the story I am telling....

what are we, as human beings, trying to achieve?
What is the point of human existence?
what is it we are attempting to accomplish?

I believe that the enlightenment took the first step toward answering these
questions by the enlightenment engagement with autonomy… the second generation
of this question by the existentialist brought in being Authentic… so, for me,
the question of existence lies with becoming autonomous/authentic human beings…

perhaps one such definition of being autonomous/authentic is this:

being autonomous means acting upon values that one decides upon, not values
given to one by the family, the state, the culture, the society…

why this value, being autonomous instead of following right wing values of
obeying the values of society, the state, the culture, the family…the right wing
holds to the value of security/order… they preach about a safe/secure state,
culture, society, and family…the greatest crime for a republican/right winger,
is disobedience… the question of being autonomous doesn’t even enter the mind
of a conservative/right winger… the conservative constantly rails against
those who do not follow the law, be it the state or the law of god…

but I am not a conservative… my highest values do not mesh with conservative
values… for my personal goal isn’t to conform or to follow the laws of man/god…
I seek different values such as the value of being autonomous/authentic…
which means I am not interested in obeying the law, of man or of god…

I seek independence of thought… I seek to become an autonomous/authentic person…
and I cannot achieve that goal while I am attempting to obey the state/god…
or to follow the various ism’s of the modern world… If I practice communism,
I cannot also practice being autonomous/authentic… the two practices collide
because one demands obedience, that of the ism, be it catholicism, communism,
buddhism, capitalism demands complete and absolute obedience…
whereas to follow one autonomous state, one must become free and clear of
ism’s and ideologies…

the sad and simply truth is that being part of the herd, is being safe…
one can hide within the herd and be protected… the dangers of
standing apart from society, the state, the culture is quite obvious
when seeing the death of Socrates, the death of Jesus, the attacks upon
Spinoza, the various and mindless crusades against both the Muslims
and various Christian groups that didn’t mindlessly follow the church…
the Lollards and Jan Hus followers for example…

look at the current GOP/TFH party in which only complete and absolute
devotion to herr Trump is acceptable… whereas on the left we don’t demand
complete and absolute devotion to any person, ism or idea…
It has been said, in years past, that I don’t belong to an organized political
party, I am a democrat… and that has been true for decades…I point out that
Kamala Harris was a fierce opponent of Biden… and yet he choose her to
be the VP… would you expect IQ45 to choose, in any capacity, an opponent
of his for any position? we all know the answer to this, a big huuuuuge no…

the left is not afraid to work against the rule of law or the law of god because
we hold that being autonomous is a more important then obeying the laws,
be it of god, be it of man…

but once again we run into the problem that we human beings, we are social
creatures, we are creatures that are social, group, even tribal in who we are,
human beings during our very long million year pre-history, have learned
the best way to survive is through and by being part of a community…
we cannot, however strong we might seem to be, we cannot survive,
being alone…our very nature and self worth and our understanding of
who we are, are defined within the community…within our place within
the community… and that is because of our million year pre-history…

everything we human beings are, we were created and defined by that million
years between when we first walked on the savanna and today…

but that was yesterdays human beings… one defined by our instincts and
our dependence on the group, the community…physically, we are still
defined by our dependence on the community, the group… but we can
become independent of the million year training of holding to group think…

we can say this another way, for the first time in human history,
it is possible for us to engage with being truly autonomous and authentic self…
we have never had this chance before…I for one am excited by our chance,
the very first time in human history, when we can make making being an autonomous
person, a reality… not just a random occurrence like the making of Goethe, as
the first modern autonomous human being… we can make becoming autonomous,
a goal, like the goal of being wealthy or being famous, but this time, this goal is
one worth reaching forward…

the next step in human history is the step forward in becoming autonomous/authentic
human beings… not dependent on others for our values, beliefs, our place in society,
our character… we can choose who we are, what we believe in, what values should we
hold…in fact, for the first time in history, we can finally answer the Kantian
questions of existence without looking at the state, the society, the culture, the family
for guidance and the answers to the questions of existence…

my values are no longer the values that I was indoctrinated into by the family, the state,
the society, the culture… I seek to discover my values… not the inherited values
I have received from the family, society, the state and the culture…

to become autonomous, I must seek values that reflect who I am, not who
society or the state has determined who I am or what role I will play for them…

I must walk away from such ism’s as capitalism and nationalism because they
determine my values and my role within society… where I must seek and find
the value for which I hold to be true, regardless of whether society, the state,
the church agrees or disagrees with me…

but in order to do so, I must work out the nature of the various ism’s and ideologies
of the society, the state, the church, the culture and the family…I must know
what my values are in comparison to the values of the state, society, the church,
the family to understand in order to make sense of my values and the society’s,
state, the culture, the church, the family values are…

what is the difference between the two? how are my values different between
the values of the state, the society, the family, the church?

I already know I hold distinct and different values then the state, society, the church…
by my being an atheist and by holding that a key value of existence is the value
of love and peace… already, I am in conflict with the society in terms of those
three values…but what other values do I hold distinct and separate from the state, the
family, the church, the society, the culture?

and that is what I am exploring…people hold that one of the strengths of
American is in its military strength… I disagree…we hold to martial values
far too strongly… we hold that the service and sacrifice of the soldiers is the
pinnacle of American values… I disagree…I hold that the true strength of
a human being is found in peace and love and other values which mark us as
human beings, not just animals…I have described these values many, many times
and hope not to describe them once more…

the path to becoming human is not through violence, but through peace and love…
the higher values of human existence…so instead of holding to American values,
such as power makes right and violence is the answer, I hold the true value of being
human lies in overcoming our animal instincts…the instincts of hate, violence,
anger, greed, lust, envy, jealousy… the lower values of existence
the lower values of animals, or of animal/human… I hold to the values of
becoming human fully human…that is the battle…to go from being
animal to becoming human…

to me that is the point of existence… the journey to becoming
human…where we are both connected to our society,
as we must be and yet we are also autonomous and authentic…

and that is the story I tell…
how to be part of the society, the state, the culture, the family
and still be an autonomous, authentic human being…

this a tough road to navigate, but navigate it we must

Kropotkin

so how do we accomplish this daunting task of being an
“individual” in our modern, human need for being part of
a society, a state, a church, a culture, a family?

It is a fact, fact, that we as human beings cannot survive on our own,
we are not “islands unto ourselves”…to become human, to survive as a
human requires many, many other human beings…and one of the organizing
principles of human beings is to create ism’s, ideologies that give us meaning,
direction, place in the universe…so in the midst of all that, how do we become
autonomous/authentic human being?

How do we fulfill the promise of the Enlightenment? how do we escape the
tyranny of those ism’s which have dominated and negated human beings?
the battle in the Enlightenment was, in part, against the church…
how the church played a role, a far to great role in who we are…
denial of the principles of the church, be it catholic, be it muslim,
meant one faced, at best, prison, and at worst, death…

true story: Jean Calas in 1762 was found guilty of murdering his son because
the son was thinking of becoming Catholic, (calas was a Protestant in a
Catholic country) he was tortured before being killed… the entire time of the case,
from Oct 1761 to his death on March 10, Calas proclaimed he was innocent…
and after his death, Voltaire was contacted about the case and he began to
investigate… the son, had in fact killed himself and in France/ a catholic
country, suicide was considered to be a heinous crime against oneself and the
dead of bodies of suicides were defiled and prevented from being buried in
a church yard… and so to avoid this fate for their son’s body, they made it look
like murder… all in the name of religion…the father Calas was later
exonerated and Voltaire, an outspoken critic of the Catholic church,
cited the incident as an example of the church severity in his work,
“Treatise on Tolerance”

the days of the church being able, well the catholic church and the
protestant church in the west, to put people into prison or to kill them
are long past… but people still tie their fate to the church… and they
still kill in the name of god, the son and the holy ghost…

in the muslim world, the religion has enough hold to put people
into prison or to have people killed… believe or die…that was
the catholic church belief for centuries and it is still the belief in
the muslim world…so how can one be autonomous, authentic given
the role of religion even in the United States today and the role of religion
in the muslim part of the world?

to become who one is, means one must be able to walk the dark forest
without the aid of faith in god or without any type of organized religion?

This is just one aspect of what being autonomous means…to be self
governed in the area of religious belief…to hold or not to hold
religious beliefs as one see fit… regardless of what others hold to or
believe…I note that in American, there has never been an Atheist
president of the U.S… I am sure many who have held the post, were
silent Atheist, most likely Jefferson and Lincoln, but one has a hard
time holding that Teddy Roosevelt or FDR was religious… but Americans
would rather vote into office Muslims or buddhist but not Atheist…
and Atheist is one who has become self governing in terms of
religion… they are autonomous… and fairly hated in certain
parts of the country… why this hatred for one who is autonomous?

that is just one side of the autonomous/authentic battle that exists
in our world…

Kropotkin

let us view being Autonomous via another lens…
the objective world vs the subjective world…
if there are objective properties, such as god, freedom,
immorality, then we are deprived of being Autonomous…
if there is a god, how are we suppose to be autonomous beings, given
that we must bow down to god, pray to god, worship god today and if we
are “lucky”, for all time in heaven… where is the ability for
autonomous behavior in religion?

the same goes true for the state… if we must, legally, act in a certain manner,
if we must do the same as everyone, if we must be the same as everyone,
then where is the ability for autonomous behavior in the state?

for there to be “order” everyone must obey the law… and where is the
the possibility for autonomous behavior with everyone obeying the law?
let us say, we act autonomously and break the law, we damage the very society
that we must have in order to survive as human beings…if we are autonomous,
we damage the society, and if we obey the laws, then we damage our
possibilities for being autonomous beings.
Dammed if we do, dammed if we don’t…

if there are absolutes, objective, given realities, then there is no
possibility for us to be autonomous… only in a subjective, possible,
relative world is there a chance for us to be autonomous beings…

how do we walk that thin line between preserving any chance for
us to be autonomous and the given, absolute, objective reality which
then rejects, doesn’t allow us to be autonomous…

if the law, human law is absolute, then then there is no chance to be
an autonomous human being in the state…

how do we solve this dilemma?

Kropotkin

It’s called boundaries Peter.

We need to set them.

Not very complicated.

If you can set boundaries without censoring, you’re a better person for it.

K: this belongs in another thread because it has nothing to do with being
an autonomous person…and how do we reach becoming an autonomous person

Kropotkin

My reference was to your conclusion about law.

Law is boundaries. People need them. In our current generation, laws are being written to absolve boundaries for certain people (ultra wealthy) and we need to fix that

we now return to the matter at hand…

becoming an autonomous person… I guess the question that should be asked,
is this, so what? who cares if I am an autonomous person, it doesn’t matter…
it has no relevance in the world of my job, my religion, the state, my watching
the football game today, GO ENGLAND,…

but ask yourself, if the point of life is not to become an autonomous person,
then what is the point of life? what is the meaning of life?
what is the point of existence if not to become an autonomous person?

Kropotkin

Peter, you’re half right and you’re half wrong.

In a world system like this, autonomy is restriction - like I said - laws and boundaries.

That’s what makes you autonomous here.

To build true autonomy … you have to reconstruct all of existence. That’s what I do. I gain my autonomy here by restricting myself, while working to the ultimate goal.

In human form having a conscience fixed within as well as a survival instinct, you can never be free of yourself and your shortcomings. Of course you can work on yourself, but never be autonomous from your design having been created with both the aforementioned to form your humanity. A thread on conscience may be interesting. Is the conscience and the survival instinct in opposition to one another on a profoundly basic level?

first things first:

let us look at “modern” history and see what it tells us about
having an autonomous being…

we can see the various revolutions of the modern times, as being
attempts to gain autonomy of some sort…
the scientific revolution, the political revolution, the social revolutions
and even, as a weird case, the industrial revolution…more on that later…

the scientific revolution was to free us from the ‘’'ordered" fixed, structure society of
the middle ages…there was no autonomy during the Medieval period… no one,
from king on down had any autonomy…the king was bound, in fact if not in theory,
to the pope, the pope was bound to god, the nobles were bound to the king,
the mass majority of people were bound to both the religious, the church and
the state, the king… there was no autonomy in the medieval times…
there was no ability to self govern in the medieval times…for anyone…

from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, was a realization that
Autonomy was not only possible but was desirable…with the Enlightenment
codifying the concept of autonomy…the political revolutions from the French/American
revolution were attempts at self governing… as was the the attempts from the French
revolutions, the 1830 attempt in France to the European attempt in 1849 to
the finally successful attempt in Russia in 1917…each revolution were attempts
at self governing…but follow this even further into the 20th century…

the various movement of civil rights, feminism, the gay movement, are all attempts
at becoming more autonomous…in fact, one could consider the entire
“American experiment” to be one long attempt at becoming more autonomous…
the American revolution in which we became “self governing” from England,
in the 1830 and 1840’s where we turned from the Aristocratic America that
Washington and Jefferson knew to the America that we know…where white men
who didn’t own property were given the right to vote…the “American experiment”
actually began to resemble the words laid out in the “the Declaration of Independence”

“we hold these truths to be self evident, that ALL men are created equal”
In America, the words of America differ from the reality of America…
and this hypocrisy laid heavy on the minds of some, some, not all…
where blacks were slaves, not “created equal”…

anyway, the story of America is the story of the growth of this notion
of self governing, of being autonomous…the modern day story, still going on,
of women attempting to achieve equal rights, equal pay, equal treatment goes on,
where blacks are attempting to achieve equal rights equal pay, equal treatment,
where gays are attempting to achieve equal rights, equal treatment…
the battle for self governing goes on in America today…
the possibility for becoming autonomous is a battle still being fought…

when we deny people the right to vote, for whatever reason, we deny
them the right to be autonomous… if we tell someone that they
can’t do something or be something, then they cannot be autonomous…

thus the battle over abortion is a battle over being autonomous…
that women can self govern their own bodies… not be told
what they can do with their own bodies…
if you deny abortions, for whatever reason, you are denying women the right
to be autonomous…if they have no choice, they are not self governing…

the entire American experiment is an experiment in autonomy…
can we be self governing or do we need others to tell us what to do?

if we have the government tell us what to do, then we are not being
autonomous as human beings…self government means we have control
over our own government… that is why a dictatorship is the opposite of
having autonomy… someone, the dictator, is telling us what to do…
that isn’t having any autonomy…and the same is true of a monarchy…

but what about our economic systems? we have autonomy in our economic
system? right? no… a clear and empathic no… because we
are told, and directed to be only consumers, producers and workers,
that we have no economic choice… we cannot exist outside of those
choices in our jobs or our career… we are slaves in the capitalistic system
and that slavery is the opposite of having autonomous choices…

if we can only choose 10 brands of cereals, made by only 5 companies,
then no, we don’t have real choice… if we can only choose cars made
by 5 companies, then no, we don’t have any choice…
because they control the choices, not us…

if we can only pick between a very few choices in the media,
that 95% of all media in America is owned by 5 companies,
then no, we don’t have any choice because they
don’t offer us any real choice…we must choose what they give us,
not what we want…or need…

capitalism is anti-autonomous…and needs to be treated as such…

do you have a choice to work? no, if you don’t work, you starve,
you don’t have medical insurance in America, you will end up in the streets,
and that choice isn’t a choice, it is a death sentence…and capitalism is
about being threaten with death every single day if you don’t work and
become a “Productive citizen”… the creation of profits is the only thing
of value in America and that isn’t what being or becoming autonomous is…

if you are unable to make choices, then you are not being autonomous…

Kropotkin

It is possible to live a happy life with or without autonomy.
Life is all about dependence on nature.
We depend upon the things around us.
Being free of need is a false fantasy.
In real life, we are basically children,
which appear on the surface to have grown up.
That’s just an appearance.

A positive outlook enables freedom. Your glass is always half full to completely full.

Being positive definitely helps someone be more complete.
But the world can be a sad place and people that are depressed,
are hyper aware of negatives.

I think James S Saint was/is right that you have to teach yourself to find joy, be happy. Happiness has to become a habit which is a very challenging task when a person suffers from the lack of a proper treatment for mental illness. Healthy coping mechanisms are crucial. In general, negativity initially requires less energy than positivity, so the easier default state is to fall into darkness.

Am I quoting someone here with ‘I am only bound by my imagination?’

The keys to happiness are a lack of cognitive dissonance. Not thinking you’re right, but knowing it.

That’s not easy. It was extremely hard work for me, and I consider it my mission to help people in concise explanations how to avoid the massive traps I stepped into.

Knowing I’m good rather than right would suit me better. Being right is no longer the end all be all.

Well… by a strange quirk of existence:

Being right is being good.

Almost impossible to prove that you’re right.

But it’s very easy to prove cognitive dissonance, contradiction and hypocrisy. If you have any of these three, it makes everything worse… even a person in a hell realm has a better time than others who haven’t tried to eradicate those three things.

I play the long game Wendy. That’s how I make friends and that’s how I approach life.

Ah, we’re getting way off topic. Maybe start another thread.

No. It’s not off topic.

Peter asked “what are we doing as human beings?”

I answered:

1.) no hypocrisy
2.) no cognitive dissonance
3.) no contradiction

That’s it. That’s all of it.

He basically asks that same question in every thread he starts, but I thought this one is discussing autonomy.