I, and 99.999% of the world’s population agree with all you have said in the last couple of posts. Tragically, .001% appear to be opposed to such a world. It so happens that they run the show - what is to be done?
Shouldn’t you be asleep?
I agree PK, on the basic needs. Great posts.
K: Yes, I woke up around 2:00 Am and worked on said posts until 3:30 or so, even though
I have to work today at 8:00 am… and in regards to my post, I am not trying to
change the world per se, I am trying to change people’s attitude or understanding
of the world and they help instigate change… it is not a top down change,
but a bottom up change that I am looking at…
but change is needed… if we are going to survive as a species…
but more on that in a day or so, as I must go to work…
Kropotkin
I read something that struck a thought in me…
(about beliefs)
“This is one of the things they had “been unconsciously waiting for someone who could
assert them with Authority”… It provided an alibi for them too”
that is what the village idiot offers the “Deplorables” the illiterate masses who
think IQ45 can walk on water…he offers them “beliefs” they hold but have
been waiting for someone who could assert them with authority…
thus the followers of IQ45 hold to hate and bigotry and anger and intolerance
and IQ45 asserts those beliefs with authority and thus they follow him…
think about it… has one follower of IQ45 here express any thoughts as to
beauty or art or love or hope or anything of a higher nature…nope…
no, they don’t… they respond to the lower, nasty violent beliefs
of the lower, animal that is IQ45 and his followers…
can you separate yourself from your beliefs enough to
see the nature of your beliefs? can you look at your beliefs with
an dispassionate and impartial vantage point? can you be objective
with your beliefs?.. few here can and I believe that IAM is one of the
few and that is also why I hold him in high regard…
to engage with philosophy… one must have courage to face who they are
and what it is they really are… and very few here have any kind of courage
at all… that is why so few here engage in a honest look at who they are…
and certainly the “kids” don’t engage into such an in depth look at their soul…
to do so is very frightening… and these kids now days are so afraid of,
well everything…including their own shadows…
Kropotkin
as I work toward an understanding of what is/makes us human…
I reach this thought…
we are both actual and possible… what that means is our beliefs, actions,
hopes, dreams are both actual, which means right now, right here…
and possible which means it lies in the future within our possibilities…
so let us follow this through to better understand this…
at birth, I am both actual and possible…
I can breath and move and have a heartbeat and hear…
but my actual self is very, very limited… there is very little
I can actually do… I cannot walk or talk or even think at birth…
I can experience, but I can’t make any sense of that experience
because I need experience to understand experience…
but I am also possible… my entire future at the moment of birth is
really all about what is possible…I can be or do anything that any
other human has said or done… it is possible that I can become
anything I want at birth… all possibilities are available to me at birth…
but very little is actual at birth… I simple can’t do much at birth…
at age 10, the actual has increased dramatically… I can think, and run
and walk and do math and jump on the bed and all kinds of actual things
I can do at the age of ten…
the possible is still very possible… I might be able to run a 4 minute mile
or climb Everest or learn German or become president of the U.S…
at ten, almost anything is still possible… but some stuff isn’t possible
for example, I was born with a hearing loss… at birth, even then,
some stuff wasn’t possible and it still isn’t possible at age ten…
I couldn’t be an astronaut at birth nor at age ten…it just wasn’t
physically possible… we have certain limitations of the physical
and of the emotional, psychological…
for example at birth or during childhood, we might be abuse…
thus causes damage to us… this damage might or might not
allow us to be able to achieve what is possible for us…
some times people are able to overcome the damage caused
to them by parents, society, religion, education…
and sometimes not… depends on the person…
but that damage may prevent us from achieving what is possible for us…
emotional and psychological damage might prevent us from achieving
the possible…and thus we are limited…
so in some people, there is this conflict between what is actual
and what is possible, even at a young age…
at age 20, what is possible comes into clear view…for example, I ran cross-country
and track in high school… it was still possible for me to run a 4 minute mile,
but not likely… as my best mile time wasn’t really that close to a 4 minute mile…
so maybe, unlikely, but maybe I could work 24/7 and try to run a 4 minute mile…
the actual was I ran around a 4:50 mile… and it isn’t likely to become that
drastically better to be able to run a 4 minute mile… so the actual
and the possible are pretty clear here…
and my hearing loss still denied plenty of the actual and the possible…
I couldn’t have gone into the armed forces or become a police officer or
even a telephone operator…my possibilities were limited because
of the actual…
so at age 20 the difference between the actual and the possible were
still pretty great… but experience allowed me to see that some possibilities
were going to be limited… I am not very good at math, at all… a family thing…
so my choices/ possibilities were not in the area of math… I still can’t add,
subtract, divide or multiply to save my life…and that actual, has determined
my possibilities…
at age 30… the actual really begins to determine the possibilities…
I no longer have the possibility to run a 4 minute mile… my actual prevents
this and this actual is called entropy… the body decays slowly over the years,
that decay to limit the possibilities and the actual…I physically can no
longer run a 4 minute mile… the actual limits the possibilities …
at different ages, the actual changes and the possibilities change
at my current age, 61… my actual has dramatically change along with
my possibilities …I can no longer really run…my body is too damaged
to allow any type of long distance running…my actual prevents me
from achieving any type of possibilities… but even my possibilities
have changed…physical activities are limited due to the decay
or entropy that has occurred in my body… I can no longer
pick up heavy objects due to the damage to my knees and back…
as I age, the actual changes and the possible changes…
for the worse I might add… I can no longer do much of
the actual that I could have done when I was younger
and because of that, my possibilities are also very limited…
and as I age, my actual decreases and my possibilities decreases…
and when I am close to death… my actual and my possibilities
no longer really exists… it is not possible for my body to achieve
anything actual and it is no longer possible for me to reach
possibilities…at old age, all that is left of the possibilities is death…
there are no other possibilities available to me as I grow old enough to die…
so what is actual in human beings and what is possible for human beings
change as we grow older and entropy becomes a larger and larger factor
in our lives…
does this depress me or make me want to kill myself?
no… it is part of the price of admission into life…
we are born with possibilities and choices and the actual…
and those change as we get older… so what is really left isn’t
what you might think…
what is between the actual and the possible seems to be choice…
I can choose to make some choices… I can try to overcome my actual
and attempt to run the 4 minute mile…even at my age…
but it won’t succeed… so do I let the fact that no matter how
hard I try, I can’t succeed at running the 4 minute mile stop my
from achieving this?
how much does the actual and the possible affects and change
our choices? to overcome means to overcome the actual
and become something else… to change what is possible…
even at my advanced old age, I can, in theory, it is possible, for
me to become president of the U.S… it is still possible…
but is it actual? only by overcoming the actual can we achieve
the possible…
so ask yourself, what is the actual in your life and what is the possible?
and what choices can you make between this actual, that we are,
and the possible, that we might be?
entropy is a given in our existence… our bodies decay and eventually die…
so what do we do in the meantime?
what is our actual, what are our choices and what is possible?
Kropotkin
we look about this day and we see, causes, events, idea’s and movement
that strike us as being “Profound” and “Timely” …
in my life, I have had many such moment that have influenced me…
I recall as a child of the 60’s, hiding under my desk in case of a nuclear
attack by the Soviet Union… yep, we truly believed a desk would protect us
from a nuclear attack…and I recall the drama of the JFK assassination
and I recall watching the news as Walter Cronkite would tell us at the dinner table
that another 54 or 38 or whatever soldiers had died that week… and we would
watch footage of soldiers in Vietnam fighting or whatever…it was the present
reality of life in 1968 America…and it was causing riots in the streets
and fistfights and kids dropping out and you couldn’t get away from it…
the war in Vietnam caused a pall over everything in America in 1968…
and in 1972, 73, it was Watergate…and it cast a pall over everything in this country…
almost every action had some tie back to Watergate…I was 14 and 15 and I could still
remember every single news cast or newspaper had front page something about
Watergate… in 1973 was my freshman year in high school…
in 1979, 81 was the Iran Hostages…and it dominated everything for
almost 2 years…and I was radicalized by the election of Raygun…
I became, after a time, a anarchist…
and in 1985-1987 was Iran Contra and it dominated the news…
and people went to jail, not the right people mind you… like bush Sr.
and Raygun should have gone to jail but whatever…
in 1990-91 was the gulf war, desert storm… and it dominated everything…
and in 1998 was Clinton’s impeachment and that dominated the news…
and in 2000 was the election of bush over Gore… still the single worse decision
in the SCOTUS history far outweighing the infamous “Dred Scott” case
which cause a fucking Civil war…
and Kropotkin, what is your point? I see the exit of IQ45 as being the dominent
news of the day… but I like to point out that we see and hear and feel the
news of the day very intently… and it tends to blot out everything…
and more importantly, these events which dominated everything, sometimes
for years, no longer have any relevance…matters that were literally life and death,
no longer even have any meaning… ask a kid about Vietnam and they are completely
clueless… they have no sense at all… what the entire war was about…
events and moments that we see today that seems to be so important
and dominated, will be forgotten… just as we have forgotten about Vietnam…
or as kids hiding under our desk to save us from a nuclear war…
from the war that never came…
and nowadays kids hide under their desks to save themselves from crazed
killers trying to kill as many kids as they can…
and we too have forgotten…Sandy Hook was in 2012… a lifetime ago…
the point is that these events which so dominate and drive us today, will
be forgotten, the idea’s that seem to be so dominate today, will be forgotten
and the emotions and feelings that so drive our actions, will be forgotten…
we are temporary creatures… we exists in time temporarily and our ideas,
beliefs, emotions, events, moments are forgotten…the anger and despair
that drove me to become an anarchist in 1981 is gone… replaced by
growing older and I hope, hope, wiser…and what of the events and moment
and ideas that I have listed, do they have any value at all? perhaps as learning
moments… maybe…we can learn from our mistakes in Vietnam and what drove
us to protect a god awful land thousands of miles away… the entire basis of
Vietnam was from a terrible misinformed belief in the sanctity of the America
ideal…58,000 soldiers died from a failed idea that if we don’t stop communism
in Vietnam that it would advance all the way to and beyond India…and guess what?
communism died anyway in 1990…
ideas and events and moments that strike at the very heart of who
we are today, won’t be so important in a few years… Hence the loud
wailing of those like Obser and gloom and UR is seen as it is,
time will erase these moments like sand castles on the beach…
I once swore that I would be a anarchist forever… and then a few
later discovered that what is human, is soon to be erased by time itself…
who I am today has been formed, in part, by my many years as an anarchist,
but it isn’t who I am today…I am something different today…and what seemed
to be so very important yesterday, today, not so much…and tomorrow, not
very important at all, in fact, most likely forgotten…and not only is that
something real, it is something that is important… that we are not defined
by our beliefs and moments, but we are changing all the time… it is this change
that has value, not the beliefs or moments… I am who I am, now at 61, soon
to turn 62… and what I hold to be true today, most likely will be forgotten by
the time I reach 70…and I will hold new truths and values and understanding…
and why, because as we age, we change to fit and adapt to our new conditions…
I will be much closer to death then I am today… and that simple biological fact,
will help decide my own beliefs, understandings, hopes and dreams…
my “TRUTHS” when I am 70… will be different, far different then what they
are today… and I am ok with that because I see how my “TRUTHS” of yesterday,
as a child hiding under my desk or of marching in the name of anarchism or
protesting the village idiot, which one, must be asked…
and it is the very nature of time that moves what we belief in
and hope for and dream about…
has there been one single immutable belief that I have been able to hold
onto my entire life?
no, outside of my impeding death and even that I can’t be sure about…
I cannot know that I will die… it is in the future and as Hume pointed
out, what we “know” about the future is simply habits, prejudices,
superstitions and wishful thinking…
so Kropotkin, what the hell is your point?
my point, if I even have a point is simply this, we can only hold onto
who we are and who we might become…everything else is simply
transitory… ephemeral…temporary…short lived…
I can still recall when I was running track and cross-country in high school
and that seems like yesterday… but that was over 40 years ago now…
my mind still believes it is 18 again, but my body, my body knows it is 61…
so who do I follow, my mind or my body?
I must, as I must, follow my body… for my mind is simple wrong in its
belief that I am still 18…
if I am to believe statistics, I am going to live for another 15 years…
what am I to make of the next 15 years?
whatever I can…and knowing that what I hold to be true today,
I won’t hold in those remaining 15 years I have…
and what you hold to be true and forever, you will discover as I have,
that nothing is true forever… time changes and dominates us in ways
we cannot even see or even fathom…
today isn’t the only day of our life, it just the latest of many days to come…
Kropotkin
“Discourse on method”
the title of the book that is the beginning of philosophy
is an excellent means of understanding the modern world…
and what is so excellent about it? certainly not the philosophy because
that was dubious at best…but the entire use of “Method” which is
the start of the modern age…
the entire difference between the modern age and the prior age of
the Medieval was not one of vastly doing things… or how the way worked…
if you brought someone from the middle ages into say, 1760… the world
would look substantially the same…
the farming would have looked the same, the means of travel was the same,
the clothes might have been different, but that is not a substantial change,
that was an Aesthetic change…the Medieval man would not have been
vastly surprised by the world of 1760…the basic markers of say 1136 medieval
Europe, still existed in 1760…transportation, communication, the political,
social, economic mechanisms that existed in 1136, still existed in 1760…
in western Europe, serfdom was eliminated, but still existed in the eastern reaches of Europe,
Poland and Russia for example… Europe in 1760 would have been familiar to the
man of 1136…but what changed? what changed was the mental changes between
the two times… Our mental image of ourselves and our place in the world changed
between the two…the changes between 1136 and 1760 weren’t physical changes,
but mental changes in how we view ourselves and the world…
the “Method” of 1136 was mentally to be Medieval… to seek god and to
strive ever closer to being next to god…the medieval world was very hierarchy
biased, whereas the world of 1760 wasn’t as much engaged in hierarchy…
if you look at the medieval world of 1136, we see the entire system of
the political, social, economic and religious being based upon the structure
of the hierarchy… from top to bottom… what was your place within
that hierarchy was all important to the man of 1136…
the key to the entire understanding of the medieval world lies in
this idea of finding your place within the various hierarchies of the medieval world…
politically, socially, economically, religiously, and philosophically…
the enlightenment motto, Sapere aude… was entirely foreign to the man of
the medieval world…Sepere aude… dare to know…had severe and dire
consequences in the medieval world… quite often spending some times with
our friends in the Inquisition…with its ensuing weight loss program…
and this idea of “Sepere aude” was not a physical action, but was a mental
engagement… have the courage to find out the truth…the truth to the man of
1136 was clear and obvious… and it wasn’t challenged until 1519…successfully
anyway…
that to the man of 1136 there was but one truth and one truth only…
to the person of 1760, there were many paths to the truth and the “truth”
itself was being challenged… what was the “Truth” was clear the man of
1136… and not so much to the person of 1760…
a mental difference in how we viewed the world…
and we now see what makes this the “Modern” world as oppose to
the medieval world… a mental construct of what it means to be human…
and that is what will separate this current age from the next one…
the change in the mental construction of the vision we have of the world…
the change from this modern world to the next will come about as we
change our vision and understanding of what it means to be human…
the different ages of humanity come about from the changes in how
we view ourselves…our mental viewpoints/changes is what creates
a new age…
and that is what I am attempting to do… change the nature of how we
view ourselves and the world… and in doing so, we change the world,
taking it from our “Modern” world to the next age, whatever we decide to
call it…
so let us better understand this mental changes… for example,
the reason for the success of Jesus was in the changes brought about
by the mental changes brought about by Christianity… the physical world
did its usual slow movement that we quite often see… the physical world
of the times of Christ, say 1 B.C… wasn’t all that different in 311 A.D…
the person of 1 B.C would have been easily able to understand the world of
311 A.D…and be able to fit into that world…but what Jesus brought about
was a mental change in how we viewed ourselves and how we viewed the world…
and that is what instituted the changes that mark the difference between
the classical world and the Medieval world… in how we viewed the world…
and that is what instituted the changes between the Medieval world and the
Modern world… in how we viewed the world…
and now we are working on the next steps… going from “Modern” to what
is next…and I say, we make the conscious decisions that bring us this
new understanding… in other words, we choose what kind of vision we
have of the world instead of inheriting it from our family, religion, state,
media and society…
an active engagement in becoming who we are instead of a passive
indoctrination that becomes our knowledge of what is a human being…
we choose our vision of who we are and what it means to be human…
and that will become the new paradigm of what it means to be human…
and the world changes… with that new understanding of the vision of
who we are and what is possible…
so let us have the courage to change and become something new by
making choices, instead of leaving it to chance…that is the new idea…
that we become active participants in deciding who we are and what is
possible…
Kropotkin
In my reflections, I have thought about who we are and what is
possible for us…what is and what could be…
but in reading books before say, the French Revolution, you don’t get
a sense of history… for example, Read Boethius, “The consolation of
Philosophy” or read Plato’s “The Republic” …and in reading either book,
one doesn’t get a sense of time, of the movement of time…of the past,
or the future… each book is engaged in right here, right now…
the idea of the movement of time in books is a relatively recent one…
either in fiction or in non-fiction books…
and this is important to think about how people didn’t engage in either
the past or the future… it was always about right here, right now…
and this attitude still exists today in conservative thought…
(well not in the modern conservative party like the GOP because
the modern GOP is engaged in conspiracies and fringe theories,
and hero worship of bread dead people like IQ45)
but in real conservatives, they hold to tradition and the past being
the true and proper guide to our beliefs and actions today…
but they don’t engage in any thought about where we ought to be
and how do we get there…
and that is in part, part of the failure of the conservative and their party…
look at the writings of the conservatives here at ILP… UR and Mags and Pedro
and even Zero… very little thought about the future and what ought to be…
a lot of talk about what is and what was…
Part of our engagement with who we are as human beings is an engagement with
who we were, who we are and who we will be…
in thinking about it, there is very little movement in their thinking…
UR and pedro and oberv is fixated on the last election…zero is fixated
upon the delusion of the end of the world…
their thoughts stray little from their fixations…
what was, what is, and what will be, has little to do with their
fixations…to be fixated means to be tied down in time to a specific
time/or place or event…have you or has anyone seen any type of movement
in their thought? and the answer is clear… they are incapable of changing
and adapting their thoughts… it is fixed in time and place…
have any of the people I wrote about mentioned something other then their fixations?
for example, beauty, love, peace, hope, Art, the future, or even laughter?
No, and no again…they don’t even see the things that make human existence
worth living for or worth dying for…so what is worth living for?
is it the fixations of UR or Pedro or Observe? no, they are fixated upon temporary
momentary events in our lives… for example, from the day I was born until I was 30,
in 1989, the fixation of America was on the Soviet Union…every day of my existence
for 30 years was about the Soviet Union… but does the “communist threat” that
filled my life for 30 years exists today? no, of course not…but what if I was
to fixate upon the Soviet Union… the danger of the Soviet Union, the threat
that the Soviet Union posed to all of us today… why you think me nuts…
as you should…people, events, moments, actions are all historically based…
and once they are over, they are over…there is no need to fixate on
those momentary events in time…the Clinton Impeachment was the biggest
event of his presidency… but who would fixate on that event over 20 years ago?
it is pass, it is done, that moment had it day and now it is a dead letter…
IQ45 is past, done, to fixate on something like that, something that has as much relevance as
the Clinton impeachment or the Soviet Union is insane…
I am sure that those I have mentioned, Ur and pedro and observe will whine about
IQ45 for years and perhaps decades…but we normal human beings will have moved
on… and I am focused not on the long dead past, but I am focused on what is next?
what is the next step for us, individually and collectively?
what is the next step for Kropotkin, individually and then as part of
a collective of human beings? and what ought we need to be engaged with,
collectively…I hold that the most important direction human beings should engage
with is the future, what is next… not what has happened…but what should happen…
what direction are you focused on? the past, the present or the future?
and that makes all the difference in the world as to what direction you are focused on…
Kropotkin
when we think about life and we wonder if “LIFE” has meaning or purpose…
and quite often we make a “grand decision” that life has no meaning or
purpose…but let us think about this…we might make that decision because
we are influenced by or impacted by the baubles that we pursue…
in other words, life looks like it doesn’t have meaning or purpose because
we begin with the baubles of existence… seeking money, titles, power,
fame…if given those values, then life is meaningless or without purpose…
but if we replace those baubles… think of baubles as empty calories…
like the empty calories of food that fill us up but offer us absolutely
no nutrition of any kind…the baubles of existence fill us up but don’t
offer us any nutrition…empty calories…
so, if we replace those empty calories with nutritious food, seeking values
that some “meat” to them, then perhaps we might rethink that life has
no point or meaning to it…(as I write this I am eating Jelly beans)
but were I to replace those jelly beans with food of some substance, of
some worth, then I will not be eating empty calories…and thus I can say,
the food I am eating has some value, has some meaning…and this is true
of our values… we have empty values and we have values that give us
some meaning and purpose…
values like love, peace, justice, hope, charity are values that give us some meaning…
that offer us purpose and self worth…empty values are the values of hate, violence,
anger, lust, greed, despair… they are simply empty calories… fill us up but
they don’t feed us what we need to grow and prosper and become wiser, healthier
human beings…
when we diet (which I don’t do, notice the first three letters of the word, diet,
Nahhhh, I don’t think so), anyway, when we diet, we come to the realization that
some sort of change must occur and that to feel better and healthier, we must change
our diet…we see or envision some future us in better shape or weighing less…
and that is our goal… to lose weight and to become healthier…
and why can’t we use this model of self improvement to also guide us in our
seeking of values that will improve us…to make us in better shape, not in a
physical shape but in a better moral and mental and psychological shape…
but to see that, we must have some vision of what that improvement looks like
mentally, morally and psychologically…
what ought we look like mentally, morally and psychologically?
in what manner can we improve ourselves, mentally, morally and psychologically?
and for this to happen, we must engaged in the Socratic method of asking ourselves about
what do we know about ourselves? in other words, we must engage in “knowing thyself”
and we must engage with the Socratic statement…
“the unexamined life isn’t worth living”
so to reach any possible goal of self improvement, either physically or in
improving “the better angels of our souls” require us to “Know thyself”
and to examine our lives, honestly and without colored glasses on…
to find our meaning and purpose begins with us and our engagement with
“Knowing ourselves” and to engage with a “examination” of our lives…
the only way to discover our meaning and purpose lies with our engagement
with the Socratic ideals…
“to know thyself” and “the unexamined life isn’t worth living”
and that will begin the path to understanding our meaning and purpose…
Kropotkin
I too have spend years, indeed decades trying to discover what
is the meaning of or the purpose of existence…
I spent 40 years seeking god… which in one sense can be considered
to have meaning… the very act of seeking can be thought of as
giving one meaning or purpose…
by seeking, be it god or philosophy or science… we can be considered to
have created our meaning, our purpose…
the search for something can be what creates meaning, purpose in our lives…
for example, I seek questions, I am not bold enough to attempt to seek
answers, so I seek questions and in that seeking, I find my meaning,
my purpose…
now one might say, I seek the baubles of existence… money, fame,
power, titles and in that search, we might find existence?
ok, let us think about this… what does a search for baubles lead us to?
the search for baubles can only one to more baubles… in other words,
we seek money and all we can find is more money… we can’t find anything
outside of money…and in seeking fame, what does the search for fame lead us to?
just more fame… seeking fame doesn’t add anything else to the mix…
when we seek power, all we find is power, nothing else…and titles,
what can be gained by seeking titles? nothing outside of titles…
I call them baubles because they have no value within themselves…
all I can find when I seek wealth is wealth or all I find in seeking fame is
fame itself…
so what will I find if I seek something outside of those baubles?
let us say I seek something more substantial then just mere baubles,
like justice or peace or humanity? Let us say we are seeking the values
that make life worth living. what might I find in seeking those values?
In seeking those values, I seek the higher possibilities of human existence…
In seeking values like love or hope or peace… I seek what it is that makes us
human… it isn’t like seeking money where all we can find is money…
no, in seeking higher values we seek that which is higher then just mere
baubles…for we can only find more such baubles in seeking baubles…
but in seeking higher values, we can find the values that are worth living for…
money isn’t worth living for or worth dying for…
fame isn’t worth living for or worth dying for…
titles isn’t worth living for or worth dying for…
power isn’t worth living for or worth dying for…
but a value like love is a value not only worth living for, it is a value
worth dying for…as are values like justice, peace, hope, freedom, connection, humanity,
beauty… all of those values are values worth living for and worth dying for…
for the seeking of these values don’t just bring about more of the same as
the search for fame or money only brings out more of the same…
in seeking money, all one will find is more money… and nothing else…
but in seeking the higher values, I can bring out the higher values…
in seeking love, I find not only love, but I find out what it means to
be human…
think of it like this… let us say, we decide to seek out pennies…
that there are a lot of pennies cannot be denied… and we should be able
to find a lot of pennies… but and this is important… pennies have little value
in themselves… a search for pennies is a search for something that has little value…
and so we should spend our time on earth seeking something of value, something
that is worth our time, money, effort and trouble in seeking…
and in seeking such lower values as in money, fame, power, titles…
we seek something that isn’t really worth the trouble or effort to achieve…
the payoff in seeking wealth or fame or power or titles just isn’t worth the effort…
but in seeking values as in love, hope, peace, justice…we are seeking values
that are worth the trouble… worth the effort…
values worth living for and worth dying for…
so in seeking values, seek those values which have a higher payoff then
just the seeking of money, fame, power, titles…because there is not a payoff
or is worth the trouble in seeking money, fame…
Kropotkin
Kierkegaard once wrote:
“What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do,
not what I am to know…the thing is to find a truth which is for me,
to find an idea for which I can live for, die for”
now which values are worth living for, which values are worth dying for?
ask yourself, is hate a value worth living for, or even more importantly,
worth dying for?
are any of the negative values worth living for? is hate, anger, lust, greed… value
worth living for? what is the only thing thing that hate and anger bring about?
why, the only thing, the only thing that comes from hate is more hate… and from
anger, the only thing that comes from anger is more anger…
that is why they are empty values, like empty calories… they fill you up but
they don’t answer the questions of existence like the positive values…
and what does the positive values bring about? let us take love for example,
what does love bring us? recall our Maslow and his pyramid of needs…
where does hate fit into our pyramid of needs and where does love fit into
the pyramid? Hate doesn’t help us get to the psychological needs of safety/security
or of esteem or of belonging… which is really connection… we need to feel like
we belong or connect to other people…
and how does the negative values of hate and anger and lust and greed fill
these psychological needs? they don’t…hate just breeds hate and anger breeds
anger… but they don’t help one feel safer or be more esteem or to belong/connect…
but the positive values of love, justice/equality, hope, charity does bring about
our achieving our psychological needs of love, esteem, safety/security, belonging/connection…
when we love we are connecting to other people… when we help bring about
justice, we are connecting to other people…for justice is about equality… we are
equal when we act with justice… and this feeling of equality/justice ties us, binds us
together…in a way that hate and anger and greed and violence doesn’t bring about…
for those who practice injustice and violence do so because they don’t believe
in either the principle of or the practice of equality/justice… violence is easy
when you don’t hold that others are your equal…
violence is easy when you hold yourself above or below other people…
when we hold ourselves to be equal, then the very act of violence becomes much harder…
so, ask yourself, what truth is my truth? what truth can I live for or die for?
Kropotkin
no idea is worth dying for, there are things to which ideas refer to and which ideas approximate worth living and risking life for. you do it all the time…There are no great mysteries nor great fantasies; all civilisation that has come into this world was a fruit of labour and of deep, honest and rational thought and of good-will. ORA ET LABORA - PRAY AND WORK.
but it isn’t enough to know “what am I to do?” as much
as why that “doing” instead of another “doing”.
it isn’t enough to just go out and do something, one has
to understand why, why are we doing that something?
what values are we following when we “do” an action?
for every action requires some sort of value to justify or
to make sense of an action…
it isn’t enough to be good, one must have a value to follow to make
being good, a 'worthy" effort…
“what am I to do?” is really about finding a value that we use to
explain our actions… “what am I to do” needs a value to make sense of
that “what am I to do”… if I am going to “act” what values guides my actions…
so, when I act, do I use negative values like hate or anger or violence or lust?
or do I use positive values like love, non-violence/peace, hope, justice, to inform/guide
my actions?
so the “truth” I am looking for is the value/values that guides my actions…
so I am searching for some sort of guideline to guide my actions…
Kropotkin
Your question is a fools errand.
80 percent of your actions are determined before you are born by your destiny(luck, age you come to live in, the part of the world, the social class) and by your genetic make-up(intelligence, personality and strength of character), already encoded and imprinted on your being seconds after your father impregnated your mother. the rest…is whatever you do with the rational mind the god has given you to differentiate you from the animals, the rational mind, not the free-will as it is often claimed since animals also have free-will but lack the rational agency to discern the truth from the false and the good from the evil. Your rational mind can express that approximate 20 percent of your freedom or be forgotten and thrashed into emotions and passions but that freedom will not be to be something completely else but to use that 80 percent in a way you see rational, to discipline yourself, to perceive evil in your own nature and try to oppose it, to evaluate yourself or others rationally and observe deficient personal characteristics and then decide to minimize them as much as possible etc. etc. in other words…to use your ability to think rationally(to whatever degree you possess it) to ‘hone’ yourself.
as the great Western mind(of the Christian school of thought as opposed to the Platonic idealism)has said:
Ein Mann kann tun, was er will, aber nicht, was er will.
A man can will as he wills but not will what he wills.
of course, Schopenhauer was not a Christian but was empathetic to the Christian morality and the great tradition of thought and knew he was a part of this great civilization of ours.
Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - “freedom” means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.
You might consider this thread - Wholeness
Although I agree with most of that, I think in this context - “freedom” means using your rational mind to persuade your animal instincts and circumstances toward less foolish paths.
Dont change my words, I said an extent of freedom over yourself, not freedom, and nowhere did I denote that that which is a part of you and out of the control of your will must necessarily be evil or undesired; whatever context you are referring to was not mine.
Don’t change my words - read them.
K: as this post is less insane then most of your posts, I shall answer it…
I don’t hold that we are “fixed” or “determined” as you seem to think…
even such matters as evolutionary determination isn’t as much as we think…
the point I am aiming for is simple, we can overcome our inheritance, of birth
of the situation we are born in, of our current socio-economic class…
we are not fixed by those things that you believe we are fixed into…
I am not of who I was at birth… I can change my thinking to better reflect
who I am… I can overcome…I was born in a very wealthy Midwest family…
and within 10 years was living in dire poverty… and my situation now is of solid
middle class… but I don’t have to hold middle class values…my values reflect
who I am, not my socio-economic situation…and that is the point… I am not
determined, as you hold, by genetics or by my socio-economic situation…
nor am I determined by evolution… I can overcome even evolution…
by holding to values that overcome evolution… for example, we have
certain evolutionary beliefs… for example, it is nature to react to certain
situations with violence… but I don’t have to react to violent situations with
violence… if you react to certain situations with violence, that is evolution at work…
we are born with passions, with feelings but we don’t have to act or react with
passion or with feelings… we can rise above our evolutionary traits
I am not the same as I was when I was 5 or 15 or 25 or 45 or even now which
is less than two weeks from being 62… as we age, we change and evolve…
I can tell you I am not the same person I was 10 years ago… at 51/52…
I also hold that the journey as Nietzsche put it, going from animal to animal/human to
becoming fully human… is a long journey… going from animal to us today, animal/human
has taken a million years and the journey to go from today’s animal/human to becoming
fully human might take another million years…it certainly won’t happen in my lifetime…
but perhaps in my greatgrandchildren’s lifetime might, might begin in earnest, the process
of becoming, becoming human…of choosing to becoming human…
instead of wandering around in a daze like we do today…
becoming human requires a choice… and that is what I am saying…
make a choice of becoming… instead of blindly seeking a way into the future…
we can overcome even evolution to become who we are… which is being human,
and not animal/human…as is the case today…
Kropotkin
K: read it and was bored by it…this is stuff I worked out decades ago…
Kropotkin