so what does this fracture system or society really mean to us?
for example, philosophers… historically, we have philosophy take
up only a few viewpoints, for example, we could say that philosophy
had only two distinct and separate viewpoints before Descartes…
one viewpoint was Platonic and the other was Aristotelian…
after Descartes the two viewpoints, the “modern” viewpoints,
were Descartes and anti-Descartes…
and after Kant, it was Kant and anti-Kantian
and after Hegel, it was for Hegel or against Hegel…
but this division was mainly of the two viewpoints,
but in the fractured 20th century philosophy, after the
French revolution and after the industrial revolution,
there wasn’t just two viewpoints, but many…
philosophy became atomized, fractured just as society became
atomized, fractured…so we have in philosophy the exact same
fracture that hit society… so we have in philosophy, the various
schools, logical positivism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology,
existentialism, poststructuralism……
this is an example of the division and fracturing that existed
within society…the core beliefs that used to hold sway like
Descartes and anti-Descartes…has now fractured into many
and diverse philosophical beliefs…
this fracturing and atomization of man occurred in philosophy just as it
occurred in society, the political, the social, the economic………
and as a result of the industrial revolution, among the other reasons…
among which was the loss of faith in the ism’s and ideologies that
drove man/human beings and allowed them to be grounded…
we were grounded as human beings by our belief systems,
for most of human history, man/human beings existed
as rural, agricultural members of society…… modern man is
rooted in the industrial/technological/urban understanding of
what man/human beings are………but this new viewpoint is new…
it is not what man/human beings thought of before…if we think
about the viewpoint of most humans in the world, we would be
thinking about the fact that most human beings in history were,
rural agricultural types…the peasants of Europe were in fact,
the most common type of human being we have seen on planet earth…
the hunter-gatherer type of human being lasted longer, but with
less people……… since the beginning of modern society, we have
had the largest number of people being engaged in rural agriculture…
not in urban cities type…and the viewpoint of the rural agricultural
human being is different, far different then the urban human being…
if I self identify as a urban, suburban human being, that is something
new, a new viewpoint that is fairly modern… and far different then
the vast years of human existence…in which for a million years,
man/human beings self identify differently then we do today…
in addition to a fairly small number of viewpoint possible,
pre-modern life is fairly different then modern life…
and the viewpoint was radically different…
so we have Marx and Lenin, they created a “modern” viewpoint…
in which man/human beings are not viewed as individual persons,
but viewed as members of various groups and subgroups…
for example, we have man/human beings self identify in regards to
some political or social or economic or philosophical groups or systems…
I am Kropotkin… I can self identify in a wide variety of ways…
in the modern sense…before the French revolution or the industrial
revolution… in how many different ways could I self identify?
Not that many different ways…the list is indeed rather short…
I could self identify as a citizen of my city or region, or perhaps
as the property of some king or pharaoh as most people were considered
to be the property of the king or Pharaoh…
when the King of France said, “L’etat, c’est moi”… I am the state,
that was in recognition of the prevailing idea that the citizens
of France were the property of the King… and that idea has existed
for many thousands of years………
so to self-identify as being independent of the state or not as property
of another, that was a radical and modern notion…
as society, the modern world has fractured into different
spheres, where in some places human beings are still considered
to be property of another, be it a king or as slaves…
the modern take is that we human beings are no longer property of another
human being…and we reject this notion of human beings being property…
but this is another “modern” idea which still flourishes in many parts of the
world… Where human beings can still exist as property of other human beings…
that is part of the legacy of the Ancient world that still exists…
the viewpoint that hasn’t been erased in our modern times…
but that viewpoint shows us the fractured and atomized viewpoint
of the modern world that we can still hold to such outdated ideas as
people can be seen as property, not as individual, free people…
we haven’t reached the new viewpoint that “all people are created equal”
because if we had, we wouldn’t be able to see people as property…
and this includes the modern version of people being property in
the guise of modern economics… modern capitalism thrives because
it still holds to the viewpoint that human beings are and can be
considered to be property……. if the modern tyranny of capitalism can
still be accepted, then we faced with a contradiction… either were
are a free people who are create equal or, or we are not and we still
hold people as being property in the modern slave state of capitalism…
part of the modern existential dilemma is within the various contradictions
that still exists within the fancy words and proclamations we have among
which is the very fancy words… “we hold these truths to be self evident,
that all men are created equal”…and the reality of modern life in which
we are not create equal and in fact, we are treated very unequal…
and we are treated as property… when our fancy words deny such a fact…
how are we to reconcile the words, the very fancy words of freedom
and equality and justice when our actions are of denying freedom
and denying equality and denying justice…
our words and actions don’t match… welcome to the modern world…
and what of Marx and Lenin? we are faced with another contradiction…
there remedy for existence is to escape into the dialectical materialism
in which man/human beings are simply part of the flow of history
and any one individual is not important or to be sacrificed to the
betterment of the destiny of future man found in the dialectical materialism…
once again, human beings are a slave… this time to the flow of history,
that is called the dialectical materialism…we have no free will or independent
will… we are simply the play toy, the slave of dialectical materialism…
this new viewpoint is new only in it is now in the realm of political
and social and economic… this viewpoint has dominated within
the religious for a very long time… where we are the play things of
god who decides our fate…where we have only the free will to
either say yes to god or we are punished… that isn’t free will…
when you only have one choice… just like those who say you can
quit the modern companies… with that choice, comes death or punishment and
death or punishment isn’t free will… it isn’t a choice to spend eternity in hell
and it isn’t free will to suffer greatly after leaving the capitalistic society…
possibly suffering to the point of death… that is the great choice one has
in our modern society… join or suffer…… that isn’t much of a choice…
Marx or Lenin doesn’t offer us some sort of freedom or free will…
it just offers us more of the same… act as we want or suffer unto
death……. and that isn’t free will or free choice…
it is slavery and the ownership of human beings as property…
in other words, our modern world hasn’t really offered us any
such thing as free will or freedom or even not being a slave…
our modern world is just the ancient world in shiny new clothes…
but we can’t understand this because we are so fractured and atomized…
we see the many tree’s but we can’t see the forest…
and we need to see the forest to understand what is the
reality of our modern times…
Kropotkin