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3021

the ism’s and ideologies of today, are nothing
more then a “tale told my an idiot, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing”

take nationalism…another tale by an idiot in a white house…
what exactly does nationalism demand?

to exclude anyone who is not white…

there is not great higher purpose to achieve or
a call to greatness…no, just a debasement of the human spirit…
just a call to bigotry and ignorance and intolerance…

it ask nothing higher of the human being then to hate and feel betrayed…

nationalism is just one step above being animal… a small step…

and what of the call of country… the greatness of America?

and what of that?

just another tale full of sound and fury…

if we sink toward our lowest, base instincts, then we
are not reaching for greatness or that shining city on the hill…
no, we are sinking toward that lowest common denominator of
being human… hate and lust and greed and gluttony and finally despair…

we cannot become human by sinking toward the bottom of human possibilities…

the current values of ism’s and ideologies doesn’t give one a chance to
to become something greater or become something of value……

thus our lives has become hollow and insignificant, hypocritical…
devoid of any value…

how do we consecrate our hallow grounds and sanctify our lives?

what does even mean in these days?

to claim all life is sacred despite all the evidence to the contrary?

if you can hold to the hate of non-white people, you don’t hold life
to be sacred…

if you can hold to the devalued ism of nationalism, life isn’t sacred…

if you hold to the lowest values of country, then life isn’t sacred…

if you hold to the debasement of the human spirit, then life isn’t sacred……

then you are telling a tale, full of sound and fury… signifying nothing…

Kropotkin

3022

Speaking a tale told by an idiot…

let us see what IQ45 brings to the table
in regards to a dominant, unifying theme for America?

let us take one aspect of his “spiel”…
his insults… he insults everyone…
sleepy Joe for example for Joe Biden…
his followers love his insults… but what does that
say about IQ45, his followers and America?

think about great leaders… let us use Lincoln and FDR, for example…
can you imagine either one labeling or using insults against their
political opponents? Lincoln, a man who said this in his second inaugural address:

“with malice toward none; with charity for all;
with firmness in the right as god gives us to see the right…”

I spent most of my childhood in Illinois, where my family still lives,
some of them anyway. I spent my childhood studying our favorite son…
and I don’t recall Lincoln insulting anyone…and he didn’t, but why?

to insult is to have no decency or principles… it is to deny the other
person any respect or esteem…it is to reach to our lower understanding
of the other person……to insult is to deny them their humanness, their
specialness… it is to make them part of them, not us but them…

it isn’t leadership or even common decency to insult other human beings…
it is nihilism… to deny someone their humanness and their human values…

and what does this say about his followers? that they aren’t about reaching
to higher values or to become better people… insults isn’t about becoming
a better person, a better human being… insults brings us down to
our lower, animal instincts…we aren’t reaching up when we insult,
we go down to our animal instincts…and what does this say about an
America where 35% of America approves of this nihilism?

it says that 35% of the population approves of and demands nihilism.
the negation of human beings and their values…

is this nihilism really helping us achieving “greatness” no, quite clearly no,
for reaching greatness requires us to reach up, to become something better,
not to go down to our animal instincts, but to reach our human side…

if you approve of IQ45, then you are engaging in lowering yourself, lowering
America and lowering human beings down to the animal side of existence,
not raising us toward the higher side of what it means to be human…

it is easy to reach down, any 3 year old can reach down… it is easy to do…
just as it is easier to destroy instead of building or being creative…

the higher side of being human is building up, creating, being creative…
to organize things is harder then to build up… and this creating, organizing,
building is reaching toward what is human about us… destroy, being negative,
insulting is what is lower, the animal side of us……

and that is the negative side of IQ45 side of being human…
it is reaching down to our lower, negative, animal side…

it isn’t about making us better human beings or about striving
toward the city on the hill, no, it is reducing us to animals…

a tale told by an idiot…

Kropotkin

3023

so what is the dominant, unifying theme of America today?

what values do we actually uphold and say we are to the world?

once again the tale……

IQ45 lies and then double down on those lies…
he has negated multiple treaties with other countries,
organizations, institutions… thus he isn’t about the we,
he is about creating an us vs them mentality…

he has engaged in the nihilism of negating other people with
insults…lower them to being non-human… he has called
illegal aliens, subhuman, this negation of human beings isn’t
reaching to become a better human being…

he couldn’t care less about the lives of people…
his insults prove that… for they are about bringing
the insulted ones to becoming non-human… less then human
and not worth the effort to care about…

those are the values he has brought to the light…
and favored by 35% of the American people…

35% of America believes that other people are non-human,
are subhuman and they are part of the us vs them issue…

so, so how do we go from this vastly negative, animal
thinking about what it means to be human, to a viewpoint
that is about the higher values of being human, values of love
and peace and charity and hope and justice… values IQ45 has
dismissed and discouraged and devalued…

the declaration of Independence has stated as it central principle,

“all men are created equal”

to insult other human beings, to deny the very principle that
we have created in the United States:

“That all men/human beings are created equal”

to insult, to devalue human beings is to deny that very statement which
is the bedrock of the American experience… equality……

to say the black human being has less value then a white human being is
to deny them that very statement, “All men are created equal” ….

a denial I will not make… for I reach for the stars and in the stars,
“all human beings are created equal” as it is here on earth……

justice for all, equality for all, those are the exact same sentence in my mind…

to be just is to be equal…

we can rebuild the values of America to reach for our higher self,
not to go down to our animal self, but to reach for our human self…

but we got to become aware of our situation, both individually
and collectively……

you want to work toward world peace, you want to end poverty
in our time, do you want to have everyone live in peace and harmony?

goals that are, are reachable…we only have to begin the steps…

we live in a militaristic world because we choose to…
and we have the wrong understanding of what it means to be human…

if you want world peace, it is achievable… your first step and the most
important step is the one step you can make…

to know thyself… to examine yourself…

the path to world peace begins with your understanding of who you are…

every step toward peace begins with one person saying, these are my values,
love and peace and harmony and hope and justice…

and then the second person says, yes, you are right

and if you can get enough people to agree with you,
then we have peace and hope and justice and charity…

every step begins with an reevaluation of what it means to be human…

you want world peace, begin with you and what you believe in…

for those who claim that the human spirit is an ugly one, with
violence and anger and hate… those lost souls believe it because
they are about violence and anger and hate… it reflects in their
soul and that isn’t the human condition… the human condition is
what we decide upon and we create…

human nature isn’t fixed or set… it is something that we build
and work for and sometimes die for…we have control over
who we are… the denial of human freedom to create who you are
is the Machiavelli/GOP vision of what it means to be human…

a leopard cannot change it spots and man cannot change his
nature of violence and hate and despair…

but we can change… we have proved it by going from animal
to animal/human… we are, in values, human beings…
we are in our basic bodily needs animals…
I choose to rise up and become human…
these believers in Machiavelli believe in us being animals
and not being able to do anything about that…

but we change, every single day we change…
we grow from baby to toddler to pre-teen to teenager
to young adult to adult and middle ages to senior citizen
to old age and then our final change is death…

my values that I hold today are vastly different then the values
I held as a child or as a young adult or even in middle ages…
if I am unable to change as an adult then Machiavelli is right,
but we see those changes every single day in others and in us…

I am not who I was… and this very fact disproves Machiavelli
and the GOP…I can change, I can adapt, I can become…

and this means we are adaptable and changeable and not fixed
or set…we are leopards who change our spots… we prove this
every single day…our children prove this…my daughter isn’t who
she was when she was young… she changed…and you change…

we are a species that changes… that might be a working definition of
what it means to be human… we change……

and what change do you want to make?

do you want to become more human or less?

to find world peace… simple begins with you understanding
who you are and then working toward becoming who you are…

all is achievable… the end of poverty, the end of war, the end of
the insults and inhuman treatment of other human beings…

all that is needed is you… and your beginning the process
of becoming who you are… going from animal to animal/human
to becoming human, fully human…

Kropotkin

3024

the ism’s and ideologies that dominant today,
are nationalism and isolationism…

two failed religions…
and they failed because of a couple of factors…

both of them deny the basic facts of human existence…

that we are social creature… we don’t and even cannot
survive alone…

if this pandemic has proven nothing else, it has proven that
we need each other…even those who proclaim the
ideology of superiority of the white man
and the ideology of capitalism, in which some
are destined to achieve great wealth… in which the wealth
“proves” the superiority of the white man, they
after less then a month, have come out and demand
that we open up…we are social creatures
that need each other… that is the demand of those
who want us to reopen the country… they just don’t
realized it…to demand to reopen the country is
to state that “all men are created equal”…
for that demand of reopening is a call to equality
and justice…the protesters just don’t see far enough to
understand their demand to reopen is a restatement
of the declaration of Independence…

“all men are created equal”

now some might say, but Kropotkin,
I cannot connect the two statements…
as cannot the people who want the country to reopen…
but I will not “save” you the time…

you must reach that understanding on your own…

I will not make it “easy” on you to make sense of the two
ideologies…….think about it…

that has been my attitude from the start…

think about how the call to reopen the country is a
call that “all men are created equal”…
and we are, all of us, social creatures…
created to be social by our common evolution from
animal to being human…

learn to connect the dots……

don’t expect Kropotkin to explain his every
statement because you are too lazy to think about it…

think about the full implications of the statement,
“all men are created equal” means…

it is a call against nationalism and a call against isolationism
and a call for a universal peace and government…

and a call to end violence and poverty and aggression
and injustice and the seven deadly sins which dominant
our economic and political life today…

that “all men are created equal” is a call to a new
way of life and a new understanding of what it means to
be human…

just think about it…

for we have missed the full implications of that statement…
that “all men are create equal”

think about what it means to be human?

Kropotkin

3025

if the GOP/Machiavelli were right in their understanding that
we are unable to “change” our spots, then we couldn’t change
our childhood indoctrinations…we do change, quite often…
we go from teenager to adult with the ensuing changes,
mental, physical, emotional, psychologically…

our understanding changes with our aging… if the GOP/Machiavelli
were right, then we would be stuck permanently in our childhood
indoctrinations or stuck as a baby or toddler understanding of the
world… but we aren’t… we change evolve, adapt… move from
one viewpoint of understanding to another… change not possible
if we believed Machiavelli…

but what about those who hold beliefs/ism’s and ideologies
of nationalism and isolationism?

are they growing? have they evolved from childhood to adulthood
to old age?

I would argue no…I would say that they still hold childhood indoctrinations…
of some sort…and they are unable to get past them…they cannot grow…

and we see this closer to home in ILP… we see several people who are stuck
in their habits, ism’s and ideologies, superstitions, biases and fear…

they cannot outgrow their extremism… their viewpoint of
being anti-human, anti-American, anti-justice…

they are stuck… and until they get unstuck, they are trapped in
intolerance, injustice, violence, dogma, partisanship…….

for to deny that “all men are created equal” is to deny our
social connection that we have as human beings…

to deny “equality” is to deny justice and hold to intolerance
and bigotry…

I cannot reach those who preach the bigotry of the right wing…

for those who preach and practice bigotry and intolerance
and hatred……. they hate and deny that “all men are created equal”

which is being anti-social and anti-human……

for the human condition demands, demands that we
exists for each other… the current pandemic shows us that…

the ism of nationalism and isolationism is anti-human…
for it preaches that which is clear and evident to
anyone who can see what it means to be human…
that we are social creatures bound to each other for
our safety, for our needs, for love and belonging,
and for the need of esteem…

to reach our goals of safety and love and esteem requires
the joint effort of all…because as the man said,
“all men are created equal” and has equal needs
and equal desires and equal right to be who we are…

one person alone cannot achieve the goal of meeting their
needs of food, water, shelter, education, health care…

rugged individualism fails because of the human need for
being social… and that our needs cannot be met by just one person…

we are bound to each other because we are human…

the need for government is the tacit agreement that we as human beings,
need each other…for if we are to become human, we need each other
to make that possible… and government plays a vital role in that
achievement of being human…

we are social beings and government accepts and affirms that
basic needs of human understanding…

if you look, honestly, at what is our world, you will see that
everything is a tacit understanding that we are social creatures
that need each other…the creation of shops and business
and sports and religion and hobbies is simply more clues that
we are social creatures that need each other…

but by focusing on profits/money, we forget and deny that
basic fact…of our being social creatures that need each other…

the pursuit of money/profits seek to make that pursuit of money/profits
a preeminent factor to being human when the preeminent factor of being
human is our biological need to be social…

we have focused on the wrong thing… and not for the first time
and certainly not for the last time…

what is it that makes us human?

our needing to be social…

and everything comes after that…

Kropotkin

3026

Tolstoy once wrote:

Every man bears within himself the germs of every human quality.
and if you are honest, you will think better of evil men, because
you are their brother, and worse of your own goodness, which
is stained with so much patent or repressed evil. That inner inspection,
(or reevaluation of values that every great teacher has called for)
ends all complacency, all self-righteousness" that we hold…

I have walked away from everyone… I stay home and read and write,
only going out to work… I disconnected myself from my fellow human beings…
friends and family to work out my “inner inspection”…to revaluate my values…

what I am writing is my report of what I have found…

if you want to explore what it means to be human and what are
your values, then you too must disconnect from your daily
activities… you must explore what it means to be human, in
the quiet of your own thoughts……. true revaluation requires silence
and quiet, peace of mind, hours and hours of just… thinking…
no radio, no TV, no movies, no people… I listen to music, a lot…
and that helps me think and reevaluate… my music is quiet
and peaceful… new age music… just me and the quiet of the
piano or flute or guitar… I think best with music…
quiet, thoughtful music…I have replaced my daily contact with
other human beings with music… I hope to find that which makes me
human…

I too am human and thus I too have a disconnect between my words
and my actions… I must connect what I say, with what I do…

who am I? what am I to do? What are my values?
upon what should I expend my energy on?
what can I know? what should I hope for?

Kantian/Kropotkin questions of existence…

questions you should be asking yourself in the quiet
of your thoughts…

If I am honest, and few are that honest, I too bear
the seeds of both evil and goodness…
I can choose, intentionality, to be good or to be evil…
it is my choice… and you too bear the seeds of
good or evil… Machiavelli says that you cannot
change the seeds of whether you are good or evil…

I am not my 12 years self and thus proving that I too,
am capable of change…of becoming an adult…
of choosing good or evil…or choosing to have values…

and thus if you believe in free will, you believe in choice…
and by choice, we can become who we are… we have the
freedom to act… the freedom to pick our values and
become those values…

Machiavelli preaches determinism…you have no choice…

I preach the values of freedom…

and what value do you choose?

freedom or determination?

pick and set yourself up to answer your questions
of existence…

Kropotkin

3027

the way we understand things is wrong…

we think the path to becoming requires us to do something…
we must do something to become knowledgeable or to become
wise or to become who we are…….no, a thousand times, no…

we don’t need to slay the dragon or journey as Luke Skywalker did
to become a Jedi… we only need to go silent and quiet
and disconnect… to hear our inner voice and see what it means
to become human in our own words and in our own values…

you want world peace and the end of war and violence…

the path lies in the silence of you own mind…

see the seeds of all that we are and then simply choose
the seeds that fit you… become your own seeds of values…
you have the free will to become who you are… who your seeds
say that your are…you only have to choose… in the silence that
is who we are…becoming who you are isn’t a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury… signifying nothing…

it is a quiet, peaceful almost imperceptible change from who you were to
to who you are……. and change is like that… not with a bang, but with
the whisper…and the silence that comes with knowledge, true knowledge
of who you are…

Kropotkin

3028

we seek answers and the means we seek them is by
efficiency… the best use of time… time is money, right?

but we have overvalued money and devalued time…

the path to becoming isn’t on the time clock and it isn’t
efficient and it isn’t done by the proper technique…….

we become on our own clock and in our own time…

the path to our happiness isn’t defined by a clock or by time
or by becoming more efficient…

In fact, the chief obstacle to our becoming wise or knowledgeable
or becoming human is being efficient and time effective
and by bearing down on working harder…

keeping our nose to the grindstone is in fact, a hinderance to
our becoming wise and becoming who we are…

disconnect and then once you can see your own values,
then and only then can you reconnect to society…

the path to world peace isn’t financial or becoming more efficient
or with laws or dictatorships… it begins and ends within our own
understanding of the seeds that lie within us and which seeds
we then choose to become who we are…

you decide the future by which seed or value you decide to make your
own…

the path to a better world starts when we decide which values we choose to be…

it is by choice and not determination that decides the future……

and what value will you choose?

and why?

Kropotkin

3029

those MAGA believers… they somehow believe that we can
make America great again by holding to values like hatred,
bigotry, anger, lust, greed, violence, the seven deadly sins…

have they even given a moment thought to what truly will make
America great? no, no they haven’t… but Kropotkin, how do you know?

because those who hold lower values of hatred and violence
and anger and lust, have never given a moments thought to
what it means to hold those values… because if they had,
they wouldn’t actually hold those values because to hold to
those values mean they don’t believe in freedom
and what it means to reach for god or reach for, become
who you are…

the seekers, the ones like Kazantzakis and Jesus and D.H Lawrence,
they hold to the search for values, not how efficient they are…
and not how fast they reach their values…

seeking isn’t about being efficient or the model use of time…

seeking is about seeking regardless of how long it takes…

to seek means you are no longer bound to the time constraint of
the modern world… to punch the time clock… to achieve
profits in the second quarter…to be a CEO by the time you are thirty…

irrelevant to the seekers… so you want to become something…

then seek and isolate yourself and become……

MAGA isn’t about becoming something, it is about becoming which
happens on it owns time and place…

seek and ye shall find… is true only if you don’t put a clock to your seeking…

MAGA is within us, not outside of us…

and that is why those who defend MAGA haven’t given it a moments thought…
as to what will make America great… it is that which is within us that
makes America great…not outside of us…

so it isn’t the dow jones or the GDP or the allege greatness of America…

it is about taking the time to find our own seed of being human…

no time clock, no efficiency, no time is money crap…

to seek is to put oneself outside of time and space…

for seeking is that which is within us…
and we don’t need time or space to find that which is within us…

we just need honesty…

Kropotkin

3030

a MAGA believer sees a painting…
is it beautiful, they are asked?

they don’t know…
for they lack the tools to see beauty…

for to see beauty, to have one’s breath taken away
by the sunset is to have love……

for we can only be see beauty when we are held by love
and within love……

can you be creative without love?

no, for the act of creation is the act of love…

that is why MAGA believers are not about beauty or the
sight of the sunset that takes away the breath of those who love…

the MAGA believer only holds to hate and anger and greed
and thus they cannot see beauty…

beauty can only exists to those who live within love…

and art and all that is involved in ART and the creation of art
is the act of love……… and which is why a MAGA believer cannot
appreciate art or beauty… they don’t love and are unable to love…

IQ45 is unable to see the love in the world and is for all intents
and purpose, is impotent…unable too take effective action;
helpless or powerless…because he cannot love……

his failure to appreciate art or beauty is prove of this…

do you see the beauty of the sunset?

do you see the beauty of a picture?

do you love?

for love is the only means possible to see and understand ART
and beauty…

Kropotkin

3031

a dialogue:

IQ45: I am the greatest Christian ever, including Jesus Christ…
(actual quote from the Donald)

K: you are nothing of the sort… you aren’t even a good human being.

IQ45: of course, I am a great human being. I am wealthy and
that automatically makes me great.

K: as if wealth makes one great… let us see some great human beings
in history and see if wealth makes one great. We can see from history,
from the biography of great human beings that wealth has nothing to do
with greatness… if that were so, we wouldn’t have heard from the poor men,
like Jesus and Einstein and Newton and Socrates and St. Augustine and
Galileo or Da Vinci or Hawkins or Gandhi or MLK or any number of remarkable
individuals who created Art, science, history, math, economics… to name a few…

wealth isn’t what make an individual great… in fact, wealth is detrimental
to greatness… for those who were seekers of wealth, say, Rockefeller or
a Henry Ford… they were not creative thinkers or intellectuals…
they weren’t the great human beings like a Gandhi or a Da Vinci or Goethe…
they were in fact, small human beings… Ford for example was a racist,
anti-Semite, who in the 1920’s emerged as a spokesperson for right-wing
extremism and religious prejudice who supported Hitler…

Ford suffered from the exact same problem you have, he and you lack
love and are unable to love… you are impotent…unable to love…

IQ45: why that is nonsense. I see a beautiful women and I say outright,
what a beautiful women.

K: No, that isn’t love, that is lust… you lust after her like a piece of meat…
You are not in love with women…your access Hollywood tonight comments
were clear proof that you can only lust, not love, but lust…a beautiful picture
to you only has value if you can sell it for some price…that is acceptable…
that isn’t love of beauty or of art…

and your followers follow that same feeling that they are unable to love
because if they could love, they wouldn’t approve your insults because
insults are degrading and dehumanizing and are by their very nature,
nihilistic ………and degrading people, dehumanizing people isn’t love…
it is hate and fear and anger…

you are unable to love thus you are unable to create or picture
beauty… to create is to love… creativity comes from love…
hate and greed bring about destruction and chaos… both of which
you desire…you thrive on chaos and destruction and that isn’t love…

love builds, love creates, love rises up, love makes us better people…

hate destroys, hate shatters, hate ruins, hate dismantle all that is good
in people…

look at all the great people in history, the ones we builds statues to,
to Einstein and Gandhi and MLK and Socrates… they could love
and thus they could build and create and appreciate beauty…

you cannot, because you hate and hold lust as your primary value…

beauty is something you cannot see or appreciate because your
vision is blinded by hate and lust…

as is your followers are blinded by hate and lust and greed…

they cannot see beauty or love or a sunset that makes one
go wow…

IQ45: I have something better then love and better then beauty,
I have money and money can buy you anything…

K: that is the value of someone who thinks in the material world…
there is more then being able to buy goods like cars or houses or TV sets…

You cannot see the value of love because of the hate that fills your soul,
the hate and intolerance and bigotry that lines the pockets of your soul…

you hold empty values along with the empty promise of wealth…

as long as you seek wealth over love, you will wind up, perhaps with money,
but certainly without love and without love, you have nothing that gives
your life meaning or value or purpose……

money cannot under any circumstance offer you peace or happiness or contentment…
nor love…

peace of mind only comes from love……

and you don’t have any…

thus your constant discontentment and anger…
you lack even basic happiness… and you will never find
happiness until you find love and love only comes to those
who put wealth after love…not before……

Kropotkin

3032

I have harped upon factors which motivate us to act,
positively or negatively…

I have called them values…and we also have needs and
desires that motivate us to act…and then we have another
factor which motivate us to act or not to act… emotional
aspects… one of the great drivers of human beings is fear…

this has been installed into us by evolution… the fight or flight process
which is driven by fear…

now I must admit, I don’t understand this emotion… I am not driven
by fear in my actions… but I see my daughter is driven by fear…
she is deathly afraid of getting the virus…and she is afraid of
so many things…

as for me, I am not afraid of death… Actually, I am afraid of very little…
I do have a weakness and that is for many years, I had a fear of heights…
and to this day, I still don’t like heights…

I can’t tell you how I got to be afraid of heights… but it was clear by high school,
my senior prom was in hotel in San Francisco, on Union sq…the hotel had
these glass elevators and my date and friends of mine thought it would be
fun to ride these elevators… I was quite clearly, very disturbed by this…
and so, just for fun, they rode the elevator over and over and over again
to the top of the hotel… I was practically sick by the end… and they
just laughed at me…I spent the rest of the night by myself sitting at a table,
being bored out of my mind…….as I knew I was afraid of heights, I tried to
overcome that by taking up sports that forced me to overcome my fear…

I did pole vaulting in high school in an attempt to overcome and shortly
after high school, I engaged in rock climbing with a friend…

I didn’t actually fly in an airplane until I was 19… so that route was not really
a possibility…

so I understand the crippling fear that can occur to us from various sources…

so I see fear, which of a biological construction, I can see how fear can
can run our lives and control what we do…

and I maintain, we in America is driven by fear…
we are afraid of our own shadow… the right wing media
machine helped drive this fear as that is the only way the
GOP candidates can be elected, by fear…….

and they were helped by 9/11… a totally fear driven event…
our fear driven event was, by far, an overaction to what happened…
two wars and the patriot act which created our modern police state…

fear can drive one to commit actions that one would normally not
even consider…… and this current pandemic has driven people
to exhibit a great deal of fear… as with my daughter…

but part of overcoming is overcoming such things as fear……

fear allows the false demarcation of us vs them…
it allows for nationalism and isolationism and
tribal thinking… in this day and age, with our modern
technology, we cannot afford to have fear as our dominant
emotional response…

but why?

fear drives one to impulsive actions, to protect by
fight or flight… and neither action is warranted by
our current situation…

again, let us think about events after 9/11…

we were in fear and so we attacked Iraq and Afghanistan…
even though they had nothing to do with 9/11 in any way, shape or form…

we are in fear and so we attack Asian citizens about the virus…

we are in fear and so we promote dumb theories about Jews…

the question isn’t about eliminating fear, we can’t…

it is hardwire into us…the question becomes
one of control… however we can control our fear
and be the master of our fears…

do you let your fears control you or do you control your fears?

that is the question……

a few years ago, the wife and I went on vacation to Seattle…
and yes, I went to the top of the space needle… I was afraid,
but I controlled my fear… enough to even look down at the street
below…

what is your fear? and how do you handle it?

do you allow your fear to control your actions or do you control the fear?

we can see many people on ILP being driven by fear…

every single rant about illegal aliens or the Jewish people or
nationalism or tribalism is a rant about how they are afraid…
and the object of their fear is their rants about nationalism or
aliens or Jews…

IQ45 rants against illegal aliens and minorities
and women… why? because he is afraid… he is a very fearful
person… he has allowed his fears to dominate his entire viewpoint…

every action and word out of his mouth is driven by fear of something…

are you afraid?

it is ok to be afraid… just don’t let it control you…

Kropotkin

3033

so, what other emotional responses do we react to?

love for example, much of what we seek is love…

our response to love is different then our response to fear…

fear is much harder to control…

I have classified fear as a negative emotions
and love as a positive emotion…and it is…

and according to Maslow, love is one of the primary needs of human beings…
but fear isn’t…

and that is true…fear keeps us from doing something stupid…
love is about filling a need…one emotion is toward something
and the other is away from something…

love is something that you can never have enough of…
it is limitless, without boundaries… the more love you have,
the better you feel…that is why love is a positive emotion…
you can never get enough of it and if you do, that is even better…

and what does fear cause?

it has caused wars and famines and murder, both large and small.
it has caused people to invade other countries and to torture people…
look at the gun/violence culture in America… we are afraid and
so to calm our fears, we turn to guns/the threat of violence…

you can see the most afraid people, they are the ones who are
the loudest promoting guns as a solution to America’s problems…

I would argue that guns create more problems then they solve…
but those in the midst of fear, they are so afraid that they cannot
see any other solution but guns…

a gun culture driven by fear can only offer up solution of fear,
by using guns as a fear driven solution, we only offer up fear…
the very gun culture we have, creates more fear…it doesn’t reduce
the fear in our culture, the presence of guns promotes the culture of fear…

if you advocate guns as a solution, then you are advocating fear as
a solution for fear…not much of a solution, is it?

the only solution for fear is to overcome it…

FDR said this:

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to
fear is… fear itself- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyses needed effort to convert retreat into advance”

to convert retreat into advance… yes, we must overcome our fears to
overcome the retreat of isolationism and nationalism and anti-Semitism…
and tribalism of us vs them… to demonize illegal aliens
and minorities and women and homosexuals… to demonize because
we are afraid… we hold fear and to continue that fear, we demonized
people who are different then us, in looks or sexual preference or different
religious preference or hold different political views… that is why
the right demonizes the left, because the right is afraid…
the left doesn’t demonize people because we aren’t held hostage by fear…
as the right is, as the GOP is, as IQ45 is driven by fear…

IQ45 base, that base is driven by fear… fear of aliens and minorities
and women and gays among other fears…

they like IQ45 demonizing people because that is what the base does because
they are so fear driven…listen to conservative radio. listen to Rush and Hannity,
they are fear driven… be afraid of everything is their message…

they paint dire pictures of America… think of the message they often deliver,
the gay agenda, the left allowing the borders to be wide open,
to take your guns away, taking your rights away, these messages of fear
delivered by the right wing media…
and they messages of fear have no basis in fact, but fact is irrelevant
when fear is involved… the right wing media drives the current fear in America
and feeds it lies and propaganda……. why?

too hold power… that is the basis of the drive to frighten everyone…
so the right wing can hold power… you quite often hear the right wing,
say the left is weak on crime or weak on defense… that is a fear based
argument… the only way you can protect yourself is by electing
right wing politicians because they aren’t weak on crime or weak on
defense… that is a message predicated upon fear…and that is the message of
the right wing and IQ45…a message of fear…

if we were to overcome our fear, we would never elect another
right wing politician again… and they know it…so you have strong
fear based messages from the media, the state, the church, the family…

so, do you allow the fear to drive you or do you overcome your fear and
learn to control it?

that is the point… the battle is not out there but inside of yourself…

so are you going to overcome fear?

if not, why not?

ask yourself, why am I so griped by fear?

and ask yourself, what can I gained if I overcome my fear?

Kropotkin

3034

I have been thinking… about what our time is…

I can’t help but to wonder what the future will make of all this,
the virus, IQ45, the number of deaths, the shutting down of virtually
every American business… the massive unemployment…all of it…

what will future historians or future philosophers write about this
time we are living in… this year of 2020, in April……

they will say, unprecedented times, extraordinary times,
unparalleled times, a singular event……

and they will all be right and they will all be wrong…

are the times we are living in, are they similar to living in a play,
a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, or perhaps Oedipus Rex or perhaps
Hamlet? if one looks up tragedy online, you get a lot of Greek plays
and some plays by Shakespeare… the only really modern play listed is
“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller…

have we lost the ability to understand or create a “tragic” play?

is our modern times so tragic that we cannot even produce a “tragic” play
because to do so would be to simply reproduce our modern headlines…

Could I even be able to compare a Greek play, say, Oedipus Rex, with
any sort of modern event which includes our great “tragedy” the pandemic?

can we compare any part of our modern age with the idea of Greek Tragedies or
any sort of modern tragic plays?

the problem lies with the numbers… We cry at the two deaths of Romeo
and Juliet and feel nothing when our modern death toll rises to over 60,000…
which means in three months, we had more deaths then the entire Vietnam war,
which lasted 11 years…but the problem then arises… people who call 60,000 deaths,
a hoax, a fraud designed to deprived them of their civil rights…are we so
selfish that we see 60,000 deaths as some kind of attack upon our person?

it is a plot to take away my rights… they say, but they do not say that they are sorry or
angry that 60,000 people died needlessly or what an injustice was done…

no, they take the massive death toll as some vague attack on their own person…

what will future historians make of this?

60,000 people died and all people could make of it was an personal attack upon
their rights!

that is practically delusional… to turn the deaths of thousands into
a personal attack upon your rights…to say, being told to stay home to protect
lives is an attack upon your freedoms… what kind of selfish are you?

and what will historians make of this type of selfish behavior and words?

how is this even possible?

the deaths of 60,000 people and the only reaction people have is to complain about
their rights?

no wonder we cannot produce any type of tragedies today…
we are so lost and confused as to think that our rights being
curtailed is more important then the deaths of 60,000 people…

there cannot be a tragedy written about this… only a caricature could
be written about a people who think that their rights have more validity then
the deaths of 60,000 people…and that the deaths of 60,000 is a hoax, a fraud,
designed to take away your liberties…

only a comedy could be written about such ignorance…

I tried to see if Aristotle has some words about tragedies, that I might
create some words I could write today… but no… I cannot create
a tragic play or novel on today’s events because we can’t even
feel remorse or pain or regret over the loss of 60,000 lives…

it is a hoax…fake news…… a nothing burger……

I can’t even tell who I feel more sad about,
the 60,000 deaths or the fools who think their feelings
have more value then 60,000 deaths.

who can produce a decent tragedy when people think their
rights have more value then 60,000 deaths…

I have been thinking… and it is pointless because people values are so screwed up
that they believe their rights preempt the deaths of thousands…

how can I write or explain tragedy when people cannot even be moved by
the deaths of 60,000 because it doesn’t fit into their mode of understanding…
it is fake news and they can’t believe anything else…

how are historians going to write about this?

what will history write about us?

that we cannot even grieve for 60,000 people because it might
interfered with our right to visit the solon or coffee shop?

what a sad commentary on the modern world

and a sad commentary about America……

Kropotkin

3035

and in the grand scheme of things…

to go out of control isn’t that bad… it is the equation that
must be kept…… in other words, the balance of our actions must
remain equal… the equation must be kept…

so if we go hog wild and get drunk… that is fine,
as long as the life equation is kept going…

it is not about the one or two night of drinking oneself silly that is
important… it is the many nights of balance that matters…

the overall balance must be kept…

we can forgive an occasional high or low…
it is the overall balance that must be maintained…

one night of debauchery can be forgotten or forgiven…
if, if we hold the rest of our time in balance…

I have said this many different ways to impress upon you the importance
of one’s balance in life… the high’s and lows are less important
then the = sign…

I am old and one night of drinking and I will suffer long for it…
the balance is automatically maintained…… I cannot go out of
the balance if I even wanted to because of the immediate
consequences that I will suffer from going too high or too low…

when I was young… I didn’t suffer immediate consequences from my actions,
which lead me to believe that I could act outside of the equation and not suffer from it…

but that is false… I still suffer I just missed it or I dismissed it as unimportant…

what happens if we go outside of the equation is referred to as
consequences… and those consequences are part of the laws of
thermodynamics… for every action, there is an equal and opposite
reaction……. we humans do not exists outside of the laws of physics…

we are not exempt from those laws…as those laws exists for us individually,
they also exists for us collectively… if we go outside the bounds of
the collective equation, we will suffer… we will face consequences…

if the government mistreats its citizens badly, maybe not today and maybe
not tomorrow, but at some point the government will suffer the consequences…
it will suffer… the basic laws of physics…

if you want to not suffer the laws of consequences of being evil,
then one must be good… the laws of physics demand that we
engage in both individual and collective behavior of treating people
with decency and respect…people respond to goodness with goodness…

and one might say, Kropotkin, you said equal and opposite reaction…
thus if you treat people good, they will treat you badly… equal and opposite…
but have you tried to treat people with honesty and respect?

in my experience, people react much better to being treated good
then to be treated badly…

you get a better response from people if you treat them like they
are human beings, then if you treat them like crap…

and if they don’t Kropotkin? what if I treat someone with respect
and they mistreat me? my, my why are we so worried about what other’s
might think or do? the best you can do is treat people with decency and
respect… if they don’t equal that, that isn’t your problem…
you can feel good about your actions and what you did…

the equation still remains if you treat people from and with goodness…

if they chose to break the equation, that isn’t your problem…

you can hold your head high if you treat other’s decently…

regardless of how they treat you back…

the equation of treating people well, will still remain the same…

don’t mistake maybe and might and could be with some sort of
reality that exists… maybe and might and could be simple
possible futures…

and not known until you take some action………

so hold to the equation… and treat people with respect and decency
and as human beings…

you will feel better about yourself for it…

Kropotkin

3036

X + 13 = 20

So what is X?

We know the answer to be 7

take the 13, move it to the other side, -13 so 20 - 13 = 7

this is your basic equation…

the two sides are equal…

13 + 7 = 20

they say the same thing…

another equation is energy = mass or energy = matter…

the two sides are equal…

and this is true of all of life… the two sides must be equal…

so we have another aspect…

we have individuals and we have the collective…

if we have individuals on one side and the collective on the other side,
then the two sides must be equal…

individual = the collective or the society if you will…

so what does an equal society look like?

well, we know that to be equal, all parties must be treated equally…

for that is the essence of equality/justice…

if some are treated unequally, either the wealthy are treated better
and/or the poor minorities are treated worse, then the equation is
off… it is not equal…and thus we have inequality in our equation…

enough inequality within the system and the system itself collapses…

a math problem must be equal for it to be of use…

1 + 1 = 2… this can only be of use if it is equal…

1 + 1 = 4… is an unequal equation and thus worthless…

a society must be equal for it to survive…
if it is unequal, then at some point, the society
will collapse…the weight on one side or the other,
will throw the system off balance…

if the society overwhelms the individuals, then the weight
of the society will throw the system off balance… it will collapse…

or if the individuals overwhelm the society, then the systems collapses…

so we must engage with keeping the system balanced as we must keep
the individuals within that system balanced…

think about it… we struggle with the work/life balance all the time…

if too much time is spent at work, we lose our balance in life…

if we don’t drink enough water, we lose our inner balance that is maintained
by drinking enough water…

if we need individual balance, we must replace that inequality with something
that will hold the balance in our lives…….

lacking nutrients, then we take a supplement to recover that balance…

seeking individual balance is one of the task of modern life

and so should seeking balance between individuals and society is another
balance we must seek……

Kropotkin

3037

Okay, here’s another fact: that not a single one of us here on earth was born without first having been that clump of cells. And a new born baby cannot survive on its own, right?

No, from my frame of mind, once conceived the unborn are just step by necessary step from being like all the rest of us.

Others, of course, use different demarcations here: beating heart, brain waves, viability outside the womb. And, if that works for them, then it becomes the bottom line. Besides, there is always the argument that men have no right to an opinion at all here because only women are confronted with the wrenching reality of actually dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.

But: how on earth would any of these positions be demonstrated as [objectively] reflecting the optimal or the only rational point of view? In a No God world.

Then comes the part that I describe as being “rooted in dasein”:

This encompasses your own unique “story” as dasein. And [from my perspective] it’s not a question of whether your mother did the right thing or the wrong thing. But that what she chose to do was in turn rooted in her own existential “I”.

Today we have any number of contexts in which doctors are able to diagnose afflictions that the unborn will have if the mother chooses to give birth. To abort or not to abort? So, what can philosophers and ethicists agree about here in regard to each situation? How are these decisions not rooted existentially in the individual “I”?

That’s always my point. And, in regard to abortion, my own “I” here is encompassed on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382

And then from my own frame of mind – no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein – you go back up into the realm of the “general description intellectual contraptions”:

But: don’t the conservatives have their own rendition of this? Only they start with the assumption that none of this can come about [given either a liberal or a conservative political agenda] if the babies are shredded and then flushed away.

The part which from their point of view you just completely ignore:

If you can’t even imagine how many conservatives would be appalled, aghast, outraged by an argument of this sort, then at least I suspect that they cannot even imagine how liberals would be appalled, aghast and outraged at their own arguments in turn.

But at least most liberals and conservatives are not “fractured and fragmented” when confronting abortion. At least they have the comfort and the consolation of knowing that they are on the right side of the issue.

3038

so IQ45 and his followers seek hate and anger and lust,
the seven deadly sins, along with intolerance, bigotry to name a few more
negative instincts…

that is bringing society out of balance…

what can we do to bring society back into balance?

by holding to the values of tolerance and love and peace…

if the GOP advocates violence and hatred, we must advocate
peace and love to maintain the balance of society…

the American society has long been an advocate of martial values…
and what are martial values? hostility, aggressive, combative,
belligerence, war like… who do we proclaim to be the hero’s of society?

the troops, the soldiers… I see ads on TV all the time, thanking the troops
for their sacrifice and service………. but we don’t put ads thanking the
advocates of peace, the ones who want us to give peace a chance…

so, to hold the balance of the society, we must advocate peace, love,
non-violence…to keep our society, we must think in terms of the
equation that society needs to hold it together…

peace = war…

the two sides must be equal or the society collapses…

simple as that…

we must hold the balance between the various forces in life
and within society and within ourselves…

we wonder about what happen in modern society?

we lost the balance that society held for thousands of years…

with the introduction of capitalism and the industrial age, we no longer
have the balance between the various forces in life…

that is why we are disconnected, alienated from life, society and each other…

how do we recover the balance that we individually and collectively need?

see what life was before capitalism and before the industrial revolution…

we were a rural, agricultural based society… and what was the focus of
that society? the slow movement of time based on the seasons and not
on the time clock… part of the disconnection within society has been
the introduction of modern time within society…

time is money… in our modern world, but time isn’t money in the world
before the industrial revolution…

am I advocating a return to the world before the industrial revolution,
like Rousseau? no, not at all… I am simply pointing out that we must return
to balance…and what is the new balance in our lives?

that is what we must discover…….

if our society is anti-peace and against art and beauty…
then to recover our balance, we must stand for peace
and art and beauty… to balance out the society…

balance is the key……

and maintaining the equation…

it is always about the equation…

Kropotkin

3039

K: as I am now working off of my
iPad because my computer died. So this isn’t going
to be pretty, so hang in there.

The problem I see with your philosophy is
The inability to connect the individuals philosophy
with any type of collective philosophy. If everyone was as fractured as you, we couldn’t even be
able to hold any type of collective discourse.
People would be so caught up in their own
individual “existential contraption” that collective
discourse would become impossible. Your
philosophy is a roadmap to solipsism.
And as much fun as that sounds, uh no.

The human question we face is as much a
individual one as a collective one. Whatever individual answer we find, must fit
Into the overall, collective answer we seek.

It is not about me, but about we. And in to
get to some collective understanding about who
we are, we have to sort out our individual
Questions.

I am a man, a liberal, philosopher, married,
American, heterosexual, Californian, atheist.

Each of these “labels” have an individual aspect
And a collective aspect.

And each to make sense, must have a collective
aspect along with the individual aspect.

This is why philosophies like Stirner failed.
As human beings, we are, for better or worse,
connected to each other. We cannot dismiss
a million years of biology and evolution to
turn away from each other. All philosophy at
some point must come to grasp with both
our individual self IN connection to
our collective self. What is your collective
answer to the human condition?

Kropotkin

3040

K: as I am now working off of my
iPad because my computer died. So this isn’t going
to be pretty, so hang in there.

The problem I see with your philosophy is
The inability to connect the individuals philosophy
with any type of collective philosophy. If everyone was as fractured as you, we couldn’t even be
able to hold any type of collective discourse.
People would be so caught up in their own
individual “existential contraption” that collective
discourse would become impossible. Your
philosophy is a roadmap to solipsism.
And as much fun as that sounds, uh no.

The human question we face is as much a
individual one as a collective one. Whatever individual answer we find, must fit
Into the overall, collective answer we seek.

It is not about me, but about we. And in to
get to some collective understanding about who
we are, we have to sort out our individual
Questions.

I am a man, a liberal, philosopher, married,
American, heterosexual, Californian, atheist.

Each of these “labels” have an individual aspect
And a collective aspect.

And each to make sense, must have a collective
aspect along with the individual aspect.

This is why philosophies like Stirner failed.
As human beings, we are, for better or worse,
connected to each other. We cannot dismiss
a million years of biology and evolution to
turn away from each other. All philosophy at
some point must come to grasp with both
our individual self IN connection to
our collective self. What is your collective
answer to the human condition?

Kropotkin