a new understanding of today, time and space.

How to be “saved”?

How to find “salvation” in our modern world?

I think we have to deal with what we know, know to be true…

I am life… life is transitory…I am transitory… I will live for
a relatively short period of time and then I die… pure and simple…

my existence will be of short duration…….

but the cells, the atoms within my body, have existed since the beginning of time
and will continue to exist long after this current form of being human, my
next existence will compose of many, many different living creatures……
as my current atoms, cells will decompose into something else and my individual
cells, atoms will take different forms, dog or cat or bird or bee or something else
entirely……

we exist within forces that limit or control who we are…
we have natural forces which limit us, gravity, evolution, chemistry…
we also have forces in ism’s and ideologies that also limit us…
we are encased within such ideologies as religion, capitalism,
communism and as we are encased, we exist without any
recourse or voice in or ability to change those forces that
dominate us………we have no say in capitalism because
we are determined by “the invisible hand of god”
which is the market forces outside of our control and we
have no say about those market forces……….

so, how do we understand the “now what” given
this understanding of these forces which give us no control over
or no say about them……

we must work within the very narrow limits of what is left after
the forces that are, limit our actions…….

for example, we exist within the market forces of capitalism which
don’t allow us much room for freedom or action given we are determined
by those market forces…….

I can say no, no to those market forces and not allow myself to be
a victim of capitalism but that leaves me to a very short and miserable
existence as I cannot survive on my own… I cannot control my existence,
to clothe and feed and house myself outside of the forces of capitalism…

to do so is death… and the main rule of existence is “thou shall do whatever
it takes to survive”……. that is a rule of evolution that has been
written into our very DNA… the very fabric of who we are is
written by the forces of evolution… the rules which we cannot
disobey without direct and immediate consequences…
we must eat and we must drink water and we must sleep
and we must release body waste and we must have contact
with other human beings… these rules, these forces of evolution,
we must obey them… we have no choice…so can I be “saved”
from these rules or commands of evolution? no, we cannot change
these rules from the force of evolution………. so, to be able to
understand what is possible in regards to being “saved”
from the forces that dominate our lives, we must also understand
what we can or cannot change…

I am a transitory being who has to follow certain forces, the force of
gravity… I cannot change as I cannot change the rules of evolution…
I am forced by these other forces to have limited ability to change…
I cannot change my need to eat as I cannot change the force of
gravity… so what can I change?

these forces which dictate what are our possible actions or reactions,
what can we have control over or have any say about in regards to these
forces?

we cannot change the natural forces that dictate who we are, gravity and
evolution and the circling of the stars… but we can change the ism’s
and ideologies that dictate our lives but I cannot change those isms’ and
ideologies by myself… that is the next lesson to be learned… the forces that
dictate or dominate like capitalism and communism and religion, I cannot
change or have any say over them as one solitary individual……

it takes millions of people to effect change in those forces like
capitalism or communism…….or religion………….

as individual people we cannot change the forces of the world that
hold us hostage… but we can try to convince millions of others to
change… and therein lies another possibility to be “saved”…

the coordination of millions of people… we can be “saved” with the
collective actions of millions in changing those ism’s and ideologies
that have us having no say or control in our lives………

now I am the first to admit that what I have offered has
many difficulties… but that is the point of being saved…if it
was easy, everyone would do it……….

so how are we to be “saved” from the forces which dominate our lives?

Kropotkin

let us take a deeper, more in depth look at a particular
ism… capitalism………

I have already noted that capitalism negates, promotes nihilism
because it negates humans and their values in the pursuit of profits…

now let us look at this new picture of capitalism that I have presented…

we have no say or cannot affect capitalism because capitalism is about
those market forces “the hand of god” and these market forces determines
our fate, not our own actions… the market forces can “determine”
or decide that I am no longer useful as a checker, the CEO then
based on market forces, the loss of profits, decides to downsize
the number of people employed by the business… the CEO reduces
operating costs which is “dictated” by market forces… this reduction
is purely done by “market forces”… impersonal forces over which I have
no control over, I have no say over, and I cannot affect… I can call this
nihilism because it negates human beings and their values based on
forces I have no control over and have no say over……

we see that capitalism is, in its very nature, nihilistic…
if we have no say over something and have no control over
something and cannot affect it, it is by its very nature, nihilistic…

so let us continue this…… let us take this notion of religion…

we have, by common consent, god and god is supposed to
have a plan… the second coming is part of the plan and
the apocalypse is also part of this plan… a plan in which we
have no say over and no control over and we cannot affect it…
all we can do is say, yes or no, to some belief in god and jesus…
and by doing so, we are “saved”…if this is true, then it is irrelevant
what I do or think or say… the second coming is a-coming and the
apocalypse is a-coming………. and if I have no say over and cannot
change it, it negates anything I say or do…because what I say or do,
is irrelevant………. I am negated and anything that negates or devalues
human beings and their values is nihilistic…

so religion negates me and my values… as does capitalism…
as does communism as does any ism or ideology that I cannot control
or affect or have any say over………

so, as I always say, now what?

now what?

ummmmmmm,

Kropotkin

one of the noticeable things about life is the ways
we exist in conflict… I will give some small examples which
can be extended to large things… I may want to have lunch at a pizza place
and my wife wants to have lunch at an sushi place… as we have been together
for over 25 years, we can easily resolved this conflict in the usual way,
we go to the sushi place, ummmmmmmmm…yah…anyway…

not all conflicts are so easily handled… one person wants, desires, something
and another person wants or desires something else and we have some conflict over
whose desires and wants gets met………this is the very nature of human conflict…
one person/group/nation wants or desires something and another person/group/nation
either has it but doesn’t want to give it up or their wants and desires clash in some
fashion…

the very essence of conflict lies within those inner wants and needs and desires
that the human beings are attempting to fulfill in some manner or fashion…

the fulfillment of wants/needs/desires is the basis of conflict……. so to avoid
conflict, do we attempt to follow ascetic and deny and reign in our wants
and desires and needs? that path is a very attractive route, but has it succeeded?

I would say no, if you read the accounts of the ascetics of the Medieval period who
went into the desert and tried to control their urges, they suffered
and had conflicts within themselves during their entire ascetic journey…

even the Buddha tried the ascetic route and turned away from it as being
unsuccessful…… the entire Christian philosophy centers itself around
this idea of asceticism, of denying oneself the pleasures of the flesh…
and you cannot call this call to asceticism by any means to be successful…

so, the answer seems to lie in another fashion… how do we limit conflicts
by somehow handling our wants, needs or desires?

as I have gotten older, I have found myself in less conflict with others because
my wants and desires and needs have grown less…… the passion of youth is
far less in me as I have grown older and with less passion comes less conflict…

but I certainly cannot expect the fire and fury of youth to be contained by any
such lessening of those passions…… so, perhaps the answer is correctly
given by Nietzsche………… we spend our youth fulfilling our passions, we
quench our fires and passion in our youth by answering our wants and desires
and needs…………….the Greeks found this to be an answer in their Dionysian
rites…the set program of holidays in which the people found release in
Dionysian or the excessive and out of control actions of the people………
you find release and you return to being in control…and being in control
is Apollonian… which is harmony, being in control, math and science,
we see in this dichotomy a possible solution to our problem of how do
we solve this question of conflict…………

human beings have energy and the key question, and perhaps the most
important question of being human, is this, how do we engage
in our energy? upon what do we use this energy?.. how do we engage
in our energy which is found in wants/needs/desires among other places?

as I have gotten older, I have less energy and thus the reason I cause
less conflict is I have less energy…… but we cannot expect people to
voluntarily lessen or remove that energy… we need that energy as
a people, as a society, as a nation…… the question becomes, where
do we direct that energy? it could be said that war was created so that
society can direct that energy into useful and beneficial ways for society……

that energy of fire and passion that drives people must be dwelt with in
some fashion and turning it into an a self-denial or asceticism will not
work as evidenced by the many who have traveled down that path…

if we find an answer to this question, we find the answer to this question
of how do we handle conflicts.

or to answer this another way, the Christian solution to conflicts
by asceticism cannot work… so we reject the Christian solution
and try to find another solution……….

this question of conflict resolution is a critical one in our modern day
and age………………

and what is the answer?

Kropotkin

well, its been a while since I posted and want you all to know
that I haven’t pulled a James like disappearance…in the last two
weeks, I was sick for several days with some sort of cold/flu that
has been going around… and it is impossible to think when one
is busy coughing or praying for death because you feel terrible…
then I got transfered to another store which is quite a ways away…
and all the shifts I’ve gotten have been during the hours I normally
write…I haven’t gotten any reading or thinking or writing done
in the last few weeks… and it bothers me, a lot… I realize I need
to keep doing my studies and thinking about what it means to be
human… not for you, but for me…I feel better when I am
working on such philosophical matters…

I hope to be writing again soon and regularly…

Kropotkin

Wishing you well. You do a good impression of James!

After a solid two weeks of not posting, I’mmmmm back…
finally a day off with nothing to do…

I am still engaged in thinking about what it means to be human…

This question of what it means to be a human being in March of 2019,
and of being American and white and male…

I recall my Descartes… about his demon and his quest to create
certainity in what knowledge we can have… I cannot see how
Descartes “Cogito, ergo sum” “I think, therefor I am” reflects who
I am… the “Cogito” has no relevance for me in 2019…for this question
of the boundries of human knowledge isn’t relevant for me…
the question is “what does it mean to be human in 2019”

Much of the questions of philosophy has no relevance for me…
the logical positivism of the 20th century has no relevance for me…
because logical positivism is mostly a theory of knowledge and finding
the limits of knowledge doesn’t lead me anywhere…I might find the limit
of my knowledge and… then what? it doesn’t tell me what is possible for me…

I think of the average person in the middle ages and I see that the “role”
they held was the only possibility for most people… in other words,
if someone was born a shoemaker, that was the only possibility for that
person… there were very little possibility or mechanism for that person to
become something other then a shoemaker… If I was born a shoemaker in
1372, what were my possibilities? There was few opportunities for me to “become”
something else… if I showed talent, I might, might be able to go to school,
a theological university which was the only educational opportunity one might have…
I would train to become a priest and that was the only real way I had to
become something other then a shoemaker…

This is important to understand because today we have dozens of ways to
change our possibilities… from education to Art to sports to the political,
we can change our possibilities……

but these possibilities are limited within certain boundaries……
the theory of modern society suggest that we can become anything
we want but the reality is we cannot… we are limited in our possibilities…
and not just by our abilities…I didn’t go to collage and that fact alone
limits my possibilities… I am handicap which also limits my possibilities…
I am lower middle class which is another boundary… with no chance of
rising into a higher middle class rank……… I am fixed economically where
I am… I can go lower but I can’t get higher… so economically, I am limited…

How else can I achieve my possibilities? It is by understanding that
that we are social creatures… we find our possibilities, not economic,
by our actions and interactions with others… I can see by my interactions
with others if I am nice or mean or vain or smart or witty……. in other words,
we can see our interactions with others as another aspect of our possibilities…

It is in our engagement with others that we can find our possibilities…
which is to suggest that we have two levels of possibilities… we
have an outer possibility of economic or political or social growth…
and, and we have an inner possibility of growth… which is to say,
we have the possibilities of becoming who we are…I can become the
possibility of becoming nice or being kind or being funny or any combination of
all three…it is my inner becoming that is within the grasp of our possibilities…

I can also do so by my engaging in values… I can engage with the value of love
or with justice or with honor or happiness… and in my engagement with
the chosen value that I find my possibilities………

it is within the inner value that creates my outer possibilities…
in my engagement with the value of justice that gives me my
outer possibilities…I can engage with society not as a shoemaker or
a clerk or as a man but as someone who values justice and holds justice
as their primary value…in other words, I judge and understand the
universe in terms of my chosen value which is justice…

I see the universe through the value of justice and everything reflects
in and through that value to me…my possibilities are understood
in terms of justice…am I being just to my friends or am I being treated
justly at work or is society treating me with justice?

we can replace the value of justice with any other value and the sentence
will still ring true… am I treating my friends with love or am I being treated
with love at work or is society treating me with love?
the truth or strength of a value is that it is capable of having multiple
uses… we can act with truth or justice or love in several different
capacities be it work or home or society…

I can find my human possibility through my chosen value…

I exist within the human construct of capitalism but I don’t have
to find my value or my possibilities within capitalism…I can find out
who I am without resort to understanding my place within the capitalism
system…I am separate, apart from my place in the capitalist system…
it doesn’t define who I am… whereas the man in the middle ages couldn’t
define himself apart from the system he existed in, which was Feudalism…

but our society wants us to define ourselves within the terms of
capitalism, I am a worker, I am a producer, I buy things and I make things…
and I am lower middle class… all of these terms are used to define ourselves but
we don’t have to identify ourselves this way… which has the point of intellectual
history since the Renaissance… freeing ourselves from being defined within
certain specific parameters…by freeing ourselves from being defined by
authority or the church or the state… the classical statement of the
Enlightenment which is to free ourselves from the authority of the church
or the state or Aristotle…… that was the goal of the enlightenment…to
find a way to define themselves without resort to the authorities of the past…

we can define ourselves in terms of our chosen value/values……

so the question exists, how do we choose our value through which we define
ourselves? why this value instead of another value? do we choose values based
on the authority of the past? or do we find our values and live our values
as the enlightenment suggests, through our own efforts?

I have left a whole slew or range of possibilities off to the side to
work out the problem we need to solve…….

how are we to define ourselves and what method or possibilities do we
use to define ourselves?

Kropotkin

in light of our understanding or our ability to define ourselves lies
Aristotle or Kant’s categories…

so Aristotle used his idea of categories as a tool in which we can
define ourselves or understand ourselves in light of the chosen
categories…so in other words, we define ourselves in light
of the chosen categories…

the Aristotle categories are:

Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, date, posture, state,
action, passion…and we define ourselves within those categories…
I exist as a possiblity within those given categories of quality or place or date
or passion or state…

the categories are a means of understanding or defining ourselves…
we see ourselves in terms of those categories…

Kant also had categories in which we must identify or understand
or define ourselves within…

his categories are:

Quantity: unity, plurality, totality…

quality: reality, negation, limitation…

relation:
inherence, substance/ which is substance and accident…
causality and depence/which is cause and effect…
community: reciprocity

Modality: possibility, existence, necessity…

For Kant, we understand ourselves, define ourselves in terms of
these categories… but the list seems to be very limited and the list
doesn’t really give us all our possibilities, our choices…

for example, where would ART exist in this list? where does the
existential question of, why am I here, belong on Kant’s list?
or what values should I choose, where does that belong in Kant’s list?

In fact, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of “what should I hope for?”
or “what should I believe in”? or “what value/values should I hold”?
or “what should we expend our energy upon”? where do they fit
in Kant’s categories?

I cannot define myself using Kant’s or Aristotle categories because
the categories themselves fail to encompass what it means to be human
or to be able to define what it means to be human…

in fact, the very idea of the ancient idea of how one defines themself
is rather limited… take the medieval idea of defining ourselves in terms
of our relationship to the state/church or to where we stand in relations
to god…we cannot understand ourselves in light of a limited
viewpoints such as “what is my relationship to the Catholic church”?

it is part of, but not the entire “method” of understanding or defining
ourselves……. no matter how broad of a category one might create to
define or understand ourselves, we somehow manage to expand beyond
that category… I am more then the sum of my parts and that is
the unspoken trouble child of understanding or defining who I am…

No matter how large a set I create to define a human being,
there is some aspect of being human that lies outside of that set…
and that makes understanding or defining what is a human being
so hard………. we can never properly establish a set large enough
to encompass everything it means to be human… for example,
ART… it is just another means in which we understand or define what it
means to be human…but ART as with any set, is unable to create a set large
enough to be able to allow us to understand or define what it means to be human…

so what does it mean to be human?

or how are we to understand or define what it means to be human?

Kropotkin

let us think about what we do know and what we don’t know…

We know that we humans, are transitory, temporary beings…
we are finite…

we know that we are matter, which means we are also energy…

we share both these traits with everything in the universe…

we know the universe is transitory and we know that the universe is also
made up of matter which means the universe is also energy……

one might ask, what about space and time? what can we know about them?

well, we know that time itself will end at some point in the future in billions of years…

and we know that space is some form of matter because it bends………

space is flexible and bends so it is something… we just don’t know what

and we know light bends……. so it is something……

and that means that space and light are matter and energy…thus they are
like all other matter in the universe…………

but matter is only a small percentage of the known mass in the universe……

we think that dark matter and dark energy is the bulk of the universe……

we think… but we don’t know thus we can only guess and that is not
our goal today… we are only talking about things we know……

everything we do is transitory… our words, our buildings, our ART,
if it is made or done by humans, it is transitory………

as living matter, we are a product of evolution…

we are determined by evolution to have certain processes which we
cannot exists outside of ………….

thus we must exists within certain parameters…… we must eat
and we must drink water and we must breath and we must sleep
and we must remove excess waste and we procreate and
and we must have feedback loops to inform us of what is going on in
our bodies and environment and we are finite…….

these facts are the same for everything biological in the universe…

for everything biological must exists with certain processes in place for
the biological matter to exist………

these are the things we know

let us begin our work on things we do not know…….
that which is anything metaphysical… beyond the physical…
we cannot know anything beyond the physical…….thus we
cannot know if there is a god or heaven or hell or angels………

we cannot know if there is an immortal soul…

we cannot know anything outside of what we experience and what our
senses can tell us……

as we exist with certain properties that is shared by all matter and energy,
we can make reasonable guesses as to the nature of the universe because
we share those traits with the universe………….

now the living matter in the universe may be quite different from what
we understand to be life, but it must follow certain rules as all life must
follow certain rules to be life…….as you understand how there are many
different types of dogs and all those dogs look so very different but dogs
must follow certain rules to be dogs and if they don’t follow those rules, they
are not dogs… they are something else……… but dogs are still living matter
and as such, doges must follow the rules of existence which is existence is finite,
temporary…and matter is both matter and energy……….

thus we have the basis for all philosophy…… matter is finite/temporary…
and matter is both matter and energy………here begins our understanding of
what it means to be human… that we must follow certain rules to
be considered human……

now what is the next step?

how do we make the next understanding of what it means to be human?

Kropotkin

ok, so we understand that we human beings are matter/energy.

we have energy… so the question becomes, how or in what way do we use
that energy? We have noted that in the past, say during the long period
of the hunter/gatherer stage of human existence, our energy was
dedicated toward procuring the necessary items for our continued
existence, thus we spend energy on gathering food, clothing, shelter,
educating the young so they knew what to do to surviving… in fact,
anything we do, we must expend energy to do that anything…
so the gathering of and expending energy is one of the primary
functions of human existence… even such a task as sleeping
requires energy to do so………. so one of the key questions of
human existence is this question of energy…….

how are we to gather the energy we need and what are going to
expend that energy on?

so think of human existence as a question of energy expenditure…
how we get it and what do we spend it on?

so far we haven’t gotten to any questions of values or anything besides the basics,
but now we reach the point of the questions of values… for it is values that
help us make our choices as to what should we spend our energy on…

we can spend energy on creating ART or we can wage war or we can dance the
night away… the choice in being human is what are we to spend our energy on…
and values help us decide or determine what we should spend our energy on…

I am old… I have far less energy then I used to have… so I can use my off days
watching TV or going to movies or to reading or to doing what I am doing right now…

I have limited energy, so I must expend my energy carefully, with real thought behind it…

when I was young, I could waste my energy because it didn’t matter, I had plenty of
energy to fuel me… I could be inefficient and wasteful with my energy… it didn’t matter…

so when we think in terms of energy, we cannot allow ourselves to focus exclusively
on energy to fuel our cars or home or airplanes… we must engage with
an understanding of we humans are energy and plenty of it…… so how are we to
spend that energy? sending kids to war is a wasteful and inefficient way of spending
their energy… we must be smart in how we are to use our energy, both
our mechanical and our biological energy…as with anything, energy
in the form of tree’s and oil is limited… but other matter has energy…
we can discover new ways to convert matter into energy…
for any matter can be converted into energy… we just have to
figure out how…but because there is no loss in either matter or energy
in the universe, we really have a source of energy as long as there is matter
in the universe. we can turn anything into energy……. we just have to make sure
it is not a finite resource that we are converting…if we can convert water into
energy, that is great however when we run out of water, we then have some
serious issues……. but the overall amount of energy/matter in the universe
never changes…… that is the point… and we must use this knowledge to
our benefit…….

so human existence is a question of energy and how are we to spend that energy?

Kropotkin

One of the pursuits of philosophy has been
pursuit of the basic principle of the universe…

what is the driving, basic principle that makes up our universe?

that basic, driving force is energy/matter…….

we have answered one of the primary questions in early philosophy…
the universal that is everything is energy/matter…… that is the basic
principle of the universe…….

for their is nothing on the other side of energy/matter…

it cannot be reduced into something else… this conversion
of energy into matter and matter into energy is the most basic
and fundamental principle of the universe… everything begins
and ends here……

now the question becomes, does energy have a goal?
does matter have a goal to achieve or is energy/matter directionless?

if we look at the forces of the universe, gravitation, electromagnetism,
weak interaction and the strong interaction… we see that they are not directed.
they simple act without foresight or understanding of cause or effect……

they simple are…

to assume that the energy/matter in the universe is directed is to assume
something that we cannot know…… how do we connect this directionless
energy of the four forces in the universe into our understanding of what it means
to be human?

as evolution is a force, just as gravity is a force, we see that evolution has
harnessed energy into us… we have energy because we are living matter…
and to be living matter is to be energy… evolution simply took that energy
and did something with it… evolution is directionless but it always uses
energy to maintain the forms that matter takes…to study evolution is
really the study of historical form living matter took…dinosaurs
are just energy taking form and all that life that existed before humans…
that was simply energy taking form…… and there was no design or purpose
to the form that energy took… it simply is nothing more then a formula…

take time, billions of years and add energy/matter and
and life will take hold…even inhospitable environment’s can
support some form of life even if it is a single cell organism.

it took over 4 billions years for human beings to be created on planet earth…
it is not a fast process… and given its nature, it is not an efficient process…
for energy by not being directed is not a efficient process…… but we can direct
our energy… and that separates us from the animals, we can direct what
we spend our energy to and we understand how energy works…it is this
question of energy that separates us from all other life…… we can combine
our energy and achieve goals such as the building of houses or the creation
of ART or whatever…

the question of the state, of government is a simple one, how are we going to
direct our collective energy? on what are we going to use our energy for?

here comes the question of values… for values direct the use of our energy…………

are we to use our energy to gain positive goals or are we going to use our energy
on negative goals? love is a positive energy and hate is a negative energy
and greed is an negative energy……. and hope is a positive energy………

our values helps us decide on what goals we shall achieve using our energy……

so the question of life is simply a question of what are we spending our energy on?

so the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of, what am I to do? What shall I hope for?
what may I hope for? what values should we hold? are really questions of
how are we to use our energy… to what purpose are we going to use our personal
and collective energy on?

and energy has a personal and a collective usage…… so how are we going to
collectively use our collective energy… is really the question the state faces.

upon what are we going to use our energy on?

and the list is open, far and wide… we can expend energy on
eliminating poverty or going into space or we can use our energy on wasteful,
inefficient projects like war or hate………the choice we have as human
beings is really a question of what are we spending our energy on…

Kropotkin

In the beginning was energy…….

in that statement lies everything we need to know……

that the universe was created as energy…………

and energy can be converted into matter and matter into energy…

and all the mass of the universe that the universe began with, the
universe will end with…

here begins our next idea which is entropy: 1. a thermodynamic quantity
representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion
into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder and
randomness in the system…2. a lack of order or predictability;
a gradual decline into disorder…

the same amount of energy/mass exists in our universe, but
the energy in the universe dissipates… it doesn’t change the amount
of mass in the universe but it simply bleeds off…and it bleeds off
in a random manner… there is no rule by which we can predict
the amount of dissipation in any mass… as I grow older,
I don’t have the energy I once had and that is entropy… a random loss
of energy which has dissipated…I know I know I cannot eat as much food
as I used to eat… In my running days, I could eat two large pizza’s and
wonder what was for dinner… these days, I might be able to eat a
potato and be full… I am taking in far less energy these days and it
shows in my outtake of energy…One needs energy to have energy…

the intake and outtake of energy is roughly even… if the outtake of energy
is more then the intake, we lose weight and if the intake is more then the outtake,
then we gain weight… so the mass we eat and the mass we lose must be roughly
even… it is a formula… A = A…and that is why your weight remains roughly
the same over the years…the intake and outtake are roughly even…

but as my entropy continues, I shall continue to lose energy as I age…
that is what old age is, the natural loss of energy……

every question of existence begins and ends as questions of energy/matter/mass…

the question of the state… the government is one of energy…how are we
to expend the energy we have as a people and mechanically……

the conservative and liberal question of the value of the state must now
be understood as questions of energy/matter…

how does the liberal idea fit into the energy/matter use of the universe?

how does the conservative idea fit into the energy/matter use of the universe?

Kropotkin

when understood what we see is this:

the universe is energy and the forms we see cows, cars, dogs, stars,
water, TV sets are all just energy in different forms… we mistake the
different forms for being something different but the reality is every form,
matter we see is simply a different arrangement of energy…

looking past the forms, we see energy and there is nothing past the energy…

Kropotkin

I have stated that emotions are energy…so we have
emotions like love and hate and anger and greed… I have labeled
these emotions either negative or positive…… now we must ask,
what makes an emotion like love positive and worth pursuing
and a emotion like hate a negative emotion and not worth pursuing…

emotions are energy… and love is an energy and take love and see
what it does to people… it energizes them, it empowers people,
love builds and creates… walk into a place with love and it
has a certain energy to it… a energy which builds into something…

now let us look at a negative energy… hate… hate is another energy
but hate reduces energy, hate dulls energy, hate nullifies energy……

walk into a retail store and “feel” the energy of the store…
feel the energy of the employees… if the store employees
are hopeful and full of positive energy, one can feel it… you can tell…

walk into my store and you have negative energy because the employees
have no hope, no positive energy, no love…it is a rather depressing
store to go into because it has so little energy and why? Because the employee’s
have lost hope, faith, energy in what they are doing…

look at the energy level of the people of the United States…
and the people with hope, love, the positive energy are the ones
who have energy… IQ45 is a low energy guy because he promotes low
energy values like hate and anger and greed…the United States had more
energy during the Obama years because he promoted positive values like hope
and love…

because human beings are energy, we are very aware of energy…
we are susceptible to the energy people put out and positive energy people
we react positively because high energy builds us, allows us to rise, high energy
rises and grows into something bigger all around us…I have been in
positive crowds and I have been in low energy crowds and the feeling
was different and quite noticeable…you have a boost of energy in a high
energy crowd and your energy is lowered in a low energy crowd……… we feed off
of this energy…… human beings quite literally feed off of energy… remember
we eat matter in which we get energy… and we are matter/energy……

and that is what America needs now… a boost of energy in the form of
positive energy…… we need to increase our intake of positive energy
and we will feel better about ourselves and about America………

Kropotkin

Now what does this mean?

we are the same material as the universe, matter/energy.

we human beings are the same, matter and energy.

And as matter/energy, we have the same needs and same wants
and same desires…… It becomes a matter of degree’s… some
need love a bit more then others and some need to feed a bit more then
others and some need to control a bit more then others, but the same
needs and wants and desires that exists in me, exists in you and in everyone…

the question becomes, if we all have needs and wants and desires, how do
we approach that? In other words, the formation of the state is simply
a means for us to achieve our needs, wants and desires without infringing
on the rights of other? If we want order and stability in our society,
we cannot act upon our impulses, impulses are simply needs, wants and desires,
for society to function, we must control our impulses. To think of a society
where we are unfettered in our attempting to achieve our needs, wants
and desires is to think of Hobbes original society…where it is every
person against every other person and “Life is nasty, short and brutish”.

this question of how are we supposed to answer our needs and wants
and desires without destroying the society we live in, may be the primary
question we humans face. Needs, wants and desires must be directed
toward some objective that doesn’t also damage society. We must be able
to have some means to achieve our needs, wants and desires but remain within
the framework of maintaining society. Now most theories of doing so are theories
of sacrifice, of renunciation, of asceticism, theories which try to deny those
needs, wants and desires. And to a certain degree, we must sacrifice who we
are to maintain order and stability within every organization we are part of, but
renunciation is not a action we can maintain and hold. Renunciation cannot
be a way of life, it must be a part of, but not the key factor in our life.

One of the key questions of life is this, how do we deal with our needs, wants
and desires that exist within us?

It could be properly said, that a human being is simply a creature that
makes it needs, wants and desires,a primary goal in its life.

Now one of the things to understand is we often desire and pursue
things that are harmful and detrimental to us… we pursue such harmful
things as related to our negative instincts. We pursue and expend energy
on such things as hate, anger, greed, lust… negative instincts…

but what we should be doing is pursuing positive instincts, love,
hope, peace, justice… we should be expending energy on matters that
are beneficial and help us, not destroy us.

we must become aware of and understanding why we must pursue positive
goals, wants, desires and needs. Again, it becomes a question of energy.
Positive goals create positive energy, we can expand and build upon
positive energy like love and hope and justice… negative energy like
hate and anger and greed decreases the amount of energy a person has.
when we are angry, we cannot build upon or expand upon that energy.
It can only destroy, not build and that is the problem with negative energy.

so the next aspect of society/the political is to make the pursuit of positive
energy to be a desired goal. And to a certain degree, society/state does that,
but the society/state also, to a certain extent, promotes the negative,
anger, hate, greed and lust. The materialism of our modern age is a
negative pursuit, buy our goods and become more popular or sexier or
more desirable. This materialism is built upon our negative instincts of
greed and lust among others. In other words, this pursuit of materialism
is another form of society trying to get its individual members to expand
energy on something. But it is a wasted goal to expend energy on such
negative instincts because it can never fully satisfy our needs, wants and
desires because we always want, need and desire more and more and more…
Materialism is really just another addiction like drugs and booze and gambling…
and it is a convenient addiction for society because it allows powerful
and wealthy individuals to become even more powerful and wealthier
because they hold the means of production… they own the businesses that
are tied into this addiction of materialism. YOU want people to become addicted
to your products because they will buy more and more and more…
Just like a drug dealer, you need people to be addicted to your product,
be it material goods like cars and TV sets or even be addicted to the
concept of materialism… recall what the Bush jr. said after 9/11 in
response to a question about what people should do?

He said, “people should go out and buy stuff”.

Yep, he said that. a good drug dealer he is. Keep the people addicted to your
product…

so what is the answer? we must become aware of the dangers of our materialism
and our futile attempt to feed our needs and wants and desires with materialism.

We must begin a reevaluation of what is our needs, wants and desires…
in truth, we really don’t need that much. we can happily survive with very little
and that is the answer of the mystics and the religious… be happy without
materialism because that materialism isn’t important and it isn’t that
important. and we must redo society and the state to address this question
of what is truly important… and thus we have Marx and his ilk……

you can understand political and social theory better if you think about
this question of how are we to achieve our goal of meeting our needs, wants
and desires without disrupting society…………

Kropotkin

this question of needs, wants and desires are place into
context when understood in our current, 2019, time…

we see what our unfettered attempts to feed our needs, wants and
desires have done… we have seen both the large scale damage,
climate change and world wide pollution and the massive extinction
event that has occurred during our watch…….to our small scale damage
done to our souls…we cannot however much we try answer or fulfill
our wants, needs or desires…I just filled a need by eating dinner, steak
actually, but that need will need to be filled again in the morning and again
during lunch and again and again and again, for the duration of my life…

Have you ever heard of a person who had sex once and said, yep, I’m good,
my needs and desires have been filled?

nope, the desires of food, fame, fortune, booze are never filled or sated…

for people, filling a need or want or desire is not a one time thing, it is an ongoing
lifetime thing…just as we need to evaluate our quest to become who we are,
we need to evaluate our needs and wants and desires… why do I want
that person or why do I “need” to attempt to make as much money as I possibly
can… why do I want to be a millionaire or why do I want to be famous?

we can only begin to understand ourselves if we not only become aware
of ourselves intellectually but within our needs and wants and desires…

we are driven by our needs and wants and desires and perhaps it is time we
understand that driven behavior of needs, wants and desires…

It is not enough to say, “evolution made me do it” for we are the sole
creatures of matter and energy that can override our evolutionary
demands within us…….we can act outside of our evolutionary DNA, the
code that dictates who we are and what is possible for us… we can say no to
the evolutionary demand or we can say yes to becoming something new…

that is the true nature of being human… we can rise above our evolutionary
coding and be something else besides our coding…….

no other animal, that we know of, can do that…….a dog must act like
a dog and a cat can only act like a cat and cows must be cows but human
beings, we can override our coding and become something else……

all animals have a fight or flight coding in them… it is evolutionary coding
that allows animals to survive another day but we humans, if we are strong
enough, we can override our fight or flight coding and do something different…

we can overcome who we are, within our genetic coding, and become more human…
which means we can overcome our coding… we can rise above our coding……
that is what it means to overcome our coding…… we are determined by evolution
to be a creature we call human beings… our coding determines who we are
but we can overcome that coding……. we can rise above the coding of
hate, anger, greed, lust…… we can recode ourselves to hold as our values
love, peace, justice, hope……………it is hard to rewrite our coding, but the
people who have counted for something, Gandhi and Jesus and MLK
and Mohammed have all given us the tools to overcome our evolutionary coding…

it is easy to just say, no, I can’t overcome my genetic coding and I will simply
be what my codes say I am to be… but the great ones have shown us
the way to overcome our base coding, the way to be more then just a
another determined (genetically) animal…to be human, to be fully human
we have to rise above our genetic and evolutionary coding………

that is the path to being human… rising above our genetic coding……

and we see by following our genetic coding of greed and lust and anger,
we have damage both ourselves and our environment… to overcome the
damage we have done to both ourselves and our environment, we must
rise above our coding and become who we are, not just animals that follow
our genetic coding, but human beings that is matter and energy and all that
that means… which is we accept our place in the universe as part of the
great universe, not as beings with ownership of the universe, but as
fellow participants with our brothers and sisters of matter and energy which
is everything in the universe……. we are not above or below the universe
of matter and energy, but we stand part of and united with the universe of
matter and energy…

Kropotkin

As it is wants, needs and desires that by their being an addiction,
bring damage to both ourselves and society……. what better way to
understand this by the ism of capitalism. We see that in capitalism
is the lower instincts that are taken as our template for who we are as human
beings…greedy, lustful addicts that demand our daily fix of whatever is
for sale today……. we are what we buy… and we buy junk to fulfill our
addiction to materialism………This explains why ART is so unimportant these
days… we no longer have the eyes to see ART as something that can change
our perception of the world or who we are… we go to ART exhibits to
see famous ART, not to get a new understanding of the world or an
understanding of who we are. I recall seeing the Mona Lisa in Paris…
We arrived fairly early and waited in line and once we got into the Louvre
museum, we headed toward the stairs toward the Mona Lisa, but there is a
very famous statue of Nike of Samothrace on the staircase itself and I didn’t even
realize that it was there…so we paused to see this statue, all the while
people were racing past us and I mean running and they were running to get
to the Mona Lisa first. You have to get by some pretty good art to get to the room
where the Mona Lisa is, but these people didn’t care about that… the goal was
to be able to say, “I saw the Mona Lisa in person” It wasn’t about whether
the Mona Lisa was good art or bad art, that didn’t matter… it was about
being able to claim an experience, not the art itself…….and few even realize
that on the other side of the Mona Lisa is a very good painting…but the goal
isn’t seeing ART and/or experiencing ART… it was about boast to come, not the ART.

ART be it painting or sculptures or novels or poetry or architecture, when you
look at ART, what do you see?

In our capitalistic, materialistic culture, ART is devalued, negated because
it cannot be bought and sold like our TV sets or our cars… you can buy
a copy of the Mona Lisa but why? Art doesn’t feed our addiction to materialism…
and for an addict, it is always about the next fix and insofar as ART isn’t
able to feed your fix, what value does it have?

Capitalism is about feeding your lower base instincts of greed and lust
hate or anger, in fact, capitalism isn’t about if something is good or bad
or dangerous or pretty. Capitalism is about making the sale, making money,
and not about values that bring us closer to our being human, really human, not just
animals that can only act upon our instincts……

the only value that capitalism has is money… everything else is unimportant,
negated………… we are matter and energy… what does money mean
to us when we are the same material as the universe itself…….
everything we can buy is the same as us, matter and energy…
but ART is something beyond matter and energy… it tells us something
about the matter and energy that the universe is made of… it tells
us about the possibilities of being human…

so what does ART mean to you?

Kropotkin

Yes, we are matter and energy but the part I wish to focus on today is
the matter part. We are matter, human beings, and as such we exists in
time and space. Human beings are, by the long hunter-gatherer years,
social beings…… we can only survive as part of a group…and evolution
has written survival into our genes, our genetic coding and these genetic
coding is very powerful in all animals… so for us humans, we are coded to
survive. As we must exist within a social society, we must then understand
what it means to be within society… now this society can be small, a family
or several families uniting together for survival, as it was for a million years
during our long childhood of pre-history or it can be large, as we have nations
with billions of us now. The size doesn’t really matter because the goal of
social society remains the same, survival. Now think back to the hunter-gatherer
society. We have small family units combining to create a larger society of
perhaps 75 to 100 people. To maintain order and allow survival in such
a group, the begining of what we would now call government began.
One person or perhaps a small group of people were in charge.
How they came to be in charge is different in each social group…
perhaps an election, perhaps the eldests, perhaps the best hunter or
the strongest person may have put into charge… it is hard to guess upon
what method was used, but the question of who is in charge and
how they are chosen has been an problem for human beings since the begining of time.

so you have some leadership, based upon some agreed upon method, which
is the beginning of government. That right there is the beginning of government,
the founding of leadership within a society and the method of choosing that leadership.
And for what purpose does this government exists? To allow the group to maintain order
and to better be able to survive the harsh conditions of the time.

We fast forward to Socrates and Greek society. Socrates felt that the
social society goal, mission, was for the individuals member and the society
at large was for the “common good”. In other words, we individuals worked for
and promoted the idea of society was for the “common good”. And it was clear
for Socrates at least, that the common good was for people to strive for
arete, excellence. Socrates goal was for society to be better, people had
to be better and the way to achieve that was for people to become aware of
and strive to work in their own soul… make society better by making the
people better, the individual people living within that society.

This idea of the “common good” has been lost in our modern society because
we are so atomize and isolated from each other and aided by
such ism’s as capitalism which is individual greed which somehow, by
the invisible hand of god, somehow makes society better. But it has never
been explained how the greed of man which drives our modern capitalist
society has within it, the ability to somehow benefit society… my greed to
achieve some materialistic goal as wealth or property is not connected to
any known method to help or improve or make society better. In fact, I would
suggest that this greed which is a vice, a determent to individual success is
in fact a danger to both the individual and the society. We have made an
addiction the central aspect of modern society. the constant drive for
goods that have an momentary high and then we want more and more,
just like an drug addict or alcoholic, we need more and more of our fix,
which in modern society is the drug of choice, materialism and the buying
of goods, wealth.

But in this drive for our addiction which is modern society, where is the
common good? How do we reach an understanding of the common good when
we are fix upon and driven by our need to be wealthy which is the
ability to have the wealth to get our daily fix of buying worthless goods.

This has been lost, the idea of the common good. This idea of the common good
has been lost in the face of nihilistic ism’s like capitalism and rugged individualism
and Ayn Rand’s false and dangerous ideology that deny the concept of the common
good. Modern society very survival depends upon our return to the old and forgotten
concept of the common good. Now the old idea of the common good ask for and
got the understanding of individual sacrifice for the good of all. But the modern
concept of sacrifice is done in terms of such nihilistic goals as in the pursuit
of money/profits. We are asked to sacrifice our souls and body for the
betterment of soulless and nihilistic entities like corporations and
the ism of capitalism. This sacrifice isn’t done for the betterment of
the common good, but for the betterment of those who own the means of production.
The pursuit of wealth and profits is nihilistic because it denies, negates both
our body and our values. The common good is not a negation of our body or
our values……… it affirms and raises our bodies and our values… we achieve
the common good when we strive for our higher values like love and peace
and justice and charity. when we deny our higher values for the lower values
we negate and deny our higher nature, our better angels.

The common good requires each of us to reach the higher values of
what is possible. when we reach for our lower values, our instinctual values,
we are no better then animals… being who we are is determined
and instinctual. Our genetic coding from which we come from is
fixed and determined in everyone, but to reach our becoming,
we must rise above our genetic coding, our instincts and become
fully human… that is what it means to become fully human,
to rise above our genetic coding and no longer be animals…
animals can only act upon instinct and their genetic coding…
if we just follow our instincts and genetic coding, then we too
are just animals, nothing more………

But I am not an animal, I am a human being because I can rise
above my instincts and my genetic coding. I can love and
desire peace and justice and charity which is our higher values,
our more human values…….

but we can only achieve this within a society.
and the only means we can achieve this, is by order
and tranquility which is the goal of government.

so the solution to our current problems of
the lack of justice and peace and disorder is
to work on this idea of the common good, not
by using your energy to achieve wealth and material goods.
These are false goals and damaging to your body and soul
and to society. For the pursuit of wealth is nihilistic. The negation
of people and their values. The pursuit of wealth is the pursuit
of the lower instincts of animals. We must reach for the higher values
of being human. and by that, we will become a better society,
we will value the common good for we can see how the common good
impacts and improves us.

The common good is reached when we begin to understand, to know
ourselves and then reevaluate and then becoming who we are. The path
to a better society lies in our becoming better people with better values
because we understand that reaching for higher values makes us
better people. Those who reach down, who follow lower values, instincts,
are not engaged in becoming who they are, they are not engaged
in becoming better people, they are not engaged in pursuing the common
good. This idea of the common good is tied up in the pursuit of
becoming more human, tied up in our engagement with becoming
human beings who rise above our lower instincts…….

If you want to improve society, improve yourself……

Kropotkin

So let us continue to understand this in other terms…

the Kantian idea and enlightenment idea of self-determination
that one frees themselves of dependence upon authority…
now think of authority as being “instincts”… self-determination
means rising above authority, instincts, to become more human.

Nihilism is the negation of human beings and their values.
By self-determination, we rediscover what it means to be
human and what our values is and ought to be.
Instead of following authority, which is the following the
lower instincts, we rise above those instincts and become
aware of our higher values. We rise above authority and nihilism
and become who we are by our knowing thyself and then
a reevaluation of values and then becoming who you are……

the process may be individual, but the gain is society’s gain,
we then become aware of the common good by our understanding
who we really are. We see how we benefit and gain by our
inclusion to society and the benefits of our social inclusion outweighs
any loss of freedom. From our new understanding of who we are, means
we can begin to pursue values that are the real values of being human,
not false security which can’t really be achieved but by the pursuit
of justice, which is equality and that can be achieved……

Our understanding of who we are means we can engage with the values
that aid in finding and understanding what it means to the “common good”.

To engage in the modern pursuit of our addiction of wealth and materialism,
means we go deep into ourselves, but to find the common good, we must
reach outward, we must become aware of and interested in what benefit
and helps the society at large… because without that society at large,
we individually cannot survive. we are dependent upon that society at large,
and so it is in our best interest to engage with and improve that society at large,
even when it cost us something, something like some of our freedoms.
but our sacrifice is not in vain when we aid and benefit the society at large.
Unlike when we sacrifice for the pursuit of wealth and the ism of ideology,
for there is no personal or society benefit when we sacrifice for the
the pursuit of wealth, we just are engaging in the negation and nihilism
of our self and our values………

Self-determination is the means by which we can understand
the real purpose and role of our individual self… we can
see what values are the values by which we can truly become
human… the higher values, the farther away from instinctual values
is the closer we become to becoming human, fully human…

What values are your values?
You can only find that out by no longer accepting
the words of authority. Engage in finding your values
by self-determination… and then become who you are…

Kropotkin

Upon reflection, this notion of capitalism, that somehow
the greed and materialism of capitalism brings about
the betterment of society, is nothing more then a
metaphysical account of the “hand of god” as an justification
for the lower instincts of greed, lust, envy, hate and anger, among
other lower instincts that are driven by capitalism…….

Some humans that are not self-determined, believe they
need some justification for their greed and lust and they find
this justification in a metaphysical concept that is the “invisible hand
of god” that drives our materialistic age of capitalism…….

Kropotkin

I have been thinking about this for some time, well since yesterday anyway…

I have already presented the concept of the “common good”
which was presented originally by Socrates, Plato and
Aristotle…but one has to understand the basic premise
of their argument…….

To the Greeks, it was only in the Polis, the city, that man could find
his Arete, his excellence and the only place where a man could become
a human being, not a barbarian. They accept and understood that was in
a civil society which they equated with the state, that someone could
become who they are. The emphasis that Plato place on the state wasn’t just
theoretical jibber jabber, it was the emphasis that the Greeks placed on
the State. To engage with the “common good” meant you were improving the
most valuable tool a Greek had, the polis, the city.

To engage with the Polis, that there was no higher goal of the citizen,
wasn’t contested by any Greek…The Greeks engage with and understood
that they were social creatures who needed the state to find their better natures.

the idea of modern rugged individualism or Ayn Rand nonsense wouldn’t have
made any sense to them… the individual cannot survive on their own, we need
the Polis to survive and become even better, find our Arete.

This is a truth that we have lost and if we are to survive, we must recover
that long lost truth… that alone, we cannot survive and we cannot make the
best of who we are…it is only in our engagement with others, in a civil society/state
that we can we make it.

The idea of the “common good” was continued by virtually every single philosopher
since Aristotle……until we reach America in the 1900, where the idea changed
names and became the “public good” but the same theory. It has many different
definitions which is part of the problem with the notion of the “public good”.
You can almost state the “public good” as almost anything and many dangerous
ideas and policies have been done in the name of the “public good” including
the Holocaust and the atomic bomb and IQ45 tax cuts……so one has to be aware of what the
proponent of the “public good” is actually advocating, but the essential nature of
the “public good” must have actions that actually benefit the “public”. As the
sign on America’s wall says, democracy, then we must conduct actions
and policies that benefit its democracy…… not any particular small group like
people who donated to your campaign, or as we call them in my house, bribes…
the “public good” must actually engage and benefit the public, so we include
education and healthcare and social security and Medicare… in other words,
things that are socialistic, as the Greeks knew to be true, we must discover
to be true that the only path to success we can know individually or collectively
must be together, capitalism is not a sustainable ideology and the only path left
is working together and combining our assets and then collectively disposing
of them to benefit the “public good”……….socialism accepts the proposition that
many hands make light work… if we work together and with purpose, we
can solve many, many of the issues that plague us today…….

which leads me to my last point, vision… who among our leaders
have a vision that leads us to some goal or destination? we see the younger
leaders like Kamala Harris trying to create ad hoc decisions, but they
aren’t leading to some overall, comprehensive goal or vision of where we
want to be and where we need to be…It is not enough to fight against global
warming, you must endeavor to fight global warming within some vision of
where we want to be in the future……. the solutions we seek must exist
within some overall plan or destination we want to reach…it is not
enough to create solutions to immigration if we don’t understand immigration
in the context of past, present and future and of where we want to be
in the future.

some goal is needed to create some understanding of what steps we
must take to reach that goal…… even if and especially if the goal is
far into the future…… we must begin to plan not just the next quarter
or to the next election, we must plan 5 or 10 or 20 or a 100 years into
the future. We must engage in the long game of the human race…

for the “public good” demands that we not only focus on the past
and present but on the future and a future where we will not exist…

I am transitory, temporary and you are transitory, temporary… the
polis, society the state will all go on after we die… the society, the state
doesn’t need any one individual, but the individual needs society, the state…
in order to exist, to survive… this is an essential fact of life and we must
think of our goal, our destination in light of the fact that when we die,
we will leave our children and their children, a better life… and that takes
planning, long term planning and thus we need to have a vision, a goal,
a destination for us to reach for and that goal will decide, determine what
steps we must take to reach that goal………who among our leaders have
a long term plan, a vision of what tomorrow will look like? None right now…
and thus, I haven’t found what I am looking for, apologies to U2…….
in our current crop of people seeking to become president……

Kropotkin