We, of course know who Spinoza is,
but Wilson is Colin Wilson…and he wrote the
‘‘Outsider’’ series…and the point of relationship
that I want to work out is the freedom of actions…
For Spinoza, he is a limited Egotist… human beings
act from and for power… They strive to gain power…
(Nietzsche wrote a variation of this)
When people have a compulsion to act,
when they are not free to be who they are…
they are ‘‘unfree’’ and an example of this, is
addictions… our various addictions, our compulsions
to act on those addictions, that is not freedom…
we are held hostage by our addictions, to act by the
rules of the addictions… not rules freely designed by
us… thus, we are not free…
According to Wilson, Outsiders are the ones searching
for freedom…not to be controlled by our addictions or
an inability to freely decide our actions… if we are forced,
by either inner compulsions or outer forces, to act or think
in a certain way, we are not free… the Outsider wants
to know what it takes to be free… to avoid inner compulsions
and outer necessities that forces one to act or think in a
certain way… to be in a certain way…
the quest to be human is the quest to move further
and further away from animal instincts and appetites…
to rise above the animal instincts of hate, anger, lust,
violence… and the instinct to think of oneself solely…
which is to say, to think in terms of the group or society
and not so much in terms of ‘‘what is in it for me?’’…
Capitalism for example, is about private acts of greed,
to fulfill primal instincts of greed and egotism…
the animal thinks of itself, the human being thinks
of the state/society…for we are social creatures…
we cannot, cannot exist outside of the state/society…
we simply cannot… all of our needs, be it bodily
or psychologically, are meet by our interactions with others…
the bodily needs, the physical needs of all human beings, of
food/substance, water, shelter, health care, education,
are met within a social, community context by other
human beings… we cannot achieve meeting our biological
needs without other human beings… it is that simple…
as is our psychological needs are also met by other
human beings… the psychological needs of love, esteem,
safety/security, of a sense of belonging… these basic
psychological needs can only be met within a state or
society of other human beings…
and Outsiders freely admit this… but the Outsider ask,
of himself mostly, of also of others, is this social collective
need of/for group think, which is/was very important in the survival
of the human race, really what ‘‘I’’ should be doing?
the vast majority of the human race simply follows the
already set program of the state/society, without questioning
the basic premise of that set program… the isms that give
the state/society its ideological underpinnings… are those
isms really the isms we want or need, or should we at least
explore, other isms, other possibilities? To freely examine the
ideological isms that are present in all societies, is an act
of freedom… because we are not following the ‘‘crowd’’
in simply obeying without an examination of those isms…
Right now, we are simply following our isms, without
any examination of those values and beliefs to see if, if
they are values and beliefs we should be following in
our current environment… for that is really the criteria we
should be thinking about… are our current values and
beliefs really the values and beliefs the one we should
have, given our current reality, our current environment?
Today, we live in a modern, technological society, with
space flight and computers and machines build into
people, cochlear implants, or cell phones that are smarter
then we are, are our values and beliefs the right values
and beliefs given our current modern state/society?
Well, our religious beliefs, Christian, are over 2000 years old, created
by goat herders and shepherds… I’m not sure how effective
ethical beliefs created by people who herded sheep and goats,
are in today’s technical and industrial world… our personal
values and beliefs must, must reflect the environment we live in…
and if we live by values and beliefs that no longer fit into the
modern world, then we are not free because we are not acting
with ideals that work in our modern-day world…
In a technical, industrial world, we must have values and beliefs
that reflect the world we live in… not the world we used to
live in, but the world of 2024…
Which says a couple of things, one that we cannot hold onto
values and beliefs as permanent values and beliefs…
in a changing world, values and beliefs are ‘‘ad hoc’’ of
the moment because that moment will change and the
conditions themselves will change… and our values
and beliefs must change to adapt to the new conditions…
Values and beliefs can no longer be thought of as
eternal or forever or permanent…for even our
essential values and beliefs must change to match the
ever changing reality, we live in…
Spinoza thought that the one substance in the universe is
god, and everything is an extension of that one substance in
the universe, god…and everything we see is a part of that
one substance… the problem lies in this vision,
is that we must have some response to the various
realities of that one substance… we cannot give one
response to every situation even if every situation
seems to be of one substance… we react to
books differently that we do to dogs or cats…
or our family or our enemies… but a one size fits
all ism or ideology cannot meet the challenges of
modern living… which requires us to ‘‘dance’’
to the challenges of modern living…
The question of the Outsider is what rules are we
and should be, living by? the modern world challenges
cannot be met by ancient rules which don’t take into
account the current environment we live in…
Kropotkin
