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