people spend their lives seeking out peace, quiet
and happiness… but the truth is quite different…
I once heard it said that ‘‘if you are not offended by
what is going on in the world today, you aren’t paying attention’’…
I hold the path to becoming is to be offended, is to be
disturbed by the world, peace and quiet, have no place
in the philosophical world…to be a ‘‘true’’ philosopher,
one must be offended and shaken and full of doubt,
to be skeptical, at odds with the world…
to find happiness, peace, quiet is not the philosophers
path… to ‘‘wrestle with the world, and even god’’ that
is the philosophical path to becoming… the philosophical
path is not through contentment and finding peace, for I
find wisdom within doubt and skeptism… I am not
searching for a path to being at peace within myself
or being at peace with the world, no, I am seeking
out what it means to be human… and only by
doubt, discontentment can I find out what it means to be human…
peace and serenity is not the path to either wisdom or
becoming human…wrestling with god until the day
I die, that is the path of being a philosopher…
to wrestle with the idea of being human, to wrestle
with the idea of becoming, that is the true path
of philosophy… what does it mean to be human?
as Nietzsche pointed out, man/human beings
are on the path from being animal to becoming
human… where are you on that path?
are you human, fully human like the other
examples of becoming fully human…
Names like Goethe, Gandhi, MLK,
Socrates, Shakespeare, people who have
traveled the furthest on the road to becoming
fully human…
are you human or are you still a slave to your
animal side? Holding to animal values like anger,
hate, greed, lust, vanity, to name a few animal values…
the path to becoming human lies in escaping our
animal values… into holding human values and beliefs…
like love, peace, hope, charity, wisdom, compassion,
curiosity, acceptance, honesty, authenticity, beauty,
altruism, to name a few human values worth pursuing…
there are literally hundreds of human values worth
pursuing… my own value I pursue is justice, which
is just another word for equality… to be just is
to be equal… justice is equality before the law…
and justice is also equality by and for human beings…
what value do you pursue?
and is it a human value or is it an animal value?
I hold that the trinkets of existence are animal values,
the pursuit of money, fame, titles, power and material
possessions are animal values because those
values are ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the moment, not lasting values…
wealth and power and titles and fame and material possessions
are temporary, ephemeral, of the moment…
and we seek or we should seek out values that are more
permanent, of more worth seeking then ‘‘ad hoc’’ values…
are you animal or are you human? that answer is found
in ‘‘what are you seeking?’’ are you seeking out animal values
or are you seeking out human, more permanent values like justice
or love or empathy or charity… human values…
the values you seek define who you are…
are you animal or are you human?
Kropotkin