a new understanding of today, time and space.

Ack! Naive Peter comes to the fore.

Has it ever occurred to you that the largest producer of electronic voting machines is a company called DIEBOLD. That’s how cocky these elites are

The Russian hacking shill…

The blocking people to vote in certain districts shill…

Are you kidding me!

It’s the us who hacks the damn things…

Nobody talks about that on tv.

This has been going on since I was of legal age to vote.

And don’t blame me for this shit…

I filled out a paper ballot and voted for myself.

I would have fixed that shit really quick

the Greeks understood, far better then we do, that
to find our potential, our possibilities, we must do so
in the public sphere…………. the city exists because
that is where we can discover who we are and what
are our possibilities……………

the human story requires two different aspects…
one is the individual… we work out our own issues
and problems individually and, and we work out
who we are in the midst of other human beings…
it is in our actions and reactions with other human beings that
we find out who we are… alone, separate, isolated,
we can never find out if we are kind people or smart people
or good people or evil people… alone, separate, isolated
means we can never discover our value and the importance
of values in our lives… justice means nothing if we are alone
and isolated… love means nothing if we are alone, isolated, separate…
these values only have value in our dealings with other life forms
like humans or dogs or elephants… we can discover who we are in our
relationships with other humans and other life forms…
and that best happens in the polis, the city…

the Greeks knew this…and in large part, this is why they were the
creators of western civilization…

but part of being in the city is this aspect of the political and economic
and social, that we keep running into…we find ourselves thrown into
an everchanging dynamics that is the city……. recall your existentialists,
that said, we are thrown into a life…….the situation we find ourselves has
been going on for centuries……. a complex series of events has brought
us to here and now………

events that we cannot untangle ourselves from… our society was formed because
of events like the two world wars and the depression and the cold war
and the hippy era of the 60’s……. you cannot explain who we are today without
reference to those events and more…………

to isolate ourselves from our society like the Christians did during the later
years of the Roman Empire is to isolate ourselves from who we are………

the fact of the matter is, that Christians help bring down the Roman empire
because they did isolate themselves from the going on in their society……
and that isolation, separation from society, meant that the Roman society
collapsed because there weren’t enough people to keep the machine going……
so many people had isolated themselves that Rome couldn’t go on…………

think of it this way… we need to move a large object, say the golden gate bridge…
but we only have humans to help us, no machines of any kind… if we have
everyone help, we have enough people to move the golden gate bridge…
but if people walk away from their share of the work, a couple of things happen…
first the burden on the remaining people becomes greater… and as more people walk
away, the burden grows greater and greater until the project must stop because
there are not enough people to move the golden gate bridge… enough people
have walked away, isolated themselves, become separate from the others that
the bodies needed to complete the work wasn’t there…this is the classic
idea of what happened to Rome… so many people withdrew into themselves
and their religion that Rome didn’t have enough bodies to get the work done
that was needed to keep a society going………… too many people withdrew into
themselves and that ended that society…………… and we see the same forces
at work today…… the tax burden becomes greater and greater as
the wealthy and powerful and corporations pay less and less taxes, putting
the burden on the middle and working poor class… this is clearly evident today…
and one response people have today is to withdraw… recall that
under 50% of the eligible voters actually voted… that is a sign that
people are withdrawing, becoming isolated, growing apart from society…
and that separation is damaging society and people…… ……… we can only find ourselves
in a city, in contact with and in relationships with other human beings……
if we retreat into ourselves, we lose that necessary part of being human,
the contact we must have with other human beings that is necessary for
us to grow and develop into our possibilities…

we must have an active, engaged polis, city, for us to become who we are…
to isolate ourselves from the city/society is to limit our possibilities…

so for those of you who advocate isolation, separation, withdrawing from
society or the political sphere are the ones who are damaging society and individuals,
by even proclaiming the need for isolation, separation, withdrawal…

look to the fall of Rome as our example and we see that Rome might
have survived if enough people had become engaged in society…….

one small detail show us the truth of this………. many have commented on
the rise of mercenary soldiers in the Roman army… Rome had to engage with
people outside of Roman citizens to become soldiers because Roman citizens
didn’t want to become soldiers… they retreated/refused to becoming soldiers
and that lead to the problem of mercenary’s in the Roman army over the last 100
years of Rome’s existence…… this isolation, this withdrawal from the Roman state
is just one example of how the withdrawal of people from the Roman state
helped lead Rome to its collapse…there are plenty of other examples telling
us the same thing……. Rome fell, in part, because the Roman people
withdrew, became isolated from, separated from the state……. and we
see the exact same thing today…….

so we can see how our withdrawing, becoming isolated from, being separated
from the state can lead to the state to fail…… and we are on the exact same
journey today…… if we withdraw, if we claim that the state is rigged and
beyond our control, we are following the same path as the Roman citizens
followed the years before Rome fell……….

so if you proclaim the system is rigged and to withdraw, then
you are guilty of damaging society…you are guilty of removing support
that the state/society needs to be able to function……….
if the state falls, we fall… the formula is as simple as that……
we are connected to the state, like it or not, and for us to succeed,
the state must succeed…………. but the opposite is true also,
for the state to succeed, we must succeed and that is where the party of treason,
the republicans, have failed… their attempts to destroy the middle and working poor
class is partly to blame for our political, social, economic issues of today…
we must have a strong society and we must have strong individuals within that
society for society to succeed… for us individually to succeed and for
society to succeed, we must have a successful society and successful
individuals within that society………. one must have the other……
the path to failure lies is in isolating, withdrawing from society
and from society isolating individuals……

we need each other… individuals need society and society need individuals…

and any attempt to hurt the other, just damages ourselves…………

this is the education we have learned from the fall of Rome………

Kropotkin

I am trying to connect “PHILOSOPHY” with our day to day lives……

how does the thought of say, Kant, who the average person has never
heard of, match with the day to day actions that we have…

in other words, how do the philosophers thought and philosophy,
enable day to day actions by a person?

we have two means of thinking about actions,
from the particular to the universal
and the universal to the particular…

so let us take the particular to the universal first…

so we have an action, let us take a look at the controversial action,
abortion…….

we have a women trying to decide if she should have an abortion……
that is a particular going toward a universal……
how should she decide?
there are multiple methods of trying to decide this matter…
she could be very rational about it or she could be emotional about it…
or some combination of rational and emotional……

the problem with making this decision, as with most decisions,
they are done ad hoc which means she is most likely to make this decision
in isolation of other concerns… in other words, without some overall
guiding principle… such as in light of what we might call, pro-life or
a women’s right to choose………… she won’t make this decision because
of some overarching principle that she has like the freedom to
choose…… no, the decision will most likely be made based on
some emotional context and not some overall principle…………

in other words, ad hoc………….

and that is how we make most of our decisions, not as part of an
overall principle, but as part of individual decisions that aren’t related
to any other decision…….

we do this personally and we do this in the political and economic
aspects of our lives……… we don’t react with some overarching
principle that guides our actions and decisions……

so, if she had freedom as her overarching principle, then
she can make the decision in light of her principles…
and if she makes all her decisions in light of some overall
principles, then it is no longer “ad hoc” but her decisions
exists within some overall framework………but few, very few
actually think this way………… they don’t make decisions
by way of some overarching principle that they have conceived of………
they just decide in the spur of the moment without any attempt
to put their decision into a larger context…

so in this sense, philosophy does have some value in showing us
how to make decisions within some larger context………

and philosophy helps create that larger context or principles in which
one then lives by… not as rigid as Kant and his “duties” but as
a general guide in which we can make decisions in light of
some overarching principles that help us understand
the overall context of our choices and our decisions………

for every decision is about the choices and the final decision…
what choices that we have, that fit into the context of our overall
principles…………if we take freedom as our overall principle,
then we make decisions based on the principle of freedom,
and every choice we make, every decision we make, is understood
in light of our freedom………. for having a child is a burden,
make no mistake about it……. you’ve given up the next 20 years
of your life to raise this child… as a parent, I have lived this
idea……… so if freedom is your goal, then having a child is not
really conducive to freedom… for once you have a child, you are
no longer free……………

this may be one way someone might understand their decisions making process
in regards to individual decisions that we face every single day………

using freedom as a guide to making decisions…………

but is freedom the only guide or overarching principle one can use?

no, of course not……. there are plenty of principles one can use…

principles can also be called values… what values are important to
someone? we can make decisions about our individual choices based
on the values we have…so for example, we can use love as
our overall principle or justice or equality……….

so in regards to abortion, we can make judgements about having a abortion
in light of these principles like love or justice or equality………

and now we are really talking about philosophy because as noted before,
philosophy is about which values are the important values…
science is about facts and philosophy is about values……
so we can use philosophy to separate out and understand
the possible values that we can then use to make decisions upon………

what values are truly the values we should base our lives upon?

so, how do you make decisions? do you simply make a decision
without regards to any overall principle?

or do you make decisions based on some overarching principle?

and what values do you use to make your decisions?

and how do you come with or understand those values?

for it is by values, that we make any decisions… or it should be at least………

so how do you make judgements? and are your judgements “ad hoc” or
are your judgements based on some overall principles or values?

Kropotkin

in reading about Kant in Copleston, I cam across an interesting phrase that
refers to the fact that Kant attacked traditional metaphysics,
as you recall, they are

  1. the nature of being
  2. the first cause of things
  3. things that do not change…

so Copleston is talking about phenomena and substance and things in themselves
and concludes that none of this things and Copleston say this,

"for the principles of the understanding, like the categories on which they
are founded, are of limited application. That is to say, their objective reference
is to phenomena alone. Hence they cannot be used to transcend experience.
(in the Kantian sense)

the point lies in the statement about concepts being used to transcend experience…
and therein lies a problem, what human concept or category can transcend
experience? how can we possible transcend experience?

for even an transcendental idea like god must be experience for it to be real…
otherwise it is just some cloud in the sky idea with no meaning or reality for us……

how does one transcend experience? with metaphysics, as defined above?

I don’t see how understanding the nature of being, whatever that is,
or understanding the first cause of things, and how can we know that?
or things that do not change, I am at loss to even begin to think of something
that does not change… even god changes as evident by the difference
in god from the old testament to the new testament… god is a different being
in the old testament as oppose to the new testament………

so in light of traditional metaphysics, how would we transcend experience?
now of course, metaphysics has been stuffed with all kinds of stuff, like
free will and determinism and immortality and the problem of universals
and particulars, but that still doesn’t lead us to some conclusion to
the question of, how we are to transcend experience?

the one question doesn’t lead us to a answer…………

and given that I don’t think we can in any particular
way, transcend experience……………

what is the value of metaphysics if we cannot transcend experience?
I don’t see the value of metaphysics if we cannot transcend experience…….

how would you transcend experience?

Kropotkin

Kant believes that our perception of reality is
based on categories we have inside of us…

but that question presupposes an interesting point,
this question of “reality”…….

What exactly is “reality”?

now, right now, look around you… what do you see?

I see the inside of my condo, I see the kitchen, with the stove
and fridge and sink and then I also see the living room with its
couch and a couple of bookcases with books by Kant, Goethe,
some biography’s of Marx………… with an exercise bike nearby…
I also see if I look out my sliding class door, my neighbors windows
and my patio fence and some pots for the plants we have in our
common area……

so, I ask you of what I see, what exactly is reality?

everything I have described is and has been created by someone…
so what exactly is reality in this picture?
think about this while I feed the cats…

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin: Kant believes that our perception of reality is
based on categories we have inside of us…

but that question presupposes an interesting point,
this question of “reality”…….

What exactly is “reality”?

now, right now, look around you… what do you see?

I see the inside of my condo, I see the kitchen, with the stove
and fridge and sink and then I also see the living room with its
couch and a couple of bookcases with books by Kant, Goethe,
some biography’s of Marx………… with an exercise bike nearby…
I also see if I look out my sliding class door, my neighbors windows
and my patio fence and some pots for the plants we have in our
common area……

so, I ask you, of what I see, what exactly is reality?

everything I have described is and has been created by someone…
so what exactly is reality in this picture?
think about this while I feed the cats…"

K: fed the cats… ok, now what in my description was reality?

K: the only thing that I can tell that was actually “reality” were the cats…
and the plants I mentioned.

we created everything else in that description… so, if we created
it, is that reality? a reality that conforms to our ease or pleasure…
the couch, the couch I fall asleep on every day, is that reality?

a reality that we made or created… it could have been very different
or made differently and still be called a couch…

so, are the plants in my courtyard, reality? well they have been put there
and nutured by gardeners who come every week and water them and trim
them as needed…the plants are also part of reality but a reality created
by humans… the reality that I see is basically a human construct…
made by humans, for humans… and is this “reality”???/

or is reality, something that isn’t constructed by humans?
is the weather for example, reality? it isn’t constructed by
humans, it exists separately, outside of human intervention…
we do not control the weather, so is the weather, “reality”?

how about the tree’s in the forest… we don’t “construct” the tree’s
in the forest, we don’t change those tree’s, we don’t influence
the tree’s, at least not directly, we do influence the tree’s
indirectly, but does that count as “reality”?

so, the question becomes, what exactly is reality?

for example, let us think about an ism or ideology, like
capitalism…… is an ism, which is created by humans,
for humans, is capitalism, reality? Capitalism is
changeable and malleable to human interest, so
is an ism/ideology, reality?

this question of understanding “reality” really comes to down
to what you think “reality” is…………….

perhaps part of our problem with this understanding “reality”
lies in our confusion over what exactly is “reality”…….

what is and what isn’t is has confusion because we not sure
what is “reality”…………

is our existence, “reality”?

Perhaps, but then isn’t our existence, to use a fancy philosophical word,
“contingent”? and how can we understand our “reality” if it is “contingent”?

perhaps, this entire idea of “reality” just an exercise in futility because
our existence and every thing in our existence, is “contingent”?

what is real if we have created everything around us?

and if we didn’t create it, like the weather, then how can we
understand it, and by understanding, I mean put into context,
where do I stand in relation to the weather? what is my role
in the weather? once again, this is really about what/where is my location
in regards to one system in which I am part of, the weather system…

but one might say, you influence the weather system by your participation
in global warming… but is that “reality”?

the entire question of understanding “reality” comes down to
our understanding of what “reality” actually is…

so, how are we suppose to know/understand “reality”
if we don’t have a firm grasp on what “reality” is……

so ask yourself, what is “reality”? and what is my relationship to
that thing, we call “reality”?

Kropotkin

so philosophy is often understood as the method of understanding
where we stand in relation to… something……

so, we try to understand where we stand in relation to
each other, to the state, to god, to reality, to knowledge…

each of these relationships have a name, the relationship to god
is thought of as theology, the relationship to knowledge is epistemology,
the relationship to the state is political science and so on…

but as I have pointed out, the “reality” of these relationships
often are subject to change… for example, our relationship
to the state often changes… the country is divided over
IQ45 attempts take this country back to the stone age…
my relationship to the state has change because of this
misguided attempt to turn back the clock…

now, how can I state or understand my relationship with the state,
when my relationship is constantly changing? the “reality” is
I have no fixed, firm relationship with the state, because
the state is always changing and I’m always changing in
my understanding of the state and what it means to me…

this ever constant flux about my “reality” as it changes,
leaves me with no firm, fixed place to understand “reality”…

where would I draw the line and say, here… this spot is
my fixed, firm place to understand “reality” when
I am ever changing and “reality” is ever changing?

if “reality” is an “human construct” as I have suggested, then
we have a real problem in understanding what “reality”
actually is……………because it is everchanging and we are
everchanging, so, where would you suggest we place or understand
“reality” if it is everchanging? Upon what fix location, would you
place or understand “reality”?

Kropotkin

now, if we are everchanging, as I have suggested, then this would
suggest that we don’t have a fixed, permanent understanding of that
thing we call, Kropotkin… in other words, the thing we call, soul,
or our nature, or when we say, “I” as in “I” am cold… what do we mean by
the “soul” or the “I”? Hume suggested that in regards to our understanding
of “who” we are, that the “I” is simply ever changing perceptions of
“reality”? there is no such thing as “I”…we have no fixed personality,
no fixed soul, no fixed “I”…just an ever changing, ever shifting of
the “self”… out understanding of “personal identity” is not fixed because
there is no such firm, solid, fixed “personal identity”………

how can we discover “reality” if we ourselves have no fixed “personal identity” from
which to base our thinking about “reality” upon?

this would complicate our understanding of “reality” if there is no fixed
“personal identity”…….

I see the kitchen, a “reality”… but which “I” is seeing the kitchen?

is Hume, right? that we have no firm, fixed, “personal identity”, no fixed
“self” upon which we can make any distinctions about “reality”………

another brick in the wall…….as one might say………

Kropotkin

Kant ask, why has the sciences been far more effective
then the philosophers? in other words, why has science
been so successful in understanding the world,
when philosophy like metaphysics has been
unsuccessful in understanding the world?

metaphysics has been a problem since the age of the Greeks…

questions of the three traditional problems of metaphysics,
the nature of being, the cause of things and the things that
do not change…I realize that other crap has been thrown into
metaphysics, but let us deal with that in a moment…

why hasn’t philosophy correctly understood these three
problems of metaphysics?

why hasn’t there been any progress in metaphysics like
there has been progress in science?

I would suggest that its because science deals with
objects that can be experiences in some fashion through
the senses…objects that can be measured, weighed,
contrasted and compared to other physical objects…
you can learn something about an object by comparing
and contrasting it to another like object…
you can compare mars to Venus and by doing so,
you can learn something important about both…
you can gain knowledge that can be measured, weighed,
contrasted and compared…what you see is what you get…
there is nothing “metaphysical” or outside of the senses
in regards to Mars or Venus…it is science which means
anyone who bothers to look will see the same thing…
they might interpret it differently, but they will see the same thing…
in fact, they might interpret it differently because of
the person doing the interpretation might be doing so via
the prism of myths, habits, biases, prejudice and superstition.

you see Mars and say, that was created by God and every observation
after that is seen in light of the idea that Mars was created by god…
because your initial thought was wrong, it leads the entire observation
to be mistaken……… and that mistake is the basis of judging reality…
which leads one to mistake reality for something else…….
so the scientific method must begin without any bias or
judgement or prejudice, so that the original observation doesn’t become
bias because the original observation was flawed from the beginning……

so when we look at metaphysical questions, it is assumed that
our questions about the nature of being or the first cause of things (god)
or things that do not change (the soul) actually exists…

but, but we cannot look at a person and see a soul… we
cannot find a soul, no matter how hard we try…
but it is assumed that a soul must exist and will exist eternally…
and so we look for evidence for such a thing… we try to find the
the existence of a soul, the thing behind what we see and we cannot
understand why we can’t find it… well, we can’t find it because it
doesn’t exists… there is no thing behind the thing… we see a person
and that exactly what we have… nothing extra, nothing metaphysical,
nothing beyond the physical…….nothing that will exists forever…
we can’t see the soul because it doesn’t exists and it surely doesn’t exists
forever………

that is why science has progressed far beyond metaphysics
in philosophy… that is why science has been far more successful
then metaphysical concepts………
because there is no there, there in metaphysics…

if we drop metaphysics, the three questions of metaphysical thought,
then perhaps philosophy will be far more successful…in other words,
if we change the question/questions of philosophy, we might have more
success with philosophy………

in other words, we are reevaluating philosophy…
we are engaged in an attack upon our basic principles
of philosophy and this is according to Nietzsche, might,
might, lead us to an overcoming of our convictions that
has lead us nowhere in our understanding of philosophy……

a reevaluation of philosophy itself may be just what the doctor
ordered………. what are the “real” questions of philosophy?
what should we really be asking? if we dismiss the traditional
questions of philosophy and start over, what will we have?

what questions should we be asking instead of the traditional
questions of philosophy that have lead us nowhere?

a revaluation of values in philosophy itself…

quite a scary proposition and perhaps one that we now need…

Kropotkin

now one might say, Kropotkin, what about
Einstein, who by mathematical means, not observation,
not experience discovered such things as black holes
and the idea that time and space are the same thing,
timespace, and that matter and energy are the same thing,
E=mc2…

what about those examples of science correctly working
without reference to experience?

we don’t actually know if they are correct, the “facts”
as we have them, may be incorrect as we learn more
about those things from experience…
as we learn about black holes, we may find out that
they are nothing like we thought and we may also learn
they are exactly like we thought…

the answer comes from experience which is observation
and testing and refining our theories…

the thing to remember is this… we are part of everything…
we are part of the stars and we are part of anything that is material
for we are made of the exact same thing as every other thing in the universe.
which is atoms… the fact that we are made of the exact same thing
as every single other thing in the universe may mean, that what we
discover about ourselves, is also true in the universe…

we are material objects that have a limited time span
and limited senses to understand things…

I would guess that we are not just similar to everything else,
but we are the same as everything else……

if we find life in the stars, they will be similar to us because
they are made of the exact same basic material as us, atoms…
in fact, they will be the same as us, just slightly different
arrangement due to being on a different planet with
different environment………that fact alone, changes the nature
of the animals existing on that planet… the environment changes
the creatures, not the creatures change the environment…

as we exist as the same material as everything else, but in slightly
different shape and form, we are the same as everything else…
this means that given our senses in this environment,
we can discover or find anything any other living life form
can, given its limitations in biology…

in other words, given the same senses as we have,
an alien species might discover the notions of timespace
and E=mc2 and how matter and energy are the same…
they might phrase it differently or put it into different context,
but it will amount to the same thing…and why?

because we are the exact same material as an alien species,
atoms… now our form and senses and shape may be different,
but that is because of environmental reasons, which creates
different biological forms and shapes and senses……….

it stands to reason, if we and aliens are made of the same stuff
as the universe, we will given enough time and motivation,
find the exact same thing out about our universe and how it works…

in other words, we have our Einstein, aliens have their own version
of a Einstein and they came up with roughly the same thing because
the universe is the same to everyone because of this idea that
the universe is made up of the exact same material… atoms…

Kropotkin

rereading a book called “What is ancient Philosophy” by
Pierre Hadot……… early in the book, he writes about Socrates………
and what exactly does Socrates offer us?

Socrates himself, says that he know nothing and he says that quite often and that
he has nothing to teach others…

so, what is the point of Socrates?

what does he bring to the table for us moderns?

he has no wisdom, no ideology, he knows nothing…

what can we learn from that?

he says the reason for his search was because the oracle of Delphi said
that he was the wisest man in Athens……….well, he knew this wasn’t true,
he said he knew nothing… so, how could the oracle claim that he was the wisest
man in Athens, when he had no knowledge or anything to teach…………

so he went about Athens trying to find a wiser man, thus proving the oracle wrong,
but everyone he met believed that they had wisdom, knowledge and after talking to
them, he discovered that they really didn’t know anything more then he did…

so, in his questions, he lead the person he was questioning to the understanding
that they didn’t know anything… that they too had no knowledge or wisdom……

now, this brings us to an interesting point, what actually happened?

the person being questioned thought they had knowledge but what they really had
was their myths, biases, prejudices and superstitions and that passed for,
wisdom or knowledge… but it isn’t wisdom or knowledge if it is simply mindless
myths and prejudices passed down from generation to generation to generation…
without being examined………… so what the person being questioned thought was
wisdom and knowledge, was actually just unexamined myths and biases and ism’s
and prejudices of their childhood……………. Socrates brought the person in question
to the point where they were forced to have a Zen moment… recall that a Zen moment
is like where the mountains dance and the sea waves foam and wildly churned
and the rivers overflow their banks… and after the Zen moment
the mountains return to calm and the sea becomes tranquil and the rivers
return to their banks………Socrates forces people to realize that didn’t
have wisdom or knowledge and when people discover that, they
become dislocated from what is solid in their lives…………

what we believe about what we know is part of the glue that keeps
us attached to the earth…if we believe we have knowledge about
the reality we exist in, that gives us trust and faith
in our universe…

if we no longer have faith or trust in our knowledge, then we are shaken
up, we have our Zen moment………….and this is the point that Socrates was
driving to with people, to force them to have their Zen moment that
to rethink or reevaluate what they believe in or what they think is true………

they must overcome their belief that that they have knowledge and wisdom
and to the point where they can now find real knowledge, real wisdom
about what is the goal of people…………………facts are not knowledge, facts
are not wisdom, understanding the values, that is real wisdom… knowing what is
worth living for…for Socrates, values like justice, duty, moral purity, they were
the values worth living for, worth dying for…

but is Socrates right about those specific values being the values worth living
for, worth dying for?

or are there other values worth understanding and worth living for, worth
dying for?

that is the question, isn’t it?

and that is philosophy………

not necessarily knowing that a specific philosopher believed
in some certain thing like “eternal forms”

but what values are values worth living for, worth dying for?

not facts, but values…………

it is not a question of having knowledge or being wise, but of understanding values.

Kropotkin

Let us continue to understand philosophy in terms
of Socrates………

Socrates says he knows nothing and he knows he knows nothing
and he has nothing to teach…

compare that to other philosophers…Like Kant or Hegal…
or in fact like any other “university” professors…
university professors are people who teach for a living…
we have a large group of philosophers who were in the university’s……
for example, most the Medieval philosophers were university professors,
St. Aquinas and Peter Abelard and Duns Scotus for example…
and in the modern times, we have Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Wittgenstein,
Quine, Nietzsche, just to name a few…… the real question is how
many were not professors, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz,
and Socrates…………

so professors by definition, teach, and what they teach, for the most part,
is philosophy……. Descartes is famous, rightly so, about his attempt to
find certainty in knowledge by doubting everything…… he entire attempt
at philosophy was with the action of doubt or doubting…….
now if we look at Socrates, he never said, he had certainty,
his approach was from doubt… I don’t know anything…
I have nothing to teach………… and what method did Socrates
use? Questions, nothing but questions… he rarely if ever said,
this is what I believe to be true… in fact, that was a criticism
of him by his contemporaries…he never said what he believed in,
he avoided answering questions about what he personally believed in……

and another criticism was that he always said the same things…
he repeated his questions in the same way to every person he met…

and to get the same response, to get the person under questioning
to admit that they in fact didn’t know anything…… to get them to
realize that they were just repeating the myths, biases, prejudices
and superstitions that they were taught from childhood…
and those myths, biases, prejudices………… they had never been
examined by the person holding them to see if they were, in fact,
worth holding……….

the unexamined life is not worth living…

this is a motto that bears repeating…

the unexamined life is not worth living…….

we hold myths, biases, prejudices, superstitions and ism’s
that, if understood correctly, won’t withstand examination…….

that is one of the real basis of philosophy…
not just to know that specific philosophers
specific beliefs about say, space and time…
to have facts and knowledge about specific philosophers,
but to have a method of examining the basis of beliefs
that we and others hold…………….

in other words, philosophy is not about what we hold to be
true as facts and knowledge outside of us, but about what is inside of us
as to the basis of and understanding of the beliefs we hold inside of us…

“It is not enough to have the courage of our convictions,
but to have the courage for an attack upon our convictions”

to examine them, to attack them, to see if they really
correspond to that which seems to be reality…

but here we run into the problem of the question of “reality”
what is “real”? or what is “reality”?

as far as I can tell, Socrates never asked this question……
because he not was engaged with something outside of us…
and Socrates never engaged with questions about things
outside of us……….

His questions were about the nature of love, of justice, of what is moral,
what is right…………………….

so what is justice? we cannot answer that question until we actually understand
what justice is……… and I have given my answer, justice is equality under the law…
justice is simply being treated the same legally as everyone else is treated…
if under the law, people are treated differently, due to wealth or power
or position, that is unequal, unjust…………… and is not justice………

justice and equality are the same thing…………. that is the type of question
Socrates would have asked…………. and the facts and knowledge we have,
are simply used to answer the question about if we have justice…
if blacks and whites commit the exact same crime, and the
conviction rate for blacks is twice that of whites, that is not equality,
that is not justice…… for different standards are used for different
class of people… it is not equal, it is not just, it is not justice…….

that is how facts and knowledge should be used… to better help us understand
how values are being used…………… values like justice……
and some facts and knowledge have no connection to values…
like how does the fact that earth lies 93 million miles from the sun,
create any use for a value? it doesn’t……………
it is just a fact or some knowledge that only has a value as a fact or
knowledge……………

the unexamined life is not worth living……

and how does the fact of the earth being 93 million miles from the sun,
helps us in understanding the unexamined life?

many of us think, and I admit I was one of them, that having facts
or knowledge was having some sort of wisdom… a fact that made me
wise… nope………………having facts or knowledge doesn’t have anything
to do with wisdom, with values……………

so when we understand the statement, the unexamined life is not worth
living… what exactly are we examining? the values that we hold,
not, not the facts or knowledge we have… the values like justice or love…

and for many of us, the values we hold are the myths and biases and
prejudices…… we were taught in childhood………….

so in philosophy, we are not asking if the sun is 93 million miles from earth,
that is a fact, a piece of knowledge… we are asking ourselves about
the values we hold and if what we believe about those values are really
the values we should be holding or the values we believe to be true,
are in fact, true………

the unexamined life is not worth living………

that is a quote that should be in every home, work place and place
of worship in every country in the world…………

the unexamined life is not worth living…
that is asking, in fact, for one to begin the search
for the truth in doubt…… for it is doubting
that leads one to the truth about values……

the question about the unexamined life is basically asking
for a person to doubt………….

do you begin with doubt or do you begin with certainty?

the answer to that question really is the basis for which we can
decide if you are a “true” philosopher…

Kropotkin

the failure of, the reason philosophy is in a Cul-de-sac, which
forms the basis of why I began this thread years ago is because
philosophers have tried to make philosophy “scientific” and
“scientific” means science and science is about facts,
knowledge… and philosophy isn’t about facts, knowledge…
philosophy is about values… thus the failure of philosophy
over the last 200 years… existentialism is the closes philosophy
has come to approaching values instead of facts, knowledge……

we have Marx who created Communism… which he said
is based on History, scientific history, as I believed he called it,
and that is why communism failed in the soviet era………

he created a “philosophy” based on history…… but that isn’t
what “philosophy” is about…………not on facts or knowledge,
that is science… you cannot have an historical/scientific philosophy,
you can have a philosophy of history, but not a historical/scientific philosophy…

and Marx said his idea of Communism was based on “science”…
thus his failure… to complete his failure came Lenin and Stalin who
tried to turn an economic theory which is what Communism is,
into a political theory, which it is not… and that is why the soviet
union failed… it was an economic theory turned into a political theory……

and this is part of what our reevaluation of values leads us to…
to an understanding of such theories as communism and capitalism
and economics and history……. because economics is partly about values,
but it is also about facts and knowledge…… that is why economics
is so muddled today……… is it an “philosophy” or it is a “science”?
the answer decides if economics is really a “philosophy” or just
another “science” like physics…….

If Marx had made communism a value system, instead of “historical
materialism” he would have created something philosophical,
and not scientific……… if Marx had truly understood philosophy,
he would have done things rather differently because philosophy
and science is different……………

by examining our systems, our ism’s and ideologies, in light
of whether they are facts and knowledge or a question of values,
leads us to better understand such ism’s and ideologies as
communism and capitalism and socialism and Catholicism…
are they values based systems or are they facts/knowledge based
system/systems… a system is what such ism and ideologies
really are… a system of coherent thought about a subject…

and Socrates never ask such questions as what is an ism or
what make an ism different from another ism………

he asked, what is love, what is justice?

so, we can better understand that Socrates was
a philosopher and Marx was not… had Marx concerned himself
with values, he would have been a philosopher…
Marx was a pseudo philosopher, not a real philosopher……
as long as it pretends to be scientific, it is not philosophy…
if it is about facts or knowledge, it is science, not philosophy…….

so to be a “true” philosopher, one must not engage with science
or the scientific method or facts or knowledge, one must engage
with values like love or justice or community, courage, cooperation,
equality, fairness, freedom, harmony, individuality, peace, so on and so forth…

so which values should we hold and which values do we actually hold?

that is philosophy, not science…….

Kropotkin

I read and responded to a thread by “Guide” that basic question
was "What does pre-Kantian mean?

and as I thought about it, I wondered why did “Guide” used the
words that he used… in other words, I wonder if he… (big word warning)
“obfuscate” his post or did he “elucidate” his post? and if, either one,
why?

In other words, he may have used english, but he didn’t make
his point clearly, and why didn’t he make his point clear?

I believe he “obfuscated” his point… render his point to be obscure,
but why?

At this point, we return to past philosophers like Kant and Hegel…
reading either one is notoriously difficult because of the language both
used… Read Kant in the english translation and you are still looking
for the english translation… apparently from those who can read both
German and English, it is easier to read Kant in English then in German
because of the way both languages are structured…

but why would one want to make obscure one’s point instead of
making it clear?

I read once, somewhere a long time ago, that it was Einstein, I think it
was Einstein, who said, that if you can’t make a statement that is understood
by an “average” person, the reason might be because you don’t really understand
the statement yourself…the reason to make it obscure is to hide this fact…
so you might sound important or scientific or philosophical or actually have some
knowledge or facts or wisdom that make you smarter then anyone reading it…

but the truth is by not simplifying your points into something the average person
can understand or in my case, I write so the average 10 grader can understand
my point…by not simplifying your points, you admit that you don’t actually
understand your statements…the wife is home, catch you later…

K: so, after talking to the wife… and taking a walk with the wife,
and then taking a nap with the wife, actual real live nap, the wife is
still asleep, soooooooooooo where was I?

so, I wonder if any will accuse me of making the statement that
“guide” really doesn’t know what he is talking about?

not at all… Guide was simply a random person who happened
to stumble into my path while I had been thinking about this for some time…

are the philosophical points there to try to impress people, or are you actually
trying to hide your lack of philosophical insight, or are you actually
trying to make a real philosophical point, either to yourself, which I often
do, or try to make a general philosophical point to any who might understand it…
motives are often at the heart of what we do…the why is as often as important
as the what… what did you say as oppose to why did you say it as oppose to
how did you say it?

the basic rules of journalism apply to philosophy…
the article must answer 6 basic points…
who, what, when, how, where and why…
every time you listen to the media, regardless of the medium,
these 6 points must be answered…
now transfer these basic points to philosophy…

Who, what, when, how, where and why…

in fact, all communication made between people, must answer
one or more of these basic points…
in fact, think of our disciplines like history or economics or sociology,
must in fact answer these questions also… as must philosophy…
and fiction… think of a book, Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” it too tells us
of the basic points of journalism… the who, what, when, how, where and why…….
you can think of fiction writing as “creative journalism”

now, what of poetry? quite often poetry will not answer all of these basic points…
but poetry is not really about information as much as creating a mood within a person……
poetry is often not interested in in giving much information outside of how the poet
was feeling at that time…would journalism be of much use if it was simply about
how the journalist felt about such matters as tax cuts or gun control?
would philosophy be of much use if it was simply about how a philosopher
felt about the metaphysical questions about being or understanding
things that do not change? journalism and philosophy and history must
be about more impersonal matters unlike poetry which is about personal matters……

quite often historians like Toynbee and Gibbon did make their personal feelings
known about certain historical events…… Toynbee especially was famous
for his personal comments about historical events…as he was a religious
person, everything that he wrote was infused by his religious feelings and he
judge historical events by his religious feelings…but, but did that
personal religious judging by his feelings affect his historical writings?

YES, yes it did… and it has been commented on by much smarter people then
me…

so should philosophical writers judge philosophical matters by their
own personal feelings, be it religious or social or political?

and can you escape writing about philosophical matters within
your own personal feelings be it religious or social or political?

ask yourself…

Kropotkin

what is its value of having facts or knowledge?

a philosophical question……

Kropotkin

There aren’t just Republican and Democratic parties in the House! Remember THAT!

There aren’t just Republican and Democratic parties in the House! Remember THAT!

K: and? what is your point?

Kropotkin

ok, so what happens after we have finished
our reevaluation of values and we have uncovered that
we are no longer indoctrinated with the myths, habits, prejudices
and superstitions of our childhood………what now?

we have returned from our Zen moment and we see the world in a new
light and with new values…now what?

we reintegrate into society with our new found values…values that
we can truly believe that are our values, not inherited values from
our childhood indoctrinations…and we use these values to understand
the world, with values that are truly our own……

“but it is not enough to understand the world,
we must change it”

Karl Marx said that……and he is right…

we must take our new values and transform the world…

the change we seek is based upon the values we have uncovered
in our reevaluation of values…

let us say, we have found that love is the value that we must
transform the world with… and we go from the particular, individual
value of love to a universal value of love…values that can be used to
protect the system we inhabit……. for we are social creatures,
we exists in groups, which are systems and those systems, if they
are worth keeping, are worth protecting with our newly found values…
we exist with each other and we need each other and the way we co-exist
is by values that we use as we interact with each other and the values
that drive our systems…in other words, what values give our social
systems the ability to be stable… love is far better at keeping a system
stable then hate……. hate will destroy a system, be it a family system,
a political system, a chess club, anywhere we come together to form a system…

hate is surely as much a value as love and which value makes the system
stronger and more stable and allows one a chance to exist and grow,
hate or love? I think we all know the answer to that… we are social
creatures and our values must reflect that…our values must not only
represent us, but those values represent who we want to be…

our values belong in the past, present and future…….
that is why we must find our values, not the indoctrinated ones,
but our true values…….for this allows us to not only co-exist with
others, but to co-exist within ourselves…it is not enough to
hold values if we don’t use those values to transform the world,
the many systems we are part of…we use these new values
to find our place in the universe, the world, this reality, within
our social groups/systems and we use those values to become who we are……

the center of human existence lies in the values that we hold, be it
negative values like hate, anger, lust, greed or for positive values like
love, peace, hope, charity among other positive values………

the positive values allow our system be it us or be it our political
or social or economic system to exist and prosper and maintain its
stability……

negative values damage us and the systems we are part of………

holding positive values allows the system and us to grow and prosper…

so, what values do you hold? and why?

Kropotkin

in thinking about Kant’s three questions,

what can I/we know,
what should I/we do
and what ought I/we hope for…

the second, what should we do is really a political question…
the first is a philosophical/scientific question
and the third is a religious question…

( recall that in Kant’s age, there wasn’t the split between science
and philosophy that there is now… science was philosophy
and philosophy was science) it was called Natural philosophy……

anyway, back to the the second question, the political question of
what am I/we to do?

what is the goal of life? that is essentially what the question
is asking, what is the goal of life… and that goal gives us our
actions as needed…once again, I bring up the idea of taking
a journey… without a goal, a destination the journey cannot
be completed until we have a goal/destination…otherwise
we are just aimlessly wondering around the land… which is in
fact exactly what American has been doing these last few decades because
we haven’t had a goal or destination to aim for and it is preventing us
from us accomplishing anything… we have been aimless wondering
about with no goal to aim for… that is precisely what has been the
problem with America these last decades… and the role of the partisan
followers in this biblical wondering the desert for the last 40 years?

their role has been to prevent us from creating a goal, a destination for
us to reach…their partisan bickering has prevented America from
coalescing around a goal from which we can then begin to move forward…

one of my major beefs with Obama has been he didn’t form or create a
grand vision to us to travel toward… he presidency was an ad hoc one,
where they went from one crisis to another without any master plan to
get ahead of the every increasing crisis… he went from position to
position but never connecting the positions into one master grand plan which
created a goal/destination for us to try for or reach…

begin with a master plan and then treat the following crisis under
the master plan…… so, the way forward is to treat any event or crisis
as part of the master plan and subsume those events into the destination
we are trying to reach…

so we have a terrorist attack… instead of treating it as a separate
and individual event, it becomes part of a overall, overarching plan
in which the terrorist attack is becomes part of the overall master plan…
instead of treating the terrorist attack, ad hoc, as a single individual event…

we treat the terrorist attack within the confines of the master plan…
we simply react to it as part of a comprehensive already created plan…
our response is one of, this has been expected and is already accounted
for in the master plan…… because we know what our destination is going
to be, we can simply overcome this and continue on to our overall goal……
9/11 didn’t need to become the clusterfuck it became if, if they had
simply had a plan in place to overcome it…… in other words, the 9/11
American response was far worse then the actual attack… the attacks
damage was not physical but mental, psychological… it damage our
psyche far more then it did physical damage………and it needed to be
treated that way……. it wasn’t the physical damage of 9/11 that was
the problem, but the damage to the psyche was the problem…

and by having an overall, overarching plan that had such events like
9/11 within them, we could have easily overcome such events…
if we had a plan, a goal, a destination to reach, 9/11 wouldn’t have
been such a deal… but because we didn’t, we simply reacted ad hoc
and by doing so, overacted in such a way to severely damage
America in the short run and the long run………

if you have a plan, a goal and you hit a setback,
that is exactly how you can say it, ah, we hit a setback but
it doesn’t matter because it is a small setback that won’t prevent
us from reaching our goal……. if you have a goal of saving
a million dollars and you have a setback of your house burning down,
that is a setback for sure, but it doesn’t have to stop you from reaching
your goal/destination… you simply take it as a setback and continue on
building your wealth to a million dollars… it doesn’t become something
that is permanent and stops one from reaching their goal/destination…
no, it is just a temporary setback and that is what 9/11 should have been…

a temporary setback… not an end all, be all………….

so what should I/we do… is really a political question and requires
us to think about and decide upon a goal/destination…….

so, what goal/destination should we try to reach for or decide upon?

and how does that goal fit into the question of “what are we to do”?

for the one answer tell us about the one question…

so, what should our goal/destination be?

Kropotkin