In thinking about ‘‘what we seek’’ the one thing
that seems to me anyway, the wrong thing to seek,
is the universal, the eternal truths…
for what is the ‘‘truth’’ about the universal/eternal?
One might say god or all life dies at some point,
or even love is a universal, an eternal truth for
all of us…
And yet, I am unable to see any truth that is
universal or eternal…we can’t even be sure
that life on earth dies… we know of tree’s
and some marine life that have extremely long
life span… and who is to say that life away
from earth is going to die…
for all we know death, as we know it, may just
be a local, earth thing… there may be life that is
eternal, just not in our neigherhood…
if there is no truth that is universal, eternal,
now what? What are we to seek if there
is no universal, eternal truth to be found?
what is it that human beings are supposed
to be doing if not seeking out the universal/
eternal truths?
And once again, we stumble into Kant’s
three sayings, ''What am I/we to do?
''What am I/we to believe in?" ''What can I/we know?"
If there are no universal/eternal truths to be found,
then what are we to do? What should we be seeking
if there are no universal/eternal truths to be found?
Life itself becomes a series of moments, one passing
after another, life itself becomes ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the
moment… and what should we be looking
for, if not the eternal/universal?
If there were something that might be called universal/
eternal, it would be change… Change is the natural
progression of life… I am not who I was 5 or 10 years
ago, hell, I am a different person than I was yesterday…
For I am aware of the fact that I am one day closer
to my last day… and because I am aware of,
(and as we age, we become more aware of
our coming demise… it becomes cloud that hangs
over us every single day, something I never noticed
when I was younger)
I am aware of change… and the last change for me, will be
death… but here comes the interesting thing…
I am in fact, not entirely certain I will die… the
evidence in front of me is that all life dies, but,
as noted, I cannot provide evidence for that fact…
until I actually die, it is nothing more than an assumption
for me… all I can point to is that all the life I have see,
has all died, and anything else is just an assumption…
and this is why human beings strive so hard for the
seeking of the universal, the eternal… we are,
as a species, uncomfortable with ‘‘ad hoc’’ of the
moment… we want there to be an eternal, a universal
because it gives our lives a solid base upon to
make our choices… but without a universal,
eternal base to make our choices upon, on
what do we now base our decisions, our
choices on?
As Nietzsche noted, we human beings are on a road,
going from animal to becoming human…Nietzsche called
it a ‘‘tightrope’’ but it is a path, a road into seeking out
what is possible for us to become…
and it is within those possibilities for us human beings,
both collectively and individually, that we can seek out…
When I was young, the various possibilities for me,
was endless… my road could have led me anywhere…
and as one ages, the various possibilities grow less
and less… the doors close as we age until very
few doors remain open to us… and in the end,
we have but one door remaining… and that is death…
My mom, who is 90, she just sits in her nursing home
and just waits for death… what else is possible for her?
she can’t drive, she can barely walk, she needs constant
supervision, what else remains for her besides death?
and that is the last door left for her…
as I am ‘‘only’’ 66, I still have a few doors/possibilities
left to me… but once again, Kant’s question haunts
me, ''What am I to do?" and the question has real
power for me as I plan to retire by the end of the year…
so, I retire, ''What am I to do?" and when I mention
I am going to retire, everyone asks, what will you do then?
and to be honest, I have no fucking idea… ''What will I
do?" and my only possible answer maybe to seek out
what is possible for me, as I age unto death…
What is possible for me, even after retirement is
seeking out what possibilities are left for me…
my goal for decades has been to become the
best philosopher ever… to be named with
Kant or Spinoza as one of the best philosophers
ever… and others will say, Kropotkin, you aren’t
even a good philosopher right now…
and that’s ok…for you to think… because
my possibilities are my possibilities… not
your possibilities… for each of us, have
possibilities for us to reach… and those
possibilities are found within each of us…
within the doors left to us…and you can
seek out what is possible for you…
not the eternal or universal, but what is individually
possible for you, as determined by you…
what is what I/we should be seeking, not
the eternal/universal, but what is possible
within us, for us, by us… at one point in
time, I was an athlete, not a great one,
average, but I was dedicated to being the
best athlete I could be, I was seeking out
what my best times could be in the mile
or in the cross-country race… what was
possible for me in the mile? my best time
was around 4:50… not great by any means…
but today, I can’t even run anymore… so,
it is no longer possible for me to pursue
running, to find my best in sports… I just
can’t do that anymore… it is no longer possible…
that door has closed… and so, I must find another
open door for me to enter… another possibility
for me to reach, another opportunity for me
to seek out what is possible for me…
I don’t seek out the universal or the eternal,
I seek out what is possible for me, with the
tools left to me… I cannot run anymore, but
I can think and speculate and philosophize…
and I pursue that possibility… I can seek that out…
‘‘What does it mean to be human?’’
is a question I seek out every single day… because
to become human, fully human is another possibility,
not just for me, but for everyone…
I am on the path, the tightrope, to become
human… and my road from being animal to becoming
human has taken my entire life… and it is a goal,
a possibility worth seeking out, worth taking time to do…
how do I become a better human being? Well that
depends on what I mean by ‘‘better’’…
and part of my own answer lies within the search
for ethics/morals that aren’t religious or god based…
part of being human, perhaps in some ways, the biggest
part of being human is how we treat each other,
or otherwise known as ethics/morality…
The quest to become human, for me anyway,
lays within the quest to discover what it means
to be ethical or moral… how do we treat others…
and how we ourselves behave… if we are immoral,
unethical, does that make me a better human being
or a worse one? I think the answer is clear…
but people will justify immoral, unethical behavior
as a way to justify their own beliefs…
I support the removal of illegal aliens any way we can
remove them… but is that moral, ethical? One might
argue that people breaking the law needs to be, must
be punished… but that punishment is selective,
and that is the essence of being immoral, unethical,
selective punishment for some, not all criminals…
IQ45 was convicted of 34 feleonies… and yet,
he has not spent a minute being punished…
how is that moral, or ethical if, as you say,
all lawbreakers must be punished?
Selective punishment is not moral nor is it
ethical… and it is not justice… for justice
require us to punish equally, for equal crimes…
Justice is the act of treating people equally
before the law… and if we punish illegal
aliens for ‘‘breaking the law’’ then we must also
practice equal justice by bring IQ45 to trial for
his many, diverse crimes… that is being moral,
ethical, to treat those who commit crimes with
equality…
and that is one possibility of our ‘‘seeking’’
to seek out what is moral, ethical given
that our own definitions of moral or ethical
is not universal, nor is it eternal… our own
idea of punishment, of justice, is today anyway,
‘‘ad hoc’’, of the moment…
Instead of seeking out what is universal,
eternal, perhaps we should seek out
what is possible for us and what is the point of ideals
like ‘‘Justice’’ or the point of the ideal of ‘‘courage’’
should we adapt love, peace as our primary goal,
and not war, violence as has been the case for
the last many thousands of years… why peace
and not violence? that is what we should be
seeking…
there are many different possibilities for us to be
seeking and we should take our time and understand
what possibilities we should be seeking…
Kropotkin
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