from atoms to philosophy and beyond

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

in the beginning was atoms from the big bang…
all the universe was atoms… one substance…
and everything that has been since the big bang has been
from that one substance, atoms… everything is atoms…
this tells me that there is no superior or inferior objects if everything
is from one substance and everything is just a variation off of that one substance…
equality of mass is the one rule of the universe because we only have substance…
you can say the white man is superior over the black man but it isn’t true because
we are one substance and you can’t have a superior or inferior if everything is
made of the same thing… you may say god exists but god cannot exist if
you only have one substance in the universe for everything in the universe is made
up of atoms, one substance and there is no higher and lower or up or down or
good or evil if everything is made up of one substance…atoms…
you might say, animals are a lower form of life… but you can’t because we are
made of the same thing and if you are made of the same thing, you cannot be
higher or lower… you are equal…
the thing that makes one substance different are the forces in our life,
forces like gravity and electric-magnetism and the other forces that shape
our form…to say that some are due great wealth because they are superior
is false because we are the same substance… we are equal and any attempt
to justify social matters any other way are false because we are equal
spacetime is just another force in our lives… we exist as motion in
the universe and motion is another equal term… there cannot be judgments
in regards to motion…for how are we to judge the physical action of motion?
motion just is…we are dimensions in the universe and how do you judge
dimensions? motion and dimensions are equal… there is no means to be
able to judge motions and dimensions…they just are…
the universe is random and chaotic as are we and there is no way we can
judge that… randomness and chaos cannot be judged…
there are no standards for them… as there are no standards for motions
and dimensions… and the last force in our lives is time and how do you
judge time? by what standard can you judge time? so the universe is
atoms that are shaped differently that have motion and dimensions and
exist in spacetime…this is a bottom line description of the universe
and with this description, you can now understand the role of philosophy
in the universe…we have the how and why of the universe… the how
is the existence of matter, which is everything, and that matter is atoms
and that matter has motion and dimensions and is shaped by forces such
as gravity… the why? we cannot use the universe as a means of creating
a why because there is no why in matter that has form and moves and
has dimensions… but we can create our own why? I haven’t yet discuss
the biological aspect of the universe… we are matter, atoms, that has
motion and dimensions… as atoms, we are formed and reformed
again and again and again… we can be anything that atoms can be which
means we can be anything… follow an atom over time and see that atom
become part of a man or a cat or water or a bike or part of a dishwasher…
the atoms inside of us cannot go out of existence and so with every new existence,
our atoms change form but not disappear… the atoms inside of us has been
recycle billions of time over billions of different forms… after I die, the atoms
inside of me will become something else and how can we judge that?
today, I use philosophy to judge that at this time with these atoms, I
am going to be…and how can you judge that? what standard will you use?

remove the human element of atoms and ask yourself? with these atoms presently
inside of me, what can I do? shall I help my fellow atoms, those that were
with me at the birth of creation, how can I help those atoms have
an easier existence? recall, atoms cannot be made or destroyed…
the same number of atoms that existed at the birth of the universe exist
today… the form is different, but their number is not…
and till the end of time, the same atoms that existed at the beginning of the universe
shall exist exists at the end of the universe… except at the end of the universe,
the motion of the atoms shall simply stop and that will be the end…
as long as atoms keep moving, the universe is still alive…
one cannot say, mine and thou because we are one substance thus
we can only say, us…we cannot justify private property and we cannot
justify the accumulation of money and we cannot justify greed and we cannot justify
hate but we can justify love because love brings atoms together and all those other
things drive atoms apart… hate and greed and ambition… but anything that
is a force that help create form is desirable and love is a force like gravity…
and like gravity, it brings different atoms together and this create new forms…
this act of creating new forms, this creativity is a force we want and we need
and the universe needs…we each passing we become something new, we
become a new form and don’t we want to make our next form, our next existence
easier by making existence easier and we can do that by taking upon ourselves
the hard job of making every second easier for the next generation and so
we can approve such things a Obamacare because it makes existence
easier for the next generation of our atoms as we recycle again and again
and again into a new generation with every passing…why not clean up the
earth and make it easier on the next generation of atoms that will come after us…
because that next generation is us, in a new form and what kind of earth do we
want to leave ourselves?

Kropotkin

2

if I am correct, what are the implications?

the universe is uncertain, chaotic, random…
this is shown by science… we are either progressing toward
or against order… but order is not certainty… and look at
science itself, evolution is about probabilities, chance, the ongoing
battle between order and disorder…and look at science theories themselves…
attempts to fix order in a disordered universe…they are attempts to create
order and certainty… this need to create certainty in the universe drives
most, if not all of what we do as humans…to find certainty, we have
created science and religion and academic fields like economics, philosophy,
history and social studies among others…the search for god is nothing more then
the attempt to find certainty… and we have often substituted this search
for god by other ways and means to find certainty… look at economics, for example,
the need for Marx to place man as an economic being, an attempt to create certainty…
to find a fix place for man… the act of creating government is an attempt to
find certainty… the institutions of government are meant to create a place for
man, and by that find certainty…the drive to create ism’s and ideologies are
attempts at creating certainty for human beings…the very foundation of
the family is an attempt to find certainty… I am a parent and one of the key
things we do as parents for children is we create certainty for children…
we provide a safe, comforting, loving space for children… and that is the means
in which we create certainty for our children…and one means we provide
certainty for children is this creation of god…I now suspect that we
created god as a story to comfort and relieve the anxiety of children at bedtime
over the million years while we progress from animal to human…
god is a bedtime story, nothing more, just one heard for a million years
and heard so often we think it is the truth…

the search for god is the search for certainty…

instead of just accepting the chaotic and unpredictable universe, we created
stories to comfort ourselves, stories like god and government and the good guys
and the bad guys…the good guy must win because that means order triumphs
over uncertainty…and order is a win for certainty and a predicable universe,
one without uncertainty, a universe that has no chaos or randomness… certainty…

so the problem becomes this, now that we know that the search for human
beings is one of creating certainty in a world that scientifically doesn’t have
certainty… our universe is chaotic and unpredictable and random…
we can try to sooth our soul with stories pretending to find certainty
and order in the universe or, or we can accept the chaos and uncertainty
that is our universe…Descartes whole philosophy was to create order,
certainty in the universe and we can now place philosophical attempts
like Hegel and Kant and Plato, as attempts to create certainty in the universe…
Philosophies like Nietzsche is an attempt to shy away from order and certainty…
they are not fully blown attempts at creating a philosophy of chaos and uncertainty…
that is our problem… how do we use philosophy to better understand and
accept our chaotic, random, unpredictable universe…our attempt now
goes the other way from Descartes… how do we find a philosophy that
places man in a chaotic and random universe? we cannot use a system like
Hegel or Kant to understand a chaotic universe because we know that
no matter how big our system is, it cannot encompass the entire system…
we must leave things out in any attempt to create a system like Hegel
and thus our system is going to be incomplete, no matter how hard we try…
thus in our very philosophy, we are going to be incomplete and that incompleteness
is chaos and randomness and unpredictability…

Kropotkin

3

The universe is made of a bit more than just atoms. They say there are also photons and other force carrying particles, and also dark matter and dark energy. There are also particles that aren’t part of atoms, like neutrinos.

I also don’t agree that all being one substance means that there is no superior/inferior. The forms that instances of this substance take, the things instances do, the characteristics they acquire, can all go towards making things superior/inferior to other things. A man can be superior to another man at playing music even though he is fundamentally the same “stuff” as the other man.

You obviously think that a clean Earth is better than a polluted one, that a society with Obamacare is better than a society without it. ← These are judgements of superior/inferior, are they not?

4

gib: The universe is made of a bit more than just atoms. They say there are also photons and other force carrying particles, and also dark matter and dark energy. There are also particles that aren’t part of atoms, like neutrinos.

K: atoms are the building blocks of the universe… no atoms, no matter in the universe and
no us… the rest is guesswork as to the actual composition of dark matter and dark energy…
you can’t make us or matter for that matter, with neutrinos or particles… so in fact,
it doesn’t really change anything I wrote…

G: I also don’t agree that all being one substance means that there is no superior/inferior. The forms that instances of this substance take, the things instances do, the characteristics they acquire, can all go towards making things superior/inferior to other things. A man can be superior to another man at playing music even though he is fundamentally the same “stuff” as the other man.

K: you want there to be a superior/inferior because it pleases your ego and you,
like most people think you are superior to most people…playing superior music
is an accidental trait, not a substance… like having white hair or being 5 foot tall…
I can juggle and so what? it doesn’t make me superior to those who can’t juggle…
there is no difference being able to juggle and being able to play music and play
video games… they are all accidental traits… people can have or not have and it
doesn’t change their basic nature, which is they are matter composed of atoms…
everything else is just details about that human form they are in this lifetime…

G: You obviously think that a clean Earth is better than a polluted one, that a society with Obamacare is better than a society without it. ← These are judgements of superior/inferior, are they not?
[/quote]
K: if you read me closely, noticed I said, my atoms will be recycled into something…
what they will be recycled into is chance and luck and random… I could be a tree or
a plant or a dog or another human being or part of the air or water… given that my atoms
will come back in some form at some time, I would like to come back to clean earth and
clean water because it is less work, less trouble to come back when the oceans are
clean then when they are dirty… I am thinking about my next recycle and I want
it to be a nice, clean experience and things like Obamacare will help that and
environmental regulations… anything I can do now that will make my next recycle
easier and smoother, I should do now…

Kropotkin

5

Peter deserves to be beaten up. Not discussed with.

Notice how he shames the true? There is no superior/inferior, there is only desire for it because it pleases people’s ego. If you think there is better/worse that necessarily means you think you are better.

He can’t understand that the purpose of such discrimination is efficient social organization.

True, some believe in it because they want to deny who they are by believing the lie that they are superior. But this is not its main, let alone only, purpose.

He places emotional peace above truth. Whatever disturbs his peace must be denied even if it’s true.

6

We say someone is arrogant if he thinks he is something more, or better, than he really is.

Arrogance is pride without humility, ungrounded pride.

Arrogance isn’t simply thinking you are superior. It is thinking you are superior without being so. False claim of superiority.

Peter is, for example, arrogant because he thinks that his stupid, emotion-driven, idea that there is no superior/inferior is superior to – even though that very idea states that there is no superior/inferior lol – the idea, the obvious idea, that there is superior/inferior.

Utter moron.

But somehow, he has tricked his own brain into thinking he is not, cannot possibly be, arrogant simply because he denies the existence of superior/inferior.

But actions speak louder than words and on this very topic he’s already claiming superiority.

Did I say fucking moron?

7

love you too.

Kropotkin

8

But being recycled into a clean environment is no more or less superior to being recycled into a dirty environment. ← Either way it’s matter. What if I come back as toxic waste? With more environmental regulations, I may not have a chance to exist. ← That’s discrimination!

9

Computer programs are made out of 1s and 0s, which is analogous to matter and void, so I guess there is no difference between them and certainly not superior/inferior. Photoshop is not superior to MS Paint. Its traits are just accidental, whatever that means.

10

I think what Kropotkin is failing to realize is that a thing is only superior/inferior at something.

11

Yes, he certainly does not understand what superior/inferior means and why it is useful to make such distinctions. He thinks it’s merely an ego thing.

I think Photoshop is superior to MS Paint because it pleases my ego or because I am emotionally attached to Photoshop not because it serves me better at particular function than MS Paint does.

12

K: “at” is an accidental trait, not a trait that is inherent within something…
I am superior because I was born this way is different then I can juggle better
then you and so I am superior then you…you are mistaking an aspect of
doing something as a mark of being superior… so what if I can do something
better then you… it doesn’t make me superior to you… it just means I can
do something better then you and every single person on planet earth
can do something better then someone else… I can juggle better then
billions of people and hundreds of millions can juggle better then me…
there is not superior in that and billions can do math better then me,
it doesn’t make anybody superior to anyone else…whereas you guys are making
this superior thing an aspect of part of being born whereas it is an accidental
aspect, something we can do slightly better then someone else, not an aspect
of who we are, as an essential aspect of who we are…by birth, I am superior to
you… you are part of the heard and I am superior to you and that is just nonsense,
or as I like to called it, ego masturbation… it makes you feel better about yourself,
THINKING you are superior when that is all that is, thinking, and not actually
superior…there is a difference… and when you can tell the difference,
you are officially, mature…

Kropotkin

13

Caesar wasn’t superior to Roman peasants, he merely thought he is superior, in fact he was only slightly better than them.

Can you see the degenerate, egalitarian, anti-social, anti-hierarchical element in his way of “thinking”?

There is no reason for castes, for relatively fixed social roles, it all should be absolutely flexible because anyone can be anything.

14

I get it, Kropotkin, you’re trying to connect the neutrality and uniformity of matter and energy to the differences between things like race, sex, age, nationality, religious affiliations, sexual orientations. Physically speaking, we’re all the same–or at least any differences that exist don’t rank us as “superior” or “inferior”. I get it, and I agree. I just think it’s silly to try to push a political argument like this from the point of view of monism and material science. Most people who really are racist, sexist, etc. are too dumb to get your argument, and those who are smart enough to get your argument aren’t racist, sexist, etc. for the reasons you think (they might not even be racist, sexist, etc. at all).

Even the most homophobic person here–Turd–has argued that homosexuals aren’t inherently inferior just because of their sexual orientation, and in fact he claims to get along half decently with a few of them.

I think you ought to attack this from a different angle.

15

As this is an ugly work week and I have limited time…

My thinking starts with this…

I see a movie recently, for the second time, and there was a theme
in it that I have been thinking about for quite a while…

The argument in the movie… Cloud Atlas, BTW, is that
there is a “natural order” in things and the strong can take the weak
because there is a “natural order” in things and that is why blacks are
in slavery and men are “above” women, because there is a “natural order”
and this idea of a “natural order” justifies much of the damaging things that
humans do to each other… Part of the “natural order” is the supposed
superiority of people over other people… part of this “natural order”
presupposes that there is naturally superior people as given by nature…
we are just following the path created by nature in following the “natural order”
in which some people are superior to other people… and yet, there is no
such thing as a “natural order” in nature… there is no justification for thinking
of a “natural order” in nature because it doesn’t exists…to derive “natural order”
from nature means you are just creating a context that doesn’t exists…
it is in short… an assumption…a lion hunts down an kills a deer…
that is just a lion feeding itself, nothing more but people create this
whole idea that because a lion is hunting down a deer, it creates this
whole idea of a “natural order” in which we can then believe in our natural superiority
over other people and nature…and yet all the lion is doing is feeding itself and their
family… there is no creation of some natural order in which the lion is the king of
the jungle type of thing… we created that in our thinking, not the reality of it,
but in our thinking about it…we created this idea of a “natural order”
in our heads and we think it is realty but it is just thinking in our head…
there is nothing in nature to justify this idea about the “natural order” and
there is certainly nothing in nature to justify our thinking we are superior or
inferior as the case may be… it is an artificial thought but not a reality…
and we humans have a whole lot of artificial thoughts that we mistake for
reality, but are really just thoughts in our head that we mistake for reality…

what other thoughts in our head that we mistake for reality and that is
my goal, to explore this idea…

Kropotkin

16

I don’t even know what this “natural order” thing means.

Basically, the way it works is people judge the worth of other organisms, which means the set of potentials they possess, and then, based on this, they decide how to treat them. People who are deemed to have little worth are treated as slaves, with no civic rights. How correct their estimations are is a separate issue.