Where do Kropotkin's question arise?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

As I have been sick for over a week, I’ve missed
several days of work and will miss another several
days, I am finally, finally mentally able to read
and contemplate matters…
And as a return to reading, this morning, I was
thinking about who I shall read… and for unknown
reasons, Kierkegaard came to mine…
and as a beginning, I started to read the ''Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy"" on K. (Kierkegaard) and I had forgotten
what an impact he had on my intellectual life…
most of my questions have come from K… not answers,
mind you, but questions…

As an Atheist, I of course reject K. ‘‘faith’’ in religion
and god… but those questions can of course lead us to
interesting thoughts and observations…

As the Encyclopedia states, K. saw his entire authorship
as being devoted to the cause of ‘‘reintroducing Christianity
into Christendom’’ whereas my own goal as been to
‘‘reintroduce man/humans to themselves’’ to become known
to ourselves as human beings…

as with most existentialists, K. was concerned with
morals, ethics and that has been the great
philosophical problem of the 20th century…
on what should we base our ethics on, if
we eliminate religion and god, as a basis for ethics…
but K. was all about ethics and god, I am not…
but the question remains for me, on what grounds
do we base our ethics/morals on?

In some ways, Wittgenstein also believed this,
that K. was the key philosopher of the 19th century…
I hope to stay healthy enough to pursue this line of thought
here…

Kropotkin

2

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.” - K

This is likely why atheism doesn’t cut it. Christ is a superhuman standard tied to a form of glory that a Marx can’t evoke.

Materialism doesn’t offer glory, thus doesn’t really challenge man to overcome his pettiness.

Nietzsche tried to replace the glory of God with the Superman, and to push for self overcoming with the ER.

Marx reduces all to what they are already. He gives ethical credit to the proletariat where it isn’t due. Proletarians aren’t by nature better, more moral, than owners.

Christianity proper is actually the opposite to opium - it is the will to endure more, to go the extra mile for oneself and others.

3

“Christ is a superhuman standard tied to a form of glory that a Marx can’t evoke”

Riiight. That’s why it originated in the hearts and minds of a people in the deepest pits of lower class hell. Because these people, and their lives, were so ‘glorious’.

Now, as far as evoking. Christ evokes the turning of the will to power toward self-denial and destruction. Why the feeling is so strong for the christian, so tonic, is because in doing so, his will is reconcentrated on a single thing, and he enjoys the intensity and control he experiences in his acetic self-denial.

He can not conquer the world, so he turns the sword on himself and curses at the world.

Marx, on the other hand, incites riotous passion, experimental daring, a strong sense of fraternity among men, the ambition and boldness to want to change society, and be responsible for it. It gives man a palpable enemy, the bourgeoisie… not imaginary ones like devils.

Even the greatest and most exciting Christian that ever lived was an insufferable bore compared to one of Che’s guerrillas. How could you even associate glory to anything christian? Glory is a hidden enemy armament stakeout in the Bolivian jungle. Glory is when Spartacus planted his foot and said “No, i will not”.

And don’t even bring up the Knights Templar guys because they were all fags.

4

Well, Im going a bit against my original temperament speaking for Christ, trying to see the Kierkegaards idea - but I do appreciate a bit more of that force than I used to.

Christ is a more quiet force gave shape to the nations of Europe, which conquered the world. It works in the background. Slowly produces things like the French language. France is the first nation that was formed out of Christianity, qua Christianity. I find it by far the most beautiful in the world that Ive seen. There is a lot of glory in the average French farmer.

Granted I can see guerilla’s have excitement, but I don’t see glory. They don’t build, they don’t amount to anything lasting - Che is mostly a print on a T shirt now.

Christianity is a religion that works well with the spirit of conquest and creation. Radical outright Christians are less important than those in whom it works as a sustaining force. And I think that is the soundest form of religion and ideology, a background force.

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5

If you got everyone to be a christian, then christianity would contribute to building a species and civilization with a very stable strategy (evolutionarily speaking). There’s no doubt about it. But not because of any divine quality… just because it’s a set of simple and condensed instructions that are easy to follow and that express natural instincts and behaviors in men (compassion, charity, forgiveness, etc). It has a consolidating and organizing force (the protestant work ethic that built modern Europe and America). All this is great…

… unless everyone wasn’t a christian… or worse, was someone who was lying in wait to take advantage of a christian. In that case, we wouldn’t want people to be christians. Unless they don’t matter anyway and have nothing to lose by believing in it, i.e., aren’t aware that it isn’t true (the divine part) and aren’t aware that their lives could be easier with a major paradigm shift toward a Marxist society. They don’t feel like things could be better so they expect to work as much as they do and be as broke as they are, etc. That feels normal to them.

6

I think Marx, with his denying people their property, is far more ascetic, dangerous to the proletariat than Christianity. He takes literally everything, from someones shoes to their gods.
Imagine not even owning your shoes.

You don’t think someone is profiting from peoples gullibility in such a world?

What’s always troubled me most about it is that, in full Communism, all you have left is your ‘worker-hood’. You’re epistemically hardly even a discrete entity, just a function of your labor-capital.

That relates to my issue with Marx purely transactional idea about value.

7

Marx misunderstood a lot, but he especially misunderstood value. And his failure to understand value is probably what led to his failure to understand the nature of profit.

Marx thought profit was theft. When in fact, profit is the creation of MORE value than existed before. This can technically occur via theft too, but that would be highly situational and need a strong case argued for it. We know what theft is, that concept is iron-clad in its phenomenological simplicity. As for profit, not only does it not equate to theft but it is in an entirely different category of things when compared to theft. So to equate them is not only stupid, but… silly and absurd.

There are three (actually four, as we will see the fourth is profit) ways to generate more value than previously existed, in the economic sense: 1) dig up new stuff from the earth, like natural resources, which have (often potential or pre-) value to humans, 2) apply a process of refinement, industry, WORK on existing resources to produce something of value that did not exist before AND has more value than the raw materials used in its making, 3) refine and make more efficient an existing process of refinement, i.e. improve the means of production to be better, use less energy, use less important resources, produce more outputs for net input, etc… So what is the last way to create more economic value in the world than existed before?

  1. Voluntary trading between people who have different things and different values. If I have X and you have Y, but I value Y more than X and you value X more than Y, what should we do? By trading with each other (this is VOLUNTARY trade for the simple reason that no force is needed, we already value what we value and so the trade is quite natural on our parts) the values of X and Y both increase. Nothing occurred except an exchange of ownership and the passage of a little bit of time; and for that, value was increased in the world.

Profit is the “magic” of increasing value without needing to go through the actual work-effort of the 1-3 listed above. It can add value in real economic, utility terms simply by allowing different things to acquire new ownership based on actually being valued differently by different people.

This also applies to our labor power, since that is just another thing we exchange ownership of. I exchange my labor power+time for some quantity of currency. To me, the currency is more valuable than that labor power+time that I gave up to acquire it, and we know this because otherwise I would not have done the work in the first place; whereas to the business owner or whoever is paying me, the currency they give me is worth less than the actual stuff I did for them while I was using my labor+time.

8

From Kierkgaard’s journal:

‘‘What I really need to get clear about what I must do, not
what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must
precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see
what it really is that god wills that I shall do; the crucial
thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea
for which I am willing to live and die’’

A close reading of this suggests that K. states,
‘‘the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me’’
‘‘Truth for me’’ a truth worth living for and worth
dying for… K. is seeking a truth to live for
and die for, but not necessarily any old truth…
K. religious bent would suggest to him a truth
within the religious sphere, within the faith in
god… but as I have noted before, there is
no evidence or proof of either a god or any
of the attachments of god/religions… heaven,
hell, angels, original sin, guilt, a resurrection, none
of that exist as fact… a court of law would reject
faith in god or heaven as ‘‘an assumption of
facts not in evidence’’ but with no faith in
god or heaven that is acceptable, where does
that leave us?

without god or religions, the burden of existence
falls on us… and therein lies the crux of the matter…
we spend our waking hours attempting to avoid and reject
our own place in the universe… we escape this burden
of existence by creating god or religions or faith in
systems like Marxism and capitalism…
anything to escape being held accountable for our lives…
if there is a god, I am no longer accountable for the state
of affairs… if god is, then I am just innocent bystander that was
caught up in his devious plans… having a god or heaven
or hell or angels, or even original sin, I am no longer held
accountable for who I am… existence is not my burden,
but god’s… existentialism is basically bringing back
the burden of existence back onto the individual
person… human beings are so creative in finding
who and what to blame for the burdens of existence…
Millions die every year because capitalism fails them…
which is just another way of shifting the burden of those
lives that die to capitalism as opposed to the burden
of existence that really lands on us… individually and collectively…

accountability: Something people refuse to do for their lives…

Are we accountable, responsible for our neighbors’ lives?
Jesus thought so…and if not on us, where does
the burden of accountability lie? we are so busy refusing
to take accountability or responsibility for our lives, we
forget that at some point, some point, someone must
take accountability for our own lives?
and of course, we will get the glib ones who say yes,
I take accountability for my life… but that statement
is really just for show… because ask them, what
actions do you take that show us you have taken
on the burden of existence? ask for proof and off
they run…

and on what do we base this understanding of the
burden of existence? Why should we accept this
burden of existence? This burden comes back to
us in terms of our looking at the question of K.
''what am I to do?" it is here that we are faced with
the question of the burden of existence…
''What am I to do?"

Do I attempt to escape the burden of existence or
do I embrace it? In thinking about the last hundred years,
we can see several attempts at either escaping the
burden or embracing the burden of existence…

One looks at leaders like Gandhi or MLK and we see
them embracing the burden of existence… and we
see those trying to escape the burden of existence,
Nazi’s, IQ45, Pol Pot, MAGA are all attempts at
escaping the burden of existence…
Statements like ''America would be a paradise without
those scummy illegal aliens?" is an escape attempt
from the burden of existence… or ‘‘If only there
weren’t any Jews, to befoul America/Germany’’…
the attempt to escape responsibility comes with
the blame of others for my own current situation…
and we can replace those words, Jews, Illegal aliens,
with words like Trans, gay, liberals, WOKE… all attempts
at escaping one’s responsibility by transferring blame
to others for one’s life… escaping responsibility…

I was born with a severe hearing loss, not from any actions
of my own, I could have easily gone through my life and
blame others for hearing loss, but where does that leave me?
So, what I do and have done all my life, is to deal with my
hearing loss as best as I can… take accountability for it
and deal with it… and everyone can do the same…
we are born with or are thrust into situations that are not
easily dealt with… but one must make do and improve if
possible, every situation we find ourselves in… no matter
who is responsible for it… my own hearing loss is a negative,
but I don’t have to respond to it that way, I can manage
my hearing loss in a way that may not be positive, but
it isn’t negative… it is what it is… and deal with it…
accepting the burden of existence that is my hearing loss…
and the same can go for you…

we all, everyone single one of us has a burden we carry,
and our meaning might be found in how we deal with
that burden we find ourselves in… do we blame others
for our burden or do we accept responsibility for our
burden, regardless of where blame might lie for that burden
being on us…

it might be said that the burden of existence weighs
heavily on us, perhaps the goal, purpose of
existence is to convert that heaviness of existence into
a lightness worth carrying…

''What am I to do?"

does that command carry the weight of existence or does
that command allows us to convert the weight of existence into
a lightness? recall the example of the couch… with every hand
helping us bring the couch upstairs, each of us has our own
burden lighten… perhaps we need to help others bear the
weight of their own existence… and in doing so, lighten the
burden for all concerned…

Kropotkin

9

Cogito ergo sum: ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’
which is of course perhaps the most famous
motto in Philosophy and yet, it fails to
correctly understand what it means to be human…

"Cogito’’ says we are, but it doesn’t address the key
question of ‘‘who’’ we are… a key scientific number
is 93 million miles, which is of course the distance
between the Earth and the Sun… but that statement
doesn’t tell us anything about the Earth… what kind
of planet is Earth or what kind of beings reside on Earth,
to gain real information, we must ask questions beyond,
what is the distance from the Earth to the Sun…
Does Earth have the key elements to survive?
Is the Earth livable? to find out anything about the Earth,
we must ask questions beyond the distance between
the Earth and the Sun…

And the same is true with ‘‘Cognito ergo sum’’
we exist, now what? what does this existence
actually mean? In this existence, what are we suppose
to do or what should we believe in? None of which is
supplied in the statement, the Earth is 93 million
miles from the sun…or in ‘‘Cognito ergo sum’’

the Statement ‘‘Cognito ergo sum’’ is woefully inadequate,
it tells us nothing about what it means to be human or
even alive… What is good or bad or have meaning, in
a world where the statement ‘‘Cognito ergo sum’’ tells
us nothing at all about the world…
‘‘Cognito’’ has very limited value hence the need
for thinkers like Kierkegaard, who then supply us with
the questions that can lead us to some further understanding
of what it means to be human… ''What am I to do?"
this is a far more powerful tool then ''Cognito…" because
it allows us to pursue human nature far deeper than
a statement about ‘‘Cognito’’ would ever allow us to
journey…

What all this reminds us, is that the questions asked is just
as important as the answers we give… for only in asking
the right question can we get close to an answer that
informs us… and part of the problem within philosophy
is quite often, the wrong question is asked, leading us
to the wrong answer… is ‘‘Cognito’’ the wrong
question? No, it is simply an incomplete question,
because it can only inform us with other questions
and answers… it cannot stand alone… it must
be pared with other answers and questions to make sense…

Kropotkin

10

Per James Collins book “The Mind of Kierkegaard”
one question is never far from Kierkegaard,

‘‘How does the finite, empirical, human self, stand
in relation to the absolute and divine self?’’

Which is once again, assuming evidence/facts not
admitted to the record… that there is an ''absolute,
divine self" is debatable at best and ludicrous with
any thought at all…

Let us take that thought seriously, there is ‘‘no divine
and/or absolute self’’… to be human is to be in doubt
and worry…without a connection to the ‘‘absolute’’
or the divine, what connects us to the earth, to
other human beings… human beings are their
connections to others… the entire human experience
is about being connected… and one of the strongest
connections we hold is to the permanent, the forever…
for that connects us to something past or beyond ourselves
and our transitory nature… we lead ‘‘ad hoc’’ lives…
lives of the moment and by the moment… and this
attempt to connect with the divine, is an attempt to
escape the ‘‘ad hoc’’ lives we lead… to give our
lives relevance by connecting our life to something
permanent, forever…divine… or as it has been said,
to be part of something bigger than ourselves…
which is the driving force of the ism’s and ideologies
that inhabit our lives… capitalism, communism,
Catholicism (which is a stand in for religions)
nationalism, MAGAism, (which is a hatred of
anything different from yourself)
without some sort of ‘‘permanent’’ connection to
an larger ism to believe in, we begin to drift
and lose sight of what it means to be human…
for to be human is not about physically being
human, it is about the values and beliefs we hold
and act upon… that is what it means to be human…
the values and beliefs we hold… one of the Kantian
questions, ''What should we believe in?"

We try to give our lives validity and hope by
connecting our values/beliefs with permanent
values and beliefs… but there is no such
thing as ‘‘permanent’’ not in our lives and certainly
not in the values/beliefs we espouse or claim
to live by… we have many who claim to
believe and hold to the values of God and Jesus,
but in actions, clearly don’t act on those values…
deporting illegals aliens is not a value that can be found
in the bible or the words of Jesus… rejecting the words of
Jesus, as Muscular Christianity does, as not being ‘‘masculine’’
enough, is a rejection of both Jesus, the bible and god…

their words pretend acceptance of the words of Jesus
and god/bible, but their actions reject those very words…
their rejection of the bible and Jesus means they
have rejected the permanent/forever of Christianty…
so, what does connect them to our world, if not
their religion? that rejection has tied them to this
world, not the next… and so, they are left with
nothing permanent or forever… they have lost
touch with the absolute, the divine… and it is worse
for them because they don’t have any idea how lost, or
far away they really are from their supposed
belief/value system…

the question becomes, is there an absolute, permanent
question that we can accept as being the question
of existence? I would say no…What is absolute,
permanent in our world? Permanence is not something
that exists in our world… everything is ‘‘ad hoc’’…of the
moment…we cannot find something that is absolute,
permanent…

for example, take the statement, ‘‘all living beings die’’
we in fact, don’t know and can’t know if that is a true
statement about living beings… even death is not
an absolute, permanent… all we can know is that
in our little part of the universe, we can see that things die,
but we can’t even know if everything we see die, we can
assume it, but we can’t know it… ''they are facts in assumption,
but not actually part of the record"" that everything dies,
is not a fact, but an assumption… just as our ‘‘knowledge’’
of god, heaven, original sin, guilt are nothing more than
assumptions, not based on facts or evidence…

so, where exactly does this leave us?

We are brief, temporary beings with brief, temporary
values and beliefs… there is no forever in our lives,
either past, present or future… no divine or
absolute to connect to… the universe seems to be
infinite, vast, immeasurable because we have no
point of connection to the universe that is permanent,
absolute…so, instead of attempting some
connection that doesn’t seem to exist, some absolute
permanent connection, we should make our connections
on a temporary, impermanent basis… in other words,
accept the temporary nature of both existence and
our values/beliefs…

We are ‘‘ad hoc’’ and we should acknowledge that
‘‘truth’’… we are of the moment, for the moment,
and by the moment…and make our connections
there… within the temporary nature of existence…
both within values/beliefs and within our own lives…

Kropotkin

11

Transcendence: existence or experience beyond
the normal or physical level… ‘‘The possibility of
spiritual transcendence in the modern world’’…

Human beings spend a lot of time attempting
to gain transcendence, existence beyond
the normal or physical experience…

But to my thinking this is a waste of time…
for what benefit can we reach by seeking something
that does not exist… we human beings can
overcome, but we can’t transcend…
what exactly are we transcending when we transcend?
please explain exactly what we are transcending from or to?

Kropotkin

12

in the question, ''What am I to do?" we also have
a collective question, ''What are we to do?" and as
always, why this course of action over another course
of action… People are so into their own trinkets
of existence, that they forget that we are, and have
always been part of the tribe, part of the collective…
I cannot become who I am without, without the collective…
the state/society… it is not possible for me to be without
you…and the followers of god, religions, faith, isms
are unable or unwilling to face up to the fact that I
can only be with you… the followers of faith claim
that I can only be with god, not by myself or with
others in a state/society… regardless of the question,
the follower of faith will only admit god/Jesus as the
answer… but in looking at what is happening today,
it is clear that the defenders of faith, those who believe
in god/religion/ism’s do so while hurting or damaging
others… the drive to remove illegal aliens comes from
the religious, the ones who believe, defenders of the faith…
and they do so, while simply ignoring the words of the bible,
the direct words of Jesus… ‘‘turn thy cheek’’ for example…

as the defenders of the faith no longer believe in
America as a shinning city on the hill… a moral
beacon to the world… where we are moral/ethical
leaders to the world… no one has lost that
moral, ethical standard then the religious, those
defenders of faith… as long as those faithful are
ok with deportations, prison time for illegals, torture
to ‘‘protect’’ ourselves, capital punishment, violating
the law, they are no longer deserving of being called
Christians… a Christian comes from a place of love,
as Jesus himself said… the modern day Christian
is quite ok with hate, violence, anger, lawlessness…

look at the world the defenders of faith are creating…
is it a world of love, peace, faith, charity… and we all know
the answers to this question… the Christian American,
as they now describe themselves… for nationalism is
an essential aspect of Christianity today… something that
is not, is not in the bible or said by Jesus…

Ok, look at the world the Christians are trying to create,
is that a world you want to live in or have your
children live in? Let us imagine the world that
Christians are trying to create, MAGA, and great
again with what policies? Women are property once
again, that slavery exists, that Jim Crow laws
brutally define blacks as chattel who have no say
in their lives… as gays and trans people are attacked
for being gay or trans, is that the love of neighbor that
Jesus was talking about?

Look at their actions and then imagine our world like that…
what a terrifying dystopian world we would live in…
what kind of future do you want to see?
That is the place to start… to build an actual
Christian world, where we forgive, we love and we
practice, live Christian values…
too bad no one is actually trying to achieve that…
Especially the Christian…

Kropotkin

13

Christian existentialist: someone who approaches existential questions (like the meaning of life, freedom, and responsibility) through a Christian lens, often grappling with faith, doubt, and the human condition within the context of their religious beliefs…

Kierkegaard is considered to be a Christian existentialist…
and unlike our modern day Christians, K. struggle with
doubt and faith in a way that suggest he believed
that to be a Christian, one must engage in ‘‘Christianity
as a way of life’’ what modern Christian struggles with,
wrestles with god as the prophets wrestled with god
in the Old Testament… to me anyway, faith is
a struggle, wrestling with god to be true faith…
faith, real faith is found on the other side of the struggle,
after one is done wrestling with god… therein lies
the problem with modern faith or belief, it is done without
the struggle or without wrestling with god… acceptance
and then move on… there is no doubt, no wavering of
acceptance… faith, true faith is done after the struggle with
god…

I hold certain philosophical beliefs… I gained them through
the struggle… my daily battle with Nietzsche for example,
allowed me to experience what N. actually meant…
and after a few years, I was no longer a Nietzschean,
I broke free and move onto someone else… and then
after a struggle, I moved on to another and another
and another… until today, I understand my own struggle
with philosophy, ‘‘as a way of life’’ to be daily and
ongoing… I no longer depend on specific philosophers
to give my faith to, I have moved past specific philosophers
and now I work with my own struggles to understand
what it means to be human… the struggle to be
human lies within the connections we make, both
individually and collectively… I am an individual
and yet, I must, in some manner or fashion,
connect to the state/society I live in… and I am
disconnected today because some of the fundamental
aspects of existence, which is the state/society connection
to me, has changed and not for the best…
destroying the state/society as the MAGA crowd is doing,
is antithetical to my attempts to become human…
and I believe is antithetical to what it means to
be human… for we are both individuals and, AND
collective/social beings… because of evolution,
we are social, collective beings… to survive we
must have a state/society upon which we can depend on…
and this wonton destruction of the American government is
going to damage us in ways we haven’t even foreseen yet…
and in the name of efficiency, an efficiency that doesn’t
exists in nature… if it doesn’t exist within nature, why
are we so bent on creating something that doesn’t exists
in nature? Efficiency is a goal that is not needed
as other values which are far more important…
Justice to name just one value, which we would
do far better to pursue instead of efficiency…
make justice be far more efficient, or make peace
far more efficient… efficiency for efficiency’s sake is not
very efficient… or to ask, for whose benefit is this
efficiency pursued? ours, not at all… we are the
enemy in terms of efficiency… it is done to save money,
and that trinket of existence is a fool’s path to seek
out efficiency…

One might proclaim, we have a more efficient government…
and how does that benefit us? it doesn’t because it puts
money, a worthless trinket, before people’s lives… is the
goal people or is it money? and a true Christian, one with
actual faith, would agree that people must come before
money… and how does the ‘‘SINS’’ of the bible, which
includes avarice, and gluttony and greed, be overcome
with this search for efficiency? The capital sins,
the major vices as listed in the bible, pride, greed, envy,
wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth, and how does this
seeking of efficiency help us overcome those 7 sins?
In thinking about it, I am tempted to put efficiency
into a category of being a sin… right next to greed
and gluttony…

Kropotkin

14

given a list of the most important values we have
as human beings, where exactly would you rate
efficiency? Especially given the values we
human beings consider to be most important…
Love for example, love is not efficient in any way,
shape or form…and who would in their right mind,
pursue love efficiently? for that is not what makes
love work… the single biggest pursuit in our lives,
love, is best done with inefficiency, not efficiency…
or is walking on the beach with a loved one, is that
efficient? Spending money on the Knick knacks of love,
flowers, jewelry, a mix tape, a romantic dinner,
how is any of this efficient? the truth is that
the single most important bodily and psychological
need we have, love, is also the most inefficient activity we
engage with? Beware of the search for efficiency,
for within its confines, we can deny other, way more
valuable needs and wants… just as we can easily deny
love in search for efficiency… and we can also deny
values like justice, peace, hope, faith, mercy
and forgiveness in our pursuit of efficiency…

So, what values should we engage with in regards to
our communal life? no one asks, we are here today, in
terms of values, where should we be tomorrow in terms
of values? in terms of community and society and state,
what values should we engage with?

In DOGE bogus search for efficiency, they have abandon
any value that is not efficient…rejecting such values
as justice, peace, love charity, hope, and mercy, among
such values that make our lives worth living for and even
worth dying for…supports of the faith in efficiency,
have also abandon god, Jesus, faith, religion, heaven
and hell…as well as other religious values…and
what values should we jettison in the name of
efficiency? What values should we live by and if need be,
die for? is efficiency really that value?

and if we were to think about what kind of future we
want, is efficiency really the value on which to stake our
future on?

Kropotkin

15

In seeking efficiency, DOGE is also seeking out
transactional values,

Transactional: relating to the conducting of business,
especially buying or selling… relating to exchange
or interaction between people… in my day to day exchanges
with people, is efficiency really the best means of interacting
with people? for businesses, they want a zero-sum-game,
where there is one winner and one loser… but in our day
to day life, a zero-sum-game isn’t worth playing… if I must
win, then my wife must lose… that is a zero-sum-game…
but I want both of us to win, win-wins aren’t as efficient, but it
is worth living for…

the things/values worth living for are not very efficient, but
they have value because they aren’t very efficient…
values like love and justice and hope and charity…

so, what values do you stand for? and why those values
and not other values?

Kropotkin

16

while one is efficient, can one then negate
or ignore morality, ethics? Is being efficient also
being moral/ethical? it has been my experience
that being moral, doing the right thing is quite often
innefficient… morals, ethics can themselves be denied
in terms of not being efficient… so, what is more important,
practicing morality, doing the right thing or is being efficient
more important? and what is your answer?

Kropotkin

17

Peter Kropotkin:
‘‘What I really need to get clear about what I must do, not
what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must
precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see
what it really is that god wills that I shall do; the crucial
thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea
for which I am willing to live and die’’

K: this is from Kierkegaard’s journal, and it reveals
much truth for us if, if we understand it…
K. speaks of ‘knowledge must precede every act’’
and what knowledge does he refer to here?

The knowledge that precedes K. seeking out a purpose,
his seeking out ''what to do?" what knowledge is needed
for ‘‘knowing’’ what to do?

This knowledge comes in two different forms… and both
from Socrates… One: to know thyself… Two:
the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

So, how does these two Socratic mottoes, impact
our knowing about what it is we are to do?
‘‘What am I to do’’ in terms of our own personal
''know thyself"… by knowing myself, I can rule out
many avenues of ‘‘what am I to do’’… I can’t work
at many different types of jobs… I was hard of hearing,
and now deaf… that alone limited my choices of ‘‘what
am I to do?’’ and each of us have limitations of what it
is ‘‘we can do’’ and it is only by self examination, to
know thyself, can we begin to understand what it is
we can or can’t do… and the second aspect of
‘‘knowledge’’ come from the ‘‘unexamined life isn’t
worth living’’… but what does this examination involve?
this examination is an examination of the state/society…
what values does the state/society support…If I were
born in the Soviet Union, the same year I was born, 1959,
The goals, were honest goals, to free people from
the horrors of capitalism… to become free from
the nihilism of capitalism where the only value is
found in money/wealth… all other values are
negated, values including human beings
and their values, such as love or justice or
freedom… This nihilism is, in part, what
Nietzsche wrote about… How do we overcome
this nihilism that negates human beings
and their values? and here enters Marx…
but Marx made several errors, one of which
is his belief that, we are our work…
Human beings are defined economically within Marx,
all roads lead to economic factors, he writes about
the economic substructure that is the base of all
that human beings do…the answer to the question,
''What am I to do?" for Marx, anyway, is economic
in nature… and Marx is wrong… we are not the sum
of our economic activity… love for example isn’t
economic, pursuing knowledge isn’t economic,
being happy, that isn’t economic in nature…
much of what makes life worth living isn’t
economic in nature… but that can only be
discovered by an examination of the state/society
values… what is expected of us by the state/society?
does that line up with my own values and beliefs?
Discovered by my own ‘‘know thyself’’ examination…

So, we have two tracks here, one is furnished by
our own self-understanding within the concept of
‘‘knowing thyself’’ and the second track is
given within our examination of the values
and beliefs given within the state or society…

an example of this is the belief
in the ‘‘greatness of America’’… as America
was the ‘‘shining city on the hill’’ is a belief
that no one believes in anymore…
We no longer pursue the higher values of
morality or honesty, or justice… they
stand in the way of the one true faith,
in wealth, in the pursuit of money…
there is no higher value in America than
the pursuit of wealth… and we all,
if we were to honestly examine the state/society,
we are greatly diminished within this American
pursuit of wealth… we are negated, this nihilism of
the pursuit of wealth over the lives and values
of people… but we can only find this out because
of our examination of what it means to be an American…
an examination of being human and its relationship
to being an American…the ‘‘unexamined life’’ isn’t
worth living because we cannot see what it means,
what the values of being American actually means…

so, we have two sources of knowledge, one is of
the personal nature, to ‘‘know thyself’’ and the second
is the examination of the values and beliefs of the
state/society in which we find ourselves in…
How do I fit into this state/society that holds to
values and beliefs that are ‘‘wrong’’ to my own
values and beliefs… Which values have
priority, my values or the state/society I live in
values or beliefs?

thus, we must engage in a constant working out
of our own values and beliefs and compare them
to the state/society values that I am expected
to hold, despite my own differing values and beliefs…
Which has priority? the state/society values/beliefs
or my own values and beliefs?

It is only by an examination of values, both personally
and collectively, can we answer this question…
but it also requires us to answer this fundamental
question, what is the goal, purpose of being human?
and within that answer, lies many of our
answers to the question, what values have
priority, personal values or collective values?

Kropotkin

18

This post is a continuation of the previous post…

I disagree with much of what Nietzsche wrote, but in
one area, I do agree with him… that the goal, the path
of being human lies in terms of us, human beings,
going from animal to becoming human…
We are not, not yet anyway, human… we
subscribe far too much to animal values,
the lower values of existence… hatred,
anger, lust, greed, the addiction to money…
these lower values, they limit us to being
just animal, and not in pursuit of what we
should be pursuing, the higher values…
of love, justice, peace, hope, beauty
and morals/ethics…this pursuit of wealth has
devalued our morals, our ethics…
and what is the bottom line in ethics/morals
worth having? that human beings and their values
have more value than the trinkets of existence…
wealth, power, fame, titles, materials goods…
as noted, justice, peace, hope, beauty, love are
all human values worth more, far more than the
trinkets of existence… and why? Because the
trinkets of existence are ephemeral, temporary,
‘‘ad hoc’’… but values like justice, peace, beauty,
love are values that can and do last a lifetime…
and we would know this if, if we were to
actually, engage in a ‘‘reexamination of values’’…
to examine what values we hold, personally,
as one person and within values held
by the state/society… two different set of
values, individually and collective…
to know thyself and to ‘‘examine’’
our values, our collective values…

For Kierkegaard, the ‘‘modes’’ of existence had
three parts, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious…
the aesthetic, the seeking out of both beauty
and happiness… and K. is correct in placing
this level as the lowest level… for one to say,
all I want out of life is to be happy… that is
the aesthetic… the aesthetic is temporary,
ephemeral, ‘‘ad hoc’’… going from one short
lived ‘‘happiness’’ to the next and then to the next
and the next… so on and so forth…

the next level is the ethical,
to seek out what is the moral, ethical thing to do…
a much tougher and higher level…
the movement from the one level to the next,
the aesthetic to the ethical, is at least to K.
a spiritual movement…and for K. at least,
the ethical is very limited in what it can do…
which is why, at least for K. the highest level
is the religious… K. identifies himself as a
religious writer… or as he himself write,
the goal is to bring Christians back to Christanity…

the ideal of the ethical lies within the faith and belief
one has for god… it is only within god, can we discover
what is actually ethical or moral… and here lies
much of 20th century philosophy… from K. to Nietzsche
to Heidegger, to Wittgenstein, to Sartre, the philosophical
search was for morals, ethics that didn’t rely on religions
or god or faith… to find a basis for ethics that wasn’t
religious base, that is the entire understanding of 20th
century philosophy… to create ethics/morals that
was human based, not religious based…
an attempt that is still ongoing… this is why I believe
that K. was wrong… he tried to tie ethics to the religious…
and religion is not the answer… why is being
religious the answer if, as Nietzsche claimed, that
god is dead, and just as importantly, we have
killed him… Ask yourself, are the gods from the ancient
past, Egypt or Rome or Greece, are they still ‘‘alive?’’
No, the answer is clearly no… they are ‘‘dead’’, and belief
in the gods keeps them alive, but when no one believes,
they are dead… and the modern god, described by the bible,
is dead…But Kropotkin, how do you know? how does
one know that ''god is dead?"
Who practices the laws, commandments of god,
as a ''way of life?" Religious belief today no longer
engages with god as ‘‘a way of life’’… god is dead
because no one truly believes anymore…
and I am including Islam in this…
and why am I including Islam in this, non belief?

Because religion, all religions are about one’s
private values and beliefs… the old prophets had
the right idea when you read about them wrestling with
god… faith, true faith is about wrestling with god
and his laws… a simple faith without any sort of
examination of its values is blind faith and the blind
tend to crash into walls and chairs because they
are blind…faith is best done with eyes wide open…
religion is about one’s faith and belief in one’s god…
a one on one relationship with god… a religion
base on societal values and social needs and wants,
is not religious… but it is social and being social,
being about the state/society is not being religious,
religion is about wrestling with god…one on one…
and public religions are about easily accepted faith
and belief… and those have no value…

Life is a struggle and our religions should reflect
that struggle… what does it mean to be human,
doesn’t necessarily have a religious context, but
it does have a social, collective context… for me,
anyway, being human has a social collective context,
but not a religious context, for I can define myself,
as a human being, without any reference to religions
or god… I can have value and worth and meaning
without any reference to god or religions…
can you?

Kropotkin