Old wine into new bottles

we have a number of issues we as human beings, as
citizens of certain countries… America for me,
and as members of certain ism’s and ideologies…
UR the radical rightwing…

but finding solutions to these issues, be it
income inequality, global warming, overpopulation,
the reduction in resources such as water and oil, which
will bring out the next wars… all of these problems
we face, seem insurmountable because we
attempt to solve these problems with old
solutions, not new solutions…

the radical right, ever being out of the times, claims
that the old solutions of god, family, country will solve
our problems… of course not seeing that many of our
current problem exist because of those old solutions…

it is our fealty to faded old religions that is keeping us from
finding new solutions to new problems…there is no problem
that requires us to believe that god or religion is the answer…

and how does fealty to one’s country allow us to solve the vexing
problem of income inequality or overpopulation?

we cannot answer new problems with old answers…
as it best put, surprisingly enough, in the bible…

“And no man putteth new wine into old bottles;
else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled,
and the bottles shall parish. but new wine must be put into
new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk
old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better”

We must engage with new wine into new bottles or we
spill both…so what new solutions can we find for our
“Modern” problems?

that old solutions like religion cannot answer our new wine
questions, and that old solutions like politics as usual,
will not answer the question of new bottles…

instead of the old wine of tribalism, which hasn’t solved
a single problem in the new age, and in fact has created
dozens of problems we must seek solutions for… we cannot
engage in the old answers of tribalism, or engage in the old
answers of god, faith, country for questions that exists outside
of such considerations… for example, this question
the reduction of resources, how does the answer of god, faith
or country solve the problem of draughts and lack of drinkable water
in many diverse locations such as the American west, South Africa,
Zimbabwe, Somalia, Morrocco, China, Pakistan… how does
a faith in god or a belief in religion, solve this problem of
many diverse countries suffering from drought?

or how do we finally, end the threat of war? is it by religion?
I don’t see it because so many countries have different and
diverse religions… try to find a similarity in religion
in such countries as China, Russia, England and the U.S.
we cannot find a similarity in either ism’s or religions,
or language or politically if we all hold to different
faiths, languages, political, economic and philosophical
beliefs…

to find common ground requires some common beliefs…
where do we find such commonalities within such diverse
states as China, Russia, France, Egypt and the U.S?

How does a resort to the past solve this question of
finding commonality between such diverse countries?

we can only solve our “Modern” problems with a recourse to
new found commonality with it various parties… in other words,
perhaps the best way, and maybe the only way to unite the world into
a common cause is to have an Alien invasion of Earth…
for if we do not unite and become one in the fight against
an Alien force determine to take over earth and eliminate
people, we will all die… simple as that and that maybe,
the only way I can see that we can become one with each other…
a force threating all of us… and our own individual survival
can only occur if we combine our forces and defeat the alien
forces together… we fight together or die alone…

but perhaps something similar to this can happen if
we take a look at the larger picture of existence…

individually, as countries, we cannot survive on our own…
we cannot survive alone as individual human beings…
it doesn’t take a village to educate our young, it takes
a village to survive as human beings…for I cannot survive
alone… I must have others, millions of others to survive
individually… we are united we just can’t see that yet…
for we seek our differences instead of seeking our
commonalities… we have far more in common then
we do have in differences… you and I are more alike,
then we are different…

and the tribalism, faith, god, country, and other ism’s prevent
us from seeing our similarities/commonalities… instead
we see our differences because of failed ism’s, ideologies,
faiths, religions, and beliefs in country…

the story of the human race is the story of us going from
the small to the large… we once held to tribes and small families
as being the highest responsibility of being human, (for in the beginning
human beings were simple tribesman and a small collection of
families to becoming large states in which we are united in
such beliefs as country and god and in the future, to survive,
we must include everyone into our systems… in other words,
we have grown from small tribes to small cities, to small nations
to large nations into empires and with the rise of the United Nations,
we are beginning to see the path into the future as being the
path where we see people, all people as kinsman, part of the tribe
of human beings…all people must see each other as part of the tribe
or we will no survive as human beings…

and thus we expand our vision from the one, to the few to the many
to all… and we can now see how the old wine of the past can no
longer be sufficient enough to see us through this “modern” times…

we must have the “new wine in new bottles” to make the next growth
of human existence possible…

that means we drop the old wine of god, family, faith, country
and accept the new wine of I am a “brother to all of mankind”
and I cannot succeed without all of mankind helping me
and that same mankind cannot succeed without my help…

we work together or we die alone…

Kropotkin

the failure of the modern age lies in its
belief that our answers lie in some sort of
“Rugged individualism” or some offshoot
of capitalism in which the individual is supreme,
whereas the reality is the individual can only
exists within the whole… my own personal
survival can only happen within the state,
the society, the culture that I exist within…

without the state/the society/ the culture,
I cannot be… I cannot grow, I cannot become who I am…
to become human beings, we need others, both socially
and politically and philosophically…
and the best way the “We” can exist is by the state,
the society, the culture…this would suggest that
politically, we cannot grow or become within
individualistic society or states… or said another way…

" We the people in order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
constitution for the United States of America"

The very first words are “we the people” not “as Individuals”,
but as “we”, the people as one… knew as the Greeks knew,
that we cannot become human beings without the benefits
of the state or of society… and any type of individualistic
politics or economics like “rugged individualism” or
capitalism, cannot secede without because we cannot
become individually… without a vast amount of help
from other people…

the very fact that we must have societies and the state to
have any kind of survival or success means that
the into the future requires us to engage socially,
politically, philosophically with ideas like communism,
and socialism, in which we put society, the state into
its proper place as teacher, educator of us all…

read a biography of Goethe, like I am right now, tells us
that even with his great genius, he could not have succeeded
without the state, without the society he lived in…
his natural genius was boosted by and increased by
his relationship with the state, with the society, with
his civilization that he lived in… Goethe became Goethe
because of the land and country he lived in and the state
and society he lived in… it becomes quite clear,
that to become the best Kropotkin I can become,
requires, demands that I am helped by the state, the
society I live in…it is not by the individualistic, capitalistic
society/economics that make me who I am, but it is the communal,
together quality of our society that makes me who I am…
it is by the schools, the commonality of America that allows
me to achieve whatever greatness I happen to achieve…

But Kropotkin, you are painting people as they ought to be,
not as they really are… no, I am saying to get from here,
ought to be, to there, as they really are, we must unite
together, become one and within that one, we can become,
not necessarily as we are right now, but as we ought to be…
and the goal, of becoming who we ought to be, is
just as important, if not more important then who we are
right now…

it is not the static nature of human existence we must engage
with, but with our possibilities of becoming that we need, must
be engaged with…it is not enough to know who I am, but
who I can become that completes me as a human being…

we cannot make any progress into the future as long as we fixate
on who we are, we can only make progress if we see who we can
become… where the future possibilities are as important as
our current realities… “I am today, but what can I be tomorrow”
are two equally important statements…the present is who we are
and the future is who we might be… and both is necessary for
us to become the human beings we ought to become…

one eye on the present and one eye on the future…
we need not pay attention to the past… because the past
is frozen into place by being the past… but I can change
the present and I can become the future… but I have no
influence on the past nor do I want to engage in the past
in any other way then to be a model of any possible futures…
the past is simple a place where our hero’s live and we can see
what was possible for them, and we can imagine for ourselves,
what we could be with those role models of the past showing us
the way…the past is nothing more than a guide into the future…
and the past should be treated as such, a guide and only as a guide,
nothing more…Gandhi became this and Goethe became this…
and we can learn from their experiences what they became,
and I can use this going into the future… as a model for my own
possibilities…but this is done in conjunction with the present
which is the unifying of what it means to be human…
I can become with your help and you can become with my help…
and that is only possible within a state, a society, a civilization…

to become one and to seek out our unities…
not our differences…that is the path into the future…

Kropotkin