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