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3641

so I laid out the two paths of ethical/moral understanding/behavior/
future guidance… one path is what I have called internal and the other
path is external…the internal path is where we seek our ethical/moral
behavior and understanding within ourselves and the eternal path is
where we seek our ethical/moral behavior and understanding outside of
us…

so what does that mean practically?

let us put this into practice… the law is, slavery is legal…
and so, if we follow the law and practice slavery, we would
be legally fine… but as we understand ethics and morals,
slavery is wrong… ethically and morally…

to allow and practice slavery would be eternally right, but
internally wrong… who do we listen to? the external or
the internal?

the eternal path simply says, you are morally and ethical fine if you
just follow the law… what is ethically and morally right can be found
by simply obeying the law, as it is written…

the internal path would be, so the fuck what if slavery is legal, it is
still morally and ethically wrong… this would be an internal path…
regardless of the legal aspect of a situation, it is still morally and ethically
wrong…the holocaust was by all accounts, morally and ethically wrong,
but it was legal…which “law” do we violate, our internal “law” or the external “law?”

are we being morally/ethically correct if we just simply follow the law or
must we also obey our inner morals, which might deny the moral/ethical
of any given law?

I hold, perhaps against the common beliefs, that Buddhism is an inner/internal
path and Christianity would be an outer/eternal path…

both have an external goal, one to reach heaven and the other to not
be reborn/to be reincarnated…but both seek different objectives…
the Christian should follow the rules/laws of god… external,
while the Buddhist should learn to extinguish desires and wants…
inner/internal path…for the Buddhist, it is more then just following/obeying
the law… one must engage with and overcome the internal aspect of existence…

for the Romans, it was an external path that was the point of
the ethical/moral… and for the Buddhist, it is the internal path
that is the ethical/moral basis of Buddhism…

and what is our path? clearly it is the eternal, not the internal…
just to follow the law, regardless of the inner/internal understanding
of the ethical/moral aspect of existence…

practice slavery because it is the law of the land…
and irrelevant to our inner/internal understanding of existence…

so what say you?

Kropotkin

3642

but once again, let us work this out…

we have before us, the play, “Antigone” which places before us,
the internal question vs the eternal question…
should we obey the laws of man or obey the laws of the gods?

to be “Righteous” in which respect…is being “good” following the law
as in allowing slavery or is being “Righteous” following one’s inner
"law? and disobeying the law about slavery?

today, at this very minute, we have this debate going on, in the
debate over Abortion…the law is clear, we have the right to have
Abortions, but to some, God’s law overrides the laws of man,
and Abortion is internally wrong… but legally right…

the problem with the Abortion is wrong crowd is that they don’t
practice what they preach with any sort of consistency…

life is sacred until it isn’t…it is ok for a policeman to shoot someone
if he is “protecting” himself… and that is legal, but it does disobey the
very direct order from god that says, “Thou shall not kill”…
this commandment has no exceptions, “thou shall not kill”
unless one’s life is threaten or to protect someone… if the religious is
to be obeyed, then there cannot be any type of exceptions… thou shall not kill,
is the entire commandment…with no exceptions… But anti-abortionists
do not follow that commandment… because they allow exceptions…
thou can kill if threatened or if provoked or during a time of war
or to protect the nation from external threats…

thou shall not kill is an all or nothing proposition… either you accept it all or
you reject it… there is no halfway aspect of the commandment, thou shall not kill…

and because we recognize that exceptions occur, what about incest or rape or
the health of the mother may requires an abortion, we cannot, cannot hold to
the religious aspect of that commandment, thou shall not kill, except for incest
and boom, once an exception is created, you have lost the right to hold to the
commandment, thou shall not kill… to prohibit abortion, requires you prohibit
without exceptions, no exceptions to this commandment…

and given this point, we cannot, cannot ban or prohibit abortions because
every single case is different and thus exceptions must be given, incest, rape,
health of the mother…

so we have discussed something about this question of internal ethics/morality
and external ethics/morality… given I must get ready to go to work,
I shall return to this point later, when I have time…

Kropotkin

3643

so in this question of “thou shall not kill”
we must punish those who kill regardless of their reasoning…
in other words, if we kill, for any reason, we must face mandatory
punishment of a minimum set time…

so if I kill someone, say in a car, regardless of the how, I must
face a mandatory prison sentence…and if a policeman kills someone,
regardless of the reasoning, they must face a mandatory prison sentence…
if by action or inaction, we cause the death of someone, then we face a prison
sentence…“thou shall not kill” must not have any, any exceptions or it become
invalid…which means we cannot allow any type of war or capital punishment
because that breaks the unbreakable rule of “thou shall not kill” we cannot
even defend ourselves because we might violate the rule, “thou shall not kill”
and if one kills, even in self defense, that is a mandatory prison sentence…

so, we take the commandment “thou shall not kill” seriously or we don’t…
there are no, no exceptions to the biblical commandment, “thou shall not kill”
except in the case of self-defense or accidental death, nope,…no, no, no…
if you kill, you then must be held accountable for that death, no exceptions…

if we hold that “all life is sacred” then we must hold that all life is sacred…
then we must not eat animals or kill animals for any reason… we must be without
any exceptions or the phrase “all life is sacred” hold no value… and there are a multitude
of exceptions that allows us to kill, then the phrase “all life is sacred” doesn’t mean a
dam thing…

it is an all or nothing belief… you must hold it to all life or you don’t…

and if you don’t, then there is no such phrase that “all life is sacred”… because
it isn’t…

you can’t pick and choose which life is sacred and which isn’t… either it all is or it all
isn’t…as it goes for abortion… all life is sacred or all life isn’t…if you allow exceptions
to the death of people, anybody for any reason, you have created exceptions and those
exceptions invalidate the concept “thou shall not kill” and “all life is sacred”

if you disagree, then you hold to situational ethics, in which the situation dictates
the ethics and thus, you cannot ban abortions… simple as that…
if you allow the death penalty, then you allow abortions…

you cannot pick and choose which part of “thou shall not kill” to obey…
it is all or nothing…

Kropotkin

3644

random thoughts: philosophy is not science, it is ART and that is
why Nietzsche and Plato are so “admired?” and why they succeed when many others
failed, because they dared to face philosophy on its natural grounds,
which is as ART, not science…

philosophy is a story to be told, not a truth to be found…

and that is why philosophy has failed in the 20 and 21st century, it has tried to become
something it is not, science…

think of Nietzsche “Zarathustra” opposed to Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus…which one tells a story?

Kropotkin

3645

let us “do” some philosophy…

GOOD: ok, what does this mean? this word has to be placed into context…
it has to be given, lacking a better word, form… this word, GOOD, has to
be understood in some context, in some meaning… a story has to be
created for us to understand this word…

“and he saw that it was good”…ok, that little sentence is screaming for
some context… who saw? what was good? why was it good? who, what, when,
where, how and why, was it good?

let us take another sentence, “commies are evil and terrorist”… another one
of UR childish babbling…the problem with this sentence (among many problems)
is the lack of content… who is a commie? are they are really commies or just another
one of UR bombastic balderdash that means nothing… and define “evil” and one
man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter… for example, George Washington
was a terrorist, according to the British, and yet, he is a freedom fighter to the
Americans… so which is he? depends on which side of the Atlantic ocean you are on,
doesn’t it?

so we have to be careful to lay out the content of our words, sentences and paragraphs…
what is the content of our statements? and therein lies one of the problems with
ILP, quite often there are bombastic statements that lack content, which makes
the statement, basically useless…

“I am good”

ok, great, now put that sentence into real world context…
what does that sentence mean in the real world?
with people and everything…

Kropotkin

3646

so the statement is “what is man?”

and we have to put that statement into context… compare and contrast that word,
man with other information we have or might have…

a man, bipedal creature that has the same responses as other animals, the same
needs, wants and desires… both physically, food, water, shelter, education,
and psychological needs of love, esteem, safety/security, a sense of belonging/
connection to others…

we are animals as we have the same biological and psychological needs of animals,
but we also think and we can rise above our programing… instincts is one
way nature programs us, and we can rise above that instinct in our responses…

we can act in opposition to our instincts and biological/psychological needs…

unlike animals, we can make choices…as to our present and our future…
and unlike animals, we can think about the future… animals are strictly
about the present, human beings can live in the past, present or the future…
and we know people who do live in the past or present or the future…

the basic structure of existence is time and space… everything happens in
that basic structure of time and space… and being the same structure and depending
on what is happening, we can be dealing with time or with space, or both…

animals don’t have a sense of time, but they do of space…but it is part of
the instincts that they have…we know that time is perceived by human beings,
but is perceived differently by human beings, I worked today, from 6:00Am to
11:00am… and while I worked time went quickly because it was very busy,
on some days, when it is slow, time seems to stop… that time itself doesn’t
change, but the way we perceived time changes depending on how focused on
it we are…time is a function of how we perceived it…
but animals don’t seem to perceived time that way…
take a dog, a dog will act as you were gone for days, even if you were only
gone for a few minutes, taking out the garbage for example…animals don’t
seem to have a sense of time… perhaps we might even define human beings as
creatures that “feel” time…

Kropotkin

3647

so what might the role of philosophy be?

I might suggest, that the role of philosophy is to connect
things…or to put things into context…science does the
same thing, but science tells with the how, philosophy deals with
the why…death in science is one matter and death, to a philosopher
is quite another matter…

science doesn’t tell us the why, philosophy can give us the why,
the context of something… the question of “what is man”
is different in science then it is in philosophy…because the context
is different… “what is man” is a question about possibilities in philosophy, the why
and in science, “what is man” is a who, what, when, where and how question…

what is the point of existence? science can’t even approach that question
whereas philosophy can at least, attempt to answer it, give it context…

philosophy can give the question, “what is the point of existence”
at least a reference point, a context in which we can at least have
a sense of the content of what that question means…

Kropotkin

3648

now science and philosophy can attempt to give us context, as to
“what is man?” perhaps a better source of context might be
ART…we have seen in ART over several thousand years, produce
a picture of “what is man?” Homer tell us in both the Odyssey and the Iliad,
what “what is man?” and Homer’s picture is so vivid that we still refer
back to it over 3000 years later…and far better then science or philosophy,
ART tells us what is possible for a human being…

science and philosophy doesn’t give us context on human beings in regard to
such basic and fundamental aspects of human existence…

that a human being loves, and hates and idealizes and laughs and
feels sad and a thousand other different emotions and feelings that
science and philosophy cannot even begin to give context to…

that ART shows us, that ART exposes us to emotions that we might not
even know that exists…emotions and feelings that are fundamental
to the “human condition”…

that ART gives us the balance picture of what a human being is…
Human beings are a hot mess, emotional and hysterical and
impassioned and poignant and sentimental in ways that
science and philosophy can never begin to touch…

so what is needed is ART that is philosophy and philosophy
that is ART… we must find one word that unites them both into
one discipline… ART vs Philosophy is what we see today,
what we need to see is ARTPHILOSOPHY… as one… not two…

Kropotkin

3649

As I have mentioned before, communication is done by a narrative,
a story if you will…try to tell a story without saying the who, what, when,
where, how and why?.. you can’t… it won’t be a story anyway… just a random
mix of words… word salad if you will… kinda like a speech by IQ45… random words
thrown together that make no sense, because those words lack a narrative, a story…

an animal, a dog or cat or a lion can go throw life without ever having a need
to know why? What was this life all about? What did I live and die for?

personally, I find it sad that a human being can go through life without ever
asking, “what was this life all about?” “what did I live and die for?”

a story of existence, as it were… too many, far too many go through existence
without ever asking, what was the point of this existence?

even a bad reason, story, is better then no story/reason…

as the Buddhist have noticed, life is full of pain and suffering and growing old
and then dying… and what was the point of all that suffering if we don’t have
a reason for it? personally, I hold that the suffering and pain and agony and
growing old is the price of the ticket for admission… to go through life,
to exist is a wonderful thing, but that price of admission for life, is pain and
suffering and agony and then death…there is no free lunch in life…
you gotta pay the price of admission…

which is why we must seek that which makes life worth living… and that is
beauty and love and hope and charity and justice and all those values, those positive
values that makes the pain and suffering and agony and death worth it…

is growing old worth seeing a beautiful sunset? is finding love worth the price of
admission of disease? is having hope enough to overcome the daily pain of growing
old? is being alive worth the price of admission which is death?

what story will we tell ourselves that makes the price of growing old, worth it?

most of life is ephemeral… lasting for a very short time…
the sunset, the walk through the forest, the moments of great beauty
that fill our life… they are ephemeral…and the moments of pain and agony
and suffering, they seem to last forever… but they don’t… even suffering only
last for a short while… (mind you, I suffer from back pain every single day of my life)
is existence worth the price of admission?

depends on the story we tell… listening to the negative among us,
Schopenhauer for example or conservatives, you wouldn’t think that existence
is worth the pain and agony… but listen to the poets and writers like
Shakespeare or Dante, we see a different story… a story worth living through…
regardless of any pain or suffering we might have…

what is your story? what story do you tell yourself every morning?

I get up because …

or perhaps, we, like Hamlet hold that…

“devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
to sleep, perchance to dream-aye, there’s the rub;
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
must give us pause–there’s the respect
that makes a calamity of so long a life”

fear of the unknown that makes cowards of us all…
is it the fear of the unknown or is it the allure of the
possibilities of life, of seeing beauty and love and hope
and justice that makes life worth living?
the negative scaring us away from death or
the positive bringing us to life?

is the beauty of the sunset worth the price of admission?
worth the price of pain and suffering?

and the story of existence for me would be a story where
the beauty of the sunset is worth the price of admission…

we get so lost in the mundane day to day existence, we forget that
life has the power of such beauty that we can live forever with
the sight of one beautiful sunset…

my wife telling me she loves me, that makes the price of admission
worth it…one moment of beauty can make an entire life worth it…
despite the suffering and illness and agony of existence, all it takes
is one moment of beauty and all that pain and misery becomes worth it…

so what is the answer?

don’t become a scientist, but become an artist and paint one beautiful
picture and all of life becomes worth it… science can tell us how,
but ART and philosophy can give us the why… and one why, is worth all
the how’s in the universe…so, tell me a story… become a philosophy/ARTIST…

Kropotkin

3650

as I work through my Wittgenstein, I come across an old idea…

as I have stated before, ethics/morality isn’t a private act…
ethics/morality requires two or more people… one person alone,
cannot, cannot be engaged with ethical/moral problems because
for one person, ethics/moral don’t apply…Robinson Crusoe
has no need for ethics/morality…alone on an island, there
is no need for ethics/morality because one person alone has no
need for ethics/morals… how do you apply ethics/moral to oneself without
anyone else? in other words, ethics/morals are a social act… it requires
two or more people for there to be ethics/morals…

but this true for more then just ethics/morals, it is true
for such disciplines like history, social studies, economics,
anthropology, mathematics and of course, philosophy…
and also to be clear in matters like politics, games, in understanding
the self… in other words, our understanding of the world must be given
in terms of a social understanding between myself and others…
we cannot be ourselves, human without other human beings…

the essential requirement of being a human being is another human being…
the other as it were…we can only create context about who we are in terms
of comparing and contrasting who I am against other people…am I funny?

who knows without others… am I sad? I can’t tell without some contrast with
other human beings…we can only make sense of who we are in terms of
other people…can I play a game without others? solitary chess, of which
I do play but frankly, it lacks something real without some engagement with
other people…we understand who we are in relationship with others…

a man alone is a man without any context…
because we can only compare and contrast ourselves with other human beings…

you might say, what about cats and dogs? and lion and tigers and bears, oh my…

but that contrast is simply not enough to warrant any real understanding of
what it means to be human… everything, everything requires contrast,
comparison, a difference between the two comparisons…
comparing an apple to an apple does gives us some understanding about apples,
but comparing apples to oranges tells us even more about apples then does a straight
comparison between apples and apples…the difference between apples
and oranges allow us to understand apples and oranges better…

Kropotkin

3651

human existence is best understood through our relationship with other
human beings…we are best understood communally… not in isolation,
but in a relationship with/to others…

this suggests, but doesn’t demand that we are best understood via communism
and not capitalism… we are engaged in life… community wide, not individually
wise…Kropotkin is… is best understood as "Kropotkin as part of a community is…)

who you are is best understood by your relationship with other human beings…
not in isolation, but in terms of relationships with others…

Kropotkin

3652

therein lies the problem of Descartes…

it refers back to the one, I am… when we must answer, we are…

I think therefore I am… a human being in isolation gives us nothing
to think about…a being disconnected from others has nothing… is
nothing… this isolation of mind against body leaves us with no connection
to others… and that is where we human beings are found…
in connection to others…

Kropotkin

3653

I think I know myself better than outsiders.
Only a disturbingly ignorant person is known better by outsiders.
Needing outsiders is like needing parents.
It reduces as we grow up.

3654

No matter what system anyone believes is best, the real problems show themselves the minute corruption enters the picture - everyone claims they know this but how many people that “know” this seek to understand corruption and how to remove it from themselves. If there are disagreements then there is corruption on one side or the other(potentially something else that many would claim to be obvious). Does a communal picture show the need to remove corruption from the group << can you see the problem with this? So whether we talk about the individual or the group, we are going to come across many problems. Communism and Capitalism are both less than perfect systems. Does this mean that we should turn our backs on both systems and never think about them again? I don’t know, all I know is most arguments in 2021 are a complete waste of valuable time for any individual.

Corruption is a plague and everyone has the plague. The only reason we are still here to talk about any of this comes back to this:

flawed logics still work in general, since a number of related processes have already produced the most accurate and most useful judgments.

3655

an interesting study to make…

compare the sack of Rome in 410 AD and the sack of Rome in 1527…
and what the two sackings? mean to the times and the thereafter…

I lack the patience to make such a study but I hope someone does
make that study…

Kropotkin