a new understanding of today, time and space.

I have a very large library… I have over 5000 books… and quite
a few are fiction books, many of the classics, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
and James Joyce and Homer and Sherwood Anderson and Andrei Bely…

I have read most if not all of them, the one exception is Tolstoy
“War and Peace” and frankly, I just can’t get into it…I cannot
keep up with the cast of thousands…

the fiction books don’t tell us what man is, they show us…
man as animal… we eat and drink and fuck and fight and hate
and love…

and some, some show us something higher…man as possibilities…
especially Science Fiction books…The Foundation series for example
or Star Trek…we think of ourselves as being fix, set in our being
human beings… but as Nietzsche correctly pointed out, we are
beings going from somewhere to somewhere… and in that going from
and to, we are ever changing…modern man is different from the man
from the enlightenment, I am different then Voltaire because I live
in a far different age…my viewpoint is far different… my understanding
of what it means to be human is different…and in all my books and in all
the thousands of books I have read over these last 50 years, only a few have
profoundly changed me, I shall write of just one, Report to Greco by Kazantzakis

for Kazantzakis, the point of being human is the struggle… he is always
writing of the struggle… for K. his description of being human is the struggle
to met God… and his struggle is always about going up a mountain…
and in going up the mountain to met god, we fall down and we get dirty
and we get distracted and we fight and ague and eat and drink and fuck
and hate and love…….but we must never lose sight of the fact that
we are struggling to met god…but Kropotkin, you don’t believe in god…
you are correct, I don’t… but that doesn’t mean that I can’t accept the idea
of the struggle, but instead of meeting god, we are struggling to
understand what it means to be human and to become more human…

instead of reaching down and becoming animal, we struggle to become
better human beings by reaching to our higher values instead of our lower values…
we struggle to be more just and to be love and to become more charitable
and to limit if not remove the distance between our actions and our words…
to say what we mean and to mean what we say and have our words match
our actions… that is the human struggle… to become more human, not less…

my books show me what it means to be human, in all their flaws and it is
ok to have flaws, I have many, but one must struggle, engage with those
flaws and attempt to rise above them…not to just be an animal/ human who
simply engages day to day without any thought to what it means to be
human and what will it take to rise above that human nature… the flaws…

if I engage with my values, values of justice and love and charity
and hope… among other values… then I engage with becoming more
human…if I engage with my lower animal values of hate, injustice,
anger, lust, greed, then I am engaging with my lower animal values…
I cannot become more human by engaging with my lower animal values…

the quest, the struggle, the path as understood by Nietzsche, is to
grow into something else…the changing of the caterpillar into a
butterfly… right now, we humans are caterpillar… and we must
begin the change into the butterfly…how?

once again, the start begins with becoming aware of…
knowing that there is a struggle to become more human…
the path is often found, once awareness is achieved…

the struggle is not to amass more wealth or in fame or
women sexually, but to find out who you are and become
something more…the mountain awaits you…do you have
the courage to begin the climb?

Kropotkin

I try to reach for the best instead of the most pleasant.
That is very hard in its own way.

K: that works… it is about becoming the best in us, not the worse…

Kropotkin

I have mentioned this before, but it is worth returning to…

our modern notion of superhero’s…why suddenly during the
30’s and thereafter, why do we have this need for superhero’s?

I would suggest that they are a response to the environment that
we found ourselves in…the Greeks created a whole slew of mythic
entities that fulfilled a function for them…the Creation of the Gods,
Hera and Apollo and Poseidon and Zeus were all created to met some
basic Greek need… they also invented hero’s like Hercules and Achilles….
which are no different then our need to invent hero’s like Superman
and Batman…let us engage in some minor speculation about this need
for superhero’s…

If I were to guess, this need for superhero’s is because the feeling of
not having some control over one’s life… we cannot influence or
control what is happening to us, so we create superhero’s as a response
to our lack of influence within our environment…

individually, I have no influenced over the course of human events…
the events of modern times that have dominated and changed my life lies
outside of my influence or control… the Industrial revolution has completely
change what life was about…we have existed for so long under the Industrial
revolution that we cannot even imagine a world without it… but no so long ago,
for the average person, they lived on a farm and lived a rural, agricultural life…
time clocks mean nothing in this life… the seasons of spring and summer and
fall and winter, those were the clocks that farmers used… for over a thousand
years, people didn’t travel more then a 100 miles from their home during their
entire lifetime…if disaster came to these people, it was in the form of bad weather
or crops failing or troop movement over their farm land… and in the winter months,
people didn’t work or they might have gotten small menial labor jobs…you just
didn’t farm during the winter months…then came the industrial revolution.
millions of people left the farmland to get better jobs in the city…
and we have the modern age impact of the modern wars and the great
Depression… Superman was created during the Great Depression, in 1938
and the second world war was on the horizon……. that Superman has been
the focal point of much discussion regarding the Archetype that Superman
represented and that can be easily found on the internet……

but for me, it is why, why do we need superhero’s in this modern age?

the average person wants to see justice done and in this modern world,
we, as individuals, cannot find justice on our own… the world is too big…
if Ford builds cars that kill people, we as individual cannot do anything about it…
we must hope that the government, being the only entity big and powerful enough
to impact Ford… and therein lies the key… for justice to be served, we must have
one entity be larger then the evil entity for justice to be enabled… in other words,
a large multinational corporation commits evil, the only force strong enough to combat
it is something larger and more powerful… we inherently see this… to combat
evil requires something larger and more powerful then evil… the problem lies
with the fact that we see powerful institutions like the Bureaucracies like
congress or the presidency act in a way that seems to us, to be evil
and we have no recourse to overcome such acts of evil… we see the need
for some outside force to bring evil to justice and we turn to not only superman but
we turn to such movie hero’s as Jason Bourne and the Terminator in the later movies…
and the avengers…we find relief that Justice can be brought down upon those who
threaten society… justice that we personally cannot fulfill… and we feel helpless
and vulnerable so we might even turn to the strong man concept in the political…

many turn to IQ45 as a strong man because they feel so weak and helpless
and vulnerable… it is no different then wishing that we had a superman to
right the wrongs we see in modern life…….of course, IQ45 failed us because
he is a con man, a fraud, a cheater and we were the ones he cheated…
so, we were burned and taken advantage of…and those who are cheated often
feel that they can’t trust anyone anymore and so they turn their back on
politics and the political and they hid inside within the world of their own
creation. be it movies or video games or watching shows like Entertainment tonight
or TMZ or E! news… what better way to escape the real world then watching these
fake news shows…and we moderns have a wide variety of means of escaping the real
world either by the creation of a world inside of us or by the taking of drugs or other
addictions like booze or sex or gambling…

if you feel you have no say or influence, no power over your own life, then escape
seems to be the modern route to take……. and this is one function of
having superhero’s…

Kropotkin

oh, you who desire fire and the sword to end our days, has
history ever fulfilled your fantasy? No, the phoenix has never
risen after the fire and death and destruction that you so loudly
preach for…no, after the fire and the end of America only
comes more fire and more death and more destruction… what you sow,
is what you reap… read your history and you see this to be true…
the violent end of every civilization has only sowed the
next crop of death and fire and destruction and violence…

nothing can arise from such fire and destruction… it is barren
and sterile… nothing can arise from the charred ruins of society…

and why? because the fire and violence and destruction is based upon
anger and greed and hatred and bigotry… nothing can be built upon
a foundation of hate or violence or greed or anger…nothing…

look around you… what has anger and death and hate and violence ever built?

nothing…

what has love built?

why everything…

in building, the key is the foundation… when a foundation is weak, it is at risk
of falling down…a family whose foundation is strong, that family will thrive
and grow even during adversity… a family whose foundation is weak, any type
of adversity will destroy that family…

the rock upon which every strong family is built… is love…
and the same is true of every human institution…those institutions
built upon anger or hatred or violence never last long… they can’t…
their very foundations are weak and the slightest storm will blow that
house down…

any house built of love or justice or freedom or charity will have a strong
foundation… and that house will last and thrive even during the worst of storms…

as part of my evidence is the NRA… it did fine when the conditions were
ok… but once the storm came, the NRA wasn’t built upon the higher human
values like love or hope or justice…the NRA was built upon anger and hate
and injustice and violence and the first storm that came its way, has damaged
the NRA to the point of it being close to collapse…

you who preach destruction based upon anger and hatred and greed…
you will not find the destruction you wrought as bringing you the rise of
the new and shiny new society you prayed for…for from death and destruction
and anger can only come death and destruction and anger…
and only from love and peace and justice and freedom can come
love and peace and justice and freedom…

whatever we sow, we shall reap…

Kropotkin

in thinking about our “modern” times, I confess
I am at a loss to understand these forlorn times…

I think of the epochs before us, the Medieval and the Renaissance are two
such periods… then comes the reformation and the counter reformation…
then comes the Enlightenment and its opposite, the Romantic age…
then we reach Nietzsche’s age of nihilism…the 20th century… each age,
with something we don’t have today… each age provided human beings with
an understanding of what “MAN” was… each age had its understanding of what
it meant to be human…each age had something we do not have today,
which is that we don’t have any description of what it means to be human…
and that is the difference between our age and any other age before it…

think of the Greeks and the Romans and the Medieval man… each of them
had an understanding of what it meant to be human… something we don’t
have today…… and that, in part, explains why we so struggle today…
we lack something very fundamental to our understanding of the universe…
we lack a picture of what it means to be human…

and much of our confusion and alienation and disconnect arises
because we lack an understanding of what it means to be human…

we have no picture of what it means to be human and so we don’t
have any sense of where we were, where we are and where we need
to be… past, present and future only makes sense if we have an understanding
of the possibilities, the choices of what it means to be human…

and that is what it means to understand what it means to be human,
it is about our possibilities, what is possible for us as human beings…

we cannot strive for anything if we don’t know what our possibilities
are………… we lack, not only the answers but we lack the questions…
and until we engage with what it means to be human, we cannot
continue our journey into the future…… we are stuck until we
begin the engagement with that it means to be human…
which is a dialogue about the possibilities that lies before us
as human beings…what is possible for us? individually and collectively…

until we answer this fundamental question, we cannot resume the voyage
to what it means to be human………

we mistake our technical world as being what we are as human beings…
but technology is simply a tool, science is a tool… what does
that science, that technology say about us? we have to put the human being
before the science and before the technology…we have made a fundamental mistake
by thinking we are technological, scientific beings before our real nature which
is what we are trying to discover… we are human being who use science and technology,
not scientific/technical creatures who happen to be human…… the humanity must
come before the science/technology… don’t mistake the tools for the creature…
as we have done over these last 200 years……… the human being comes before
the science or technology…

we mistake the ism’s and ideologies of Marxism and communism and democracy
as being a survey of what it means to be human… they are ism’ and ideologies,
tools for us to discover what it means to be human… we are mistaking the tools
of human beings for what it means to be human…

learn to separate the tools from an understanding of what it means to be human…

we are not homo Economicus nor are we Homo habilis nor are we homo erectus…

we are homo sapiens… beings that are human…and what does that mean?

Kropotkin

if I may be so bold to question…

why has philosophy failed in our modern times?

think of art and how it is done…

the Japanese for example, they don’t create art the same way
as we in the west do…

think about the Japanese method of Archery…
as they aim for the target, they imagine themselves
as being the arrow… they become part of the art…
the same goes for painting…

artists imagine themselves within the painting… they are painting the art
as if they were inside the picture…

we in the west stand outside of the art and look at the art…
and those in the east imagine themselves within the art…

and therein lies the failure of modern philosophy… we in the west see
philosophy objectively, outside of us, as if we were looking at a picture…

we don’t see ourselves as part of the picture… and in philosophy, we
don’t see ourselves as part of the act of philosophy…philosophy is separate,
apart from us… whereas to engage in philosophy, truly to engage within philosophy
we must become part of philosophy… painting within the picture as it were…

philosophy exists outside of us, apart and separate… something we view
as independent of us…instead of living philosophy… we don’t philosophize seriously
enough to engage with philosophy as something inside of us…it lies viewed but
not engaged with…

and that is why philosophy has lost the respect of the public…

philosophy has failed because we see it like a TV show… we watch it,
and we critiqued it, but we don’t live it……. and until philosophy becomes
something that lies within us and part of us, it won’t have any following or
respect…outside of professional professors… as long as philosophy is a
spectator sport, it will never impact anyone including you…

Kropotkin

to follow up on yesterday’s post…

BEING… a rather formidable word with a deep philosophical
history and meaning…

let us walk through some examples of being…

I am in love… that is being in love… I am…
it is not a possibility or wishful thinking or done outside of myself…
it is done… being in love… inside of me, presently… now that “being” in
love may last historically, it may endure over time or it may not… I can’t say…
I can only say, I am in love… I am…

that is being…now think of communism… can I be in “communism”?
not really, think of communism… it is an historical ism, at least according
to Marx… one exists within the dialectical materialism…I am not
existing or being with dialectical materialism within me, no, I exist within it…
the dialectical materialism is being and I exist within it…part of it, or not…
the dialectical materialism, again according to Marx, exists regardless of whither
or not, I acknowledge its existence…the dialectical materialism has its own
existence, its own being…

think of Catholicism, think of what it means, exactly and what is expected of you
within Catholicism…it has its own existence regardless of whether I notice it or not…
GOD is… HEAVEN is… HELL is…but you don’t exists within GOD or HEAVEN or HELL,
it has a separate existence from you… it is said to be the real existence, not you, because
you are temporary, impermanent, you are for a short time, then you are not…
but GOD and HEAVEN and HELL are permanent, they exists from the beginning of time
to the end of time… regardless if you exists, regardless if you believe, so ask yourself,
what is being in this case? as an temporary, impermanent being, I can only be for a short,
brief time…

communism and the dialectical materialism has a separate existence apart,
and far more lasting existence then your existence… you can exist within them,
but they cannot exists within you… you cannot be god, nor can you be heaven,
nor can you be hell, nor can you be dialectical materialism… you cannot be god…
you can only exists, be within god or within heaven or within the dialectical
materialism…

so this concept of being is limited… I am…but I cannot say, I am god…
but I can say, I am in love, I am love…

what else can we say?

I am happy, I am sad, I am afraid, I am mean…….

we can be in several different human existences, which we have named
happy or sad or afraid or mean… I am…I am being sad or happy or afraid…

being as a state of existence…I am dialectical materialism? uhh, no…

so when the goal is to be something that lies outside of our human existence,
like be dialectical materialism which isn’t possible, then we must reject that
as being (there is that word again) not possible…

so when existentialist talk about an “authentic existence” they are talking
about our being something that is possible… as oppose to being something
that is impossible like being god or being dialectical materialism or being heaven
or being hell………we can be honest and we can be just and we can be happy
and we can be love and we can be hopeful… those are states of existence
which we can be…

so what are we talking about? we are talking about an “authentic existence”
as being values…… we can be values, be it just or honest or happy…
we can exists, have values exists within us, not us existing within values…
but us existing as values…that is what an “authentic existence” means…

now recall my earlier post where I referenced Japanese painters, they were
painting from outside the painting, they were painting as if they were inside
the painting…they were existing as part of the picture, not separate our
outside of the painting… as we do in the west…the Japanese painters were
being part of the painting…and that is how we must do philosophy…

not as if we were outside of philosophy and looking at it like one would
look at the dialectical materialism, but within philosophy… we must become
part of philosophy, we must be philosophy…that is what an authentic existence
existence means for a philosopher… we don’t treat philosophy as something
outside of us, as something we study, but as something that exists within us…

being philosophy as oppose to watching/reading/studying philosophy…

being……. that is how we must approach philosophy, as part of being…

I am happy, I am sad, I am afraid, I am philosophy……

be philosophy, and then you will be engaging in philosophy
as it was meant to be…an engagement with being…

Kropotkin

we must rethink what existence means to us…

is existence fame or fortune or wealth or titles?

Given my last post arguments, I would say no…

is it possible to be authentic if we are fame?
are we authentic if we are wealth?

“I am wealthy” is not a sentence that is
a being sentence… why? because wealth exists outside of us,
separate and apart from us… when we say, I am wealthy, we are really
saying, I exists within wealth… for we cannot, cannot say, I am wealth…
for what is wealth, but merely pieces of paper, American pieces of paper which
happen to be green… “I am wealth” say, I am green pieces of paper…a lot of
green pieces of paper… but green paper nevertheless…
and that sentence doesn’t make sense, I am green pieces of paper…
no, wealth cannot exists within you as love or justice or happiness does…

wealth is a material object…and how can we have material object like green
pieces of paper exists within us?

wealth, green pieces of paper have a distinct and separate existence,
apart from us… outside of us and wealth has no connection to our existence…
and by that I mean, according to Maslow pyramid of needs, what is necessary
for our existence, food, water, shelter, health care, education… and the second level
of our pyramid of needs is security/safety…must we have money to achieve any of
those needs? no, human beings lasted for a million years gathering those basic human
needs without any recourse to wealth to procure those basic needs…we can
feed ourselves and we can educate ourselves and we can feel safety
and security and all without any recourse to money/wealth…

it would require a different form of civilization then we have now, but
as we have seen, it was done for over a million years, quite successfully…

everything we are today, we are because of that million years training
and education in becoming who we are today… become who you are…
and that is what that million years did, we became who we are by
first knowing thyself…we began as animals and grew into human beings
and then our next phase is to become something greater then human beings…
more then just animals existing in human form… we are becoming something else,
and what that something else will be is the question…

and that is the greatness of Nietzsche… he saw before anyone else,
that we are about overcoming and we overcame our pure animal nature,
and we became human beings, now we need to overcome the animal side
of our human nature and become fully human… will our training last
as long as the million years it took for us to overcome our animal side to
become human? I hope not… I hope that our overcoming our animal/human
aspect of us will take much less time then it did to overcome our pure animal side…

and part of that project of overcoming lies in our understanding of being…

I am love, I hope, I am happy… and extend that side of being into the values
that make us fully human… instead of being driven by our needs, we are driven
by our attempt to become our values…to live a fully authentic life by overcoming
our needs and become love or justice or hope or free… to become values instead of
needs…… and the first step is to understanding the nature of being, our being…

who am I? what is the nature of my being? do I chase after that which lies outside
of me, like god or heaven or hell or Catholicism or the dialectical materialism?

or do I chase that which can lie inside of me like values… values which lead
to an authentic existence… I am happy, I am just, I am free, I am hope…
I am leading an authentic existence when I engage in the values that lie inside of me…

I am leading an inauthentic existence when I engage in that which lies outside of me,
like engaging in communism and Catholicism or god or heaven or hell…engagement
in any ism or ideology is engagement with that which lies outside of me…

engagement in values is what lies in me…

I am……

and what says, I am… for you?

Kropotkin

let us continue to understand the nature of having
an authentic existence versus an inauthentic existence…

let us look at hero’s… Harry Potter for example… I have
read all the books and seen all the movies… the first book
came out in 1997…I was 38 years old… thus I didn’t come to
the Potter books until I was an adult…

Does Harry Potter have an “authentic existence”?

Yes, but why? Look at what he is attempting to be…
and look at what Valdemort and those who follow him attempt…

those who follow the “dark” lord, are attempting to gain wealth and power…
to be able to control the fate of others as it were…does Harry Potter make
a similar attempt? no, what does he search for? what does he say about himself?
the entire series is a rumination upon good vs evil… and good is what?
about values like, I am good, I am honest, I am just, I am equal…

and those who are oppose Potter, what do they want?
nothing like values, they want power and money and fame.
not values but they want to exist within something outside of
themselves…to say, “I am powerful” isn’t a comment about what lies
within you, it is a comment about what you hold in your possession,
not within you…I have the power to make you……

that isn’t something that is like a value which says, I love, or I am happy
or I am sad…Potter is attempting to achieve a value whereas the “bad” guys
are attempting to achieve something that lies outside of themselves, like
following communism or Catholicism… those ism’s lie outside of you…

Potter can say, I am good, or I am just, or I am honest… it is the values he
is trying to achieve that makes him a hero… values that lie within him…

so let us see if this works in a real life hero, like Gandhi…

what was Gandhi basic philosophical principles?

he called them, Satya, and his movement, Satyagraha…
which means, “appeal to, insistence on or reliance on the Truth”
and what was the “Truth” to Gandhi?

His truth was self-actualization, non-violence, vegetarianism and universal
love…what Gandhi did was make those values, turn those values into
political values…I am self-actualized… I am not-violent, I am
universal love……… I am a vegetarian… less so of a value…

but the others, they are values worth living for…

our hero’s are people who have values like justice and love and equality
and honesty and they try to live those values… think of Abe Lincoln
or Jesus… they had values and they tried to live those values…

that means they lived authentic lives because they were about the values
that they were living or trying to live…the fictional villains of Harry Potter
were not living authentic lives because they were not pursuing values that
existed within them… they were pursuing things that lie outside of them,
like power and wealth…

the authentic life is one that engages in the values that lie within themselves
and those who succeed are the ones that becomes hero’s like Gandhi and
Jesus and Lincoln… we build statues to them because they lived their
values which lie inside of them… values like love and honesty and
justice and charity…all values espoused by people as diverse as Jesus
and Gandhi and Lincoln and Harry Potter……. it is the values they live
that makes them Hero’s…

want to be a hero? then find your values within you and live them…
values that are positive values like love and justice and hope
and justice and freedom and charity…for those are the values
that rise about our being animal/human…for those values are the
values that allow us to overcome being merely human, all to human…
those values, those positive values are what will make us rise above
just being animal/human……

want to become something? become fully human by engaging in values
which make you be a hero…values that lifts us above being merely
animal/human and allow us to become fully human…

justice, love, truth, honesty, freedom, charity, hope…
values that create hero’s and human beings…

Kropotkin

I have spent some time working out what it means to be human…

I have also worked out what it means to be human in terms
of Maslow pyramid of needs…perhaps we could start to tie various
aspects together…

the real question of being human is this question of needs…
we human’s have needs and among them is meeting the bodily
needs all animals have and we are, in body anyway, animal…

we must have, we need food, water, shelter, warmth, education,
health care, air… these are the basic non-negotiable needs of
human beings…and these basic needs are the starting point of
human existence…if we are hungry or cold or uneducated, we
cannot, cannot make the journey to becoming who we are…
our growth as human beings require us to meet our basic fundamental
needs of being an animal…that is the starting point…and all animals
require this basic fundamental base from which to start…

self overcoming is really self actualization… becoming who we are…
and this is the focal point of what it means to be human…
and then to overcome even this…

the human path has been a long slow path from animal, no different
then a dog or cow…and we overcame this animal aspect of our existence…
during the long several million years of existence that has preceded the right now…

As noted, Nietzsche realized this overcoming and saw that we as human beings,
are also something to overcome… just as we overcame being animals, we must
engage in overcoming being human… and we then become something else…

human existence is one of process… we progress from animal to human to…
a process that for reasons unknown, we human beings, are the only one to
be able to engage with right now…

this process is not just an individual process, but it is a collective process…

the disciplines… history, philosophy, economics, political science, science,
art… are all aspects of our overcoming our animal side of existence…
art and history and philosophy along with the rest, are simply
a record of our process of becoming human…….but read correctly,
they could be, could be, an indicator of what is next, that we are also overcoming as
human beings…and becoming something else? something more fully human…
and that is the battle to become human, all too human…and then overcome being
human…

to overcome our animal nature totally and then overcome our human nature
and then to overcome our ? nature…

so we grow as human being by rising up the pyramid of needs…
we rise above basic physical needs of food and water and warm
and education… into the second tier of the pyramid which is safety…
security and safety of our selves… and at each level, we can see
how society can of great value in our search in overcoming both
our animal side and our human side…

the society can met our physical needs of food, water, shelter, warmth,
education, health care… and part of the current political battle is just
over education and health care… are they really part of the currency of
what it means to be human? and if they are basic necessities of being human,
then we as a society must engage in providing these basic necessities of human
existence… beyond just providing food, water, shelter, warm…we must engage
in education and health care as part of what it means to be human…

and in regards to society response to our human need of safety and security,
we can see the basic fundamental role society can play in meeting this
basic and crucial need for safety and security within human beings…

can society play a role in the next aspect of human existence which is
love and belonging? I don’t think directly… I do believe that if society
plays it role of making sure all primary human needs are meet like
food and water and warmth and education and health care, that
society lays out the basic groundwork for us to engage in the next
aspect of our overcoming which is love/belonging……

this next level of human existence is to meet our need for
love and belonging…society can’t necessarily met this need, but
society can make it possible for us to achieve love and belonging
by providing societies members with the physical needs of food, water,
shelter, education, health care… and safety and security… society
can and must provide these basic human necessities of the lower level
of Maslow’s pyramid in order for us, as human beings, to reach the higher
level of human existence… society can see to our lower level needs
while we work on our higher level needs and including in these higher level
needs is esteem…esteem needs are ego needs or status needs…
the need for titles and wealth, even is one is already the wealthiest
person on earth, they might need this level of ego driven, status
driven need to be the richest person on earth… most people have the need
to be respected and have the esteem of others… this includes self esteem
and self-respect…if we are unable to meet our lower needs of food or safety,
then we might not be able to reach this need of self-respect or self-esteem…

and then comes the highest level of being human which is the self-actualization
of being human…the quotation which brings this to a head is this:
“what a man can be, he must be”…and in this we find the highest form
of being human… until we overcome even this crucial aspect of becoming
human, fully human……… how many human beings can we find that have
actually found their way to the highest level of being human?
I can think of one off the top of my head, Goethe…

He was one of the highest level of human beings to have ever lived…
he overcome and become a great writer, a poet, a very good scientist, a politician,
he succeeded at every aspect of life that he tried……… he
was a self-actualized person of the highest level…

we could do much worse then try to rise to his level and then overcome
what he did… it isn’t enough to just become something, one must then
overcome even that, the highest ideal of being human just isn’t enough…
we must overcome what it means to be fully human like Goethe
and become more, to become fully human…

the path to becoming human requires that we have an active, engage society
that provide us with the basics of human existence, to meet our basic
physical needs of food and warmth and education and health care and water……
and safety and security… to achieve these demands an active and engaged
government to allow us to reach our higher level of becoming human…

we aren’t at war with our government, we are engaged with the government
so we can reach the highest level of being human… and without
the government, we cannot, we cannot reach the highest level
of what it means to be human, we cannot become self-actualized
human beings without our lowest level of human needs being met…

the engagement of government and society is essential for us to reach
our highest possibility of being human…… but what form of government
is needed for us to reach our highest level of our potential?
what type of government is needed for us to become self-actualized?

that is the next question… how do we arrange government so that
we can reach our highest potential/possibilities?

Kropotkin

the question becomes, how do we achieve our highest potential,
how do we become our possibilities?.. what would it take from
government/society for us to reach our highest possibilities?

the realization from the start that there is no difference between
the economic and the political, that would be a start…

we cannot divide the two if we are to reach our goal of becoming
fully realized human beings…

we have to start basic…

all men/human beings are created equal…
we are born and at birth we are to be given
an equal chance to become who we are…

but within our possibilities lies differences…

personally, I am terrible at math… I cannot add, subtract, divide
or multiply to save my life… I have no possibility to reach some
greatness or even average ability in math… I have very limited
possibilities in math… I hope someday to be able to conquer
Algebra… but realistically my potential, my possibility in math
is very low… the best I can hope for is someday being able
to master fractions…but that isn’t my only possibilities…

as with everyone, I have strengths and weaknesses…
if math isn’t my greatest possibility, then some thing else
might be…I must find out my possibilities and then
become who I am in those possibilities…my strength isn’t
math but it is in philosophy and history and thinking about things…
making connections between various and diverse things, I am strong
in those possibilities…

so, right now I am a checker, a cashier in a supermarket…
I am working with math, my very weakness… and not working
in my strengths which is making connections and working out
philosophical questions… I am being wasted in my economic job,
from achieving what I can become, which is a great philosopher…
I believe I should be ranked with Nietzsche or Kant or Hume as
far as philosophy goes…….this is an example of how the economic
system fails us or deny us from becoming who we are…… I am unable to
reach my full potential or to reach my full possibilities because I am being
wasted in a dead end job that doesn’t allow me to become who I am…

and I am not alone… millions of people are being prevented from reaching
their full possibilities or potential because they are being wasted in
jobs that doesn’t allow them to reach what is possible for them…

the call to change our economic and political system is really a call
to make it possible for people to reach their full potential or possibilities…

you cannot become a great poet if you are trapped in some dead end, crappy
job like a checker or a dead end job of being a mechanic… the economic
system destroys any chance for most people to become who they are……
and the political system insures that people cannot become who they are…
which is to find out what is possible for them, artistically, politically,
philosophically… you must have an political and social system which
is geared toward allowing people a chance to discover what is possible for them…

had Goethe been born a peasant from a poor family, he wouldn’t not
have been able to reach his possibilities and become the most fully realized
person, perhaps, to have been born…….

to become who we are demands we have a system which allows us
to become who we are…and let us look at the political and economic
system we have today?

we have several economic systems and we have several political systems…
we have as economical system communism, capitalism, distributism,
fascist socialization, feudalism, hydraulic despotism, market economy,
mercantilism and of course the longest lasting and easily most successful
economic system of all time, hunter-gatherer system which lasted for
a million years…

and we have political systems such as democracy, republic, monarchy,
dictatorship, and for me the one that isn’t a political system but
an economic system, communism…and this is where we are at…

you can have several different types of democracies or different
types of monarchies or different types of republics ……

so the question becomes, what is the goal of each?
what is the end result of each? that is really what we
should be looking for… what does each system, both
as a political system and as an economic system allow us
to achieve? what the end result of each system as it relates
to what it means for us personally?

a political system can be reduced down to a couple of questions,
who makes the decisions and who pays for it?
and so, we can turn that around and say, who pays for it, which is
an economic question and who decides, which is a political question…
and we then ask the third question, what are we trying to accomplish
with these economic and political systems? what is the goal?

If we make the goal to the individual achievement of becoming
who you are, then we can better make out which economic
and which political system better fits our goal of becoming
who we are…… which system allows us to better become more
human, all to human as Nietzsche wrote…how can we overcome
in which economic and which political system?

clearly a political system which denies us rights and freedoms
and in which the higher powers tell us what to do, isn’t a system
conductive to getting us to reaching our full potential or our full
possibilities…so we eliminate dictatorships as being a means for
us to reach our stated goal of becoming who we are…

and we cannot accept any system which tells us what to do…
that means we remove, as currently constituted, capitalism…
and feudalism…and we must remove although I didn’t list it, slavery…

what about monarchy? the problem lies with the consistent nature of
monarchies… in some monarchies, we can achieve our possibilities
but in some we cannot, it is in the wildly unpredictable nature of
monarchies that we cannot accept monarchies as being a possibility
for us to achieve our goal of becoming human, fully human…

we might be able to accept democracies and republics but
as we have seen in our recent and current reality, democracies
and republics can be bought and sold as corporations and wealthy,
powerful individual or families simply buy the democracy or republic…
and this what we have currently in America today…politicians
simply being bought and sold like cars or couches…and all to do the
bidding of those who have bought democracy and the republic…

if money/ profit is to be the final arbiter of what is important,
then we have no democracy or a republic as they can be bought
and sold…so again, as constituted currently, we cannot accept
democracies or republics…

but that doesn’t mean we have permanently denied either capitalism
or democracy or republics as a means of government or an economic
system… it just means, we must remove money/profits as the final
arbiter of what is important…we must remove money/profits as being
the final goal of the political or the economic systems…

if we accept that the final goal of human existence is to become who you are,
if the goal of human existence is to become what is possible for you,
then we can only accept a political or an economic system that allows
us to achieve this final goal of reaching our possibilities…

the political and economic systems that we can accept are those which
allows us to achieve our goal, which is to become who we are and to fulfill
our possibilities…

that is the goal… to create or adapt an political and economic system
which isn’t about money/profits but about making is possible for us to
become who we are…

so we can, theoretically, accept capitalism or democracies/republics
as being acceptable political or economic systems for us…

the accumulation of wealth as being a human possibility is no longer
on the table as it denies our full possibilities of being human…

we are economic beings only interested in accumulating wealth/profits…

that goal is anathema to beings that are trying to become their possibilities…

wealth and profits are a detriment to beings attempting to becoming who they
are or tying to find out what is possible for them as human beings…

you can only serve one master…and trying to engage with who you are
or trying to engage with what is possible for you is the only master worth
attempting, not the accumulation of wealth or power or titles or fame…

a total revision of what it means to be human… we seek that which is
our potential, what is possible for us, not something outside of us like
wealth or titles or ism’s or ideologies or power…we seek to find
out what it means to reach our potential and, and to become who we
are which means we are engaged in leading authentic lives by living
our values which means we can say, I am happy or I am in love or I am sad…
but we can also say, I am just, I am honest, I am charity, values worth
living, values that makes life worth living… to achieve values, to
find out what is authentic in our lives is well worth a lifetime
and to live our lives based upon the values we decide upon…

to lead an authentic life is to live our lives as values… I am just…
and then to lead a life in which justice become not only
as faith but as in actions… words matching our actions… if we say,
I am just, then we must act with justice… and this is the end game
of finding out who we are… by living our lives as values to engage with…

and we must find a political and economic systems that allows us
to find out what values are really us and then to become those values
and then to achieve our potential/possibilities with those values…

it is a process of knowing thyself, of becoming those values and then
living life as those values…….

and what political/economic system will allow us to engage in life
as I have stated?

that is the overall engagement we have as collective beings…

to discover what political and economic systems that will allow us
to become who we are and then live our lives as the values we discover
to be most important to us… to allow us to match our words with our actions,
our values… so what political/economic system will allow us all that?

and that is the question for us to engage with as collective beings…

what will work for all of us?

Kropotkin

let us take a deeper dive into why, WHY capitalism is a
failure for us…

what is our goal? our goal has human beings is to find out who we
are and become that… we must find the values which are us,
be it justice or love or charity of honor… I am just…a value I can
live within and that can live within me……

as is known, I work as a checker in a very large supermarket corporation…
I want to be my values, I want to be just… I want my words and actions
of being just, to match…

I work in a capitalistic society that doesn’t care if I am just and doesn’t care
if my words match my actions… all, ALL any capitalistic corporation cares about
is making money/ creating profits… that is it… nothing else…

if I cannot, given my wages, reach the first level of human needs, to
met my needs for food, water, clothing, warmth, education, health care,
what does the corporation care? not one iota… couldn’t care less if I lived
or die… that isn’t the main value of a corporation… making money/profits
is the one and only goal of a corporation… it has nothing else to offer…

working within capitalism doesn’t allow me, for example, to engage in
the values I want… I want to be just, I am just…I am love,
I am hope, I am honesty… values worth living by… and capitalism
couldn’t care less… my values are unimportant and completely
unwanted by capitalism and corporations… my values of justice
isn’t wanted or needed by capitalism or my corporation ……
my values of love or hope or charity or honesty or honor…
capitalism and corporations just don’t give a shit about those values…

that is one brick in the wall…

by working within a corporation, within capitalism, I am unable to become who I am,
I am unable to become my values, I am unable to hold justice or love or honor or
charity as my values… I must hold capitalism values which is money/profits…
anything else is unwanted by capitalism/corporations…

sorry about that, wife came home and wanted a ride to work…

so what can capitalism, a corporation offer us?

well, beside money, nothing… capitalism doesn’t offer us workers,
anything of value… it doesn’t offer us loyalty or justice or love or honesty…
a corporation under the guise of capitalism cannot offer us anything of value like
the values upon which we as individuals need and depend upon to guide our lives…
a corporation/capitalism cannot offer us those values which make us human…

all capitalism/corporations can offer us is money and that is about the least
valuable thing we can get… for the money we might get means we
still remain under the corporate/capitalism thumb… quite often, what
little they offer us as payment, is barely enough for us to meet our needs of
the basic physical level of food, water, shelter, health care, education…

this is another brick in the wall against capitalism… it has nothing to offer us
but money…… and that is poor, very poor recompense for physical, mental,
psychological, emotional damage that capitalism and the corporation
levels upon its employee’s…to barely have enough money to pay my bills added
upon the physical damage my corporation has done to me… over the years, I
have had spinal surgery directly the result of work and I have extreme issues
today of damage to my body from years of hard physical labor as a checker…

but does that matter to capitalism or the corporation I work for?

nope, it is just another brick in the wall… the cost of doing business in which
I pay the cost, not capitalism and not the corporation…I pay the damages
physically, emotionally, psychologically… with my being unable to become who
I am, in saying, I am just, I am love, I am charity… I must say, I make money
for the corporation… my only goal within the corporation is to make profit
and once I stop doing that, I am fired, gone… I have no more value within capitalism,
I have no other value within the company other to make money/profits…

and when they offer me money and nothing else to work, no other value besides
money to work extra… I say no…I have more value then to be just a worker bee…

I am a human being with value… something denied by capitalism and my corporation…
and all other corporations… who only value money/profits…

I am Kropotkin… and I have value beyond the alienating and disconnecting
and frankly detrimental to my health… of work…

I am more then just my job… I am a human being in a world that considers
being human as being harmful to making money/profits…

it comes down to this… what is more important?

my individual need to become human, and then to become something more or
is being a cog in the machine with no value, more important?

I think my answer is clear and obvious…and why it is clear and obvious…

Kropotkin

theorectical capitalism can’t be a failure because it doesn’t contradict its basic premises. but if you are under the impression that capitalist theorists had in mind a system which would benefit everyone equally, i can see how you would think that. there are two kinds of capitalist theorists here; one kind, the innocently ignorant kind - or those theorists who lived prior to the 20th century -, actually believed the system would benefit everyone. the other kind knew it wouldn’t, but never had in mind endorsing a system that would in the first place.

but for the simple fact that not everyone could be a capitalist (since no work would get done), the theory isn’t realizable for the whole of a society. it necessarily requires an exploited class in order for it to work.

the real spectacle here worth any philosophical attention is how people continue to believe that there can be a shared agreement on a system of laws for a society that is fundamentally divided by class. in reality, there are two separate moralities operating here because there are two competing classes, each with their own interests… which happen to be in direct conflict with each other. therefore the codification of one system of laws under which all people are expected to be obedient, is ridiculous. and this continues to both fool the less intelligent of the exploited classes and force them through coercion to remain obedient. they haven’t the knowledge or the organization to collectively defy the system and reform it, so they continue to plod along as the centuries pass. western ideology… nonsense that has been around for so long and grown roots so deep that even the working class gimps see it as a kind of compulsory tradition.

but not us, pete. we defy the laws of tradition, a crusade only of the brave.

American Capitalism existed before there was taxation on Income, but not so much after.

I presume that even Prom would prefer a system with NO TAX whatsoever on income.

I thank you two for your contributions in this very interesting area……

every single ism or ideology begins with an understanding of what a human being is,
what man is… we cannot begin to create an understanding of what it is we
are to do without some understanding of what it is we are…

and part of the failure of the modern age is one where we have no understanding
of what man is, of what a human being is… if we know who we are, we can
begin to understand what is next for us…

many here have a very low, low opinion of human beings… but I can’t tell if that
is because these people hold an low opinion of themselves and try to drag
everyone down to their level or they hold themselves so highly that everyone
is simply below them… after reading most posters here, I can tell that most
people around here are of low mental possibilities and thus are trying to drag
everyone down to their level…there is no supposed superiority in these posters…

as for me… I continue my quest to understand what our being is, our
human being… we are creatures that stand between the animal of our past
and the truly human of our future …………. a million years of growing, becoming
who we are from animal to human/animal and now another million years to transform
ourselves from human/animal to just human…

we are not fixed but we are always in transit to becoming something else…

and I choose to become human… what do you choose?

do you choose to wallow in our animal nature, thinking that
we are animals, that we cannot become anything else?

No, we cannot revert to what we were… animals… eating, fucking, shitting,
existing in our animal existence… no, I say… we are human beings…

we are in control of our animal nature… that is what it means to be human…
to control our animal side but not with the sickness of those unnatural
religions that hate our animal side… religions that demand us to resort to
such nonsense like renunciation of our animal side… it doesn’t take renunciation
to become human… all I take is acceptance of who we are… I am human
and I eat and I fuck and I shit… I don’t deny it nor do I fixate upon it…
I simply accept it… and move on…….

we are on the road and with any road or journey, sometimes
we get stuck at certain places…it is our duty to overcome
being stuck…… each stage of human development, be it the middle ages
or the enlightenment or the Renaissance, are just that, stages along
the path to overcoming and becoming who we are…

it isn’t just an individual journey we take, but we also take
a collective journey to becoming…

individually and collectively… that’s what is important to remember…
any individual journey must be taken with the collective in mind
and any collective journey must be taken with the individual in mind…

Kropotkin

as noted, we are born into a series of questions…

“What can I know?” “What should I believe?” “What should I hope for?”

these are the original Kantian questions of existence…

and we are born into these questions…and every society offers up it own
answers to these questions… I was born into the question of “what should I believe?”

and the answers were the answers of America in the 1950’s…Believe in America
as the shining city on the hill… believe in “truth, justice and the American way”
America was not a country but an example of what it means to exists and live
within the truth…… for god himself had blessed us and made us the shining beacon
of the world… we were justice and equality and truth incarnate…

that is the world I was born into… where no one, absolutely no one
doubted the correctness of the fact that we were the absolute
pinnacle of human existence…

it is now 60 years later and we no longer have that absolute faith in what it
means to be an American…

the answers have changed because America has changed… “what I should believe
in” has changed in both tone and nature…

so once again, I ask the Kantian/Kropotkin questions that we are born in…
“what values should I hold?” “what is the point of existence?” “what should I believe in?”

so, what is the point of existence… what is the meaning of life?

we have many, many different and diverse ism’s and ideologies that offer
us some meaning, some purpose in life… I have offered up one possible
meaning as being found in the values that we live and die for…the point of life
is to discover our values and what does it take to become our values…

to follow both Socrates and Nietzsche by first knowing thyself…
what do we believe in, what values do we hold… our those values “our”
values or are they values we were indoctrinated with… the values that
our family and/or nation, city, culture, society, church has indoctrinated us with…

do we hold to these values or do we hold our own values… that is the first question…
what values do we hold and why?

the next step is the reevaluation of values…what values are really our values
and what values have we been indoctrinated with? What are my values?
and why do I choose those values…

the final question becomes how do I become those values… how do I become who I am?

I spend my youth discovering that “my values” were really the values of family, the state,
religion, culture, church… I didn’t have any values of my own… I was indoctrinated
with the values of my society… but what was my values? I didn’t know… for a long time…

I finally realized that my values were the values of justice, which is really equality,
and my values were love and honesty charity… the next question that arose was,
how do I become these values? How do I become my values? how do I become who
I am? How do I get my values, my words, to match my actions?

that is the real question…how do I get my words and my actions to match?

so, to recap a bit… we have traveled far… us human beings… we have in a million
years gone from animal to animal/human… and the next step is to go from
animal/human to human… all too human…the journey of going from animal to human
is a journey of values… of finding our values and becoming those values…
that is the meaning of, the purpose of life…

we are mid journey as beings… we are not fixed, set beings…
we are beings that is in transit from animal to human……
right now we are animal/human… and soon, soon, perhaps,
we shall make the next leap from animal/human to fully human…

the meaning of life is participating in this journey from animal to human…

what have you done to move us down the road to being human?
do you still obey the animal within you or, or do you obey the
human being within you?

the conflict that has really governed the earth…

what are we going to be, animal or human?

if you are violent, mean, full of hate or anger or greed,
the lower animal instincts, you are still animal…

but if you are to be human, then the path is finding values
that are worth becoming like justice or love or honesty or charity…

so what does it mean to be human?

it means that you no longer depend upon animal values to guide you…
hate, anger, lust, greed, blind faith, certainty… are all animal values…

to achieve being human… we must rise to become the human values that
is possible within all of us…

to become who you are means… means you are rising to become human
and you hold values that are the higher angel of our existence… the human
part of us, not the animal part of us… and we do this long enough and
with enough of us, we turn from animal/human to human…

I have explained what is the meaning of, what is the purpose of life…

it is to become part of the journey from animal/human to becoming fully
human… what have you done to become fully human today?

what have you done to match your words with your actions?

what have you done to become your values?

what have you overcome in the indoctrination of values that
society, family, state, church placed in you… what are your values?
not the values of the society or state you live in or what values the
church and society or culture has indoctrinated into you…

no, what are your values?

and that is the first step into becoming human, fully human…

and the beginning of the road to finding meaning, purpose…

to go from animal to animal/human to becoming fully human…

it is that journey that is our meaning/purpose in life…….

what are you values?

take that first step… and find your own meaning, find your purpose in life…

Kropotkin

in thinking about things… thinking about how Kant and Hegel
brought time into the philosophical mix… which is to say, read
Descartes…Time, duration of existence doesn’t appear in Descartes…

there is no duration of existence within Descartes…no past, no future…
just the present, the here and now…Descartes doesn’t work out
the idea of how we gain our knowledge historically………

Cogito, ergo sum… I think therefor I am…

that has no existence within time, within a duration of moments…

it exists independently of the duration of existence……. it is the same today
as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow…

in the “history” of philosophy, we see how Descartes fits into philosophy…

he was the first “modern” philosopher… or as some believe, the last Medieval philosopher …
depends… but Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz and Hume, all wrote before
our “modern” times…Modernity began after the Enlightenment… again, to put
a date upon the beginning of Modernity, I would say 1789 or the start of the
French Revolution… and when did Kant write? His Critique of Pure Reason was
published in 1781…and his other Critiques were written during the 1780’s…

so Kant wrote at the very beginning of the Modern age…

what could be a possible answer to the question of, “What is the modern age?”

we humans became aware of existence as being in time… we began to see
our existence as being moments with duration… and we also began to see
idea’s and concepts as having existence over time… so we see writers like
Plato or Augustine of Hippo having no duration of moments in their writings…
time as we know it didn’t exists for these writers…everything was set in the
present, right here, right now…

and this lasted until Kant and Hegel… or the beginning of Modernity…
being or existence was now a duration of moments…existence lasted
over time…idea’s lasted over time…

but what does this really mean?

it means that starting around 1789 give or take a few years,
that people began to understand existence differently then they
did before… we have what we today know as the 4 dimensions…
width, height, depth… and today we see time as being that 4th dimension…

at night, look at the stars… they seem so close and yet they are billions
of billions of miles away…what we see of a star is that star thousand or even
millions of years ago… we actually see time when we look at the stars…
so distance is time… the greater the distance, the greater the time…

our perspective has changed…we have had a radical change in viewpoints
as human beings…what we see, that which we take for granted today,
is actually new to our human understanding…time, being existing over
time… the very idea of there being time is new……

this extraordinary change in how we view the universe isn’t really understood
for what it is… we can call “modernity” as being the change in how we have
understood moments in time…experience, existence, being, idea’s all have
past, present and future…something that has never happened before…

before modernity, being was static, existence was static, experience was static,
it was unmoving, unchanging…… it was easy for one like Machiavelli to
understand that human beings, that man was the same since Adam and will not
change ever……… this notion that we are who we are and that can never change
is an pre-modernity idea… today, we know anyone can change and oftentimes
the reason for change can be very obscure…

a static viewpoint of human beings…that is pre-modern… human beings
who are viewed as being unable to change…

but let us look at modern idea’s… the very basis of evolution lies within
its understanding of change and how that change creates new species…

the Big Bang theory is all about the ever changing universe from
the Big Bang to today…modern scientist debate how the universe will
end, either from the slow death from the loss of energy or to the universe
flowing back into itself and the ever present cycle of existence…

how our very solar system, the sun and planets and us… were all created
from the remains of a prior star which had exploded… we are the second
and even third generation of stars and planets existing in this spot…

what life existed in our location previously, in that last star before it
went supernova, gives me pause… perhaps we can credit this last
star/planet for the seeding of life on our current planet… we will never
know…

that existence flows from past to present to future is a major
contribution of modernity understanding of existence, of being…

that we think historically, is a major shift in the viewpoint of
human beings and that shift began with the rise of modernity,
the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution and the French
revolution……. all of which began roughly the same time…

even this radical shift in understanding gives us hope because we
are not fixed, set in our viewpoint… we can change and adapt
our viewpoints to meet or understand what is existence…

if such a radical and world wide shift in perspective can occur
about our understanding of experience and being having
duration in time, then we can certainly expect to be able
to shift and think differently about other aspects of existence
and experience…

so, those who say, capitalism is the final, ultimate understanding
of our economic experience simply have failed to understand
that capitalism is simply another economic system in time,
and we shall change our economic system once conditions on
the ground or our understanding of what it means to be human
changes…… our political and economic system is simply a reflection
of our understanding of what is means to be human…

we see humans as being greedy and lustful, so our political
and economic systems reflect that vision of being human…

but what if we see human being as being different then greedy or
lustful or materialistic… then the economic and political system
must change to reflect our new understanding of what it means to be human……

and once again, our knowledge of what it means to be human depends upon
our understanding of what it means to be human…… we fail because
we don’t have an map of what it means to be human…

and so to move forward in time, we must have or create a map of
what it means to be human…

who am I? that understanding can help us create a new and more
powerful understanding of experience and existence…

Kropotkin

I have noted before that we are, as creatures, not fixed or set…

we are in fact, mid journey to our final destination…

whatever that may be…….

we have gone from animal, no different then a cat or a dog, to
or current state, animal/human, which is to state we are still,
in part, existing as animals… we haven’t made the transition to
becoming human… we can in fact have animal functions and still
be human… it isn’t the animal functions that make us animals…
it is our understanding of the universe that keeps us being animals…

when we lower ourselves to obey the animal side of our existence,
then we are nothing more the animals… when we choose to obey
instinct or when we choose violence, hatred, anger, greed, lust…
those are our heritage instincts from our days of being purely animal…

when we choose to follow our higher nature, love, peace, charity,
honesty, honor… then we are more human then animal……

but what is the next step?

take philosophy for example, we merely study philosophy…
it is nothing more then a field of study which is promptly forgotten
once class is over… when we close our philosophy books, we return
to being animal/human…

it is not until we don’t treat philosophy as an abstract study, but
we take philosophy as a way of life…then and only then, shall
we begin the business of becoming fully human…

we might say we believe in justice… but until we are and become
justice, then our words match our actions…… that is when we will
become human…

and our journey is still going to press on but at least we shall reach one
major goal of being human…… which is to rise to our possibility of being
human…until our possibilities becomes reality, we have reached the final
end stage of what it means to be human… once we turn possibilities into
reality, then we are engaged in being human……

once our words match our actions we shall be in fact, human…

our journey is a long one, and it took a million years for us to go from
animal to animal/human and it might take another million years for us to
go from animal/human to fully human… but then we can another million years
to go from human to…… and that is just another possibility we face…

so the goal is to become philosophy, not to study it or to read about it,
but to be it, to engage in philosophy as a way of life… to have philosophy
actually mean something………… and this is part of the path we must take
to become human, fully human…we must learn to live our goals, to become
our goals… not just as words, but as actions inside of us…

Kropotkin

to continue to elaborate on my prior post…

to find our journey, we must begin by exploring values…

it is by becoming values that we travel the path to becoming human and
not just animal/human… values are what rise us above the animals…

it is our values and our desire to become our values that make us human,
fully human… it is not enough to study or examine these things outside of us,
values must become us and we must become our values……

our words must match our values and our values must match our words…

and the journey to becoming who we are is by those values we become…

we cannot look at those values as abstract and distant, apart from us…

values only have value if we engage in them on a personal, meaningful level…
we cannot just study them and then when the book is closed, return to
being animal/human… we must become our values… that is the path from
animal to animal/human and then fully human…… values aren’t outside of us,
but inside of us, as part of us, and they guide our believes, our actions and our words…

to become human, we must become our values, be it love or justice or hope or
peace or charity or honesty…… the higher human values… not the lower
animal/human values of hate or anger or lust or greed…… but we must become
our higher values in our course of rising from animal to animal/human to becoming
human……

the journey to becoming human is the only journey worth taking…

know thyself, overcome the childhood indoctrinations, become who you are…

the path is clear and open to anyone who wishes to rise above themselves…

to become more then you are now, requires a deep commitment to the new path
of becoming our values… of our words matching our actions… of becoming human,
fully human…

Kropotkin