a new understanding of today, time and space.

so we approach a religious problem,
that of the renunciation problem…

so many religions demand that people renounce
their desires and emotions……

but the fact is, we human beings, a definition of being human is, a creature of
desires and emotions… we cannot escape that which is built inside of us,
that which we have inherited in our genes and in our blood…….
desire and emotions…

we do not need to renounce desires or emotions…

we just need to learn to place desires and emotions
into the mix as part of, part of the means we use
to explain and understand the world and the universe…

we human beings, we desire… it doesn’t make that desire bad or wrong
or dangerous, no, it just means we must learn to control it…
desire by itself isn’t bad or evil or wrong… it just is…
but how we answer the question of desire is where we
find out the intention of desire…if it is bad or evil or wrong…

desire quite often isn’t even what we really desire… it is quite often a symptom of
something else… I feel a loss or isolation or alienation and I substitute desire
to somehow compensate for that feeling of loss or isolation or alienation…

it might, might explain our current mania for desire by the fact that we
really are compensating for some other emotion or feeling like isolation or
alienation…

but Kropotkin…you are engage in psychology… not philosophy…
and as I have stated before, I don’t see any division between
psychology and philosophy and history and economics and sociology…….

to my mind, they are all simply different aspects of the same thing…

Kropotkin

the book I am reading, “Upheavals of thought” has
given me new thoughts about such matters as
compassion and kindness and empathy……….

I am not by nature a compassionate person…
whereas my wife is always a compassionate person…
to a fault actually…

I am forced to come to grips with my “viewpoints” on
such matters…

I see injustice and I become mad… I want revenge… on those
who practice injustice… but it calls into question why?

I want revenge more then I want those people to receive justice…

it calls into question my own understanding of who I am…
am I a “kind” person… perhaps, am I a “just” person?
I like to think so, but if I demand revenge before justice,
am I really a 'just" person or am I just someone looking for revenge?

I have been “wronged” in my life and my response has been
to dream of revenge… I’ll teach those “idiots”… but in the end,
what exactly am I thinking about?

what is the value of the pursuit of revenge as oppose to the pursuit
of justice?

is pursuing “revenge” really a pursuit of justice?

somehow I don’t think so…have I actually been able to get my revenge?
once, and frankly, it wasn’t as much “fun” as I had hoped it would be…

to engage in the pursuit of revenge instead of the pursuit of justice says
something very fundamental about me……….

am I a “kind” person? I would like to think so, but and this is important,
I can see myself and have done things that wouldn’t by any stretch of
the imagination be considered to be “kind”……

I am a typical human being whereas I have some sort of self image
but at times, at times, I even conduct actions that confirm my
own self image, but what about the other times?

what about those times, I don’t conduct myself in accordance to my own
self image? I usually consider myself the smartest person in the room,
and usually I am, but what about those times, I am not?

emotionally, how do I handle this? do I deny, do I make excuses?
do I just pretend that I am still the smartest person in the room?

well, emotions are the same thing…I see someone being kinder then
me, which frankly is just about everyone, and how do I see that
being reflected back to me? I don’t… and that is the point…

I don’t…it becomes two distinct and separate acts… my kindness
becomes one distinct and separate act and other people kindness
become another…I don’t make the equation at all… and by doing so,
I can still maintain the pretense that I am kind and loving and all that stuff…

and in the end, it is about maintaining the pretense that I am still what my
ego demands of me…my ego wants me to believe that I am a “kind”
“decent” “warm” “humane” “lovable” “justice seeking” human being…
but what is the reality? am I who I “believe” I am? the honest answer is
sometimes, sometimes…….

and the question becomes, am I ok with being the person my ego wants me to
be “sometimes”?

but let us take this even further… should I make being a “kinder” person
a value to be achieved? in other words, what values should I pursue?

“Kindness”? “humane”? “just”? “loving”? “decent”? among the thousands of
value’s possibilities? which values should we engage with and why?

why should I desire to become more “kind”?

for whose benefit does that desire help? me or the society?

in other words, what is the goal here? to what end does my pursuit
of “kindness” involve? why should I want to become “kind”?
what is the end result of my increased “kindness”?

that will depend upon what sort of society we are aiming for?
if we want a cold, angry, mean society, then “kindness” is not the goal,
for “kindness” doesn’t get us our cold, angry, mean society…

but if we want a kinder, more loving, a gentle society, then we
should and must emphasis “kindness”………

should the bottom line becomes this, what kind of society do you
want to see and more importantly, why this type of society?

you have to be able to justify any type of choice you make in
deciding why type of society you are working toward…

so the question is asked, what is your vision of what a human being is?

ultimately, what are we working for? what kind of society should we have
and why that society? and if we are working toward a certain type of society,
then what type of people should we have in that society?

Kind? mean? angry? loving? happy? just? honest? responsible? insightful?
dependable?

what values are we really trying to become?

what values are you striving for?

and why?

as always, comes the question of why those values and not another set of
values…

strip away your ego driven idea of who you are and come to grips
with the person you actually are…few, few if any can begin the
honest search for the “real” person that lies within us…take away
your ego and see the person you really are…

do you like what you see?

Kropotkin

we look at emotions and we judge them to be
“irrational” and we consider that to be bad on some
basis or grounds, but why?

we see emotions as being Irrational and we see that
as being bad, but why are emotions being irrational, bad?

emotions being “irrational” is kinda the point of emotions…

recall, everything but everything must be part of an equation,
and if we correctly understand emotions, then we
can create an equation…

emotions = rationality…

the two are equal… their role is the same…
they are two means by which we navigate and understand
the world…

I am a checker in a supermarket… I have to be able to spot
what kind of person I am dealing with very quickly…
is this person going to give me a hard time or work with me
or does this person want some “engagement” or
does this person want to get the hell out of the store?

I have to decide very quickly and I use my emotions to make
that decision… and that is the value of emotions…
we can make very quick decisions based on nothing more
then how a person is standing in line and quite often,
we are correct in our “understanding” of that person…

we make judgement based on intuition and experience
and instincts… or just a feeling about someone…

and we are quite often right…

people can sense other people… again, intuition or instincts
or whatever you want to call it… but it is quite often far more
reliable then our “rational” self…….

are we sometimes wrong? yep, recall that saying, don’t judge a book
by its cover…sometimes our instincts is really, really wrong…

but we cannot simply discard our evolutionary and quite often life-saving
instincts because we “think” that we should be “rational” or “logical” when
being “rational” or “logical” isn’t as quick or as effective as intuition or instincts…

we must learn to temper our rational/logical self with our intuition
or instincts and we must be able to temper our intuition/instincts with
our rational/logical self…

it is a balance, an equation that we must learn to engage with…

emotions aren’t bad and neither is our rational self…

an excess of one or the other cannot be of use because we need
both of them in equal parts to become fully human…

we are millions of years of instincts and we must be able to
use that because it is the reason, one of, that we human beings
have become who we are… we survived a million years of
living in nature by our instincts, our intuition… and we
need them to continue to survive… but we need to equalize
our rational/logical part…

Kropotkin

a couple of points…

should we consider IAM constant demand that we look at
“conflicting material goods” emotionally or should we engage
in it rationally?

by what means are we to understand the world and our place
within it? emotionally or rationally?

and the choice we make, either emotion’s or being rational,
will decide how the matter is settled… for our emotions lead
us one way and being rational will lead us another way…

but the goal is understand ourselves enough to the point,
where if we choose being emotional or to be rational,
we still wind up in the same place…

emotions and rationality are so attuned to each other that
making a choice for one, doesn’t, doesn’t lead us away from the other…

that is the goal, where we have emotions and rationality become so attuned
to each other where one choice doesn’t mean we deny or ignore the other
possibility…we see emotions and rationality as two sides of the same coin
and later, the same thing… simply as means to understand and, AND
as means to achieve whatever goal we are engage with… some goals
require, demand emotions to achieve and some goal require, demand
rationality to achieve…what goal we decide upon then requires us to
decide upon the means to achieve… either emotions or rationality…

if I pursue the quest of understanding math and the higher goal of
understanding higher math such as geometry, trigonometry and calculus…
we do not use emotions to achieve an understanding of that higher math,
no, the method of understanding the world via emotions will not help
us in understanding the higher math… rationality will help us, logic will
help us…if my goal is to fall in love, then rationality will not help me…
love is not rational, love is not logical…that doesn’t mean that the two,
emotions and rationality is opposed to each other, in some weird attempt
of one to dominate the other, no, we cannot have either to become dominate
over the other because we need to two, emotions and rationality, to
to engage with each other equally…and at the right times… to engage
the emotions when it is necessary and engage in rationality when it is
necessary……

so, you want to become a “complete” human being, a human being
where the emotions and rationality are equal… study someone
who has mastered having equal use of both the emotional and
the rational… study Goethe…

Kropotkin

in our understanding of the world, we base
it upon certain unstated assumptions that we hold…

the point is to bring out those unstated assumptions into
the open and then decide about them…

in other words, the conservative viewpoint is full of unstated
assumptions about the world and the people within that world…

as is the liberal viewpoint full of unstated assumptions about people
and the world…

for example, one of the unstated assumptions of liberals is that given
a chance, people will be able to make something of their lives…
if we create equality then people will be able to build upon that equality
to make “something” of their lives…

the conservative doesn’t hold to these assumptions…
if we “give” people the basics, then they have no reason
to strive to “become” something…we give people no
incentive to do anything if we fulfill their basic needs…

now, conservative believe that my assumptions
are “weak” and “softhearted” as if believing in equality means
one is weak or softhearted…

we base our “liberal” or “conservatives” values upon certain
assumptions of human beings, and we act upon those assumptions
as if they actually exists within reality… now they may or they may
not actually exists… but we certainly act upon them as if they exist…

my assumptions are based upon certain idea’s and your assumptions
are based upon certain idea’s… first of all, where do we get our
assumptions? secondly, are our assumptions correct? do they correspond
to the “reality” out there? are we just projecting the fact that
within us, the idea that we want to be “good” or a “just” or a
“kind” person influence our assumptions of what people are…

in other words, are our assumptions about us influence
our assumptions about other people?

if we want to be “good” people, does that influence our
assumption that “all” people want to be “good”?

I want to think, assume, that I am a good, decent person,
does that mean I assume everyone wants to be a good and decent person?

this question of our basic assumptions of who we are and
our basic assumptions of who people are and what they
ought to be, haunt our understanding of who we are
and what is the point, meaning of human existence…

to become who we are means we must bring out the assumptions
that haunt our understanding of what it means to be human…

what are you doing to bring out your assumptions into the open?

Kropotkin

if we have assumptions that we base our decisions upon
as individuals, then we can assume that we base our collective
decisions also based upon collective assumptions, so, what
are our collective assumptions? and is America’s assumptions,
different then the UK assumptions and different then
French assumptions and different then other people assumptions?
perhaps it isn’t the truth we should be seeking, but the collective
assumptions that we live for, by and make decisions about?

Kropotkin

now one might suggest that I should be a “philosopher”
and give my proscriptions about what a “proper” society
should entail, both individually and collectively…

but that isn’t the role I see for myself, I am simply the guy
who points out the issues, and it is for you to make
the decisions about what you want to do about it…

I can lead you to water, but I can’t make you drink it…

the battle to become human ultimately is a personal, private
one that engages us in an individual level and then after that,
can we engage on some sort of collective level…but one might
say, but my pursuit of understanding my assumptions may take my
entire life… and it might…so what?

what else are you doing that is so important?

earning money? gaining titles? getting fame?

those are just another set of assumptions that
we strive for…

are they really worth the effort we make to gain them?

you already know my answer…

but what say you?

Kropotkin

as we have so far covered our individual understanding of
our assumptions, but we really haven’t covered our collective
understanding of our assumptions…

the basic political structures we have today are based
upon long standing assumptions…

in other words, democracy is based upon basic assumptions that
people hold… and a monarchy is based upon another set of
assumptions and dictatorships is based upon another set of
assumptions…

the political process that we work for and base our lives upon,
is simply a series of assumptions that we collectively agree to…

if I, and I sincerely do, believe in freedom as the key goal to
what is necessary for a human being needs, then that belief
in the value of freedom, is based upon an assumption that I hold…

and If you hold to capitalism as the defining goal of human achievement,
then you hold a certain set of assumptions…… assumptions that I believe is
wrong… but those beliefs I hold is also set upon assumptions…

we have assumptions based upon assumptions based upon assumptions…

at what point shall we begin the task of working out our assumptions to
begin the task of holding beliefs that are not just a set of assumptions?

this collective task of holding certain political and social beliefs
must be tied into the task of breaking our assumptions…
upon which we base those certain political and social beliefs…

the battle to be human starts with us… with us beginning to
understand the basic assumptions that we hold to be dear to our lives…

“that we hold these truths to be self-evident” ……….

and that those truths we hold to be “self-evident”
are truths and beliefs to be nothing more then a set of
assumptions…

the battle to be human means we must first do battle with the
assumptions that we engage with and operate with as a matter of course
in our lives…….

Kropotkin

so let us think about the law and morality that we have
seen over the course of human history…
for example, Greek law is different then Roman law
which is different then ancient Chinese law…
and Greek Morality is different then Roman morality
which is different then Chinese morality……
but why?

we can’t we have law or morality which is uniform
and appropriate to each and every civilization?

because each civilization’s laws and morality is based upon
a different set of assumptions and because each civilization assumption
is different, we have vastly different laws and morality…

thus we cannot, at this point, have a uniform across the board law
and morality because each civilization/country has a different set of assumptions…

but could we have a set of uniform and set series of laws and “morality” if
we remove our assumptions?

possibly? but how do we achieve such a goal?

might I suggest here is where we use rationality and logic…
but even rationality and logic is still based upon a set of assumptions…

but what about certain aspects of our basic understanding of such
“ideals” such as socialism and capitalism and democracy and taxes
and the “welfare state”?

yep, each idea is based upon some sort of set assumptions…
such as the “welfare state”… we make certain assumptions
and then we follow it out in laws that either increase or limit the
“welfare state”…

how are we to know what is right?

perhaps by some agreement with what is the goal, purpose
of society/civil society… what is the point of having a society/state?

your answer will tell us your set of assumptions about what it means to
be a human being……

so what is the point, the purpose of the human existence?

we have so many and wildly different answers because, perhaps,
we operate on so many wildly and different assumptions…

we certainly have a “sticky” wicket here…

Kropotkin

and what does any of this have to do with the price of tea in China?

everything………. look about our current society…we are a polarized
society, very, very polarized… and why?

because we are operating under a different set of assumptions…

the “blue” states have one set of assumptions
and the “red” states have another set of assumptions…

and what is the solution?

starting over with our assumptions…

begin with the assumptions that each side begins with…

do you believe that people are inherently “good” or do
you believe that people are inherently “evil”?

that question alone should clear some of the grounds of
polarization that exists between the two sides…

“do you hold these truths to be “self-evident”, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with
certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness”

within that paragraph lies several different assumptions…
that the point of life is life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness?

I for one, would disagree with the idea that the point of life
is the pursuit of happiness……

and the divide between “blue” states and “red” states can be said
to divide upon the very lines written in the declaration…

that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the point of, the purpose
of our existence…the liberals, who for the most part live in “blue” states
might make the pursuit of justice as important, if not the most important aspect
of life whereas the conservative might say, it is safety/security to be the most
important aspect, the point of, the purpose of life…

to say, we can agree to disagree is to avoid this basic and fundamental
set of assumptions that divide our country into “blue” and “red” states…

for the good of the country, we must and soon, agree to a certain set of assumptions or
we risk going to civil war…….and then the winners will impose their set of assumptions
on the losers……. I would rather we collectively agree upon a set of assumptions,
but we don’t always get what we want…

the divide in this country is one of which assumptions are we going to abide
by? the fundamental question of our time is simple,
which set of assumptions are we going to work with and abide by?

Kropotkin

let us approach this a little deeper…

let us take our assumptions and look at them…

for example, conservatives, generally, believe in god
and they believe in hierarchy…and they don’t believe
in equality……

let us take conservative press as the conservative belief system…

for example, we know that conservatives are against the equal rights for
women and gays and other “oppressed” people…but why?

why not equality for everyone? the usual argument lies around the fact/assumption
that everyone is already equal? but we know that not to be true…….
for if everyone was equal, then we would have women who were paid equally
as men…and that isn’t true… but then conservatives would argue that
for “some reason” that women don’t need to be or shouldn’t be paid equally
as men… that is an assumption…liberals argue that women should be
paid equal as men…again an assumption… but what is the value of one
over the other? we have the argument that women should be denied, negated
for reasons… by conservatives and we have an argument that women should
be treated equal with men…

the liberal argument is not a negative one…the conservative argument…
which is based upon denial, negation of women…that they don’t deserve
to be treated equally…is a negative argument… it is based upon a negative
assumption…

conservatives base their argument upon the existence of god and yet,
they cannot show us the existence of god… their argument although based
on a “positive” argument, the existence of god, cannot be defended…
because it isn’t true……… their is no proof of the existence of god as their
is no proof of the inequality of human beings that is presupposed in the conservative
argument… for example, many conservatives rail against Jews, the “elites”,
the “deep state” without any proof or examples of such inequality of such idea’s…
for example the “Jews”… conservatives rail against the Jews as being “somehow”
negative against society or the conservatives interest… but they never have
the “proof” that their examples actually exists…that the “Jews”
hold or dominate the world’s economy… show us how that is true?
and the conservative will launch into right wing conspiracy theories
until the cows come home and at no point will they actually reach a
fact that can be proven……… it is all about emotions and feelings…

my daughter is a conspiracy nut… she believes in the chemtrails
and the right wing conspiracies that dominate their lives…
she believe in alex Jones and other foolish souls…
why? because she believes that she is above the others sheep, like me,
and she has “researched” it… but she hasn’t researched anything…
she has simply look at things that reinforce her already held beliefs…
like a good conservative she is…she won’t reach out beyond those
conspiracy beliefs to examine other types of research because of
her already held conspiracy theories which says, anything from the government
is already compromised and therefore untrue… she truly believe this
and this is why she can’t move past any set held of assumptions…
she cannot challenge her assumptions because to do so would mean
she would have to challenge beliefs by which she identifies herself…

her beliefs and her identity are one and the same…….that is conservative
thinking…the traditional charge against liberals has been we don’t

hold to principles, that we are simply picking up views that are current
at the moment…which puts us against conservatives who hold values
and principles to the death…the conservative holds to values that
are traditional because if they have held over time, they are values
worth holding…that is an emotional response…

liberals have been accused of holding rational views over
irrational views like the believe in god or the inequality of human beings……

but the liberal argument is that the changes in environment makes
changes in one’s viewpoint, in one’s principles, a must… we must
change with the times, says the liberal…nonsense, says the conservative…

again, a different set of assumptions…….

but we can use being rational as a guide to suggest to us that
we must change our principles, our viewpoints if we are to continue into
the future…

we cannot deny that changes in the environment requires, demands
that we change how we operate… if we must change to met changing times,
then we should change to meet changing times…says the liberal…

no, no, says the conservative… we must stick to our principles with values
that carried our fathers and their fathers through difficult times…

but if the times demand we change, for example, with climate change,
then we must change or we are faced with the possibility of severe
trouble in the future……

but one might say, Kropotkin, seriously, you haven’t said anything at all…

just clichés and crap……… it all depends upon your set of assumptions,
now doesn’t it…

Kropotkin

but what if, what if one of my assumptions if shown to be wrong…
that is the basic difference between liberals and conservatives…

where I am wrong and it doesn’t damage or change my understanding of
who I am… if a conservative is wrong, it damages and undermines
their understanding of who they are… their beliefs are tied up
into their understanding of who they are… my beliefs are not…

if I am wrong, so be it… it doesn’t change my understanding
of who I am……… that is the basic difference between a liberal
and a conservative…my beliefs system doesn’t define who I am…
whereas a conservative belief system does define who they are……

look at how hard conservatives will go to defend their basic assumptions
of life… look at how hard IQ45 will go to defend his basic position…
he lies as often as he breathes and why? because his understanding
of who he is, is defined by what he believes in…he cannot separate
the two… if I am proven wrong, it isn’t the tragedy in life that it is
for a conservative……. the field I play on may change, but it doesn’t
affect me whereas for the conservative, the field of play changes how
they feel about themselves…

now one may say, Kropotkin, you are wrong… perhaps…
but it is my set of assumptions that is wrong, I am not my set of
assumptions…… I am separate, apart, different from my set of assumptions…

I am a human being… with a set of assumptions…

the idea that I am a human being doesn’t change with a different
set of assumptions…the way I might play the game might change with
a different set of assumptions, but I still begin in the same place…

I am human…with needs and wants and desires……. that won’t change
regardless of the assumptions I may make about the needs, wants, desires I have…

it won’t rock my world if my assumptions are wrong…
but it will rock the conservatives world…

Kropotkin

a paper you might like pete: pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/ag … atism.html

K: very interesting, thank you for that piece…

Kropotkin

what I am about to write will be three and distinct topics, but
ask yourself if they are three distinct and separate topics?

ask yourself, what is my relationship with these “three distinct”
and different topics……

ask yourself, what do I know or think about these three topics?

engage with yourself about these three topics and see if you can
discover what they “mean” to you…

PAST

PAST: 1: gone by or elapsed in time… 2. of, having existed in or having
occurred during a time previous to the present… bygone…
3. gone by, just before the present time, just passed…

things, events, people, institutions all exist in time, and they
exist within the past… they have existed but sometimes, no longer exists…
the Roman senate at one time existed, but no longer exists… Martin Luther at one
time existed but he no longer exists, the America civil war once existed but it
no longer exists… stone age houses once existed but no longer exists…
we have examples of things, events, people and institutions that once
existed but no longer exists… this list by no means can be exhausted
in our description of no longer existing things, events, people or institutions…

How could we think of the past? we might use an analogy of the moving
sidewalk we see in airports…the moving sidewalk takes us from one part
of an airport to another side… let us think of the moving sidewalk as
going from past to present to future…at one point in time, I was born…
I was placed on the moving sidewalk…at the time of my moving onto
the moving sidewalk, it was, for me, the present…I was born in time…
at a particular place and time, to a particular family with a father and mother
and sister…later in time, that family would dramatically change… it would
no longer have a father but it would gain additional members… in several births
after me…in time, I would have 3 sisters and one brother… but all that is in the
“future” for me…when I was born, I was born into a particular situation…onto
a moving sidewalk as it were…going from past to present to future…
the “present” I was born into had certain people, things, events, institutions
that existed at that particular place and time…but I was just born…
I had no knowledge of those people, events, time, things, institutions…
I was on the moving sidewalk with everyone else but because of the time
of my particular birth, I had no knowledge of past, present or future…

I had no say or voice in the events, people, things or institutions of that time
and place… things just happened… I had no knowledge of the who, what, when,
where, why or how of anything…I didn’t even know I was on a moving sidewalk we
call time…movement/distance is time… a basic point of Einstein…
as we move, we travel not only distance, but in time…but as I now know,
if everyone is moving at the same speed, then it looks like we are not moving
or we are moving at one constant speed which means standing still…
but that is not true……

as we “grow” up, we change and the world around us changes…
distance equals time…but sometimes it looks like there is change…
for example, during World War 2… some people didn’t change in any,
way, shape or form…their lives remained the exact same from before the war,
during the war and after the war… but millions of people were impacted
directly by World war 2…but I wasn’t born yet, and yet because of my mother
direct impact by World War 2, I was indirectly impacted… I was born 14 years
after World War 2… December 7 was a day to remember during my youth…
it was felt by everyone because it was a day that occurred 18 years earlier…
millions of people who were alive in 1959 were adults and they had lived through
the events of Pearl Harbor…my mom was a child in 1941… and she distinctly remembers
that day…

the movement of us as individuals, and the movement of us
collectively, as members of the state/society/culture does not
coincide… events that occur like Pearl harbor may or may not impact
me individually… me specifically because I did not exist during Pearl Harbor,
it was past for me…and the society/state/the culture that did exist during
the event of Pearl Harbor…the society/state/culture and me, we
travel at different speeds… just as we individually move at different
speeds, we collectively move at different speeds and recall, speed/distance
is time… we cannot separate out speed/distance and time…

we can think of this difference in speed between the individual and
the society/state/culture as being the idea of alienation, of disconnect,
of discontentment between the individual and society/state/culture…

so if we travel at different speeds due to our current situation, then
we experience time and events and people differently…
I experience events and people and situations differently then
you do because we are at different points in our life, we are traveling
at different speeds… I am old and old people just don’t travel/move that
fast…whereas the young, they move and travel very fast or not, they have
a possibility that I do not have… I cannot choose to travel very fast anymore…
I just can’t do that… at one time, I could run a mile in 5 minutes… past…
but in the present, it is no longer possible… I don’t even think I could run
a mile anymore and if I could, it certainly wouldn’t be 5 minutes, maybe
20 minutes at best…if I’m lucky…so time passes differently for each of us…
depending upon our age… which is a measurement of time… which is another
word for distance… I have travel a certain amount of distance to get
to my age…so I cannot travel as fast as the young people… my distance
has slowed me down and as I age/distance, I shall become ever slower…
until one day, I shall stop moving… my time will end and I shall be no more…

Present …

Kropotkin

“very interesting, thank you for that piece…”

nods

and you notice he more or less called Marx obsolete? This is evidence that the signature ideas here do not belong to anyone… that they did not begin with Marx nor will they end with Marx. The concept of democracy leads necessaily to socialist models of material economy, and there are countless ways to arrive at this conclusion. Why Marx gets the award is because of those who saw it coming, he was the one to lay it all out in philosophical and scientific terms. Most thoroughly, anyway.

Now if you’re interested in a different way of seeing philosophy… more specifically the role it has played in stalling this inevitable conclusion and/or its development (this began as early as Mesopotamia and Egypt… but really took hold in ancient Greece), check out the work of Rosa Lichtenstein; a wittgensteinian approach to philosophy with a focus on its ruling class origins. If not, just take the red pill and you won’t ever know what happened.

once again, not ignoring you… just other fish to fry,
namely our inquiry into

Present.

Present: 1. in a particular place. existing or occurring in a place or thing.
fully focused on or involved on what one is doing or experiencing…

2. existing or occurring now… now being considered or discussed…

the right here and the right now… I am 60 years old, right here and right now…
you may be 20 or 30 or 40… As each of us came into that moving walkway we call
history, we came at different times and at different places… all in the past…

we have different experiences due to our being within different times
and places… and we experience differently due to differences in our senses
and our education…

I am not a child of 9/11. I was an adult, a middle age adult of 42… with a long
history before 9/11 which means I have a different experience of 9/11 then
those of you who are younger…

yet, at the same time, 9/11 could be considered past, present and future…
depending on how we view 9/11 it could be past, present or future…

I can by imagination, think about 9/11 from before 9/11… I can think of 9/11
as future, before it occurred…I can think about 9/11 as past… I can by
memory and imagination, recall what I was thinking and feeling while
watching the planes hit the buildings…I can tell you how I felt 18 years after
9/11 by memory and imagination… which means we use memory and imagination
to fill in the blanks of our lives, of our memories, of our thoughts and feelings…
you can date America by pre-9/11 and post-9/11…I might not exactly remember
what I was thinking at any given time or place or at what event, but by memory
and imagination I can recollect my memories and feelings…

I can also extend my imagination and memory to the future…
about how I might feel about a certain event or person or thing in the
future…from my past experiences of existing, I can remember how I felt
at certain moments and extrapolate into the future to think about how I might
feel or think about certain people or events or things…

the future does not yet exists, but with help from my
memory and imagination, I can understand where I stand in the future…

I can use my memory and imagination to think and feel about how
I would feel/think if IQ45 would get reelected… I can use past experiences
to understand how I would think about that terrible day in American history…
and by using memory and imagination, I can feel the elation if he is
thrown out of office via impeachment… now is memory and imagination
gonna feel the same way as the moment when either of those events occur…
which is then the present…remember, I am extrapolating about possible future
events… I am using memory and experiences and imagination to think and feel
about something in the future…

the present can look backwards or it can look forward…
by both memory and imagination, I can try to understand my
own thinking and feelings about a future event…

the present is always moving forward, it is a means of measuring time…
movement is time, speed is time, distance is time…

this brings up an important point, we are not bound to the present…
we can with equal ease, recall and remember the past and use our
memories and imagination to think about the future…we can choose
to live in the past or we can choose to live in the future… we have those
possibilities…time is not a fixed, set idea, it can shift or bend or flow
as we wish by using memories and imagination…

I can rewrite the past and make me the hero of the past… my past…
with memory and imagination, the past can be rewritten to make me the hero
or the villain or not even there…time is flexible because it can be
rewritten in our memories…with memories and imagination…

next: the future…

Kropotkin

next: the future… Spooky!

The rest was brilliant and funny and insightful! I would be interested in the views of MagsJ - the paper Prom 75 included. It was long, I read for 40 minutes - had enough after a while. I was minded of the foreword to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Otherwise, I wish you well. PK!

K: why thank you Sir… any words from you are very welcomed…

as for the content of my post being brilliant, funny and insightful…
I cannot say, it is hard to see how powerful the storm is when inside
the storm…I write what I see and feel and think…… truth be known,
I have no sense of what impact my words have, good or bad… I just
don’t get enough input to know what value my words have…

so I operate in the dark, writing but not knowing what the value of
the words I write have…if my words are “brilliant” or “funny”
or “insightful” that is news to me…and much appreciated words…

so, Mr. Derley, I hope you are well this day…and thank you…

Kropotkin

and as promised,

Future…

Future: 1. the time or a period of time following the moment of
speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come…

I can think about the future using memory and imagination…

I work on Halloween this year, in 5 days…but I can imagine what
will happen by using memory and imagination…

Halloween is on a Thursday this year and I work from 8:15 to 5:15…
a pretty good shift for a Halloween… I don’t plan on dressing up,
but if I did, I would simply wear a SF Giants shirt and hat……nothing
complicated…by having worked prior Halloween’s I can guess that
customers will come in, in costumes… I can use prior memory of
what customers wore to guess at to what they will wear this year…
I can use imagination to think of other possibilities that customers might
wear this year…I can create a reasonable understanding of what might
happen this year on Halloween, in 5 days from now…but as the future
is unknown, I could be very wrong about what will happen on Halloween…
something may happen outside the realm of imagination and experience/memory…
that I haven’t considered… it is possible that I might even be dead by that day
and so, I won’t be there on Halloween, it is a question of possibilities that
may or may not happen that day or before that day…….

each possibility has a chance but some possibilities are more possible then
other possibilities…an alien invasion from outer space is a possibility,
just not a very likely one and an earthquake that destroys my section of
California is also possible… a more likely possibility then an alien invasion…
but not that much more likely… it becomes a question of odds… what are the
odds of a certain event happening by a certain day…the future is about
possibilities and probabilities…which is different and outside of memory/experience
and imagination…

the future of October 31, 2019… 5 days from now…
when I look at that day, I can only guess at what might happen…
nothing or everything… I just can’t know…we could see great
changes that day, small changes that day or no changes that day…
we just don’t know…and that uncertainty is different then the
uncertainty of the past or the present…when I think about the past,
there are no possibilities… when I look at the present, I see
some possibilities and when I look at the future, I see an almost
infinite number of possibilities…and my memory/experience
and my imagination cannot cover all the possibilities of the future…
I cannot anticipate or guess as to what the future will bring…

we react to the future and its uncertainty with possibilities of
fear, and hate and desire and despair and anger…we cannot know
our possibilities…

I worked with a women who recently suffered two strokes… the first one,
she did recover and came back to work, the second, she was found after
2 days of laying on her kitchen floor… she had surgeries on her brain to
remove blood clots and she is now in a home, paralyzed and unable to
speak…… she will never recover…she has no possibilities left to her…
all that is left for her is death… she is only a year older then me…
and all she can do is exist, not living, that possibility no longer exists for
her, but she can only exists until she dies…she has no possibilities…
whereas I have some possibilities, not as many as I did when I was younger, but
some possibilities… and those of you who are younger, much younger,
you have a even greater possibilities then I do…the future can be understood
by the number of possibilities we have to us…

on October 31, 2019, in five days, the future…
when it is that day, Halloween, it will become the present,
and then on Nov 1, 2019… Halloween will become the past…I won’t need
to fill in the gaps about that day because I can use my memory to inform me
of what happened that day…….this process of past to present to future goes on
all our lives but it has become so common that we don’t even see it anymore…

that moving sidewalk of past to present to future is such a smooth
journey that we don’t even notice the passing of time…while I write,
I am aware of the fact that in a couple of hours, I must go to work…
the present, my writing, is taking notice of the future, my going to work…
and I also think of my wife who left yesterday to babysit our nephew, so I
didn’t see my wife last night and I won’t see her today and I won’t see her until
much later tomorrow night…past, present and future all seamlessly woven
into one tapestry……

I am writing these words in my present… but you will be reading them in my future,
but it will be your present… our lives is immersed in past, present and future
and we don’t even notice…when you read these words, I will most likely be
at work… your present… my future…

we live our lives at different times… we exist in different time frames…
we are apart by distance… and distance is time…when I go to bed in California,
Mr. Derley in the UK, might be waking up… my night begins and his day begins…
I sleep and dream while he is active and living and playing snookers…

what is past and present and future when our lives exists within different time
frames? my past is Mr. Derley present and his future is my present…

I can only work with my past, my present and my future……
I cannot exists within his past, present or future…
we are not only separated by distance but we are separated by time…

time is not just a scientific fact to be understood, but a biological
question that must be answered…am I a biological being going through
time or am I time going through matter and space? for we are not only
matter and energy, but we are time… and we exist within matter such
as rooms and chairs and tables and walls… and the mirror that has existed in
my bathroom has noted the passing of time in my face and loss of hair… while
the mirror itself hasn’t changed… I am growing old… and with it comes the
loss of possibilities that once existed for me in the past…the present, my
current present offers me some possibilities and my future will offer me,
fewer and fewer possibilities until the only possibility left for me is death…
and that is my future… and some day it will be your present and then after that,
it will be your past…and life goes on…that are no guarantee’s in life…
just possibilities and memory and imagination…….

Kropotkin