as has been noted, I reject the basic notions of what it means to
be an American…
I don’t see work as being the point of existence and we Americans
see no higher value then work…mindless spending 40 plus years
of wasting our existence to increase the wealth of the already wealthy…
I reject nationalism or patriotism as a goal… for that is just another empty
value … glorification of our country as the expense of every other country?
to be an American or to be English or to be French is to glorify that which is
temporary… Recall that the Roman empire no longer exists or that the
nation of Parthia no longer exists… we see nations come and go…
or we have seen the nation of the “Confederate States”, the American
south also disappear…we can point out numerous states and nations
that have come and gone in the world…the temporary nature of
nations is why we must reject nations and patriotism as a value
we need to accept…
I reject the American obsession with the “Highest ideals of being an American”
as serving as a soldier… in service of nation is not and cannot be the highest
idea of being human…the national mantra is “serving the country” and that
is an false ideal… because nation is such a fleeting concept…
so, Kropotkin, you have rejected just about every aspect of what it means to
be an American… so, what do you suggest?
to find the values that we should have requires us to reevaluate what it
means to be an American…I hold to the radical concept that the highest
ideal of existence lies in being a human being… not in some specific ideal
of nation or race or creed or color or gender…
and the path of existence that is needed is to work out what it
means to be human, not what it means to be an American…
and I hold that we find our meaning in the values we hold, not in
nationalism or patriotism or in white power, but in values such as
love, hope, justice, truth, honesty, to name a few…
we can find what it means in being human by the values we hold
and act upon… I find my value as a human being within
the value of love or justice…I hold that to become a “better”
human being, I must seek out and engage with the value of justice…
or freedom or peace… it is the values we practice and hold dear
that makes us better human beings…
instead of being a better “American” which means I am a consumer,
or a producer or engage in some activity, I seek a value and engage
in that value… and the beauty of this is I can pick my value to
engage with… I can choose liberty or freedom or justice or love
as the value in which I can find my meaning in…
what is the truth? the value which I engage with, be it justice or freedom or
any of the hundreds of values that is possible for me to achieve…
so, I take, say justice as my value… then every action I take, I take with
justice as my value… is that act just? Is the president acting justly?
Is BLM engaging with the value of justice? Is it seeking to make America
more “Just” or not? I seek every word and action in regards to the value
I have chosen, which is justice… so, I use the value of justice to
make an engagement with every single action and word I engage with…
is this just? that is the question I ask myself at every word and act or actions
I see or engage with… it is not the action or word itself I am engaged with,
but whether that act or word is about justice, becoming more just, instead
of becoming less just…and so, I must understand what the word justice means…
and I have defined justice, in an earlier post, as being equality… in other words,
we see justice as being treated equally… so to be just, one must treat everyone
and everything equally…thus there is no more unequal treatment under the law,
or as we see it, America has not one justice system, but two… one for the wealthy
and powerful and one for the rest of us… and that unequal treatment is
unjust… everyone must be treated equally by the law or it is by definition
“unjust”…at work, we must treat everyone equally or it is unjust… at my work,
the management has one set of rules and everyone else works by a different set of rules…
what will get me punished will not get a manager punished… thus we have an unjust
working environment…among the other problems with work…
so if I were to judge the world by another value, say love… then every action and
word is just by the value of love… does that action or word increase the amount of
love in the world? no, then it must be disposed of…only actions or words that increase
love are acceptable… that is what it means to be held accountable by
our values… to judge every action and word by the value of “Love”
but you can find another value by which you can judge the world…
again by the value of freedom or the value of peace or the value of fun…
that there are literally thousands of values in which we can judge what
it means to be human…
so what values do you hold to be true?
and can that value be used to judge what it means to be a human being?
if so, then act with that value with all your heart and soul…
and that is the reason I reject American values… because they
don’t make better human beings… they make better workers and
better producers and create people who create activity…
but it doesn’t create better human beings…
Kropotkin