The realm of possibilties

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

I have often attacked the ‘‘Trinkets of existence’’ that of wealth
and of fame, titles, power and material possessions, as being
‘‘ad hoc’’ of the moment and temporary…

Now I may ask, if not the modern pursuits, then what are we to
seek? If one removes the material, then what is left?

We have a couple of choices, the religious and the
philosophical…

As I have argued against the religious numerous times,
among those attacks have been the existence of god
and the existence of an eternal soul…

and so, this morning, I shall advocate for
the philosophical…

One of the thorniest questions of existence comes down
to ‘‘Why am I here?’’ and as always, we can turn I questions
into a we question, ''Why are we here?" I would suggest that
a life spent pondering this question is far better spent life then
spending it on the pursuit of the trinkets of existence…

But Kropotkin, what if there are no answers?
So, what? pursuing the trinkets of existence do not
offer up any answers either… given that the trinkets of
existence don’t offer us anything of substance or of duration…
money, fame, titles, material possessions and power are of
short duration, as to be as quick in existence as a particle…
or that that dollar bill in your wallet, the same dollar bill that
was there three days ago? I doubt it… money comes and
goes, rather rapidly… as do the other trinkets…

and one may not find what we are looking for in the
pursuit of philosophical matters, but, but in philosophy,
the pursuit is the thing anyway…''What am I/we to do?"
''What can I/we know?" ''What beliefs/values, should I/we hold
to?" if we accept the Socratic motto, that the ‘‘unexamined
life isn’t worth living’’ then we should, indeed, must
make this examination to be the highest priority…
but the beauty of philosophy is that we don’t have
to make Plato’s or Kant’s question (or answers) to be
our questions… we live in a vastly different age, with
vastly different problems… we cannot answer 21 century
problems with 18th century philosophies…

Just as we can’t answer today’s spiritual questions with writings from
2000 years ago… we are not shepherds or farmers…
we cannot answer our spiritual questions with answers from
those who cannot understand our problems today…
or do you think that in some fashion, Jesus can address
the ‘‘modern’’ questions that haunt us today? our
environment has changed and thus, both the
questions and answers must change…

What does it mean to be human in 2024?
should we engage, like our forefathers,
in seeking out a god that has no meaning in our times,
a god that doesn’t exists, a god that can’t speak to
our modern times… What can a carpenter 2000 years ago,
tell us what it means to be human in an age of technology,
and machines and spaceships and of transhumanism, of
human in part or as will be possible whole, consumed by
technology… my cochlear implant, legs of machines
and arms make of plastic, we can even transplant a heart…
and lungs… tell me exactly what Jesus said about that?
or what Moses said about transhumanism?

that the questions (and answers) of the past worked in,
the past, but today, today we have new questions because
of our new environments… I would suggest that
Quantum Mechanics, something developed over the
last 100 years, has much more to say about what it means to
be human, then books written thousands of years ago…
because we live in a very different environment today,
then thousands of years ago…I would suggest that one
possibility lies in an old activity…

Kropotkin

2

After the fall of Rome, a new type of religious type emerged
from the fallen state… the ‘‘Desert Fathers’’ who were
early Christian hermits and ascetics, who live in the desert…
Perhaps we should take a page from them and wonder
away from the state/society and examine what it means
to be human, free from the entanglements of modern
day existence… but even solitary philosophers such
as Spinoza, had to earn a living… he turned to
lens grinding… a rather solitary profession…

Can we turn like Spinoza, to solitary professions and
leave enough time to properly engage with philosophy?
For that is the question, does the pursuit of a living,
allow one the time to philosophize? My own work has
changed the time I work, I now mostly go to work at 6:00 Am,
which doesn’t leave me the proper time to work on my
philosophy… Unless I am getting up at 2:00 in the morning,
every single morning and that is physical hard for me these days…
so I can only do my work on my rare days off… I got today off
and I will get next Saturday off… I rarely ever get two days in a row
anymore… and that doesn’t leave me time to spend time with
the wife or do anything else… My philosophy time is wasted with
working… and that is a waste… I can retire, but I will take
a massive economic hit… and it still might be worth it…
and if I was single, I would have done it years ago,
but being married, that responsibility carries much weight
in me… and we come back to the modern world’s problems…
we are forced to work, which leaves us no time to engage
in such activities as philosophy…

Which is kinda the point of work… to prevent us any time
to actually think about the nature of our lives… we are drones,
working as many hours as possible, to prevent us from investigating
the underlying principle of being human… which isn’t work, but
then, what is it? '‘What am I/we to do?"…’'What can I/we know?"
''What beliefs or values, should I/we hold?" ''What should I/we
be spending our limited energy on?"

On something like working our entire lives with no
benefit to ourselves? When I retire, in a bit more than
a year, I shall have barely enough money to last 10 years,
and at my retirement age, 67, my life expectancy is
76… I shall have roughly 9 years of retirement before
I die… is that worth a lifetime of killing myself for the
benefit of others, owners of the business, for example?
I don’t work for me, I work for them… recall that 500 people
own over 50% of the world’s wealth… the rest of us are fighting over
the scraps that fall off of their table… is that worth living for,
worth dying for? Does that give your life or my life, meaning or
purpose? I don’t see how…

What does it mean to be human? a question that is best centered
in our own age, our modern age…

Kropotkin

3

‘‘Natura naturans’’ which is to say,
Naturing Nature… is the active, eternal, and
immutable dimension of nature… according to
Spinoza, Natura and Natura Naturata are two ways
of conceiving the same thing… nature acting upon
and nature being acted upon… Nature Naturans, is
the creating power, and Natura Naturata is the created
world… and god is both… but we can imagine nature,
as both without any recourse to god…

we can imagine the laws of nature, the rules by which
the universe operates with, the law of gravity, of evolution,
of thermodynamics and of entropy… to name a few
scientific laws, we can imagine those laws without,
any recourse to a god… for that is how the universe
operates, via laws…Newtons theory of gravity is one such
law/rule of how the universe acts upon and is acted upon…

if we think about the universe this way, then Spinoza was right,
there is but one substance and that substance is nature…
and that nature operates within the laws and rules of the
universe… and one might argue about who ‘‘created’’
the rules/laws of the universe… but we can see them
coming into being as the universe itself comes into being…
the law of gravity impacts the opening moments of the big
bang and itself is impacted by the big bang… and the
various laws of the universe, either come into being, right
at the very first of the moment of the big bang, or they
come into being fairly quickly after the fact…
and the law of entropy, of the universe and its individual
components are impact by entropy and entropy is
impacted by the universe… a mutual back and forth
between the aspects of the universe and the laws
that have been created… and at no time do we need
to reference god or religions to get to this place…

Everything is part of the big bang… it is part of the universe,
part of nature… and is impacted on by other aspects and
nature impacts other aspects… impacted on and impacting
others… this back and forth is one of the, if not the
central movement of the universe…

the central question of the universe is the question of
matter and its movement…it is not the spiritual
aspect of the universe that we engage with, but the
motion of matter…and how does matter impact or move
other matter… but this question does not have
a spiritual or a philosophical side… it is a scientific question…
how, but not why… science cannot answer the why question,
but philosophy entire point lies in working out the why of a
question… ''What does it mean to be human?"
''What am I/we to do?" ''What can I/we know?"
and of course, ''What should I/we believe in?"

Questions that science, in all of it might, cannot
even ask… little less answer…

ISMS, at their heart, are just an organized way to
understand what it means to be human and ''what
am I/we to do?" … but the Isms of today, they
no longer speak to the mind or heart of the modern
day citizen… and how could they? In this modern age
what can an ism from 2000 years ago say to us, or
any religious ism says to us? We are, to borrow a phrase,
material beings in a material world… so, what can
spiritual answers mean given that they don’t answer
the fundamental questions that are basically about the
material world…matter and its movement…

Kropotkin

4

we know of the laws of nature, that of gravity and
evolution and thermodynamics, to name a few laws/rules
of existence… and we can think that those laws/rules are
eternal…the events within evolution requires chance to
make sense, but the law itself does not… thus we can
speak of the rules/laws being eternal and that within
the laws/rules are not eternal… the law of gravity creates
stars like our sun, but that our sun itself can be destroyed…
the rules/laws remain the same… thus, within entropy,
the objects subjected to entropy, they go from order to disorder,
but the law/rule itself remain the same…

thus, that seems to suggest that the law/rules of
nature, seem to be eternal… but that sports fans
is an assumption… we cannot be sure that
the laws of gravity or of entropy will last forever…
be eternal… we just don’t have enough information
to make such a judgement… we human beings only
have a few thousand years of language to engage with,
to make such judgements about…
we don’t even know enough, to judge how little we actually know…

being finite beings, we can only know finite… any
thoughts about eternal are just guesses and assumptions…

is the universe eternal? well, if the universe can be made,
as god made it and the big bang suggests it is, then if it
is created, then it is not eternal… for being created clearly
suggests that it can also be unmade… be not eternal,
but finite… and that being finite seems to better fit into
what we know about the universe… both with the
scientific and the philosophical…

my own existence will be roughly 76 years, or 11 more years…
my existence is finite, limited… the human race has been
around for, give or take, two million years, it too is finite…
even if we take religions has our source of content,
then the world is created and thus can be uncreated,
the earth can be extinguished, even with a god…

Life has been around for, again, give or take, a billion years…
thus, it too is created… life itself is finite… and we can know
that by the vast number of extinct creatures we find in the soil…
creatures that go back hundreds of millions of years ago…
and as big of a number as that is, it is still a finite number…
even the vast length of time for the dinosaurs existing,
a staggering 180 million years, is still a finite number…

so, what exactly is eternal? some will shout god or
the eternal soul, but once again, that is just an assumption,
an unproven idea…

But Kropotkin, you have to take that on faith… like I take
the universal rules/laws like gravity on faith? Oh wait,
I don’t have to take that on faith… by simply jumping in
the air, I can prove that gravity exists…or any number of
simple experiments showing us that gravity is and works
really well… Personally, I have some old scars from
how well gravity works… and the fact that pigs can’t fly,
show us how well evolution works, and that Ice melts,
show us how well thermodynamics works… and my old age
is a clinic on how well entropy works… going from order to
disorder…as your old age will be a lesson in entropy…
there are no assumptions in these scientific concepts…
but trying to make an assumption like the eternal soul?
that is a tough sell because of the lack of evidence…
How does one prove that?

existence is a question of matter and the motion of that
matter… we do not need to engage in metaphysics to
make sense of the universe… we just have to work out the
laws and rules of the universe…

Kropotkin

5

this question of matter and the movement of matter
being the only real questions we have… is true, but
to be clear, all matter operates within the laws/rules
of the universe… the big one is of course, entropy…
the movement of order to disorder…

but we have an odd case to ponder… that some matter,
is alive, and some matter isn’t… the table or the carpet…
these material things do ‘‘suffer’’ from entropy,
but living matter like human beings and dogs,
‘‘suffer’’ from entropy, but in a very different way…
the movement of entropy in living matter is faster
than entropy in lifeless matter… that there is a cost
to being that isn’t present within lifeless matter…

I think these are just different aspects within
the cells that make it react to entropy differently…
cells within a living body is different than cells within a dead/
lifeless body… there is movement within the living cell…
the atoms of the living is different than the atoms of the
lifeless…and the fact is that we can use either set of
atoms to make a table as easily as a baby…
the atoms are interchangeable… but in life reacts differently
than in lifeless… the movement from order to disorder remains,
it just travels in a different time frame… how do atoms go
from being in lifeless matter to matter with life, so quickly
and easily?

If there is the one substance of Spinoza, it is atoms…
Atoms are the building block of everything that exists…
if there were a substance I would call god, it would be atoms…
but because I don’t believe in god, I will call the one substance
in the universe atoms… which is just another way of saying
atoms are nature… the building block of everything,
from trees to dogs to human beings to entire galaxies to
the ant, all come from atoms… when Einstein talks about
matter and the conversion of energy, he was talking about
atoms… and atoms cannot be destroyed… they can only
be converted into other forms of matter… thus, the idea of
that the mass of the universe remains the same… it is because
of atoms that are like logo blocks… they blocks remain the same,
but the thing being built is different every single time…

the commonality of existence is the smallest thing in the
universe, the atom… from those tiny atoms, everything
we see or hear or taste or feel or smell, comes from a building
block of atoms…
that atoms are the basic building block of the universe,
that atoms form the entirety of nature, that what we might think
of as god, is really just atoms at work…thus the answer to
the question, what is nature? the complexity of atoms being
put together… thus we can have atoms take the place of
Spinoza’s god… the basic building block of the universe is
not god, but atoms…and that is nature… thus atoms
and nature, are the same thing… they can be impacted
on and they can impact upon…

Kropotkin

6

Imagine if we didn’t chase anything. What if we simply embraced today’s highs and lows? While life may be meaningless in the grand scheme, we create our own purpose to find hope and joy in the time we have.

7

truth is objective so is morality, morality is truth and is also known as convention, it binds us, it’s evolution. Your reason is discovering truth, the only thing that will ever happen is what’s possible

8

I thank the last two posters for their input…

In look into history, one can gain some understanding
of what works and what doesn’t…

Take Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, as example…
both tried to remove religion from the state… which
is to say, they deny others their religions…
Were either state stable or considered to be ''good?"

let us take a look at other countries history…
for example, whenever a country tries to expel
believers of a certain religion, usually, but not
always, Jewish, (the French tried to limit the
Huguenots, who held to the Reformed (Calvinist)
tradition of Protestantism and it didn’t end well
for France either and greatly benefited the countries
they emigrated to)

and look at counties that have been fairly successful…
the U.S, Great Britan, ancient Rome… and what is part
of the commonality of those three empires…
that different religions were accepted… no one force anyone
to change religions in those three empires… and it allowed
those empires to be stable and great empires… the ruin of
empires and countries come when a country tries to ban or
force a certain religion to leave the country… we can almost
mark the end of the Spanish Empire when they banned
Jews from Spain… it had a disastrous impact on the
Spanish economy… and that act while hurting Spain,
allowed other countries like the Dutch Republic to
really prosper…

What I am attempting to show is that any attempt to
have a country have a monolithic religion, never ends
well… as the Crypto-Fascists of America, is trying to
make Christianity the one and only religion in America…
and that is how one starts a religious war in a country…
and it will not end well in America…

Kropotkin