exist in the “is” where we are right now…
and I spend much time trying to understand that “is”

and then I try to give an “ought”… a vision of where
we need to be and why?

when I speak of justice and equality and freedom,
they are all “is” and they are all “ought”

we have a type of justice which as I have clearly laid
out is not justice at all, because justice must be equal
to be true justice…and that is my “ought”…….

so I am laying out a vision of where I think we ought to be…

and so see me in this context, sometimes I lay out the “is”
and sometimes I lay out the “ought”………

so what does your “ought” look like?

Kropotkin

now some have argued that I operated from certainty…

I most certainly do not operate from certainty…

in fact, I begin with doubt…and end in doubt…
the begining of all wisdom begins with doubt…
which must make me the wisest man of all because I
doubt… a lot…

Kropotkin

As I pointed out in Omar’s “religion and politics” thread,
I believe that both religion and politics value lies in
creating a person’s understanding of their place in the universe…

having a religion, any religion, creates an understanding of where
one’s stand’s in the universe………. it creates a place for one to
stand, a worldview allows one to say, here I exists in the universe…

so it is not the specific religion or the specific political stance
that is as important as the general belief in a religion or political stance…

so one might be a “Christian” in a Christian country,
but had that person been born in an Islamic
country, they would be Muslim or in a Buddhist country, Buddhist…
it is not about the specific religion as it is the need to create
an understanding of your place in the universe…… and religion
creates that and a political viewpoint creates that understanding
of who you are in the universe………. it creates a place for a person to
know who they are and where they fit into the universe………

adapting a religion or a political stance is to discover who you are,
but if that just means adapting the local traditions as a means to
place one in the universe, then it is possible that by adapting
the local traditions of religion or politics, you hid or misunderstand
who you are and what is your place in the universe…….

this is the value of toleration… it allows people to discover that they
are in fact, not Christians but perhaps they are really Buddhist or
Hindu and because they were born where they were, they never
discovered that……… they simple adapted via the myths and habits
and prejudices and superstitions of the local area that they were born in…

you support capitalism and you support Catholicism not because you truly
believe in them, but because you were born in an area that had as
their belief system, capitalism and Catholicism………you simply
took over the local belief system as your own…………
and this isn’t the path to truly understanding who you are…
it is simple taking the path of least resistance and taking over
your society worldview and making it your own………….

become human, truly human means trying to understand what you truly
believe in, not what you believe in because it was already there as a
worldview…………….the myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions that you simply
took over as your own…………………

a reevaluation of values means to understand what your real beliefs,
what your real worldview is, not just the beliefs or worldviews you
simply picked up as a child…………

it is not enough to be Christian or to be a conservative or to be
a capitalist……… you must actually discover if they are your real beliefs
or simply beliefs you adapted as a child because it was the indoctrinations
of your childhood………

do you have the courage for an reevaluation of values that might
tell you that your firmly held “convictions” are really just the
indoctrinations from your childhood…….are you brave enough to
undertake a true “reevaluation of values”?

few are brave enough to challenge their own tightly held beliefs
that sustain and create certainty and a place in the universe for them……

do you have the courage?

Kropotkin

But Kropotkin, I have undertaking a “reevaluation of values” and
I truly know what I believe in…… I say the desire to have certainty
and knowing your place in the universe often overcomes any real
“reevaluation of values”…………one thinks they have “overcome” their
childhood indoctrinations but the reality is, you haven’t…….
one has simply pretended to “overcome” to maintain the pretense
of being an independent thinker…… the pride one has often overcomes
any real “reevaluation of values”………….

it is very hard to go against the established norms and standards
that exist in a society or a local area…………….

I am a liberal living in a very liberal area…
how can I be sure that I am truly a liberal living
out my values and I have a real and true
“reevaluation of values”?

I have changed my political values, my political standards
a couple of times………… that change tells me that I have engaged
in a “reevaluation of values” because I have overcome my childhood
indoctrinations… which are, politically, a very moderate democrat
worldview…whereas I today, have a very radical viewpoint, well,
radical given how conservative the U.S is today………….

I would welcome and engage in an overthrow of our current
economic system as it engages in the nihilism of devaluing
people in relation to money/profits……. money/profits are
valued over people and people’s values……… where money/profit
is given precedence over people and their values… and that
is nihilism…………… I have overcome my childhood indoctrinations
of the belief in capitalism…and I am coming to the belief that
money has destroyed democracy as we have been taught it and so,
democracy must be seriously changed or even destroyed to
be able to bring about real change as to the clause in the
Declaration of Independence which is,

“government of the people, for the people, by the people,”

we no longer have this, we have “government of the corporation,
for the corporation, by the corporation” and this change is by
the influence of money into our political system… and so, to make
effective change in our system of government, we must end
the influence of money and corporations in our government……

I truly believe in the statement, “government of the people, for the people,
by the people”…… and so I take that as one of my understanding, of my place
in the universe, my place in the line graph of who I am and where I exist
in terms of my place in the universe…………the statement of “government of the people”
…………… helps creates, in me, an worldview that I can draw upon to create
an understanding of who I am and what is my place in the universe………….

I have struggled to reached that understanding, that worldview, it came
about because I overcame my childhood indoctrinations, I overcame
by an “reevaluations of values”……………

the question of life is really a question of “what values do I believe in”?

so, what values do you believe in? and why?

Kropotkin

so, I return to an earlier thought, which
is Anthropomorphism……

which is the attribution of human traits, emotions and intentions
to non-human entities and is applied to such disciplines as
history, psychology, and yes, even philosophy…………

part of the indoctrination we have as children is this
Anthropomorphism within our world…….
the environment was “created” for the use of human beings…
the world was meant for human beings to use as we wish…

I doubt the universe was created with human beings in mind…
in fact, the universe has evolved without humans beings in mind at all……
the universe exists as a neutral entity… with no thought at all to
its citizens, be it human or otherwise……………

we fit into the society as do all other creatures based on the fact that
we came from this evolution of life… this idea that we are the solely the receivers
of the universe benevolence to us as human beings, is just another example
of this Anthropomorphism…………. the “universe” doesn’t know or care about us
in any way, shape or form…it is and we are and the interact with each other,
the universe/environment with us, but we came from the evolution of living matter,
but we are not the reason for the evolution of the universe…that just happened…
and we are simply the results of that evolution, that random evolution that
happened to create us as it did all life…….

the result of this random understanding of the universe is that because the
universe is and does act random, it doesn’t give us any possibility to create
a coherent viewpoint, a worldview that gives us our place in the universe,
that gives us a home within the universe…… a random universe is just that,
random and random doesn’t give us any line graph of who we are and what is
our place in the universe………

that is in part, why people hate evolution so much… it takes away
the possibility of anthropormorphism that drives so much of our religion
and philosophy and history and our view of who we are and what is possible…….

the truth is that evolution doesn’t give us a place or home within the universe
and that is what drives the hatred of evolution…………….

people want a given understanding of our place in the universe that
religion or a political viewpoint gives………….

we Anthropormorphize the universe in order to create an worldview of
where we exist within the universe, a home to understand who we
are and what is possible for us…………

a reevaluation of values might take away that home, that special place
that we need in order to maintain the fiction that we have a home,
a place within the universe, a special viewpoint from which we can judge
the universe from………………. take away that viewpoint and how do we judge
who we are and what is possible for us?

Kropotkin

recall earlier, when I spoke about accidental traits…
being born an American is an accidental trait, being born
white is also an accidental trait or being 5ft 8 inches tall
or being a man or woman, all accidental traits……

we think of those accidental traits as being definable traits,
in other words, being born white in terms of the misguided
thought that, “white is right”… and in terms that the white man
is superior to the black man or to the Asian… and yet, being
born white is just an accidental trait just as much as being born
an American………………

we take these accidental traits and in a sense, anthroporomorhphize…
them…….I was accidentally born white and by taking that accidental trait
and making it a definition of who I am, is anthroporomorphising it…
giving it value it doesn’t have…
it is accidental… it has no value outside of what we give it…

we have constructed our values and meaning due to the accidental
trait of being born on one side of a line or being born white or being
born a man or woman, as it were…

all of religion, all of politics, all of thinking about who we are
and what is our purpose is based on accidental traits and
our anthoroporthism of those accidental traits…

the universe doesn’t give a shit who we are or the fact we
are “human”… it just doesn’t know or care…

think of Ants… we have literally billions maybe even trillions of ants
on planet earth… think of one specific ant in Brasil… now do you care in
any way, shape or form about one specific ant in Brasil? of course not…
you don’t know or care about one specific ant in Brasil…
and now think of yourself as being life, does life care about
one specific human being or even the human race? naw…

life doesn’t care or give a shit about you or your race, creed, color,
ethnicity or gender or anything else about you?

life is simply about life and what specifically happens in the creation
of life is not important……………evolution doesn’t care about you or
who you are and what are your possibilities……

that is the beginning of wisdom… the true understanding of
your place in life and the true understanding of who you are
and what is your possibilities………

don’t let your ego decide what life is or isn’t…
think about life as being neutral… it just doesn’t give a shit…….

now what?

Kropotkin

so if we can’t self identify as our accidental traits of being white, or
being an American or race or sex, then how should we identify ourselves?

If we remove our accidental traits, being white or male or 5ft 8 inches,
American, then what do we have left?

We have being born human… for we cannot be born any other way then
being human because of our programming, our DNA…….
our software demands we are born as human, not as pigs or dogs
or cows, but as human… being born a species cannot be accidental because
of the programming we have as humans… we can only give birth to humans…

we can also become more then any accidental trait by proclaiming ourselves
as being part of life… for being born as part of life is not accidental…
the part of being born, means we are part of life, it is not an accidental trait.

we can celebrate that fact that we are human and a part of life…
that is something that is not accidental… it is a part of us that
is not accidental…………

we can take pride in and proclaim in a loud voice, I am human being
and a part of life…………… thus you are part of the tree of existence,
you are part of all life, all living matter… the tree, the bird, the cat,
the cow are all part of who you are because they are part of life also……

you don’t need to be white or male or American to be part of something that
is real… those are accidental and thus not something that we can
really claim credit to… but being born human and being part of life…
that is something you can be part of and something you are already part of…

for being human and being a part of life is not accidental…… it is a basic
part/ function of who you are and what is possible for you… but being human
also means you can achieve something more because of your programming,
the software we are born with can be overcome with a conscience decision to
overcome… I am human but I can overcome my childhood indoctrinations…
and become something more then just what I was trained to be…… indoctrinated with……………

who are you and what is possible?

overcome and you will find out…

Kropotkin

as I can’t sleep and I have to get to work fairly early,
this won’t be very pretty tomorrow morning……

anyway, this question or problem of human existence is really
a question of who are we and what is possible for us………

and we cannot tell or understand who we are until we
escape certain idea’s like our anthropormorphism of our
environment…….we cannot understand our environment a priori…
we must have experience and observation to understand our environment
but our need to anthropormorphize everything damages our ability
to correctly understand who we are………we fail to correctly understand
our place in the universe because we anthromoprize religion and god
and thus mistake who we are and what is our possibilities…

thinking that there is a god leads us to incorrectly understand who we are
because we believe we are spiritual creatures when in fact, we are social
creatures…………….and this misunderstanding effects how we understand
the world…if our starting place is wrong and the ending place is wrong,
then how are we to get to the starting place we need to be and the ending place
we need to have?

we must reevaluate our starting point because if we have a wrong starting point,
we cannot possible end up where we want to end up………. and
we have the wrong starting point……………… all we have is
experience and observation to guide us, nothing like the a priori
of Kant…… let us begin with experience and observation and see where
that takes us……………

Kropotkin

ok, so let us begin with experience………

since oh, Descartes, philosophy has been done on
a “scientific” basis. Descartes starting point was with the
new physics… began in large part by the new science of Kepler and
Copernicus and continued by Tycho Brahe and moved along
with the new idea’s of motion by Galileo who died the same year as Newton was born…

Now for Descartes, he only knew the idea’s of motion from Kepler to Galileo, not
Newton………….

the new physics was about motion…the movement of the heavens,
the rotation of the earth and the stars and the planets…….
everything seemed to move including the earth……

And so to be scientific, that is where Descartes began, with movement…
so if everything is moving, how can one create a starting point?

so with that in mind, Descartes wanted to create a fixed and firm starting
point that didn’t move………………

he ended up with the mental mind, not the physical brain,
“I think, therefor, I am” is not about the physical brain, because
physical objects move and you cannot gain certainty from moving objects…
because they are always moving which includes the physical brain…….

“I think therefore I am” is about mental thought and not physical
movement or motion……… he was trying to avoid this motion…

Spinoza solution was to include everything into what he called “nature”
which was everything including god… everything was an extension of
“nature” which included motion and movement……….

so, Spinoza simply just included everything into one neat and tidy box
which he called “NATURE”… he didn’t have to worry about thinking about
how motion or movement needed to be included into his philosophy…….
it was already there as part of everything else…………

now Hume thought that cause-effect was simply formed by our thinking,
by our habits and myths (although he didn’t use the word myth, he meant it)
indoctrinations, prejudices and superstitions…………

space/time was part of our mental facilities and not some outside existing
force… and Kant accepted this… thus Kant tried to show how
time/space was relativistic, based on each of us and not on some outside
force…………

so we have as part of our modern philosophical history, science being
a key understanding of philosophy…whether the philosopher correctly understood
the science or not is actually irrelevant……….he based a large part or his entire
philosophy on the motions and movement of the universe, the reality of the universe
was about motion/movement of everything…….

Hegel began the shift away from basing philosophy on science……

so let us look at science today and understand it in terms of
philosophy………

Modern science is in a wild mess because it has several problems it cannot solve
and doesn’t know how to solve……

first we have the macro science, the large theories of gravity and the motions of
the earth, sun, planets, stars, which is pretty well understood except for the idea
of gravity……. Gravity is a major sticking point in our understanding of the universe…

what exactly is gravity? No one actually knows… we can predict it and we understand
its motions, but we cannot say for certain what it is…………

so we have uncertainty because we don’t know or understand exactly what gravity is…

and we have beside the macro, we have the micro world, the world of the small…
and we understand that fairly well… but and this is a really large but, we do not
have a theory to connect the two, the very large motions of the universe and
the motions of the very small universe………….this is the very dream of science
to connect and if someone does manage it, they will go down as one of science
greats with Newton and Galileo and Einstein………

so there is a lot of motivation to create such a theory……………

having laid out the groundwork of where we stand, let us take the next step…

Kropotkin