Kropotkin and language....

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I have long avoided a personal understanding of my own
language… perhaps because of my hearing loss, perhaps
because of my lack of formal schooling, never went to collage…

but I have avoided it in any case…as an example of the oldest
directive in philosophy, Know thyself… I could try to understand
the language I use and why that language…

as a kid for fun, for fun, I used to read dictionary’s…I have a pretty
large vocabulary… but I made a conscious decision in my writings on
ILP to keep the language down to the point where an average high school
student could read my work… I simplified my language to make it
accessible for anyone to read it…

I have no interest to complicate my words, my language to make seem
like I am a profound or an extraordinary thinker… I have no interest in that…

and in reading philosophers like Hegel or Kant or even Heidegger, they
have made an extraordinary attempt to complicate their language…

Hegel for example, we know can write cleanly and with some style,
we have some of his early works which show the fact that when he
wants to, he can be a pretty good writer, and yet, his main works
are fairly badly written… overly complicated and frankly, boring as sin…

and the same could be said about Kant and even Heidegger could at times,
at times, be a pretty clean writer…

I guess that there is some need to write complicated writing to make
it seem like the philosophers are somehow above you in wisdom…
if only you could understand them, you would become wise too…

and on the other side is Nietzsche who was a very good writer…
whose words, “danced” and were light to read…Nietzsche found
profoundness in the idea’s, not in the language itself…

If I were to write in some style, I would pick to write in
the style of Ernest Hemingway…the book that I wish I could
have written would be the “old man and the sea”…

now take that use of language and turn it into philosophy…

to write philosophy with the style and grace of a novelist like
Hemingway would be my ideal method of writing philosophy…

the second brick in the wall for me personally, is my hearing loss…

I am not much of a verbal person, as I am a person who engages
in terms of sight… I like to see things rather then to hear about them…

I am far more comfortable reading things then I am about hearing things…

hence my hatred of video’s and audiobooks, talking on the telephone…
receiving instructions by hearing them instead of reading them…

but the question remains for me personally, what does my hearing loss
mean for the language I use?

I avoid using big words in my daily conversations because I rarely ever
pronounce them correctly… we learn to talk and pronounce thing
by hearing them first… I can’t hear things, so how am I to correctly
pronounce them correctly?

and perhaps, perhaps that is why I avoid the usage of big, fancy words
in my writings here on ILP? Because I avoid them in my daily life…

when I was a kid, the way we learned to spell was phonetically…
you heard a word and then you spelled it phonetically… to this day,
I can’t spell to save my life…

but those are language factors in Kropotkin’s life…

what factors about language exists within your life?

Kropotkin

2

I think we should be free to make up new words as we want.

I treat language as a means to an end.
The end is the goal of it.
The means is the most meaningful succession of ideas.

3

K: that is certainly one possibility… but as possibility…

what else is possible with us using language?

Kropotkin

4

In a way, anything is possible.
Symbols can symbolize anything.
Language is the format and method of information.
Like I said elsewhere, DNA and a gameboy game are similar.
Each is a language based calculating system.
if DNA can create an entire man,
language can create anything.

5

D: I think we should be free to make up new words as we want.

“I treat language as a means to an end.
The end is the goal of it.
The means is the most meaningful succession of ideas”

K: that is certainly one possibility… but as possibility…
what else is possible with us using language?

D: In a way, anything is possible.
Symbols can symbolize anything.
Language is the format and method of information.
Like I said elsewhere, DNA and a gameboy game are similar.
Each is a language based calculating system.
if DNA can create an entire man,
language can create anything.
[/quote]
K: ok, so what are you going to create with “your”
language?

Kropotkin

6

Hopefully I can create utilities for my social life.
By utilities i mean, functional structures.
By social life, i mean, to communicate with people.

7

K: and what is stopping you?

Kropotkin

8

I have stated before, the questions of Kant:
“What am I to do?” “What can I know?” and of the subject
of this sermon… “What can I hope for?”

the questions of Kant reflect certain idea’s… for example,
the question of “What can I know?” is a question of epistemology,
a question of knowledge, what can we know?, what is the limit of
our knowledge? how valid is our knowledge?

and the question of “What am I to do?” is a question of what obligations,
of what am I to do today, tomorrow, next week, next year, for the rest
of my life?

but this question of “What can I hope for?” is a theological question…
it is a religious question… for hope is a theological question and answer…

one can hope that there is a god or that there is a heaven for me
and hell and devil for those I oppose or those who wrong me…

this question of having hope allows one to escape the nihilism
and the void that exists in our world today…

if one has hope, one can glide over the abyss that Nietzsche
so struggled with… hope is the wings that allow human beings to
fly over the nothingness of our day…

for what to believe in? can I believe in god? not after Auschwitz…
and not after the horror of World War One, not after hearing
about My Lai or seeing the devastation of Hiroshima… how do we hold
our hopes up after seeing or reading or hearing about such things?

What can I believe in during our “modern times?”

gone is the faith of the simple peasant who tills the land,
for who is left to till the land?

Our age is an empty age, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,
a tale told by an idiot…

what can give our age, meaning, purpose, significance?

for we pray, like Hemingway, we pray to nada…

and I can’t even tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing?

we seek the shallow baubles of existence, money, fame, power,
material goods… things that have no value, outside of us
pretending that those bauble have some value that might lift
us above the nada that so dominates our lives…

we are fractured, As IAM is and why? because our lives have
no context or relationship to anything…

we have no connection to our world because we only seek the
meaningless baubles of existence… we are no longer grounded
in reality… look at those who deny science, medicine, experts
and ask us to hold faith in talking to “reasonable people”…
as the answer to our most profound questions…

we have lost touch with reality because we no longer seek anything
real… we seek meaningless baubles that have no connection to
anything real or honest or is something that can give us HOPE…

I don’t see how having material goods can give us hope or
how fame or money or power, can give us hope?

to say hope is another way of saying “faith” and what do you
have “faith in?”

science or politics or religion or philosophy or history?

most people around here deny all of these idea’s…
they deny science and they deny politics and they deny religion
and they deny philosophy and they deny history…

and after they are done denying everything, what is left?

certainly not hope…

so Kropotkin, we can see what you are against, but what are you for?

indeed, what am I for?

I hold faith, hope in science and that “all men are created equal”
and I hold hope in the struggle of animals/human to rise to becoming
something that is human… all too human and then rise above that…

I believe in, hope for the struggle of overcoming, of becoming who we are…

I believe the struggle is to become better then we are today…

I hope for, believe in the soul and its struggle to something greater then
just being an animal/human…

in other words, I believe in the future…
and hope for a better future…

Kropotkin

9

If I had to sum up your philosophy in a few words,
it might go something like this:

You want to reach higher things of existence and life.
Higher is not a fantasy or a “subjective” thing.
It is simply hard to understand, for some people.
Blindness does not disprove light.
Lowness does not disprove highness.
Arguments against the heights are mostly fallacy.

There you have it.

Comments?

10

K: ok, nice… now how to turn this philosophy into
an “action plan”… how do you turn this philosophy into
actions and a “way of life”?

a philosophy does no good if it can’t be turned into real world
practice…in fact, most people around here, (I can’t even call
them philosophers) are just posers and dilettantes…

How does one live their philosophy?

the engagement one has with philosophy, is not being a poser,
but in being able to live that philosophy… how do you live
your philosophy?

Kropotkin

11

Keter Propotkin.

12

K: I have no doubt this passes for wit in your neck of the woods…
however for adults, not so much…

Kropotkin

13

I’m going to be very stern with you for a moment.

If you are married to and actually fuck a woman, you have no grounds to call yourself anything remotely resembling a philosopher.

All philosophers understand the zero sum problem. You don’t give a shit. You’re not anything resembling a philosopher.

Are you the conqueror because you get to see a vagina that the other 8 billion people can’t?

Fuck you man.

Every time someone has sex on earth it breaks other people’s hearts. But you don’t care, because you don’t fucking have a heart.

You’re a selfish greedy bastard like trump. You two were twins separated at birth.

14

Unnecessary insults.
Kropotkin isn’t evil.

15

Let’s analyze this then Dan.

Zero sum realities. Winner/loser mentality.

Of course this is all sublimated in Peter (and apparently you as well)

I ask this of you Dan.

Meditate for about 20 minutes on what zero sum realities really mean. Winners and losers.

Now, after you wake from this meditation, contemplate how evil this species is!

It’s scary stuff … which is why people run their whole lives from it. But, I’ll tell you, once you face this particular fear, it’s not really as scary as you think it is or will be. In fact, you’ll stop hating yourself as much, which means that you’ll stop hating others as much.

Peter is every bit the greedy bastard Trump is, he hates himself so much that he hates Trump as almost his entire pattern of posting for several years now.

This is not a cool head he has. It’s projection that hasn’t been resolved.

16

In wondering what the OP was about, I did a quick word count -
"I " - 30 times in just that one post.

17

Peter Kropotkin: I have long avoided a personal understanding of my own
language…

and the subject line: Kropotkin and language…

and that is why I talk about me so much, use of the “I”

If I was talking about IAM language, I would have used his name or
if I was talking about your use of language, I would have said so…
but it was about MY use of language and so yes, I said “I” a lot…

Kropotkin