my first day of vacation… much needed…
I have been diving into Japanese philosophy…
and thinking about how we think of philosophy/history in the west…
and how to merge the two…
and right now my thoughts are not very clear, so I will be working out my
theories here, so if it doesn’t seem to be clear or organized, it isn’t…
in the west, we have many theories of philosophies… after all, the word
philosophy really means inquiry… as does the word history…inquiry…
as does the word, economics, psychology, social sciences, biology,
science… all of these are simply inquires into some aspect of the past
and present… for example we have some historians study the Enlightenment
and some study ancient Greece and some study Japan and some study
philosophical connections between ancient Greece and ourselves…
and well, frankly anything from the past can be a object of inquiry…
the study of the past and present, for that matter,
is simply a study of relationships between two or more things…
now there are two ways to study something, from the outside looking in,
which is how the west studies things and from the inside out, which
is how the east studies things…for example, a study of political science
requires us to at least notice our current system of politics in large parts of
the west, as being democracies… so, we might ask, what is a democracy?
and the west would say, a democracy is… A, W, Z… looking at it from the outside,
where the truth is, I exists within a democracy…I am inside my field of study…
so I must look from the inside out…so when I study political science, specifically
democracy, I am looking inside out…I experience democracy directly, every single
day…it impacts me, but conversely, I impact democracy…each of us impacts democracy…
with our actions, voting for example, impacts democracy… praising or attacking
democracy impacts democracy…by both our words and actions, we impact democracy…
it has been said, history is “man in time”…we are creatures who exists in time…
past, present and future… and we study that “being in time” historically,
scientifically, socially, philosophically…and we have many people studying
our “being in time” past and present, but what about that third possibility?
the future? we were, we are and we shall be…so what shall we be?
what choices and possibilities exists for us in the third possibility of the future?
we have what is praxis, actions, and we have words…and why don’t we study
the future as intensely as we do the past and present? what actions can we take
right now, the present, that will impact the future…what future are we
attempting to make, right here and right now?
this new thinking shows us why, why conservativism is a failure… conservativism
is focused on the past, and studying the past isn’t going to allow us any type
of idea of what we should we working toward… studying the future is really
a study of the choices we should be making to reach a future that allows us
human being to succeed…
so let us begin small… where do I want to be in 5 years? this is a common game
people play… where do you want to be in 5 years? at my age, in 5 years, I will
be in a far worse state then I am now…I will be 67… and health issues begin to
rack up as we go further and further into old age… I will have some significant
health issues in 5 years… as to also being deaf or close to being deaf as one can be…
and it is quite possible, that I will be dead in 5 years… I cannot discount that possibility…
so, what does this future say about my current present? what choices and practices
should I engage with now that will impact my future? I am dealing with my future
hearing loss by getting a new hearing aid, much stronger hearing aid and by preparing
for a cochlear implant…and I also see the doctor more often these days…I am by
actions, praxis, preparing for my future…I hope to be retired in 5 years… and so
by my actions today, I am working on improving my retirement money… right now,
I have enough money saved up for a big mac, fries, perhaps I can save enough up
to buy a soft drink in the future…(if your retirement planning involves winning the
lottery, like mine does, you have fucked up)
but the point is, I can see what my future will look like and I am taking actions right
now to work out those details…a study of the future for all of us, would require
the exact same thing… what is possible given where we are now? and we in
planning the future, not just for me individually, but for us collectively…
so we need to ask, where shall we be in 5 years? and what does it take for
us to reach some sort of planning to reach a collective goal?
so collectively, a study of the future becomes, what is possible for us in the future?
what can we do to reach a collectively agreed to goal in the future?
we can use the tools we have at our disposal to think about and reach
our possibilities… philosophy, history, economics, social studies,
psychology and rationality…
but recall, we are in the midst of our thinking, not outside of it…we lie
at the heart of our words and actions, not outside of them…
we lie directly in the present… we are not disengage, separate from,
dispassionate observers of the past or present, we are in the middle of the
present, and we have been impacted by the past…
to claim some sort of detachment or apathy toward the future, is a lie we cannot
afford to hold…
we are beings that exists in time… that is part of the human equation…
not the false time of the timeclock or the stopwatch, but of our passage through time…
what was, what is and what will be…
we have a strong engagement with the first two, past and present, and now
we need to engage in the third, the future…we need to begin to think about
where will WE be in 5 years, now I may be dead by then, but you won’t be…
and that understanding of where we will be, impacts us just as strongly
as the past and present impacts us today…
let us look at our actions and words in light of this possible future…
Kropotkin