I hope to continue on and while doing so, speak to Iam concerns……
it is a bit complicated and complicated by its very nature is confusing…
I am a sole individual… my aim is to survive as best I can…
any “solutions” I discover for me, are by definition, my solution…
so, when faced with the discovery that my attempt to rise through
the corporate world, was ego driven and doomed to failure… I
no longer took that path… I simply tried to have jobs that allowed me
time to think and read and write…for those things are what important to me…
thus my solution was to my problem, I wasn’t interested in making money or
rising through the corporate ranks to get a “title”… that had no interest for me…
(granted, given my attitude toward corporate America, I had little chance of going
anywhere in the corporate world) but given that, I had to find a solution the
ongoing problem of making enough money while still leaving me time to engage
with what matter most to me… now that was my solution to my problem,
for many, indeed most people that particular solution wouldn’t have worked
for their problem… I am not engaged in finding specific solutions for specific people…
I have a different task, one that involves understanding our possibilities and
and thus present the case for being human as being one, ONE, possibility
for people to aim for… I am just laying out possibilities for people to
consider… and that is certainly isn’t meant to suggest that there is one solution
for all problems… hardly… our answers must work with our current situation…
I am 60… and as such, solutions that were useful when I was 6 or 16 or 26
or 46, are not longer useful… any solutions must be able to adapt to
my current situation… I can no longer hope to “become” anything useful
in society…I can not hold any other job outside of checker or management…
and management is no longer a solution as it sucks me even further into
the nihilism of capitalism…… I have no solutions for my situations involving
work or a career… the only solutions left to me is retirement or death…
but that “solution” does not work for those who have more possibilities
then I do… one solution for one person doesn’t mean it works for
people or even anyone in particular… it is simply one solution for
one person…… but we have to understand that my individual problem,
and my individual solution does have universal context because
because I stand as one of millions of baby boomers who are facing
the exact same choices as I do………there is a universal context for
human beings and their problems because even though problems
might be an individual problem, still we humans because we are human
still face these problems… we have individual choice in our solutions
but the problems are of a universal nature… I am going to die at some point…
that “problem” never bothered me when I was younger, it was so far away…
but today, the problem of death is staring me in the face… my mortality
isn’t some vague or abstract issue… I write with some urgency because
I can never be sure if my latest words will become my last words…
this is an urgency I have never felt before… it is an “old” person problem…
and my solution might work for some because we human are born and live
and die with many of the same issues that plagued previous generations and
plague us “moderns”… individual solutions have a universal impact because
we humans are by the forces that dominate us, nature in the guise of
evolution and gravity and social forces like capitalism and communism…
I too am searching for some measure of freedom against these forces…
that search is of a universal search… individually I exist within the universal…
any “answers” I find to my problems are within the context of those forces
that have dictated terms to me… evolution has forced me to exist within
certain boundaries, boundaries I cannot escape… I must eat and I must have
water and I must die and I must have air… any solutions I find, must
operate within the confines of these forces that have determined who we are…
and have to a great extent, determined what are our possibilities……
I cannot fly like a bird… that is evolution limiting my possibilities……
I cannot exist in a capitalistic society and work outside of the forces
of capitalism, I cannot work in a situation where profit is not the dominant
factor… the universal of capitalism decides my possibilities so my
“solution” to the universal of capitalism is my solution and it may not work
for anyone else, but it is a solution that others in their individual actions
within a universal context…
I am one, an individual but I also exist within a universal context
of social, political, economic structures which are also bound
by the forces of nature, gravity and evolution for example……
and how do we find freedom in the midst of all these tightly held
forces that determine and shape us? My solution is just that, but
you and I, we live and breath within a universal context that
has existed for a very, very long time before we were born…
any individual solution to any individual problem still lies within
a universal context, for I exist within a universal context of society
and the state and nature and the religious and all the other forces
that exist……………
I think what it means to be a “modern” is to finally realize what
the universal context really means and how do we find freedom
given the universal context which controls virtually every aspect of our lives…
so given this, I see abortion as a way to discover freedom…
if women are forced to give birth to children they don’t want,
where is the freedom for the woman? taken away by a universal context
where only one solution exists for all situations, the one solution is to
force women to give birth regardless of the situation… there is no freedom
here, only coercion by the state to its individual members, to force them to
give birth no matter what the circumstances…so women must find the
individual context to their universal problem… in which one possible solution is
contraceptives and another is the morning after pill… the individual solution
is given within the context of the universal problem………
this is one example of individual problems and solutions that are
within a universal context……….
Kropotkin