so given what I just wrote…I am not objecting to
capitalism based in ideological grounds, I am objecting
to capitalism based on the damage that capitalism
has done to both people and the planet earth…
I stand witness to the nihilism of capitalism based
on my own experiences with capitalism…
my experiences of 40 years with capitalism that has
left me with pain all over my body and a soul that
has been crushed……
I am not objecting to capitalism based on some far off
idealistic assumptions… every single day, I see the damage
of capitalism as given by the news, given by the ever growing
pursuit of profits/money, by the people I talk to every single
day whose lives have been altered and not for the better by
the pernicious influence of capitalism…….
I am also attacking democracy based not on ideological grounds,
but on how our democracy has been hijacked by the wealthy, for
the wealthy and of the wealthy……
I can see this ever single day by just watching the news…….
my understanding of modern day America is driven by
the world I see and not by the ideological ism’s and biases
that I was born into or have developed in the years after I
began my reevaluation of values……….
and that is where I am really going… instead of
our evaluation of the world based any given set of assumptions or
based on ism’s or ideologies, I say we try something different…
let us evaluate the world based on values…let us adapt values
like love, justice, honor, peace and use those values to judge
and understand the world…now we don’t need ism’s or ideologies
to adapt values… we can assume the value of love without any reference
to any sort of ism or ideology or bias or myth or superstition……
we can adapt values without any recourse to ism’s or any set of assumptions…
why love? love is a positive value, a value which we know from personal
experience that love can grow, love can bring out the best in us, love
can be used to reach greater heights then we thought possible…
love binds us and love is creative and love enriches us…
so we can adapt love as a value through which we can
understand the world………
we should we use hate as a value? because hate is a negative,
destructive value… hate cannot help people, hate cannot create,
hate cannot bind us or unite us……. hate can only destroy… it cannot build…
that is why we cannot use hate as a value from which we understand the world…
if I use justice as my lodestar, then every action of mine is focused upon
reaching justice for myself and, and others…justice is simply equality…
and if we reach justice, that is positive and we can build upon justice to
reach even greater heights of our possibilities………
and that is the point… our values can lead us to discover possibilities
that we never thought about…… I dream of a society where every single
person is equal, politically, socially, economically……….
I dream of a just society…
but Kropotkin, what are we suppose to drive for if we are equal?
our inequality creates possibilities for us… no, no it doesn’t…
our inequalities denies possibilities to millions… because we
use money as a means to judge the value of people instead of using
values to judge people… profits as a means of judgement means
we don’t need to be good or honest or just or even free as long as
we have money, we are gold… which denies the possibilities
of human existence and having money means it doesn’t matter if
we are good or just or honest or loving… money as a value denies
human beings and their values… using money as a value for human beings
is outright nihilism…it is a denial of human beings and their values…
if we judge people based on values, we are no longer practicing nihilism,
for we are not denying people or their values… we are judging
people based on their values…and then we discover that if we
have values instead of money, we no longer even need to judge people…
our values speak for themselves as we allow our values to speak for us……
if I am just, my justice will speak for itself………
so Kropotkin, what are we to drive to if we are simply about values?
I say unto you…we discover what our possibilities are outside of
society’s set assumptions…… we don’t need society to tell us what is
possible or what is not possible…… we judge for ourselves what is
possible…we no longer have a set assumptions telling us what
is or isn’t possible… we have values…
but Kropotkin… what values should I hold?
and therein lies one of the questions of existence…
one of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…
What values should I hold?
Kropotkin