a new understanding of today, time and space.

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

the question might be asked, honestly, legitimately, why not
embrace hate, lust, anger, despair, greed? why must we embrace
love, peace, charity, justice? why are the values of hate considered to
be negative values?

it comes from the nature of the universe…

entropy is the and I quote:

Entropy a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s
thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the
degree of disorder or randomness in the system…

  1. entropy: lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder…

hate, lust, anger, greed brings about lack of order or predictability into
a system… anger and hate and greed sucks energy out of a system…
and that energy is needed to maintain order or predictability in a system…

Love, peace, honor, charity, are all positive values because they increase the
energy into a system…when you have love in a system, that system has more
energy… it doesn’t decline into lack of energy or becomes disordered because
positive values invite and creates positive energy into systems……

hate, anger, lust, greed takes energy out of a system… hating someone
takes a lot of energy… lusting after someone takes a lot of energy…
those negative values takes out energy from a system and thus
helps bring about disorder and chaos and randomness in any system which
practices anger and hate and greed…………

that is the legacy of IQ45… his hate and his followers hate and anger and lust
and greed is taking energy out of the system and thus we have increasing disorder
and chaos and randomness in our system, our political and economic system…

love and peace… increases energy… hate and anger… decreases/dissipates energy

pretty much as simple as that……

love and peace and honor and honesty builds up the system…
hate and anger and lust and greed tears down the system…

that is why we must engage with and focus on the positive values
that can be our possibilities…

Leninism failed because it didn’t embrace the positive values…
it embraced the negative values… and this is why negative
energy systems like Nazism and the KKK failed too…

democracy succeeds because it embraces the positive energy of
people… dictatorships fail because they embrace the negative
values of hate and anger and greed and lust…….

we can predict which social and economic and political systems will
succeed or fail based upon the energy they bring into their systems…

and that is why capitalism has failed… it is a negative system which
embraces greed and lust and the avarice nature of the animal/human
in us…

why did Christianity succeed in the Roman times and failed today?

because Christianity offered up the most positive values in the ancient
world, values like love and charity and hope… it brought in energy
and that energy fueled the success of Christianity… and took energy out
of the Roman empire…because the Roman empire by 200 AD was
no longer a positive value system…and with the introduction of
Christianity, in 300 AD, within the Roman empire increased the amount of
energy going into the empire… it revitalized and reenergized
the Roman Empire to last another couple of hundred years…

that is why positive values are so important…

positive values brings in energy into a system and thus slows down
entropy and disorder and chaos within that system……

thus you want to save America? you must, must begin by
embracing positive values and reject negative values…

that is the only path available to America that will allow it
to succeed… increase its energy and reduce the disorder within
our system…

and that is why we must embrace positive values like love
and peace and hope and justice and honesty and charity…

they increase the energy going into a system and decrease
the negative energy which brings about disorder and chaos…

this is true of America and this is true of any political, social,
economic or philosophical system you care to name……

the answer lies in increasing energy… and that is the solution
to what will save America… positive values which will increase
energy to America…

Kropotkin

our question of personal engagement with
with positive values not only includes us personally
but must include our engagement with the society,
state, culture that we live within…

in other words, we must live our values within
a societal system…… we must learn to engage
with our values within the context of the society
we live in…if we engage with justice as one of our values,
then we must learn to include justice in our dealing within
the state or society we live in…

this conflict between an individual values and society values,
has almost been the history of civilization… we see this in
the conflict between Jesus and the state… and we see this
between Socrates and the state……

individual values conflicting with societal values……

if we hold to justice as a value, and the state does not,
how do we resolve this conflict?

that is the real question that has been presented to us…

we see that America, as one of its main values, has force, violence,
war as one of its main values…we know this because in America history,
we have been at war over 90% of its history… that value of violence
and war is at odds with the value of peace and love and other higher
values… for war, violence is a negative value, it is a lower animal/human
value that is destructive, negative… it does not and cannot ever build
a lasting and positive contribution to people…it is negative…
and negative values decrease the amount of energy a society has…

in other words, when we build, we increase energy and when we
destroy, we decrease energy… that increase or decrease changes
or influences the systems we live in…for a system to thrive
and become something more, it must, must have increasing energy
to do so… when it fails to increase its energy, it begins to fail
as all systems begin to fail when the amount of energy is reduced…

that is entropy……. a system can only succeed when it
increases it energy and begins to fail when it loses energy…

this idea of energy is the basis of every single system
we know of… from solar systems to biological systems
to mechanical systems to our bodies……… every single
system ever, has as its basis, the ebb and flow of energy
as its basis…you want to understand the world,
then understand how energy influences the world and
the systems within the world… we must increase energy
for any system to survive and decease energy to
a system to reduce it power and influence…

positive values is one such means to increase a systems
energy and negative values are one such means to decrease
energy to a system…

so, if we can individually increase our energy and thus increase
collectively increase the energy of the systems we live in…

for if we have individual energy to spare, we can transfer that
energy to our collective systems we live in… thus we can increase
the amount of energy going into any system we choose we want by
transferring our energy to a collective system of our choosing…

thus our individual energy can be used to increase and thus
better enable our collective systems to last longer…to survive
longer…

one of the direct questions of existence is, “Upon what do we
expend our energy upon?”

this is one of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

this question of how we use and transfer our individual
energy, whither we use it on personal benefits or do we use it
to benefit the society we live in?

so, what do you spend your energy on?

is it in use of personal or collective systems?

Kropotkin

we must ask ourselves, “what should we spend our energy upon?”

and as we ponder this question, comes another point…

as I search for meaning, for my engagement with myself and the
society I live in, how do I educate myself? in other words, how do
I grow and become who I am? How do I educate myself enough to
know what values, are the values I should engage with?

how do I become educated enough to know that the values I should
accept is love, peace, hope, charity, justice?

by what means do I become educated enough to accept the
positive values?

once again, we begin with Socrates… he said,

“the unexamined life isn’t a life worth living”…

so, we begin there… we must begin to examine who we are,
we begin to know thyself in our pursuit of the examined life…
a life worth living…

we cannot begin as so many here have begun, which is with
certainty… the many here who hold the certainty of truth…
I.E. those who believe that IQ45 walks on water… or that
there is a god or holding to any other belief that
holds to the certainty of truth…

you must begin with uncertainty… I know nothing…
and begin there…

what have I been taught, what beliefs have my society and family
and state and religion and media indoctrinated me with?

if I believe in god, do I believe in god because it was indoctrinated into me?
do I believe in a divine being because my society around me indoctrinated me
into that belief?

that is the process one must begin with in order to examine one’s life…
to know thyself…begins with “what was I indoctrinated with?”
“what values were indoctrinated into me as a child?”

and do I still hold those indoctrinated values?

I begin to examine my life in terms of what values do I hold and
why do I hold those particular values?

“What values do I really believe in?” not just the values I was
indoctrinated with, but what values are really “my values?”

these process is an process of education… educating oneself
to the point of becoming who you are, “who you really are”
“which means what values do you really hold?” not the values you
were indoctrinated with, educated with, but what values are you?

the values of America are the values of violence and war and
inequality… look at our history… we have been at war for over
90% of American history… we have, as our basis, inequality…

first it was the inequality of race… the concept of slavery is
a concept of inequality… income inequality is also a concept
of inequality…our failed justice system is another failed concept
of inequality… justice denied is justice inequality… justice must
be equal or it isn’t justice…when some can escape accountability
for actions taken because of job, title, wealth, power or race…
when justice see’s one as a title or a job or as white or wealthy,
then justice has failed, for justice is simply equality in action…

justice is equality……….

if you are ok with justice inequality, then you do not have the value of
justice as your particular value… you practice injustice…as a value…

and injustice practiced is a negative value…
for it doesn’t increase energy… it decreases the amount of energy
in any given system…… for injustice denied is to take out energy
out of the system for justice inequality creates anger and hate and
despair in those who suffer from justice inequality……. and that takes
energy out of our political and economic system which leads to chaos
and disorder within our political and economic system… entropy
is the scientific word for what happens when we act unjustly
and create anger and hatred and despair in those who are treated
unjustly…….

so how do we begin our own personal educational process?

by beginning with the understanding that we are seekers of the truth,
not holders of the truth… we must begin with an the process of
knowing that the unexamined life isn’t worth living and we must
engage with knowing ourselves, examining our lives to see if we
have been indoctrinated by our society, family, state, religion, media…

that is the beginning… the unexamined life isn’t worth living…and go
from there…

Kropotkin

after working so many long and ugly hours of late,
after work yesterday, went home and slept for over 12 hours…
I really needed that…….

my long and very “unprofitable” hours of late
has gotten me to think… by “unprofitable” I mean,
what exactly was I able to accomplish for me, by
working long, hard, ugly hours?

I made money, but so the fuck what?

if that is all I accomplished, I accomplished nothing…

what is the standard we use to judge our actions?

by that, I mean, how should we think about our actions?

I worked days on end and what did I get out of it?

I am sore and tired and every part of my body hurts…
I made a little bit of money but that will be gone
in a week or two, so, what exactly did I accomplish by
my month of hell?

I wasn’t able to work on that which made me human…
I wasn’t able to make the small steps needed to go from
animal/human to human…I accomplished nothing in the last
month but survive it…

we go to work and suffer through it… work doesn’t bring us
any tangible benefits of making us better human beings…
it just brings in some money that will be gone shortly after
we pay bills and stuff…

work doesn’t make us better human beings… in fact, I would argue
that work dehumanizes us, make us less human and more animal/human…

because think about what it means to be animal?

all animals do is engage in meeting their needs, food, water, shelter…
the basic physical needs that all animals must engage with…

but as human beings, why are we still engaged in such “animal”
practices as trying to engage in the simply attainment of physical
needs? if all work does is allow us to get the basic physical
needs of being an animal, food, water, shelter, warmth…
then we are not living any better then animals… the difference
is how we procure the basic physical needs……

the sole missing step from animal to being human is money…
otherwise their is no real difference between animal and human…

we are forced to seek out on a daily, indeed an hourly basis,
the means to procure our daily bread… we don’t hunt in a forest
anymore…but given how dehumanizing work is, we might as well be
hunting in a forest for our daily bread…….

we haven’t even risen above a basic daily search for our animal needs
of food, water, shelter, education…

how can we say we have risen above the animals if we still engage
in the exact same physical search they engage with, just with different
means…

if we can meet our daily needs without this pursuit of finding them,
then perhaps we can begin our drive to become human, not just animal/human…

in other words, if we can solve the income aspect to allow us the means to
become something greater then just animal/human, then perhaps we
can rise much faster in the real goal of humanity, which is
to go from animal to animal/human to becoming human, fully human…

the answer lies within creating a social and existential concept whereas
we no longer engage in our daily struggles to gain our daily bread, by some
much more equitable system that is practiced by all…

in other words the path to becoming human lies in changing the
economic system from a capitalism system to a much more
equitable system of communism… the goal changes from
increasing our economic wealth which has no benefits outside
of increasing the wealth of a few fortunate individuals and families…

in other words, we don’t put our GDP as the heart of what it means
to be human…the path to becoming human lies in our basic physical
needs being met by an far more equitable economic system which
divides the wealth evenly between all the human beings…
and then they, human beings, can engage in discovering what it means
to go from being animal, to animal/human to being fully human…

the journey isn’t a journey to increase our physical, material needs
of cars or couches or TV’S or an increase in our bank accounts,
no, that path is a false and dangerous one because it leads
to human beings engaging with the base, animal needs of greed
and lust and desire………

we must rise above the animal/human path of that is promoted
by our political and economic systems…… we must take to the
path whereas we aim for becoming human… to rise above our
basic physical needs driving our current political/economic systems…

to become human, we must not engage in just the simple pursuits
of basic physical needs, just like animals engage in simple physical
needs…

no, if we are to rise above being just an animal/human, we must
learning to grow above the petty and unnecessary pursuit of
seeking our daily bread…that can no longer become our primary pursuit
of what it means to be human…… to be, to become human, we
must rise above such animal engagement…… we must engage with
what will make us human, fully human…

and that is a daily engagement with values and what values are we to
become…….

if I am no longer pursuing basic, physical needs like food, water,
shelter, warmth… then I can pursue the higher, human aspects of
existence…I then rise above being simply animal/human and I
can begin to engage in becoming human……

what is the point of being human if we cannot engage with what
makes us human? and being human means we can rise above such
petty needs and desires that make us animal/human…

our engagement must be with human concerns like becoming who we are
and in knowing ourselves and

the unexamined life isn’t worth living……… Socrates…

let us take him at his word and make that our defining principal,

let us take as our motto these fine and important words…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

and begin to examine your life as to what is really important…

and if we are engaged in this daily routine of work as we know it
today, whereas we spend our days in mindless and futile pursuit
of making money to gain our daily bread…
then we cannot, cannot discover what is really important
in being human…

to become human, not just animal/human or even just animal,
but in becoming human, fully human…

Kropotkin

so, let us examine what it means to be animal…
then what it means to be animal/human, then what it means
to be human, fully human…

animal… an engagement with a simple pursuit of our basic needs,
food, water, shelter, warmth, education………

all we do is seek out what our bodies need… the simple pursuit of
our animal needs…and nothing more…we don’t seek out our
possibilities because to be animal is to be without any possibilities…
if we are animal, we cannot, cannot become anything else…
we have fully encompass what it means to be animal…
we cannot become something else… that are no possibilities we can
reach…

animal/human… to be animal/human means we have some possibilities…
we see this in us today…we can become some things, not all things, but
some things… we do engage in the animal aspects of existence by
spending our days in futile attempts to met our daily needs of food, water,
shelter…….but because of the current political and economic system,
we cannot rise above such a petty search for our daily bread……

human… to become human means we rise above our daily search for
our animal needs of food, water, shelter… we no longer spend our days
in pursuit of those daily needs… we spend our days in pursuit of what it
means to become human…we have… we are possibilities incarnate…
the road to becoming human is full of possibilities… and the path of
going from animal to animal/human to human is the path of increased
possibilities for us………. the greater possibilities we can pursue is
the path to becoming more human…I can become a poet, a writer, a thinker,
a priest, a farmer, a lawyer… with each possibility come the higher possibility
of becoming human…… to become human means to engage with all our possibilities,
not just with the basic drive to procure our daily bread, but to become all
that is possible in being human…

the road to becoming human is the road to following our various
paths of possibilities of what it means to be human…

to be human means to engage with our possibilities…
and to be human is possibilities… animals have no possibilities…
animal/human have some possibilities… to be human is to have
all the possibilities available to us…

to explore what is possible for you… is to explore what it means
to be human… possibilities are what it means to be human…

and our current political/economic systems deny and destroy
our possibilities by making what is possible for us, is to be
mindless drones that simply exists to make money…
and that is our sole and defining reason for existence…
and that is denying what it means to be human…

to become something more then just animal/human, you must
begin by making life as something more then just making money…

making life to explore the possibilities within you…

by exploring the values which define us as human beings…

the path is…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

know thyself…

a reevaluation of values which means reexamine the values you have
and the values you should have…

to become who you are… by an reexamination of values, you see that
the values you hold are the values you were indoctrinated with as an child,
and an reexamination of your values will lead you to the real values that are you…

and then become those reexamine values… to become who you are…
by becoming those values which you can totally embrace and become…

I was raised in America… America embraces values like martial values…
and values of injustice and inequality and I was raised with those values…
indoctrinated with those values…

after a reexamination of my values, I discovered I didn’t hold those values

I hold values of justice and equality and love and peace…

I am now becoming my values… I want to exist as values of justice
and equality and peace…

this is the path of becoming who you are…

Kropotkin

upon reflection, I was raised with “patriotism”…

but that value is a false value because it doesn’t include,
it excludes……

the only people who are valued under the guise of “patriotism” are
those who are Americans but I hold to a higher value system which
is the highest value is life… not because of some false and
divisive ism or ideology like religion, but because I hold to
something higher then just mere religion…

life is above some religion or ism or ideology…

I hold to the value that life is the highest value we have…

and what does it mean to be human when the highest values if to
life?

it means we discard such provincial and dangerous values like
America first and we no longer hold to such small and petty ideas
of religion or nationality or race or creed or color…

we hold that all human beings are created equal…
and have the right to pursue that which is most human…
our search for what values we are and then become those values…

it has nothing to do with those petty idea’s of nationality or
religion… but everything to do with what it means to be human…

the pursuit of becoming human, not just animal or animal/human but
human… means we discard such ancient ideas that once advanced what
it meant to be human but those ancient idea’s are to be overcome because
they represent what it meant to be human at one time, but we evolve
and become……… and the next step is to rise above religion, nationality,
race, ism’s an ideologies…… the next step is to embrace being human…
regardless of birth or status or wealth or anything other false
standard we might embrace………

the only standard we must now embrace is the fact that we are human…
and life is the goal above that………. so we no longer think of ourselves
as being American or white or catholic or Buddhist or forgiven or not…

for those are false goals of being human…the next step to is to embrace
being human and becoming more human… which means we no longer self
identify as being such minor accidental traits of being American or being white
or being Jewish…….

we self identify as being human and then the next step is to self identify as
being life… and we think ourselves as being part of being human and we think
of ourselves as being part of life, equal to other human beings and equal to being
life……

the path is to become something more then just an accidental trait
is the path to engage with our possibilities… and those possibilities
are something more then just being an American or Catholic or being
white………. I am more then just those accidental traits…

I am the possibilities of what it means to be human…

find those possibilities and become them…become something
more then just an American or just a white person or just
an catholic…… become human, fully human…

Kropotkin

upon further reflection, which means I thought about it…

If we think that the highest possibility is to be an American or
to be white or to be catholic, then we have reached the highest
possibility for us… if being an American is the highest human
possibility, then if we are an American then there is not place to
go, we have reached the highest possibility of being…
we have no more possibilities to reach…

if we think that the highest possibility is to be white, then if we
are white, we have no other possibilities for us to reach……

we have reach the top of what is possible… and the only place
to go when one has reached the top is down…

no, we must always have possibilities ahead of us…

we cannot assume that by reaching some goal, we have reached
the height of our possibilities… because then we have left
ourselves no other place to go……… if we reach the top,
then where else can we go?

no, we must think bigger then some outdated belief that being
an American or being white is the end all, be all of human existence…

we must think of being an American as being another step along the
way, another step in the journey of existence to becoming something
else…the path of possibility doesn’t end with us being
and American or being white or being catholic, no, the path
of possibility lies beyond our being just an American or just being
white or just being catholic……… no, the path of possibility requires
us to move beyond the mere accidental traits of being an American or
being white or being born catholic…

if we are to grow to becoming human, we must think of being American
or being white or being catholic as just another step along the way to
becoming human…

the course of existence demands that we rise above such
trivial matters as being American or white or catholic…

we rise to our possibilities and those possibilities aren’t just
about the accidental traits we are born with…

they are about the choices we make and the values we become…

be it justice or be it love or be it charity or be it honesty or be it………

those possibilities are what it means to human and above…

for once we become human, fully human, then the next step is
to explore what other possibilities exists for us beyond being just human…

it is the possible growth that matters, not some final, pretend
goal or accidental trait we might have…

that there are always possibilities beyond what we might see or believe in,
gives us some hope to the future…

Kropotkin

the quest is not to do philosophy…

the quest is to be philosophy…

Kropotkin

it is a very weird thing to think about…

I was thinking about our modern age…
and what drives it… attention must be paid to that
which we think about… we go on about certain matters as
if that is the goal… for example, one of the matters of faith for the
right wing is that corporations are more efficient then the “government”
(and any one who has worked in a corporation knows that is simply not true)
and we, as a society, attempt’s to become more efficient…
and we try to become more organized…and we try to increase the GDP
and we engage in all sorts of manners… but and this is the weird part…

we don’t engage in this matter as “I”…we act as if the “I”
wasn’t part of the equation of existence…now we see people
all the time attempting to become more efficient, but that is done
in light of increasing our efficiency within a context of work, family,
a job…

but do we ask ourselves, is efficiency really what “I” want?

what values should “I” engage in? we don’t think of ourselves in terms of
of an engagement with values or finding what is truly important in our lives…

we think of ourselves in terms of some other aspect of existence……

the “I” has disappeared from our thought…

How do I become wiser? Who dares ask this question?

how do I become a better person?

and that question, how do I become a better person, requires
some understanding of what it means to be a better person…
so what does it mean? to be a better person?

no one knows… because no one asks……

as I have made clear, I don’t see any difference between self-help
and philosophy and psychology and history and science and economics and…

they are all different aspects of the exact same question…

who am I? and what does it mean to be human?

so ask yourself, what is the “I” that seems to be me?

I am sad, I am happy, I am feeling philosophical today…….

that “I”…………“I” wake up in the morning and “I” get ready to go to work
and then “I” might read a book and forget about work altogether……

how do “I”, that vision of “I”, how do “I” become a better human being?

what is the path to wisdom for “Me”? that me is really just another “I”…

but now we discover that we have different aspects…

I am, you are, he is
we are, you are, they are…

and then we have the past understanding…

I was, you were, he was,
we were, you were, they were…

and don’t get lost in the tree’s thinking about who we are in
the grammar of existence…….

much of the 20th century philosophy has gone down the rabbit hole of
thinking that we are our grammar and we are our language……

my emphasis is not on the was or am or were…
my focus is on the “I” “We” “you”…

I think we have, at the same time, lost focus on the “I”
and we overemphasis the “I”………

we think of existence as being out there… I am going to
become rich… something out there… instead of thinking of
existence as being in here… How do “I” become a better person?

instead of the doing, we have forgotten the being of existence…

we are so busy doing stuff, we forget that at its heart of existence
is being… I am………not being in the weird ontological method of
Heidegger but in terms of “what does my existence mean”… what does
it mean to say, “I am”………I wish I could make it clearer but the very
question of being precludes one asking easy questions about it……

“I am” we need to ask ourselves, what does it mean to say, “I am”?

we aren’t asking doing questions, I shall mow the lawn today…

no, we are asking what does it mean to exist…

what does it mean to ask, and it is a question, to ask, “I am”………

ponder what it means to ask, “I am”………

Kropotkin

now ponder this…

“I am good”…

what on earth does this sentence means?

the “I” that is good…ummm… what does it mean to be good?

the Holocaust, the defined event called evil, was still good to some
Germans who personally benefited from the Jews being sent
to concentration camps… benefiting individual Germans as the
Jews who were sent to camps left behind jobs, houses, cars…
the individual German who personally benefited by coming into
possession of these jobs, houses, cars…

How can something be evil if people benefited from it?

no, we cannot define something as good or evil because
we have to be able to sort out, in some fashion, what is good
and what is evil and to whom?

we can however understand values… I am love…
we can agree to, even if we aren’t able to define it, agree
to the concept of love… I am love…

love as I have already pointed out is positive because it is a
constructive, a building value… it builds something…

whereas negative values negate, are destructive…
hate cannot build, anger cannot build, greed cannot build…

so we can hold to values that are positive…

so, we can say, “I am good” which is to say, I hold to the
positive values of hope, charity, love, peace, among other values…

to say, he is evil… is to say, he hold negative values of anger, hate,
lust, greed………

now will one or can one say, I am evil because I hold to negative values…

the act of denial is strong within human beings… we can rewrite
history to turn our acts of hate, greed, lust, anger into positive values
by rewriting the rules to what it means to hold positive values… invert
them by saying “greed is good”

whereas we can state that greed isn’t good, it leads us to actions that
are destructive in nature and within ourselves………

ponder what is “good”……

Kropotkin

You mean live a life that would be a storyline Dostoevsky or Kafka would gladly develop into a three part novel series? Well shit man, I’m good then.

K: yes, in a very real way, we create our own narrative…

think of stories we might tell our children or grandchildren about
what our life was like…I can imagine my own narrative when
I talk to my daughter. I skip anything that might speak anything
badly of me and go to the parts that reflect highly of me…

and that is human… to “overlook” any part of the narrative that we might
be ashamed of or feel guilty about…in our minds, we rewrite
history to make us look better…

think of a Nazi concentration guard… what type of history is he going
to tell his children or grandchildren? I doubt he would talk about
his role in the slaughter of millions…

selective history… we do so as individuals and we do so as
a culture… think of the genocide of the American Indian at the
hands of the white population… we decry the genocide of the Jews
at the hands of the Nazi’s and we denounce the genocide of the
Armenians at the hands of the Turkish… but we attempt to
hide our own American history and cover up the fact that we
too participated in a very real, very long genocide of the American
Indian…

we are not innocent of crimes against humanity……

but we like to think we are better then that…

that we are good, honest, peaceful, god loving people……

the positive values…

we don’t admit to or own up to
the negative values that allowed us to slaughter millions…

this is an example of how we use values to write or rewrite history…

in the slaughter of millions, did we use values like peace, love, charity,
hope, honesty? I don’t think so…instead we used values like
hate, anger, lust, greed, vengeance to enable us to slaughter millions…

this is a direct application of values into our actions within our life…

so think of the values the Nazi’s used to slaughter their millions?

you think that the Nazi’s used values like love, hope, charity, honesty,
to slaughter their millions?

is an act of violence an act of love? no, it is of anger or hatred or greed
or lust… but it isn’t an action full of the positive values……

we write our own stories full of the values we want to impress others
and those values are the positive values… think of the person
who writes their values in terms of the negative values like
hatred or greed or lust or anger? you would ask yourself, what
is wrong with this person?

so write your own story but think of the values you use to write that story…

are they positive values or are they negative values?

what values best represent your life?

Kropotkin

mehrwert, Pete… a whole shit load of it. When they bury me they’re gonna etch into my tomb: ‘here lies one surplus-value creating sonofabitch’.

K: and that is one narrative one might create about oneself………

and in your narrative, people will be loudly proclaiming
how you are the poster child of positive values…

yes, I hold narratives of that sort where I am the hero of my stories…

where the people cheer my name and statues get built… yes,
I am familiar with such narratives… but like the song says,
but for now love, lets get real…when I die, at most 10 people
will even notice and within a few months, only a few of those will
remember me… I am realistic… I am old… that is what happens
when you get old… the stories, the lies we tell ourselves become
harder to justify…… as we get older, the inconvenient stuff, the
stories of where we act with injustice and inequality and untruthfulness…
those stories are simply left out of the narrative… we “forget” them…
a useful forgetfulness… I have acted badly to many people… but I don’t
share or recall those stories… I have simply left them out of my narrative…

and to what end? to make me look better to other people?
no, to make me look better to myself… to maintain the fiction
that I am a man of superior values and goodness…

instead of creating a different narrative of my life… I should have
just lived a decent life full of positive values… then I don’t have
to lie or to “forget” my past…

we rarely ever think about the future when crafting our stories but
perhaps we should…as an old person, I wonder about my life
and ask myself, what values should I have engaged with?

but it is a wrong way question… the question should be from
a young person looking toward old age…what values should I hold
that will make me proud when I am old? perhaps I should have asked
that question when I was young…

Kropotkin