In the long line of prior attempts, Tolstoy and Lenin and
Chernyshevsky, I ask, given the nature of reality today,
“What is to be done?”
Is salvation to be found in the political, social, religious,
economic, moral or philosophically realm …
To find solutions, one must correctly sense out the issues, the problems
facing us today…UR and gLOOM claim that all our problems stem
from a series of conspiracies that doom us…what a narrow vision
of our world…what of our moral/ethical issues that seem to
dominate both our personal and political/economic lives.
Their, UR/gLOOM, efforts seem to avoid religious, moral,
philosophical, economic and political solutions in their understanding
of, ‘‘What is to be done?’’ Their entire focus is on dubious conspiracy
theories that have no basis in reality. What solutions can be found
in tilting at windmills? I have no idea and clearly neither do they.
The answer to the question of ‘‘What is to be done?’’ requires
a firm understanding of the issues facing us…
The conservative often claims that the solution lies in a return
to religious/moral/ ethical concerns… but does that concern
put food on my table? Does that ethical/moral concern solve the vast
economic problems facing the world… does a moral/ethical concerns
solve global warming, for example? Or finds an answer to the deep
social, political divisions within America?
They might long term, but what of today, right now?
Does they answer lie in creating new laws or new standards, politically,
or does the answer lie in us socially, morally, ethically?
are we to understand “what we are to do?” in terms of the political,
or the social or the religious or the economic? Is the answer found
in us individually or in us collectively?
but as I pointed out, the answers can only be found if, if we ask
the right questions as to what is the “real” problem/problems of
our modern times…or to be blunt, who and/or what is to blame for
our massive issues facing us to today? Once we can assign blame,
we can then and only then seek out answers to this existential problems
of existence…
and how does this overall question of “what is to be done?” relate to us
as individuals in regard to the Kantian questions of existence,
“What am I to do?” “What should I believe in?” “What can I know?”
“What should I spend my energy on?”
and how do the Kantian questions of existence relate to us
in terms of us collectively and the question of “what is to be done?”.
“What are we to do?” “What should we believe in?” “What can we know?”
“What should we spend our energy on?”
the question of “what am I to do?” is directly related to the question
of “what is to be done?” the answer to one leads us to the answer to
the other…
so, are we going to reform the government, or big business, the society,
ourselves, individually and/or collectively? So “what is to be done?” requires
us to engage in this question of examining our lives, both individually
and collectively…so it becomes a Socratic question…the answer also lies
in the Socratic answer of ‘‘know thyself’’
‘‘So, what is to be done’’?
Kropotkin