Lies we tell ourselves

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

we have insiders, and we have, especially today,
we have posers, pretending to be outsiders…
they identify today as MAGA… anarchist who want
to tear down the system without any understanding
of the system they are working so hard to destroy…

but why are they pretenders of being on the outside?
because they still hold firm to the insider goal of money
and wealth…

as long as they consider wealth as the arbiter of all
values and beliefs, they are, and forever shall be,
insiders… for until they accept and practice values,
not spiritual values, but human values, they shall be
lying to themselves about being outside of, beyond the
control of the system they wish to tear down…
the true state of America today is nihilism…
where profits have more value, more worth than
human beings…that is the true religion of modern day
America…Nihilism…

The MAGA party of today are the true children of nihilism…
the great battle of Nietzsche was against nihilism…
it is easy to massacre millions, when the primary value
of a society/state is money… where freedom and ‘‘Aryan’’
values are just window dressing for what really matters
in our modern world… the Trinkets of existence…

and any who proclaim the ‘‘wisdom’’ or ‘‘greatness’’
of the village idiot, are not patriots or wise, they are simply
nihilists who are practicing their religion…
conservative values are really just nihilistic values…
for what does conservatives’ values really celebrate?

Tradition over life… the continuity of the past over
the overcoming of values that the epitome of nihilistic values,
money, fame, titles, status, material possessions, power…

the election of IQ45 is a celebration of the triumph of
nihilism in America…the attack on ''WOKE"" is the
attack of nihilism in America today…for ‘‘WOKE’’
is about the worth and value of human beings…
Human beings have value… that is the message of being
‘‘WOKE’’ and those who deny '‘WOKE"’ proclaim loud
and clear that they accept and practice nihilism that
denies the individual value of human beings…
that the only values that count, are the nihilistic values
of money, fame, status, material possessions, power
and titles… America is simply the first and the certainly
not the last, to accept and practice the nihilism that
is both our heritage and legacy…

Kropotkin

2

and some, most, might object…
Kropotkin, you are wrong…

My only response is… go back to sleep, continue to
dream of your pursuit of the trinkets of existence…
Heavens forbid, we actually doubt our values and
beliefs… no, the modern way is complete
and absolute belief in the ‘‘rightness’’ of our convictions
and values… no child… go back to sleep
and dream of the certainty of your values…
leave doubt and unrest to ‘‘WOKE’’ values…
values that say human beings have more value
then the trinkets of existence…
sleep and dream of your certainty…

Kropotkin

3

I dont know anyone who lies to themselves more than you do. So I guess you would know.

4

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Lol

5

those who have attacked the last 4 years,
have also exposed their emptiness and
nihilism…

Those who favor IQ45 and conservatism,
are held hostage by ancient books of
sheepherders and small farmers…
and within those books lie stagnation,
rigid values and beliefs that have no future
or possibilities within them… they are written
in stone with no chance of expansion…

They express horror at the murder of a CEO
and are totally unmoved by the deaths caused
by that CEO… thousands of deaths…
the forces of the market, another lie,
has caused the death of more thousands,
and yet still, it leaves them untouched, unmoved
by all those deaths…

and yet, mention ''WOKE"" and they proclaim
their horror and disgust… hay, why worry about
actual people dying when one can get worked up
about a concept they can’t even define…
and still their faith, their absolute certainty
about their values and beliefs being the only values
and beliefs that have any truth, legitimacy…
that there is but one truth, and I hold that truth…
I hold the gospel truth of life… Allaha Akbar becomes
‘‘My truth is the greatest truth’’ Truth Akbar…

that is the mindset of the MAGA conservative…
Truth Akbar…death to the infidels… ones who
don’t hold to my truth… of course, those truths are true
for they are written in stone and stuck in one place and
time… immobile and unchangable… so says the conservative…

Kropotkin

6

upon reflection, I see the vast difference between
the world and myself…the world is transactional
and my writings are transformational…
I have little interest in transformational leadership,
business leadership, but I am invested in, what might
be called, secular transformations…
and the world is invested in transactional business…
which is to say, you expect something in return for your
contribution, in a short time frame and if not, you will not
provide your contribution…for every action must have
a return on that action…no pay, no work…no work, no pay…
I have no interest in that sort of existence…

I am interested in possibilities… what is possible for us,
individually and collectively… One does not seek a
payoff in a transformational system…and in a
transactional system, payoffs are all we have…
in a transactional system, it is all about today…
what will you do for me today…

and in a transformational system… what we might become
tomorrow is the goal, not the payoff…

and that is the difference between the world and me…
I am transformational and the world is transactional…

Kropotkin

7

the world, the transactional world is held hostage
by the trinkets of existence… a faith, a religion
that has money as its object of devotion and prayer…
the idol that men bend the knee to…

devotion to the past, prayer to traditions
is also just another form of being hostage
to values and beliefs that are not your own…

examine your values and beliefs and see the truth…
those values and beliefs are simply another means
of being held hostage to values, not of your own…

proclaiming the greatness of country or of god,
without a reexamination of values, just means
you are announcing you are being held hostage by
values and traditions of your childhood indoctrinations…
another value that says, hostage, is the claim
of the greatness of capitalism…

How many people were driven to bankruptcy by
medical bills in Germany last year or in England
or in Sweden? none, not one person…

How many Americans were driven into bankruptcy
by medical bills last year? 350,000 just last year alone…

How many people, nay children, face a food insecurity
in America last year? Nearly 14 million children didn’t
have reliable access to enough nutritious food to be
healthy and active…Tell me again about the greatness
of America and its religion, capitalism…

Those being held hostage can’t see the large scale
damage that capitalism bring us in America…

Kropotkin

8

William Blake once wrote:

I must create a system, or be enslaved by
another man’s. I will not reason and compare.
My business is to create.

But our childhood indoctrinations lead by the lies
of childhood, are just another form of a system…
but we can overcome this enslavement of system,
by the examination of values and beliefs we hold…
One might think, or believe in the greatness of America,
or the existence of god, but an honest, true evaluation
of these two values/beliefs lead us to question them,
and that alone helps us escape being enslaved in a system…
if the values and beliefs we hold, are in fact our values
and beliefs, not indoctrinations, then we are not
enslaved in another’s system…

And how do we engage with this overcoming?
by an examination of our values…
I believe in god…but why this value and not another?
For most people they believe in god because it
was indoctrinated into them, not that they actually believe…
they are unable to sort out their indoctrinations from their
own actual beliefs or values…What are my own values/beliefs,
what system do I actually believe in? Few if any actually ever
ask that… and because they haven’t examined their own values/
beliefs, they are enslaved in another value system…

What is the evidence, or facts supporting the hypotheses of
god? an honest seeker will note that there is no evidence
supporting the idea of god…but why does it still exist?
Because one has been held hostage by or has been enslaved
by another system… and what does it mean to be enslaved by
another’s system? by failing to examine what are your actual,
true beliefs…

Kropotkin

9

one of the Kantian questions is, ''What am I/we to do?"

and that is answered, in part, by what we hold to be true,
what values and beliefs we engage in… if we hold to wrong,
incorrect beliefs and values, that will lead us into taking
wrong actions… doing the wrong thing… and this
is best shown by our holding to false beliefs and values,
like there being a god… and if we take actions based on
there being a god, and if there is no god, our actions based
on there being a god, becomes not only wrong, but ridiculous,
foolish and even a danger to ourselves and a danger to others…

to take actions, one must have solid and sufficient reasons
for those actions… and false beliefs/values lead to false
actions… or as it has been said, garbage in, garbage out…
which leads us to what is the reason some actions work
and some fail? Garbage in, garbage out is the basic reason…

garbage in, garbage out is not the only reason why we fail
at times… oftentimes, we fail to work out the goal we
should be reaching for… if we think the goal of existence
is to meet god, then our actions, values must reflect that goal…
but if we hold to the goals of the trinkets of existence,
we fail because that is more of the garbage in, garbage
out failure…truth of the matter is that failure can come from
both having the wrong goals as well as having the wrong values
to base that goal upon…

another example of failure based on the wrong values/goals is
the example of those who hold that to get to heaven,
a suspect goal as it is, that we must put our lives in god’s hand…
to abdicate our own responsibilities… by saying, put our lives
in gods hand, is to say, I hold no more responsibility for my life
than I have responsibility for a star’s existence…
to abdicate any responsibility for our lives… it seems
there is a large industry attempting that very thing…
humans spend more time escaping their responsibilities
than possibly any other activity in their lives…

GOP/MAGA types are always bleating about people failing
to take responsibilities for their actions and yet, in the very
next breath, they bring up god… make up your mind people,
it is one or the other… but that brings us back to what values
or beliefs we hold and what goal/purpose are we attempting to
get to… tell me the values you hold and then the goal you
are trying to reach with those values…

Kropotkin

10

but Kropotkin, why won’t human beings engage in some
sort of an examination of values? Asking themselves,
why do I believe in these values, and not those values?

some sort of combination of fear and laziness…
it is far easier to hold to belief in the trinkets of
existence, then to examine our values and beliefs…
not only fear and laziness but a lack of courage
prevents us from a reevaluation of values…
in my own examination, I discovered I have
a mean streak, a mile wide…
I was afraid to approach that until I was older…
Today, I accept and know that…and because of this awareness of
who I am, I can watch it and know that I can, at any time,
become that mean streak… but that isn’t who I want to be…
Not because of social restraints or lies I have been told,
but because I want to, because I am a better person without
my mean streak… and because the world is a better place
around me when I am a kinder and nicer person…
I am seeking to become a more ideal person when
I don’t lash out with being mean…here my engagement
is with the past, present and future…My past has shown
me what I bring to others when I am mean, my present
shows me that, at times, I still struggle with being mean,
but I am aware of that tendency, and so I strive to become
a better person…the future… and all of this without
any recourse to god, religion, faith, heaven or hell…
or any of our childhood indoctrinations…

‘‘What am I to do?’’ becomes clearer if I am aware of who
I am…and my goal/path also becomes clearer with
this new understanding of who I am…my attempt to
create a private good, also benefits the state/society…
private vices don’t create a public good, only privates good
can create a public good…and in my becoming aware of
my mean streak, I am helping to create a public good…
one person at a time…

Kropotkin

11

This idea of a private good is really just a secular ethics…
remove god and religions and heaven and hell, and what
is ethical behavior? what is a private good that leads us to
a public good? a series of private vices cannot lead us
to a public good? As is claimed by the defenders of
capitalism…so, we must engage in understanding
what private goods are…

the faithful of MAGA/GOP politics believe in such values
as hate, anger, prejudice, bigotry, and revenge…
One doesn’t have to guess this, the MAGA faithful
will happily tell you this…send the immigrant home,
put women their place, prevent women from controlling
their own bodies, put the gays back into the closet,
the MAGA/GOP crowd hates anyone who is different then
they are…Stepford Americans would be the best way to
describe this…

all Americans should look alike, dress alike, act alike,
think alike, be exactly alike… and we see once again,
the path into the future is in seeking out totally unity of
thought and actions…strength though the unity of all…

but throughout history, we have never had a civilization that
was one thought, one action, one belief, one people…
Even the Chinese, had dozens of vastly different people,
states and a wide diversity of human beings within their empire…
And the same goes for Rome and all the other great empires…
each of them made up of vastly different groups of people…
Russia before the revolution had dozens of tribes, and hundreds
of languages within it…as did Great Britain… think of the number
of vastly different people that existed within the British Empire…
and America was considered to be the ''Melting pot"
of the world…

Conservatives are attempting to turn America into one thought,
one color, one religion, one set of politics… and that is the
path to failure…

The other goal is to turn back the clock… to ''Make America
Great Again"" but what part of America are they referring to?
Slavery, Jim Crow laws, where women were the property of men,
where only white men with property could vote?
What America are they referring to? the real problem is
that we cannot return to the past… I cannot ever become
a child again… I can’t return to the Kropotkin I once was…
the only path, the only path forward is toward the future…
there is not path backwards or into the past…
a child, once born, cannot go backwards… a child,
every single child, moves forward… going from newborn,
to baby, toddler, to child and moving forward into young adult
and puberty… we cannot turn back the clock after puberty…
and we become adults… we cannot turn back the clock…
no matter how hard we try…and yet this exactly what
the MAGA/GOP crowd is trying to do… to turn back
the clock to a time when only white men had power and
blacks and women were property…there is no future
here… just wishful thinking… a path to failure…

So, how does the private vices of turning back the clock, help
us become part of the public good? I cannot see how
the private vices of bigotry and hatred and prejudice lead
us to any type of private good or public good…

Acceptance of our diversity is one path into the future,
it is an ethical belief that tolerance is the path into a
public good…human beings are flawed… that is a fact,
and we can move into the future, by accepting that fact…
which is toleration and acceptance of our faults…
private goods that lead us too public good…
and with no recourse to god or religion…
Morality and ethics without god or religion…

that has been the goal of philosophy since Nietzsche…
ethics and morality that is human based and human
centered… ethics and morals divorced from religion or
god… and it begins with this notion of private good
lead us too public good…for we have to start somewhere…

Kropotkin

12

What I find astonishing is the lies and hypocrisy of
our modern age… the GOP/MAGA party proclaims
that ""America is a Christian Nation’’ and yet, the GOP/MAGA
party actions and statements are 100% opposite of being
Christian… the very act of supporting IQ45 is anti-Christian…
how exactly does supporting someone who has violated
every single commandment, lead one into thinking they
are Christian? A Christian, a true Christian, would be
unalterable opposed to the values and actions of
IQ45… putting money/profits before human beings…

Conservatives bewail the state of morality in America today…
without considering that they themselves are the legislators
of those failed values… in practicing hypocrisy, they make it
easy, so very easy to lose touch with what is ethics…

Gordon Gekko, a fictional character said this

''Greed is good""

and America acts as if private vice leads to a public good…
and it acts as if hypocrisy and lies, private vices leads us to
a public good… and only private good can lead us to
a public good… and that is the path forward…
within our own private actions, of which must come
the public good, we must engage in being good, privately…

We hold ourselves to standards that are higher than what
we should hold ourselves to…It is not enough to say,
‘‘I didn’t kill today’’… we must be able to say, I didn’t lie
today or I didn’t practice hypocrisy today… and mean it…

and this attempt to become more moral or become more
ethical, could also be considered to be the point or focus
of existence… the meaning of life could just be our
attempt to engage in private goods, leading to public good
and that would be a life well spent… the meaning of life
could just be attempting to be moral…to practice ethics
with our lives, as actions taken every single day…

Instead of pursuing ephemeral values, like money,
titles, power, material goods, fame, we could pursue
ethics and morality… which lasts until the day we die…
unlike money or fame or material goods or titles…

Don’t confuse morals and ethics with being legal…
the congressman who takes legal bribes to vote with
the corporation that made the highest bid for him,
that may be legal, but it doesn’t make it moral or ethical…
just as Slavery was legal, and Jim Crow laws were legal
and laws making women the property of men, or the
Holocaust, they were all legal, but that doesn’t make
them ethical or moral…Don’t confuse what is legal with
what is moral or what is ethical…

Now what is an ethical, moral, value?
That we can call a law forbidding murder, Is it a universal law?
Which applies to all people, at all times?
Is it ethical, moral to murder people?
The GOP/MAGA crowd seems to think that murder is ethical,
moral… and their opposition to abortion has nothing to do
with murder… because they are clearly in favor of murder…
as is all who favor capital punishment… and the police
murdering civilians… they have no problem with that…
and thus, murder is not a problem for them…
being selective about which form of murder you approve
of, isn’t being moral or ethical…
It is just another aspect of the hypocrisy and double standard
the right wing practices…

What is being moral? and do you practice that?

Kropotkin

13

and one has to wonder why, why has morals and ethics
become so problematic to ourselves?
Why has doing the right thing, become a moral quandary?

I believe it is due to the nature of the isms we practice today…
We engage in anti-human, anti-life, nihilistic isms…
for example, Christianity is a celebration of god, but
certainly not of human beings…according to the gospel,
we are born of guilt and sin… the very act of being born
is to be in sin…and exactly how is that not anti-human?
Christianity by its very value system is nihilistic…
Nihilism: to devalue human beings and their values…
It is god’s value we value, not human beings because
we are born of sin and guilt… and it is no better
in other religions… for example, Buddhism…
what is the end goal of Buddhism? Not to be reborn…
seems to be pretty anti-human to me… life itself is
something to escape from… not to be reborn is to escape life…
to return to the nothingness that we came from… that is
the final goal in Buddhism… and how is that pro-life?

Our religions, including capitalism, is nihilistic…
the emphasis is on devaluing human beings and their
values… (capitalism is a religion because it blindly
accepts the values of capitalism without any evaluation
of what those values mean to human beings)

Which values are more in line with being human?
the GOP/MAGA values of hate, anger, prejudice,
discrimination, and violence? or are the values of
love, tolerance, acceptance, and becoming more human,
not less human, aren’t they the values of being human?

a state, a society is simply an aggregation of
individual human beings… if one wants a better state,
a better society, the answer lies in becoming a better
human being… practice private good instead of private
vices… and that leads us to a public good…

the answer to making America great lies in each of us,
reaching to become more human… not in us seeking out
private vices like anger, and hate and prejudice
and greed… those values don’t lead to a better America,
or even better human beings… but in seeking out
values which make us better human beings…
values encapsulated in being ““WOKE””
aware of what we do and why we do those things
and not other actions…

to rise above sin and guilt… to become something
above the modern hypocrisy, that is inherent within
our isms and current values…

The Socratic Maxims: to know thyself
and the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
how have you practice that today?

the goal is ethical, moral behavior without, without
a god or religion… man/human based ethics/morals…
secular ethics…

Kropotkin

14

The great tragedy of modern life lies within its
education… How do we become human, fully
human within the confines of education? For
what is the point of modern education?
Basically, its job training… to gain a skill
in which to make a living… that is the entire point
of modern education…

And to me, that is the least important part of being human…
Earning a living has become the highest goal of today’s
human being and it is the least important part of who
you are… for earning a living, can be done in a myriad
and various ways…are you working in the field in which
you gained a college degree? For most people, the
answer is no… their education has nothing to do with
their job… their earning a living has little or nothing to
do with their education…

and what should the point of education be, if not
to earn a living?

to lay out our possibilities of existence…
to make the choices necessary to become human, fully
human…and being able to select the values and beliefs
that allow us to become human… that is the point of
education… the road to becoming human lies in
escaping our animal values and beliefs…
in escaping the values of nihilism and anti-human beliefs…
to make human beings and their values as the goal to
becoming human…

look at animals and other life… which of them has
societies somewhat similar to human beings?
Ants and bees are the two common choices,
of having similar society as human beings…
and what do they have in common?
they both have a strong social structure…
they work with their prospective species to
build up something, a nest or a hive…
as does human beings… in which we build
a state or society… same thing… but what about
other animals or birds?

Because of the survival of the fittest, animals cannot
build a state or society as ants or bees or human beings…
they are too busy trying to gain their daily substance to
build a society or state…

If we are so busy trying to gain a living, how do we have
time to help grow or sustain our state/culture/society?
and in practicing the goal of our modern state, in
practicing greed and other private vices, how does
that advance the goal of a better and stronger state/society?

What is the goal or purpose of existence?
is practicing greed or hate or anger or lust,
is that really the goal or purpose of existence?

Kropotkin

15

to approach our problem from another angle…

our approach to life, of making money, earning a living as
the ‘‘purpose’’ and ‘‘goal’’ of existence, is
to seek out the shallow aspect of existence…

there is nothing challenging there… birds, and cows and dogs
do the same thing… it is an animal goal to gain enough to
eat and drink and have a shelter… but what goal/purpose
is enough for us human beings to seek out? What goal/purpose
challenges us into becoming human? certainly not earning a living…

Some have said, to become divine, but what exactly does that mean?
to outgrow the basic and easy challenge of earning a living…
what is the next step? to become human, fully human means
we must grow from just earning a living into something else…
and what is that? seeking out our possibilities of existence…
which means what, exactly?

within my own possibilities, lies what I may become…
I can no longer be an athlete, nor will I ever become
a pilot or a cop or a soldier… those possibilities no longer
exists for me… but I can become one possibility within me,
that of being the greatest philosopher in the world…
and that is the possibility I strive for, I work for…
maybe I will, maybe I won’t be the greatest philosopher
ever… but it is a goal, it gives me purpose in my
day to day life, that making a living will never do for me…
and will I gain something from being a great philosopher?
in other words, will it make me rich or famous or have a title?
Nah, and it isn’t necessary for me to get a conventional goal
like the trinkets of existence from being a great philosopher…
it is the goal itself that becomes important… and the only
goal I can see that is worth my effort to reach…
and what do I do with this philosophy? I strive to bring it
into my life… as a ‘‘way of life’’ and that is how one achieves
greatness… by turning purpose into action… to achieve
by using philosophy as ‘‘a way of life’’…and in achieving
this, I become a better human being…my path of becoming,
of going from animal to becoming human, is this path…
of using philosophy to guide my actions… the further
away from animal I get, and the closer to becoming
human I get, that is the path to greatness…

If I operate on instinct, I am operating as an animal…
if I operate on reason, being rational, that is being human…
but I must also engage with my psychological side of
being human… in which I must love, be appreciated,
wanted, to be esteemed and have safety/security…
is also part of being human… but we can have both
sides of being human, in which we both reason
and, AND accept the bounds of our psychological needs…

To hope and to love is not rational, nor is it logical,
nor is it having reason… but we can love and hope
while also engaging in reason and rational thought…
we can do both… and we must do both if we are to
move from animal to becoming human…

Kropotkin

16

most people treat life as it is transactional,
whereas life is transformational…

we are here, going to there…
transforming ourselves as we go along…

Kropotkin

17

One of the perennial problems of philosophy has been
this question of the universal vs the individual/singular…
As far back as Zeno, the question of change vs uniformity,
has been either front and center, or at the outskirts of
philosophy…

Think of the universal, a human being… that there seems to
be a universal idea of a human being… Two legs, two arms,
one head, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth…and 5 senses,
that is a universal description of a human being and yet,
and yet, when faced with the individual human being,
they quite often fail to match the definition of being human…
I am legally deaf, does that mean I am not a human being
because I have failed in one aspect of the universal definition
of being human? or what if I was born without legs, or arms,
then am I still human? The individual nature of human beings
quite often doesn’t match the universal description of human beings…
Or what if I was born without any memory? Am I still a human being?

I work with disabled people who have problems with past,
present and future… they can’t recall 2 minutes earlier
or think about two minutes into the future…
they just can’t… does that mean they are not human?

it is not unusual for individual people to fail to match up
to the universal idea of human beings… where does that
leave us? We are hard pressed to match up individual
human beings with the universal definition of human beings…

the next problem within the universal vs the singular is
this question of change… a universal, by definition,
is the same today as it always was and will be tomorrow,
but we know from our own experiences as a human being,
that if there is one fundamental aspect of existence,
is that change is the one constant of the universe…
everything changes over time… everything…
think of fossils… dinosaurs fossils…we have the bones
of dinosaurs who lived a couple of hundred million years ago…
and yet even they changed… as we have them today, they
are vastly different then they were millions of years ago…
a bone on a living creature is very different than a bone found
in the ground millions of years after it lived… inside of an
animal, the bone changes and adapts, and even after going into
the ground, the bone itself changes… the bone loses any
moistness it might have had and becomes brittle, after several
hundred million years in the ground…

Armed with this information, can we safely say,
that there is such a thing as a universal? something that
was, is and always will be the same? I can’t think of anything…
Even the sun was born, one time a long time ago, and it
will, a few billion years from now, it will end…
One should keep in mind, that in our present location in the Milky
way, there was another sun that supernova… and our solar
system coalesce from the leftover dust from that prior star…

Changed is built in the very system we live in…
what of the laws of nature? What about the law of Gravity
or evolution or thermodynamics?

Evolution is the law of change in living beings, such as ourselves…
how lifeforms change from one set to another set…
we human beings came from Monkeys, who came from another
species who came from another species and we can go back
billions of years… of entire species changing from one set form
to another set under the pressures of evolution…

even something as universal as light, can change…
Photosynthesis, is the process by which green plants and
certain other organisms transform light energy into chemical energy…
the key word here is transform… even light can be transformed…
and we know from Einstein, that matter and energy are interchangable…
that they can be converted back and forth, matter into energy
and energy into matter…

So, given all of this, what can we say is ‘‘Universal’’
unchangeable from its very beginning? but therein lies
the problem, ‘‘from the very beginning’’ implies
it was created, and anything created, has, as its heart,
change as its basis… to be universal, it must not
have any sort of beginning or any sort of end…
and everything has a beginning and everything has
its end…

and what does all of this mean for us engaged in philosophy?

that the ongoing search for certainty, for a universal concept or
belief, for a search for the unity of existence, is doomed to
failure… to suggest any sort of universal unity of existence,
requires that the objects in question have something in
common with all the other objects… and what sort of
unity can objects have if they are limited, of short duration,
changeable, not fixed…But Kropotkin, we human beings
by our being alive, is different than inanimate objects…
while we are alive, yes, but once we are dead, we become
inanimate objects… there is no difference between a dead
human beings and a rock or a boulder…

all of this leads us to the conclusion that there is no
such thing as unity or eternal or a universal…
that there is only the one, the individual, the singular…
the philosophical search for a universal value is a wasted search…

which means the search for god, the universal is going to
be a failure…as there is only the individual, the singular,
and there is no such thing as a universal, common to all
things in the universe…

and this knowledge changes the nature of what it means to
be a philosopher and what the goal or purpose of philosophy
is…

Kropotkin

18

to be rather blunt, when one says, we are in pursuit
of the ‘‘ultimate nature of the universe’’'…
there isn’t such a thing as the ‘‘ultimate nature of the universe’’…

there is just me and there is just you…

and what connects me to the ''ultimate nature of the universe?"
if, if there is nothing to connect me to the universe?

We have yet, to come to grip to the fact that we are disconnected
discrete bits of atoms… now what?

Kropotkin

19

and if there is no connection between me and the universe,
there cannot be any such thing as determination…
I am determined… by what if there is no universal
connection?

In an attempt to overcome this problem of ‘‘free will’’’
being the only game in town, we have come up with
isms and ideologies that overcome the ‘‘free will’’ problem…
We are connected by isms like capitalism… or communism,
or Catholicism… (which of course is a stand in for all religions)

if we are determined, what determines us?
god, natural laws of physics, ‘‘universal’’ laws of science,
energy, matter? to be determined requires something
to be the determinator?

The question of existence is this question of ‘‘free will’’…
the problem being that all people see are the laws binding
us, not the freedom that is our lot…

if we are determined, then the Kantian questions, of
''What am I/we to do?" ''What can I/we know?" ''What should
I/we believe in?" become different questions then if we are
actually capable of ‘‘free will’’… If I am determined,
then ''What am I/we to do?" becomes a different question/
statement…

Which leads us to the problem of determination…
Why are human beings so invested in being determined?
if we are determined, then we are subject to the whims
of that which determines us… the greater the need of one
to be determined, the greater the need to escape the
question of one’s ‘‘free will’’… Emotionally, it is far safer
to be determined, then to hold to ‘‘free will’’

If I hold to ‘‘free will’’ then I am past, present and future,
responsible for me and my actions…If I am determined,
I am not responsible for myself or my actions…
Individual responsibility for my actions is only needed if
we subscribe to a ‘‘free will’’ universe…

So, which universe do you subscribe to, being determined or
of having ''free will?"

Kropotkin