a new understanding of today, time and space.

let us approach this from another direction:

much of the “mystic” thought centers on the union with god,
the assimilation of man into the “higher” levels…

much of Marxism/communism lies here… we are to assimilate into
the higher levels which is the substructure of economics which dominate
the world, according to Marxism… to assimilate human beings into the great force
that is dialectical materialism that is the governing force of marxism…
we adapt to the social forces that dominate our lives, we change to meet the
needs of the dialectical materialism, not it changes for us… we change for it…

and this is true of capitalism and Buddhism and catholicism or any ism that
you must assimilate into, become part of to “achieve” success…

to achieve heaven or to become a saint, one must sacrifice one individual self to
the greater force of that ism…to assimilate into something… not to be one’s own
self…to become eternal, one must assimilate into, not be oneself, but to sacrifice
oneself into the eternal…I reject this…

to hold onto that which is me, and to bring that into the completion of
my search for what is possible for me, I am willing to destroy the eternal,
the forever… to keep me into what is possible for me…

but I am willing to meet the eternal half way… to be able to be me
and still be part of the whole… some sort of compromise must be possible…
I am willing to be part of the whole if, if I can continue to seek what is possible
for me without being hindered or be obstructed by rules and regulations designed
to force me into accepting the path of society at the cost of becoming who I am…
I am willing to become part of the whole if, if I can continue to seek what is
possible for and then to attempt to achieve that possibility…

as this all sounds very vague, I shall try to “bring it down to earth”

I hold that one possibility for me, is to become a philosopher…
and I hold that my soul/body desires to be a philosopher…
but I lack the money to spend my days and night seeking that possibility…
I am forced to work and thus my ability to seek what is possible for me,
is reduced, lessened…society has forced me into working for it, at the cost
of my ability to seek what is possible for me… I am part of the machine,
with no ability to escape that dehumanization that is the machine of society…
for short, we call that capitalism…it is a economic system designed to
strip us of our dignity and it dehumanizes us and return we get worthless
baubles of existence… a comfortable couch or a “cool” car… so the fuck what?

I have sold myself into slavery to spend 40 plus years to achieve a retirement
that will last, at best, 10 years… what a terrible deal…
a lifetime of work, pain and agony just to have 10 years of retirement…
which will be spend in illness and misery… no thank you…

let us begin the search for a deal which brings us a better bargain…

reject the current system… one that puts us into slavery for capitalism
and dehumanizes us and brutalizes us by making us nothing better then machines…
I work in a factory lite… I am nothing better then the scale that I use to weigh
the produce… just another machine which is easily discarded when I have no
more use…when I stop making a profit for the company, the company has no more
use for me… I am expendable and discarded without a second thought…

I am just another tool to use and discard… or to say another way,
I am assimilated into the system, as part of the system, and discarded
when I lack any value…my individual self has no value or use in modern
capitalism…

I am supposed to become one with the system… a system that doesn’t see me
as an individual, or of any individual value… only as a cog in the machine do
I have any value in capitalism…to be assimilated this way is to become
dehumanized, worthless as a human being, devalued to just a cog in the machine…
a cog that can be discarded at any time or moment…

this type of assimilation as a human being into capitalism destroys that which
makes me a human being…for capitalism has no use for the values which make
me human… capitalism has no use for love or justice or freedom or hope or
honesty or peace… the only value that matters in capitalism is profits…
everything else is expendable to that value… so why should I spend 40 years
of my life working for a system that dehumanizes and devalues me, as a human being?

to become one with capitalism is to destroy everything about me that makes
me, me…assimilation to capitalism will lead to my own destruction…
so, why would I want to assimilate to an ism like capitalism?

the search for the eternal doesn’t mean we have to seek such destructive
ism’s as capitalism, communism, catholicism, buddhism?

ism’s that deny us as human beings…and makes us part of an eternal system
that makes us cogs in the machine…

until we create an ism which allow us to keep our humanity and self as is,
we cannot accept or allow any type of assimilation into a ism that
denies who we are as human beings…

which means we need to work out or create a new type of ism, one that allows
us to remain human while being able to be part of the system/ism that is current
in society…

as of right now, there is no system that will allow us to be ourselves and still
be a part of a larger system… an eternal as it were…we have no ism that isn’t
part of the systematic destruction of what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

I just have to say, I like the way you finished with this.

K: thank you… but with any philosophy, part of the solution requires us to
state the problem first, and once the problem is stated, then we can seek or
look for a solution… part of the current problem in both America and the world,
is a failure to understand what the cost of the current ism’s mean to us, individually
and collectively…we simple can’t see that our alienation and disconnection to
society/the state/ each other and to ourselves lies, in the nihilism of our modern
ism’s which is to say, our ism’s like capitalism and communism and buddhism
and catholicism…causes the nihilism we see in the world today…
how do we overcome this? first, by becoming aware of… and that is the point
we are in now, becoming aware of the nihilism of capitalism and communism
and buddhism… etc, etc…

very few people are aware of the problem, and that is my starting point,
making people aware of the problem…and then I, if I should live long enough,
or some others, more likely, will find a solution to our negative and destructive
ism’s that dominate the world today…

so becoming aware of the problem… most people live in denial that there is a problem…
and that must change if we are to overcome our current nihilism/ism’s of the world…

Kropotkin

how are we to “become” one if we are to answer to
the ism’s of reality that demand that we are not unless we
are part of the ism… in other words, we are forced to reject who
we are to become part of the machine, the ism’s that dominate the current
world… if I am to accept, say nationalism, as my ism, then I have to
reject or demote that which is me… I must deny who I am, to become
part of the ism “nationalism”…I cannot be me and still hold to nationalism
as an ism… it is one or the other, not both at the same time…

the only ism large enough, broad enough to cover what I am individually
and collectively is the ism of “human being”… any other ism simply doesn’t
extend far enough to include that which is me and that which is the state/society/
culture/ ism’s…so what does it mean to be man?.. to be a human being?

until I find an answer inclusive enough to include “all” human beings, I am back
at the starting point of not having a universal, transcendent theory of everything…

perhaps this is where we can find our universal theory of everything, what is a human being?

start there and then reach out to discover various ism’s and ideologies in terms of
our answer to the question, what is a human being?

the various ism’s of religion, the state, society, culture are simply too small to
answer the question, what is a human being? we must seek a far greater answer to
to the question, what is a human being, we must expand our understanding to seek out
every possibility of existence/of being human…

we are thinking too small… and until we expand and extend our understanding
of what it means to be human, we cannot find an answer…

so don’t narrow your search, expand your search… think of our collective
nature, and decide what in that collective nature makes us human beings?

what do we have collectively and individually, that makes us human?

what is the commonality of existence that make us human?

Kropotkin

In my philosophical work, it is not always possible to state the problem first because sometimes it is the problem that I have to find first(at the same time I know I need to find a solution because something is broken) - this is also the case with some of my engineering work. The cause of the problem becomes my focal point - here we speak of dependencies(sometimes circular in nature).

It looks to me that we have to piece all of the parts of the problem together before we can state the problem.

I have often stated that I am not interested in finding out the limits
of language as some are and I am not interested in finding out
the limits of knowledge…others have done that far better then I could ever
do, so I don’t engage in those philosophical questions…

but with that said, what do I engage with?

the range and limits of what it means to be human…I seek the possibilities
that exists within each of our lives and then try to connect what it means to be
human with the collective, all of us… as a human, how do I fit into society?
as we have no overall universal theory of being human or how we are to fit into
society, every theory right now is “ad hoc”, temporary, to fit the situation at hand…

human existence doesn’t seem to have some fixed, permanent basis… human existence
seems to be “ad hoc” dealing with the current situation at hand…with no such
overall theory or a universal understanding of what it means to be human…
every man for him or her self at this point in regards in understanding their place
in the universe…

what is reality? it seems to be different for you as it is for me and is it for everyone…

as my reality is different from your reality, as is different from everyone else
on planet earth…what theory could possible bridge the gap between me
and everyone else on earth? what universal understanding can bridge the gap
between me and you?

we have the same needs of food, water, shelter, health care, education…
and we have the same psychological needs of love, belonging, esteem,
safety/security…that is something we have in common…our biological
and psychological needs…I was born at one point in time as you were born
in one point in time and we are, each of us born in different places…

so we cannot connect from having the same beginning because our
beginnings are very different and our ending, our deaths will be vastly
different in space and time…

I don’t see a universal, overall theory that might even connect just the two of us,
you and me…

but perhaps with the use of imagination, we might find some connection that
will unite us into some overall, universal theory of existence? maybe…

Kropotkin

in thinking about this thing we call philosophy, it is quite often
a search for the limits of something… for example, epistemology,
the theory of knowledge is the search for the limits of knowledge,
the methods, the validity and the scope of knowledge…

so let us look at each separate parts of philosophy…

so Aesthetics, would the searching for the limits of beauty, ART, taste,
and the creation of personal kinds of truths… the methods, the validity
and the scope of Aesthetics… that sounds about right…

Ethics, would be the search for the limits of value and morality…
the methods, the validity and the scope of ethics/morality…

logic, would the search for the limits of valid inference and
reasoning… the methods, the validity and the scope of logic…
again, sound about right…

Metaphysic, would be the limits of the fundamental nature of
being and the world that encompasses it… the methods, the validity
and the scope of Metaphysics…again, sound about right…

Political philosophy, is the search for the limits of political philosophy,
the methods, the validity and the scope of political philosophy…
again, works for me…

and god knows that there are all kinds of little subsets of philosophy…
philosophy of religion and philosophy of science and the various
theories of mind theories… and the philosophy of languages…

and in each of those theories, we are looking at the limits of them,
the methods, the validity and the scope of the various subsets of
philosophy…

so let us pick one at random, Deconstruction: an approach to
understanding the relationship between text and meaning…
what are the limits to Deconstruction, what are the methods,
the validity and the scope of Deconstruction? and once again,
our little maxim seems to work…

and now we return to the ethics/morality portion of the program…

so, we have ethics/morality, so what are the sources of ethics/morality, the limits of
ethics/morality, the methods of ethics/morality, the validity and the scope
of ethics/morality?

we can begin by noting that each civilization, each nation and each state,
has had a different idea, basis and understanding of what was ethical
and what was moral? for example, the Greeks, specifically Athens, but not limited
to Athens, the basis of ethical/moral understanding was in the concept of Arete…
which we might think of as excellence…the moral man, the ethical man
was the epitome of excellence…we think of excellence as being one thing,
and being moral as another, but that was a distinction that the Greeks never made…
it was the same thing to them…

you could almost spot the fracture in Greek society when the split occurred
between the two, excellence and moral… and I would say around 400 bc.
would be where it began…both Socrates and Plato would have agreed with
the statement that they were the same thing, excellence and moral…
but you don’t see that after them…even Aristotle started to drift away from
that idea…

and you compare the Greek idea of the ethical with the Roman,
and you can see the difference…their social codes were derived from
another idea which was “mos maiorum” which is ancestral custom,
or “the way of the ancestor” it was time-honoured principles,
behavioural models and and social practices that affected private,
political and military life in ancient Rome…the ancients knew best would
be the best way to describe this ethical and moral theory…
which was different then the Greek model which would be the ethical
as excellence…which would be different then the ethical model
of the middle ages which was religious in nature…follow the biblical
theories of what was right and wrong, which is a different emphasis
then the Greeks or the Romans…

and to be clear, this is not an in depth, in the weeds attempt to
lay out the various aspects of the difference between those three
types of ethics… just broad strokes…the heart of each those ethical
theories lays in a different area…the concept of ethics as being excellent,
the theory of ethics as being laid down by one’s ancestors and the religious
aspect of ethics in the middle ages…

and we look at ethics/morality today and it doesn’t seem to have anything to
do with excellence or the path of the ancestors or any type of religious aspect…

in our society today, we hold what would be called situational ethics, the situation
dictates the ethics applied…but there is no overall, universal, transcendental/necessary
application rule/rules/laws that seems to dictate our ethical/moral behavior…

and all three, the Greeks, the Romans and anyone from middle ages, would
be aghast at our real lack of moral guidance in today’s society…

for all three had a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong,
but we have lost, (never found) that sense of what was right and what was wrong…

and by no means am I even pretending to know what the ethical/moral status of
the eastern nations, China, Japan, India would be, but I would guess that they
are vast difference from the past theories then there are in the present theories…

and there does seem to be some profound difference in the method of
working out ethical/moral theories…and they are in the way we achieve
and work out ethical/moral behavior/theories and I would call one way,
the internal theory and the other way, the external theory…
and that will be the focus of my next post…

Kropotkin

so I laid out the two paths of ethical/moral understanding/behavior/
future guidance… one path is what I have called internal and the other
path is external…the internal path is where we seek our ethical/moral
behavior and understanding within ourselves and the eternal path is
where we seek our ethical/moral behavior and understanding outside of
us…

so what does that mean practically?

let us put this into practice… the law is, slavery is legal…
and so, if we follow the law and practice slavery, we would
be legally fine… but as we understand ethics and morals,
slavery is wrong… ethically and morally…

to allow and practice slavery would be eternally right, but
internally wrong… who do we listen to? the external or
the internal?

the eternal path simply says, you are morally and ethical fine if you
just follow the law… what is ethically and morally right can be found
by simply obeying the law, as it is written…

the internal path would be, so the fuck what if slavery is legal, it is
still morally and ethically wrong… this would be an internal path…
regardless of the legal aspect of a situation, it is still morally and ethically
wrong…the holocaust was by all accounts, morally and ethically wrong,
but it was legal…which “law” do we violate, our internal “law” or the external “law?”

are we being morally/ethically correct if we just simply follow the law or
must we also obey our inner morals, which might deny the moral/ethical
of any given law?

I hold, perhaps against the common beliefs, that Buddhism is an inner/internal
path and Christianity would be an outer/eternal path…

both have an external goal, one to reach heaven and the other to not
be reborn/to be reincarnated…but both seek different objectives…
the Christian should follow the rules/laws of god… external,
while the Buddhist should learn to extinguish desires and wants…
inner/internal path…for the Buddhist, it is more then just following/obeying
the law… one must engage with and overcome the internal aspect of existence…

for the Romans, it was an external path that was the point of
the ethical/moral… and for the Buddhist, it is the internal path
that is the ethical/moral basis of Buddhism…

and what is our path? clearly it is the eternal, not the internal…
just to follow the law, regardless of the inner/internal understanding
of the ethical/moral aspect of existence…

practice slavery because it is the law of the land…
and irrelevant to our inner/internal understanding of existence…

so what say you?

Kropotkin

but once again, let us work this out…

we have before us, the play, “Antigone” which places before us,
the internal question vs the eternal question…
should we obey the laws of man or obey the laws of the gods?

to be “Righteous” in which respect…is being “good” following the law
as in allowing slavery or is being “Righteous” following one’s inner
"law? and disobeying the law about slavery?

today, at this very minute, we have this debate going on, in the
debate over Abortion…the law is clear, we have the right to have
Abortions, but to some, God’s law overrides the laws of man,
and Abortion is internally wrong… but legally right…

the problem with the Abortion is wrong crowd is that they don’t
practice what they preach with any sort of consistency…

life is sacred until it isn’t…it is ok for a policeman to shoot someone
if he is “protecting” himself… and that is legal, but it does disobey the
very direct order from god that says, “Thou shall not kill”…
this commandment has no exceptions, “thou shall not kill”
unless one’s life is threaten or to protect someone… if the religious is
to be obeyed, then there cannot be any type of exceptions… thou shall not kill,
is the entire commandment…with no exceptions… But anti-abortionists
do not follow that commandment… because they allow exceptions…
thou can kill if threatened or if provoked or during a time of war
or to protect the nation from external threats…

thou shall not kill is an all or nothing proposition… either you accept it all or
you reject it… there is no halfway aspect of the commandment, thou shall not kill…

and because we recognize that exceptions occur, what about incest or rape or
the health of the mother may requires an abortion, we cannot, cannot hold to
the religious aspect of that commandment, thou shall not kill, except for incest
and boom, once an exception is created, you have lost the right to hold to the
commandment, thou shall not kill… to prohibit abortion, requires you prohibit
without exceptions, no exceptions to this commandment…

and given this point, we cannot, cannot ban or prohibit abortions because
every single case is different and thus exceptions must be given, incest, rape,
health of the mother…

so we have discussed something about this question of internal ethics/morality
and external ethics/morality… given I must get ready to go to work,
I shall return to this point later, when I have time…

Kropotkin

so in this question of “thou shall not kill”
we must punish those who kill regardless of their reasoning…
in other words, if we kill, for any reason, we must face mandatory
punishment of a minimum set time…

so if I kill someone, say in a car, regardless of the how, I must
face a mandatory prison sentence…and if a policeman kills someone,
regardless of the reasoning, they must face a mandatory prison sentence…
if by action or inaction, we cause the death of someone, then we face a prison
sentence…“thou shall not kill” must not have any, any exceptions or it become
invalid…which means we cannot allow any type of war or capital punishment
because that breaks the unbreakable rule of “thou shall not kill” we cannot
even defend ourselves because we might violate the rule, “thou shall not kill”
and if one kills, even in self defense, that is a mandatory prison sentence…

so, we take the commandment “thou shall not kill” seriously or we don’t…
there are no, no exceptions to the biblical commandment, “thou shall not kill”
except in the case of self-defense or accidental death, nope,…no, no, no…
if you kill, you then must be held accountable for that death, no exceptions…

if we hold that “all life is sacred” then we must hold that all life is sacred…
then we must not eat animals or kill animals for any reason… we must be without
any exceptions or the phrase “all life is sacred” hold no value… and there are a multitude
of exceptions that allows us to kill, then the phrase “all life is sacred” doesn’t mean a
dam thing…

it is an all or nothing belief… you must hold it to all life or you don’t…

and if you don’t, then there is no such phrase that “all life is sacred”… because
it isn’t…

you can’t pick and choose which life is sacred and which isn’t… either it all is or it all
isn’t…as it goes for abortion… all life is sacred or all life isn’t…if you allow exceptions
to the death of people, anybody for any reason, you have created exceptions and those
exceptions invalidate the concept “thou shall not kill” and “all life is sacred”

if you disagree, then you hold to situational ethics, in which the situation dictates
the ethics and thus, you cannot ban abortions… simple as that…
if you allow the death penalty, then you allow abortions…

you cannot pick and choose which part of “thou shall not kill” to obey…
it is all or nothing…

Kropotkin

random thoughts: philosophy is not science, it is ART and that is
why Nietzsche and Plato are so “admired?” and why they succeed when many others
failed, because they dared to face philosophy on its natural grounds,
which is as ART, not science…

philosophy is a story to be told, not a truth to be found…

and that is why philosophy has failed in the 20 and 21st century, it has tried to become
something it is not, science…

think of Nietzsche “Zarathustra” opposed to Wittgenstein,
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus…which one tells a story?

Kropotkin

let us “do” some philosophy…

GOOD: ok, what does this mean? this word has to be placed into context…
it has to be given, lacking a better word, form… this word, GOOD, has to
be understood in some context, in some meaning… a story has to be
created for us to understand this word…

“and he saw that it was good”…ok, that little sentence is screaming for
some context… who saw? what was good? why was it good? who, what, when,
where, how and why, was it good?

let us take another sentence, “commies are evil and terrorist”… another one
of UR childish babbling…the problem with this sentence (among many problems)
is the lack of content… who is a commie? are they are really commies or just another
one of UR bombastic balderdash that means nothing… and define “evil” and one
man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter… for example, George Washington
was a terrorist, according to the British, and yet, he is a freedom fighter to the
Americans… so which is he? depends on which side of the Atlantic ocean you are on,
doesn’t it?

so we have to be careful to lay out the content of our words, sentences and paragraphs…
what is the content of our statements? and therein lies one of the problems with
ILP, quite often there are bombastic statements that lack content, which makes
the statement, basically useless…

“I am good”

ok, great, now put that sentence into real world context…
what does that sentence mean in the real world?
with people and everything…

Kropotkin

so the statement is “what is man?”

and we have to put that statement into context… compare and contrast that word,
man with other information we have or might have…

a man, bipedal creature that has the same responses as other animals, the same
needs, wants and desires… both physically, food, water, shelter, education,
and psychological needs of love, esteem, safety/security, a sense of belonging/
connection to others…

we are animals as we have the same biological and psychological needs of animals,
but we also think and we can rise above our programing… instincts is one
way nature programs us, and we can rise above that instinct in our responses…

we can act in opposition to our instincts and biological/psychological needs…

unlike animals, we can make choices…as to our present and our future…
and unlike animals, we can think about the future… animals are strictly
about the present, human beings can live in the past, present or the future…
and we know people who do live in the past or present or the future…

the basic structure of existence is time and space… everything happens in
that basic structure of time and space… and being the same structure and depending
on what is happening, we can be dealing with time or with space, or both…

animals don’t have a sense of time, but they do of space…but it is part of
the instincts that they have…we know that time is perceived by human beings,
but is perceived differently by human beings, I worked today, from 6:00Am to
11:00am… and while I worked time went quickly because it was very busy,
on some days, when it is slow, time seems to stop… that time itself doesn’t
change, but the way we perceived time changes depending on how focused on
it we are…time is a function of how we perceived it…
but animals don’t seem to perceived time that way…
take a dog, a dog will act as you were gone for days, even if you were only
gone for a few minutes, taking out the garbage for example…animals don’t
seem to have a sense of time… perhaps we might even define human beings as
creatures that “feel” time…

Kropotkin

so what might the role of philosophy be?

I might suggest, that the role of philosophy is to connect
things…or to put things into context…science does the
same thing, but science tells with the how, philosophy deals with
the why…death in science is one matter and death, to a philosopher
is quite another matter…

science doesn’t tell us the why, philosophy can give us the why,
the context of something… the question of “what is man”
is different in science then it is in philosophy…because the context
is different… “what is man” is a question about possibilities in philosophy, the why
and in science, “what is man” is a who, what, when, where and how question…

what is the point of existence? science can’t even approach that question
whereas philosophy can at least, attempt to answer it, give it context…

philosophy can give the question, “what is the point of existence”
at least a reference point, a context in which we can at least have
a sense of the content of what that question means…

Kropotkin

now science and philosophy can attempt to give us context, as to
“what is man?” perhaps a better source of context might be
ART…we have seen in ART over several thousand years, produce
a picture of “what is man?” Homer tell us in both the Odyssey and the Iliad,
what “what is man?” and Homer’s picture is so vivid that we still refer
back to it over 3000 years later…and far better then science or philosophy,
ART tells us what is possible for a human being…

science and philosophy doesn’t give us context on human beings in regard to
such basic and fundamental aspects of human existence…

that a human being loves, and hates and idealizes and laughs and
feels sad and a thousand other different emotions and feelings that
science and philosophy cannot even begin to give context to…

that ART shows us, that ART exposes us to emotions that we might not
even know that exists…emotions and feelings that are fundamental
to the “human condition”…

that ART gives us the balance picture of what a human being is…
Human beings are a hot mess, emotional and hysterical and
impassioned and poignant and sentimental in ways that
science and philosophy can never begin to touch…

so what is needed is ART that is philosophy and philosophy
that is ART… we must find one word that unites them both into
one discipline… ART vs Philosophy is what we see today,
what we need to see is ARTPHILOSOPHY… as one… not two…

Kropotkin

As I have mentioned before, communication is done by a narrative,
a story if you will…try to tell a story without saying the who, what, when,
where, how and why?.. you can’t… it won’t be a story anyway… just a random
mix of words… word salad if you will… kinda like a speech by IQ45… random words
thrown together that make no sense, because those words lack a narrative, a story…

an animal, a dog or cat or a lion can go throw life without ever having a need
to know why? What was this life all about? What did I live and die for?

personally, I find it sad that a human being can go through life without ever
asking, “what was this life all about?” “what did I live and die for?”

a story of existence, as it were… too many, far too many go through existence
without ever asking, what was the point of this existence?

even a bad reason, story, is better then no story/reason…

as the Buddhist have noticed, life is full of pain and suffering and growing old
and then dying… and what was the point of all that suffering if we don’t have
a reason for it? personally, I hold that the suffering and pain and agony and
growing old is the price of the ticket for admission… to go through life,
to exist is a wonderful thing, but that price of admission for life, is pain and
suffering and agony and then death…there is no free lunch in life…
you gotta pay the price of admission…

which is why we must seek that which makes life worth living… and that is
beauty and love and hope and charity and justice and all those values, those positive
values that makes the pain and suffering and agony and death worth it…

is growing old worth seeing a beautiful sunset? is finding love worth the price of
admission of disease? is having hope enough to overcome the daily pain of growing
old? is being alive worth the price of admission which is death?

what story will we tell ourselves that makes the price of growing old, worth it?

most of life is ephemeral… lasting for a very short time…
the sunset, the walk through the forest, the moments of great beauty
that fill our life… they are ephemeral…and the moments of pain and agony
and suffering, they seem to last forever… but they don’t… even suffering only
last for a short while… (mind you, I suffer from back pain every single day of my life)
is existence worth the price of admission?

depends on the story we tell… listening to the negative among us,
Schopenhauer for example or conservatives, you wouldn’t think that existence
is worth the pain and agony… but listen to the poets and writers like
Shakespeare or Dante, we see a different story… a story worth living through…
regardless of any pain or suffering we might have…

what is your story? what story do you tell yourself every morning?

I get up because …

or perhaps, we, like Hamlet hold that…

“devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
to sleep, perchance to dream-aye, there’s the rub;
for in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
must give us pause–there’s the respect
that makes a calamity of so long a life”

fear of the unknown that makes cowards of us all…
is it the fear of the unknown or is it the allure of the
possibilities of life, of seeing beauty and love and hope
and justice that makes life worth living?
the negative scaring us away from death or
the positive bringing us to life?

is the beauty of the sunset worth the price of admission?
worth the price of pain and suffering?

and the story of existence for me would be a story where
the beauty of the sunset is worth the price of admission…

we get so lost in the mundane day to day existence, we forget that
life has the power of such beauty that we can live forever with
the sight of one beautiful sunset…

my wife telling me she loves me, that makes the price of admission
worth it…one moment of beauty can make an entire life worth it…
despite the suffering and illness and agony of existence, all it takes
is one moment of beauty and all that pain and misery becomes worth it…

so what is the answer?

don’t become a scientist, but become an artist and paint one beautiful
picture and all of life becomes worth it… science can tell us how,
but ART and philosophy can give us the why… and one why, is worth all
the how’s in the universe…so, tell me a story… become a philosophy/ARTIST…

Kropotkin

as I work through my Wittgenstein, I come across an old idea…

as I have stated before, ethics/morality isn’t a private act…
ethics/morality requires two or more people… one person alone,
cannot, cannot be engaged with ethical/moral problems because
for one person, ethics/moral don’t apply…Robinson Crusoe
has no need for ethics/morality…alone on an island, there
is no need for ethics/morality because one person alone has no
need for ethics/morals… how do you apply ethics/moral to oneself without
anyone else? in other words, ethics/morals are a social act… it requires
two or more people for there to be ethics/morals…

but this true for more then just ethics/morals, it is true
for such disciplines like history, social studies, economics,
anthropology, mathematics and of course, philosophy…
and also to be clear in matters like politics, games, in understanding
the self… in other words, our understanding of the world must be given
in terms of a social understanding between myself and others…
we cannot be ourselves, human without other human beings…

the essential requirement of being a human being is another human being…
the other as it were…we can only create context about who we are in terms
of comparing and contrasting who I am against other people…am I funny?

who knows without others… am I sad? I can’t tell without some contrast with
other human beings…we can only make sense of who we are in terms of
other people…can I play a game without others? solitary chess, of which
I do play but frankly, it lacks something real without some engagement with
other people…we understand who we are in relationship with others…

a man alone is a man without any context…
because we can only compare and contrast ourselves with other human beings…

you might say, what about cats and dogs? and lion and tigers and bears, oh my…

but that contrast is simply not enough to warrant any real understanding of
what it means to be human… everything, everything requires contrast,
comparison, a difference between the two comparisons…
comparing an apple to an apple does gives us some understanding about apples,
but comparing apples to oranges tells us even more about apples then does a straight
comparison between apples and apples…the difference between apples
and oranges allow us to understand apples and oranges better…

Kropotkin

human existence is best understood through our relationship with other
human beings…we are best understood communally… not in isolation,
but in a relationship with/to others…

this suggests, but doesn’t demand that we are best understood via communism
and not capitalism… we are engaged in life… community wide, not individually
wise…Kropotkin is… is best understood as "Kropotkin as part of a community is…)

who you are is best understood by your relationship with other human beings…
not in isolation, but in terms of relationships with others…

Kropotkin

therein lies the problem of Descartes…

it refers back to the one, I am… when we must answer, we are…

I think therefore I am… a human being in isolation gives us nothing
to think about…a being disconnected from others has nothing… is
nothing… this isolation of mind against body leaves us with no connection
to others… and that is where we human beings are found…
in connection to others…

Kropotkin

I think I know myself better than outsiders.
Only a disturbingly ignorant person is known better by outsiders.
Needing outsiders is like needing parents.
It reduces as we grow up.