the real question of our “modern” times is the
question of values… what values are we going to hold?
both individually and collectively…
one might hear, “I am a Christian” and what exactly does that mean?
or one might be accused of being a “socialist” and what exactly does
that mean?
many have accused me of being an “anarchist” or more often a “communist”
and or a “socialist” and yet, few who make such accusations really know what
it means to be an “anarchist” or a “socialist” or a “communist”…
they heard that being called a “socialist” is a bad thing and if someone
says its a bad thing, then that must be true, so in my laziness, I will
simple call someone an “socialist” even though I have no idea what that means…
and that is how the “Modern” method of accusations goes…
Call someone something even though I personally have no idea what it means
and I can dismiss someone who actually knows by calling it “fake news”…
so once again, what are the “modern” values?
no one knows because no one understand what values are…
“I am a Christian” and what values should a “Christian” hold to?
one should hold to values that are in the bible and values that
god and Jesus proclaimed to be true…but the modern “Christian”
has no need of the values proclaimed by god or by Jesus…
for example, the story of Jesus is very clear about how we are
supposed to treat strangers in our land…recall the story of the birth of
Jesus… he was born in a manger, which is basically a room for animals…
and we should treat people better then having them reside in a manger…
and the story/parable of the good Samaritan… in which we should treat people
with kindness… but today’s Christian holds to the values of anger, hatred of
others, lust, greed and yet they still call themselves “Christian” even after
such displays that eliminate them from being “Christian”… the “Christian”
values are love and care for your fellow human being… and yet, the
“Christian” supports the concentration camps we have for children…
and the “Christian” supports violence and hatred and greed toward
any who isn’t them…
I hold to the values of the democratic party and to these values
I engage with… tolerance for people, ending bigotry, creating
a level playing field for people to allow them to achieve the
“American dream”… to hold people to be equal and to
choose justice and equality as the values of our political life…
“I am a liberal” and I hold to the values that liberals partake in…
I am consistent with those values… in other words, my words and my
actions are compatible and logical… when one says, “I am a Christian”
the words and actions and values must be consistent or they are
engaged in hypocrisy… and we see a whole lot of hypocrisy in
“Modern” day America…
and why? why is the crime of America hypocrisy? because we have
failed in an understanding of what it means to be an American or
what it actually means to be “Christian” or we fail to see
how our words and our actions fail to match because we
are afraid of looking any deeper then an inch or two into our lives…
to me, I would rather people engage in terrible and dangerous
actions instead of holding to the hypocrisy between their
words and their actions… which is equally dangerous if not
more dangerous because hypocrisy allows us to feel good about
taking actions that harm others… when we should feel bad or guilty
about our hypocrisy… but that is the “modern” way when we don’t
even notice our hypocrisy in our day to day life…
the hypocrisy of the “modern” age cannot be denied… the Nazi’s practiced
it and the Russians practiced it when they proclaimed the Soviet Union to
be a 'worker" state…as America is practicing it hypocrisy when it claims
to be “Christian” and fails to fulfill even the basic notions of Christianity…
what values are we to hold? let us drop the hypocrisy of America
being a “Christian” nation when we practice values that are
antithetical to the values listed in the Bible…
let us practice our values… let us end the hypocrisy of the “Modern”
world… but what values should we hold to Kropotkin?
Indeed, what values should we hold to?
that is the question of our “Modern” age…
let us walk away from our “modern” age and begin to
engage with both our words and our actions as being
compatible and in synch… let us walk away from
our “modern” hypocrisy and match our words and
our actions…and to do that requires us to look at
ourselves, a long and hard look at what it means to be
an American and what it means to be a human being…
to accept the Modern age means to accept being
a hypocrite and I refuse to do that…and what about you?
are you going to accept being a hypocrite or are you going
to explore, look deep into yourself and see what you really believe
in and what values you really hold…
Kropotkin