seeking who I am... the Kropotkin way

the two most vaunted and beloved maxims of philosophy
come from Socrates…

One: to know thyself
Two: the unexamined life isn’t worth living…

each maxim is a personal one…
the maxims don’t say, seek out community or
seek out what the mass of people hold to be true…

but each maxim is a working out of personal beliefs about
what it means to be human…

Socrates maxims are not passive requests. they don’t say “passively seek out
what it means to be human”

they are active demands that we seek out who we are
and to examine what we hold to be true…

and in light of these two maxims, I begin an engagement with
who I am…

what drives Kropotkin?

of all the questions that one might have, who, what, when, where, how and why?
what question drives me? that one is pretty easy to guess at, it is the why question…

If I were to ask the how question, I might have engaged with science or economics
or history…but I engage with the why question, which is why I engage with
philosophy…

the other branch or discipline that engages in the why is theology…
but I have rejected god and thus theology is not an option…

way back when, Aristotle open up a book with this statement…

“All men seek happiness”… (pleasure)…

a statement I disagree with…

and what do people seek?

they might seek pleasure but we can see people also seeking many
other diverse things such as power or money or fame or challenges…

for example, we see people engagement with sports… as I did for years…

I wasn’t seeking pleasure… for working to improve one’s mile time for example,
takes dedication and effort and a hell of a lot of work…
the pleasure of reaching some sort of milestone like a PB in the mile,
isn’t reflected in the work it took to get there…why would anyone dedicate
so much time, trouble, effort and all that work to improve one’s mile time
from 4:53 to 4:50… just an improvement of 3 seconds takes a lot of running,
a lot…it is that challenge of improving oneself which is outside of seeking
pleasure…

why would anyone go to that trouble?

we see that the Aristotle didn’t see all the possibilities that
drive human beings actions…

we see Freud holding to the “eros” complex which is everything comes
from the sexual drive… and that is true that much of what we do,
comes from sexual desire… but not everything…or we see in
Nietzsche, that “will to power” and certainly that has driven
people, it can’t be considered to be the “DRIVING” force of
human experience…

we see far too many people acting under a wide and diverse
number of “drives”…to be able to conclude that the one and single
driving force of human experience is the “will to power”…

personally, I do not seek wealth or power or fame or anything else
like that…and I see millions of people who are driving by other forces
then just the “sexual” desire or the “seeking of power”…or even just “pleasure”

there seem to be as many different “motivations” “driving force” as there are
people…one of the possibilities of what we might think of as
authentic or inauthentic, might be if we were to follow
our own “driving force” instead of following the society or the state’s idea
of what a “driving force” might be…

so if society/state says, it is money or power or fame or pleasure… that must drive
people… and we seek something else, for example, knowledge, and we bow
down to the society/state’s “driving force” and we seek what the state/society
has deemed to be the “driving force” money, power, fame or pleasure…
then we are being inauthentic… in other words, if we seek what the state or
society demands instead of our own personal “driving force” then we are being
inauthentic…if we follow our own heart and seek that which drives us,
be it knowledge or self improvement of some sort or seeking… and we are then
being authentic…we are being authentic if we follow our own drives,
and not follow the societies or the state “drives”…

so what does Kropotkin seek?

I never sought money or power or fame or even pleasure…

I sought knowledge, understanding of what it means to be human…

I held true to my own desires and by doing so, I held to my authentic self…

if I ignore my own personal “drives” and seek what society/state demands,
which is power, wealth, fame, pleasure, then I am being inauthentic…
I am not following my own personal drives and I am following someone’s else
“drive”…that is what is meant by being inauthentic…

the problem is most people won’t or don’t know what it is that personally
drives them… they simple take on societies/state “drives” from lack of
knowledge of what “drives” them personally…

thus if we practice the first maxim, to know thyself, we can try to
engage with what really drives us and that allows us to be authentic
to ourselves…being authentic or inauthentic is really about our engagement
with ourselves, not with society or the state…are we truly being honest with
ourselves? what drives me? do I want power, wealth, fame, pleasure or do I want
something else?

Kropotkin has spent his life seeking other things outside of power or wealth or fame or
even pleasure…I held true to what I seek and thus I am being authentic to myself…

who am I and what are my possibilities?

it is rather a shame that I have reached this understanding toward the end of my life
instead of the beginning of my life…I am old, 61, about to be 62, and my own
possibilities are beginning to shrink as they do for all old people…

the possibilities that existed for me at 15 or 25 or 35 or even 50, no longer
exists… I can never run again, or achieve the physical feats that I once
dreamt of… doing a triathlon which was my goal when I was much younger,
before I was 30, that will never happen now…those possibilities are gone…

I must achieve my possibilities that I am now capable of…
of becoming the 4th best philosopher in the world…( I have been told to
reach higher then the 5th best philosopher in the world )

I can become a better person or become who I am…

so what drives Kropotkin?

I want to know why!..why are we who we are and what does it take
to make us something better…

human beings are something to overcome… we were once animals, and now
we are animal/human and we must become human, fully human…
and what does it take for us to take the next step of becoming fully
human?

these are the questions that drive me…

so what drives you?

what possibilities do you want to achieve or reach?

and most importantly, why those possibilities or why overcome
this or that particular thing?

the why… that is my question… why…

indeed …why?

Kropotkin

there are plenty of people here who will shout how wrong I am,
but they won’t engage with their own beliefs…

let us give an example, Wendy…she has a set of beliefs,
but she won’t or more possible, can’t tell us why those beliefs
instead of these beliefs… why does she hold these beliefs
instead of those beliefs?

what “drives” her to hold this set of beliefs or assumptions instead
of those set of assumptions or beliefs?

I hold “liberal” set of assumptions or beliefs because they fit into
my set of assumptions or beliefs about what it means to be human…

I hold that human beings can change, I hold that most people want to do the
right thing… they just don’t know what the right thing is…
I hold that the search for being human is something different then what society
or the state holds to be true… in other words, the state/society wants individuals
to seek wealth or power or fame or pleasure… to the benefit of the state/society…
whereas I hold that those things do not have any value at all…

I hold it is pointless to seek wealth or power or fame… they are empty goals,
empty calories as it were… to seek something far more substantial then
mere wealth or power or fame or even pleasure… but to know what we should
be seeking requires us to engage with Socrates maxims, to know thyself
and the unexamined life isn’t worth living… so examine your beliefs,
examine your possibilities, examine who you are and what you need to overcome…
know thyself…

that is why reading such authors as Freud help us seek these things…
because they offer us suggestions as to who we are and what it
means to be human… what drives us? that is the Freudian question…
and we can make it part of our questions… what drives us to act and think
and believe in what we act and think and believe in?

I hold that existence isn’t a series of answers, it is a series of questions…
and what questions engage you?

who, what, when, where, how and why…

Kropotkin

Kaufmann holds to certain beliefs in regards to Freudian thought
and Sophocles’s tragedy of Oedipus Tyrannus…

One: man’s radical insecurities,
Two: human blindness,
Three: curse of honesty
Four: the inevitability of tragedy in some situations…
Five: the highly problematic nature of justice…

first of all, we can use literature and poetry and fiction to inform
us as to what it means to be human…

from Oedipus to Faust to the poems of Whitman, we can use them to
help us see who we are and what it means to be human and, and what
might the next steps be?

it isn’t enough to know where we have been and where we are now,
we must seek out where we need to be tomorrow… I am Kropotkin…
I have held these beliefs in the past, I hold these beliefs today,
and what should I believe in tomorrow?

we must see the future as being part of the right here and right now…

so to return, to the radical themes of human existence,
One, man’s radical insecurity…

one only has to look at the news today, to see our radical insecurities
at work, right now in the world… we fear what tomorrow might bring,
in a very real, physical sense… what violence might we see tomorrow or
the next day in Washington Dc or in the States capital’s?

my birthday is in March and frankly that looks like it is a million years away,
given the current political unrest in the nation… what might happen tomorrow
overwhelms any possible future and that is what is radical insecurity… I am not
at all secure about tomorrow might bring…

Two: human blindness… we human beings are famous for not just what
we see, but what we are blind to…I too have my blind spots, but I am
working to bring them out and allow me to see, to know my blind spots…

and I blind to the reality of who I am? possibly, or am I blind to
the assumptions and beliefs I hold to be true? perhaps…
Am I blind to what it means to be human? maybe… maybe
my own personal beliefs and set of assumptions have prevented me from
seeing what or who I really am or who or what human beings really are…

these blind spots I have, I have to overcome them and to do so requires
that I seek out and discover what are my blind spots…

Three: the curse of honesty… no one, absolutely no one wants to hear
the completely honest evaluation of who they are…

if you want to be the loneliest person in town, be the most honest person
in town… trust me, you won’t have a friend of any kind if one is truly honest…

4: the inevitability of tragedy in human existence…

every single example of human possibilities is faced with tragedy…

I fall in love and that is good, but there also lies the possibility of
the other person dying… tragedy exists in every single possibility of
human existence…that I may grow old and get disease and then finally
dying is clearly part of the ticket of existence… but to know others in my
life will also, grow old, get disease and then finally die, either before me or
after me…must give us pause…as a long time married man, I care far less about
my existence then I do about my wife… I would and have not worry too much
about the growing old and getting illness and my final end, death…far less
then I would and do, worry about my wife growing old, sickness/illness and
her final death… that grieves me far more then my own old age, sickness/illness
and final end…

and finally the highly problematic nature of justice… what is justice?

and how do we find it? I see injustice all the time in modern America,
in the workplace, yep, even and perhaps especially in my own workplace,
but I see injustice practiced in the court room, the classroom,
the workplace, and in day to day existence…

you hear about people screaming about seeking or finding freedom,
but perhaps a better question might be, how does one, do we, find
justice?

one rarely ever hears of a conservative who says something about justice,
but quite often screams about freedom or the lack thereof…

but I see justice as being as important as freedom… and far harder to
find… we can be free in ways that we cannot find justice… if that makes any sense…

and I would argue that having freedom without justice is simply a waste of time,
we must have both or it doesn’t really matter…

so, what values would you work out first? justice or freedom?

or perhaps, some other value?

Kropotkin

we have a whole slew of ism’s and ideologies, capitalism,
communism, catholicism, to explore what it means to be human…

but I hold that it is not enough to explore our existence via ism’s
and ideologies… we have to explore our existence via values…

values like love, hope, charity, peace, tolerance, understanding…

I hold values are more important to our understanding of what it means to
be human over ism’s and ideologies… I can find my own meaning or
reason of being better through values then through ism’s and ideologies…

so, what values should we seek to understand or explain our existence?

Kropotkin

so, what is the point of, the meaning of life, what is the purpose of
existence?

lacking some means of being able of indentifying what is the point of life,
or the meaning of existence… we must then work with what is present in life…

I hold that values, values like love, hope, peace, tolerance, and charity, for example,
are values we can use to replace any possible meaning of life or the purpose of
existence…

we can exists in terms of values instead of existing in terms of some point or
meaning… I can use the value of love or hope to give me meaning of, or
the point of existence…

I don’t have to have a point to existence or a understanding of the
purpose of existence… if, if I hold to values like love or hope or peace,
instead…

those values can replace understanding of the meaning of or the point of
existence…

Kropotkin

as I write I am aware of the need I have as do other people have,
of making myself the hero of my story…as they make themselves the hero of their
own story…this is quite clear with people here like, perhaps the best example,
of Zero…he calls himself an “aristocrat” and bragging about how he will
laugh and have a grand old time while the world burns…

to avoid the obvious psychopathic nature of this, he tells himself
to be the hero of his story… while the world parishes, he will laugh
at us from his mountain hideaway…I think he means his mother’s basement in
Scranton Pa…but I could be wrong…he is the hero by virtue of his “Knowing”
that the world will end…and does he show any regret or fear or is sorry
that the world will end? no, of course not, because that doesn’t make him
the “hero” of his story… the important thing is to be the “hero” of one’s story,
regardless of how it may make us look like to people…

but if people respond negatively to your story, you can just write them out by
saying, “if only they understood”, or “they are jealous of my being the hero”…
one can always rewrite their story… it is an easy game to play…look at
how the right wing is at this very moment rewriting history to make their place
in it look far better… for example, by saying the impeachment of IQ45 will
cause violence and rancor and it is divisive in this time that needs healing…

what a bunch of horse crap… they are rewriting history because it was the rhetoric
of the right that brought this country into the violence and division and cause the
domestic terrorism in the national capital last week

rewriting history to make one the hero is common in the right…
conservativism is basically romanticism…which emphasizes inspiration,
subjectivity and the primacy of the individual… it is an reaction against
the order and restraint of the enlightenment, the classicism and neoclassicism
of the enlightenment…the right hates order and restraint because it doesn’t allow
them to act like a 6 year old kid…

so, how do you write your story so that you become the hero of your story?

Kropotkin

am I the “sick soul” of William James or am I the “healthy soul?”

to be honest, I don’t know…I am quite aware of my flaws, all
10,000 of them…in thinking about it, I may far more aware of my
flaws then I am of my good traits… and I am sure, if I think about it,
I might even think of one…one of my many, many flaws has been,
people have always been a better friend to me, then I was too them…

one of my sisters once described me as “a bull in a china shop”…
and I think that fits…I have no tact or discretion… I say whatever is on my mind…
regardless of who it hurts and I have hurt a lot of people along the line…
but surprisingly, I have lost very few friends despite my many failures…

well to be honest, I never really had a great number of friends
and I can’t, right now, be able to call a single friend on the phone because
I don’t know anybody… but I am so self contained that I rarely ever notice…
but today is a day for seeing who I am… not having a blind spot as it were…
my wife is always pushing me to renew old friendships and I decline…
or even to finding new friends… but that seems to me to be too much work…

I have my books and my music and that seems to be enough for me…
for now…will the day come that I find the need to be around people?
maybe, maybe not…I see hundreds of people every single day at work
and that seems to hold me over from my basic human need for company…

but human beings are social creatures and we must, must have contact
with other human beings…perhaps it is enough to have contact via ILP?
I don’t know…perhaps what drives my call for community and social
interactions lie with my extreme isolation I have from people?

I don’t hold with individualism actions because in my own life, I
know the cost of individualism…in my isolation…

and I don’t ask for pity, or comfort or suggestions to join the human race…

I know enough the cost of my isolation… and right now, I am willing to
pay that price because of the increased and new understandings that I receive
from having only isolation to keep me company and so I write to avoid
complete isolation…perhaps, perhaps…

we not only react to the world, but we also react to what is happening in
own lives and in our own head…

the unexamined life isn’t worth living… is my life now worth living?
as I examine further, time will tell…

Kropotkin