The quest for understanding begins with

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

As due to circumstances, I haven’t been around of late,
but it gave me a chance to contemplate matters…
and one such area of interest has been modernity,
what is the current state of affairs of human beings given,
our current ''modernity?"

Modernity was once described as ‘‘fleeting, ephemeral
experience of life in an urban metropolis’’ at least according to
Charles Baudelaire… But what does this mean in practical terms?

I have lived in my little town for roughly 27 years, same place,
and before that, I lived within roughly 5 miles of my location,
several different places, since 1973… or over 50 years…
and this sleepy little town in the last few years has dramatically
change… with changes like apartments being torn down
and other building put in its place and several little mini-malls,
the kind that has dominated the American landscape for decades,
has been slowly torn down and again, replaced by condo’s and
apartments… and the same is true for the city above, where I
went to high school and the city below where I lived for 15 years…
the changes are so dramatic that those three cities have
become unrecognizable over the last 50 years…
and the same is true for virtually every American city… with massive
changes over the last 50 years as to make our cities unknowable from
its past…So, in a very physical sense, Baudelaire was absolutely
correct… the city we live in today is constantly changing and
evolving… but we are not just about the physicality of existence,
we also change and evolve in terms of our mental concepts
and thinking… in terms of our American political life, the modern
day American cannot overemphasis the damage that the political
crisis we know as Watergate, had done to America…
we can say that there was a before and after politically
in regard to Watergate… a line that once crossed, change
America forever… and today, we still live with the damaged
caused by Watergate…the pessimistic and cynical America
came about with the events of Watergate, and of course Vietnam…
That ideal of America being a ‘‘shining city on the hill’’ a beacon
of morals and a model for the entire world, was lost as the result
of Watergate and Vietnam… and what replaced it? Just read
the news today… there is no leadership in America today because
it was lost, not in being a model for the world, but in being a very loud
example of what not to do, politically, morally, ethically, judicially,
in fact, in practically every example of what a country could stand for,
we are the opposite of that… we set the extremely bad example
of what a country should not do…

But is there one or a few reasons as to our moral collapse?
as usual, there are many different and diverse reasons for
our inability to even know what it means to be a moral and ethical
person, city, state and society… and as we go through this,
I hope to work out some, some of the issues we face in terms
of returning to, becoming moral, ethical, responsible human beings…

but there are many, many, many moving parts to this… and it will take
quite some time and many posts to work out where we are and where
we need to be…

Let us begin

Kropotkin

2

there are many diverse and different aspects to being human…
in particular order and without explanation, here is a modest
list…

the environment, our political structure, our economic structure,
our ethics and morals, spiritual structure, our institutions,
our goals, and of course, our values… this is really a minimal
list of our human existence, experience and is by no way
complete or even halfway complete… but as we know that
in any system, ANY system, our ability to describe it will be
incomplete and incorrect because there is no way to be able
to FULLY explain any system in existence… bits and pieces
of a system will not be included in a full description of said system…
and it’s those bits and pieces that make a system work…

So, there is no way on earth that we can completely describe
any system that includes all aspects of the necessary parts of the
system that allows it to make sense… in other words, no matter
how hard we try, we can never completely describe a system to
the point of describing all necessary aspects of that system…
Every single system we describe will be incomplete,
missing important aspects that make that system work…
we cannot, no matter how hard we try, be able to completely
describe a system… that is a scientific fact… systems
cannot be completely and totally explained because some
aspects of our explanation will be incomplete and missing parts
of our system…there is no escaping that fact…

So, that is the first thing, no matter how hard we try, we can never
completely explain a system to all its components… we will be missing
some aspect of every single system every created…

that is the first problem, we cannot ever be able to explain
any system to its every aspect… we will miss something
of every single system ever created…

So, we know in advance that we are missing aspects of
any explanation of systems… that is the first thing…
we will have an incomplete explanation of any system we try
to describe/explain…

That human beings are not now and not ever be able to explain
or describe what it means to be human because we can’t ever
be able to explain/describe all aspects of being human…
failure to understand this point means one will not even
understand what being human means…

But we must, however inadequately, we must still
make an attempt to understand what it means to be human…
a partial answer is better than no answer…

but the question as always, begins with, where to start?
how do we begin to answer this question?
I think the best starting place begins with Nietzsche,
that we are on a journey from animal to becoming human…
a path, tightrope, a road from being animal to becoming human…
and with any destination, we must first understand our beginning
point… human beings were animals… now many say that we
are just/still only animal, but that is clearly not true…

we know from evolution, that animals, including us on the path
to becoming, begin with instincts… and therein lies part of our answer…
the further we move from instincts, which is animal to overcoming our
instincts, the closer we are to becoming human… it is this overcoming
of instincts that bring us closer to becoming human…that we share
with animals such needs as food, water, shelter, education
and beyond just physical needs, we also have psychological
needs, of love (which too is a bodily need) and of being human
needs safety/security, of being loved, of having self-esteem,
of having a sense of belonging…to be part of the group is
an essential aspect of being human…and those people who
are isolated from groups, they suffer from both mental and emotional
pain…that is why the greatest torture we can give another
human being is solitary confinement… many people who suffer
in solitary confinement never really recover, either mentally or
emotionally… so, in understanding what it means to be human,
we begin with this idea/notion that we need other human beings…
if there is a bedrock upon which to name what it means to be
human, having other human beings in our lives is it…

Human beings need other human beings… and that is both
a bodily and psychological need that is the basis of being human…

so, we begin to build our human society/state with this idea
that we must have other human beings within it in order
to be/become human…

that is one:

Kropotkin

3

But that was NEVER the ideal of the hypocritically called “united states of america”. That place has always, since its inception, been a shining light of immortals and what NOT to do.

Since the stealing and taking over of ‘the lands’ that became the “united states of america” there has been the PRIME example of what future peoples are best of NEVER doing.

Since ‘you’ adult human beings took over there has been NO responsible only adult human beings. The immorality from ‘your past’ is just catching up with ‘you’. And, there is NO going back now. ‘you’ will have to live with the consequences of ‘your past Wrong doings’.

Where ‘you’ people are, exactly, is LOST and CONFUSED. And the only real and True way out of this self-created predicament of ‘your doing’ I have already partly explained, and explain more fully in the Nine Step process.

4

Modernity has become all about maximizing profit of the very powerful, it has very little to do with average people at all anymore.

From all of that of course is the trend of everything devolving into postmodern existential nihilism.

Because when wealth, profit, and power are the only things that matter as societal values existential nihilism becomes the inevitable end result. It all becomes a simulation of financial capital and at the very bottom the lives of human beings crushed by it completely.

:clown_face:

5

Environment: an environment is the sum total of
all living and non-living elements and conditions that
surround and influence a person, animal, plant or thing…

an environment is not just the entire earth, but it also covers
part or a portion of the earth… a room or a jail or a school
room are also environments…can we have an ‘‘environment’’
without human beings? does something exist without, without
any human present? Which is clearly a variation of the tree
falling in a forest, does it make a noise, if no one hears it?
right now, at this very second, I am in my dining room,
writing on my kitchen table, (the only place where I can work from)
The room itself is my current environment…
on an environment this small, I can easily change it, move
the bookcases to another room, or move the TV set into the
bedroom, that will clearly change the environment of this room…
do I need any permission to engage in these changes?
Only the boss, my wife… but let us move outdoors,
we have another environment there… where there is a pool,
several chairs, several lounge chairs, and everyone
patio has plants and trees planted around them…
Now can I change that environment? Not really,
I need the HOA board permission and other people labor
to make any changes to my outdoor environment…
Now let us say, I went to another environment, say of going
to Yosemite… that being a national park, I have virtually no
chance to change any aspect of that environment…
and if I were to try, I would most likely be arrested, as I should
be…so, depending on the environment, I may or may not be
able to make changes to it… the smaller environments are
easier to change than large environments…

Now I have worked out some, some aspects of the environment,
but clearly there are other aspects to the environment we need
to examine…for example, the religious, how do say, Christians
approach this idea of environment?

The basic idea is that for the Christian, that it is god that
controls the environment… not human beings…you
have hears the saying, that god has a plan for everyone,
and that plan includes the environment…for if something
is outside of god’s control, then he is no longer omnipotent,
omnipotent: means having unlimited power absolute authority,
or the ability to do anything… and any corner of the universe beyond
god’s control means he is no longer omnipotent…
but for me, there is no god…which means if god
doesn’t have complete control over the environment,
then who does have control over the environment?
As I have previously argued against any metaphysical
aspect of the universe, that means I hold that the
changes to my environment comes from me or some
other natural choices… Earthquakes, floods, snow…
each of these can and often does change the
local, state or national environments… the forces that
can change an environment are natural forces… nothing
metaphysical or beyond the physical…
but what else can we say about the environment?

That our environment can and does impact or influence
our choices… my own environment today, leaves me
with the very faint, very faint possibility to journey into
space… An example of this was William Shatners journey into
space when he was 90 or so… and we come to another
aspect of the environment… that the environment impacts
or influences our own choices… and we have many diverse
examples of this… that in Plato’s environment, there was
absolutely no choice for him to go into space…his environment
dictates his choices… just as our environment dictates our
own choices… if one is born poor, the chances are that person
have a much smaller chance to become wealthy then one who
is born into a wealthy family… Elon Musk was born into a very
wealthy family as was IQ45… it wasn’t much of a journey for
them to become wealthy… as they were already there…but for
example, I was born into a very wealthy family but quite quickly
after my parent’s divorce, my mom had to work several jobs
to support her 4 kids, which quickly became 3 kids…
and we got meals from programs for the poor, especially
our school lunches… now, given my family wealth when
I was born, it would have been much easier to become wealthy
when they had money, but afterwards, it would have taken
a lot of effort to even become middle class… from where you start,
does dictate how far one has to go to become something…
our environment does dictate our choices to a great extent…
is it possible to overcome one’s environment? of course,
that is essentially the American dream…to go from little
or nothing to gaining the American Dream, (whatever that might be)
but our environment does to a great extent, dictate what
is or isn’t possible for us to gain or achieve…

and it is on this note that much of what happens, happens…
for example, when reading about a crime committed, say murder,
and we read about the person who committed the murder,
and we are not surprises to read that the criminal in question,
had a brutal childhood… was beaten as a child, had very
few resources to count on, quite often was abandoned,
or stole things to survive, and when caught, spent time
in prison… but in looking at that person’s life, we
see how the very limited resources that person had,
limited the choices that person had…it would have
been extremely difficult for that person to get enough an
education to get into a decent collage… and that environment
is often enough to bring a person into having a greater
and greater choices… an environment like collage allows
one greater choices into the future… but it is quite easy, in fact
it is very, very easy to claim that a person already had
choices and they made the wrong choice, turning to crime,
instead of school… but again, our environment quite often
makes our choices for us… and this is why liberals
focuses on the environment… for the environment helps
create our choices… if we proved children with a better
environment, they can have better choices available to them…
and therein lies the reason, one of them anyway, as to
bringing about the welfare state or the ‘‘entitlement
programs’’ such as WIC programs or head start… an attempt
to create a better environment for children, so they have better
choices available to them…

I am a parent, my daughter is now middle age, but when she was
growing up, it was our job, as parents, to create a safe environment
so, she could make and have the right choices available to her…
did she make the right choices? sometimes, sometimes not…
but as a parent, I can’t control that… all I can do is create
an environment that is best able to help her make the right
choices…

But this idea of environment, isn’t just about parents and children,
it is about all of us…as a state or a society, we create
an environment for those around us… it is my contention
that the environment we have created in the US, is in fact
allowing people to make the wrong choices…
If the environment is allowing one to commit crimes or
the wiliness to lie, that stems back to our own inability
to create an environment that is conducive to doing the
‘‘right thing’’…

Or said another way, the criminal trump family is creating
an environment that says it’s ok to commit crimes and lie
about it…for that is the environment they are creating…
and we are allowing… for one thing to remember, one person,
one solo person does not have ethics or morality… it’s impossible
for one person to hold to ethics… ethics and morality takes two
or more people to make it work…
So, to think, that we can solve ethical, moral problems by one
person ethically acting alone, never happened… ethics, morals
is a communal, social activity… it really does take a village
for there to be morals, ethics… and ethical, moral standards
begin with the environment, exactly as it has been done for
human beings since time began…if you want moral, ethical
people, it begins within our environment that chooses to be
ethical and moral… we also have our environment impact
us by the environment setting the example for us to use and
think about…I recall my parents, my mom specifically
telling me not to smoke… while she had a cigarette in her
hand… that is an example of an environment that sends
me and us, mixed messages… but which lesson or
message should I follow? to smoke, as she did or not
to smoke as she said for me to follow? BTW, I have never
in my life tried a cigarette… for me, I made a choice, and
I think I made the right choice…but given the environment,
where the adults around me smoked, and the sheer number
of ads and commercials telling me how ‘‘cool’’ smoking is,
it is no wonder many people turned to smoking…

Now one may complain, as many around ILP complain about
how fucked up men are or how the state/society is fucked up,
or how individuals are ‘‘ruining’’ life in America today, but
let us ask ourselves, what role does our environment play
in this line of questioning? If we see congressmen and
the president committing crimes without any consequences,
how can we not say anything about them and then complain
about others who are also committing crimes?
if our ‘‘leaders’’ have no problem committing crimes, then
why can’t we? this is the environment we are in today…
there is widespread crime and violence and it is deemed
acceptable by the environment… if we don’t punish it
and if we don’t say anything, then that is, by default,
committing crime is acceptable…
the environment determines our options…

So, given all of this, what should we do about our environment
and the choices determined by our environment?

Kropotkin

6

Why do you believe, absolutely, that a system, itself, could never ever fully explain itself. Obviously nothing else could know ‘a system’ better than ‘itself’, and if ‘a system’ can explain things, and knows itself fully, then it logically obviously could itself FULLY.

Here is another prime example of ‘the way’ “peter kropotkin” so-calls ‘argue’.

I believe something is true. I say what I believe is true. Therefore, what I believe and say is true, is true.

“peter kropotkin” seems to believe that because it claims something to be true is all that is needed of ‘it’ to be true.

For example, because “peter kropotkin” believes that there is no way on earth that it can completely describe absolutely any system in the whole of the Universe, therefore this means, absolutely, that human beings for the rest of eternity will never ever be able to describe absolutely any system at all FULLY.

As can be clearly seen here, absolutely nothing is proved as proof, and there is also nothing provided that supports the claim, besides, of course, “peter kropotkin’s” own preexisting belief only.

Here is a prime example of circular reasoning, with the bonus of adding in the, “this is a scientific fact” claim, to further trick and deceive some people into believing this made-up fabrication.

Even the system the Universe, Itself, can be explained. The Universe, Itself, is fundamentally made up of two things. These two things coexist together always, and it is because of these two things all things evolve in creation.

And, what proof do you have for this belief and claim of yours “peter kropotkin”.

you just keep repeating the same thing, just with different words, here in your circular reasoning. All you are essentially saying is because I believe we can never know a system fully this means that we will never know a system fully.

But discovering, or learning, and understanding and knowing who and what a human being is exactly, and how the ‘human being’ works fully was and is a very simple and easy process.

Why ‘must’ ‘we’?

Since when has there been a ‘must’ that human beings must attempt to understand “themselves”?

Human transferred from the human animal into the human being quite a while ago “peter kropotkin”. There is even a story about HOW it happened, exactly. It is called the story of “adam and eve”, in which it explains HOW the animal human evolved into the creation of the human being.

‘you’ might believe that ‘you know’ this, but for ‘us’ ‘we’ do NOT claim this at all.

Nothing can overcome ‘its instincts’, although and obviously adult human beings have ‘tried to’ ‘override’ instincts with their distorted and Wrong presumptions and beliefs.

So, the instinct of human beings is to love, care for, guide, and protect each other, but here “peter kropotkin” believes, absolutely, that to become so-called ‘closer to human’, (which is ‘the animal’), is to overcome these natural instincts within human beings.

Talk about taking things ‘backwards’.

So, what is ‘your reason’ for wanting to ‘overcome’ what is ‘needed’ and is ‘our instinct’, exactly?

So, supposedly, the quest for understanding begins with:

  1. you will never understand anything fully.
  2. you have to overcome your natural instinct of loving and caring for others to become ‘human’.

How can you write so many words but express and explain things so Wrong?

7

Is this satire? :rofl: When has it EVER been that?? You’d better tell the rest of the world because they certainly aren’t aware that this is what they think or have ever thought :roll_eyes:

8

Now that I have worked out environment, we can put
some meat on it…

the question of environment brings us to the question of
Modernity… what is our current environment?
in other words, we have had several environments in
the past, for example, the Enlightenment was one
such environment… Romanticism is another such
environment… this question of environment or as
some have called it, our milieu… which is defined as

Milieu: is a person’s social, cultural, or physical surroundings
and environment…

and today, what milieu or environment are we in?
early in the 20th century, it was called Modernity…
then we had post-modern, some call today ‘‘meta modernism’’
or even ‘‘post truth’’… but let us reexamine some ideas about
modernism and try to move forward…

As Baudelaire said:

‘‘Modernity is the transient, the fleeting the contingent; it is
one half art, the other being eternal and the immovable’’

which is to say, for Baudelaire, artist have a dual responsibility,
an artist must immerse themselves in the contemporary world
to ‘‘extract the eternal from the ephemeral’’ capturing the
eternal from the ephemeral… capturing the timeless beauty hidden
within passing moments, changing fashions and everyday city life…

One of the many noticeable reactions to modernity, was this notion
of the crowd, the masses, the mob… if nothing else modernity did,
bringing us to a vision where the masses/mob, have some impact
on our lives, economically, socially and politically… and in reading
those who lived in the 19th century, with the arrival of the people, masses,
the mob, came a reaction to that… there were a whole group of people
who were clearly against this newfound thing… the mob/the masses…
along with Baudelaire, the hatred against the mob is a whose who of
19th century writers and thinkers… including Baudelaire, we have
Kierkegaard, Ibsen, Nietzsche and of course Schopenhauer…
each of them wrote about their dislike or actual hatred of the masses
or the mob… which in part, help defined modernity…
in addition to these writers, we have the American founding
fathers also writing in opposition to the mob… in fact,
both the declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
were documents that were very weary of the mob…
and the founding fathers were pretty clear on their
opposition to the mob…but therein lies the modern problem,
the modernity is all about the mob/the masses…which is
shown by the various bill of right which is designed to
protect free speech and freedom of religion and of course,
the right to a free press…before the enlightenment, no one
thought to include the masses in any sort of decision making
involving the masses lives…so, you have one series of
thoughts being clearly anti-mob/masses and we have
both the constitution and the declaration being about protecting
the minorities thought, not just in protection of the majority…
and this, conflict, for lack of a better term, has existed in
America ever since… the cultural wars of the last
50 years, is just another example of this conflict between
the ‘‘elites’’ and the masses…

So, this question of Modernity, is a very long one, lasting
over 200 years… and we have to examine the
environment, our current milieu to understand what is
at stake in understanding what modernity actually is…

Kropotkin

9

Some people were this delusional.

Besides the above, ‘this one’ actually ‘tries to’ insist that the quest for understanding begins with holding ‘the belief’ that NO one has the ability to describe and understand will absolutely ALWAYS be incomplete and INCORRECT.

So, if anyone here has a question to understand anything, then you MUST BELIEVE, ABSOLUTELY, that you will NEVER understand anything fully, and that your understanding WILL ALWAYS REMAIN INCORRECT.

10

So, how are we to go about thinking about our
current, our modernity? What questions are engaged with when
we discuss our relationship with modernity?
How do we know, know that modernity is engaged with
Baudelaire idea about modernity being ‘‘transient, fleeting,
and contingent’’… we can use ART itself as being our guide
to modernity, the environment that is as Baudelaire describes,
‘‘transient, fleeting and contingent’’

As of right now, ART is our witness to the state of modernity,
and let us look at ART… we can see how ART before 1860,
was still the ART that had been around since the Middle Ages…
and looking at ART, we see that it still painted the same way,
that ARTISTS have done since the Middle Ages…
ARTISTS painted what they saw… and faithfully recorded
that on canvas, stone, creating paintings, sculpture, buildings…
that ARTEST were recording the ‘‘truth’’ or ‘‘reality’’ as they saw it…
so, why does that change, beginning in roughly, 1870?
With the Impressionists, who still painted what they saw, but
with a new modern flare…that in impressionism, we can still
tell what is being painted, however it is exaggerated, bolder..
it is reality/the truth painted through the eyes of someone
in the midst of modernity… Think of ART as being a way someone
see’s the truth or reality… so, what does Impressionism tell us?
that the paintings are the way the world is viewed by some ARTISTS…
Impressionism is a kinda half way house from paintings as they have
been done for a thousand years, and the coming 20th century vision
of reality…the next prominent ART school is Symbolism, which
again, is simply a vision of reality or the truth…and Symbolism
evolved from Romanticism without a clear or defining demarcation
point…Romanticism existed in the 19th century as a reaction
to the ‘‘Enlightenment’’ another set time period, or an
environment like Romanticism… So, Symbolism is a
reaction to its environment just as every single ART school
that has existed, such as the next in line school of ART,
the Post-expressionism, and the Decadent Movement
and ART Nouveau, to name a few movements after impressionism…
and each of them, a response to the environment created by
every new movement/school…and each movement, creating
new ways of seeing, new ways of understanding, a new way to
explore reality/truth…

Let us explore one art piece and see where it leads us…
‘‘The Scream’’ by Edvard Munch… I picked that one because
it is so famous… The Scream can and does, tell us many different
stories about modernity and our current environment…
It could not have been painted any earlier than it was because
it too, tells us a story about the reality/truth the ARTISTS sees…
Goethe who died about 50 years before this painting was done,
would not have understood the reality/truth that the ARTIST
Munch saw… Munch had 50 years of capitalism and modernity
and the industrial revolution to work with that Goethe didn’t have…
the Scream is Munch’s vision of that time’s reality, that truth…
and the Scream stands for modernity… the ‘‘transient, the fleeting,
the contingent’’ and the Scream still stands today, as a faithful
representation of our modern world… we can still understand
what exactly this painting reflects about modernity… it is
a faithful picture of the reality that the ARTIST saw…

And what other aspects of modernity can we see? That there is
no absolute standards upon which we can use to support a vision
of reality… or to say that another way, there is no objective reality
we have that we can use to navigate the world…
let us take music for example, tell me, who was the greatest
musician in the world over the last 126 years, or since 1900?
and everyone will have a different answer because everyone has
a different standard… BTW, I nominate Miles Davis because
that is my own viewpoint and understanding… my own reality or
truth…but your own reality might suggest it to be Eric Clapton
or perhaps Elvis, or Paul McCartney, or Sting? Who is to say?
because it would be hard to create a reality, a truth about who
is the greatest musician in the last 126 years because we have
no way to create a standard that would include every musician
during those years… what stats are you going to use to
name the greatest musician during the last 126 years…

So, let us return to ART… what is the greatest ART, painting
that was done over the last 126 years?
One may make the argument that it was ‘‘Guernica’’ by Picasso…
but look at that picture, I am looking at it right now…
without knowing the background of why Picasso painted ‘‘Guernica’’
and just by looking at it, can you see what reality or truth Picasso
is trying to tell us? If one doesn’t know the background of why
Picasso painted ‘‘Guernica’’ how would you know the context of
that painting? or let us try this, look at Duchamp painting,
‘‘Nude descending a staircase, NO, 2’’

looking at this painting, without knowing the title, could you
have seen the truth or reality of this painting? The three artists,
Picasso, Duchamp or Munch, their paintings reflects their understanding
or the truth of what they see… and those truths that they see,
it does seem to be ‘‘transient, fleeting, contingent’’ or what
Baudelaire declares to be ‘‘modernity’’…

If ARTEST are correct in seeing our modern times as ‘‘transient,
fleeing, contingent’’ then what does Philosophy say about our times?
Since Nietzsche, the problem that philosophers have faced is
morality/ethics… on what grounds can we judge morality on if
we don’t have a universal ethics created by religion to guide us?
recall, if ‘‘god is dead’’ then where is our morality coming from?
if our morality, the basis of our ethics, is ‘‘transient, fleeting,
contingent’’ then where does our morals values come from?

But Kropotkin, how can you believe in this? I am simply taking
Nietzsche seriously, maybe try taking philosophy and its questions
seriously… and we might, might actually get some real/true philosophy
being done around here…But Kropotkin, I don’t see any questions
that philosophy has left us? and therein lies the first problem,
your vision extends to the end of your nose, no further…
How does the bigotry and prejudice of hating, in no particular
order, Jews, Liberals, education, blacks, women, ‘‘WOKE’’ help
us move toward answering our philosophical questions?
Hating Jews for example, isn’t philosophy or even an attempt at
understanding reality, truth? Hating is not seeking but is an attempt
to escape reality or the truth… many, even around a philosophy
site such as this is, mistake hate, which is a prejudice, as the truth
or as a reality… it isn’t… it is simply bigotry and prejudice,
and those are not reality… they are a blindness which is
hiding the truth… and why are they are blindness and not
a reality? Because reality, the truth has already disproved
these bigotries and prejudice… and what is reality/truth?
it is experience… these blind people of ILP see an imagined
reality, for example, that Liberals hate America… and yet,
experience tells us something different… for what proof,
does a conservative have that ‘‘Liberals hate America’’…
where is the evidence? They only have their bigotries and
prejudice to point to, in their defense of the statement,
‘‘Liberals hate America’’… there is no truth or reality to
defend their prejudices… where is the experience that
show us ‘‘Liberals hate America’’…

and now we return to the question at hand, Modernity…
the only possibility to work out the truth or reality, of what
Modernity really is, is by experience… and which experience
give us an insight into what it means to have/be modernity?

Kropotkin

11

Goethe wouldn’t have understood The Scream??

Goethe who co-founded Sturm und Drang, a literary movement dedicated entirely to overwhelming emotional turmoil, irrationality, and psychological angst, wouldn’t have understood the existential terror in The Scream???

Goethe who wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book about intense, unmanageable existential agony so visceral it sparked a wave of copycat suicides across Europe wouldn’t understand The Scream??

Goethe who wrote Faust, at tale existential disorientation, alienation, and spiritual dread, wouldn’t understand The Scream?? Goethe understood existential screaming better than almost anyone.

Medieval artists painted what they saw??? This is the opposite of the case. The completely avoided realism, proportion, and perspective to paint flat, symbolic, theological allegories - that is things they had not seen. And we have many examples of artists Pre-1860 introducing terror and existential angst and the 'not what they could directly see: Bosch, Fuselli and Goya are a few famous examples.

It is a weird idea that existential terror and angst came with modernism. There is nothing in Munch writings that indicates he was portraying the problems of capitalism and modernism. And his own horrors had to do with his family’s deaths and illnesses. He was agoraphobic and had a lot of illnesses himself, all things that Medieval and even Ancient people, heck even CroMagnon humans could identify with. The location of the painting is nearly entirely natural, and it is rural. Fjord and sky and nature. This would be an absurd choice for someone pointing out the horror of capitalism and industrialization.

I can’t fully blame PK for this. There were some critics, long since debunked who tried to say it was about modernity, but there’s nothing in the painting or in anything Munch said or wrote that connects it to that. It is clearly archetypal horror and universal as far as time and likely even culture.

__________________________________________________________________________

Differences in taste over art does not demonstrate there is no objective reality. These are separate realms. People might differ over the Mona Lisa. But if you ask them where it is in the room, they’ll all walk and point at the same place. They will agree there is a frame, a human portrayed, that it is a painting and so on.

‘We’ never had a universal ethics. There were always diverse religions, for example, with opposed branches. One look at Christianity shows that the problem of determining a universal ethics has been around for the whole history of Christianity even within Christianity, let alone with all the pagans, other religions, indigenous people and their spiritualities, sects, cults and the major division between P & C & O, those enormous faction in Christianity.

Well, if there is no objective reality, that’s all you have also. So, if you are right about reality, then you in the same boat as them.

12

As noted, before, Baudelaire said that modernity is:

‘‘transient, fleeting, contingent’’

but we can also connect this definition of modernity into
our modern-day object of worship, that of money/profits…
for money itself is ‘‘transient, fleeting, contingent’’
that money itself is exactly how we describe modernity,
‘‘transient, fleeing, contingent’’ and perhaps that is the reason
that modernity is so described, because modernity is so tied
into money/profits, that we can’t separate the two concepts,
modernity and money, are two sides of the same coin…
can you even disconnect the two, money and modernity?
I don’t see how…and the pursuit of money, that is the very
essence of what it means to be modern… the religion of the
last two centuries has been capitalism with its praying to money
as its god…

The problem lies in this notion that all we need, ever, is money…
and the rest will take care of itself…Which is no different than
the man who calls for us to repent and accept jesus as his savior…
and money plays of the role of the savior, and I ask, is there
a third way? Where we don’t accept Jesus or money as our
saviors, but we seek out another path toward salvation…

and that is our environment today… where money is god and
the more money one has, the closer to god one is…
that salvation depends on the size of one’s bank account…
the only reason money/profits have value is that everyone
accepts that value, money only works if people believe in it,
once people stop believing in worth of pieces of paper, those
pieces of paper have no value of any kind outside of being
pieces of paper…which is to say, the only reason we haven’t
collapsed as a society, is that people, on faith, accept money/
pieces of paper have some value…the only reason money
has value is because you believe it to be so, stop believing
in this, and money has no more value… the only thing
keeping the modern world functioning is the faith people have
in money, as being something real, whereas it has no value
outside of being a colored piece of paper…that is how flimsy
the modern world is, stop having faith in colored pieces
of paper and the world collapses… lose the faith and lose the world…

So, what does this tell us? that the world is built on money
and money only has value as long as we believe it does…
that isn’t a strong foundation to build the modern world on…
faith in colored pieces of paper…

so, let us engage in a thought experiment, the world suffers
some sort of catastrophe, an asteroid hits the earth…
what will have value then? will it be colored pieces of paper,
or will it be concrete objects, one can hold in one’s hand…
food, water, shelter, survival tools such as guns, hammers,
medicine? I know given a choice, I would rather have the tools
rather than money because money only works if, IF people accept
it has value… You can’t eat money, you can’t protect yourself with money,
you can’t dig in the ground with money, you need food, guns, shovel’s,
to survive, not the actual piece of paper…for you can’t do anything with
colored pieces of paper… if one understands this, then it becomes
hard to have faith in something so perishable as colored money…
and so, Kropotkin, what do you suggest?

That we rethink the modern day belief in cash, because
it has no real value… that we seek out something more
permanent, as modernity is about the transient, the fleeting,
the contingent, we seek out what is not transient, or fleeing
or contingent… as modernity has us seeking those temporary
things…

and some might say, what about god/religion… and once again,
it becomes a matter of faith, of belief in something that doesn’t
exists… like the value of colored pieces of paper… I note
that money as we know it, only came about roughly 700 BC…
that the vast majority of human existence was without any money…
millions of years of existence with no concept of money…
can you even imagine such a thing? that 700 BC of money
coming into play, was less than 200 years before Socrates,
Confucius, the Buddha, and other thinkers of the time…
in other words, the rise of philosophers came with the
invention of money… the Vedas of India, were written
before the advent of money… and the wealthy man was
described as one having many cows… cows were India’s
understanding of wealth… and today, we see that cows
have legal protection from being harmed… I for one, see
the connection between cows as being wealth in one era,
being the object of protection in another era…

As money has no value outside the one we give it,
we may as well worship cows for at least they give us something,
which is far more than I can say about money… colored pieces of
paper… which have no value until/unless someone believes
it to have value… and if one were to say, money/colored pieces
of paper have value, then as far as I can tell, you have been
brainwashed into thinking that money has some external value
other than being colored pieces of paper…

Kropotkin

13

Now let us think about what this means…

that by putting money/profits ahead of people, as clearly
both the American political and its economic systems do,
we are faced with nihilism… which is the negation of human
beings and their values…and this negation of people stems
from putting money before people…Ok, Kropotkin, now what?
Unlike many around here, I don’t just answer the negative, how
wrong someone else is, but what could be a positive solution
to this problem…

and at this point, we return to my original post, which is
about environment… and our own current environment is
one of nihilism… which is the negation of people over some
abstract idea… the reason why it seems that some people
hurt others or find it ‘‘pleasurable’’ to damage and even destroy
things is because that is a reaction to being denied valued…
If I am, as capitalism quite clearly says, that I am expendable
and without any value, if that is my value, what point is there
to play the game, of participating in capitalism or even democracy
our environment determines what our choices are, and given we
are deemed expendable and irrelevant, why would I want to
engage in that society/state? Why not commit violence and
harm, if I am expendable and irrelevant, so are you…If
there is nothing to be gained by kindness and courtesy, why
bother having those traits? if it is truly a dog eat dog world,
why even bother? and because there is no goal or purpose
given in our capitalistic world, there is no goal to aim for,
something to become…if that is true, then committing violence
against others has as much value as working a 40 hour job…
both are pointless experiences…

Because we negate goals and a sense of purpose in capitalism,
what goals or purpose makes any sense if all we ever honor is
the accumulation of colored pieces of paper…and the way the
system is rigged to prevent the vast majority of people from ever
making enough money to actual prosper, or even have a decent
retirement… why should I kill myself working for a system that
couldn’t care less if I live or die? why bother engaging for the
rest of my life needlessly in working, when there is no benefit to be
gained by so working?

So, one sees the random violence from different quarters
of the state/society, it stems from there being no other real
option available to us… if capitalism is our only choice,
that means there is no choice… for all capitalism does is
to gain profits and money, which has no future or possibility of
making any valid changes for us to escape the nihilism of capitalism…
there is no future or a possibility of a future if all we are attempting
to get is money/profits… because, as I have noted before,
the gaining of money is transient, fleeting, contingent…
well, Kropotkin, having money means I can buy a house or
a car… and these two are also transient, fleeting, contingent…
Most of us only buy cars when the old ones break down, but
that is the capitalistic point where material goods become
replaceable because they are set to break down after a short
period of time… We have had more than a couple of dish washers,
and why? because those earlier dishwashers were designed to
break down and force us to buy another dishwasher…
it is this planned obsolescence that drives the modern world,
to help drive profits… where our cars, cell phones, computers,
and dishwashers are made to fail in a fairly short time…
and this extends throughout our modern world… we don’t
have cures for cancer or diabetes because to do so, would
cost those who make those temporary, fleeting, contingent
pills need to keep people from being cured, to maintain their
profits levels… profits before people…

and this is the environment that we face in our modern world…
and our environment dictates our reactions… we are not
essential, nor are we permanent… we human beings are
modern in our being transient, fleeting and contingent…
which is all the justification one needs to put profits before
people…

and within an environment that considers people to be
transient, fleeting, contingent, where is the motivation
to become something more than just a modern person?
Why not commit violence and create danger, because I have
no other value left to me in our modern world… create an
environment where people have value and self-worth,
and we create a society where people will do the right thing,
where people will become something more than just transient, or
fleeting… the quest is to become human, where I have
value beyond just my production or consumption or being
a worker… and one place to start, is by understanding what
it means to be ‘‘WOKE’’ which the moral principle of people
having value and worth just because they are people…
to treat people with decency, justice, respect are all values
which engaged within an entire state/society, will help
us free ourselves from becoming modern, transient…

to object to ‘‘WOKE’’ is to say, yes, to becoming part
of a system that engages in treating people like they
have no value, no worth… the path of nihilism is the
path to deny people their worth, and nihilism is clearly
the modern path that we have been walking down for
many years… putting profits before people is the path
of nihilism…

the beginning of our being ‘‘saved’’ begins with us denying
the proposition of profits over people… that is the beginning
of becoming an environment where all people are treated with
value and respect… and with that new environment, we can
begin the path to becoming human, fully human…
but that can only start once we admit that our current
modern state/society, our current environment is not working
for us… solutions can only be found once we admit we
have a problem… taking that first step… and until we do that,
we will remain, modern people…

Kropotkin