a new understanding of today, time and space.

ok, we cannot base or judge philosophy on science, as did
Descartes up till Kant did…………… so, what can we base philosophy
on?

as philosophy is a human construct, based on human values and
based upon human needs……. we must base philosophy on
human understanding, upon a human construct…….
which implies that the Existentialist with their focus on human values
and human needs are closer to what philosophy needs to be then
other philosophical idea’s like the analytical school or the
deconstructionist’s…………………………

the real question of philosophy, is who are we and what is possible?
a human question with a human focus with a human answer………

any questions that take us beyond human needs and human focus
need not be bothered with……………… so does that mean that we
entertain questions like, is there a god? or are there metaphysical
possibilities? I would say no, because they go beyond the
human question, of who are we and what are our possibilities?

in other words, we must refocus philosophy to be about the human being…
and questions that go beyond the human being, are not
acceptable or even wanted……………thus we ignore questions like,
what is the metaphysical? and is the answer to the human question,
god or religion? why not? because they take us beyond the
human aspect of philosophy… if the answer is god, then
the question is not about human beings…………

and the question must about the human being to be philosophy…….

a how to question is about science, how does the heart work?
philosophy cannot answer that question but science can…
or said another way, science can tells us facts about the world,
but philosophy tells about the why, the values of the world………
because the why and the values of humans are about human beings…
why am I here? why is love more important then hate?

these are philosophical questions because they are about
the human animal and their existence………………

questions and answers must be directed to and about the human being…
either individually or collectively… what is our individual role within society?
this question is about the nature of the human construct of society and
our role within that particular construct……… for example,
what is my place within society in a democracy? or what is my place
in a society in regards to capitalism? what is my place in society in regards
to the political or the economic or the social?

all questions about the human construct we call society……………

society is simply an answer to the question of, how are we to exist in
this particular environment? with society being part of the environment,
as well as the environment, what we call nature…….

if we live in a cold, inhospitable environment, what would our society look like?

quite differently I will wager……………you cannot escape question about the human being
that doesn’t at least engage with the environment/nature…………………

who we are is part of what is our environment at this moment…….
and again, that includes society/social/political/nature………
all of which is part of our environment…………………
and must be part of our answer in regards to the
philosophical question of, who are we and what is possible?

questions about our environment, which includes society/social/political/
nature are questions that are philosophical………………….

if the question is about humans, then the question is philosophical, unless
it asks, “how does” questions? and that is science………

Kropotkin

the story of man:

Born… pushed out of paradise
Born… tossed out into the harshness of reality
Born…bright lights, harsh sounds, rough touch
Born… why am I here?

In the begining was me
In the begining, only I existed
In the begining was my needs, my pain, my wants
In the begining…why am I here?

School… A frightful place
School, with all those creatures that look like me
School… a tighting vise upon my soul
School… why am I here?

Age… as I do so, the mystery deepens
Age… my childhood has passed
Age… but understanding has eluded me
Age… why am I here?

Finally……. I escape the drudgery of school…
Finally…I can call myself an adult
Finally… I can claim my freedom
but I only find obligations, responsibilities, bills
Finally……… I ask, why am I here?

Adulthood… a job, a wife, a two car garage…
Adulthood… there is no freedom in adulthood…
Adulthood… I am tied down, staked to the ground, immoble…
Adulthood… isn’t what I thought it would be
Adulthood……. is asking, why am I here?

Aged… I have gained and lost, both jobs and wives
Aged…my children have all begun their own bondage…
Aged…now all I ask is, when can I retire?
Aged… Why am I here?

Old… the days have passed me by…
Old… the joints hurt, my walk is slow, hands unsteady…
Old… I am left to wonder
Old………was there some great truth to my years?
Old… I ask myself, why was I here?

Kropotkin

a plane figure with three sides and three angles………

what am I?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: a plane figure with three sides and three angles………

what am I?

K: can you figure out what a plane figure with three sides and three angles
is, without, without resorting to experience?..

Now some may say, I learned that in school and that is using experience
to find out what my riddle is… without using any experience, can you
discover what my riddle is?

the answer is no… you cannot figure out what my riddle is without
a resort to experience… experience of some sort or another…

If a priori understanding was actually possible, then we wouldn’t need to
teach children in school what items such as…hint, hint, squares and circles
and … what triangles are… we spend a great deal in childhood playing
with toys that represent the various shapes that exists…
if we had a priori understanding of the world, that wouldn’t be necessary…

we learn from teaching and experience how to order the universe
and what morals are and the shape of objects and that 1 + 1 = 2…
all matters we learn from experience…

Kant claimed that we have an innate group of categories that
allow us to understand reality… the problem lies with some
understanding from where do the “innate categories” come from?

we are born with innate categories but we aren’t born with
an innate understand of math or english or shapes or space/time…

so where does this innate catagories come from?

it has to come from somewhere, so where?

answer me this and I shall die a happy man…

answer me this and I shall become a convert to Kantism…

where do innate catagories come from?

Kropotkin

as I read and attempt to make sense of Kant,
I wonder a couple of things…… first of all,
what does this whole idea of Kant’s really mean for
the human problem of existence……………

yes, Kant was aiming as all philosophers aim for, which
is certainty and order…………but I am old and I have reason to
suspect this need for certainty…….

the most dangerious people on planet earth are the ones who
are “certain” that this is so or that is true…
religious fanatics are “certain” that there is a god and that
there is heaven and the entire point of existence is to reach
heaven and they are certain…

certainty leads people to ignore logic, understanding, compassion,
intelligence… why have any of those things if you are certain?

IQ45 is certain he is right and acts upon that certainty… to the clear
and obvious detriment of America…he is unable to see the damage
he is doing because he is “certain” what he is doing is right… he is simply
the most visible and obvious candidate of someone who is “certain” and
doing incredible damage to us as a country…

being absolutely certain allows one to act as if it doesn’t matter
what the cost are, because you are certain and to be certain means
to be right……. and if you are right, then the cost is negligible because
you aren’t paying the cost…… someone else is… and that is the problem with
being certain… the cost is almost always being born by someone else,
not the person who is certain……….

in my ideal world, we would have no certainty, no reason to be
certain because everything is in doubt and when people are in doubt,
they act more slowly and with care and caution… unlike those who are certain……

having doubt or uncertainty doesn’t mean less will happen or
that we will become timid… no, it just means that we
won’t act stupidly because we aren’t so certain that we are right…….

so in regards to philosophy, I reject the object of philosophy
as being a search for certainty……………the object of philosophy
is to gain the truth or to find one’s place in the universe or to
at least understand the questions of life… and none of these have
anything to do with certainty or finding certainty……

the search for certainty is the search for a need to be filled, but
that need to be certain leads one to make grave and dangerous
mistakes…………… better to do without
certainty then to have certainty and think you have all the answers…
and when you act with certainty, others pay the price for your
“certainty”.

Kropotkin

we must accept the fact that we are subject to the same
“laws”/ “rules” that govern planets, stars, biological matter,
space/time…

they have their set rules, for example, light must travel at a
certain speed and pig cannot grow wings and we cannot overcome
gravity and fly with just our arms flapping…

are their exceptions to the rules/laws of nature? of course, but
and this is important, to violate those rules means that violation undermines
the stability or order of nature…order here means the order needed to
maintain a stable system, which is what we are talking about… if we violate
the rules, we threaten the stability of the system in question…

we can violate the rules/laws of society, but we threaten the stability
of society… if planets can move outside of their orbits, they threaten
the stability of the solar system they reside in…

the rules/laws exist to allow the system to maintain order in which it
needs to maintain its stability… and allows it to keep functioning…

so, when Kant propose a rule/ law that says, what if we made this law universal,
so, he says,

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity both in your own
person and in the person of all others, never as a means only but as an end”

now the real question becomes, does this “law/rule” allow the system,
the social system to continue to function, does it allow the system to
to remain stable? and if the answer is yes, then it is a good rule/law…

Kant treats moral issues as part of “duty”… it is your duty to
act in such a way as to treat humanity as a end, not as an means…

a duty… where would this idea of duty come from?
duty is cold and inhuman and heartless……… for following duty
and only duty, it allows much of the inhumanity of the day…

the I.C.E agent who separates a child from his family isn’t heartless
or insensitive, no, he is just following his duty……
a guard at a concentration camp sending Jews to their death isn’t
heartless or insensitive, nope, he is just following his duty…….

at what point does becoming responsible for ones actions,
override duty… at what point does the concentration camp
guard becomes responsible for his actions even if he was doing his
duty………………so at some point, following one’s duty can lead one
to commit acts of treason or acts against humanity…….

so we might be able to accept Kant’s individual idea’s like
treating humanity as an ends, not an means,
we cannot follow Kant and make morality as a matter
of duty because in following duty, we can commit actions
against humanity and by claiming duty, we can escape
our responsibility for said acts………….

following duty cannot allow us to be no longer accountable
for our actions………………… a concentration guard is accountable,
is responsible for his actions of marching the Jews to their death,
regardless of their “duty”………

so, we reject Kant and his belief that morality is an act of duty……

Kropotkin

Who am I?

the way we self identify suggest that we don’t know “who we are”?

for example, I might self identify as a liberal or a democrat
or as an American…….but, those self identification
aren’t really who I am, they are what I believe… I for example,
being a liberal means I am telling you what political philosophy
I follow, or being a democrat means I am telling you what political
party I follow or identify with……….I am an American not by choice,
but because I was born on this side of a line and not on the other side
of a line……….being an American is about an accidental trait like
being white or being male… I didn’t choose them… they were accidents
of my birth……. just as being born handicap… it choose me, I didn’t choose it…

we self identify with our accidental traits, white, male, American…
that can’t really be who we are if they are accidents of who we are……
something that happened without any choice on our part…….

as far as being liberal or being democrat, it means we are identifying
with a ism, an ideology………. we identify with an ism, that doesn’t
mean that is who we are, that is merely an ism we believe in, not who
we are…………… so this question of who we are, who am I, is really
a question that we don’t even understand because we
identify ourselves with accidental traits or ism’s, that have nothing
to do with us personally, they are just things we believe in………….
but that isn’t who we are, is it? perhaps that is exactly who we are…
we are simple a collection of the things we believe in, accidental traits
and ism/ideologies that make up, who we are………

there is not there, there… there is no thing I can point to
and say, that is who I am…………………… it is simply a
collection of beliefs and accidental traits that make up the
human being…….we are those, the who we are, is the collection
of beliefs and accidental traits……… that is who we are……….

perhaps…….perhaps not…… maybe, just maybe Hume was right……

Kropotkin

Now Hume thought there was no such thing as a personality…
Who am I, was really just a series of reactions to sensations,
no real “I”, just a rapid series of reactions to stimuli with no central
coordination or central place for the “I”…and if you see people respond
to the question, Who are you? with responses like I am an American or
I am white, answers that are about the accidental properties or traits
we are… but this doesn’t understand or answer the question,

Who am I? Who am I, isn’t about being white or being an American,
it is about, who we are………do I read, yes, but that isn’t who I am,
do I study philosophy, yes, but that isn’t who I am

think of the question, who am I…………and put the answers into
a set theory of math…… I read, that gets me into a subset of readers,
I study philosophy and that gets me into another subset……

I am male and that gets me into a subset of being male or
the subset of being white or the subset of having brown hair…

then within the circles of the various subsets, you get circle after
circle after circle with me being in the middle of all of those subsets…

but is that really who I am? just a listing of various accidental
traits? traits I had no choice over like being white or being born American?

how about traits, wait a minute, should I call my choices like being
religious a trait? If I choose to believe in god, is that a trait or is that
something else? but do I believe in god because of my childhood
indoctrinations which means I didn’t get to choose again, I was trained
to believe in god and that isn’t choice………… it was accidental once again…
so we cannot admit certain traits to being mine and mine alone if the
are the result of being childhood indoctrinations like being an American
means being indoctrinated into capitalism or democracy from childhood…
but the reality is that if I don’t choose an ism or an ideology, but was
indoctrinated into them from childhood, that those beliefs of capitalism
and democracy, they too are accidental and thus subject to be called
traits……. but what if I choose to be something, what if I chose
to believe in god, not as an accidental traits from childhood indoctrinations,
but from an actual understanding of what it means to be religious???

something that is no longer an accidental trait, but being a choice, freely done…
is that who I am? freely made choices about what I believe in… that still
tell me about my choices, not who I am……………let me think about this for
a moment………… ummmmmmm, I read a lot of philosophy books and I think
and I study philosophy, that seems to paint a picture of someone who is
rational, someone who thinks, someone who resolves problems with thought,
not just feelings… that does tell us something about who I am…

I am a rationalist, someone who thinks and that does tell us something
about me, who I am………. that thinking is not a accidental trait or
something I was indoctrinated with, because how we think is not a function
of being indoctrinated…… it is a choice we make as to how we respond to
the world and the sensations we get from our senses, eyes, ears, nose, touch,
tongue…………

who am I?

I am someone who thinks…….

we have reduced our question into the basic form of thought or
reacting emotionally, and I think…………

so one response to the question of who am I, is
the answer, I think…….

Kropotkin

we have a couple of reactions to make…….

in light of the good versus evil question……
we understand “good” and “evil” as two distinct
and separate issues, but we understand that “good”
and “evil” are really just perspectives……….

take the Holocaust, it has been classified as “evil” and yet,
and yet, was it? People did benefit from the removal of Jews
and communist and Gays into those concentration camps…
People were able to get better jobs, make more money,
have a better house because the Jews were taken away…
from this standpoint, the removal of people into concentration camps
was not “evil”… it was good because it benefited people
and any event that was a benefit to people cannot be counted as
“evil”

but take the Jewish people or the communist or Gays that were transported
to concentration camps to die, it was “evil” nothing more, nothing less…

so, is removal of people into concentration camps, “good” or “evil”?
depends on your viewpoint……… but take an event and let us look at it…

for example, a tree falls… in one case the tree falls and it kills a lion
that was about to eat some people… in another case, the tree fell
and killed some children… now for some people, the tree falling and killing
the lion was a “good” thing and for some people the tree killing children is an
“evil” thing……. depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?

so, how is one to understand the tree falling?

you see the act, the tree falls, you see the tree killing either the lion
or killing the children……………. but you cannot make a judgment without
bringing in some other evidence………… for example, the visual image
of the tree falling doesn’t allow one to make some moral judgement…
the fact the tree will kill one life form or the other life, still doesn’t
allow some moral judgement… to make a “moral judgement” one must
have facts outside the actions itself……

to make this clear, let us take two similar emotions…

let us say, that for me, to get a sexual thrill, I like watching two women,
now let us say, that for some person, raping and killing children, also
brings about a sexual thrill… if we just judge it based on the
result that the actions have on us, we both get sexual thrills…if that
is the criteria, then it doesn’t matter what the action we take to reach
the sexual thrill… the point is to have the sexual thrill………….
not how we got the sexual thrill.…………….

but to justify either action, we must go beyond the act of causing
the sexual thrill……. It can be argued that my looking at two women
having sex is “less” a danger then some person raping and killing children……
but we have to go beyond the action, go beyond the sexual thrill and
bring in outside reasons for our actions to be “judge” right or wrong………

Now one may object to both actions equally, as watching two women
debases and demean and destroys what women are and raping and killing
children destroys lives that had no choice of any kind………….

in other words, the path to understanding the “rightness” or “wrongness”
of any action lies outside of the action itself… you cannot call an action
“right” or “wrong” or “good” or “evil” based on just the actions themselves…

any explanations must come from outside of the actions……………

the criteria for judging “right” from “wrong” doesn’t come from the action itself,
the criteria comes from some outside source… society cannot function if we allow
people to rape and kill children but society can and does function if we allow
men (or women) for that matter to watch two women have sex………

and we can create other reasons for accepting one action or another, but
those reasons come from outside of the actions itself…

so the standard we might use to judge such matters arise from outside of
the actions because we cannot know from an action itself if it is “good”
or “evil” until we take some inventory of the event and note the pluses
or minus of any given event………. it is after the fact that we decide
if an event is “good” or “evil” or simply just neutral………………
and we use criteria outside of or beyond the event itself…………

So “good” and “evil” require some analysis, some full understanding
of the event and its aftermath before we can consider an event to
be “good” or “evil”……………

or said another way, understanding “good” and “evil” requires some
perspective and a full accounting before we can make some declaration
to the value of the words “good” or “evil” and apply the words “good” and “evil” to
any action………

to understand “good” and “evil” requires a judgement to be made…
and we must understand the basis of that judgement for the
judgement to have any value………………

and the judgement requires an explanation outside of the event
and outside of some personal moral understanding……………

is "good’ and is “evil” “subjective”?

the problem with that, is the fact that we must bring in outside
evidence to “correctly” understand any judgment we might make…….

we cannot properly understand an event until we use some outside
criteria and not just judge the event by itself… but we run into
another problem, which outside criteria should we use?

But Kropotkin, you haven’t answered anything, you haven’t solved
anything… you just have more questions………… yep……….

Kropotkin

so if we understand this whole question about “good” and “evil” correctly,
then to be able to judge something being “good” or “evil”, we must resort
to some outside the event criteria……. in other words, we see an event,
a tree falling and we cannot judge the moral implications until we’ve done
a complete analysis of the event………

ummmmmm, ok, we have our childhood indoctrinations,
the myths, biases, prejudices and superstitions that we are taught
from birth……………… we take these indoctrinations and accept them as is…
we are taught that there is a god or that America is the greatest country
on earth… prejudices really… and because we haven’t done as Nietzsche
has suggested which is… “to have the courage for an attack upon our convictions”
we just simply accept our convictions, the myths and biases and prejudices
and superstitions of our indoctrinations as the basis for our understanding
of the universe, of reality……

when we look to outside evidence to understand if something is “good” or “evil”,
we resort to our convictions, which are nothing more then the myths and bias
and ism’s and prejudices of our childhood indoctrinations……………

the very evidence we use to understand if something is “good” or “evil” is itself
bias and prejudice and of superstitions……………

that outside criteria we use to understand if something is “good” or “evil”
is nothing more than the biases we are used to since we have had them
since childhood…….“good” and “evil” is nothing more then the
myths and biases and prejudices and superstitions of our childhood
indoctrinations……………

so how are to know what is really and truly “good” or “evil”?

by overcoming our myths, habits, bias, prejudice, superstitions,
and ism’s that we were indoctrinated with as children……

that is the only sure path to our becoming aware of what is truly
“good” or “evil”…………

If a man declares an event to be “evil” what he really means is,
that is an bias I was indoctrinated with as a child and I never outgrew it
because I never overcame it…

what we call “good” and “evil” are simply childhood indoctrinations
that we haven’t the courage to overcome…

Kropotkin

how do we actually understand things?

let us take a previous example, a tree falls down…….

how would a child who hasn’t been indoctrinated understand
a tree falling down?

it becomes a magical event……… the child does not and can not understand the
cause of events required to have a tree fall down…………

if you don’t have some causal understanding of an event, it becomes
magical………

another example is a elevator… from a child perspective, a door
opens up and then people walk out… and the elevator is empty…the door closes…
then a few moments later, the door reopens with more people in it…….
wow…… a magic event where a door opens up and an empty box/ room,
becomes full again with people who then walk out and over and over again…
we know that the elevator goes from floor to floor picking up people…
but a child doesn’t know that……… and we have to explain to the child the
“trick” of the elevator……… it no longer becomes a magic event…….

but for a child to understand, they must be taught the causal relationship
of the event, the elevator and how it moves from floor to floor…
until the child understand it is the elevator that moves from floor to floor,
the child won’t understand how it picks up people…………. from the child’s
standpoint, most of life seems to be magic… and from their perspective, it
is…………… because they don’t have the causal understanding of reality…………

which is why Kant is wrong in his understanding of the universe being in
categories……………… we don’t understand the universe that way until
we are taught the categories and what the categories are for………

in other words, we learn from experience what the categories are and
how they are used…………… not from some innate sense of the categories……

we learn what motion is from people describing motion or we learn motion
from actually doing motion… from experience… we learn what space
is from either a description or from experience, not from some innate
category because the category itself must be furnished from experienced…

when we are adults and we have categories, learned from cold hard experience,
we can label or categorize or time or weigh matter or experiences and put
them into a category learned from experience…………. not an innate idea……

the category of hot things we learned from experiencing hot things
and the category of hard things we learned from experincing hard things…
and time and space from our ever present existence in space and time…

does a fish understand it is in water? no, it is just the enviroment
that the fish has existed in all its life and it doesn’t know or understand
any other enviroment… space and time are simply the enviroment we
have existed in all our lives…and thus we don’t need to have an “innate”
or a category of space/time… it already exists and has all our lives…

what we fail to understand is the human being has existed within
a enviroment all of our lives… it is a part of us…we no more think
of the sun as being a star as we do of earth being a planet…
it just is and has been all of our lives… it doesn’t need a category…

oxygen was discovered in 1772… no one bothered to look for it because
it never occurred to anyone… because we have always have had
oxygen… it is part of the enviroment… why look for something that
is ever present… the question of space/time is the same thing…
it is always there… ever present…

to create categories for our understanding is to miss the entire
point of childhood where we learn from birth, such things space/time/ matter
events/causal relationships and we learn such things from experience
and from people’s explanation of what happened and why…

Kropotkin

we are imperfect people living in an imperfect world……….

and all our work is meant to rise above our imperfectness
or the world’s imperfectness, or perhaps both………

Leibnez is wrong in thinking that this is “the best of all worlds”

it is not perfection we struggle against… it is the opposite,
imperfection……………… you don’t struggle against perfection,
you emulate it, you copy it, you steal it… you don’t struggle
against it…………………

but what imperfection do we struggle against exactly?

the world/nature isn’t perfect or imperfect, it just is…
Nature is neutral… it doesn’t give a shit about us…
negative or positive………….

what is imperfect is us……… and our response to nature………
we have anthropomorphize nature to our detriment in understanding
the world/nature………….

so how do we make ourselves perfect? we don’t…….

we simply begin to understand/ become aware of our imperfection……

from what stems out imperfection? By relying on our childhood
indoctrinations, we have a false understanding of the world and
who we are…… if we overcome those childhood indoctrinations,
habits, myths, prejudices and superstitions, we will have a better
understanding of who we are and what is possible…………

no longer will we be imperfect because our imperfections is a result
of our false understanding of the world……………create by the childhood
indoctrinations………

childhood indoctrinations create a bad fit in our adulthood, for they
lead us to make false and erroneous conclusions about who we are and why
we are here and what is possible…………………

it is not the world/universe/nature that is imperfect but the way we
we look at the world that is the problem… fix how we look at the world
and the “imperfection” that is, is no more………………. the problem is us,
not the world………the imperfection is us, not the world

Kropotkin

love… one of the basic emotions of life and for
many, one of the reasons to remain alive… love is the
reason for existence……………

so how would you describe love?

would you use scientific terms? would you use
philosophical terms? No, I don’t see that working out well…

so how would one describe love…

"How do I love thee? let me count the way.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

for the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s
most quiet need, by sun and candlelight

I love thee freely, as men strive for right…

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use
in my old griefs, and with my
childhood’s faith…

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with my lost saints, I love thee with the breath,
smiles, tears, all my life; and, if god choose,
I shall love thee better after death…….

Elizabeth Barret Browning………

you cannot clearly and distinctly describe love with science or philosophy
or math or history… you need the right words to describe love and
poetry and songs do have the right words to describe a personal event
like love…….but you cannot describe philosophy with words of love…
and you cannot describe history with mathematical formula’s……

what we need is to understand that to describe something, we need the
right words to be able to describe that something…and we cannot use
science to describe love or love to describe science…………………

much of our current failure arises because we are using the wrong words
to describe events and feelings and our life……….

but more of interest is this, why don’t we have a current theory of
“aesthetics”? what is art and what is it meaning for us? what is beauty
and what does beauty mean to us? the problem of “aesthetics”
is one that we need to sort out…………. but we don’t know or care
what is beauty or what it means to us……. ask yourself, why?

for over 200 years “aesthetics” was a major problem in philosophy and
today, we have even forgotten what “aesthetics” is… why?

find a poem, read it, think about it……… try to understand what it means
and what it says to you………………… most people would consider that a waste
of time… there is no reason for us to ever think about or understand poems
or literature or great art… but why? understanding art was
one of the Greek’s great pleasure… they created great art in response to
what they saw or felt within their reality…………… why don’t we create
art in response to our reality, to what we see in the universe?

perhaps the failure of modernity lies in it forgetting how important
art is and pursuit of beauty is to us…………

we lost something very important when we gave up our engagement with
art and beauty and began to pursue money/profits/ upwardly success…….

we lost part of our soul……… and this is reflected in the emptiness of
our time……………… what is art to you?

and begin to understand the emptiness of your soul because you have forgotten
what it means to pursue beauty instead of money……….

Kropotkin

You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.

K: it is not the world/universe/nature that is imperfect but the way we
we look at the world that is the problem… fix how we look at the world
and the “imperfection” that is, is no more………………. the problem is us,
not the world………the imperfection is us, not the world"

I: You and I are pretty much in sync regarding most political issues: leftist, liberal, progressive.

But the manner in which you seem to embrace them appears [to me] more in sync with the manner in which I construe the meaning of a “moral objectivist”. Whereas my own commitment is considerably more tenuous…more in the way of an existential contraption, a bunch of “political prejudices” derived largely from the particular life that I lived.

In other words…

Hindus
Buddhists
monarchists
populists
nationalists
liberals
conservatives
Marxists
fascists
Nazis
libertarians
anarchists
socialists
capitalists
Objectivists
Christians

And on and on and on.

Which of these folks would not argue much the same thing that you do?

Perfection may or may not exist, but the closest our own species can come to it is to think like they do.

And that just seems more about embracing one or another psychological foundation to embed “I” in.
[/quote]
K: it is always a pleasure to hear from you…there is much misunderstanding
about my “method” and I shall take a moment to clarify…….

there are, so far, two ways to understand things, one is the universal to
the particulars and the other way is to go from the particular to the universal…
the misunderstanding in my case is although I do have a certain “political”
viewpoint and that I go from the universal to the particular there, this
is philosophy and I go from the particular to the universal in philosophy……

now one method people use is to begin with a universal, I am a “Hindu”,
to use one of your examples, and argue from the universal, “Hindu”
to the particulars to promote or to encourage people to understand
what it means to be 'Hindu" or to even encourage people to become “Hindu”,
the universal to the particulars…but my “philosophical works” do not go
from the universal to the particular because I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint to engage from…I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint…….whereas I do have a political or religious
universal standpoint………I don’t argue philosophical that my position
is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same
because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from…………

don’t mistake my political or religious viewpoints as a means to influence
my philosophical viewpoints… they don’t……….

what I am doing is simply trying to take some particulars and then
use those particulars to create a philosophical position…
go from the particular to the universal……………

to call me an “objectivist” from a political or religious standpoint,
may or may not be correct, but I have no set philosophical standpoint
from which to call me an “objectivist”………….

I am simply trying to gather the evidence to make some sort of
judgement about the human condition… to try to discover
what is the human problem and how do we solve this
problem of existence……………and I am now leaning toward
some sort of embrace with art as a means toward our understanding
the problem of human existence……………but I could easily be wrong…….
or not…………………

my positions are simply just questions attempting to create some meaning
in my life and perhaps, perhaps in yours or someone else life… I simply report
my finding about the human condition… I state the problem of existence
and I try to understand the solution, if any, to this vexing problem……….

it has been my experience, that quite often in searching for answers to
problems that having a fixed, set position prevents any hope to find
answers to the questions……………perhaps the solution to the question of
existence is found in being “Hindu” or “liberal” or “fascist” but I doubt it…

I am, in the worn out cliché, attempting to “think outside of the box”………

I may succeed or I may fail………. but I don’t believe that taking a set
philosophical position will allow me to solve the question of human existence……

but in any case, I shall continue to search and ask questions about
what I see as the fundamental problem of our age,
“the problem of human existence” ……………………………………………

Kropotkin

in the question of human existence,
we have Kant’s three question…

"All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical combine
in three questions,

  1. What can I know?
  2. What ought I to do
  3. what may I hope?

Critique of Pure Reason…

in which Kant tries to understand the first question, What can I know?

but what is missed is the fact although Kant phrases this as personal questions,
they can really also exists as sociality questions…

  1. What can we know?
  2. What ought we to do?
  3. what may we hope?

and the questions still make perfect sense
and thus we begin…

we are not solitary creatures… we are social creatures,
we exists within a group, social context…

“for no man is an island”

no matter how hard he tries…

I need you and you need me… simple as that…

what can we know? we can know certain facts, but facts being facts
are not fixed in stone for all time, facts change… are there really 8 million
people living in New York city, no, but that “fact” gives us a sense of the number
of people living in NY, not the actual true number because we can never actually know
how many people really do live in NY because of the incoming/outgoing movement
and births and deaths………………facts are temporary “truths” that are changeable……
we can know “laws” like the “law of gravity” this “Law” is firmer then the idea of
“facts” given above……. you can trust the “law of gravity” in a way you can’t trust
“facts”…….but the “Laws” rules of our natural world are not absolute’s…….
the idea that Laws of nature are completely fixed is shown to be wrong
by the one “fixed” law of nature, the speed of light…………

the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second… and upon that “law”
Einstein based his theories upon but we know that a black hole gravity is so
strong that not even light can escape it…light is trapped by gravity and thus
unable to move at 186,000 miles per second…………thus the absolute “law” is
not absolute, it is a variable… and that is important to know…
because there may be a situation where gravity itself may not be
what we think it is and gravity is changed by some other force of nature……

it is not the certainty of the universe we can build upon but
the uncertainty of the universe……… we cannot be absolutely certain
about anything, we can we know? Perhaps nothing, perhaps all our knowledge
is really of a transitory nature……. now granted some of that knowledge
may change in billions of years, but it is changeable, it just doesn’t change
very fast……….

our knowledge is not from an innate form as Plato or Kant thought…
out knowledge comes from experience…….
now one might say, our knowledge of black holes certainly isn’t from experience…
no, our knowledge of black holes isn’t from experience but we have so little
“knowledge” of black holes, our knowledge is so limited as to be almost guesswork…………….

what can we know?

I may not know much and you may not know much but combined, we know more
then either of us individually might know……. and so, we come to the real truth of
knowledge… that collectively, we can know more then individually…….
what can I know? not much, but with your knowledge, I can know more…
and that is the real secret of knowledge… it must be shared to be of use…….

individual knowledge is ok, but knowledge shared is better, far better…….

what can we know? a lot… if we share it…….

next, what can I/we ought to do?

Kropotkin

Okay, let’s bring this out into the world that we live in.

With America on the verge of sending abortion legislation back to the states [or straight back to the back alleys coast to coast] how is a universal/particular frame of mind applicable here?

Folks can “think up” – define, deduce – a universal morality into existence “in their heads”. They then cram all of the particular pregnant women into it; or they can note the particular contexts that pregnant women might find themselves in and then reason from that to a universal moral law.

Either way though from my frame of mind, dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don’t go away.

I still construe both the “universal” assumptions and the assessments embedded in particular contexts as largely “existential contraptions”.

I’m still unclear then as to how this is applicable with respect to your own personal views on abortion rights.

When you note that…

“I don’t argue philosophical[ly] that my position is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from.”

…my own reaction revolves around wanting to grasp the “position” from which you do come to embrace one set of political prejudices rather than another.

How do you not see your values here as just political prejudices [as “I” do] rooted in the manner in which I construe the nature of “self”/“identity” out in the is/ought world.

That’s the part I am always most curious about. What goes on inside the head of those who are not down in the hole that I’m in when confronting conflicting goods in social, political and economic interactions.

Then I am still completely baffled as to how you make this distinction. From my frame of mind an objectivist is someone who argues [either from a philosophical, religious or political perspective] that their value judgments regarding an issue like abortion reflect the most reasonable and virtuous frame of mind; and that in the best of all possible worlds “right makes might” would prevail.

And even to the extent they accept moderation, negotiation and compromise as the best of all possible worlds, they are still of the opinion that the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”.

Yet any number of the objectivists above make the same claim. Except for the part where they might possibly be wrong.

And [from my frame of mind] once you go down this path you are basically embracing the idea that “we’re right from our side and they’re right from theirs”.

But only as a particular political prejudice that “here and now” you are most comfortable with.

In other words, even though you think that your value judgments relating to an issue like abortion are probably the right ones, you admit that they may not be. And it is this assumption that makes is easier for you to accept that, with regard to democracy and the rule of law, “one of theirs” is acceptable. For now.

Someone like Trump becomes the problem here only to the extent that his followers are convinced that his own value judgments [re an issue like abortion] are objectivist [like theirs]. And not just part of the political game that he plays to stay in power.

As I see it though, a frame of mind like this may well be more in search of a psychological foundation upon which to anchor “I”. Political values here then become more in sync with a psychological defense mechanism disguised as a moral or political commitment.

But I readily acknowledge that these relationships are [existentially] profoundly complex. I would never presume to suggest that “I” understand “you” here better than “you” understand “me”. I just appear to be considerably more “fractured and fragmented”. As I was with folks like karpel tunnel, phyllo, von rivers, gib, moreno, zinnat…

Again, from my frame of mind, inside or outside the box, the search for solutions to “the problem of human existence” remains “for all practical purposes” an existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least until someone is able to convince me that it doesn’t have to be.

Peter Kropotkin:
there are, so far, two ways to understand things, one is the universal to
the particulars and the other way is to go from the particular to the universal…
the misunderstanding in my case is although I do have a certain “political”
viewpoint and that I go from the universal to the particular there, this
is philosophy and I go from the particular to the universal in philosophy……

I: Okay, let’s bring this out into the world that we live in.
With America on the verge of sending abortion legislation back to the states [or straight back to the back alleys coast to coast] how is a universal/particular frame of mind applicable here?

K: ok…

I: Folks can “think up” – define, deduce – a universal morality into existence “in their heads”. They then cram all of the particular pregnant women into it; or they can note the particular contexts that pregnant women might find themselves in and then reason from that to a universal moral law.
Either way though from my frame of mind, dasein, conflicting goods and political economy don’t go away.

K: Ok, here we have a distinction between you and me………………as a well known liberal,
I have well known idea’s about Abortion……… I see the matter of Abortion as being a
political or/a religious matter, but and this is important, not as a philosophical matter…….
as a political/religious matter we do run into dasein, conflicting goods and
political ecomony….but as a philosophical matter, we don’t…….
I have never actually done a philosophical “study” of abortion…I don’t
think it is possible because of the inherent conflict inside of the political/religious
mess in America……….but I don’t necessarily think that abortion for example,
must be done in a strict universal to particular or a particular to universal set…….
because of its nature, we simple take political/or religious understanding to
abortion………and you can run your usual arguments through the political/religious
context in regards to abortion… but not philosophical arguments…

I: I still construe both the “universal” assumptions and the assessments embedded in particular contexts as largely “existential contraptions”.

K: now lies the problem… at one time, you were an objectivist, you admit as much…
and you assume that people are “objectivist” because they don’t see the world as you do…
but that is really is the result of how you view people, as you see them, not
necessarily as they see themselves… if you start off thinking that everyone in
the world has sinned, then you will see everyone in the world sinning, but that
is not necessarily the truth, it is just you………your understanding of people dictates
your viewpoint of people…

Peter Kropotkin: now one method people use is to begin with a universal, I am a “Hindu”,
to use one of your examples, and argue from the universal, “Hindu”
to the particulars to promote or to encourage people to understand
what it means to be 'Hindu" or to even encourage people to become “Hindu”,
the universal to the particulars…but my “philosophical works” do not go
from the universal to the particular because I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint to engage from…I don’t have a universal
philosophical standpoint…….whereas I do have a political or religious
universal standpoint………I don’t argue philosophical that my position
is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same
because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from…

I: I’m still unclear then as to how this is applicable with respect to your own personal views on abortion rights.

K: once again, I don’t view abortion philosophical, I view it politically/religiously……
I classify abortion by my political/religious views…… so I don’t attempt philosophy
in regards to abortion……………………
you have to understand this or the rest doesn’t matter…

I: When you note that…

K: “I don’t argue philosophical[ly] that my position is the correct one and here are my reasons why you should do the same because I don’t have a philosophical position to argue from.”

I: …my own reaction revolves around wanting to grasp the “position” from which you do come to embrace one set of political prejudices rather than another.
How do you not see your values here as just political prejudices [as “I” do] rooted in the manner in which I construe the nature of “self”/“identity” out in the is/ought world.
That’s the part I am always most curious about. What goes on inside the head of those who are not down in the hole that I’m in when confronting conflicting goods in social, political and economic interactions.

K: that idea conflicting goods in social, political and economics is not in my head,
it is your head… and it will help you understand things better if you can separate
out your thoughts from my thoughts… I don’t think like you do… I care little
about those competing goods or “existential contraptions”… it might work for
you, but it really doesn’t work for me… I work off of different idea’s and different
thoughts…… try to remember that……. to be honest, I think the whole
conflicting goods and “existential contraptions” is really much, too much work.
I like to keep things simple…… my motto is “keep it simple stupid” or known
as the “Kiss” theory…….

Peter Kropotkin: to call me an “objectivist” from a political or religious standpoint,
may or may not be correct, but I have no set philosophical standpoint
from which to call me an “objectivist”………….

I: Then I am still completely baffled as to how you make this distinction. From my frame of mind an objectivist is someone who argues [either from a philosophical, religious or political perspective] that their value judgments regarding an issue like abortion reflect the most reasonable and virtuous frame of mind; and that in the best of all possible worlds “right makes might” would prevail.

K: at the point of sounding repetitive, I think the problem lies with your thought
about “objectivist”, it is a label and labels are rarely ever completely accurate or honest…
a label is really nothing more then a prejudice or a habit to put upon people…….
remove the label, “objectivist” and try to see people another way…… but Kropotkin,
that is easier said then done…… yep………

I: And even to the extent they accept moderation, negotiation and compromise as the best of all possible worlds, they are still of the opinion that the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”.

K: as a political/religious thought, yes, but not as a philosophical thought…….
and even as a political/religious thought, it is not very accurate… who today believes
in moderation/negotiation, compromise? might as well be Diogenes………

Peter Kropotkin: I am simply trying to gather the evidence to make some sort of
judgement about the human condition… to try to discover
what is the human problem and how do we solve this
problem of existence……………and I am now leaning toward
some sort of embrace with art as a means toward our understanding
the problem of human existence……………but I could easily be wrong…….
or not…………………

I: Yet any number of the objectivists above make the same claim. Except for the part where they might possibly be wrong.
And [from my frame of mind] once you go down this path you are basically embracing the idea that “we’re right from our side and they’re right from theirs”.

K: and once again to be boring, the problem lies with your thought about objectivists…
I am talking about the matter philosophical, not politically or religious… the problem of
existence is not a political or a religious matter, but a human matter… I don’t care what
your political or religious thoughts are in regards to the question of the human problem,
that of human existence… it doesn’t matter what your political or religious feelings
are… the question/problem of human existence is not a day to day matter of politics
or religion, but of existence…it is a metaphysical matter which I am investigating
right now and will be posting once I get a handle on it…….

I: But only as a particular political prejudice that “here and now” you are most comfortable with.
In other words, even though you think that your value judgments relating to an issue like abortion are probably the right ones, you admit that they may not be. And it is this assumption that makes is easier for you to accept that, with regard to democracy and the rule of law, “one of theirs” is acceptable. For now.

K: ok…

I: Someone like Trump becomes the problem here only to the extent that his followers are convinced that his own value judgments [re an issue like abortion] are objectivist [like theirs]. And not just part of the political game that he plays to stay in power.

K: I object to IQ45 on political/ religious idea’s, not necessarily philosophical ones…
I could object to him based on values, but I really think he is a danger to America
based on facts……… as far as I can tell, he is completely wrong about every single
issue and wrong being from my understanding of competing goods, existential contraption,
political economy… the whole nine yards… he is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…
but that is from a political/religious standpoint………like an good “objectivist”

Peter Kropotkin: my positions are simply just questions attempting to create some meaning
in my life and perhaps, perhaps in yours or someone else life… I simply report
my finding about the human condition… I state the problem of existence
and I try to understand the solution, if any, to this vexing problem……….
[/quote]
I: As I see it though, a frame of mind like this may well be more in search of a psychological foundation upon which to anchor “I”. Political values here then become more in sync with a psychological defense mechanism disguised as a moral or political commitment.
But I readily acknowledge that these relationships are [existentially] profoundly complex. I would never presume to suggest that “I” understand “you” here better than “you” understand “me”. I just appear to be considerably more “fractured and fragmented”. As I was with folks like karpel tunnel, phyllo, von rivers, gib, moreno, zinnat…

K: I am not a fan of trying to turn political/religious/ philosophical thought into psychological
thought…it just isn’t a very good fit…….

Peter Kropotkin: I am, in the worn out cliché, attempting to “think outside of the box”………
I may succeed or I may fail………. but I don’t believe that taking a set
philosophical position will allow me to solve the question of human existence……

I: Again, from my frame of mind, inside or outside the box, the search for solutions to “the problem of human existence” remains “for all practical purposes” an existential contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. At least until someone is able to convince me that it doesn’t have to be.

K: and that is where we part company, because I don’t believe the search for the problem
of human existence must travel through dasein or conflicting goods or political economy…
there are other journeys to be made that don’t require those “traits”
and to think that “for all practical purposes” the search for the solution to the human problem
must travel through those issues is to be as much an “objectivist” as anyone…

we travel the path we travel, but we don’t need to bring along the crap…
we can travel light and I like to travel light… so I try not to bring along
the crap of myths, habits, prejudices and superstitions that we either
are indoctrinated with or we create along the way… sometimes I fail…

I believe your path of finding the truth through dasein, conflicting goods or political economy
or “existential contraption” is your way, your method of being an “objectivist”…
and from where I sit, I really, really, really don’t care… its your way, not mine…
I believe that many of the problem I find are really creations of my issues…
and I believe that finding the truth through these values of dasein, conflicting goods,
political economy and existential contraption is just not traveling light…
but hay, what do I know? I am just muddling through this human existence…

Kropotkin

a general note… I am wading deep, waist high in metaphysics…….
I have pages of handwriten notes about my readings in metaphyics…

now after my readings and thinking about those readings, I shall try
to connect metaphysics with Kant’s thoughts, his three questions…
I am guessing that this is a reinventing the wheel type of exercise,
as philosophy classes most likely do this as standard procedure, but
hay, what the hell…I have time…

anyway, Kant’s three questions
1; what can we/I know?
2; what should we/I do?
3; what may we/I hope?

so how does the question of metaphysics involve in these three questions…
and of course, the issue becomes, what is metaphysics? and that is what I am
looking at…what is metaphysics?

the original thought about metaphysics is Aristotle,
and they revolve around three questions, there is that three again…

One: what is the nature of being
two: what is the first cause of things
three: things that do not change

those are the traditional metaphysics questions…
but Kant, for example adding in some questions like
his well know thought about

“god, freedom and immortality”

so how does metaphysics give us an answer to the questions of
“god” freedom" “immortality” I would guess under the guise
of “things that do not change” from above…

so in other words, I have waded into some very, very deep waters…….

but its ok, I can swim :sunglasses: ……

Kropotkin

This would seem to suggest then that ethicists and political philosophers [among others] have nothing to say about abortion.

And yet others would seem to suggest otherwise:

iep.utm.edu/abortion/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoph … ion_debate
philosophynow.org/issues/36/Lib … d_Abortion

My frame of mind here, however, revolves more around the extent to which even this is rooted in dasein. That, in other words, there does not appear to be a way in which to resolve this once and for all. That, instead, each individual had a unique set of experiences at the intersection of philosophy and abortion and based on that particular confluence of existential variables was predisposed to think one thing rather than another.

Not sure how your point here really addresses mine.

However we might see ourselves or others, we are still faced with the task of confronting conflicting goods such that certain behaviors [within any particular community] are either prescribed [rewarded] or proscribed [punished]. Some argue that this revolves around universal moral laws applicable to everyone. Others suggest that an objective morality revolves instead around an objective understanding of each particular contrext. What I argue however is that individual value judgments are rooted existentially at/in/around the historical, cultural and experiential intersection of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

What interests me then are those who argue that their own value judgments are derived from something other than that: religion, political ideology [reason], assessments of nature etc.

I’m simply unclear as to how “for all practical purposes” your political/religious narrative [sans philosophy] actually “works” for you when confronting those who have views on issues like abortion at odds with your own.

Thus…

Lots of people think it’s “too much work”. But most of them are objectivists. They “keep it simple” by the dividing the world neatly into “one of us” and “one of them”. They genuinely come to believe that, out in the is/ought world, “I” is in sync with the “real me” in sync with either the optimal way in which to behave when confronted with an issue like abortion, or, in fact, the only rational manner in which virtuous people are obligated to behave.

So, I am still rather puzzled here as to what you do “care about” when confronting those who wish to prescribe and proscribe behaviors completely at odds with your own relating to political conflicts like abortion.

Do you have any examples of this of late [from your own life] that you can use to illustrate your text?

As of now this seems basically where we are “stuck”.

As I see it, one either believes that their own value judgments reflect that which the legal and political superstructure ought to be predicated on [right makes might], or one acknowledges that “you’re right from your side, I’m right from mine” makes greater sense and thus moderation negotiation and compromise is more the political order of the day.

Or, as with many who own and operate the global economy today, right and wrong behaviors revolve mostly around “what’s in it for me?” One or another rendition of might makes right.

My problem with this is [once again] that I gain no real sense of how “for all practical purposes” this enables you to confront others who don’t share your own moral and political values.

Clearly one of the biggest “problems of existence” revolves around the question “how ought one to live?”. And most folks intertwine one or another combination of philosophical, political and religious narratives into a practical assessment such that this propels their interactions with others. Here I’m down in the hole I describe above. But I really don’t understand how you are not down in it.

Okay, let’s zero in on a particular policy of his. Say, for example, the wall on the southern border with Mexico. His immigration policy. How would you separate a political/religous assessment of his views here from that which an ethicist or political philosopher might speculate about using the tools of philosophy?

And then there is the gap between the language he might use and the extent to which a logician may or may not consture it as rational…as logical thinking.

And then the gap between what he claims to know about the issue of immigration and that which an epistemolosgist may or may not claim actually can be known.

You insist that he is wrong about every single issue. But how is that not just you insisting that being wrong here revolves around not sharing your own value judgments? And how are your own value judgments here not just manifestations of dasein?

Note the political/religious values embraced by men and women down through the ages. How are they not just “existential contraptions” embedded historically, culturally and experientially? Unless in fact someone [either using the political/religious path or the philosophical/scientific path] is able to concoct a set of values able to be demonstarated as that which all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to embody.

Then shifting gears [on my part] to the psychological parameters of all this:

But how on earth can they be separated realistically? It’s not like we live on a planet of Vulcans who are able to somehow reduce everything relating to an issue like abortion down to “logical”, “not logical”. Instead, our own species is programmed genetically to react to the world around us both cognitively and emotionally/psychologically. And that’s before be get to the id and instinct and libido. Not to mention the part played by the subconscious and the unconscious mind.

And then finally, the imponderables embedded in things like determinism, sim worlds, demonic dreams, correlation vs. cause and effect, the ontological/teleological understanding of Existence itself.

You think this. But I have no clear or substantive understanding as to how thinking like this makes dasein, conflicting goods and political economy go away.

And until you are able to describe to me more substantially how these components are not factored into your own conflicted interactions with others, I doubt I will ever grasp how the components of your own political agenda “work” for you out in the world that we are all familiar with here and now.

Yes, I get this all the time. Only my “objectivism” does not allow for the sort of soothing comfort and consolation that the moral objectivists on both side of issues like abortion are able to take with them to the grave. Indeed, for some, even beyond the grave.

True enough. But then that is basically the psychological foundation that all folks able to think themselves into believing the world is divided between those who are “one of us” and those who are “one of them”, are able to sink down into.

Here [re an issue like abortion] it’s mostly the liberals and the conservatives. But there are hundreds of other moral and political and religious and philosophical perspectives out there.

All of them able to insist that “from where I sit, I really, really, really don’t care… its your way, not mine.”

And, if we’re lucky, they are of the sort that are tolerant of other points of view. And, if we’re not lucky, we have to deal with those objectivists who insist that we either embrace their own perspectives or there is a price to be paid.