let us continue on about greatness…
We have spoken about Athens but let us further understand it…
we often consider the greatest explosion of creative thought to be
Athens from roughly 480 BC to about 380 BC……
it wasn’t wealth or the military that drove this unprecedent creative
explosion…we remember Athens because of its buildings, the philosophers,
the ART, the many first that Greece founded from math to science to history
to philosophy…
we turn to the renaissance and we see the same thing… an explosion
of creativity that has enthralled the world since… and that creativity had
nothing to do with wealth or the military…you cannot attribute genius
to wealth or the military…….and genius is greatness and that has nothing
to do with wealth or the military……. so, we cannot continue to define
our country “greatness” with wealth or the military because greatness is not
found there…
we can and must redefine what greatness means and then act to reach
for greatness… the theory tells us the actions… as theory is
the underpinning of actions…… our modern world is built upon the
underpinning of the science that drives the technology and the machines…
without the science, the underpinning, we cannot create the technology or the
machines………
what is the underpinnings of our modern world?
what are the philosophical idea’s that give our world its shape?
we have the religion/theology of Mammon….
we pray to this god all the time… this religion is a nihilistic one,
it negates people and their values… it is the religion of the GOP and
IQ45…Money above all else… that is the GOP mantra……
money above people and their values…….nihilism… pure and simple…
no, our philosophical underpinnings cannot be a nihilistic one……
we must have as our philosophical underpinning a hopeful,
positive philosophy…… we must begin by acknowledging
our addiction to this ideology of materialism…….
then we must place people and life above materialism or money…
and for many, many, this will be hard to do because they have lived
with their addiction for so long that changing will be hard to do…
we can do worse then replace our addiction with a pursuit of greatness…
we can begin to replace nihilism with creativity by building, creating art,
engaging with love which is the basis of all creativity…… the overflowing of
the heart is the basis of all ART… this overflowing can be one of the many
emotions we human beings feel, from sadness to anger to hate to love to despair…
our heart overflows and we must release it, express it and ART is the means we
use to bring the heart back into moderation…think of a boiling pot, without
a valve to release the steam, the pressure within the pot grows and grows until
it becomes dangerous… we release the steam from the boiling pot and there is
no danger to us…… the human heart is the exact same thing as a boiling pot…
we must release the steam or we get burnt when it explodes……
one might say, Kropotkin, you are talking about several different things,
what exactly are you talking about? I say unto you, no, no, I am talking
about the exact same thing when I talk about greatness and nihilism
and ART and releasing steam from the human heart… they are just different
sides of the human experience…we cannot separate out who we are into
distinct and separate parts… we are one and the same… and the myriad of
feelings and thoughts and instincts that drive the human soul, all come from
us, the human being… and we must learn to harness and love all aspects of us…
we can only reach or achieve greatness once we learn to become who we are,
and learn what are our possibilities… for art and greatness and love and
becoming all rise from our possibilities…… and possibilities means what is
possible for us to become… it is possible for us to find greatness within us
and it is possible for us to become great artist and it is possible for us to become
great human beings, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King………for love and greatness
and hope and our possibilities are all found within us, within who we are……
our philosophical underpinning is simply a statement of what we believe is
possible for the human soul………
Kropotkin