a new understanding of today, time and space.

my goal, or I should correctly say, one of my goals, is
to free ourselves of the various tyrannies that exists within
our life…

we have political tyranny that gets all the press, but isn’t
the only tyranny we have, I have mentioned multiple times,
the economic tyranny that we American’s now live under…
and we can have internal tyranny… What’ch you talking about Willis?

Simple, we can have internal tyranny by our being dominated by
internal matters that are limiting…

what do you mean, Kropotkin?

we are, as animals, driven by certain internal matters, I might
call them emotions, we are also driven by intellectual matters,
and we are, as human beings, driven to find our connection to
each other and to the human race… and we are internally driven to
become who we are…human beings have several internal drives working
within them… we have our drive to our basic needs, food, water, shelter,
education, health care… the basic needs of human existence…
the bottom row of Maslow’s pyramid…the physiological needs,
the needs every human being has…then we have the next level of
the pyramid, the safety needs…security and safety…
then we have the next level, the belongingness and love needs,
intimate relationships/friends…
then we the next level, the esteem needs, prestige and feeling of
accomplishment needs…

then we rise above our needs but the next and last level,
the self actualizations needs, achieving one’s full potential,
including creative activities…here, we are no longer about needs…

but we also have internal needs like, “the will to power”
as Nietzsche said…the will to dominate others to our will…
this need to make others subservient to us… this need is strong
in conservatives… to dominate others… this is why politically,
it is more likely that right wing ideologies wind up with dictatorships,
such as Fascism and oligarchies and theocracies…
because of this need to dominate others…

Despotism is more then likely to come from right wing ideology
then left wing ideology…

now one may make a counter argument, but if you actually think
about the nature of despotism and the origins of them, you will see
the right wing nature of most despotism’s…….

so we have needs and we attempt to answer those needs…
but we are quite often held hostage by those needs…
our needs come to dominate our actions… like the man
who needs love and then spends his life looking for love…
even if he finds it, it becomes a addiction for him to search for
love… and that becomes the problem… our needs sometimes
becomes our addictions… we search high and low for something
to fulfill our addictions…emotions can become that sort of
addiction as does physical addictions like drugs and booze……

addictions to something is a tyranny… it demands that we devote our time
and energy to suppling that addiction…so, we must avoid all sorts of
tyrannies, be it external or be it eternal………

and that is part of my agenda… to seek out the nature of these
addictions and allow people to understand them……

it is by understanding that we can begin to avoid our addictions…

to become aware of… oh, that sounds like Socrates decree…
“to know thyself”… yes, yes it does…

we cannot be free if we don’t understand the nature of the drives
that propel us… we cannot begin to discover our way to the journey
to become who we are unless we discover the internal drives that
propel us into action……

every single journey begins with an internal moment, not
an external moment…we say to ourselves… let us go somewhere…
even if it is internally, not externally… let us seek out the drives
that influence and propels me into some sort of actions…

let us begin to understand the internal tyrannies that form us
and drive us… the need to dominate, the need to seek out
addictions, the need to answer internal demands instead of
of understanding those internal demands…

to free ourselves of the internal demands that drive us…

to be in control of our demands instead of them in control of us…

do we need to accept the demand to renounce those demands?

as the religious claims that we must renounce the physical demands of
love and sex and other physical needs we have? Is renunciation really the
only recourse we have to free ourselves of our drives?

I don’t believe so… I believe that we can overcome our physical needs, that
we can be in charge of our needs instead of them being in charge of us…

but it takes an understanding of the nature of our addictions that will
allow us to begin to understand what drives us and why……

I believe we have to work out our internal tyrannies before we
can work out our external tyrannies such as dictatorships, either
politically or economically…we must become aware of what drives us
and why before we can free ourselves of such political and economic
tyrannies that exists right now in the U.S…….

now one might argue that I am not being clear or specific…
but I cannot know what internal drives that are within you…
that creates your internal tyrannies…… I can only work on my
internal drives that create an internal tyranny within me and those
internal drives are different between you and me…….

so what drives you? what drives do you have that
has become your “addiction?”

and how do you free yourself of your addictions?

Kropotkin

as an underlying issue of my writing is simply this,
what does philosophy have to say to people?

what can I say that will have an impact upon people’s lives?

As of right now, I write for a very small, specific group of people…
but what can I say to the wider population of American’s or even
to those outside of America……

Must I tailor what I say to fit into some conversation that people will
understand or should I just say what I gotta say and understanding be damned…

I suspect that my viewpoint is so outside the realm of understanding of
the “average” person that I may as well be writing in Greek……

the “average” person cannot for the life of them, see how the matters I bring up
are even a “problem” in the lives of “average” people…

for most people, the slogan is the message… as Raygun pointed out,

“government is not the solution, government is the problem”

this slogan is the message… any deeper thought into the matter never
comes to mind…all people can or will think of, is how government is
the problem… meanwhile never looking deeper into the matter to see if
this is even correct…the slogan matches people feelings about the matter…

in other words, people were already feel this way, but the slogan puts into
words, their feelings…people were already dissatisfied with government,
but they hadn’t or couldn’t put that feeling into words… the slogan match
their feelings about government…

the struggle to become human, fully human just doesn’t have a fancy
slogan which allows that idea to become part of the cliché of human
expressions…

clichés like “to err is human, to forgive, divine” that expression
has existed since, well forever… and is has become such a cliché that
we forget what it means…

so some clichés are so cliché that we are immune to its effects…

but what has philosophy offered to people that might even be considered
to be cliché? nothing…the impact of philosophy in these “modern”
times is minimal at best…and that is the problem……

the one discipline that people and society needs is unable to minister
to the needs of people because it has become out of touch with what
people need…philosophy has driven itself into extinction because it
has lost touch with what the people need…

and what do the people need?

why some means of being able to steer and direct our lives,
both individually and collectively… and we cannot steer or direct
our lives until we understand it… not in a scientific way, but in a
philosophical way… and that means we not only answer the who, what,
when, where, how, but we must answer the why… the one question that
scientific cannot answer, the why… but religion can answer the why, but
religion cannot answer the who, what, when, where and how…
religion comes from a place where the answer is already known,
the why… but in this case, the why fails to answer the doubts that
fill our hearts……

why do I suffer? believe in god… why must I die? believe in god…
what is the point of, the meaning of life… believe in god…

the problem with religion is that every answer ends with the answer of god…
you can replace every question of why, with the answer of god… question of why,
the answer, god,

the questions of philosophy do not and cannot answer with god…
for that answer is theology and we don’t need any more theology in our
lives… we need philosophy…

philosophy begins with doubt… theology begins with certainty…

I would rather live in doubt then live in certainty…for in certainty
cannot lead us to any new understanding of who we are and what is our point…

for certainty is the beginning of and the end of the process… there is no
other steps to the certainty of god… either you believe or you don’t…

I don’t… now what? that’s it… that is the end of theology…
I don’t believe…

but in philosophy, I don’t believe is the beginning of philosophy, not
the end…so, once again, what do we philosophers have to say to
our friends living a life where they don’t doubt anything…

begin to doubt?.. is that really all we can say to people outside of
philosophy? I would hope we could at least create a really cool slogan that
brought to life, the real message of philosophy…

something a little less esoteric then “cogito ergo sum”…

perhaps we can work on a really cool slogan of philosophy…

Kropotkin

once humans became intelligent enough to recognize death for what it was, and to anticipate there own inevitable death, two philosophical kinds of minds emerged that approached this problem differently. on kind refused to believe it. these were the spiritual philosophers. the other kind figured we might as well enjoy ourselves as much as we can before we die. these were the hedonists. now in order for the second kind to fulfill their goal, they had to remove from their life that requirement which would greatly hinder their pursuit of pleasure. namely, work. the task then was to figure out a way to get others to do your share of the work. but since taking direct tyrannical control over those who you want to do all the work, is extremely difficult (slavery doesn’t go too well), there has to be a better way… a way that would make those others willingly do all the work… and even be thankful for being given the opportunity to do so. it was at this point that the hedonists realized they could use the spiritualists to do this, and the ruling class hierarchy was born. the hedonists then employed the spiritualists to brainwash people into being voluntary slaves. and here we are… several thousands of years later.

i wish there was more to the story, but i’m afraid there isn’t. this entire history of the development of intelligent life on this planet has had this single modus operandi, and nothing more profound than that. essentially a bunch of upright bipedal apes split into two fundamental groups; workers and non-workers. and during the meanwhile all manner of special significance has been given to the species’ existence… as if there ‘was something more’ to its existence that was some great philosophical puzzle to be solved.

the greatest curse laid upon mankind is the requirement of his drudgery to survive. those who escape it are the parasites, and those who do not are the gimps. but there is a third type, the species of the novatore, who like a shooting star passes overhead… above all the insipid noise and chatter of these two apes in their eternal struggle against each other.

“…only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don’t want and I don’t grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism.”

biggs was right. we’re all waiting for godot, but who can do it with the style of a novatore?

“… My motto is: walk expropriating and igniting, always leaving behind me howls of moral offenses and smoking trunks of old things.”

nihilists of the world, ignite!

might I offer up a slightly different theory…

love… the Greeks identified 5 forms of love:
familial love, friendly/platonic love, romantic love,
guest love, divine love…

over history, love has been identified by an generic overall name,
for example, we can see the late Middle ages, early Renaissance period
of chivalric romance/love…and we have the grand romantic stories of love,
Romeo and Juliet and Abelard and Heloise…and we have the very strict rules
of the Victorian era in which romance was strictly guarded… a women could
not see a man without permission…and any visit must be with a chaperon…

various societies have had very strict rules on courtship and marriage
and who could love whom…in most societies, the higher class, the
nobles would never fall in love with someone from the lower classes,
the poor…

and we have Christian love which has been defined as “the love”
and we have the Chinese benevolent love with its emphasizes on
actions and duty… think Kant…

now given this, what are our rules for love and dating?

and why is this so?

Kropotkin

thinking about our “modern” world…

think about our world before say, the French Revolution or the Industrial
Revolution…think about the Art being made, think about philosophy
or science or theology or politics and the “viewpoint” that people held……

In other words, science had one basic viewpoint… Newtonian physics,
Literature had novels that were pretty much following the path of
Don Quixote…published in 1605 and part two was published in 1620…

you had ART which was, in part, painting which identifiable as being
similar to painting done after 1500 to 1880… the art work done in
this time period were variations of a theme…but painting changed
starting roughly 1880…

you have plays which were following themes set up by the Greeks
and Romans…until, 1900 when plays began to change their nature…

the thing to understand is that “Modernism” affected different aspects of our
lives at different rates…

you have viewpoints which exists in time…

…. so, we have the Middle ages viewpoint which is a style
that was about the paths to god…everything related to
some aspect of the pursuit of god… the art, the buildings, the literature,
how one lived……everything was related back to some viewpoint about god…

then we have the changing viewpoint of the Renaissance… in which
the pursuit of god was gradually being changed into an pursuit of
man… “Man is the measure of all things” could be this motto…

and we have a Renaissance viewpoint which is expressed by painting
and Architecture and statues and plays and writings…

then gradually over the years, we have another viewpoint which is the
enlightenment viewpoint…where we have more changes in how we
view paintings and plays and history and Art and statues…

then, beginning with Sturm und Drang… we have the next phase of
viewpoints in literature and music and paintings and plays and Architecture…
which is the Romantic viewpoint which dominated Europe and the
America’s for roughly 100 years… think of it as an anti-enlightenment…
movement…

then roughly 1880 in Art and at different times in different countries and
in different disciplines, we have changes in Paintings and literature
and plays and philosophy and history and economics…

let us take one example… communism… Marx began to write in the 1830’
1840’s and continued into the 1870’s… but his critique wasn’t possible,
his viewpoint wasn’t possible until the material conditions of various
countries had change enough to allow Marx’s viewpoint to become
widespread… what that means is that, the Industrial Revolution
changed people’s basic understanding of what it meant to be human…
Marxism simply wasn’t even viable until the economic and political
changes made it possible…as a viewpoint, Marxism wasn’t even possible
until the Industrial revolution made it possible…

and all of the “modern” viewpoints of Art, Symbolism for example,
wasn’t possible until the conditions on the ground changed…

the philosophy of a time… say, 1700, must match the conditions
on the ground… Marxism just wasn’t possible in the year 1700 because
the conditions that Marxism describes wasn’t created yet…our theories,
our viewpoints must match the conditions on the ground that we see…

so, in science for example, the Newtonian theory of the universe matched
what people saw on the ground…in 1700… it match the various theories
and idea’s that people had about the universe and what it meant to be human…

but if Marxism cannot fit into 1700, it certainly did fit in 1850 or 1900 because
of the changing conditions on the ground that people saw that made Marxism
a better fit for what was the political, social, economic conditions on the ground…

so how did the “modern” world change in terms of viewpoints?

we can see the changes in paintings, Architecture, plays, novels,
and philosophy and politics, all beginning around the 1850 in
politics for example… and in paintings around 1880, and philosophy
in 1900 and science after Einstein in 1905… different viewpoints of
disciplines changed at a different rates in time depending…….

for example, take literature… we can see changes in poetry beginning in
the 1870’s with Arthur Rimbaud for example and the changing viewpoints
in novels and plays… the rise of modernism in novels has been very well
established and easily researched…but we have novel/poems that are the
“stream of consciousness” novels/poems that begin from 1870 on…

those “stream of consciousness” writings are simply not possible before
1870 because of the already established viewpoints that were current at
the time…

in other words, the viewpoints we have are viewpoints that
can only exists during a specific time period, ours……

we cannot hold to ancient viewpoints like the Medieval viewpoint
because those conditions no longer hold… and as our current conditions
change, our viewpoints will change with it…the literature, the painting,
the poems, the Architecture, plays and movies will all change as our
material conditions change…our viewpoints must change with the material
changes we see around us…and our viewpoints that seem to “up to date”
only last as long we remain static in the conditions on the ground…

so, the viewpoints of literature and plays and philosophy and music
and poems are a reflection of the conditions on the ground…
and we see that the “modern” viewpoint starting in 1880’s on,
were reflections of what is going on in society at the time…

and see “modernism” as being mobile and active, variable
and changeable, shifting as being representative of what
the conditions on the ground were……fluid, molten…
a famous saying was this… “All that is solid, melts into air”
and that little saying exemplifies everything we need to know
about our modern times…viewpoints that were solid
and firm, melted under the heat of our modern times…

because of the changing conditions of our times, we no longer
seem to have solid, firm convictions or viewpoints that we
can point to and express our everlasting agreement with…

the diverse and every changing conditions on the ground is reflected in
the diverse and every changing viewpoints of people…

we don’t have a fixed and set viewpoint of say, Liberalism, because the
conditions on the ground isn’t fixed or set… the ideology of Liberalism
requires a set and fixed situation on the ground but we can see that
modernism has turn all past certainties into possibilities, at best, possibilities…

or said another way… our modern life has taken the ambiguity of language
and set its way into all parts of our life… we cannot say for certain that
liberalism is the best way or conservatism is the best way or democracy is
the best way or that communism is the best way because we are now
aware of the ambiguity of liberalism and the ambiguity of communism
and the ambiguity of democracy…with ambiguity comes uncertainty…

and if there is a modern viewpoint, it is of ambiguity and uncertainty
and doubt and puzzlement about who we are and what is our meaning…

“all that is solid, melts into Air”

that is the “modern” condition right now…

and into that uncertainty comes the political drive for tyrants
and dictatorships like IQ45… to remove our doubts and
uncertainty… all we have to do is follow those would be
tyrants and dictator’s……

and is the solution to turn to political tyranny?

no, the solution is to accept and learn to live with
ambiguity and uncertainty and doubt……

for the path to wisdom lies with doubt, not with certainty…

for the certain man never challenges if he is really on the path to
wisdom… having certainty means never having to doubt if
you are on the right path… it is assumed that you are on the right path…

I cannot make any such assumption… you have a set and certain viewpoint,
if you do not doubt, you can only assume that you are within bliss and wisdom…

a set and fixed viewpoint in these modern times doesn’t fit the conditions on
the ground… we have rapidly changing conditions which forces rapidly changing
viewpoints…will we ever have a set of fixed viewpoints again?

yes, but not now… right now we are in an transitional time period between
set and fixed viewpoints… at some point in the future, we shall have
a fixed and set viewpoint, but not today…not now…

soon…

Kropotkin

let us take a specific historical event, the Holocaust…
and specifically, Auschwitz…is Auschwitz even possible before
the 20th century?

No, is Auschwitz possible before World War One?

No, it isn’t…the deaths of millions in a war means that we have
legitimized the deaths of millions by any means…

a war is a set piece of theater… we have two counties by conventional
method declaring war on another… we have rousing speeches and
widespread marches and formal declarations leading up to a war…
see the days before World War One… In August of 1914…

if the deaths of millions is legitimized by war, then the deaths of millions
by other means is perfectly legitimized…

Auschwitz becomes possible because of a changing viewpoint that
makes it possible to condone the death of millions within an ism or
an ideology…we are “freed” to condemn millions to death because
they hold different beliefs, different ideologies then we do…

Was Auschwitz so terrible as to prevent concentration camps today?

No, because we have concentration camps today, right now, in
a America that help liberate the concentration camps of the Germans,
help liberate such camps as Auschwitz…

if we approve of concentration camps because of an ism or an
ideology, then we have no better ground to stand upon then the Germans
who operated their concentration camps on grounds of ism’s or ideology…

America has had concentration camps before today… during the Civil war,
both the north and south had concentration camps… such as
Andersonville… so, why should we be so surprised that America
has such an affinity for such barbaric actions as concentration camps…

America which had its genocide in the decimation of the American
Indians and held slavery as the highest ideal of a civilized country…

an America that had slavery since its first days from colonization…
and nary a word disapproving until after the turn of the 19th century…
over 170 years of American history……

we allowed such barbaric practices because our viewpoint allowed it…
the conditions on the ground allowed it…
we felt is was our “right” to engage in the genocide of American Indians
and our right to allow slavery, the ownership of people as property…

and this right still exists as corporations still own people in terms of
capitalism…if people can be fired for engaging in social media, critical
of the company after working hours, then the company owns our work, our
person…because I for one, cannot make a distinction between the work I
do and my person…… one might say, it is not slavery because you can always
quit, but that isn’t true…to leave the working world, to escape having a job,
is to starve to death and that isn’t a choice at all… we must work to have
food on the table and to have health insurance and to become educated…

in other words, in our viewpoint, to have rights in America, one
must first have a job… a job where it is dictated to us what kind
of shoes we can wear and what color shirt we can wear and
what time we must be at work… then and only then can we expect to
have the right to food and due process and health insurance……

you might say, this has nothing to do with Auschwitz…
wrong… it has everything to do with Auschwitz…
because the reason Auschwitz happened is because of a viewpoint
that made it possible…if in our viewpoint, we think of people as
“Subhuman” then we make it possible for us to dehumanized people…
and that allows us to participate in such events as genocides and
the Holocaust…if in our viewpoint……

because we haven’t understood tyranny as being economic as
we have identified it to be political, we still, in our viewpoint,
we still accept the tyranny of corporations, whereas we might fight the same
tyranny in governments…we are economic slaves… a distinction lost
to many people because their viewpoint hasn’t evolved enough to make
such a distinction…

the current rumbling against capitalism is the start of such a distinction,
that the tyranny of the economic is just as bad and evil as a political tyranny…

what is possible and what isn’t possible for a person and for a society/state,
still comes from our viewpoint that make it possible……

if we separate people into different and distinct classes, we make
such events a possibility… in other words, Auschwitz becomes possible
when we to think of, have a viewpoint of people being different then us…
the us vs them problem… as long as we have an us vs them, understanding
of the world, we shall be capable of the Holocaust and capable of Auschwitz…

Our viewpoint that allows us to dehumanize other people allows an Auschwitz
or allows us to be slaves of our modern corporate world…….

The act of tyranny is simply to have the viewpoint that other people are worth less then
we are……. to negate and to dehumanize people is to allow World wars
and to allow the Holocaust and to allows concentration camps and to allow
Auschwitz and to allow slavery…

if you think that democrats are less American then you, if you think that
blacks are less human then you, if you think that Jews are stiff neck Hebrews…
then you have set the stage for a viewpoint that allows concentration camps
and slavery and Auschwitz…

reexamine your viewpoints… do you subscribe to the point of view that
certain people are less then you? Then you believe as the Nazi’s believed,
then you believe as the slave owners believed and you believed as
the perpetrators of the American genocide believed……

I am better then you…

it is all a matter of a viewpoint……

what is your viewpoint?

Kropotkin

as I quite often come back to a value…
the value of love…

but what is the value of love?

we humans, we are naturally engaged in our own mind…
we are solipsist, narcissistic by nature…

love is one means for us to go outside of ourselves…

by loving another, we actually note that there is someone
outside of ourselves…

for example, IQ45 is completely unable to acknowledge any one
outside of himself… for he is the center of his universe and there
is only bit players within that universe for him…

he cannot love… for if he could love, he would see that there is
another to love… but he cannot even acknowledge that there are
other human beings……. other possibilities to love…

by love, we can acknowledge that there are other people…
and that is the value of love…

now some may say, but I love America!.. I acknowledge that
there are others in America…but those who make love of country
as their central claim quite often limit that love to certain people…

America, love it or leave it…

but that is not the unconditional love I am speaking about…
if you can only love another conditionally, then you don’t love…

and those who make love of country central, will dismiss and deny those
who love differently…

I want to America to become the shining beacon of justice in the world…

but that love is denied because it is a different love then those
who say, America, love it or leave it……

what aspect of America that we are suppose to love as others love it?

In other words, if we are to accept the message America, love it or leave it,
what part are we to love unconditionally?

for I see those who proclaim love of country as central, loving
conditionally………

as I have been married for over 20 years, I love my wife… but
there are things that she does that, well frankly annoy me…
but I don’t love her conditionally… I love her, the good, the bad and
all the rest of her, unconditionally…I love her…and that is more then I
can say for those who proclaim America, love it or leave it… because the love
of my wife is without conditions… there is no love it or leave it… it is simply,
love it…

now some may say, love of wife is different then love of country……

is it? how?

The goal I set for myself is to become the best Kropotkin I can be…
and my goal for America is no different… I want America to become
the best America it can possibly be… and the route I choose for both
follows the same path… to begin by knowing thyself… to see myself
without any prior rose color glasses… to see myself as I am…
and I do the same for America… I try to see America as it is,
not as I want it to be or what I have been told it is… or even
as I need it to be… but as it is…just as I want to see me
as I am…for I cannot understand myself without being able to see
myself as I am…

the evolution of Kropotkin comes with the acknowledgment, the understanding
that Kropotkin is human… and like all other humans, I make mistakes,
sometimes I fail people, even those who I love the most…

I can be very short tempered and sometimes, I am engaged in a world
of my own…in other words, I can be very solipsistic… sometimes, I
can’t see a world beyond my own thoughts… I am engaged with what
I am thinking about and I forget that there is a world beyond my own
thoughts…Kropotkin failings as it were…

I am at peace with who I am but that doesn’t mean I don’t attempt
to engage with becoming a better human being… I can improve myself
and still be at peace with who I am…

I accept who I am unconditionally, but love has shown me that there is a world
beyond of my own unconditional acceptance of myself… I can accept my wife
unconditionally… now, I must learn to accept other people unconditionally…
just as they are… and someday, if I am lucky, I will learn to accept
all people, unconditionally… thus my love grows from one, me, to a second person,
my wife, to a third and fourth, until I learn to love all, unconditionally…

it is a battle between my natural inclination, solipsism, and my engagement with being
human…fully human…and understanding that there is a entire world of human beings
beyond me…and should I ever get to that stage, I must make the next journey which
is an engagement with the understanding that beyond human beings lies animals,
tree’s, birds, grass… that I am one with all life…I may never reach that stage
of engagement, but it is a goal worthy of a lifetime of engagement…

my value as a human being does not need me to have wealth or greatness
or military value or having material goods, but my value as a human being
simply comes from being able to increase my love from one to all…

that is what it means to become human… learning to love others, all others
as I love myself…it is a tall task I have set before me, a task I am sure to fail
at… but even if failure is a certainty, I must try to achieve the impossible…
for we find ourselves in trying to reach the impossible, not in achieving the
responsible, achievable goals…

recall my favorite myth…Daedalus and Icarus…

and I root for Icarus to succeed… to attempt to accomplish the
impossible even if failure is guaranteed… is a goal worthy of
attempting…

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin:

"I accept who I am unconditionally, but love has shown me that there is a world
beyond of my own unconditional acceptance of myself… I can accept my wife
unconditionally… now, I must learn to accept other people unconditionally…
just as they are… and someday, if I am lucky, I will learn to accept
all people, unconditionally… thus my love grows from one, me, to a second person,
my wife, to a third and fourth, until I learn to love all, unconditionally…

it is a battle between my natural inclination, solipsism, and my engagement with being
human…fully human…and understanding that there is a entire world of human beings
beyond me…and should I ever get to that stage, I must make the next journey which
is an engagement with the understanding that beyond human beings lies animals,
tree’s, birds, grass… that I am one with all life…I may never reach that stage
of engagement, but it is a goal worthy of a lifetime of engagement…"

T, I realise you have an aversion to posters putting up youtube videos, etc. - you feel it is laziness. Howwwwwever, given the nature of your (in my opinion) noble aspirations, I thought it fitting to post the following. It occurred to me recently that ‘the song’ could be considered as an anthem for philosophers - seekers! There are countless renditions to choose from - I plumped for Frank, as it includes the lyrics. Of course, in my opinion, I am old romantic! :slight_smile:

youtu.be/JjI7VeIA7ZI

pete’s a swell guy and he’s become quite the scholar, hadn’t he?

i told him he needs to start doing pod casts.

That’s a fine idea! Although I’m sure he would say he lacks the knowhow! :-k :slight_smile:

K: to Pro75… as noted by Mr. Derleydoo, I do lack the knowhow… but more importantly,
I have a routine in which I write by…I take a couple of hours just to write one post,
and two or three posts, can take all morning…

if I do two or three posts in a row, I am so tired that I need to take a nap…

I am not a verbal person… I am most comfortable in philosophical conversation,
with writing…a podcast wouldn’t allow me to reflect or think about what I am saying…
and to be honest, I actually never know exactly what I am going to write about until
I begin to write…or perhaps, I might have a topic but that will be all I have
and I must work out the rest as I write…….

my mornings are spent divided between reading and writing, when I have a day off…

my afternoons can be reading or dealing with the wife as she comes home from
work around 1:30 in the afternoon… I basically need to be done with my writing
and reading by that time…

right now I am reading a biography of Karl Marx by Stedman Jones…
and I am casting about for the next book to read…

all in all, I lead a boring, routine life and that routine helps me write…

I am either at work or I am at home reading/writing… that is pretty much
what I do…or I watch sports on TV… watched the Warriors win their first
game in the new Chase center last night…I really don’t do anything else…
read/write/watch sports… that’s it…

to engage in podcast would take me away from my routine…
and mess up my flow… :smiley:

BTW… how are you Mr. Derely… I hope all is well with you…
and thank you for Frank… I have always had a soft spot for
that song, the Impossible dream…to be honest, the only Sinatra song I
listen to with any regularity is “It was a very good year”…
just as the only Rolling Stone song I listen to is “Angie”…

Kropotkin

we have face this question before… of our living
philosophy as opposed to our studying philosophy…

We moderns, we study, we dissect, we measure philosophy…
but we don’t live philosophy…we have on our mantelpiece…
a very nice statue of philosophy… which we gaze at and marvel at,
but we sure the hell don’t bring philosophy into our lives nor do
we live our philosophy…….

our “modern” philosophy is just a showpiece meant to be looked at
and marveled about and that is all…

and that is what is wrong about philosophy…when I begin a philosopher,
I read a biography about them… and the last, the truly last philosopher who lived
philosophy perhaps, perhaps Spinoza and before that, we have to go back to
the Greek philosophers to find a philosopher who lived their philosophy…
perhaps even go back to the foundations of philosophy, Socrates before
we find a philosopher who actually lived their philosophy…I liken this
to Christianity… where we have Christ who lived the true Christian ideal
and everyone after that pretended to live it but in these “modern” times,
people don’t even pretend to live as Christians… they mouth the words
but have no idea of what it really means to be “Christian”………
what it means to live and practice Christianity… to be Christian means to
exist as Christian, to act and be and dream and love as a Christian…
and no one does that and hasn’t done that in a very long time…

and it is no different for philosophy…we mouth the words, say the prayers,
but we don’t exists as philosophers…we don’t live as philosophers…

philosophy in ancient times meant as a way of life, today,
philosophy is simply a course to study which has no bearing on our
day to day lives………… I don’t engage with philosophy as a way of life
and you don’t either… and that is our failure to engage with philosophy,
I mean to really engage with, to live by and if necessary to die by, philosophy……

to live philosophy as if it were our only possibility……

How do we live philosophy?

we don’t even understand the question any more…

philosophy stands over there and we stand over here and may
the two never meet… that is the “modern” stance to philosophy…

we don’t engage with philosophy as a life and death struggle to understand
what it means to be human…philosophy must rock us to our very core
and make us reexamine everything we think and feel about being human…

if philosophy doesn’t rock you, then you are just a dilettante,
an amateur who dabbles in philosophy while waiting for dinner to be served…

Kropotkin

but if you look at America today, you see millions of American’s
simply not interested in what it means to be an American…

as long as we have our dancing shows and sports on TV,
we don’t care how our lives might be impacted by IQ45 and
his attempts to undermine our basic freedoms and to undermine what it means
to be an American…so this is the third instance of people just
pretending to be something but not even putting on a good performance…

we have Christians pretending to be Christian but faced with the real chance
of being Christian, they simply look away… and we have philosophers who
only play philosophers on TV… given these people just study philosophy, but
don’t actually practice philosophy, just like the Christians and those pretending
to follow what it means to be American…

so we have three separate examples in our modern world, where
people proclaim themselves something, Christian, philosopher, American
and at no point do they actually practice what they preach…at no point,
do they engage with what it means for a Christian to be Christian and at no
point do they engage with what it means for a philosopher to be a philosopher
and at no point do American’s engage with what it means to be an American…

let others do the hard work of engagement with being Christian or being American
or being an philosopher… I shall think about the Kardashians or Dancing with the stars…

I shall let other do my living for me…I shall be responsible and middle class
and adultlike while others live for me and think for me and die for me…
I have bills to pay and don’t have the time to engage in what it means to
be human or to be a Christian or to be an American or to be a philosopher…

I will let others do that… while I sit on the couch and watch Monday night football…

Don’t I deserve that after the hard week I put in work?

As if that excuses not engaging in your life and not engaging in what
it means to be human or to be a Christian or to be an American or
to be a philosopher…….

I am reminded of a line from a play…

“as for living, our servants can do that for us”…

as for living, I am too engaged in my solipsism to take the time
to engage with or to understand what it means to be human, or what
it means to be Christian or to be an American or to be a philosopher…

that line should haunt us… I am too engaged in my solipsism to engage
in my own life……

what solipsism engages you to the point of you not engage with your own life?

Kropotkin

as noted before, if you only love yourself, what do you care about
being an Christian or an American or a philosopher or even a human being?

your vision, your viewpoint can only extend no further then your skin…
or in modern American, your viewpoint can only extend as far as your
“smartphone” which does your living for you……. why have servants,
when your cell phone can live out your life for you?

your cell phone is just another addiction which allows you to avoid
facing what it means to be a human being or a Christian or a philosopher…

if we devoted as much time on what it means to be human as we did to
our “smartphones” we would have solve this question of what it means to
be human or Christian or American…

the answer can only come from a decision you make about what is important,
truly important in your life… what do you value?

do you value understanding what it means to be human or an American or Christian or
do you value watching TV or spending time on your “smartphone”?

only you can answer this question…

but why Kropotkin, why is this an important question?

I can’t see what difference does it make if I don’t understand what
it means to be human or to be Christian or to be an American or to be
a philosopher?

I can simply look up what it means to be philosopher or to be an American…
Wiki can answer questions like that so I don’t have to answer it…

and once again, letting others live for you……

the engagement we must have with who we are and what is important
must be as personal as falling in love or suffering a great loss…

we must feel something before we can finally engage with what is truly
important in our lives…is learning who is the masked singer really as important
as an engagement with what it means to be a human being?

if it is, then you have some serious issues because
you can’t even tell what is important and what isn’t…

try it… what is important? what is worth living for and what is worth dying for?

what does it mean to be human? and does that compare to spending the next
ten minutes being on Facebook? or Instagram learning what your bff was eating last
night?

we have forgotten what it means to engage with the real matters of existence…

“what are we to do?” “what should we believe in?” “what should our values be?”…
among some of the questions of human existence that lie just outside of your
viewpoint which only seems to be of your cell phone…

J’Accuse…… I would accuse but people don’t seem to really care about what
it means to be human or to be Christian or to be an American or to be
a philosopher…all that matters is how is Kanye treating Kim…
and who won dancing with the stars and how many pictures you took of
yourself yesterday…

Kropotkin

engaging in philosophy might not any more important then asking yourself,

what is important in my life?

what should I engage with?

what values are my values?

What am I to do?

what should I believe in?

are these questions more important to you then
spending time on Instagram?

if those question are not as important to you?

then why not?

begin there… ask yourself why?

a simple engagement with what it means to be you…

can you even do that?

or is your addiction to your phone or to your TV shows or is your
latest fix on movie stars more important?

and why?

Kropotkin

watching the TV the other day and various candidates were
calling other candidates “radical”… Its a thing in the U.S… where
by calling another candidates “radical” you can claim the middle ground,
in any political race…
… which got me to thinking…

the boogeyman of American politics over the last 70 years has
been communism…Richard Nixon won his first senate campaign by
painting his opponent as “communist” and that was in 1950…

so by definition, Karl Marx who “created” communism must also be
a “radical” but let us understand what the word “radical” really means…
with examples from Marx…

one of the key events of the 19th century was the widespread
discontentment that culminated in the attempted revolutions
of 1848 and 1849……

the list of demands that were part of this revolutionary period
are also the demands of one Karl Marx…and this is important to
note… the “party” that Marx lead was basically a workers party…
the entire revolutionary demands were basically workers demands
and what do workers demand?

Even today, we can list off basic worker demands…

better pay, safer working conditions, more benefits, press freedom,
universal manhood suffrage…(more on this one later) freedom
of expression…

these demands were the “radical” demands of the workers who drove
this revolution…and Marx supported each and every single one of these demands…

and in the pages of the newspapers he wrote in, he pushed these demands…

these “radical” demands were the demands of workers wanting basic
democratic rights of voting and liberalism… they wanted the workers
to become something more then just “workers”… they wanted a say in
the things that affected their lives, as workers and as people…

and how is that any different then anything we demand today?

in fact if we actually read the “Communist Manifesto” written by
Marx in 1848, we see how really “radical” he really is…

what are his “radical” demands?

a progressive income tax, abolition of inheritances, abolition of child labor
free public education, nationalization of the means of transport and communication,
centralization of credit via a national bank, and perhaps the most “radical” he had,
which was the abolition of private property…

Let us look at these “radical” demands… each and every one except one, became
a reality in the next century, the 20th…

and the one that didn’t, it is rather obvious……

but how “radical” does a man have to be to want the right to have some
say in his life?..

Marx was so “radical” that a majority of his ideas, once considered to be dreams,
were fulfilled the next century…

some of the ideas of the revolutionaries in 1848 requires some explanation…

for example, one of the big demands of the revolution in 1848 was the
relaxation of and even the elimination of censorship…what that means is
that any book written in say, Prussian Germany, had to be passed by
the official government censor to be allowed to be printed…
and that censorship even extended into the daily writings of
newspapers…and needless to say, that censorship also extended
into private communications, your mail was also examined for
“radical tendencies”… there as no such thing as “private” communication…

the next example was “universal manhood suffrage”… in Europe as was
true in America, laws were passed that allowed voting to occur only if
you had a certain amount of property… so, to vote, you had be male
and own a certain amount of property…

this is the basis of the “radical” demands Marx had for “universal manhood suffrage”

so we have basic worker demands that we can certainly relate to today,
demands like higher wages and safer working conditions and having a say
over the matters that affect us the most…

and so, in this midst of “radical” demands, we find ourselves
with a question?

on whose side are we on? do we stand with the workers and
give them the basic human needs of having their bottom line
needs of food, water, shelter, education, health care being met?

the needs that all human beings have and must be fulfilled
if we are going to rise above being simple, human/animal…

or are you on management side, where to deny people their basic rights
is done to maintain power and wealth of the wealthy who own
the production side of the economic system…

ok, let try this, if we admit that one of the basic rights allowed
to human beings is education, then what is wrong with universal
free admittance to collage… free collage for anyone who wants it…

why is this idea so “radical” when one of the basic rights of being
human is an education?

the answer lies in “it costs to much”…

so, we deny people one of their basic human rights because it
cost too much?

who exactly will it cost? and how can we logically decide upon
the matter of “it will cost to much?”

cost to much to whom and how do we decide if the cost is too “high”?

by what means do we judge this matter of the “cost” being too high?

in whose viewpoint do we make this sort of judgement?

the wealthy or in the eyes of those who have a need to be educated?

these are the “radical” demands that someone like Marx would have
fought over today, if he was still alive… why is free collage education
so “radical” when the cost of ignorance is far greater… see the 2016
presidential election for the cost of ignorance in America……

if the idea of abolishing tuition is so “radical” then why do these
countries practice it, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark,
Norway and Finland, Iceland, France and Estonia…

this is just one small example of “radical” demands not being so “radical”…

and an example that lead us to think of Karl Marx has being not so “radical” if
his demands were the exact same demands that workers want and still want…

the only question comes down to his most “Radical”
demand, that of the elimination of private property…

I shall approach that in some later posts as it requires a very long,
detailed explanation…

but the question of the demands of the “radicals” really resides on
the question of “values”?

what do we consider important? is having a say in our lives really that
“radical” of a demand? don’t all people want a say in what happens in
their lives? do I personally want my life to be dominated by this
fanatical drive for profits that corporations have?

I can see the cost of this drive in my mind, heart and soul and I can
see the costs of profits in the mind, heart and soul of America…

we have such social problems as alienation and discontentment
and within such actions as Sandy Hooks and rampant drug addictions
as in opioids, which are meant to deaden the pain one feels, sounds
familiar? most of, indeed almost all the problems of modern day America
can be directly or indirectly shown to be the fanatical drive for profits
by corporations…

in Europe, they have far fewer issues because they have
limited the profit motive of corporations and thus they have
alleviated many of the social problems we face in America…

or said another way, Europe is a saner place then America because
it has limited the pursuit of profits………

in 1848, the battle was to gain some rights to be able to have
some say over the forces which dominate our lives, politically…
but the forces that dominate our lives are just political, they
are economic and we must begin to face up to that problem which
has promoted such stress in American’s… and it is this stress that
has lead to many of our social issues… in America you can go bankrupt
if you face a medical crisis, I know because when I had my colon issues,
the total cost was around 360,000 and my share was 20%…
that pretty much cost every single dime of money we had…
we haven’t recovered and most likely will never recover financially,
but what about people who can’t afford that?

that is part of the stress that afflict America…and causes
such issues as I mentioned…

so part of the solution that was a factor in 1848 is also
part of the solution in 2019 and that is this…

the solution cannot be just a political solution, it requires
and indeed, demands an economic solution for it to become
a viable solution…we cannot just fix the political problems
and say, “mission accomplished” no, that is just not enough…
we must fight the economic tyranny that currently exists
in this country…

and what is the solution?

the “radical” Marx had the solution all those years ago,
fight for the right to become who you are and
engage in having a say in our lives……

Kropotkin

as noted, I am reading a biography of Marx…
by Stedman Jones…

and I was thinking about the relationship of Marx to Jesus,
a post is coming on that one, anyway, I was just letting my mind wander
and thinking about Marx… and I suddenly realized that we can use various
historical figures as one possible means to discover who we are…

for example, we can use Jesus as a possibility as a life lived
religiously… and we can use Newton or Einstein as a life lived
scientifically and Nietzsche or Spinoza as a life lived philosophically…
and we can use any number of people such as Bill Clinton as a life
lived politically…and Gandhi as a life lived peacefully…or perhaps
MLK as a life lived both religiously and peacefully within a political means…

in other words we can use people’s lives as an understanding of what it means
to be human in a certain regard…we can use Da Vinci as a life lived
artistically…

but name me someone who lived more then one life, someone who lived
not just artistically but lived politically and scientifically…

because this is so rare we can only name a few people,
the message of what it means to be human that is found
within our lives can be found within those who have
achieved multiple lives…

and the most prominent name I can think of is… Goethe…
he lived artistically both a poet and novelist and Playwright
and even as a painter… but he lived politically as the chief
advisor to the King and held various posts within that state,
and scientifically as a researcher into color and as a mineralogist,
and he discovered a human bone not described before…

and he loved… he poems about his various loves are standard reading
material in Germany…

if any could accomplish half of what Goethe did, they would be
very successful person…

so, who is your hero?
and why?

do you attempt to follow in that “hero” path?
or do you just do nothing?

what is the point in having a hero if you don’t attempt
to emulate that hero, both in spirit and in actions…

what part of your possibility is being used in your understanding of
what it means to be human?

In other words, if you see a possibility that lies within a life, like
Nietzsche, do you then attempt to follow that aspect of life…
the philosophical…or do you admire Jesus and then do you
attempt to follow that aspect of human existence and
follow the religious?

if you want to write, do you follow the writer that you admire
and pursue writing with the same passion as the person you admire?

Do you see the people within history as an example of what is possible for you,
historically, philosophically, politically, scientifically, artistically?

Marx was an economist, and he studied people within the context of economics…

and how radical is that?

Kropotkin

make no mistake, at no point does the following post
consist of any original research or insights…the points I am making
has been commented upon for at least a hundred years…

many times the right has accused the left of participating in
a or creating a religion……. the right is always accusing
the left of turning science or evolution into a religion…
not true, but the truth is not the strong point of the right…

but one cannot deny the strong relationship between Marxism
and Christianity… they share so many aspects as to be very interesting…

for example, the Christian ideal of Eschatology, end of times,
where god establishes his thousand years of peace and prosperity…
and when the Marxist classless society becomes established, we shall
see an endless time of peace and prosperity…

Marx tries to play the role of Jesus… myth making, predictions,
prophet, prophesies…

in Marxism, you had the “true” believers who were those who were to
lead others to the promised land of the classless society…

and you had to have true faith in “dialectical materialism”…
that political and historical events result from the conflict of social forces
and are interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions.
this conflict is believed to be caused by material needs…

this all consuming faith in the necessity of “dialectical materialism”
within history and human beings, lead one to be able to sacrifice people
to its whims because “dialectical materialism” was the silent hand of
history driving towards it inevitable ends…that of a classless society…

and thus human beings are sacrificed to historical inevitability of
the “dialectical materialism”… this nihilism is no different then
the Capitalistic nihilism of the invisible hand of god driving the forces
of profits and no different then the Catholicism or any other religion in which
human beings are sacrificed to the necessity of god’s work toward the end of times…

there is always some sort of plan that lies outside of the human ability to
understand and comprehend…….which drove human actions and acted upon
human actions and behavior………

reading the history of Marxism and the following communism societies that
followed, one is amazed with the number of times the charge of Heresy is
leveled against various people within the Marxist world…at one time or
another, every single person in the Marxist world is charged, rightly or wrongly,
with heresy to the “official” Marxist position and that includes Marx being charged
with heresy at times…

the one thing that needs to be understood is the fact that in Marx’s own time,
he was engaged with a very small number of people…his groups never numbered
more then a couple of thousand people………he was the leader of a very small
and unimportant group of people… just like Jesus and he felt he was preaching
the “true” gospel, just like Jesus… he had his disciples that never reached
much more then the number of disciples that Jesus had…

Personally, Marx had a authoritarian personality and he clashed with
just about everybody in his circle including Engels…

Marx was completely and absolutely convinced that he and he alone
held the truth to history and how history has unfolded and will unfold…

and if you disagreed, you were disagreeing with the holder of the truth,
nothing less then Jesus…….

it may sound like a rather odd thing to say, but we need a secular
Marxism… a Marxism that is detached from it religious context…
where there is no final eschatology of Marxism like the forever classless
society…and where we remove Marxism from its authoritarian beginnings….

where we really have Marxism become the so called “scientific” theory it
claimed for itself… when one tries to deviate from the established “Marxist”
theory, they are called “Heretics” and in that is different then established
science, where different theories are compared to the current theories
and seen if they fit into the established theories…for example,
when Gould and Eldredge suggested the “punctuated equilibrium” theory
of evolution…it wasn’t rejected out of hand as being “heresy” against
the accepted theory of evolution, it was studied to see how it worked with
the established theories of evolution……

so, when one proclaims a political theory to be wrong, it is quite common
to proclaim the new theory as wrong and Heresy… but scientific theories
are quite different from political or philosophical or cultural theories…

we should be able to test new scientific theories whereas we quite often
can’t test political, philosophical or cultural theories…

so if Marxism is a “scientific” theory, it should be testable in some fashion

but a simple look into history and the various “predictions” of Marxism
leads us to the simple fact that Marxism is a terrible way to predict the
future…thus it is very, very limited in the way we might call Marxism
a “scientific theory” as Marx thought of it…

but as a religion, Marxism does fulfill the criteria of a religion…

Marxism has its official “texts” like the bible and Marxism has its
official prophets and it official belief system, “dialectical materialism”
and it has its own eschatology …. it is enough for me to declare Marxism
as an religion…

so, to save Marxism from itself, we must disengage official Marxism from
its status as religion…we must engage with Marxism as a secular
theory of history and how people engage with or interact with each other…

if we narrow the theme of Marxism to being about what it means to be
human, Marxism can be a useful tool for us to engage with what it
means to be human and the existential question, “What are we to do?”

and Marxism may give us an answer to that existential question…

Kropotkin

not much time today as I am in a midst of a long stretch of
days where I am working every day…

in reading Marx, one only the one emotion that Marx refers to,
that of alienation… you don’t see love or hope or hate or anger
or any other emotion in Marx…it is a fairly emotionless world
that Marx is thinking about… why?

Well, basically because Marx is an economist… and economists
are not known for their exploration of the cause and effect between
the economic world we live in and the emotions of the world…

an economist world is a dry world of money and production
and labor and consumption…among other things…
but not a world given to love or hope or faith or anger or hate or
any of the thousands of possible emotions…

man/ human beings are simple a unit of measurement…we don’t have
any value outside of our production or consumption…

but we know from our own lives that lives are marked by
the moments of joy and happiness and moments of sadness
and unhappiness… and economics does not and cannot
help us to navigate the many moments of our lives that lies outside
of our production and consumption aspects of our lives…

Marx offers us an economic theory, not a political theory…
he can tell us about what a surplus value is in regards to human labor…

but he can’t tell us what is important in our lives…

so when communism is attacked, you must ask, whose communism?

because what Marx did had nothing to do with the Soviet Union…
that was Lenin trying to stretch an economic theory into a political theory…

so those who attack “COMMUNISM” really have to tell us whose communism
they are attacking… because what Marx wrote was quite different then
the communism of Lenin and different then Trosky and different then
Stalin’s version of communism…

so attack communism if you must, but tell us whose communism you
are attacking so we may be able to understand it…

Kropotkin

Because he’s hard, because he’s gangsta, and because he’s not a liar