The questions we ask

The question before us, is the Kantian Questions,
''What am I/we to do?"
''What am I/we to believe in?"
''What can I/we know?"

and each of these questions is grounded by what
‘‘Values’’ we use or live under…

Today, when asked, ‘‘Who are you?" most people
answer with, ""I am a teacher’’ or ‘‘I work in a
grocery store’’… Or I am a lawyer…
we define ourselves in terms of what we do
for a living, not in terms of the values we hold
or a sense of being ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’ people…
for being ‘‘good’’ is irrelevant to us ‘‘modern’s’’…

what else is there to think about?

Kropotkin

And the question often asked, what does it take to
be a ‘‘good’’ person?.. and why ‘‘good’’ and not ‘‘evil’’ or
‘‘bad’’

There are certain basic in being human… One: human beings
have needs… both physical and psychological needs… that to
be alive, as we are, entails having certain, set needs… our bodily
needs are of food, water, air, shelter, health care, education…
and our psychological needs are love, a sense of belonging,
of safety/security, of self-esteem and the esteem of others…
There are of course other needs, but these are the basics human
needs…

And the other certainty in being human is our need, both our
physical and psychological need for others. Human beings
are evolutionary built to require other human beings…
socially, politically, educationally, and as a means for us
to reach our needs and potential…

I cannot, under any circumstance, reach either my
bodily or psychologically needs alone, by myself…
every need I listed above requires a state/society for
us to reach and meet our physical and psychological needs…

So, what is good given the requirement of state/society to reach
our bodily and psychological needs? Helping people to reach their
needs, both physical and psychologically, is good, preventing
people from meeting their needs is bad/evil…

If through my actions, or inactions, I prevent you from being able
to meet your needs, I am acting with evil or bad intent…
that is part of being good or evil… the other aspect is
being able to help people reach their possibilities, their
potential… to help people reach those possibilities
that potential, is good…

This is why our current system of ''What is in it for me?"
has failed… Our private vices, which capitalist claim
drives the modern world, in reality, damages, harms
both people and the state/society…

Seeking out private vices is to ignore, neglect our primary
goal of making our state/society better, more engaged in
seeking out good and the other word for good, which is
virtue…the act of seeking out virtue is the act of helping
others reach their own needs, both bodily and psychologically…
and others act of virtue is the others allowing you to seek out
your own needs, both bodily and psychologically…
you help me reach my own needs and I help you
reach you needs… that is the essence of a virtuous state…

You want a ‘‘utopia’’ that would be it… we aid each other
in reaching our own bodily and psychologically needs…
and we aid others via the actions of the state/the society…
that is the definition of a virtuous state/society…

Under that definition, we are not prevented from
acting/moving toward the future… for we can act
within our desire to create a better future, that will
also allow others and us, in meeting our own needs…

and for most people, most, the stated desire of people
is to become, ''HAPPY"" and I have stated before, I
don’t believe that the ‘‘human’’ goal is or should be
the gaining of happiness or contentment or joy
or gratification or even bliss…

The point of existence is to seek out our potential, our
possibilities and reach them… a contented man isn’t
going to seek out his potential, his possibilities…

To a very real degree, I don’t want us to be happy or
contented… Life isn’t seeking out our bliss, which is
badly defined as seeking out happiness…
The fact is that we should be like the prophets of the bible,
always wrestling with god… and contented people
don’t wrestle with god… only the discontented,
the ones who want more, the ones who are seeking out
their own possibilities, who wrestle with god/life…

seeking out our ‘‘happiness’’ is the path to our current
malaise and discontentment that we mask or hide from
ourselves and others… we are seeking out the wrong things
and we are paying the price for that ignorance…
Seeking out empty promises can only lead to the
empty lives we lead today…and seeking out the
nihilism of today, the seeking out the false idols of
fame, money, titles, material possessions, and power,
can only lead to the modern despair we have today…
We are empty, false because our moderns’ isms
of capitalism and communism and religion are empty,
false promises…and why are they false, empty?
Because in that pursuit of capitalism and nationalism
and communism and religion, we are pursuing
nihilistic values… nihilism: the negation of
human beings and their values…

An example of the negation of human beings and their values lies
in various school districts, mostly in the south, attempting to
‘‘promote’’ Christian values by putting the Ten Commandments
into schools… the very act of putting them on the school walls
is supposed to be enough to turn around the entire society…
It is not enough to post empty values on school walls, we
have to do something very radical, and that is to live, to
lead our lives with Christain values… If you don’t live
by Christain values, then who cares what you post on
school walls…the question is not about how others
live by or don’t live by those values, the question is,
Do you live by those Christian values?
Do you practice what you preach or do you
preach empty values that only others should
live by, not yourself?

The questions we should be asking is this, What values
am I supposed to have that will allow me to be a ‘‘good’’ person?
What is a ‘‘good’’ person? Not what I do for a living,
which for many of us is independent of morals and ethics…

and here I return to the idea of public and private ethics, morals…

Kropotkin

As I wrote earlier about public and private vices,
in a thread that makes me wonder about
the reading comprehension of some people around here…

the State… let us take the United States, as an example…
the State, America has taken upon itself certain values,
beliefs and actions it does not allow its private citizens…
Capital Punishment for example and the practice of torture…
or the collection of taxes or private use of vendettas to practice
justice… the state prevents the private citizen from actions that
the state allows, gives to itself…

It is ‘‘immoral’’ for a citizen to kill another and yet, the state
claims this very right for itself… is that moral or immoral?
A policeman can kill another and nothing is done, I kill
someone and I will face swift ‘‘justice’’ regardless of my reasons…
Why is my action of killing another treated differently than
the policeman? If I am acting immoral, then how is the
policeman acting ''morally?"

Private actions are treated differently, in terms of ethics
and morals, then public actions… the standard used
to judge actions morally are different given if it is private
or public…

IQ45 has threaten to invade a couple of countries already,
in complete defiance of internal laws which is the US has
signed in various treaties… in other words, a treaty is a law
that is applicable to us as a country… if we sign a treaty
allowing more trade, that is a law applying to our country
as it does to the other country in question… break a treaty
and you are breaking American law… as well as international
law… a law is really nothing more than a contract…
I fulfill my part and you will fulfill your part of the treaty…
which exactly a contract… and we cannot allow contracts
to be broken at will… for much of what makes a society work,
is the ability to make and keep laws, treaties and contracts…
Without this trust, the state/society will break down if you
can’t trust the other guy to keep his word… and this is true
for us individually, but what about the ethics, the morals
of us, collectively, within the state and the society to keep
our word… a treaty and a law must be kept or we cannot
trust the state/society to keep its word again…

an act of morals such as capital punishment, means one
thing to the state and it means something else to a private
citizen who cannot engage in capital punishment as the state does…

there are private morals and there are, or ought to be public
morals that are as enforced as strictly as private actions
are enforced… to create a more ‘‘moral’’ society requires
the state and the individual to be held by the same standard
of ethics and morals… we cannot allow the state to hold one
set of moral/ethics and the individual to hold another…
This disconnect is part of the reason for our current problems
of people having real problems with the state/society…
to allow one set of standards for one group and a different set
of standards is, at its heart, the very essence of injustice…
Justice is the act of equality before the law… laws are
equally applied to everyone equally… there is no one set of
laws applying to the wealthy or powerful or the famous and another
set of laws that is applied to everyone else… for that is the very
definition of injustice… and we see this inequality every single
day in America… the wealthy and criminal, lately voted president,
are/have been treated differently, with a different set of laws,
then the average person… that is the very heart of injustice
and one of the basic problems with America today… we have
two different sets of justice, a two-tiered system of justice…
and that directly harms America…

and that is part of what I am talking about… given morals
and ethics are now part of a two-tiered system… one set of
morals for the average person and the second tiered of morals
for the government…

What I am calling for here is the same standard of ethics being
applied equally, to both individuals and the state… what is
ethical and moral for one, is ethical and moral for the other…

the same set of rules for everyone to play by…
that would be the application of justice in America today…

public and private rules being the same… the same ethics
is practiced by both…

Kropotkin

That’s what Max has been trying to tell you, keter. The state calls the violence of the individual a crime while it calls its own violence ‘justice’. The whole thing is a sham, bro. Don’t pay any attention to anybody with a badge unless you’re making them the butt of a joke.

We have a value… that of service to others…
and in certain circles, it is considered one of the
highest values we can have…the question of service
can be tied into what we are talking about here…

One path, among many possibilities, one path of service
is to help people reach their possibilities, to reach their needs,
both bodily and psychological needs… that is one path of service…
to help others to reach their needs…
and I think, in many ways, this type of service is one of
the higher forms of service… to help people reach their
needs… to help people find or even to bring love to
others, that is a form of service that is one of the highest
forms of service we can imagine… to love is a form
of public and private service that benefits everyone…
Thus, we can deduce that those who bring the state/society
and individuals hate and prejudice and anger and lust,
the private vices, that only benefit the one, the individual
who aspires to the vices, that is not of service, of aid to
anyone… that is to be avoided… private vices do not
aid or help the public, and thus harms the state and the
society…and is to be avoided…

so, what is moral, ethical?
that which brings benefit to individuals,
in helping them find/meet their needs,
be it bodily or psychologically… we can do so,
both privately and we can do this publicly,
via the state, the society can be of use in helping
us to meet our bodily and psychological needs…

or said another way, we can be of service to the state, the
society by helping individuals, and thus aiding the state collectively,
by meeting the bodily and psychological needs of the individual…
Thus, we can serve, the state and individuals, by helping individuals
reach their own personal needs…that is what it means to be good,
to help others reach their own personal needs… and to be evil,
to prevent others from reaching their own personal needs…

Kropotkin

promethean75:
That’s what Max has been trying to tell you, keter. The state calls the violence of the individual a crime while it calls its own violence ‘justice’. The whole thing is a sham, bro. Don’t pay any attention to anybody with a badge unless you’re making them the butt of a joke.

K: the question is twofold, one, what is justice, and two, what are we to do about it?
As an individual, what should my own response be to this two-tiered system?
''What am I to do?" The public morals and the private morals we have…
Should we have a two-tiered judicial system? and why or why not?

Kropotkin

Labels should not be taken as definitive or exhaustive.

In the early 80s when unemployment was at 4 million in Thatcher’s Britian, I was, at parties often confronted with “what do you do”? (Meaning do you work for a living or are you a parasite living off the earnings of others)
My response was usually, What is on your mind? My life is full of many different activities, gardening, writing, reading, wine and beer brewing, walking, thinking. None of these things defined me, but all of them allowed me to grow, despite being cash poor, I was time rich.