a new understanding of today, time and space.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8[/youtube]

it is often said that “man is with nature”
but the reality is, “man is nature”…….
how do we experience this?

Kropotkin

Ok one may ask, what is philosophy?
or one may ask, what is history?
or one may ask, what is the state?
or perhaps one might ask, what is man?

Ok, so I ask, what is man? However, I don’t get much
by asking that question. So I ask, what is the state?
and I don’t get much there……

but, but if I ask, what is the relationship between man
and the state? Now we’re talking………

and what is philosophy? It is the word between two idea’s.
the word is relationship…philosophy is simply trying to understand
what is the relationship between man and the state or man and god
or god and the state? Relationships all… and that is all history is,
a question of the relationship between two idea’s…
and political science is the relationship between two idea’s…
and religion is the relationship between man and god…
everything we ask about, is asking, what is the relationship between…

so if you want to understand philosophy, try to understand the relationship
between two separate idea’s and you are a philosopher…

it is the relationships we spend our lives asking about, not the specific
idea’s themselves…….

Kropotkin

What I am about to write is a whole, it just looks like parts…

We have art… and what is art? Many, many definitions of art exists…

We know that art changed in nature from 1880 through 1900…

and I have surmised that Art changed beginning in 1880 because of
the industrial revolution… because of the industrial revolution,
we were atomized, fragmented… we no longer existed as part
of a whole……. the industrial revolution in conjunction with
its ism/ideology, capitalism… tore human beings from
their connection to other people, to the state, to religion…

to atomized means it separated human beings from its
connection to other human beings, connections which ranged
from religion to nationality to families…… recall that
families were being driven from farms to factories in
massive, record numbers and that changed was part of
the atomization of man…… when we live on the land, we
are connected to the earth, we are connected to the seasons,
in ways that is impossible in our modern industrialize world…

You cannot, cannot understand the modern world without understanding
this alienation of human beings from their rural, farming life that has
lasted for 10 thousand years and was being uprooted in a generation.

To atomized means to separate human beings from a life that they had
always known to being a single atom in the modern world.

Now am I glorifying the rural farming life? Not at all, I am pointed out
you cannot go home again. Am I a farmer at heart? not in the least…

I am pointing out what the results were when we transported millions
of human beings from being farmers to our modern industrial world of
nihilism and despair…

We are and will continue to be alienated and disconnected until we
finally adapt to our new found conditions.

Art…… we practice art… the ancients didn’t practice art in the way we do…
You didn’t have individuals who painted or sewed or wrote music just because
it wasn’t necessary for the average person to engage in ART in the ancient world, Why?

Because the ancient world could engage in its act of creation by the timeless act
of farming, of growing fruits and tree’s and vegetables in one’s field…….

We no longer have that luxury……. we engage in Art because we no longer
have another outlet for us to engage with……. but why is it important to
have an outlet to engage in?

We have another dualism…… we have the conscience mind
and we have another aspect of the mind, the subconscious mind…
Art comes from the subconscious mind…Art is a way to engage
the subconscious mind……. and that is why Art changed from the 1880’s
to the 1st world war……… Because the exterior of the human being changed
from a rural, farming, seasonal person to the modern factory working human being
and the subconscious mind too must adapt in the way it adapted to the world…

Art is one way, means for the subconscious mind to process the massive changes
from its prior rural existence to the modern factory life…….Art is an means to
adapt, a means to accommodate the new atomized, disconnected life we now
lead…and Art in all forms changed to acknowledge our new existence…
and Art is driven by the subconscious…….

And so what is the solution to our problem of us having a atomized, disconnected
life that we lead today? Art, art is the solution but we no longer react to Art
in the same way we once did… Art is dead… or so we are told… Art isn’t dead,
Art is trying to adjust to the new conditions of modern man and the subconscious
mind that is so important to all of us, is trying to adjust to the everchanging
conditions we find ourselves in…

and that is the new modern world, the everchanging world… for that was
one of the hallmarks of the world before 1880. The lack of change…
Caesar could have walked the streets of Paris in 1800 and he would not
have felt that out of place outside of the new “uniforms” that modern
people feel compelled to wear……. Rome of 45BC isn’t that different
than the streets of Paris in 1800… but Paris by 1900 had completely
changed… we find all the modern conveniences starting to come into play…

the world has changed more in the last 200 years more then it did in
the previous 2000 years and we must adjust and the subconscious
mind must adjust……… Thus we have the crime and serial murders
and violent attacks we see every day as a consequence of the rapid
change from the rural, farming world of 1800 to our modern world…

Our current alienation and disconnection from ourselves and each other
is from that rapid change in our historical situation…

Think of the events of the 20th century, the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the cold war… events that was impossible before 1900 and why?

Because the wars and the Holocaust were reactions to our rapidly changing
world… and Art? Art is not only thing that changed, but Art is one possible
solution to the problem of our adaptation to this everchanging world……

we must find a way to allow the subconscious mind to adapt and change, to
understand its place in the world…we are adrift because the subconscious mind
hasn’t yet come to terms with the new reality of modern times……… and we will
remain alienated and disconnected until we come to grips with the new reality,
come to grips both in the conscious AND subconsious mind…

Kropotkin

all the above is meant to say is simple, Art is a psychological
event…and once again we return to psychology…just
as philosophy can be connected to and in fact, might be
the same as psychology, Art may be not just art, but
psychology…

Kropotkin

Agree, to the extent that there is a lot psychology in art, and maybe a lot of art in psychology, but the divide(sub conscious) is great and a lot of it goes into the Pearls garbage can.

Peter , this why I thin psychoanalysis became dysfunctional because the patterns of holism is becoming unavailable to the average museum-goer. Who can understand pointillusm nowadays, unless they understand the principles of aesthetics, of the proper distance to st and to the piece, whereby most museum attendies just breeze through so as to cover the most inn the minimum time so that they cam hurry over to McDonald’s for lunch and after which see a movie?

Farm pictures are great , and there is no need to contemplate it forever since they cam represent the simple life with authenticity
Georgia O’keef is so pleasant and breezy, so is a lot of American art, even Western Art, it’s so relaxing to view it, and it’s worth maybe hours of psychotherapy.

and once again Meno, I am not ignoring you, I just have
other fish to fry today…

I have been studying German idealism for some time now…
I am starting to understand it… what my problem with it is simple,
German idealism begins with the assumption that there is a god…
or as some idealist have put it, the “unconditioned”
or the “absolute” and some like Hegel, have tried to make philosophy
and religion the exact same thing.

‘the eternal truth in its objectivity, god and nothing but god and the unfolding
of god’ and this…‘Philosophy unfolds only itself when it unfolds religion
and when it unfolds itself, it unfolds religion’…

This concept that philosophy is religion is quite new…

but the heart of the question for philosophers like Hegel is that
there is a god and he is called absolute and being and unconditioned…
that is where German idealism begins and where it is heading for…
the unification of the subjective and the objective in god…….
for much of German idealism is concerned with this question
of the subjective and the objective… for them, they thought
that Kant was far too subjective and they were trying to
bring back the objective and then unite the two……

to unite the subjective and the objective is a very worthy goal,
but you can’t make that unification in the person of god,
as the German idealists tried to do…

Kropotkin

When we think about god and humans need for god,
we think that theology/religion is really psychology need…
we need to believe in god to fulfill some emotional or psychological need…
to believe that our fate, our person is watched over by some all powerful
being… to believe in a personal god of Christianity is to fulfill some
psychological need we humans have……… let us carry that to other religions,
we contemplate say, Buddhism for example, and we wonder about
this idea that the point of life is to escape suffering…as there is no
evidence of reincarnation, we then must understand this need to escape
suffering, (in life, we all suffer in some fashion or another) this need to escape
suffering becomes a psychological need…… theology/religion is an
manifestation of some psychological need to overcome…….

feel the psychological oppression of guilt, we have an religion for you…
feel the need to escape suffering, we have a religion for you…
feel the need to follow the law, we have a religion for you…
feel the need for obedience, we have the religion for you…
feel the need to look backwards, we have a religion for you

all the psychological needs of human beings are matched
by a religion whose point is to alleviate those psychological needs…

let us take a look at human beings who were “relatively”
psychological “normal”… let us look at several people who
were outstanding/ normal human beings and we note that
most of them were not religion at all or lightly held their religion or held highly
unusual religious beliefs…
Goethe, Shakespeare, George Washington, Lincoln, Socrates,
Tolstoy, Einstein, Spinoza, Hegel, Tom Jefferson, Locke,
Ben Franklin, FDR, Beethoven, Hawkins among others…….

We can see from this list that quite often the most capable among us
the most talented, the “genius” among us, is the least religious…

we should take note of this…….

Kropotkin

much of philosophy and religious thought like Buddhism revolves
around this idea of desires, of wanting, of fulfilling needs…

The stoics for example believed that the path for happiness for
human beings is found in accepting the moment as is, by not
allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire of pleasure of
the fear of pain…the Buddha also believed that by removing
desires, we can learn to become the Buddha and escape
the ongoing reincarnations that plague human beings…

as much philosophical and religious thought revolves around the
escaping of or controlling the desires, then we can accept
the fact that much of philosophy and religion is about the
psychology need of dealing with and controlling desires…

Philosophy and religion is quite often the rational explanation
of the ways we understand the psychological needs of human beings.

Must we remove psychology from philosophy or, or should we
simply incorporate psychology into philosophy?

Kropotkin

in our understanding of philosophy, then the question
arises…… is our questioning of certain parts of philosophy
psychological driven? in other words, is the part of
philosophy that is engaged in metaphysics, which is of course
one of the main drivers of philosophy, is the search into
metaphysics really just a psychological drive? Is metaphysics
nothing more then psychology driving us to an answer about
the beginning of or the nature of reality………

Why need to know what is reality or what is at the heart of
reality, is it god? and this need to know what is at the heart
of reality itself, really just a psychological need?

My answer seems to be clear, but what is your answer?

the need for certainty, be it certainty about the nature of reality or
the existence of god or the certainty of religion……

this drive for certainty is a psychological need…
and the basis of religious thought…

Kropotkin

we see ourselves as human beings, in terms of god or of the state
or of ism’s or ideologies or in terms of those pesky childhood indoctrinations,
but do we see ourselves in terms of us? In other words, do I see myself,
Peter Kropotkin, as I am… not in light of any sort of ism or ideology or
childhood indoctrination? but as I am? I am kind and smart
and gaining in wisdom, not so much in knowledge, and I am very funny…
now the question arises, once I have understood myself as I am, as I
truly am, now what? Recall I wrote a bit ago about how we must
understand things in terms of relationships… how do I, Kropotkin,
stand in relationship to the state, for example? Or how do I stand
in relationship with god or with philosophy or with knowledge?
or of the any 5 million ways I can stand in relationship to something…

I must understand myself both as an individual and, AND in relationship
to something…

and have noted, much of philosophy is psychological driven, so
how do I understand myself psychologically? as I don’t need
certainty as other people do, what does this say about me?

I am quite happy with myself… I don’t require friends nor do I need god
nor do I need certainty… I am self reliant in regards to outside
needs and psychological needs… I am not very social, I don’t need
the certainty that many other people need……

I do need the physical needs that all living beings need, food, water,
clothing, shelter, love… even someone as self reliant as myself, needs
love and I get love from my family……….

is my quest for wisdom which comes from the doubt I feel, is
that a psychological need I have? perhaps, is doubt itself
a psychological need? probably…I don’t subscribe to the Greeks
understanding of philosophy as being from wonder and I don’t see
the desire for knowledge to of much value and I certainly don’t need
to loved by god… but as know, if we become aware of our psychological
needs, as to our need to be certain or the need for our understanding
the basis of reality which is metaphysics, we can overcome our
psychological needs if, if we can become aware of them…
for example, we can overcome any addictions we have if we become
aware of our addictions… it might be hard, but we can do it…

the same can be said for our philosophical/psychological needs…
by awareness, we can overcome… and thus we arrive at what
the Buddha said about desires, if we become aware of our desires,
we can overcome them and become the Buddha and thus no longer
be reincarnated…or if we can overcome our desires as the Stoics
said…all roads lead to the same place…….

so what road are you on? What philosophical/psychological need must
you fulfill? what desires/needs do you need to have, that must be answered?

wonder/desire/doubt/escaping suffering/to become obedient/
or some other psychological need/needs, do you have that leads you to philosophy?

Kropotkin

how much of our behavior or actions, the result of
deprivations of our needs? in other words, if we didn’t get enough
love, for example, then how much of our behavior and actions are
a result of us not getting enough love as children?

I suspect that much of our behavior and actions are driven
by deprivations in our childhood of certain needs and wants
that we had……………

and is our “philosophy” an attempt to meet those unfulfilled
needs and wants as children?

Kropotkin

and what of the critic who says, Kropotkin,
your “way” of turning everything into psychology means
that we have nothing solid to base our theories upon because
everything is psychologized including political theory,
history, economics and of course, philosophy…

We have no such thing as disciplines because
we have turned all disciplines into psychology…
and that is true to a certain extent anyway…
but and this is important to understand,
whereas everything is turned into psychology in
the beginning, it doesn’t end up as psychology…

let us understand the point of psychology…
we are trying to understand ourselves in terms
of actions and behavior with an understanding
of the psychologically drives and deprivations that
drive so much of our behavior…

In other words, if we cure ourselves of our psychological issues,
if we understand the forces and drives that lead to our actions
and behavior, then we have overcome, moved past those forces
and drives that dictate how we act and behave…

If I understand why I act the way I do or why I am driven to
do something, then I have overcome it, I have conquered it…
it no longer haunts me as some silent motivation that I don’t
know about or understand………I understand what that motivation
is and can overcome it by conscious decisions and actions…

let us say, for example, (this didn’t happen but is simply an
example of what would happen if this happened) for example,
I was molested as child… but I “forgot” or I drove it out of my mind
as too painful to bear as an adult, I have this tremendous weight on
my subconscious mind… it subconsciously drives all my actions even
though I am not consciously aware of it…If I become aware of it,
I can begin to do the work to overcome it…the key is to become aware
of the issue… a psychology issue that has plagued me and my actions
and behavior for a long time is resolved… I am free now…… I have cured
myself…as I am no longer bounded by this issue of the molestation,
I no longer am driven by unseen and unnoticed subconscious issues…
as I am no longer driven by this event, I have become aware of and
now in control of who I am and what are my possibilities…

the molestation has prevented me fully becoming aware
of who I was… I was a child molested and because I was not
aware of it, it had control over my actions… but because I am
now aware of it, now I am in control of my thoughts and my actions
and my behavior…

the question becomes what is next? and that is where because
we have cured ourselves we can begin the positive understanding
of who we are… we are no longer in the grips of the psychological
issues that plagued us and we can come to grips with the real philosophy
that we must engage with to become fully human…

that is not to say that being molested is the only psychological issue
that we are faced with, but the most obvious… we can have many
difficult and troubling issues psychological issues that we must face
and overcome to become ready to begin the process of real philosophical
progress……….to overcome our psychological issues is just the first step
toward being able to become who we are… the first step to being able
to understand life in a real philosophical way…………it begins with
the psychological but once we overcome that we can begin to
understand and overcome other issues like who are we and what
are our possibilities…….

the psychological is part of us, of that we cannot deny, but as we come
to an awareness and understanding it becomes a smaller and smaller
part of who we are… and it will never go away, but it can be processed
to become something we can manage or control…….and it as always, begins
with becoming aware… that is the start of everything… become aware…

everything is a process and that process never ends but it can be used to
allow progress in other area’s… we are simply a work in progress and the
progress/process goes on until the day we die…

Kropotkin

after several days of work ugliness, I’m baaaaaaack

The other day, the wife and I went to a museum on the Stanford campus called
the “Cantor Arts center” there was a temporary exhibit about the photo’s of
Andy Warhol… and, and in this museum there are several permanent
exhibits like Early European art Egyptian and Greek art and there was the
Rodin sculptures like “The Thinker” and indigenous American Art along with
African, Oceanic and Asian Art… so when you walked from room to room,
you often traveled thousands of miles and thousands of years…….

The first room we went into was the Warhol exhibit… photos taken
from roughly 1976 to his death in 1987… there were nudes, male and female,
and his famous Campbell soup photo’s along with shots of famous people…

then with a 10 second walk you were in a room with African Art, then
Oceanic Art in the next room… think of each type of art… and compare
that art with say, Egyptian Art or Greek Art which is quite well known…

so, what art or what time period would you think as “Art”?
and then compare that time period or Art, with say, mid 19 century
Art with its paintings of people standing in formal poses in their fine clothes…

Now think of the Mona Lisa… that is perhaps the most famous painting
in the world… but for most of human history, the Mona Lisa wouldn’t
have been considered Art, it was psychological too different from
the local art being created to be considered “ART”

Would, say African Artist of the mid 18 century be able to create the Mona Lisa?
No, but why? because the mindset of the African Artist is different then the mindset
of the artist of the early 1600’s when the Mona Lisa was painted…

We can compare and contrast the art of Africa and the art of the Renaissance
and we can see the completely and different mindset of the two places and
era’s…………

Art is not only the reflection of the Artist but an reflection of the time period
when the art was being created… Art gives us a sense of what matters enough
to be recorded by Artist…for we only record what matters to us……

If we look at Medieval art, we can see a sameness about that art, we can see
the same forces drove the artist in London as it did in Paris and as it did in Florence…
we see very similar art in all three cities with similar idea’s……… the mind set in all
three cities was roughly the same and this is reflected in the art produced in the middle ages…

A few years ago, the wife and I went to Europe and we went to all the museums,
and we saw a gazillion Madonna with child and they all look very similar, but
then art begin to change with the new thoughts, a new understanding of the universe
and art began to reflect those new thoughts and understanding…Art changed……
the Art produced reflects ever changing thoughts and understanding of the world
by the artist…think about the Art and think about how the nude picture was
at times acceptable and at other times, the nude wasn’t acceptable…….
the changing of morals lead to changes in art… recall the idea that the art
reflects what the artist or society believes to be important… you don’t paint
unimportant or useless things, but, but that is exactly what happened…
Artist began to paint everyday life of the “common” man…
we no longer see only the king or nobles being painted, we see
the average person on the street being painted… and this change is
a change in the thinking of the artist… where we see the “common” person
rise in importance, become more valuable in thought…we see the rise of
democracy in the arts first, then came the rise of the common man as reflected in
the economic or social or the political… the artist leads the way in seeing
the common man as becoming important…

Art has always reflected the understanding that the important
people of the world was to be reflected in the art…
in other words, think about the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”…
the two books were about important nobles or kings, the two books
weren’t about the common man as the common man was unimportant…
Art for thousands of years wasn’t about the common man, Art was about
the king or nobles or the gods… Art didn’t reflect any knowledge of
or understanding of the common man because the common human being
wasn’t valuable or worth understanding… only the great person was worth
art… and this state of affairs lasted for thousands of years……. the changes
in the political and social aspects of our lives changed the nature of art…
we now see the common people being represented in Art starting
after 1500 AD…… ….and this new representation in art is because of the massive
social and economic and political changes that start to sweep Europe

art reflects the social and political and economic thinking going on in the world…
we see this in the rise of the new art form, the Novel, in which we see that the
common man becomes the “star” of this new art form… the common man like
Tom Jones and Don Quixote become the new stars of this new vision of society…
Art reflects the changes in society… so what do we see when we begin to see
the new art of the 20th century, which actually began in the 1860’s… with
impressionism and leading us to the many new styles of the 20th century…
Post-impressionism, realism, Cubism, Surrealism, abstract, pop art, fauvism…
to list a few of the new art movements of the last 140 years……

think of the art and artist of the 20th century… Picasso, Warhol, Kahlo,
Matisse, Braque… think about the art they created…compare and contrast
the new art with the “Old” art after the Renaissance till 1860… the new movement
reflects the changes and how we understand human beings… we see human beings
being reflected in art as being abstract or without form… for example, look
at Duchamp, “Nude descending a staircase” done in 1912… this is how artist
see human beings now… we have become individual atoms, we have been
reduced and separated from each other into individual atoms with no connection
to society or each other… and that is reflected by the art that is being created……

from the poems to novels to paintings to sculpture, we have been atomized,
separated, alienated from each other… we no longer have a connection to
each other and that is reflected in our art… as we also are no longer connected
to our society or our government……and the art that is being created reflects
this change in how we are perceived and how we perceived others……….

art reflects the modern culture/society/economic and political
status which is the negation of modern man… art reflects the
modern nihilism which negates human beings…just as art shows
us the negation of human beings by showing us as in the “Nude descending the
staircase” that we have been negated socially and artistically……. art reflects this
negation of human beings through the way human beings are being artistically
shown…………in paintings, sculptures, novels, architecture and in music…

the ongoing negation of humans is reflected in today’s art…….

Kropotkin

we have a couple of different ways to understand things…

one: we can go from the universal to the individual…
we have forces such as gravity and evolution, the “clockwork” mechanisms
of nature and from those we deduce our individual status…

two: we can go from the individual to the universal…
I am Kropotkin and I am this, this, and this, and what that means is,
I am a human being with human needs and wants and desires…
because I am this way, it leads us to understand the universe this way…

the question has often been asked, how are we to understand such concepts
as freedom with so much of who we are is based upon universal forces such
as evolution and gravity and electromagnetism, the forces upon which
our universe is built upon… how are we to understand freedom given
we are bound by these forces that created the universe? how are we to be
free in a clockwork universe?

the other side of the equation is, how are we to find a home in a universe without
a solid base of operations? In other words, we are homeless right now given
our understanding of the universe where we are not the center of the universe,
where we are minor, at best, players in this immense universe where our actions
do not change or affect the universal forces that have created and still dominate
the way the universe functions………

we are bit players in our own lives… given the forces that are described by
Newton, Einstein, Marx, Smith, Freud… forces that are beyond our abilities
to affect or change… natural forces of gravity/evolution and social forces such
as capitalism and Marxism………forces that are also beyond our ability to change
is religious… we cannot understand or change the religious as described by
Jesus or Mohammed or the Buddha……

We live in a universe that is beyond our capabilities
to understand, little less to change or affect………

and that universe is a universe where we are homeless because we cannot, cannot
understand or change this universe… if you cannot understand or change something, you
are not at home with it… you can’t be…….

so those vast exclusive theories of Einstein or Marx or Jesus, also make us
homeless in those theories for we cannot exists in theories we cannot change or
understand… a theory of man as a greedy, selfish being is a theory we can be
at home with because we understand what it means to be greedy or selfish…

How are we to be free in a universe where we have no place in it?
How does man be free in a theory of forces that are beyond man’s ability
to either understand it and/or change it?

To say man, human beings exists in a universe where there is a god as defined
by the bible is to say, man has no home because he cannot understand god’s plan
for human beings and, and he cannot affect those plans……

the grand theories of human beings are also theories that deny, prevent
human beings from freedom and from being at home…….

think of modern science explanation of the beginning of the universe,
the big bang theory and think of how over time, the earth was created
and over billions of years, life was created and billions of years after life
was created, came man, human beings and we began as apes and after million
of years, we became human beings and we went from animal to human beings…

where in all of that, do you see freedom? where in all of that do you see choices
and possibilities of what we could be?

I was born into a society, the American society that had its dogma’s and
ideologies and I was indoctrinated into those dogma’s and ism’s and habits
and prejudices and superstitions…….where is my freedom given how I was
born into this dogmatic society that had certain beliefs that are given as
“certain” and “absolute”? How do we become who we are when we
are given dogma’s that are so indoctrinated into people, that to
even raise doubt about those dogma’s is to invite punishment…
if I doubt that America is the greatest country on earth, I am inviting
punishment, both from individuals and societal…

in other words forces like gravity are supposed to be like
the ideologies of America… infallible and certain and disagreement with
those ideologies leave one without a “home” and without any recourse to
freedom…of freedom of action…and, and freedom of thought…

how do I find freedom given the ism’s and ideologies of America
are no different then the forces of gravity and evolution… and to
find freedom in such ism’s and ideologies means to deny such ism’s
and ideologies… but why must I have to deny ism’s and ideologies
to be free? why can’t I be free and accept such ideologies and ism’s?

because the two, freedom on one hand and ism’s, ideologies, dogma’s
on the other hand, are incompatible because they demand different things…
freedom is the freedom of action and speech and ism’s and ideologies demand,
demand complete and absolute obedience to them…………

so do we engage in freedom or do we engage in obedience?
do we work toward freedom or do we engage in obedience to
our ism’ and ideologies/dogma’s?

that is the question…

Kropotkin

so given the above post, what is art?

Art is an attempt to escape the two dogma’s…
the necessity of such forces as gravity and evolution…
and the equally unfree forces of such ism’s and ideologies
of capitalism and Marxism and monarchy…

we have little or no room to be free given such boundries
as the forces of nature/gravity or evolution and we have little or no
room for freedom given the boundries of capitalism or Marxism…

Art is that in between the dogma’s of the natural/gravity/evolution and
the dogma’s of the social ism’s that dominate our society…

Kropotkin

or perhaps said another way, Newtonian laws of nature are
mechanical theories of nature, the clockwork theory of nature…
and the forces theory of Marxism is also a mechanical theory because
it doesn’t allow freedom of action… so how do we humans achieve
freedom in a mechanical understanding of the universe?

Kropotkin

we are not only caught by the forces of nature, gravity/evolution/electromagnetism…
and social forces such as Marxism and capitalism but we are caught by the forces
of human nature… greed, lust, love, hate, anger, despair…

so we have physical forces, mechanical forces and we have psychological
forces as in desires, wants… the forces that the Buddha and the Stoics
want us to overcome… recall that the Buddha want us to overcome
suffering which is caused by desires… we remove desires and we overcome
suffering which allows us to achieve salvation, becoming Buddha…

the nature of overcoming our desires, wants, is central to religions…
think of the christian religion…think of the 10 commandments…
thou shall not…

we human beings have a lot going on… we have many diverse
and different forces affecting who we are and our nature, past
present and future…and some of those forces are/exist in
past ism’s and ideologies, present ism’s and habits and future
expectations of ism’s and superstitions…

how are we to be “free” given all the various and diverse
forces affecting us?

how are we to find out who we are and what are our possibilities
given the many and diverse forces, mechanism’s working on us…

usually, we pick one or two forces, be it social or physical or psychological
and we try to overcome those small and isolated forces… when in fact,
we have several different and diverse forces working on us, all the time,
in time and space……… how do we choose what battles we are going to fight?

Kropotkin

in our thinking, we have certain things we want…
thus we can say and expect that if we search for
or expect certain things, we are “progressing”
so for example, the declaration of independence,

“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 are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness”

it has also been suggested that we seek certain things beyond
“the pursuit of happiness”… that we seek “god, freedom and immortality”
and that we seek understanding and that we seek wisdom or we seek
knowledge… and we can mix and match these pursuits. We can seek
some combination of happiness and wisdom or seek wisdom and knowledge
or we can seek beauty and truth… there are quite a few combinations of things
that has been suggested of things that we seek…

and the place to begin to understand is the place for example, philosophy
begins, which according to whom you read can be wonder as the Greeks list
it or in doubt as I and Socrates list it or in the pursuit of wisdom… which “value”
do we use to begin our pursuit of philosophy? wisdom, doubt, happiness,
certainty or some other value which is used to engage in our pursuit of…

but the problem is, as I see it, is the psychology issue… and what that means
is this… by virtue of the values/ism’s/ideologies, superstitions, habits, prejudice
we are raised with, we can have psychological issues…for example,
we know that in pursuing the ism of capitalism, the pursuit of profits/money
over human beings and their values, in people we cause such psychological issue
as alienation, discontentment, despair, anger and the negation of human beings
and their values… all of which causes psychological issues in human beings…
we must “cure” ourselves of our psychological issues before, before we can
engage in our pursuit of happiness or wisdom or certainty… in other words, we
cannot become happy or wise or certain until we cure ourselves of our
psychological issues…

there are many different reasons why, why we have psychological issues,
among my psychological issues are caused not only by the indoctrinations of
my childhood but by the handicap of my hearing loss… it has taken me years
to overcome the psychological issues of my hearing loss…I cannot become wise
until I have learn to overcome the physical loss of my hearing and this is an example of
the psychological issues that we human beings must learn to overcome before we
can pursue happiness or wisdom or knowledge or certainty…

we must “cure” ourselves before we can engage in our pursuit of anything…
this is why I say that we must deal with our psychological issues before we
can engage with the question of what values are we going to engage with, or
pursue………

that is why the psychological is so important…we cannot become wise
or happy or content or certain until we “heal” ourselves…….once
the psychological is dealt with, then and only then can we begin the process
of the pursuit of…… whatever……

Kropotkin

Sapere Aude: “dare to know”
is also loosely translated as “dare to be wise”
or perhaps even more loosely, “dare to think for yourself”

Now Kant used this as his motto… what he meant was that a person
was to think for themselves and not allow, as previous generations did,
to allow others to think for you… for example, authorities like Plato, the church,
documents like the bible……. Kant wanted a person to think for themselves
and become self directed… this self directed is very important to Kant…
we are supposed to be self directed which for Kant meant to obey one’s
personal duties… for Kant, above all other aspects, he believed in
following one’s own personal duties…for example, when he said this…

“Two things awe me most, the starry sky above
and the moral law within me”

that was about one taking ownership of their own personal duties…
and the Kantian idea of

“living your life as thou your every act were
to become a universal law”…

this too is about the duties that Kant felt were a part of every human’s life…

but this self direction… what direction was it to take?

for example, we are instructed to self direct ourselves toward
some goal, to be happy or to find wisdom or to gain knowledge
to be rich… to discover some self directed goal which is not
based on what authorities like Aristotle or the church or the bible,
meant for you to base as personal goals…we are to discover our
own personal directions or goals, to be self directed…

it is in this self direction that was the basis for what Kant wrote…

are you self directed or do you base your goals upon authorities
or upon the church or upon text like the bible?

now if you think about life in general, most of life is driven by
desires, wants, needs… as animals, we have drives, such as food, water, shelter, to procreate,
clothes and as human beings, we want to be social, we want love and to love,
we want freedom and some want security…… these needs are the higher needs
of being human… these drives are drives based on specific human needs
and not about the animal drives that all life has…

the forces of evolution has “created” in us, certain drives which allowed
the human species to grow and thrive…we are driven by evolution as human
beings to have certain inalienable drives…now some may differ as to what
those inalienable drives are… be it love or be it the search for god or be it
security or life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness………
we can call these drives, self directed drives… but I am not sure they
are self directed as much as evolutionary drives which are by their very
nature, uncontrollable… for example, the drive to procreate is a strong
and powerful human drive that drives much of human behavior and goals
and energy…… much of what we do is based on this evolutionary drive we
have little or no control over…………we cannot count this as being self directed…

so what Kant is saying is that the search for freedom is one such self directed
goal which can be the basis of our actions and behaviors and energy…

we can have other drivers of behaviors and actions and we have mentioned
some of them, security and love and being social are all possible drives we
humans have…

personally, I have a drive for understanding and wisdom… my drive used
to be for knowledge but I learned that knowledge is not necessarily
the basis for wisdom… we can know things, have knowledge and still not
be wise… we can have understanding which is different then knowledge…….
and I want to understand and have wisdom…

at my age when most people are just sitting around and watching tv, I am
spending my days reading and studying philosophy in hopes of some day,
perhaps, maybe I might become just a little bit wiser and have some more
understanding… I am self directed… to achieve a goal which most people
attempt, if at all, when they are much, much younger……. old people like me
are suppose to be past such nonsense like philosophy… but here I am…
and here I shall remain…… for I am driven to pursue wisdom and understanding…

so when asked, what are you driven to do?

when challenged to “Sapere Aude”… dare to know…

what do you dare to know?

do you dare to be wise?

do you dare to think for yourself?

what have you self directed yourself to do?

Kropotkin