a new understanding of today, time and space.

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1141

Philosophy: the love of wisdom…

and wisdom, in what house do we find wisdom?

Do we find wisdom in the house of religion or do we find wisdom
in the house of science or do we find wisdom in the house of philosophy?

How do we become wise? we have lost sight of this question which was
the primary question of the Greeks…

this question avoids the duel, the battle between religion and science…
because is the search for wisdom about finding god? or is the search for finding
wisdom lay in facts, ever changing facts about our universe?

The man who commands us to seek Jesus as our savior… is he a wise man?
is he someone who really understands the nature of things?
I doubt it… for the man who commands us to find Jesus is a man who
believes in faith… as does the man who commands us to follow Mohammed…
he is a man of faith…a man who depends on faith is a man who will be
disappointed because faith rest on the ever changing whims of our souls…
we hold just as much faith in god, Jesus and Mohammed as we do in money…
Man’s pursuit of money is faith in the power of money just as a man’s pursuit
of god is faith in the power of god… no difference…money will take us to the
promised land of a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, a two car
garage with two kids, a boy and girl and a dog named spot… that is the modern
version of the promised land… and it is just as empty as any promise of
faith in god… where if you believe you will have a place in heaven and
if you believe in money, you will have a place in the burbs waiting for you
and if you believe in Mohammed, you will have a promised land of gardens
and pools of water and women…all of which stems from the desires
of a man and a people who live in the desert… Heaven looks much like
the people who dream it… a Christian ideal of heaven fits their
vision of heaven and Islam’s vision of heaven matches their lives…
for the people of the desert, we have visions of water and gardens
and virgin women and in the Christian vision of heaven, we see what
they value… but neither vision can truly exist unless we accept
ideas and visions and dreams that lie outside of our experiences, lie
outside of our ever possibly knowing if they are true…
at least with our modern faith of the little house in the burbs,
we can at least see it and know some have achieved this promised land…
but once again the question arises if this promised land of the little house
is really worth the effort? I for one, believe that like religion, our modern
faith is based on wishful thinking… should the house in the burbs
really be our modern goal? I am asking because I think it is time to
reevaluate our entire modern premises… our faith in capitalism, our
faith in religion, our hope of science, our modern system of consumerism…

we need to find the wisdom to reevaluate who we are and what are our core
values…we need a new image of who we are and what is our goal…

I offer up a new goal, a new faith and that is the pursuit of wisdom
in whatever form we find it in…

I don’t want or suggest we expand our energies or space to discover
new pursuits… we need to restrict our search into the basic idea
of wisdom and what is it? that’s it… limit our search into wisdom…
not wealth, not the house in the burbs, not in faith in old and worn out
religions… but wisdom…

how would you find wisdom?

Kropotkin

1142

Its late and I’m tired but I can’t shake certain ideas that
are rattling around my head…

It is understood that we are born into the world…
but it is a world that has a structure… we might call it
a paradigm… an understanding of the world that is passed down
from generation to generation… it is a vision and understanding
of the world offered by ism’s and ideologies and institutions that
each civilization and society has…the paradigm is those
ism’s and ideologies and institutions meant to offer an understanding
of the world and how it works… we are raised inside of that
paradigm and we don’t see anything, can’t see anything outside of that
paradigm because we are inside of those ism and ideologies…
we are raised inside of capitalism as an ism/ideology and so we
are unable to see anything besides that paradigm/ism/ideology…

the defenders of the status quo are defenders because they haven’t
seen any other option, any other ism/ideology… they defend the status
quo because that is the only reality they know, the only paradigm
that they have existed within…if capitalism is the only reality you know,
then it is the only possible option you have and the paradigm you defend…
because you don’t know any better…

we have been told reality is this and this and this and you believe what
you have been told because it is the only reality that you have seen and experienced…
you believe the given paradigm and don’t doubt the given paradigm because
to doubt that paradigm is to doubt everything you have been told and taught
and who among us is strong enough to doubt everything we have been taught
since the day we were born… to doubt thus is to reject the very society
we grew up in and everything that society believed in and taught us…
who is brave enough to do so… very few have the strength or courage to doubt
the very basis of every belief we have been taught since birth…

what beliefs from birth are worth keeping and what ones are not worth
the effort to keep… that is the dilemma of the modern age…

and the philosopher, what is their role?
we judge the ism’s/ideologies as to their value…
we make normative statements about universal experiences…
we judge, make value statements about those universal experiences…
ism’s/ ideologies are part of the universal experiences we judge, make
normative statements about…

it is time we make normative statements about our current ism’s and
ideologies… we must judge them and decide on their worthiness…
we must find the wisdom to properly judge and understand our current
paradigms and ism’s…

and in doing so, effect the change needed to create new models or new
paradigms… we must be changing with the ever changing environment
and have paradigms that reflect the new realities we find ourselves in…

that is the business of philosophy… finding the ought’s of a society model/
paradigm… thus changing that society ism’s and ideologies/paradigms…
thus being able to adapt to the changing conditions an situations that we find
ourselves in… it is being able to adapt and change that is the key to becoming
who we are… thus the business of becoming who we are is really a business of
changing and adapting to new conditions and this begins by understanding
the paradigms and isms/ideologies that we find ourselves in…being born in…
to understand any situation… one must begin by separating themselves from
that situation… we must put our ism’s/ ideologies/paradigms at a distance and
then begin the long and painful task of finding the new ism’s/ideologies/paradigms…

that is where we are now… trying to find the new ism’s/ideologies/paradigms
and we must make normative statements about where we are, to find out
where we need to be…

so where do we need to be to adapt to the changing conditions of our lives
and our world/environment…

Kropotkin

1143

To continue my thoughts from my last post…

Science for the last 500 years has been about motion…
the motion or movement of the big bang, Galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets,
people and atoms, among other aspects of motion… and philosophy
followed this idea that physics is about motion and as physics is the
umbrella science that all other sciences follow, we think of motion as
being the main attribute of the universe…
but what if, what if we base our understanding of the universe on something
other than motion…we don’t base our universe on our understanding of motion…
but on something else…

the next science evolution won’t be about motion but about something else…
the basis of science won’t be motion but about something else like gravity or
space, or time or chaos or some other central notion that helps explain
what makes the universe work as it does… just not motion…

the next great science will be about something other then motion…
what will happen is that motion will be reduced into some greater
theory…our idea’s, our understanding of the universe will make motion
a part of some greater theory such as the Grand Unified Theory for example…
right now motion is the aspect that drives all our theories but I suspect that
beyond this idea of motion lies a theory, a greater theory that incorporates
motion as part of that theory…

when this radical new theory strikes, it will be like
those years after Copernicus, we will have many battles over
the correctness of this new theory in which the old way, motion, will
be overthrown by this new theory but will we handle it better then those
who existed 500 years when facing the paradigm shift from Ptolemaic system to
the Copernicus system…that battle lasted from roughly 1550 to 1700 when
Newton finally gave us the Newtonian system… and ended the paradigm
shift from the Ptolemaic system to the Copernicus system… we need another
Copernicus, another Kepler and another Newton to bring about this new
paradigm shift from the current theories about motion to ?

Kropotkin

1144

as I just lost my last post continuing this idea, I am trying again…

our understanding of the universe is based on our understanding of motion…
Einstein theory of relativity and his special theory are both a mathematical
theory of motion…

but let us speculate further and suggest that motion is not a cause but
a symptom of something else… like in medicine… we see the symptoms
of a cold, fever and feeling bad and sneezing headache and general body aches…
but those are symptoms of a deeper cause which is a virus causing those symptoms
we are like the doctor who studies the symptoms but not the causes…

the cause of motion can be several things but I would suggest gravity as the cause…

that motion one day will be subsumed under the general theory of gravity is
my idea… the symptoms will be explained by the cause…

I can see a situation whereas after the big bang, we have unequal pieces of matter
distributed around the universe… the unequal pieces of matter moves other pieces
of matter toward it and thus causing the beginning of the motion in the universe…
and the reason for this movement toward the unequal pieces is gravity and the means
the unequal pieces begin to coalesce is via electromagnetic force…as the pieces grow
larger they begin to move more and more of the cloud that existed after the big bang…
after a time of millions or even billions of years the entire universe is moving, motion,
because of the initial pull of gravity into unequal pieces, ever larger growing pieces
of the universe which cause even more and more of the universe to begin to move…

we can envision a scenario where gravity began this motion which we study so hard
today, where motion is the symptom of gravity just as a cold has fever and chills but
those are just symptoms of a virus…we should study the cause of motion,
not the symptoms of which motion is a symptom and not the cause…

Kropotkin

1145

a slight change of subject today…

after several days of aggravation, work trying to kill me again, computer problems
that has lead to my laptop dying (right now I am working on my daughter’s computer)
ugly heat over the last few days and I don’t do well in heat (its suppose to drop to 84 today)

so all of this aggravation has really taken me away from what I want to do which is
contemplation of the questions that vexes a man, a village, a society, a country and
a species…

and it occurs to me, that one path, one path, of wisdom lies in this very aggravation that
has so bothered me the last few days…we are bothered by such things as work…
at work, they had me close, which is 3:00 pm to 12:00 midnight and then come back
to work at 10:00 the next morning… lovely crap like that… that type of schedule
takes me two days to recover from… I was pretty much unable to function yesterday…

as for my computer dying, that has prevented me from writing as I like to write
in the morning…usually by the afternoon I am too tired to gather my thoughts…

and this heat has keep me from sleeping for days…

this aggravation is keeping me from even reading…

I had to fight through all these distractions and aggravations to get to today and being able
to sit here and type out these words…

it was a question of preserving… of fighting through the aggravations and obstacles
and it occurs to me that most of life is simple just that… fighting through the obstacles
and aggravations that present themselves in life… on a daily basis, we find ourselves
facing challenges and obstacles and how we respond to them is not only a sign of
who we are but a sign of our wisdom…but this is true not only on an individual level
but on a society and national level…

we face trials and tribulations as a country and as a society… we are facing one now
and how we respond tells us much about who we are and how wise we are…

we are facing, as a people and as a country, the greatest crisis we have seen in the last 40 plus years…
perhaps this is our greatest crisis since Watergate and I suspect this will be far worse…

we face this crisis in part because we have lost faith in the ism’s, ideologies and institutions
that have governed a people for generations…

we have allowed the aggravations and distractions of the day to deter us from
what should be our focus which should be on who we are and where do we need to be…

Philosophy is not just a love of wisdom, but philosophy is a path to wisdom…
and we have lost our path… we have lost our way with distractions with
fears about Islamic terrorist and how do protect ourselves when we must
change our focus… let them attack… they cannot hurt us unless we let them…
that is a truth… we can only be affected by change if we allow it…
the terrorist, and the greatest terrorists we face today are domestic,
and even then, they cannot hurt us unless we allow it…
but we allow these insignificant, minor events to dictate our feelings and
our actions…

over 11,000 people died from gunshot wounds last year and no one even pays
attention, so why should a minor fleabite like a terror attack even make the news?

we have lost perspective on what is important and what we should be
paying attention to…

think about it this way… to a strong person, a cold is a very minor detail
and quite often a strong person will work through the cold… but to an old
or physically weak person, a cold could be life threatening…have we become so
weak that we are threaten by such a minor event like a small scale terrorist attack?

weakness is not just physical, but mental and emotional and we have become
mentally and emotional weak… so much so a minor terrorist attack sends
us into a tizzy and we entertain talk of reducing our freedoms and the liberties
of others in some vain attempt to secure our safety…

how weak we have become… that the trials and tribulations and aggravations
of life has made us change what is important to who we are…

the lack of security has been a major issue for most of human existence…
read accounts of being in a city before the 20 century and we see that
violence was so common place as not to be noticed…it has only been in the
last century or so, has being in a city been a relatively safe thing…

but freedom… we have only had freedom in the last 200 year of
our existence and that freedom has created in large part, the modern world,
don’t allow fear to take us away from that which has created the modern world which
is freedom and liberty…

so in my own personal journey, I face times of aggravation and tribulations and
I outlast them and so sit here and do what is important to me…
so outlast the trials and tribulations and do what is important in society
and within the country… don’t lose focus on what is important because
of fear about what may come or what has happened…

focus on freedom and not safety and that change of perspective makes all the difference in
the world

Kropotkin

1146

as I study the seventeenth century, I see a strange mix of science and theology
that sometimes inhabits an age…

we are born into a world which has its ism’s, paradigms, ideologies that give the
world its guidance, (not sure of a better word) in other words, we use those paradigms
and ism’s and use them as a road map to guide us in this life… we are born and
we are trained in the culturally ism’s and paradigms that culture uses…
for example, in America, we have an particular paradigm that drives much of
the debate here and that is this idea of “Rugged Individualism”… the false belief that
a single person like a Rockerfeller or a Ford built a company by themselves…
I built this… Ayn Rand gives life to this ideal in “Atlas Shrugged”…
it is part of the “American paradigm”… it is part of the American ideal, part of the
ism we grew up in… and since we have been inside of this paradigm all our life,
it is hard to escape something that has been part of our existence since birth…

liberals don’t accept this ism… we understand life as a communal and social
affair, not a solitary affair… we have, for whatever reason, grown out of this particular
ism, this paradigm and we celebrate community…not the idea of “Rugged Individualism”…

Now in the Seventeenth century, we see that the bible and religion had a
profound influence in life, thought, beliefs, part of the paradigm that people
were born in was the bible and all that brings forth…Today, we have move
away from that paradigm… in other words, for millions of people, they are no
longer live and breath and die, with the bible and religion…That is no longer
part of the paradigm they grew up and it is easier to step away, to isolate
from that particular paradigm…
which is all well and fine, but the scientific paradigm that has in some part
replaced it, is not very understandable to people, science is hard and most
people don’t want to take the time and understand even the easiest and most
understandable part of science, evolution for example, which is pretty easy
to understand and grasp… but if we no longer have paradigms like the bible,
existing for us since birth and we cannot understand science, what are our
options for us as paradigms? We see it even here at ILP… it is ignorance of
the lowest order… we see it in void for example… he/she is incapable of
a rational argument and instead deals with created list of insults and
name calling… there is one thread where they bash Jews, I think in
the Georgia election thread, nothing there resembles an rational, coherent
argument for or against… it is just anti-Semitism and nothing more…
it is simply a excuse for lazy, vile, incoherent (I can’t say thought, because
there is not thought here) but feelings, it is a paradigm of sorts but nothing
that requires anything more then hate and anger and violence…it is feelings
put into words…a four year old would feel right at home in this thread…
no, I’m not, but what are you? type of thread…

the loss of ism’s and paradigms in American life has a profound effect,
people in search for an easily understood and not very hard to follow
ism and ideology/ paradigm turn to this sort of feelings turned into words
of hate, anger and word violence like the jew bashing of the previously
mentioned thread…it is easier to reach down and access the lower, base
level of human nature and follow the paradigm of hate, anger, lust, violence.
that is easy to do… just follow the example of animals… who operate with
instinct… and we humans can just follow the hardwire aspect of human nature
and simply hate, and have anger and express violence because that is easy for
us…it just means following emotions without any thought given…
but, but there are other paradigms and other ism’s and other ideologies,
we can follow but they require work, they demand we think and they
ask for more of us, then simple follow our instincts…

to think, to rationalize, to study, that is hard work…and that is why people
avoid it… it takes time and effort to think about things and why bother when
you can just be like an animal and use your instinct to hate and have anger?

we are born within certain paradigms and ism’s…we can just follow those
paradigms and ism’s mindlessly or we can be human beings and follow Nietzsche
example and begin to reexamine those values… that is what he means…
not just to accept and follow those childhood paradigms that we are born into,
but to examine them, understand them, reevaluate them… and that is hard work…
but what is the goal of this reevaluation? to lead us to something even greater which
is wisdom and that is the goal of philosophy… not the love of wisdom, but to find
wisdom and what path shall we take, what method shall we use to find this wisdom?
we have suddenly traveled very far from those childhood paradigms and ism’s we grew
up with…and that is a good thing…and the true path to becoming… for we are beings
in whom we are beings that are becoming, we are not is, but we are to be…
and if you understand this one fact, you are on the path to wisdom… we are
beings who are becoming… and what are you becoming? to express oneself
as a being of lower instincts like hate and anger and violence is to say, I am…
and there is not becoming in, I am…because there is no room for growth in, I am,
but there is room for growth when you doubt and when you question and when
you reevaluate…you are then becoming and not is… if you can understand this
difference, you are on the path to wisdom…

Kropotkin

1147

in thinking about the whole of the 17 century, I was thinking of
the history, the events of the century and the people and who lived
during that century and it occurred to me that if you lived from 1600 to 1700,
you could have met some of the greatest thinkers, scientists and philosophers that
have ever lived… for example, in science, if you lived during that century, you could have
met (in no order) Kepler, Brahe, Galileo, Newton, Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke,
Halley, William Harvey, Leeuwenhoek, Huygens, Pascal, Fermat, Gassendi,

in Philosophy: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnez, Locke, Hobbes, Berkley,

in the arts: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Donne, Dryden, Milton, Pepys, Moliere,
Chris Wren, Caravaggio, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer, Racine, Ben Johnson,

in other fields, Cardinal Richelieu, Oliver Cromwell, Peter the great, Elizabeth 1,

have we in the last 150 years even had half the number of such people?

and look at the time period… you had the reformation with its wars and divisions,
English civil war, a French civil war, the great war between science and religion which
has lasted until this very day…

it is truly remarkable if you think about it…but why? Why did so many great
thinkers and artist and scientist lived during that time period? It certainly wasn’t because
of the stability of the era because the era was turbulent in different and diverse ways, so
we can’t account for the people by the security the people had…intellectually, the
period had a wide range of new information coming in from the America’s and from
Asia and from science and philosophy…

perhaps it was because of the turbulence of the century that helped create the
remarkable people that we still study and admire…

Kropotkin

1148

Since 1867, there have been lots … too many to list but to start …

Music : Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Scott Joplin, John Lennon, Puccini, Stravinsky

Writers : Joseph Conrad, Hemingway, Samuel Beckett

Art : van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Dali

Science : Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg

Tech : Edison, Tesla, Henry Ford

Philo : Camus, Sartre, Wittgenstein

Politics : Hitler, de Gaulle, Lenin

Misc : Gandhi, MLK, Nelson Mandela

That doesn’t even scratch the surface. It’s easy to think of dozens of others.

1149

It is the era that makes it’s people “great” and historically famous. The famed people are seldom any different throughout the generations and never the greatest available.

1150

Ok, am starting to understand…

You have the medieval times where the “TRUTH” was with god, the church, the pope,
the bible… the “TRUTH” was outside of you in religious format…you
could not learn or understand the truth unless it was conveyed to you by one of
these outside forces… the priest or bishop or pope was the holder of “TRUTH”
and they gave you this truth as they thought best…

and along came the reformation…in religious terms the 'TRUTH" didn’t need
to be given to you by a priest or bishop or the pope… you could learn the “TRUTH” by
simple reading the bible… that was all the truth you needed and wanted…
discovering the 'TRUTH" on one’s own in religious context was crucial for the
later occurring scientific truths to follow…The beginning of the battle occurred,
officially but was in force already but no one realized it, in 1517, when Luther
pin his 95 thesis on the Wittenburg church… that was the official beginning of the
Protestant religion…you cannot separate this historical event with scientific and
philosophical thinking…for thinkers like Descartes and Kepler and Galileo,
there work was not possible until the religious aspect, the idea that humans
can find the truth on their own by reading and thinking about the bible…
that freed humans up for the revelation of their own by scientific and
philosophical means… instead of letting the authorities determine
the ‘TRUTH", now people could find the “TRUTH” by their own efforts…
this in part lead to the weakening of the hold of ancient thinkers like
Aristotle and Plato and St. Augustine because the new model was finding
the “TRUTH” on one’s own like in reading the bible to find the truth instead
of having the priest or bishop tell you the truth…
so the scientific revolution was a continuation of the religious revolution as
in finding the "TRUTH’" was an individual matter, not in a institution like
the church or via ancient thinkers who told you the truth and you just had to
accept that…

so this is why the scientific and philosophic revolution had to occurred after
the religious revolution…

Now we have two different understandings of the truth…
you have the old way of the church and priest and the pope
holding the truth and they give it to you and
we have the modern way which is finding the truth via
individual reading and research and thinking…

it is in this context we must see both science and philosophy…
Thus when Descartes wanted to make “certain” about our knowledge,
it had the backdrop of this battle between the old school institutions
and the new school of finding the truth on one’s own…

so when Descartes is making Knowledge certain, it is making knowledge
certain for the new way of thinking…he didn’t need to justify the certainty
of the old way because that was already determined by the church and had
been sanctified for over a thousand years…

no, he was trying to justify the new way of thinking, the new science in his
approach… he was simply trying to make the new science as certain as the old
religion had been…think of it as a war, a PR war, with each side trying to
to make PR hay with its books and pamphlets … the church trying to sell
its version of the truth and the science side trying to sell its version of the truth…

if you put things into this context, much of what happens make much more sense…

Kropotkin

1151

so if we run out our last understanding, as in the 17 century had
two understandings of the “TRUTH” one was religious and the other
scientific… today, we have but one truth and that is scientific but
that “TRUTH” has become so technical it is beyond the understanding
of the average person but the religious understanding of the 'TRUTH" that
no longer exists… you can see it in CINO’S, Christians in name only,
they claim to be Christians but they oppose just about everything
that Jesus offered…compassion for your fellow man, charity,
love, feeding the poor, all of these things the modern CINO who
is conservative, opposes…

so to continue on… we have the modern “TRUTH” but that is
lost today in its modern complexity and technical aspects…
so, we don’t have a single truth like religion the 17 century had or even
a second truth like science…

so, this is the modern problem, we have no readily available
“TRUTH” that the modern person can turn to… science is hard…
to understand science requires time and effort and most people want
their “TRUTHS” handed to them, which explain the hold that religions
still have on people… it doesn’t require any effort to reach…

so how do we solve this modern problem?

one possibility is we find a third “TRUTH”… and this is evident in our modern
world today… we see people seeking and struggling to discover their 'TRUTHS".
the decade of the 60’s was one such collective effort to find the “TRUTH”…
We have people today who are traveling from religion to religion and
drug to drug and using modern escape techniques like sex and booze
and drugs in an effort to either discover the “TRUTH” or to avoid the problem
entirely…

or we have people try something new which is searching for the “TRUTH”
and by somehow convince them that the hard work needed to find the “TRUTH” is
worth it and somehow to justify that hard work…
the problem with that is, the entire modern world is built in such a way
as to make finding the 'TRUTH" very difficult by oneself…

we have to spend our lives working and struggling to make ends meet,
who has time to find the “TRUTH” when we are too busy just trying
to survive and that is by designed… the system is rigged to prevent
people from learning new “TRUTHS” because that could cause
chaos within the system and this cannot be allowed to happen because
anything that affects profits is prevented because that is the focused
of the modern world, not finding the 'TRUTH" but in making money
and that is what the system cares about, profits…and not the “TRUTH”…

so we few, we happy few, for whatever reason, have the time, energy and
ability to do the thinking for the people and we search for the 'TRUTH" one
that can replace the “TRUTH” that has existed for centuries…

we have had religion and that is disappearing and we have science and
few understand science and so we must pick up the slack and discover
the new 'TRUTHS" that will become the next ideologies and the next ism’s
and next paradigms… we few, we happy few… we search for our ‘TRUTHS’
and in doing so, we speak for the human race…

Kropotkin

1152

It is late, but here goes…

The search for the truth drives a good deal of life…
Philosophers and scientist and artist all strive for the “TRUTH”
and each in their own way search for the “TRUTH”…

Artist look for the “TRUTH” as the Greeks looked for “TRUTH”
“TRUTH” is beauty… and by finding beauty, we find “TRUTH”…

The ism’s and ideologies and paradigms of the world are another
means to search for the “TRUTH”… We use these ism’s ideologies and
paradigms as a map, a guide to find the “TRUTH”…

For each, the “TRUTH” is something different…
For a philosopher a “TRUTH” is something different then
a “TRUTH” for an artist and different again for a scientist…

But what if we have lost sight of the end of the path, what if, we
have no sense of the “TRUTH”… We don’t understand it and we don’t
know it and we don’t feel it… The “TRUTH” has become something foreign to us…
something external to us and separate to us and very, very far away…

So how do we search for the "TRUTH’ when we don’t know what we are looking for?

We have no sense of what the “TRUTH” is or what it means to have the “TRUTH” and
thus we have the lost sense of today…how do we find something when we don’t know
what we are looking for?

That is the status of today… we are searching for something and we don’t know what it is…

So what are you searching for? what “TRUTH” are you searching for? What does it look like?
What is it and how do you find it?

Kropotkin

1153

Alone…

Individual and apart…

Engaged in a search…

Desperately seeking and

never finding…

that most elusive of pray

that which gives our lives, meaning…

a Truth, my kingdom for the Truth…

the problem however is simple,

upon which truth do we rely?

How do I know this truth or that truth is the “real” truth?

Upon which “TRUTH” do I rest my weary heart?

God or man or faith or beauty?

Each of these have been an ism, an ideology,

but are they valid paradigms to base my life upon?

How do I separate the winds of imagination, the ism’s,

from the hard truth of reality?

I dream of a world, but is that world me,

or is that world long forgotten ism’s and ideologies?

How do I mark the line between living realties and

long dead ism’s and ideologies?

Each of us is born into a built house,

not of brick and stone,

but of beliefs and stories and dreams of an earlier generation…

We inherit the songs of the past…

But how do we create new songs,

song that match our new reality,

songs that no longer require imagination

to make them true?

Alone…

individual and apart…

but we need not be…

for we can unite over our shared humanity,

no longer to divide over images

of Adam and Mohammed

or of Adam Smith or Marx or of Aquinas

to imagine man… Us versus them…

is a formula for failure…

to classify man by race or creed or color or wealth

is to measure a part of a man…

to weigh out a part of who we are

and to divide us by accidental properties

of birth and circumstances…

we miss the human in each of us

if we divide by portions…

but if we see ourselves as whole

and not accidental properties

if we see humans as whole

and not in part…

we can begin the long path…

We can no longer afford to isolate man into disposable parts,

into accidental properties…

as long as we see man as divided…

we cannot heal the wounds…

but if we see man as a whole

we can cure ourselves

and we can begin anew…

Kropotkin

1154

So if we can think about particular, partial aspects of the human
existence, if we can think about the accidental properties
of being human…

properties of birth, of gender, of nationality…
if I am born on this side of an imaginary line…
I am American… if I am born on that side of the line,
I am Canadian…

if I am born man, I am born of an accidental property
if I am born women… it is random and accidental…

if I am born in this family or that family…
it is one of chance and accidental…

if I am born white or black or
born into wealth or poverty…
it is by chance… accidental…

to decide that a person is their accidental reality…
is to decide that a person is their accidental property…
you are because you are white…
you are because you are male…
you are because you are born wealthy

these are accidental properties
and we miss the point if we judge by accidental properties…
for we are collectively… human and not defined
by our accidental properties…

we are whole and not part…
so don’t judge by part…
by accidental properties…

judge by our unity
and not by our accidents of birth…

for as we divide by our accidental properties,
we are divided by them too…
but judge a human whole and
we become whole ourselves…

how do you want to see yourself?
judge whole and that is how you see yourself
judge part and that is how you see yourself…

Kropotkin

1155

If you understand what I have said, then you understand how Descartes is wrong…

UMM, how did you get from point a to point b?

You must understand Descartes first and so I shall summarize…

Descartes wanted to find certainty for the new science…
so he decided to try a thought experiment…

He decided to search for certainty by
searching through his beliefs and eliminating
those beliefs that cannot be held certain…
his standard for this is very high…
if you cannot absolutely hold this belief to be true, it must
be eliminated…

and so Descartes went through his beliefs…
Sensory beliefs can be wrong, so we cannot hold them
and even beliefs like mathematical beliefs might be wrong
because some evil demon might put these thoughts into my head…
So at the end of doubting all beliefs, what beliefs can we still be sure
of… certain of?

It occurred to Descartes, that we can be sure of a “I” that is doubting…
He build his certainty on the “I” belief… I am believing, I am…
and this is where he made his mistake… on this “I”…

so let us return to this notion… What is the “I”?
what Descartes fail to see is this “I” is really a HUMAN understanding…
Animals cannot see the “I” because they cannot rationalize the “I”…
But we can… Our human nature is what allows us to understand this “I”…
We see the “I” because we are human and this allows us to see the “I”…
The bottom line is not the “I” but the Human aspect that allows us to see the “I”…

we see what Descartes means because we are human and that allows us this
understanding…Not the “I”…so we return to my thought which is
we think in terms of accidental properties… we see a red chair and
we think about the red instead of a chair… we mistake the red to be
the primary quality of the chair when red is an accidental property
and the chair to be the primary property…We see the “I” as the primary
property when in fact it is an accidental property… the Human aspect that
see the “I” is the primary property, not the “I”… “I am”… is really the Human
nature I have see’s the “I am”… “I am” is a accidental property and the part
doing the understanding is the primary property… the human part…
without being human, we cannot make the connection of “I am”…

So we see how Descartes is wrong… he mistakes the “I am” as the primary
aspect of existence when it is an accidental property and being human
is the primary aspect… “I am” means “I am human and because of that, I am”

Kropotkin

1156

Earlier I brought up the concept of "Who are we? Who am I?
When we think of this human being and our existence,
we are born into a house already built, but built with
ism’s and ideologies and paradigms that have existed from
generation to generation oftentimes for thousands of years…
think Christianity or Islam being passed down for generations…

Now what would an alien culture from say about that simple question
who am I? Who are we? Let us think about Movie or TV aliens…
What would the Vulcan’s say or what would a Predator say?
Clearly the answer to the question of “Who am I” would be different
depending on the species…Let us think about a species like the Borg…
that species think of itself in a hive fashion… now imagine yourself
in that hive, bee fashion or perhaps a ant, a simple worker ant…
that we can imagine species such as this is interesting…
but I can hear someone say, uh, no, I would never be a worker bee or
a worker ant and then apply this to an species like the Borg…

but here is the key to this and that is the question is not about being part
of the collective, but about the survival of the species… the species
survived because of its ability to adapt to changing conditions and this
is the criteria one must use to properly understand the question of “who am I”…
it must have a aspect of understanding “who am I” in context of the species…
we do not exist independently but as a part of a species… Part of the answer
to “Who am I” lies in the species we belong to and part of that understanding of
the species lies in the framework of ism’s and ideologies and paradigms that
drive the species…Who am I… is answered in part by what I do believe in and what
does my culture and nation and species believes in…
In part, “who am I” is answered by what I believe in and what my culture and nation and
species believes in… so once again, let us imagine the Vulcans and one individual Vulcan,
call him Spock for simplicity sake… and how would Spock answer the question, Who am I?
In fact, this question does run through both the series and the movies…
Data often wonders about this in the Next generation series…
so this question of “who am I” is not just an individual question, but a question
that can be collectively asked, Who are we?..

and ask yourself, Who are we? and ask yourself in light of or in terms of
our beliefs that we hold, in light of our ism’s and ideologies and paradigms that
we have and are born into…

Kropotkin

1157

Who am I?

I am a Christian…understand here, when you self identify as Christian,
you came from a home where the parents even if they are Cino’s,
(Christians in name only) they at least had Christianity as part of the
family structure in terms of ism’s, ideology and paradigms…
you were born into that family’s collection of ism’s that has been
carried down from generation to generation to generation…
and by self identifying as Christian, even if it is as being a Cino’s,
you are bringing that building, architecture of ism’s and ideologies,
and paradigms that houses human beings and has for generations,
you are mindlessly bringing those ism’s and ideologies and
paradigms into the present…without ever questioning or
asking if those ism’s and paradigms are valid ism’s and paradigms
in this day and age… we are building the present and future with
thousands of years old architecture/ism’s and ideologies…
Would you build a house with wood and metal and sheet rock that
is centuries old? No, so why would you build an internal house,
a mesh of idea’s and ideologies and ism’s and paradigm’s that
are thousands of years old? to move forward, we must adapt new
ism’s and new ideologies and new paradigms that more reflect
our new environment, our new situation…we are reacting to the modern
world with centuries old ism’s and ideologies and paradigms… in other
words, we are in the 21st century and we have 2000 years old ism’s and ideologies
to guide us… no wonder we are lost… we have an outdated map to guide us
in this 21st century… we must update our maps to match our current conditions…
and these new maps are new ism’s and ideologies and paradigms… meant
to better allow us to cope with the new modern realities we are faced with…
so to self identify as Christian, you are using a 2000 year old map to cope with
21st century landscape… it is no wonder millions are lost…

Kropotkin

1158

The 16 and 17 century are centuries that pursued the “Truth”…
the new science was one means and the philosophy that followed the
science meant to defend and create certainty about the new science…
but why was science and philosophy so into this idea of certainty…
What was this need for certainty?

and this flows from one of the lies about science and philosophy
which is that science and philosophy don’t take into account…
aren’t involved with the daily aspects of life… a for example of this
is science and philosophy are supposed to be separate from trials
and tribulations of life… science and philosophy go on regardless of
the state of the world…Greek philosophy was done in such a way that
you had no idea of what was going on in the world while this
philosophy was being done… wars and famine and crisis didn’t affect
the Greek philosophy…it was independent of, outside of whatever was
going on in the world… Read Plato and in dialogues that were given
during the war (the Peloponnesian war) and you couldn’t tell that they were
in the midst of a long and protracted war between Sparta and Athens…

But in the turbulence of the 16 and 17 century, the philosophical search for certainty
was, in part, due to the uncertainty of the times… The information coming
from the new world unsettled Europe and the Reformation that was going on
from roughly 1517 to 1650 caused much chaos and warfare and uncertainty
during those years…and the search for the “TRUTH” was in part due to the
uncertainty going on at the time…in other words, unlike in Greek philosophy,
the science and philosophy of the 16 and 17 century was reacting to the events
of the time…science and philosophy do not operate in a vacuum, the events
going on at the time change, influence and sometimes drive the science
and philosophy of the time…so how does the events and drama of our time,
influence the science and philosophy that is going on…well during the 20 century,
a violent and angry century, you take a philosopher like Quine whose life spanned
the 20th century and he was about logic and set theory and language issues…
you couldn’t tell from his writings that he lived in a violent and turbulent century…
and this is in part, the failure of philosophy… as it didn’t engage in people’s lives…
talk about the important matters that was going on in people’s lives…

so should science and philosophy follow the Greek example and exist outside
of what is going on or should science and philosophy engage in the
concerns of people and their lives?

what is the role of science and philosophy in the lives of average people?

Kropotkin

1159

once again, to change the subject…

very few today deny the fact that we are in need of reform…
45 was elected as a non-politician to reform Washington (he won’t/can’t because
he is a clueless idiot) so we have elected someone to reform Washington…
it is in the spirit of the times… about this need to reform
ourselves politically and culturally, I am reading about the Reformation in which
we see an earlier attempt at reforming the religious and the political…
some attempts failed and some succeeded but what is interesting is the need for
reform was in large part stoked by the failure of the powers to be to met the reformers
half way…so the spirally out of control by reformers was in part caused by the very actions
of the powers to be… had the powers to be attempted real compromise with the reformers,
that would have tempered the reaction of the reformers… the Reformation would not have
be so dramatic, so full of violence…but everyone stuck to their guns and wouldn’t
even think about compromise and not allowing any type of negotiation to occur between
the reformers and the powers to be…this was a world of all or nothing and we must learn
from that…the art of the deal, the real deal is that everyone leaves the negotiation thinking
they had won… in the real deal, everyone comes out with something… it is not a zero sum
game where if one party wins, that means all other parties lose… this idea of reformers
and the powers to be is a long one, going back to the beginning of time…

So today, everyone agrees that we need reform today… the question becomes
one of, what is to be reformed and why? to those who say, only the political, must
understand that we are connected and in this connection we cannot reform part of
the system without reforming the whole… each part of the system is connected to
every other part of the system…this is why reform of say, taxes, has failed in the past
because the reform of taxes is only part of the equation…as taxes
are part of the system…you must reform whole parts of the system as
reforming parts affects the other parts which must then be reform to match
the already done parts and so on and so forth…so we cannot just reform the
political and be done with it, no, we must reform not just the political but the
economic as the two are intertwined… the political system and the economic system
are just two sides of the same coin and if you go deep enough, they become the same…
as I have brought up time and time again… you have two thoughts that are opposed
and then the two thoughts become two sides of the same coin and then they become the
same thing… think of the concepts of good vs evil… they are two opposed systems
and then they become two sides of the same coin and then they become the same thing…

so reformers and the powers to be have two separate idea’ and if they
thought about it long enough, they would be two sides of the same coin
and then at some point, the same thing…

so in light of these thoughts, what needs to be reformed and why?
do you believe that society, culture, the political system need reform?
if so, why?

Kropotkin

1160

I hope to tie together several strands of thought here…

the question I have asked is simple, Who am I?
and the answer tells us everything…

Ask the man from the medieval times and he would have answer
the question of, “Who am I” far differently then we would answer the question
and that is because of the understanding that someone would have answered the
question by… they understood themselves not to be separate individuals but
as part of the whole… they thought of themselves as existing within a hierarchy…
you didn’t exist outside of this hierarchy… you didn’t separate yourself from this
hierarchy…one saw themselves as a piece of the whole… a single brick within
the whole building whereas we see ourselves as the building…recall that
medieval artist rarely if ever signed their art works… it wasn’t about them personally…
a concept that we don’t understand today… we proudly and loudly sign our
name and claim it as ours even if it isn’t whereas in the medieval times, the artist
as well as the average person on the street was simple just a brick in the wall and
nothing more…

so today when we answer the question of “who am I”…
we might say, we are a Christian… for example…
we answer as the medieval man but we mean a far different thing then
a medieval man would when we answer, we are a Christian…

so I answer the question of “who am I” by stating
I am a Christian or I am a grocery clerk…

(many answer the question of who
they are by stating their job or their job title… that is how ingrained this
idea of we are as being what our job is… we self identify by our work and
not by any actual reference to ourselves)

what we really say when we say I am a Christian or I am an American,
is to say we accept certain values and adapt them as our own…
as we our born into our values, recall we are born into an already built
house of values which are called ism’s and ideologies and paradigms…
we are born into a situation where the idea that god exists is already
built into the house we are born… it is part of the values we
live inside of all our lives…it is a value and we are born into that value…
and if we say, I am a Christian as part of the self identification, we
we have simple given a rote answer to who we are…

in other words, to say, I am a Christian is to say, I accept certain values…
to say, I am a Christian is to follow that ism, that ideology you were born into…
you have simply and blindly followed the ism that you were born into and if
you defend capitalism, you are simply defending that value you were born into…

to be a conservative, is to accept the values you were born into without any
any critical examination… you accept the idea that the past that has lead
you to today, we call this tradition, and you accept this tradition…
that is a conservative… you defend tradition as being the best values to
adapt… if you attack liberals, you are saying their values are wrong…
but you do so without any critical understanding of your position…
you have blindly accepted tradition as being best… you have
accepted the idea that the values your were born into are
the values you believe in… the house of your childhood, the
values of your childhood… the already created values that make up
the house of ism’s and ideologies you were born into, are the values
you accept…you have done so without any thought given…
you have simply accepted those values without any evaluation of their
value…or to put it into Nietzsche words, you haven’t reevaluated
your values…if you attack liberals, you have accepted that
conservative values are your values… that the values of the house
you were born into are the values you accept…

a reevaluation of values that Nietzsche calls for isn’t what you done…
for to do so might mean you might call into question those values
you were born into… that house of values you were born into might
be wrong… and so, the conservative doesn’t think about or
wonder about or reevaluate those values…you simple accept them
as a given… as tradition…what exactly those values are and what they
mean are never evaluated because that might cause a shift in those values…
so you blindly follow values, you don’t really understand or know what
they exactly entail…because that is the point of following tradition…
you don’t have to exam those values or understand those values…
they are a given as tradition…values given to us by authority…
the past which has sanctified certain values is another means
of authority… the medieval times followed authority, be it
Aristotle or the church and the authority was never questioned…
it was the authority that matter and this following of the values
of the house your born into is exactly the same thing…
it is the values of authority as dictated by the past…
and any reevaluation of values might challenge the authority of the past…
challenge the idea’s and ism’s an ideologies and paradigms, you were born into…
that is why conservatives don’t reevaluate values… it is a challenge to already given
values that you were born into, values given to you by authority, the past…

who am I? is defined by already given values of the past…
I am a Christian… is simply stating that I accept the values given
to me by the past…you are defined by the values of the society
you were born into because if you have simple accepted those values without
question… you have carried on the values from the past into the present and therefore into
the future without any critical evaluation of those values… without challenging
the authority of the past…

I have often heard conservatives stating that liberals have forsaken thinking
and rational thought and just act on emotion… but they are simple projecting
as conservatives often do… liberals do challenge the values of the past…
that is the defining value or defining understanding of being a liberal…
we don’t accept the past as an authority and we don’t automatically accept
those values given to us by the past…we challenge authority… in this case
the past… that is what being a liberal is defined as…we reject
the past as being an adequate judge of values… we reserve the right
to reevaluate our values in terms of new information and a new environment…
that is why liberals are attacked… we don’t automatically accept the values
of the past like the conservative do…the conservative believes the values
that sustained their father and their grandfather is good enough for them…
the house of values given as authority is good enough for a conservative…but it
isn’t for a liberal…

now conservatives will simple say, you are wrong… that is their standard
operating statement but they will not engage in reevaluating their values…
they will simple state that I am wrong without thought to if I am right,…
I have revaluated my values hence changes in my core values
both politically and philosophical…

a conservative would never do that… their core values are values given
to them by the past and that past being authority is considered untouchable …

to reevaluate one’s values cannot be conducted by a conservative…
because to do so would mean you doubt the authority of the past
and that basic principle cannot be challenged…

so the question of “who am I” is both a personal statement but also
a statement of values given to me by society and my parents…
“who am I” is a question of what values do I accept…
values created by me or given to me by the house of values I was born into…

so this question of “who am I” lies at the heart of the core values we believe in…
past and present and future lies in this question of “who am I” and the values
of ism’s and ideologies and paradigms that I was born into come into play when
I answer the question… “who am I”?

Kropotkin