a new understanding of today, time and space.

more random thoughts…

my hearing aid gave out and my glasses broke…
I sent out my hearing aid to be repaired and the
hearing place gave me a loaner hearing aid which doesn’t really work
and when my glasses broke I couldn’t even fix them, so I had to
go to an optometrist, get an eye test and pick out new frames…
I have been getting by with a pair of reading glasses and an
8 year old pair of glasses that I can’t even see out of, for the last
week……… it has proven to be difficult faced with being unable to
really hear or to really see… I am trying to read some books
but its harder with reading glasses instead of my normal glasses…

as I can’t really see and I can’t really hear, I am feeling very isolated
this week… and it is reflected in the thoughts of this thread for the
last few days………I am forced out of my comfort zone because
I am unable to function as I normally would function…….

in my thinking there is normally a continuity to my thought,
but this last week, I have lost the thread of this continuity
and it shows…

as I am unable to physically function as I normally function, it is affecting
my thinking…… it is an interesting to see how bodily functions
and how they work affect the thought process………

when a couple of years ago, I had multiple surgeries for my colon
issues, I was unable to write for months on end………….

the state of the body, good or bad, gives us our ability to think
and write………. we are so affected by our physical bodies,
that we need to physically exist with few if any problems to
conduct ourselves mentally or to write……………….

physical aspects like stress or illness or a crappy job or marriage will
change our ability to think or to write……………….

the body must function properly for the mind to function properly…
the body can function without clear thoughts, think of the person suffering
from mental illness whose body still works, still functions properly…….

so we have an equation between the body functioning and the mind/thought
process……. we must have a working physical body to allow the mind to
work its best………….that is another equation…

mind = body………… if one gets out of whack, it affects the other side of the
equation… the two, body and mind must be equal for them
to successfully operate…….

Kropotkin

physical aspects like stress or illness or a crappy job or marriage will
change our ability to think or to write………

very true man!
its hard to work for a master and still be your own master, personally I dont know how its done.

For example also philosophers used to be these clowns to jump around before the king who was clapping like a gleeful child, no wonder philosophy isn’t meaningful compared to science, which happens in dirty old attics and basements where no king would ever show his face.

Which is why most animals are superior to most humans, because humans can’t provide for themselves without a master but animals can just go out and are equipped to get by and do life as an independent.

Its really all baloney our system.

K: great, you have an analysis, now what?
what are you going to do with this analysis?

Kropotkin

as I have discussed, we as a system and existing within systems,
must have an equal equation, which means our system, be it personal
or be it some collective system like the economic system we have,
must be balanced………… if it isn’t balanced, it will eventually collapse

this idea of balance of equation must hold true for all systems…
all systems being political, economic, social, culturally…….

so for example, this massive income inequality that we have
is by its very term, unequal and that inequality is not keeping
a balance, is not holding the equation of our political and economic
system equal and thus our system is unbalanced and as with any system
that is unbalanced, unequal, it will collapse…….that is as certain
as the sun rising tomorrow morning… the only way extreme wealth
can maintain its balance is by massive poverty and massive poverty will lead
to massive discontentment which will lead to the system collapse…
see both the French revolution and the Russian revolution for a detailed
understanding of how this works………

our very democracy is damaged by this extreme wealth and poverty…
you can see this at work in “our” representatives in Washington, who
whore themselves to the highest bidder, usually right wing extremist who
are the very worst proponent of capitalism…the balance needed in
Washington is destroyed by the buying and selling of “our” representatives…

the way to balance in Washington and our entire political system is
with the removal of money as the primary value in our economic
and political system…the answer to the problem that exists
in Washington is not the answer given by IQ45 and others who are
anti-democratic but in more and a whole lot more democracy in
our both our political and economic systems…

the answer isn’t even in getting people to vote but
in giving people the controls of government… turn
the government over to the people,

“When in the course of human events, it become necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them to
another………”

the answer to the question of democracy is more democracy, not less…….
the real history of democracy lies not behind us, but ahead of us…
when people finally take control of their own fates, their own
future and declare that the government is,

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

this is the revolution that is to come………… we the people must, must
take over the government and make it our own………or the government
because of the imbalance created by the money meant to corrupt
government will cause enough of an unbalance equation that the government
must, must collapse……….either we take control or have the government
collapse… those are our choices… there isn’t a third path…………

now for those who want a greater understanding of the balance,
the equation of systems can look into this with a look at a scientific
term which I am avoiding because I want to come at this, not from a
scientific standpoint but a human viewpoint……

the word to look up is Homeostasis: "

Which is the tendency toward a
relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements,
especially as maintained by physiological processes"

In other words, the equation must be kept or the system fails…

that is the reason the solar system still functions after 4 billion years,
it is an equation, a balance between the various interdependent
elements……. the sun and the planets maintain a balance which
keeps the system functioning… if a planet were to go rogue,
that would unbalance the system, the solar system and the
entire solar system would become so unbalance that it would
most likely collapse…………

but one might ask, does this have anything at all to do with
what you preached about for days on end, values?

I am glad you asked………

values are one means that a human being maintain balance……

values act like gravity does in a solar system…… values provide
the basis for us to maintain our balance… it provide our
system a means to provide balance……. values gives our
system which is an equation, the balance to maintain itself…….

an example of this is, the American system motto was for a long time,
“Truth, justice and the American way of life” but that hasn’t been true
for a long time, not since money has become the primary value of America…
the problem with money becoming a primary value is there is nothing beyond money…
it is the end, means and the only justification we have for our actions…….

there doesn’t need to be justice if justice can be bought……
justice is equality before the law… if justice can be bought,
then there is no equality, no equality means there is no justice…

if we judge base on money, then it isn’t about whether people are
good or honest or pure or full of love or of peace……. judgement is
about money and only money………………being judge on the only criteria
that matters, as in money, means we judge, our judgment is based on
only one standard and that standard is unbalanced, unequal…
so our judgements are unbalanced, unequal………
we fail to judge correctly…

and that failure to judge correctly means we are unbalanced, unequal…

and any system that is unbalanced, unequal is going to collapse…

but values helps us correct our unequal, unbalanced judgements…
values like love and peace and hope and justice help correct our
unbalanced and unequal judgements which is tainted by our fixation on
money………

we each of us, have unbalanced judgements which we call
biases, myths, habits, prejudices, superstitions………
and every single one of us has them……. the question is
not whether we can exists without them, no, the question becomes
how do we become who we are by a reevaluation of the indoctrinations
of our childhood…………. how do we discover the values that really and truly
are us………… personal balance, personal equality comes from discovering
the values that really represent who we are… and then we take those
values into the world………. we see the world through the lens of our values…
if our values are peaceful, loving values… that is how we see the world…
if our values are violent, hateful, mean and full of anger, that is how we see
the world…….

the question of our system being balanced, equal is really a question
of values… for values are the means in which we judge
the many systems we are and are part of…………… we judge our political
system, our economic system with the values that we have…….
if our value is money, we judge incorrectly the political system,
the economic system……. if we have values that give precedence to
our higher human being, then we can better understand what political
system and what economic system really better fits the human creature…
and that criteria is finding a balanced, equal system that benefits all over
a few…………. we must find values where the emphasis is on being balanced
and equal………… therein lies the path into the future…….

Kropotkin

:blush:

I saw more of this thread and only understand now it is a private one.
Sosorry.

K: it is not a private thread… but I expect the same level of self introspection
that I offer of myself…………. anyone may come or go as they please but here
you must be able to challenge yourself on what your values are or your idea’s…

for example, you stated that “its really all baloney our system”

and I then ask, ok you have an analysis of our “system”
what are you going to do with that analysis?

your didn’t really have a response… and because I expect people to
engage, they usually just run away as you are apparently running away…

and that is fine…I don’t expect people to hold themselves to the same
high standards I hold myself when engaging in philosophy………

what I am doing here, as philosophy is a good as anything written in
the last 500 years…….and as with any good philosophy, it is hard…
to both understand and to engage with…to do philosophy as I have
done it requires commitment and a willingness to engage honestly
with the values and myths and habits and prejudices and superstitions
that we all have…few want to engage in a real search for the truth…
frankly, it a lot of work and can be on the painful side…….
I have changed my political thought 3 times in my lifetime and
my philosophical thought/stance more then that…but it takes
courage to engage with oneself and few have that courage…

so it seems that this is a private thread but really it is a private thread
because people lack the courage for an “attack upon their convictions”
and so they run away…personally, stay or leave, it doesn’t changes what
I see as my essential mission which is to explore what it means to be human
and explore what are our human possibilities in the modern age……

and if I am the only seeker, that is fine too… I recognize that
my thoughts and my commitment to finding the answers to the
Kantian/Kropotkin questions leave me being a man apart from
society and so be it…I thank you for your input…

I shall continue on my discovering what it means to be human in
this modern age…….

Kropotkin

as we are rapidly heading toward a totalitarian society,
I thought I should try to understand what the path to
an Authoritarian/totalitarian/dictatorship looks like…

and it is a part of the modern problem which is the path of
least resistance… it is easy to allow someone control over our lives
because it relieves us from needing to accept responsibility for our lives…
if we allow someone else to tell us what to do, we don’t have to
be force to become accountable for our actions… I am no longer accountable for
my actions if we live in a dictatorship/totalitarian society…they are
making me… can be the mantra…….escaping responsibility is something,
we as human being have done since we were children, “I didn’t break that lamp,
no, someone else broke that lamp, it wasn’t me” was a favorite comment from
my childhood… as the second born in a family of 5, escaping responsibility for
my actions was a theme of my childhood………… and a theme of
Americans today… what, I didn’t vote for that village idiot, whose presiding over
a major clusterfuck in America today……. no, you didn’t vote at all…
and thus you cannot escape your responsibility because you didn’t do
anything at all……….escaping responsibility for IQ45 is the political game
being played today in Washington and on main street in America today……

and escaping responsibility has lead us to this path of heading toward a
totalitarian society……… as Americans voted in IQ45, we must bear
final responsibility for the clusterfuck that is America today…….
then and only then, can we begin to find a solution to
this major crisis, maybe the greatest crisis in American history………

if you try to escape responsibility for IQ45, then you are not part
of the solution, you are part of the problem……

Kropotkin

I will occasionally write out notes and leave them on the kitchen table,
as that is where I work because I don’t have anyplace to set up my computer,
I found this note from a while ago, while it doesn’t have anything directly to do
with my thoughts of late, it is interesting…

the religious denies the body in favor of the soul…….
the emphasis of religion is to be “saved” which means to be
saved as a soul, not as a body… religion ignores, avoids
a major aspect of the human experience which is our experiences
as a body… a physical being with physical needs and wants and desires…
the problem of being human which in part is the suffering of the body
which the Buddha among others tried to offer us answers to………
but the problem of Buddhism is simply that suffering while a part of
human existence, is not THE aspect of human existence that the Buddha
or Buddhism makes it to be…

we suffer… that is true, but we also love and hate and bleed
and suffer mental breakdowns and lust and eat breakfast food for dinner…
and attempting to escape suffering as the sole cause or point of human
existence doesn’t answer the other questions of the human condition…

religion can only vouch for or speak to the needs of the soul but
we humans, we are so much more then just spiritual needs…
we are biological needs… we must attend to the body
as much as we must attend to the soul………

religion cannot answer the myriad questions of human existence…
because religion can only focus on the soul whereas philosophy
can answer many of the questions of human existence because
it is not focus on the status of the soul but it can
extend its focus to both the body and the soul………

the religious is too narrow in its focus as if the concern with
the soul is the only question we humans must face and although the
concern with the soul is valid, it is not the only question of
human existence……………. the questions that is of concern
in our engagement with the human condition is about both
the body AND the soul……….

Kropotkin

I have been thinking about a way to rethink, reevaluate government
in our modern times………….

we have “modern” government which is based on the new norms which
is that we serve the government…… when a politician see his/her constituents,
they see someone who serves them, not the politician serving the people…

we see this “modern” condition in police… on the sides of their
car’s, you see this, “To protect and serve” and today, in
modern America, the police do neither… they don’t protect
and they don’t serve… the modern police act as if you work for them
and they demand that you obey their every order as if a voice from
god… try to ignore or argue with a policeman and if they don’t shoot you,
they at least will arrest you for disobeying an order… once again, we
find as THE modern crime, that of disobedience……………
that is not protecting and serving, that is making you serve them……

the path is see is a new path of government but a common path found
found elsewhere in life… the new idea of government and the
future model is simple, government as customer service…
think of the government as offering customer service…
just like a business… the government is in the business of
providing customer service………… the government works
for you, the customer, you don’t work for the government…

a politician elected into office is not your boss, but your
employee…… and is expected to provide customer service
to you… what can I do to make your life better… that is the new
model of public office and of government……. how can the government
better serve its customer, its citizens? that is the new question
of government……

a president is not the leader of the free world…
he/she is a employee of the citizens of the United States…
not an employee of those who buy and sell politicians,
the Cock brothers or big pharma or any big corporation or
lobbyist but a politician who works for the American people…

If elected president, I will be your employee, not your boss……
this is a fundamental change in how government has been done
for last 70 years or so………… government is and should be
engaged in customer service for its citizens…
how can we make your life easier, your life better, your human experience
an experience that is worth living…… that is the question that must
be answered……

Ronald Reagan was wrong on so, so many things and he was wrong
on something else… government is not the problem, government is
the answer when it engages in the simple and basic reason for its existence,
that of engaging in customer service for its citizens…

a president who doesn’t ask, How can I make your life easier?
isn’t a fit president, isn’t a president I want, a president we demand…

only by having a president who understands the proper place of government
is to serve, not to lead, but to serve it citizens……. that is the true, proper
place of government……… to serve the people………

only by having not just a president, but all branches of government understand
the proper role of government is to serve the people, to engage in customer service
for its citizens…how can I/we make your life easier or simpler?

that is the true, real function of government… to serve its customers…

and we can achieve this by electing those who truly understand this notion……

a president cannot lead, must not lead, but a president takes his marching orders
from the people… those that he serves…………he gives the American people
customer service and that is the president’s role…

how can I serve you? that is the question of the president, not how
do you serve me……………… government redesigned, government
reevaluated…….government as it is supposed to be………

government of the people, for the people, by the people…

Kropotkin

so the new paradigm is that the president and congress and
the courts work for you… you don’t work for them…

so, when IQ45 said, MAGA, make America great… he was wrong…
completely and utterly wrong (as he is wrong about everything else)

no, that is not the job function of the American government…
to Make America great…no, the job of government is to improve
your life and by doing so, you, the american citizen will make
America great… the government doesn’t make america great,
the citizens of America is what makes America great…

and by providing support and help and encouragment to the true
boss of America, which is its citizens, American goverenment can
improve its citizens life’s and THAT is what makes America great…
the citizens of America is the reason America is great, not the president,
not the congress or the courts or any institution that exists in America,
but the people, that is who makes America great…

We return to this idea of government of the people, for the people,
by the people… and that is the only way, the only way you can create
greatness in America…to make America great again is to
allows the citizens the chance to make America great again…

it is not the government we trust or in god we trust or in our
institutions, but in the average citizen of America that we
give our trust to… they are the ones who will make
America great again…

Kropotkin

Do you think that civilians are less crooked than governers?

K: it is not in one person that we depend upon but all of us…
a group of people are far more likely to be honest then just one
or two people………think about any situation involving a group
and morality… it is far more likely that a group will engage
in moral acts then just one person…… now, I will grant you that
quite often, groups will commit immoral, unjust actions like
the lynching of blacks in the south during the Jim crow years…
the individual will feel embolden, safe when acting in a mob
as one person in a group committing unjust, immoral acts
they wouldn’t have done alone… but with that said, quite
often, one moral person in a group will often provide moral guidence
for a group to be just and be moral within a group situation…the
question in a group situation is one of accountablity… holding a group
accountable just as we hold an individual accountable is key to
keeping a group of people acting just and moral…

(at this point, we don’t give an account of what is just and moral because
that could be a 300 page book… we state that knowing what it means to be just and moral
are known, they are just ignored by people)

I do believe that people can be moral and just when they are being held
accountable for their actions and given this, I do believe that individuals
can be more moral then our “governers” especally when people are being held
accountable, being held responsibile for their actions…

and in this lies the failure of our “modern” society because we are only
accountable, not just for being kind or nice or having love in our hearts,
but being accountable by monetary standards… having money/profits as
guiding our actions and not the safety and stability of the systems we
belong to…

in the end, we are all acountable for each other… that news just hasn’t
reached the ears of everyone yet… but I hope it does reach people soon…

Kropotkin

I went very deep into that in my first post which you did not answer to!
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=188122&start=1925#p2708744
It was meant as a friendly but tough challenge on what you had said.

I have read the post in question and will respond when I have
a chance but work calls my name for the next two days…

Kropotkin

I much appreciate it.

K: I recall reading this post and thinking then, as I do now, I did not
see your post as a challenge, friendly or otherwise…I simply did not
see your post as any sort of attampt to get me to “reevaluate” my thinking…

I saw your post as simply responding with your own thoughts about what I wrote…
for example, one might post, What about god? and the next poster might respond
with their own thoughts about god, but at no point that response includes a
challenge to the first poster to engage in a dialogue about the “fitness” of
beliefs by anybody…In other words, I didn’t respond to your post as
you wanted me to respond/engage to your post because we saw your post differently…

you saw it as a challenge whereas I just saw it as a personal response to a post of mine…
no challenged was offered and no challenged was accepted… at least in my view…
whereas you might have indeed offered a challenged and I, in your eyes, refused…

these brings up points of communication that often plague communication…

as individuals, we bring our own intrepretations to every aspect of communication…
as I am hearing impared, I intreprete communications different then hearing people
and different then fully deaf people… I exist between two worlds, the hearing
and the deaf…as I exists between many other “intrepretations” of the world…

I am not materialistic in the sense of finding my reason for existence
to be the buying and selling of anything… I don’t exist to make money
or to gain the usual reasons for existence, fame… fortune… power…

I have, for over 40 years, searched for the “TRUTH”……. but the “TRUTH”
I have found is that we, each of us, find our own individual truths…
I have studied philosophy, science, religion, history, economics,
art and literature in an attempt, perhaps a vain attempt, but an attempt
nevertheless to discover the answers to the Kantian/Kropotkin questions…

What can I know? what are we to do? ………

my engagement with the world is different then your engagement
because we exists in different but parallel worlds…
by that I mean that we exists as human beings with a common history,
with a common biology, within a common ideology…
but different because our own individual history is different…

I am male, 59, American, white, middle class, hearing impaired, wears glasses,
not traditionally educated but self educated and quite self educated at that…

whereas your individual history is whatever it is………

and because of our mutual shared common history, we can understand
each other, but because of our different personal history, we quite often
misunderstand each other……….the question of communication is a complicated
one and has been discussed at length for over 2000 years and will continue to be
discussed for another 2000 years because of its nature…

you see a challenge and I simply see a response… we can see the same
word and interpret it quite differently…………… that is both the
pleasure of and the problem of communication…………

Kropotkin

to return to the problem of the “modern” age…….

I see the “Modern” age as being different then the other ages,
not necessarily better or worse, just different……

the industrial age and the ensuing technological age
has created a different understanding of the universe then
prior ages… the ancient world and the medieval world had
different paradigms, different realities, different goals and agendas…

we see very essential matters like time differently…

a complaint of the Greeks and Romans was that when two
parties agreed to meet, that each party had a different sense
of what time they were going to meet and quite often
it led one party or another to wait a considerable time for
the other party to arrive… they didn’t have clocks as we
have them and so, meeting at 10:00 am as we would meet was
really not possible…the time they fixed was really just
rough guess… what does it mean to meet mid-morning?
we have clocks and so for us, it is easy to arrange a very
specific time to meet… for them, not quite so easy…

this one example is just one point how we differ from the
ancient and middle ages…………….

we are human but our individual circumstances
dictate how we see the universe and reality……

existing in the “modern” age determines that we see
reality and the universe differently then someone from
the ancient world or the medieval world……
just that fact alone, of when we exist, determines how
we interpret the world……………

the tools of man also determine how we understand the world……
for example, if the only tools you have is a hammer, then you
see the world as being one where a hammer pounding something
down is how you see the world… whereas if you have a nail or
a computer or a wheel makes how you see the world differently…

if we can only transport ourselves via a horse or a wagon changes
how we see the world as oppose to if we transport ourselves via
cars, trains, airplanes or spaceships……. the very means of
transportation changes how we see the world… the technological
aspects of the world changes how we see the world………

if I live in a house changes my perception of the world as does
my living in a cave or a yurt, changes my perception of the world…
we are still human beings but because of our different technologies
and means of living, we have different understandings of the universe
and reality…………… how we live changes how we understand…….

so as an American living in 2018 changes my understanding of the world then
a person living in a tribe in China understands the world……………

so when I speak of values, it is really speaking of values
that exists in modern America in 2018………

but, but values that have value in modern America 2018,
can have value in modern China because values do have
the ability to leap over technology and science and politics…

for example, we can speak of love as a universal value because
because it can exists independently of the external operations
of the world… in other words, love is not about technology or
time or the political or social or economic goings on in the world…
love isn’t about those things and can exist in or out of those things……
love is independent of external matters…….values are independent
of external matters like time or space or the political or economic
or social goings on in the world…………. we can have love in
any form of government or any form of social or economic system…

that is the value of “values” they exists independently of the external
world but they are influenced by the external world… how we think
of say, Justice, is impacted by the external events of our world, our reality…

thus, IQ45 attack upon basic human equality/justice changes our
perception of what justice/equality is……… values don’t exist completely
independently of our world

WAIT A MINUTE… WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE…… you said two
completely different things in the space of three paragraphs…
first values are independently of our reality and then
you said values are impacted by the world… you can’t have it both ways,
…………ah, a contradiction…I am not afraid of
contradictions because I believe the truth, any truth, is
found within a contradiction………

Kropotkin, you aren’t making any sense……… but I am making sense
if, if you aren’t married to or have your understanding of the world
written in stone………………… this is a Zen moment………

the questions and answers of the “Modern” age is found in the contradictions of
the “Modern” age……… and we are full of contradictions in our
current understanding of the universe, of our reality…………

Kropotkin

one of the “modern” questions is about certainty………

what is certain? that has been the pursuit of both science and
philosophy since the rise of science, roughly 1500…….

the Roman/Greek world had their version of certainty…both
operated with the certainty of a fixed and set universe…

the medieval world has their certainty in their belief system in which
the point of existence, human existence was to get to heaven…
the medieval world negated the physical world… the body was
denied in favor of the soul…and the order of the universe was an
hierarchy… from bottom to top with god being at the top and the pope
next and the staff of the pope next with the kings and royality being next
with the lessor nobality next with the large base of this pyramid being
the large mass of peasants and serfs…

this was the certainty of the middle ages… and then came the cracks
in this belief system… we call it the rise of science which has engage
since 1500, the search for certainty…the same certainty that was felt
during the Greco-Roman period and the Medieval period…

you can describe the “Modern” era, as a search for certainty…

for example, Marx and Hegel both wrote about how their “systems” were
both models of certainty…and you can see in Kant how he thought his
Critiques, all three of them, were models of certainty in his pursuit to
find certainty in philosophy, especially in his “Critique of Pure Reason”

but we now live in 2018 and certainty is hard to find… science does
not guarantee the existence of a “certain” universe…philosophy
has its own issues and our political, social, economic and historical
understanding of the world has left us without any grounds for certainty…

I have gone over this ground before but I don’t think or see how
an understanding of moving objects that is the bases of Modern
science can help us or aid us in the gaining an understanding of
the world, how the understanding of moving objects can create
certainty in the world…………….the entire theory of relativity is
about a mathematical understanding of the movement between
objects in space with one being stationary and the other moving
whereas the special theory of relativity is about two moving
objects and how we can account for their relationship as they move…

I just don’t see how we can build a coherent system of or a model
of what it means to be human based on a mathematical understanding
of moving objects………………that is one of the major problems with
trying to stretch science into philosophy… science does it thing
which has little to do with any kind of understanding of the philosophical
nature of the world…….

so what is the philosophical nature of the world? Let us remove what isn’t
the philosophical nature of the world………. the movement of the planets,
stars, galaxies and of atoms… none of this creates any type of understanding
of the human condition, the human problem……

even if science were to discover what in fact began the universe, it doesn’t
change the reality of us being and existing in the here and now…

the existential crisis of being human does not come from our beginning,
to the big bang, but to the reason for and what is the point of our existence…
I submit that when science does find out the reason for the big bang, it will
not solve a dam thing… the question of human existence does not
resolve around how we got here but why, why we are here?

we are attempting to find certainty in this question of why we are here, instead
of how we came to be… (a side note, it would be quite interesting to find out
how we came to be, but it doesn’t really change the existential questions of
human existence)…

how does one find the answers to the existential questions of our human existence?

we use our tools of logic and science and philosophy and religion and history…
but the are just tools, a process to discover answers to certain questions……

this question of certainty looms large over every thing we do and act upon…

how are we to be sure that our hard earn taxpayer money is being spent
wisely and on things that matter in our lives? that is a question of certainty…

How can I be certain that my taxes won’t go up this year? How can I be certain
that we have a strong enough defense, a military, to protect us?

How can I be certain that I have all the freedom I am suppose to have?

How can I be certain that the laws being passed, benefit me?

How can I be certain that the company I work for won’t go bankrupt?
It won’t go belly up next year?

the many questions we have of the universe and its nature, revolve
around questions of certainty… ……

the next stage of philosophy is an understanding of what it means to
exist without certainty…the next great philosophy is a understanding
of how to exist without certainty………… how does one “ride” the wave
of uncertainty into the future? the quest for certainty is a search done
by our ancestors…… we “Moderns” have no need of certainty anymore…
because that certainty locks us into actions, behavior, schools of thought,
that are temporary… we act, think, behave, believe in a temporary
fashion……… our beliefs as children are temporary… the belief in Santa Claus
is an temporary one…our childish behavior is a temporary one, our
belief system is a temporary one at every age……….

at no point do we engage in or with permanent thoughts, beliefs, behavior,
or actions… so why should we believe in permanence, in certainty, when
clearly at every stage of our lives, we act, believe, think, behave in a
temporary manner… my beliefs, actions, thoughts, behavior are different
today, then they were 20 or 30 or 40 years and they will continue to change
and evolve as I age… become an senior citizen, just 3 years from now……

so why should we engage in finding certainty when our very lives change, modify,
develop, revise and turn over as we age……… I am not the same person, the same
man I was and I shouldn’t be…as I age, I change………

and this pursuit of finding certainty doesn’t reflect this constant
change that we human beings exist in…….

so in the final analysis, finding certainty in a life full of change, temporary
actions, beliefs and thoughts is a foolish task.

we should reject any attempt to spend our lives seeking that which
we don’t live our lives in, we don’t exist in or with certainty…
so why search for it?

embrace the who we are, embrace or become who we are…
we are creatures that change, evolve, seek, and engage with
movement… let us embrace that movement as our existential
core of being human……… the human being you are at this moment,
that will change in time, in the next 5 minutes you will change in some
fashion… embrace that change… become who you are… the
human creature is one that is constantly changing and evolving…
become that creature………

become who you are

Kropotkin