read as much philosophy as I do and one thing become evident,
that self understanding is one of the key points of philosophy…
and it is one of the key points of psychology………….
when I self-diagnose myself, am I conducting philosophy or
am I conducting psychology?
Kropotkin
[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
read as much philosophy as I do and one thing become evident,
that self understanding is one of the key points of philosophy…
and it is one of the key points of psychology………….
when I self-diagnose myself, am I conducting philosophy or
am I conducting psychology?
K: now some my wonder about my term “self-diagnose”, what exactly
am I saying?
If I ask myself, am I alienated from or am I disassociate from myself and/or
my society? is that philosophy or is that psychology? and the solution?
is the solution philosophy or is it psychology?
If I find that my alienation from my society is because it has
chosen to engage in the pursuit of profit/money over me and
my values? then what is my solution? and is my solution to be
considered psychology or is my solution considered philosophy?
Depending on the solution… if I am engaging in therapy and
taking drugs, then the solution is psychology and not very
productive in finding a solution that really answers the question or
if I engage in overthrowing the system, I am engaging in a real solution
to the question of my alienaton from myself or my society…
but in my engagment in overthrowing the society, I am not
being a very productive member of society which is a key critria
of being a citizen in modern society…to threaten a system
like our economic system is to threaten the stablity of society
and I can be considered to be insane or demented while all I am doing is
is trying to discovering a “cure” for my alienation and dissociation from
myself and the society…
some “cures” are acceptable and some are not……….
what “cure” do you find acceptable?
Kropotkin
That which drives us………
we have many drivers of behavior… we have (and in no particular order)
lust, hate, fear, love, anger, greed, duty, honor, passion, biological needs…
and beyond those individual needs, we have social, group needs…
the need to fit in, the need to be part of the group, which is part of our social needs…
now these social needs and our personal needs often match up, we need to feel love
and being part of a group can allow us that…….
sometimes our social group and our personal needs don’t match up……
for years, I was a committed pacifist and I wasn’t going to fight, commit
acts of violence for me or for my social group… so if I had been drafted,
I would not have served regardless of how much “benefit” I might have received
from serving…my own personal convictions prevented me from engaging
in actions that would have benefited my group…
we have heard of other drivers of actions or behavior…
the human need for pleasure or the pursuit of “life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness” or the pursuit of knowledge or the avoiding
pain or to escape suffering………there are many different drivers of
actions or motivations to act that we humans have………
Now these motivations are sometimes driven by physical needs,
love is just as much a physical need as it is a psychological need,
and much of our actions and behavior is fueled by needs of
food, water, clothing, shelter, physical needs……
but much of our actions and behavior is driven by mental,
emotional and psychological needs………we must account
for our psychology needs as much as our physical needs…
in other words, our psychological needs drive our behavior as much
as our physical needs…………we cannot construct a honest appraisal
of what a human being is unless we address the psychological side
of who we are……….it is these inner needs that we exist in
that makes an understanding of who we are so difficult…….
and it is the experiences we have that, in large part, shape
who we are… but each experience understanding is shape by
the very tools we bring into each experience… Think garbage in,
garbage out………if the information we receive is garbage, then
all we have to put out is garbage……….but part of the philosophical
experience is to shape our inner self to be better able to internally
understand experiences, be it garbage or not… Think the Stoics…
by training and discipline, we can shape the way we react to experiences
and thus not be affected by such experiences… be it good experience
or be it bad experiences………philosophy has gone ahead and tried to
train people to better handle the experiences of life… it is time that
psychology becomes more pro-active and get people the tools to
better confront or explain the experiences we human beings
face in our lives…….
we don’t need classes on how psychology works, we needs classes
on how psychology prepares us for the experiences of life…
how do we cope when bad things happen, how do we cope when life happens,
how do we cope when good things happen……… psychology is too static in
allowing people to become prepared to undertake this emotional/psychology minefield
of life……. we spend far too much of our education training people for jobs or careers
instead of training people to become prepared for life and its consequences…….
what does it mean to be human instead of what jobs skills can we train you for…
that is the point of education, to train human beings, not workers………
and psychology can be an essential aspect of our training human beings…
one might argue that psychology is much to confusing to people and it
will cause harm to them if they actually understood themselves……
that is the point of psychology… to get people to understand themselves
regardless of any confusion it may cause………… for it is better in the long run to
be able to understand yourself then to have a job skill or to be confused about
your self………….
we must begin to understand what drives us into actions and behavior…
and that is the point of psychology… to understand what drives us………
what causes us to act and behave in the way we act and behave…….
that is why we must unite psychology and philosophy… for these
two disciplines can allow us to gain an understanding into the forces that
drive us to actions and behaviors………to allow us to prepare to
engage with and understand experiences that we human beings
must deal with on a daily basis……. life, death, despair, sadness,
happiness, joy are just some of the reactions we must deal with
every single day, reactions to events and experiences we have every single
day…………….
and we must train for and begin to learn how to cope with these
multitude of possible responses we can have to events and experiences…
This is really more important then learning a job skill……
learning how to cope with life and all its ups and downs…
and psychology/philosophy must lead the way into this future………
we must have an education that allows us to deal with future events
and experiences and job skill are secondary to that primary mission of
learning how to cope to the events and experiences of life………
Kropotkin
psychology deals well with one’s individual mental health
but psychology must become adept at dealing with not just the
individual mental health, but a society’s mental health……
for I maintain that our individual issues and problems that are dealt
with on a individual basis are really because of society’s pursuit of
profit/money over humans and their values… this fact alone causes
much of the basis of alienation and disassociation that modern people
suffer from…we individually suffer from societal issues…
how does psychology or philosophy, for that matter, deal with that fact?
we cannot solve the problem of societal issues on a personal, individual
level……. those societal issues must be solved on a societal level……
and thus we see how philosophy can impact psychology and society at large.
we have social issues, psychology can try to treat those issue’s and
philosophy can search for a “cure” by its attempt to discover the true role
of man in society… a role that doesn’t mean that we traumatized
by society as we are in modern life… that is what happens in the modern world,
we are traumatized by our role, our place, our actions in the modern world…
and to recover from it, we must engage with psychology to heal the modern man…
but if we work to prevent our trauma by changing society then we have taken
a large step toward healing ourselves by taking pro-active steps to prevent
the trauma, the alienation, the disassociation that we modern feel because
of society’s nihilism in its pursuit of profit/money……
we must prevent the negation of modern man and in that we
prevent the otherwise ensuing trauma and mental illness that is
the hallmark of being a modern human being………
we must return human beings to having some value, value other then
just being consumers or producers or citizens…we are more then our roles…
we have value beyond our roles……. we are valuable for ourselves…
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these
rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”
we hold these truths to be self-evident……. that we are of value, regardless
of our roles, regardless of our wealth, regardless of our title………
we are to be treated equal because we are equal and in that equality we discover
ourselves to be of value……….
It is not just in political equality that we are one, but in economic equality
that we are to pursue our inalienable rights………to know yourself as equal is
to know yourself as being of value……….to know you are not being negated
because you above the act of negation by virtue of the fact that we are equal…
you and I…….
We have individual value… all we have to do is discover our equality…
Kropotkin
I have been trying to connect the dots on this whole
head/intellect vs the heart/emotions/psychology… thing……
We have the head, the intellect which sets the table for
all things intellectual… when we doubt, we doubt from the head…
when we practice skepticism, that is the head for skepticism is
the intellectual aspect of us…From all accounts I have read,
German idealism had two missions, one was to escape the idea
that the skepticism of the Enlightenment lead one to either
nihilism which is skepticism carred to its logical place or
one was lead to atheism… which was no better…
The argument has been made that the entire argument
of the German idealists from Kant to Hegel was an attempt
to avoid these two dangerous positions, nihilism or atheism…
so the head in its skeptism could lead a person to either
nihilism or atheism…
Now that would be true if, if we simply account for us as being
only thinking creatures… but we are not, we are emotional,
feeling, psychological creatures…
we might intellectually dismiss such things as love or hate
or to reduce the world by intellectual arguments into
nihilism or atheism… but the heart, the emotional part
of us will say yes to love when the head says no……
quite often the heart opposes the head…this conflict between
the intellectual and the emotional has been noted since time began…
if a person in conflict between the head and the heart, you cannot say
that person is complete or whole or even fully human………
to be complete or whole or even fully human, the head and the heart
must be going in one direction……
that is the path to being completely human, when the head and the heart
are traveling in one direction with one goal………when we find ourselves
in conflict within ourselves or when we find ourselves out of sorts or
incomplete, the problem is that the head/intellect is in conflict with
the emotional/psychology part of us……….
When we become alienated from ourselves it is because the head
and heart are in conflict……… once we solve this conflict, one way
or the other, we begin to become one, not two… remember
Goethe’s quote, “alas, two souls reside in my breast”
alas, we have conflicts between the head and the heart and sometimes
conflict between the emotions, recall the closeness that exists
between hate and love……. we cannot love that which cannot potentially
become hate………if we are indifferent to something, we cannot love it
nor can we hate it…….
but let us get into specifics… my heart may want something that
is out of bounds, taboo in some fashion and my head may agree with
this taboo… but the heart wants what it wants……. this conflict
is between the head and the heart and anybody having this conflict
cannot, cannot be united and thus whole… they are incomplete,
partial because the head and the heart exists in two different places…
there is no unity between the head and the heart and thus we are alienated
from ourselves……
The goal is to become more human and the path to that lies
with the unification of the mind/head and the heart……
two different aspects of us must be traveling in the same direction,
toward the same goal if we are to understand ourselves as being whole,
complete, in control… to be human…………
how do we connect the head and the heart?
that is where psychology can come in… how do we unite
two different and contrary aspect of ourselves? how do we
unite the head and the heart?
philosophy is the head and psychology is the heart……
and we must unite the two into having the same direction
and the same goal… or we will have conflict within ourselves…….
and this is why German idealism failed… because it failed to make
as it primary mission the attempt to unite the head and the heart…
it came close but close isn’t good enough……… we must unite the head and
the heart if we are to become human, truly human……. that means we
must begin to understand the forces that exists within us… for me, that means to
understand the forces that “makes” me be a complete and total ass at times…
to understand the emotional side of me that has steered me wrong many,
many times before… or perhaps I was lead on the wrong path because my
intellectual side and my emotional side are not united, not working as one…
with different goals and different agenda’s…….
I must engage with myself on an emotional, psychology path
to understand myself…I must try to unite myself mentally and
emotionally…whereas I have thought it was society that
created this alienation in me, perhaps it was my disconnection
between my emotional side and my intellectual side………
and then how do I connect my newly united two side/aspects of
the being known as Kropotkin with society?
I may be 59 and physically toward the end of my journey,
but I am not done with my journey at all…I am at the start
of the journey to connect the intellectually side of me with
the emotional side of me… connect the philosophy with
the psychological side of me……….
the road as always begins first with the understanding that there
is a problem… then you must understand the exact nature of the problem,
then and only then can you overcome the problem… for we have
another situation where we first begin to know thyself, then we
overcome ourselves and then finally, we become who we are…
and this is by uniting the intellectual side of me and the emotional
side of me…uniting psychology with philosophy………
Kropotkin
when we think about it, the eternal questions of
Kant, of God, freedom and Immortality are questions
of the heart, questions of psychology, not questions of
intellect, of the head…………
Freedom for example, we feel the question of freedom
and not necessarily think about the question of freedom…
like some two year old, we think we should be free to act
as we see fit… but intellectually, we know that we cannot
so freely act… we know the damage that can be inflicted upon
people and society/system if we engage in freedom of action…
Our head/intellect rightly limits us from our desire to act freely…
and when our head/intellect try’s to use skepticism to negate,
to so thoroughly negate that we arrive at nihilism, then the heart
will quietly say, no, no I love… and we find our limits with our heart…
and thus we can never truly be devoid of intellectual beliefs because the
heart will simply announce, I believe, and negate the negation……
we can never be truly be without faith in some beliefs because
the heart will always put an end to such skepticism… even though
the head may allow us to deny the validity of idea’s, beliefs and theories,
the heart will simply say, I believe… and thus explains the right wing…
where evidence and facts mean nothing because their heart says they believe,
regardless of the evidence or the facts…I believe and the heart will hold
faith in idea’s and beliefs and facts that no evidence or facts support…
there is no evidence or facts that support the idea of god… and some believe
that atheism is dangerous and damaging to society… but no matter how far
into of an atheist one become via mind, the heart will simply say yes…
and regardless of the evidence or facts, one will believe in god…
the heart limits the head and the head limits the heart…….
and thus true, absolute skepticism that one may practice
really becomes limited by the heart and its faith, it beliefs…
true nihilism isn’t really possible…… the heart will have its say…
now my mind and heart are united on this idea of
there being no god… thus I don’t have conflict between
the head and the heart in this matter… I am united
and this togetherness allows me peace of mind…
now in other matter, I am conflicted between the heart and the head
and that conflict brings to me, alienation and disconnection…
between me and my soul and me and my society……
I am alienated and disconnected because of my conflict between
my understanding emotionally of capitalism and my knowledge
that I must feed and clothe and shelter my family… I hate capitalism
and I fight it… but I also must feed my family…… how do I resolve this
conflict between my emotional and my intellectual side of me……
and to be honest, I am afraid of walking away from the only economic
system I have ever known… fear is a great motivator and a wonderful
tool for hanging on to for dear life even something that we know is
harmful or dangerous to us… fear prevents us from breaking away from
actions we should take… like sometimes fear prevents us from leaving
another person who is damaging to us, but we are afraid to leave because
the devil we don’t know is scarier then the devil we do know…
and fear is psychological and once again our actions are dictated by
emotional and not mental/intellectual… we must act with one mind
and one heart…… together united… working toward a single goal, taking
a single road together…………
the idea of immortality is a question of the heart… we feel we must live
forever where if we were to actually think about it, living forever is a
nightmare… and I for one, would never accept any attempt to
live forever……… mentally/intellectually I understand what living forever
would mean, no greater horror can be imagined, but emotionally, the heart
wants to live forever… and we have the conflict between the heart and head…
we need the head to steer us into safe terrain and we need the heart
to understand why we need that terrain to be safe……… to be safe,
that is an emotional response… security is a question of the heart,
of emotionalism and the conservative believes in security, believes in
being safe……
the left believes in justice… and justice is equality in actions toward
all people… and too is an emotional response but we can justify
justice on a intellectual level whereas we cannot justify security on
an intellectual level…for most of human existence has been insecure,
the average person in earth’s history has been insecure in life…
the dangers in life where plentiful and quite present…
whereas justice is a “modern” idea……. we can pursue justice
as the practice of equality in modern society…………
does justice and security clash?
justice is where we treat everyone equal and security doesn’t care
if people are treated equally as long as one feels secure…
under the guise of security we can mistreat and abuse and
torture people because the goal is to “feel” safe regardless of
who is hurt and who is damaged……
justice is where we are willing to sacrifice security to achieve
equality for everyone…… which I am willing to do…….
to achieve freedom requires justice, not security, for security is
willing to destroy freedom in the name of security…
and all of this is psychological and we must understand that much
of what we do is psychological, not philosophical…
we must learn to understand ourselves psychological so we can
act philosophical…………
Kropotkin
we have forces bearing upon us… we have natural forces such as
gravity, strong and weak nuclear, electromagnetic which affect us
and also were instrumental in creating us…
we also have forces bearing upon us like governmental and economic
and social forces who affect us every single day………
Early man was concerned with forces beyond their control, forces
they considered to be god…and then we have those political
economic forces but human beings until the age of enlightenment didn’t
ever considered those manmade forces that work upon us every single day…
now given the forces upon us, both natural and manmade, how are to
express our freedom against those forces? In other words, we have gravity,
we cannot act freely against the force of gravity… we cannot defy or
change that force…
in regards to the forces that are manmade, governmental and economic forces
that dominate our lives today, how are we to be free against those forces?
how do we navigate our way through forces that we have little or no control over?
How do we express freedom in regards to the political and economic forces
that dominate our lives today?
How do we find justice in the forces that dominate our lives today?
that is the question… how are we to find out who we are given the forces
that exists in our lives today? we have the force of capitalism and democracy
in the modern United States… how are we to find ourselves in the face of
these forces that control our lives? If our economic system forces me to
be an economic being and I am a philosophical being, how do I reconcile
my need to act as a free being in the face of severe economic forces that
demand my obedience to economic factors…my role in society is to
be a consumer and a producer… not to have any direct say in society, but to
consume and produce, materialism that is the driving force of our modern society…
but I am not interested in either role, neither consumer nor producer…
I am interested in engaging in thought and creating idea’s…neither of which
befits us politically or economically… and so according to society, I have
no value………as I am not engage in the creation of wealth or the use of wealth,
I have no value in our materialistic society…but, but how do I find my value given
the forces around me, politically and socially and economically, demand, demand
my allegiance to concepts, beliefs, idea’s that I believe to be damaging to me
and society… I believe capitalism to be damaging to society and yet, I am unable to
free myself of its insidious, corrupt method of negating who I am and what my values are……
How do I find the freedom to attempt to negate capitalism which is destroying
my body and my soul? 40 years of work and my body is pretty much crap…
I can barely walk and I can’t sleep at night because of the pain that I endure
from hours of hard physical labor… and yet, I cannot escape…
How do I exist within the forces of both natural and manmade forces that
dominate and control my existence? how do I find my freedom?
this is the question of how we work within the forces that exist in our lives…
this is not a psychological question, it is a philosophical question… how to
create a system of politics and economics that doesn’t nihilate who I am
and what I am and what I value?
my mind quakes at the thought of fighting our manmade systems of
political and economics, but my heart knows what is right and says,
don’t worry mind, I have enough belief for the both of us… let us do
battle for I shall carry the day because passion is enough to overthrow
everything that stand between us and freedom…Be still my friend,
mind/intellect… for the heart can carry the day because we have hope
and hope is the greatest tool we have for overcoming anything…
be like me mind/intellect and have faith…for we shall overcome…
and so the heart and head work together, as one in finding
its place in a system that negates who I am and what I value…
Kropotkin
as we have already spoken of conservatives and their commitment
to security and its fear based ism/ideologies………….
we have to understand what is the basis for their ownership of
their belief base system which can ignore even basic facts to
accommodate long held beliefs like god and they will not
adjust or change their beliefs regardless of any fact or knowledge
that may challenge those beliefs system…
and we have already encountered the reason for this…
their childhood indoctrinations that everyone receives but
conservatives cannot escape…
they will hold unto their childhood indoctrinations regardless of
whatever evidence or facts that come their way… they
will not evaluate or reevaluate their values… they will not
begin the process of know thyself and then overcoming
and then becoming who they are……. conservatives are stuck in
their childhood indoctrinations…
beliefs held long enough become articles of faith…
Once a long time ago, I was told or I simply “remembered”
that my mother grew up on a farm… it was not even a questioned
in my mind that my mother grew up on a farm…it was a
childhood indoctrination… one day, my wife asked my mother
where she grew up when she lived on a farm… my mother, say what?
I never grew up on a farm… My wife who only knew of this from me,
couldn’t believe it, an article of faith with me, my mom grew up on
a farm was wrong… I was wrong… It was unsettling that
an article of faith with me, the fact that my mom grew up on a farm
was completely and totally wrong…… I had to rethink because the evidence
was rather conclusive… my mom grew up in a city… It never even occurred
to me…I now have my facts… I no longer believe my mother grew up on the farm…
another childhood indoctrination down the tube… I must adapt to this
new information…another idea that I had held for years was this idea…
I played baseball, little league until I was 15… and the
was that my only thing I wanted to be growing up was a baseball player…
the other thing I wanted to be was President of the United States…
that was my childhood, either growing up to be a ball player or
president of the U.S… those were my only answers to what
I was going to be when I grew up…
and now many years later, I tell the story of how one day, same day,
I gave up baseball and threw my glove away and no longer wanted to
be president of the U.S. because I figured out that those two dreams
were my fathers dream, not mine…he wanted to be a ballplayer
and he was a frustrated politician… and so I, as my childhood indoctrination
was indoctrinated into either being a ball player or being president…
and the story is true, except for the little bit of fact that I made
those two realizations months if not years apart… it wasn’t the same day
that I gave up my two childhood dreams… but it makes a better story…
and so I kept to the story even though the reality was quite different…
BTW, I never recovered from losing those two dreams… I am still, after all these years,
trying to find out what I want to be when I grow up to be an adult…
so the stories are accurate to a point, but I changed it and as I believed
the story after so many years, it became an article of faith that I lost my
belief in being a ballplayer and being president the same day…
an article of faith… because the number of years that past, gave my
beliefs certainty, just as I believed my mom grew up on a farm…
It was an examination of my past that led me to an understanding of
what really happened in terms of my playing ball and being president
and of my mom giving rather irrefutable evidence that I was wrong,
that my belief that she grew up on a farm was wrong……
we are faced with these childhood contradictions all the time…
how do we resolve them? do we begin to reevaluate them or do
we hold to the childhood indoctrination regardless of the facts or
evidence presented……. do we act as conservatives do and stick
to the childhood indoctrinations regardless of the facts or evidence
or do we begin the process of knowing ourselves and then overcoming
and then becoming who we are……….it is a choice… freely made…
and given the forces that determine our lives, a freedom one should
act upon because what other freedoms do we have?
Kropotkin
It is late after a long day at work, so let us see how coherent this
turns out……
The fancy writing of such people who dazzle us with their bullshit…
like Kant and Hegel who use words to conceal and hide their words and idea’s…
they have nothing to say because it is hidden behind verbiage of unnecessary
words… why can’t they speak plain?
Einstein once said, if you can’t reduce a theory to be explainable to
a 12 year old, you don’t know it at all…….
the attempt to seem profound and meaningful is widespread and
not surprising…… this need to feel one is above others by pedantic
words is just another attempt to feel superior to others………
it is also an attempt to avoid dealing with the real questions of
one’s life… how are we to live? What are we to believe in?
what values should we hold? what should we hope for?
these are the real questions of one’s life, not pedantic
bullshit of the academic professors who try to impress each other
with pretentious crap…….but do nothing to improve our understanding
of the questions facing the common human being in their desire to
understand what it mean to be human and what it takes to rise above
merely being human…….for being merely human is just more words for
being an animal…… we are more then just animals if, if we rise above
our animal instincts which are the lower level of human existence……
who are we and what are our possibilities is not answered by any university
professor who has their reputation to maintain by writing above the “masses”.
with language and words only the highly educated can know……. how is that
going to allow the “masses” to understand what it means to human and what
is our possibilities…if philosophy engages in the university group masturbation
speak of those who follow Kant and Hegel and other in an attempt to hide
the fact that the university professors have knowledge but no wisdom…
Socrates used words and language that could be followed by anybody and why?
because he wanted people to understand what he was getting at… He didn’t make
it hard or understandable only by those with specialize knowledge of what certain
words and idea’s meant…we should follow Socrates and not Kant or Hegel…
we should make our language plain and simple, easy to understand by anyone with
a 12th grade education…the path to wisdom is not to make knowledge
inaccessible because we are using words to hide the lack of wisdom…
words and language should be understandable to all because we want all,
there is that dam equality thing again, we want the path to wisdom to
be accessible to all and the only way to achieve that is by using language
and words accessible to all………
stop using words to hide the fact you lack wisdom…
and if you are offended by this, note that I haven’t named anybody and in fact,
I don’t have anyone at all in mind
then you might want to rethink your words, your language to
become understandable to everyone…….rethink, reevaluate your language
and how you convey your message and your idea’s…….
stop hiding behind words and language to cover up your lack of wisdom…
Kropotkin
in reading the German idealist, one often reads of “nature” as if
nature was something outside of us… it isn’t……. the best description
of nature really is Spinoza’s everything… we exists within nature,
we are nature, we cannot escape nature… it is like this immense
bubble that hold everything…… think of the classic picture of the universe
where everything is within that immense bubble that we call the universe…
that is nature…….we have large scale nature and small scale nature,
but it isn’t two separate things, it is one and the same, just the size is
different…and us? we exist within this bubble as part of nature and
we are nature… we help create nature just as everything in the universe also
create nature… a rock, the sand on the beach, every blade of grass,
every star in the in sky, every galaxy in the sky, all of it, nature…
just as we on planet earth are nature…….you cannot escape something
that you are encased in…
we don’t need to connect this entirety of nature with god,
we just call it reality and call it a day…….
nature is just another word for everything out there and, and everything inside of me
and inside of you and inside of everything…….nature is simply everything…
we can stop talking about nature as if it is something outside of us, different from
us, apart from us, it isn’t…it is us and we are nature………
and to be honest, you can’t even break up nature like that, you can say,
nature is everything…and leave it at that and you would be correct…
Kropotkin
and what about the dual scourge of the enlightenment,
skepticism which leads one to nihilism and atheism…
How does skepticism fit into this idea that nature is everything?
Glad you asked…….for no matter how far down into the rabbit hole
one’s skepticism leads, the end still leads one to the bottom line of
nature………for to deny nature is to deny us and our existence…
and we understand that the heart will, regardless of the facts or evidence,
will simple proclaim that we exist and that nature exists……. that is what
the head and heart do, they set limits to the other guy…but does that make
it true? for the heart, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not, if the heart believes,
that is enough for the heart…even here, even here we find ourselves face
to face with psychology…you simply cannot philosophize without psychology…
and you cannot psychologize without philosophy… Mutt and Jeff……
Kropotkin
if we are nature and nature is us, then how do we
reach this modern point of the fragmentation of the modern world?
If everyone is us and we are everyone, then how do we fragment?
If we posit the other person as “the other” then we have achieve fragmentation…
if we allow this negation of the other person as “us vs them”, then we
create fragmentation………. if we see the other person as simply us,
then we have no fragmentation… a united, combined nature doesn’t allow
fragmentation because there is no difference between anything in the
universe… as we are all made of atoms and thus at the smallest, basic level
of existence the same, then there is no difference between dogs and cats
and cars and galaxies and us… there is no other… anything…
for we are all atoms… we are combined into different shapes,
but aren’t humans in different shapes anyway but at the heart of the matter, we
are the same… atoms combined into different shapes……
I am short and someone else may be tall, I am white and someone
else may be black and I am male and someone else maybe female…
it doesn’t change the fact that we are the same beings, human beings…
and animals may have two legs or 4 legs but they are still animals…
and insects may have any number of legs or means of motion and yet,
they are still insects… it doesn’t matter what the atoms shape become,
they are still just atoms in different shapes… we are just atoms in different
shapes…… and that means if we damage or hurt animals, we are hurting
our fellow atoms, atoms that may find their way to become human beings
in time or, or may even have been human beings in the past… atoms are
simply what everything is made of, including us…………
that is why we are nature and nature is us… for we are made of the exact
same thing and the forces that has created us and the forces that
determine how we can exist, such as gravity and electromagnetism
are forces that determine all atoms regardless of the shape of atoms
at that time…and those forces that determine us, are also atoms…
as is time and space… for space bends and flexes and that bending means
that space is made up of something and that something is atoms……
One might ask where does the metaphysical stand in the midst of
all this atoms? There is simple no place to understand anything
that is not atoms…thus god which is understood at being outside
of time and space doesn’t exist because god isn’t atoms…it is
beyond the physical, that is what metaphysical means, beyond
the physical… and nothing exists beyond the physical, beyond or
outside of atoms………
we might not be able to account for all matter, but what matter that exists
is matter that is atoms and as we are atoms, all matter is us and we
are all matter………
Kropotkin
and what of concepts like freedom? the concept of freedom isn’t
atoms… correct, it isn’t… but we atoms called human beings use
the concept of freedom to help us understand our place, our role in
the universe…….
We see a tree… and that we see the tree through our eyeballs which is
made up of atoms and the tree is made up of atoms………… we experience
“reality” by such means as atoms seeing atoms or atoms hearing atoms or
by atoms feeling atoms……… our senses are simple atomic structures
meant to sense other atomic structures…… we experience atoms as atoms…
then by experience, which is when we have already experienced similar looking atoms,
we can understand what the current shape and structure of the atoms
we are experiencing “means”…
so once again, how do we experience Freedom?
certainly not as atoms, for freedom is not made up
of atoms…I cannot “experience” freedom, but I can
interpret freedom from actions… so what does this really mean?
We are simple atoms and if atoms are prevented from moving because
the state preventing us atoms from moving, then we interpret that
as the loss of freedom… we don’t experience freedom per se…
we can interpret what freedom means from the loss of of motion or
the loss of some action…the action of abortion… I cannot personally
experience abortion but a women could… the loss of action, the
prevention of an abortion by legal means is the loss of action in a particular
case…Freedom basically means the act of motion is some fashion…
we can reduce all our concepts, I think, into some fashion of motion…
Now if this is true and I must go to work shortly so I am unable to
work out this theory, but if it is true… freedom exists only as
an action, motion…and we as atoms are affected in some fashion
and we interpret that being affected as concepts… freedom or slavery
or hope or peace or love… for isn’t our emotions simply some
action taken or not taken? We feel love and we want to take action…
we feel hate and we want to take action and we feel hope and we
want to take action…… it is in that action that we discover what
concepts are………
Now I may be completely and absolutely wrong and that is ok…
for with every understanding, be it right or wrong, we better understand
what it means to be human and what are our possibilities…
Kropotkin
it is interesting to note that perceptions are listed
in wiki as philosophy and experience is not…
Kropotkin
We moderns think of ourselves as superior or above other times
and their cultures and why? Because we have couches and large screen
TV’s and fancy cars and smartphones…We have all the luxuries of
our modern times and who needs the past when all they were concerned
about were such unimportant matters as truth and art and love…
What do we moderns need with such unessential matters of beauty
and truth when we have the highest religion of all, materialism…
Our all consuming pursuit of profits/money has made such things
as any search for knowledge or wisdom or truth or beauty, nonessential
or superfluous……………
it is wasteful to pursuit unneeded idea’s that cannot create profits…
we have one value and one value only and that is the creation of profits…
Knowledge or wisdom or truth cannot, is not a means for creating profit…
we moderns have no need of such things as for example, beauty…
unless said beauty creates profits…
Art for example, has no place in the modern world… we have removed
any need for art and it pursuit of beauty and truth…for those less advanced
cultures that failed to understand the meaning of life which is the pursuit
of profits, they failed because they foolishly thought that the pursuit was the
really a pursuit of beauty and beauty was truth… and truth was beauty…
we moderns have no need of such foolishness… truth is bought and paid for
and beauty is bought and paid for and to think such foolishness that beauty
might actually lead to the truth, such naïve nonsense isn’t tolerated
in our modern age… we who view everything in light of what can
be bought and sold… truth has its price and beauty has its price…
that is all that matter to us moderns……. what is beauty is determined
by the market forces that creates our wages and determines the price of everything
and that is all that matters… we moderns who know the price of everything
and those foolish ancients like Voltaire who thought that beauty was truth
and truth was beauty but they failed to price anything…… if it can’t be bought
or sold, what is it value?
For how can truth or beauty have value if it can’t be bought or sold?
what value has honor or peace or love if it can’t be bought or sold?
We moderns have removed the foolishness of the ancients because
we no longer believe in love or peace or beauty because those
ideals will not bring us any profits/money………
We moderns clearly are so much more advance over past civilizations,
past cultures because we can buy and sell trinkets and gadgets and whatchamacallit
like our cars and phones and TV’s sets…who needs such worthless
idea’s like beauty and love and truth and justice and art?
clearly we are at the height of civilization when we can purchase
a 65 inch TV…and what does it matter that we don’t pursue
such trivial matters love or beauty or art or truth……
indeed, what does it matter?
Kropotkin
The question of the day…
What is your relationship to Art?
and you might say:
Art? Art? what the hell are you talking about? No one talks about art…
Art is dead, man… didn’t you know that… Art my ass…
so what is your relationship with Art?
Kropotkin
Let us take a look at Art……
take the Mona Lisa… probably the most famous painting in the world…
I saw it when I was in Paris a couple of years ago… It is a small painting…
that surprised me…Many millions of words have been used to describe
the Mona Lisa…… Many theories have been put forward about it…
I can see it in my mind’s eye… quite clearly as you most likely can see
it in your mind’s eye…
The Mona Lisa cannot be understood scientifically or mathematically
or philosophically… it cannot be weighed or measured or understood
by any known scientific or philosophic method…….
It is…… simple as that… and as we cannot purchase it, it cannot be used
to buy or sell, so in essence, from a modern standpoint, the Mona Lisa is
worthless…… it has no value in our modern society because it cannot
be understood scientifically or philosophically or be sold…so how else
would one begin to understand the Mona Lisa?
As a work of art, but what does that mean? I would even question the notion
that the Mona Lisa is a “beautiful” painting… so what is the “value” of the
Mona Lisa?
One might answer, we moderns don’t bother with such primitive ideas like
art and what art means………… It is beneath us…so why the fascination
with such artwork like the Mona Lisa?
Art is all around us… we hear music all the time, in fact I am listening to
Mozart right now… and we hear music all the time, on the radio and on TV
and in movies and yet do we consider that music that we hear all the time,
to be Art?
We see plays and TV shows and movies all the time and they are ART,
plays and TV shows and movies… one might even consider ads as
just another aspect of Art…Let us take a popular TV show, one I
have never seen, NCIS… very popular and has been on TV for what seems
like forever… and yet, it by its very definition is ART…….NCIS is ART…
And what does that mean? It is Art just the same way we consider the
plays of Sophocles to be Art… and if not, what exactly is the difference
between NCIS and the play of Sophocles? We know that a problem,
perhaps the greatest problem of modernity is the fragmentation of
man and we still feel those effects to this very day… so what does our
understanding of art mean to the greatest problem of our modern times?
the fragmentation of human beings…….and how can art become the possible
solution to that fragmentation? We are broken… mentally, physically, emotionally…
and we are also fragmented in body and soul…… how do we repair the damage
to our bodies and our souls? We can use ART to begin, to begin the unification
of body and mind. We can use Art to reunite and fix our broken bodies, broken
souls and our broken emotional states.
How? How can ART begin to heal our bodies, our soul, our emotions?
How does one begin to solve any problem? First by knowing thyself…
an understanding of who we are… then second, by overcoming…
then third, by becoming who we are…………Art is the means by which
we can begin to understand who we are… it can create the means by which
we begin to see who we really are… then and only then can we begin to
long process of overcoming and then we can become who we are…….
For me personally, I am terrible at Art… even my mother says I was born
without a gene for Art… and yet, I create, I create every single day
when I sit down at the kitchen table and open up my computer and I begin
to type……. My name is Kropotkin… and I am creating…
and by this process of speaking my voice, I am creating and I am healing my soul
at the same time… Recall the process of psychoanalysis whereby
we heal ourselves by confessing our sins… philosophy is nothing more then
confessing ones sins………and Art too is the act of confessing ones sins,
among the other functions of ART………and the Mona Lisa? what is
Da Vinci confessing there? Art as with any aspect of human existence,
is partly mystery… and what mystery does ART present us with?
and mystery itself cannot be weighed or measure or understood
scientifically or philosophically…… so we might be able to
classify Art and mystery as being the same thing?
So does Art answer the question or, or is ART the question/mystery?
So how does art answer the eternal questions of human existence?
The Kantian/Kropotkin questions of life… what can we know?
what can I hope for? What should we do? What values should we hold?
what can we affirm, not negate? And that is the point of Art…
It affirms… it is not nihilistic like our modern world…Art
doens’t negate human beings and their values… Art affirms
human beings and their values…And that is why we attempt
to minimize ART… because it flys in the face of our modern age
which is to negate… to be nihilistic whereas ART affirms and
that is the answer to the question… how are we to escape our
nihilistic age? By ART…
Kropotkin
think about the connection between the rise of psychology
and the rise of modern Art. Both begin to bubble up
in the 1870’s and 1880’s and were pretty well on their way
by the turn of the century, 1900…several interesting papers
could be written about the connection between the rise
of psychology and modern art. And both began as a reaction
to the fragmentation of mind, body, soul that was begun
by the industrial revolution………… without the industrial revolution
you don’t have modern art nor do you have modern psychology because
you don’t have the fragmentation of man that was created by
the industrial revolution.
Art with its turn to the various ism’s within Art like Impressionism
and cubism are really just responses to the what has happened.
See also philosophy whereas modern philosophy began to fragment
into various philosophical schools of Marxism and logical positivism and
rationalism and existentialism among other schools…we have yet
to see philosophy reunite due to the pressures of the fragmentation
of modern man by the industrial revolution…and by fragmentation,
we can also use the word, nihilism, for it is the nihilism of
the modern age that created the fragmentation of man…
for we have no basis upon which to unite and become one when
all we have is the ongoing nihilism of our political and economic
systems………
Kropotkin
Think of Russell’s and A.N. Whitehead attempt at
unification with their “Principia Mathematica”.
That was the point of the Principia….to unite
mathematically the fragmentation of man, in body, soul
and emotionally……. it failed, but that is the starting point,
not the conclusion of our attempts to unite ourselves against
the nihilism of our modern age…….
Kropotkin
Take the above 4 post and do the modern thing, which is
to dismiss them as having nothing to do with your life…
for to dismiss is to negate and to negate is the “modern”
way, method of dealing with inconvenient truths…
dismiss them… negate them……. save yourself the trouble
of having to think what Art means in your life and what ART
means to our modern society, our modern culture…
dismiss and be a modern man…
negate…
Kropotkin