The above topic sentence is a direct statement
by Socrates…and to my mind anyway, perhaps the
most important thing we need to work out or consider…
It isn’t about seeking out the trinkets of existence,
I have shown them to be of no value, to anyone…
and it isn’t about seeking out the Declaration of
Independence mission statement…
''We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
I have argued against the pursuit of happiness because
happiness is the byproduct of doing something else…
If you have to ask yourself, am I happy, you aren’t…
and I love to read… but the happiness I feel when reading
is the byproduct of reading… we do something and
we, in doing that something, feel happy… that is the
byproduct of happiness… and so we are left with
two other possibilities… that of life and that of liberty…
are we happy when we are at liberty, or the modern word
which is freedom…Who knows because we spend
a great deal of time running away from freedom/liberty…
People spend time engaging in practices that is the opposite of
freedom/liberty… the modern day anti-abortion forces are
anti-freedom/anti-liberty…it has nothing to do with ‘‘life being
sacred’’ that is just another lie… the bible doesn’t consider human
beings lives as sacred… with a death count in the millions in
the bible, life is hardly sacred… and the torture of Job, how is
that sacred, and the clear and obvious hypocrisy of god, how
is that sacred? It is clear from the bible that god is anti-freedom,
anti-liberty… because it is basically god’s way or the highway…
and that is anti-freedom…
So, to return to Socrates question, how are we to live?
Kierkegaard once wrote,
"It is not about what can I know, but what I ought to do’’
or said another way, how am I to live?
But what does this say about knowledge? The modern age
is obsessed with knowledge… (well until the age of ignorance
that we are within, struck) I have often heard that
‘‘Knowledge is power’’… and Socrates argued that
‘‘Knowledge is virtue’’ Two statements that are wrong…
one can have all the knowledge in the universe, but if one
doesn’t have the wisdom to use that knowledge correctly,
it doesn’t matter how much knowledge one has…
and people have the knowledge to do the right thing
and yet, still they act illogically, irrationally, and quite
often against their own bests interest… (the working poor
voting against their best interest by voting for IQ45)
having knowledge is not a guarantee of acting in one’s
best interest or even within the state/society best interests…
What am I to do? or ''how am I to live"… is the step beyond
having knowledge… it is knowledge plus the wisdom to
act on that knowledge wisely…having knowledge is not
a guarantee of acting wisely…
the Human journey is just that, a journey… going from one
place to another… and what is the human journey?
As Nietzsche pointed out, we are going from animal to
becoming human…if we accept the biblical idea of
the creation of human beings, there is no journey…
the bible doesn’t talk about the evolution of human beings,
we were created as we are today, but the essential
fact of human existence is the journey… the movement that
lies within our lives… we travel from infant to children to
teenagers, to young adults, to adulthood and many years later,
middle age and then senior citizen to finally, death…
the human existence is the movement of humans from
birth to death… but this biological movement is just one
aspect of the human journey…
In our youth, we are indoctrinated into the values and beliefs of
the family, church, the state, the society… and sometimes,
sometimes, we, beginning with being a teenager, we rebel
against our indoctrinated values… but the journey we face is
where we discover our own values and beliefs… this overcoming
is an essential aspect of becoming human… values and beliefs
are indoctrinated as vital information we need, but we, sometimes,
discover that those values and beliefs are not our values and beliefs…
we reevaluate the ‘‘knowledge’’ we were indoctrinated with as
children…the fact of the matter is that knowledge changes…
what was ‘‘certain’’ knowledge, later becomes wrong knowledge…
We are indoctrinated into believing in Santa Claus… that is information,
but we learn later that that knowledge/information is wrong…
and this happens our whole life… we have information that
we discover later to be wrong… if knowledge is ‘‘ad hoc’’,
then how can we believe so passionately in the value of
that information… science is predicated on our knowledge
changing and evolving… the theory of evolution, a true theory,
but one that does change in terms of our knowledge about
what evolution does and is… we have change our basic
fundamental knowledge of the universe, many times…
the knowledge of the nature of the universe has changed, take
Copernicus for example, he changed our knowledge of the
universe, as did Newton, as did Einstein, with each
scientist, our knowledge of the cosmos changed and
evolved… our modern theories like the theory of Relativity for
example, is a change from the previous theory… as is
Quantum physics is a change in the knowledge we have…
the bottom line is that our knowledge changes…
and by changing, we cannot trust in the nature of knowledge…
Knowledge is power only if knowledge can be trusted to
remain the same… if the knowledge changes, as it must,
it is no longer a reliable means of certainty… we cannot
trust in knowledge anymore if that knowledge changes…
So, the bottom line becomes not what we know, for that
changes, but what are we to do? How are we to live?
One of the essential aspects of being human is our
need for community… our relationships with others…
my own relationship with my wife, being together over
30 years, married for 28 years, has changed over the years…
but the important aspect is the relationship… we all must
have relationships… with each other and with the state/society…
that is an essential part of being human, the need for relationships…
to connect with others is both a biological and a psychological
need… this need for connection, for relationships is necessary
for us as human beings, the specifics of who the relationships
with, is not as essential as the relationship/connection itself…
So, the question of ''how am to live?" is a question of
our relationships with others… and that is ethics… or
another term for ethics, politics… ‘‘What am I to do’’
is vastly more important than the question of ''What should I know?"
our relationships are far more important than what we can know…
how we connect with each other is more important than any
knowledge we can have…
thus, we can state that being '‘WOKE"’ is about the
relationships we have and how we act and interact
with others… ''How am I to live?" by being ‘‘WOKE’’
where we treat others with decency, respect, and tolerance…
values of relationships, not of knoweldge… for we can
carry our values of decency, respect and tolerance
into all aspects of our lives…it works within the family,
within the workplace, within the church and state…
whereas knowledge cannot be part of all aspects of
our lives… facts such as the earth is 93 million miles
from the sun, while a very interesting fact, it has no
bearing or impact on our day to day lives… whereas
treating people with decency and respect and tolerance
can be and is a daily part of our lives…
having knowledge only impacts certain aspects of our lives,
while knowing how to live, impacts our lives every single day,
every single hour…
the Kantian question of ''What am I/we to do?"
isn’t about our knowledge but about our relationship with
each other… ethics/politics… knowing things only
matters in dealing with those things, learning the
nature of relationships is something that is done every
single day, every day we are alive we are engaged in
relationships with each other…
and we reach the point where we can now, correctly
understand Socrates… and that point is my next post…
Kropotkin