a new understanding of today, time and space.

I did, I did. The post was a kind of synopsis to a epic trilogy that you haven’t yet seen.

So I think it’s time for me to tell you a story, pete. But I can’t tell it here, so I’m sending a car for you. You’ll be driven to one of my cafes on the east side of town. I will be there waiting for you.

K: curious, I just spent the last 3 days waiting by the driveway for that car…
Ummm but no one showed up…you must have forgotten about me…

anyway, a minor family crisis brewing…my daughter just got a new job which
she hates…so, she already made a decision to leave, but she was looking
for answers as to how… fine, so I made a few suggestions…it was clear
that she was making decision without any context to her life… it was
an isolated decision make without any regard to any other aspect of her life…
and I was trying to incorporate philosophy into her thought process…
she was having nothing to do with philosophy…she wanted to maintain
a very narrow focus on this job and this job only…but that brought about
some thinking about philosophy…philosophy is about theory but not about the
practice of life… think about philosophy… we have various theories about
philosophy… ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, metaphysics, logic, political,
but these are philosophy studied, not lived…
and that is the problem with philosophy… it is studied, but not lived…

until we incorporate philosophy into our lives, we approach problems just like
my daughter did… on an ad hoc basis…ad hoc solutions are temporary, improvised
methods to deal with a particular problem…

ad hoc solutions are non-generalizable and not intended to be able to
be adapted to other purposes…

what does it mean to be a man? we can have ad hoc solutions, a man is someone who
… but is that answer a temporary, improvised solution?
or, or we can finally answer the question, what is a man? in clear, definite
words that explain and understand what a man is… today, yesterday and tomorrow?

but Kropotkin, you have stated numerous times that an ad hoc understanding
is all we get in life…life is temporary, transient… and that temporary nature
in life extends to our understanding of what a man is?

different situations require different solutions… that is ad hoc by its very
definition………… you contradict yourself…

just like when we understood that good and evil are two distinct and different
things and then we begin to understand that good and evil are two sides of the
same coin and then we understand that good and evil are the same thing……

a contradiction can leads us to a solution if we understand it correctly…

Kropotkin

a scorching day on the west coast
can’t find relief in any way
coming from the stylist
hair is looking sharp

turn the corner and the street is blocked
police cars with lights on
fire trucks with sirens
ambulance all blocking the street

parked in front of my building
the action is on the other side of the street
by the old man who fought in a war
which one I couldn’t tell

the stretcher came out
and the old man was on it
decades ago he survived a war
there is no defense against growing old

I had planned a quiet evening at home
just thinking about the Kantian questions
but that is thinking about theory
here I was faced with reality

one of the 4 sufferings of the Buddha
birth, old age, disease and death
of the four, I am most acquainted with disease
it has haunted my life since birth

old age recently found me
every day it reveals a new side
when I pronounced old age to be this,
old age denies and says, I am that

if someone asks me
what is old age?
my answer
will be swift and sure…

old age is the constant pain in my hip
and old age is forgetting where my keys are
and old age is discovering how slow I’ve become
and old age is the gradual retreat from the bustling world

and the last of the Buddha’s sufferings
is death…
and what is to become?
seeing long lost faces or a quiet sleep into eternity…

I don’t know………… I don’t know
would I say I am haunted by death?
no, no… I wouldn’t say so
I am seeking as to what is next…

as we grow old
the future closes the doors
the dreams of yesterday quietly become silent
growing old means we have but only one door left

when I was young, the possibilities were endless
door after door after door was open to me
I had choices beyond possibilities and dreams
old age presents me without choices or possibilities

my choices narrow until one day, a very hot day
the street will be closed off by an ambulance and firetrucks
some kid will see me surrounded by medics and fireman
taking me on my final ride to a death with dignity

death with dignity…
all death with dignity means is
I expire without drooling
and perhaps, perhaps that is all I can hope for……

to die without drooling…
death with dignity

Kropotkin

now some might say, Kropotkin, you are being morbid
Kropotkin, you are being sad and depressing
Kropotkin, cheer up and join the living
smile and dance and drink the night away

but I say, why not face up… to what is to come
I don’t need to be in denial about death
if I am honest about what has been my life
I should be just as honest about what is to come

but those without courage will say,
but nothing will change, but nothing will change
and they are right and so what?
in death, will it matter if I am right or wrong…

in death, will it matter that I know all the presidents
and all the state capitals and the population of London?
that the earth is 93 million miles away from the sun…
will that matter as I take my final breath?

as I face my final moments, what will matter?
what faces will come to mind and
what moments will bring a smile
and what will be my regrets?

as I take my final breath,
will all the books I have read matter?
when I take my final breath…
what will really matter…

all those experiences that have made Kropotkin, Kropotkin,
will they matter anymore?
as I breath my last,
what will be my final thought?

will my final thoughts be the Kantian/Kropotkin questions
or will it be the regrets of my life
or will it be the trips of my lifetime
or will my final thought, be of my wife……

or are my final thoughts like this:

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
and then is heard no more: it is a tale
told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing”

Kropotkin

galaxies spinning in space
star rotating
planets revolving
earth spinning around and around and around

think of all that life moving
migrations, immigrations and our daily commute
life in a constant dance of movement from here to there
striving, reaching, struggling constant movement.

define life one might ask
change, development, movement, action…
hustle, motion, industry, response…
ceasless activity that lasts a lifetime and beyond

and here, today I practice
idleness, respose, inertia, inactivity…
I am anti-life… practicing my indolence
all that motion of life… is making me dizzy

one of the questions I have asked
upon what should we spend our energy on
should it be mindless, ceasless activity?
perhaps we should be mindful of our energy spent

for even here in silent rumination
the planet spins
and the earth rotates
and the stars travel to unknown places

taking me along with them
my meditation has journey to distant space
without me ever moving a muscle
engross in reverie and still moving

I have no more ambition left in me
I cannot think of anyplace to be
progress… doesn’t mean a thing to me
voices becomes background noise

as I sit here
life intrudes from all directions
noise, light, action, request for tea,
cats begging for food

it is hard to muse and meditate
when the world is demanding attention
my only claim is for peace and quiet
why is disorder and commotion…life

where is the quiet needed for
introspection and reflection
how can I hear myself think
in the midst of all this… life

how do I engage in these questions of mine
when life itself demands my time
how do I find peace and quiet
when life comes at me from all directions?

How indeed…

Kropotkin

I have read “western” philosophy and I have read “eastern” philosophy
and I have read Marxist history and I have read Greek history
and I have read English poetry and I have read Japanese poetry…

we define and label and organize our readings and our days
and our lives into labels and definitions and categories……

one might categorize Kropotkin as Marxist and old and senile…
I am not the labels you wish to make me…
I stand outside of any categories or definitions you wish to put on me…
just because it is easy to label or categorize or define a person doesn’t
mean that person is how you label or categorize or define them…

what is the difference between “eastern” philosophy and “western”
philosophy? a label, a category, a definition……
labels and categories are simply artificial terms we use to define
something… to label something…

there is no difference between eastern philosophy and western
philosophy except for the focus or the viewpoint of the philosophy…

both seek answers to questions that we have because of the existential
questions we have from being born………

I am born and by being born I am faced with questions…
“what am I to do?” “what should I believe in?” “what should I hope for?”
these questions face every single human being regardless of when or where
they were born…

you… yes you too face these existential questions
of human existence…

and philosophy and books and plays and music, we see and hear and read are attempts
to answer these existential questions of human existence…

so it doesn’t matter if the book we are reading says “Oriental Philosophy”
or if it says “Western Philosophy” or says it about political philosophy
or economics or history or a biography… all of these books attempt to
answer the fundamental questions of human existence, the existential
questions that we face because we exists………an answer is an answer
regardless if that answer is posed by a man or women or an American
or a Frenchman or currently living person or one who has been dead
for centuries or someone from the east or west… because
think about it… even the term east or west is artificial
because east or west depends on where we are standing at that moment…

our labels and our categories depend on where we are standing
at that moment…a label that makes sense at one moment
doesn’t make sense if we change our viewpoint…

to say I am reading a book about eastern philosophy only
tells one I am reading a book about philosophy from China
or India or Japan… It doesn’t tell the important story
of the answers that those people found in regards to the
existential questions that arise at birth…….

we like to label and categorize people and idea’s for our
benefit and our convenience… that labeling and
categorizing doesn’t change the other ideas, meaning or purpose…

to return to an old idea… the Nietzschean idea of becoming
who you are… to become who you are isn’t about the labels
or categories you might find yourself being listed in…

to become who you are rises above such petty idea’s as labels
and categories… what does it mean to be a western philosopher
as a label or a category when one find the values that
define who you really are… to become who I am, means
I have found values that are me… I no longer have or hold values
that are someone else’s values or society values that were
indoctrinated into me as a child… America holds martial,
violent values that aren’t me… as long as I hold those American values,
I am participating in the label and category game…
but as soon as I forsake indoctrinated values and begin to
hold values that I have found or selected or hold and use
those values to define who I am, then it no longer matters
if those values are eastern or western or American or French
or Chinese or male or female…

the labels and categories we hold only define us if, if
we reach those values through our own discovery
of those values…….

Kropotkin

let us take one idea and work it out…

Are human beings flawed or are we naturally good?

according to the bible, human beings were good until the
original sin of Adam… and we have suffered from this
original sin ever since… but what truth can we find from
this understanding of people?

if we are flawed from the original sin, then we cannot find
salvation on our own… we can only be saved by outside forces,
be it god or some other force… Marx believed that outside force
to be dialectical materialism… the only way to be saved for Marx
is to hold believe in and act within dialectical materialism…
and for modern human beings, the only way to be saved or to
find salvation is to hold in the “modern” values of capitalism
and in American exceptionalism……….

both are outside forces that can save us, but should we even search
for a method of salvation? do we need to be saved? I hold that we
can find our answers within us, as part of us… we don’t need to have
outside forces of god or ism’s/ideologies to save us………….

are human beings naturally bad/evil or are human beings naturally
good? I am not sure that is even the right question…
we are both depending upon how we define human beings
and how we define good or evil…

I can be good or I can be evil depending upon the criteria
we use… according to strict bible believers, I am evil because
I don’t believe in god, but according to other understanding of
what it means to be human, I am good, depends on how you
define good or evil, that gives us the answer to whither I
am good or evil……

to be evil is by definition, to be flawed… but flawed
meaning what? I have read of a man who wanted to end all
vivisection and I can say that is a good man, but that man is
Hitler, so is he good or is he evil/flawed?

what is good and what is evil/flawed depends upon how we define good
or evil………

I have argued for the elimination of capitalism because capitalism
makes the pursuit of profits as being nihilism, the negation of human
beings and their values and to pursue profits means one negates
and negation is evil/flawed, no matter who or what gets negated…

the act of negation, of nihilism is flawed/evil according to Kropotkin…

I believe man is naturally good unless corrupted by such nihilistic theories
such as capitalism…and American exceptionalism………
and Marxism and religions which put god first and people second like
with Catholicism………any religion which puts god before people is
nihilism, because it negates people and their values……………

now the question arises, is Kropotkin right?

does Kropotkin negate people and their values?

Kropotkin

the goal of philosophy is to find solutions to problems…
to ease one’s mind over the vexing problems which confront
us as human beings…and solving problems bring about ease of mind
and comfort as we live out our days… but, but what if that is wrong!

what if the point of philosophy to stir up people, to create
confusion and misunderstandings and bring about discomfort in
the mind and soul of human beings…

what if we are approaching this the wrong way…

peace of mind and the salvation of the soul is a false
and erroneous belief that human beings have…

let us engage in dangerous and mind blowing thought
experiments about what it means to be human…

let us explore our discomfort and anxiety about life by
engaging in discourse about such uncomfortable matter
such as maybe the political answer to our human problems
lies with chaos and anarchy and disorganization instead of
the steady, organized peaceful existence we think we need…

let us engage in possible solutions by entertaining all, ALL possible
solutions to whatever ails us, creates problems for us…
perhaps we might find the answers we are seeking in solutions
that we don’t necessarily approve of or even think of…

the correct solution to our political problems might lie
in some engagement with chaos and the correct solution
to the question, “what am I to do?” might lie with
idleness and quietude and passivity instead of action
and movement and energy and busyness that we normally
associate with the question, “what am I to do?”

expand our possibilities to include answers that may not be logical or
even make sense but might be the solution to our eternal questions
of human existence……

the existential questions we find ourselves in might be best answered
with answers we don’t even have yet… but can be found in questions we don’t
even think need to be answered…

explore ALL possibilities even if it doesn’t make sense, perhaps
especially if it doesn’t make sense…

look for answers in our contradictions…

Kropotkin

philosophy does not solve problemsss. The duty of philosophy is not to solve problensss, but to ra-edefine problemsss

K: I would say that the Greeks were wrong when they wrote that
“Man is a rational creature” as a definition of man… My take
is that “man/human beings are problem solving creatures”

If you look about your life, you see solutions all around you…
books for example are a solution as to how to communicate the knowledge
of our species over time… without incurring the problems that happen
when knowledge is transmitted over time, verbally, as it was for hundreds
of thousands of years…cars are another attempt to solve a problem
as it stoves and microwaves and refrigerators and telephones…

every thing we do involves solving a problem………if you are tired, problem,
then you rest… solution…philosophy is the same thing… it is a problem
solving method… just as logic is a means of solving problems…
and science is a means of solving problems and mathematics is
a method of solving problems…

the real thing to understand is the nature of the problem we are
trying to solve… that is the question of philosophy… attempting to
clarify the problem we are attempting to solve…look at the problem
by changing our viewpoint in relation to the problem……

an example is my attempt to understand the nature of the problem
of modern existence… we are born in a modern world and what exactly
does that mean? what is the modern world and what problems are created
by being born in a modern world…“What am I to do?” and “what should I believe in?”
are questions that haunt the modern world…I shall explore the one of the problems
of the modern world which this question of the battle between faith and reason in my
next post…………should we be human beings who have faith or should we be human beings
who reason? this question or battle between faith and reason could be the demarcation line
that one could realistically use to understand the history of human beings……………

so, what problems are you trying to solve and what method are you using?

to think of the problem of human existence as being a quest for salvation or
to escape sin means you are going to use religious methods to solve that
particular problem…you must understand the problem before you can decide
upon the method you are going to use………how do human beings think? that
is a scientific problem which requires a scientific method…

the problem decides the method used………

Kropotkin

I am rereading “Irrational Man” by William Barrett…
as I have noted before, this book has been one of the most
important books I have ever read…in many ways, this book
has defined “My” problems over the last 40 years… the copy of
the book I am reading has my name and address in it and the address
listed is in Palo Alto and I haven’t live in Palo Alto since 1980 or 1981,
so this particular book goes back almost 40 years……

This book brings up this question of the long running clash between
human beings of faith and human beings of reason……

Plato could be defined as a man of faith and Aristotle could
be defined as a man of reason…

but as with any two distinct and separate idea’s, we often find
that when they are correctly understood, the two distinct and
separate idea’s become two sides of one coin, as does the idea
of good and evil go from two distinct and separate idea’s to two
sides of the same coin and then upon further reflection,
we see that good and evil are really the same idea…
depending upon where one’s viewpoint exists… standing in one
place an idea can be good or change the viewpoint and the idea
becomes bad/evil…….the viewpoint one has changes if/whither
an idea is good or evil…….scoff at the nature of concentration camps
but they fulfill a very important function, they create jobs… and if we
accept the proposition that one of the function of human beings is to work,
then concentration camps create jobs and thus are good…a viewpoint
I personally don’t accept, but arguments have been made to the same
idea, that jobs are the most important aspect of the human existence
and we must do anything to create and maintain jobs… thus we refuse
to sign the Paris climate accord because it might, might cost jobs… as flimsy
excuse as one can find, but no more flimsier then approving of concentration
camps because they create jobs……. it depends upon where one stands
that we may approve or disapprove of any given action… good and evil
changes depending upon where we stand, our viewpoint of any given
position………situationally understanding of what good is and what evil is…

and men of faith and men of reason fall on along different viewpoints on
whether something is good or something is evil…for the record,
I am person of reason… I have very little faith… and thus I condemn
our current concentration camps for children and I condemn all the things
the humans of faith take upon faith…that the immigrants are destroying
America and all the other conspiracy theories the men of faith hold as faith…
theories about the Jews and chemtrails and vaccinations and freemasons and the deep state,
and how George Soros runs the world…men of faith hold these theories as being true
and it is a shame that their world view or viewpoint is dominated by theories
that have no basis in facts… just as they have belief in god, who has no basis in fact.

for human beings of faith can believe in things without any proof
and indeed they express their faith as believe in something that
cannot possibly be true, for example, the rebirth of Jesus,
that is a physical impossibility and because it is impossible,
that makes faith even more necessary… to believe regardless
of any facts opposing that faith is the definition of faith…
to believe regardless of any facts that oppose that belief…

to hold faith even in the midst of all kinds of evidence
opposing that faith…… a man of faith might hold as faith,
that the world is flat… even though the evidence showing
the world is round is overwhelming and indisputable…
what matters to the human of faith is the faith, not the facts…

the important thing to a person of faith is the faith and everything
else is secondary……

but I see the two distinct and separate idea’s, faith and reason…just
like good and evil… we can understand that faith and reason
are just two sides of the same coin and then understand that
faith and reason are simply the same thing, depending
on your viewpoint , upon where you stand…

so, are you a person of faith or are you a person of reason?

mind you, there is no wrong answer nor is there a right answer…

there is just an answer……

Kropotkin

the question, the personal question for Kierkegaard, was what it
meant to be a Christian? when it was clear to him, that the west,
Western society which at one time called itself, Christian, was no
longer Christian. And what did this separation mean to honest people
to engage with their lives? I am not a human being of faith because
those who engage in faith can ignore evidence that disproves their faith…

If I believe in God and there is no evidence for god, do I continue to
believe or do I follow the evidence and engage with the universe
as a man of reason and not a person of faith…

what does it mean to be a Christian in a world that no longer believes…
thus K. argues, strongly argues that the truth lies with the individual
because it allows the individual to hold belief in such things as god…
it doesn’t matter that the entire world or that the evidence is clear,
if one believes then the important thing is the belief, not any evidence to
the contrary……

to be able to hold his faith, he must argue for faith being an individual
requirement and subject to individual needs… faith doesn’t need
the world to agree… faith only needs one to believe and so K.
argues for the strength of the one and not of the few or the many…

what does it mean to be a Christian when the world has forsaken
that belief system? K. and Nietzsche would try to understand this
problem from opposite ends…what are we to believe in if
the world has stopped believing in god and Jesus?
that was Nietzsche starting point…how is morality possible when
the basic morality of the last 2000 years was Christian? and now
Christianity is dead, god is dead… what should the foundations
of morality be now?

I a man of reason… upon what foundations should I engage in
morality with, given that I don’t believe in god? What should be my criteria
for how I engage with my fellow human beings, or even the other life
I share this planet with?

now some may argue that any basis I find for my actions is really
just faith place in something other then the religious? in other words,
if I base my actions upon the laws or upon other agreed rational basis,
that is just another form of faith… I have faith in the rational
actions of other human beings and for some, that faith is misguided…

the man of reason doesn’t take into account that human beings don’t operate
under rational basis… human beings take actions based upon irrational
grounds, not rational grounds and this is where the man of reason fails…
because the man of reason fails to take into account the strength of
the irrationalism of human beings…… we are driven by everything but
rationalism… we have the lower instincts of greed and hate and anger
and lust driving our various actions…and greed and lust and hate
and anger have no basis in rational thought… but they drive human beings
actions and behavior above and beyond any rational thought…
rational thought can never be successful because human beings
aren’t rational… so says the man of faith… and because the man of
faith is driven by those lower instincts, he believes that others are driven
by the same instincts that drive him……… a man of faith assumes that
others are driven by the same forces that drives him……
a rational man assumes that others are driven by the same forces that drives
him… rational thought drives rational behavior… so says the rational man…

so how does one becomes or stays a Christian even though the society
itself is no longer Christian? K. answer was faith…

do you have faith?

Kropotkin

the man of faith argues for god because the primal instincts
that drive man are too great for man to control…
we are greed and lust and hate and anger and we cannot
by ourselves control those instinctual urges, thus we need
an outside force that can control it for us… that being is god…

for the man of faith, humans are weak and failures
and are so flawed that we are unable to succeed upon our own…
thus the need for god and thus the need for secular stand in for god,
the human secular version of god which is a dictatorship or monarchy…

that is why men of faith so desire and demand monarchies or dictatorships
that men of faith proclaim themselves to be weak and flawed is
not news… you hear it all the time from various sources and these
weak and flawed human beings, being weak and flawed want someone else
to shore up and give them salvation from being weak and flawed…

a rational man believes that salvation is found within
and the man of faith believes that salvation is found outside of oneself…

so, do you believe yourself to be weak and flawed?
is salvation from being weak and flawed found within
or outside of oneself?

Kropotkin

well they weren’t entirely wrong here, pete. rather what happened was, after discovering the basic rules of propositional logic a la aristotle, they began the long philosophical travesty (we’re still experiencing today) of fitting semantic nonsense to logical form, thus producing super-empirical statements that masquerade as profound truths… but which are in fact entirely void of content. and, in fact, this wasn’t completely by accident… which is to say some of them knew they were full of shit, and kept going, because it served an agenda; long story, basically involving the propagation of ruling class ideologies to secure the authority and luxury of the parasitic aristocratic class that didn’t want to work. i’ll give you some links that’ll have you up at night, if you want em.

but yeah, man was, and is, rational so long as he observes and preserves the difference between the natural sciences and it’s sidekick, philosophy. but this line has been blurred, and robin is often given the same authority as batman… and we all know robin is not half the bad-ass batman is. some of the greeks knew this (e.g., anaximander, aristotle, democritus), and some of them did not (e.g., plato, plotinus, pythagoras, heraclitus). so you can characterize general stages of the development of philosophy here. pre-socratics; precursor to scientific inquiry (minus that space cadet pythagoras minus his work in mathematics). plato; sudden spiral downward into metaphysical hogwash. aristotle; saves the day and cleans up all the bullshit before him. fast forward several thousand years. medieval philosophers get a’hold of aristotle and do everything aristotle did NOT want done with his work. scholastics come along and fuck it all up even more. that fat fuck aquinas… man you have no idea what that fucker got started. enter the enlightenment/age of reason; bring in bacon (or ‘the wolf’). let’s get rid of all this a priori bullshit and get back to the inductive methods of science. we’ve got six thousand years of shit to clean up and it’s gonna take a while. then, when we’re just about to start making some headway, that douche-rocket adam smith interferes and reinstates the very thing we were trying to get rid of; the ruling class ideology of the greek fancy-pants dandys who were too good to work. we were so close to finally getting rid of all gods and all masters… and then they cropped right back up at the turn of the industrial revolution. okay, you wanna do it like that? bet. bring in the beard (marx) and start the vienna circle up. the muthafucking death squad. them hard-hittin’ polymath niggas that have forgotten more than you’ll ever learn, homeboy. naw, don’t get scared now. say something ‘philosophical’, i dare you. yeah, s’what i thought. you betta put a fuckin’ muzzle on that shit and sit the fuck down.

all in all we doin’ alright, pete. the war is still on, and man is evolving to become ‘rational’ once again. we just had to go through a very long adolescent phase, that’s all.

Yeah right but midlife crisis demands a backward look by necessity, otherwise they would see nothing worthwhile to look back , and adolescents discern only a modicum of rationality that the old ones teach them

Nihilism can not sustain the brevity of duration which is known to be shorter for the young one’s, which is ironic and contradictory because for the older man, time appears to go faster.
That reverts to the forum’s title, and leaves in brackets how time travails from an objective to a subjective qualifier.

That is significant because it entails political expediency, which is difficult to negate or even negotiate , in it’s above mentioned rational passage, and that is why, as well intentioned that obscurance appears politically and socially, the derivitive has always assumed a veritable equiminity as reasonable backwards as forwards. Prove otherwise , and you’ll become a camera obscura for real.
That is why history is dying and really dead as a doorknob.- Gods die first, then followes reasons why they were even born in the first place.
Reason can never die, even of you were born in miserry, And that’s the ticket.

And don’t say that political correctness will ever die.

And that is why despots will always confidently subscribe to the well worn and healed role within reasonableness of despotism~nepotism.

Course despots come in various types, some even dress to the occasion, daring even complete nudity, like the emperor with no clothes . But that was before the advent of modern education.

youtu.be/5IpYOF4Hi6Q

Reason will die when the last mind dies because it is not something that can survive in a vacuum
When there are no more life forms and no more machines that will be when to write its obituary

I welcome each post… for human beings are collective creatures,
and not solitary creatures…

I have been thinking about a basic philosophical idea…
existence vs essence…this basic philosophical idea
has been around since Plato…what is our basic understanding
of human beings? the essence vs existence has been one of the
bedrock of human thought for thousands of years…

to be blunt, existence is I am… and essence is about what I am…
existence is simply about being and essence is about being
something…………if I am brave or smart or funny, that is essence,
I am something……

as it clear from my statements, I am an existentialist, I take
existence to be primary, to be before essence…
however with that said, that does not negate essence or
nullify essence…

we exist, we are born… we are as Locke said, Tabula Rosa,
blank slates, upon which understanding is written on…
on our blank slate, society and family and the state write indoctrinations
and myths and biases and prejudices and superstitions…

and from this writing on our blank slate, we take our essence…
we become who we are…but until we are old enough to begin the
process of becoming who we are, we are those indoctrinations of
the state and society and the family………

so in fact, our essence is at first, the writings of family and society
and the state and the church and then once we can engage in
our own becoming, then our essence changes to become who we
are after we have our reevaluation of values…

yes, we exists then we become essence… in other words,
we are both existence and essence……
it is not a question of either/or but a question
of being both… two sides of the same coin as it were…

and how soon to we begin to understand that essence and
existence is the same thing?

Kropotkin

so we begin with existence and then we spend our time
in discovering our essence… the who we are…

am I a god fearing man or am I an atheist?
that distinction is essence… my essence is
either discovering god or my essence is about
learning what it means to be a human being
outside of any metaphysical belief system…

so in regards to essence, it seems to me that I want
my essence to be written by me and not written
by others like society or family or the state or the church…
and that is what we mean by a reevaluation of values…
I discover what values are my values and not the values
written down by society/state/family/church on my
blank slate……

in my reevaluation of values, I rewrite the values listed on
my blank slate into values that I accept, not given to me by
my indoctrinations as a child……

I am born… I exist… the existential question of being born… which begats
the question of “what values should I hold?”

should I be honest or should I be brave or should I have faith or should
I be engage in rational thought or should I hold Arete as my value?
the question of which values we should hold is the question of essence…

what is my essence going to be? and how do I choose? and which values
should I engage with to fulfill my essence?

and in choosing our values, we choose what kind of person we are going to be…
if I want to be brave, I will choose as my value, bravery… the values we choose
decide what sort of person we are going to be…that is the question of essence…
what sort of person are we going to be?

and do I choose what sort of person I am going to be or does
society/state/family/church gets to decide what sort of
person I am going to be? who decides what my essence is going to be?
me or some outside entity such as family or the state or the church or the……

Kropotkin

as a question of essence, who we are… leads us to the many
names we give to who we are… I am a democrat,
a liberal, a man, an atheist, a rationalist, a humanist,
each name here tells us something about me, about
my essence… who I am… that I exists is a given…

my existence is taken for granted when I am asked, who are you?
and the question of , Who am I, revolves around this question
of what values do I hold…

but forgotten is the simple fact that my existence is of limited time…
I shall exists only for a short time and then I shall not exist…
I am transitory, temporary, impermanent…

my existence is finite… and my essence is also finite… for
my essence depends upon my existence…

and once I am gone, people will say, hopefully, he was a good person,
he was a kind person, he was… he existed and in that existence,
his essence was kind or good or whatever people might say about me…

so in a sense, my essence will live beyond my existence because
people will comment about my essence, he was ________…
and those values which create my essence are descibed… kind,
good, honest, fair, loving… or whatever…

think about names from the past… Julius Caesar for example…
we say he was ruthless…and that is part of his essence, part of his
values…….he was a dictator… and to be a dictator means you accept
certain values…

if I am a doctor, it means I accept certain values of being a doctor…
the Hippocratic oath… I take an oath that I shall use treatment to help
the sick… but never with a view to injury and wrong doing…
Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so,
nor will I suggest such a course………I will help the sick and I will
abstain from intentional wrong-doing and harm……

the essence of being a doctor is to treat the sick and not to
injure or engage in wrong-doing to anyone…
the doctor exists but he has values, his essence is to help others…

was he born engaged in the practice of treating the sick
or not to injure or engage in wrong-doing to anyone?
no, he is born, he exists and then later, he
comes to his values, his essence………

so by choosing values, you choose your essence… who you are…

existence is already there, you need to choose what values
you shall live by, thus creating your essence…

Kropotkin

we cannot chose to exist but we can chose our values, our essence…
the essence we have is by choice… we choose our essence but we
cannot choose existence…

Kropotkin