How to heal America......

There have been some threads of late as to how to heal
America…but they missed the solutions because they don’t grasp
what is actually involved in this process…

We return to Socrates, as always, because he understood the question…

healing… Socrates quite often called Philosophy… a healer of the soul…
of the individual soul and collective soul of a people/state/society…

Philosophy was the method he devised to heal the soul…
and this healing was the basis of his very last quote on earth:

“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; pay it and don’t forget”

and who is Asclepius? He was the god of healing and the sacrifice of a cock
was the normal offering of thanks for recovery from illness.

His very words reflect his ongoing concern with healing and the soul…

Socrates was also very engaged with medicine… he quite often connected
medicine and philosophy…he felt they were engaged in the very same act,
that of healing… medicine was to heal the body and philosophy to heal the soul…

so now that we understand the connections, we can move on the philosophy
as healer…

Socrates would assess America (and perhaps the world) as being sick,
specifically being soul sick…the symptoms Socrates would point to
as America being soul sick is quite evident in looking at America and
have been touched on by others…see how divided we are, see how
much disfunction and disarray exists in America today… we are lost
as to what comes next and we fundamentally disagree with each other about
possible solutions…

but it quite clear that we have lost our way in the way basic fundamental
values/principles have been lost or is now ignored…for example, take
the TFH party… formally known as the GOP… tell us what values or principles
the TFH party stand for? none that I can tell…the TFH party is all about the
conspiracies… and they will happily tell one about the various conspiracies they
believe in, but as for principles? they have none…outside of being mercenaries…
ideals for sale to the highest bidder…

it was said about Rush Limbaugh after he died that he would have just as happily
espoused liberals idea if they just paid as well as the conservative ideas…his
ideology was driven by how much money he could make with it…liberals don’t
pay as well, so he offered his services to the right because the pay is better…
( it was his producer of many years that said this btw)

and that particular story reflects exactly the conservative values… on sale to
the highest bidder…and this is our first understanding of the sickness of America…
it values and beliefs are corrupted by money…we hold money to be of higher
value then the values themselves…so the question of “what does America stand for”
really becomes about how everything in America is for sale including the
values and principles that make up a country…

our first understanding of our soul sickness begins here… we have no
values or principles… because if you can buy off values and principles,
you don’t have values or principles…for something to be a value or
principle, you can’t just allow it to be bought and sold like a commodity,
like beer or iron or cars…a car isn’t a value or a principle because it can
be bought and sold by anyone off the street with money and just as easily sold
by anyone for a price…which leads us to a question? what value or principles
can’t be bought in America today?

pro-life? please, that is just a display for show because the pro-life forces don’t hold
onto this principle after the birth of a child…they are pro-life for a fetus and then after
that, they couldn’t care less which means that they aren’t pro-life…they are just
“pro-fetus”…so once again, what values or principles are held as values and
principles and held regardless of the conditions on the ground?

none, that I can spot… everything is for sale in America including our values
and principles…

and so we find our first issue with the soul of America… it doesn’t stand for
anything… we have no values or principles that we hold onto regardless of
the circumstances on the ground…what principle defines what it means to
be an American?

and the fact of the matter, there isn’t a defining principle or value that defines
America… you might say “freedom” and that value or principle left the building
after 9/11 with the so called “Patriot Act”…which I might add the right wing
built and cheer on…but now that we have right wing domestic terrorists,
they try to hang their hats onto the “rights and freedoms” of Americans…
which they happily discarded in the "patriot act…because the “patriot act” was
to be used against the “others” “others” being people of color or of a different
religion or race… and that is perfectly acceptable to the right wing…

they have an intolerance toward anyone who isn’t them… and hold the exact
same beliefs… and that isn’t a principle or a value, it is simple prejudice that
drives this… there is no great value or principles here,
just old fashion prejudice and bigotry…

and in fact if I were to name the one “value” of the conservative, it would be
prejudice and bias and bigotry… but as I said, those aren’t values or principles,
they are hate and anger and violence dress up pretty, real pretty…

so we return to the soul sickness of America…and what exactly does America
stand for? what are our values and principles?

We in America clearly have a angst or malaise or a discomfort that lie around
us like a deep fog in the morning…

think of the words that are opposite of Malaise…

words like calm, comfort, ease, pleasure, peace, healthiness, happiness,
joy or well being… these words clearly don’t describe the America I live in
today…

so step one is understanding that we don’t actually stand for anything,
that we have values or principles that mean anything or that can’t be bought…

so what is step two? understanding that we don’t have a goal or a destination
for us to engage with… what is the goal of America? what is it we
are attempting to do? what are we trying to accomplish? and therein
lies part of the failure of the current pursuit we engaged in, money,
fame, power, titles… they aren’t a goal or an accomplishment that
we can use to achieve the goals we really seek…
for to seek money means that is all we will get, money, and in seeking
fame, that is all that one gets in seeking fame…and in seeking titles or
power, this is no other ending game for this… all you get when seeking money
or fame or power or titles is money, fame or power or titles… you don’t get
anything else from these empty promises of existence…

so that leads us back to what should we be seeking?
should we be seeking the normal paths of existence
such as knowledge, pleasure, union with god, equanimity, justice,
control, peace? these are considered to be deeper values then just
a search for money or fame… and why? because a seeking of these values
brings us something that is more then just more of the same…

let us just take one of these values, equanimity…
if we achieve equanimity, that can’t be bought or sold or even lost
because equanimity is something that can hold us to and last us till
death…and we can use that equanimity to make all our judgments
upon…it can become our lodestar value that we use to make all other
decisions with…and that is the value of this list of values like knowledge or
justice or peace or even love… we can use that one value to make judgements
about all other values or actions or words…If I hold that justice is my value,
then every other action or word I might make, I can use justice, as a value,
to decide about every other action or word I make… it is right to deny
people their ability to free speech? no, and why? because we can judge the
denial of free speech on our value of justice… and justice is always about
equality…those two words, justice and equality are the same word…

but today, can we truly say we have a word or value that we use to judge
all other words or actions we make? no, no we cannot say that…
because we are valueless and without principles… we have no set or fixed value
that we can judge all other actions or words upon…that is, in part, why we
are so lost and full of doubt today…

and so we can use philosophy, the understanding of values and principles to
reengage us into some semblance of knowing who we are and what is our goals/
plans for the future…

the only way to escape the malaise or angst or anxiety we experience today,
in America, as American’s is to engage with value/values that allow us to
make some judgement about any or all of our words and actions…
that is certainly one solid step toward ending the unease and doldrums
that have infected America today…

but we must use the most effective tool in our toolbox to fix
what is wrong with the soul of America and that tool is
philosophy…

so we use philosophy to diagnose what is wrong with the soul of America
and we use philosophy to find a cure for what ails America today…

philosophy as medicine for what ails us…
for what ails our soul… for finding out what has caused us
to become soul sick and what is the cure for that soul sickness…

what is your diagnoses of America and what your cure?

and it is philosophically based?

Kropotkin

I came across another interesting word in my reading of “Max Scheler”

the word is “Kulturkampf” in English means “culture struggle”
and if that word doesn’t mean what has happened in America over the
last 40 years, I don’t know what word will mean it…

the reason, the real reason that the culture wars of the last 40 years hasn’t
reached some sort of conclusion is because the conservative faction of this war,
doesn’t actually stand for anything… they shift the nature of the war in any which
direction needed to win the war and win the power that the winner will get…
it isn’t about what was being fought about, it was about the power that the
winner will get from winning the war that matter… not the subject matter…

The GOP which is now the TFH party, used the cultural wars to gain power…
and that was the point of the culture wars…

this attempt to win the culture wars divided up and split America,
as was probably the goal…culture in America is one means to
hold onto the spiritual power that culture brings the winner of the culture war…

what is culture in America today? it is a means to dictate or articulate
what it means to be human… the right in their hatred of being,
try to use the culture wars to downgrade and deny what it means to be
human… the right wing is negative and depressive… it works best in
a society that feels badly about itself and is insecure about itself…

the right wing love to use hierarchies to define human beings…
the defining symbolism of the right is the light, good and the dark, evil…
the right wing believe in right and wrong… good vs evil, up vs down…
the right wing very much believes in a black and white vision of the world.
whereas the left, we hold a much more nuance vision of the world…
there are no black and white visions of the world, it is all shades of gray…
as Nietzsche put it, it is about a matter of degrees, shades of gray…
and not black and white…

the right wing paints existence as a battle between good and evil,
and no matter what side the right wing takes, that is the side of good…
and the left, no matter what side it takes is the wrong side, the side of evil,
this explains the language of those like UR and observe, they hold to the
existence of fixed belief in right and wrong… there is only black and white
in their viewpoint… the world is fixed and set… all it takes is to pick a side
their side…

the culture wars is one aspect of this belief in the black and white nature of
the universe…if you hold this belief, you are right and part of the “team”
and if you hold that belief, you are part of the enemy and treated as such…

the culture wars are part of this black and white vision of the world and
of America…and as I have explained before, there is no black and white
vison of the world or of America… it is all shades of gray… hence the black
and white vision of the culture wars is based on an incorrect and incoherent
view of the world and the human beings inside of the world…

the right wing try to fix and set the nature of human beings and that is simply
the wrong way to approach human nature… for human nature, in all of us, is
in flex and changeable and quite often missing in action…we quite often just
use the “vapors” around us to make our decisions about who we are and what it
means to be human…

this being called Kropotkin… is different today then it was yesterday and will
be different tomorrow… I am a far different person today then I was 20 years or 10 year
or 5 years ago or even one year ago…

and the path to healing America is a recognition about the flexible
and changeable nature of human beings… we are not fixed or set beings…
and to assume that, is to damage and hurt America and the human beings within
America…hence we need the medicine that is offered to us by philosophy
in curing our souls of its need to require everyone and everything to be fixed and set…

we are not moored into fix and set lives and situations… being human is to
accept our situation in the universe as being unmoored and no fixed or set…
we live in an ever changing and flexible universe and to survive we must also
be ever changeable and flexible and being to turn on a dime if necessary to
survive in this universe…

but Kropotkin, earlier you said that we have no fixed and set values or
principles and you used as a downside of human existence… or of the downside
of our America today…of part of being soul sick…

but the use of values and principles is what set us up to be moored in this
ever changing universe… we use values as a anchor to keep us from drifting to
far away out away from the shore…

think of existence as being on a boat… not on shore… we cannot
ever stand still, the waves and currents will move us, no matter how
secure we think we might be… but with the use of anchors, we can at least
hold our spot in the midst of the waves and currents…and those anchors are
values and principles that we have…

think of all the forces that a ship encounters on the sea… the waves, the winds,
the currents, the weather, the sun and the moon… ships are buffeted by the
various forces attacking a ship… and think of human existence as a ship…

we too are buffeted by forces beyond our control… the winds and waves and
weather of the sea are on the land we live on too…

how do we survive the various forces working on us all the time, changing
the conditions and environment we face all the time… and the human element
is changing the forces working on us all the time…it is by values and principles
that we have that allow us some measure of calm in our lives…

the culture wars are another force in our lives that buffet us all the time…
for the human element, education, indoctrinations, biases, prejudice,
our needs and our procurement of those needs play a role, a big role
in our every changing environment…the Kulturkampf or culture struggle,
in America is just one way or means of defining what it means to be human or
to be an American…it dominates our education, our indoctrinations,
our prejudice or needs and our wants…

the culture wars, the culture struggle is an method of philosophy meant
to understand what it means to be human or American…

so, we can now better understand the Kulturkampf of Germany and within America…

Kropotkin

and now we hit the next aspect of the healing of America…
now this may sound strange coming from an atheist, but
part of the damage to the soul of America comes from the loss
of the religious, the spiritual side of being human…

the recent failure of religion can be tied to one basic fact, religions
have gone away from what made them so needed by human beings…

religions have gone from their basis and fundamental function to something else…

what is the value, the point of religions, the spiritual?

the value or point of religion comes from the connection of a human being
to their god/ or their spiritual base…and that base could be a spiritual
connection to nature, to the earth, to the sea and sky… we don’t have to
be spiritual about just god, we can be spiritual about anything that connects
us to something that is outside of us…I can have a spiritual feeling about anything
that allows me to make a connection to something… hence we can be and hold
spiritual connections to human beings, such as Jesus or Mohammed…
or even Gandhi or MLK…the concept of being spiritual is the connection we
have to something…

we have lost our religious connection to people, and why?

because we have politicized religion by turning it toward the
politicization of religion and by forcing religion into our political life…

religion, the very basis of religion and the spiritual comes from
having a connection, a personal connection to god, it has nothing to
do with forcing religious concerns into political concerns…
by trying to turn the state into a theocracy, we have lost
our connection to god and the spiritual…

part of this idea of a “lost” America comes the realization, that we have
politicized religion…to the determent of both, the political and the spiritual…

to be spiritual, truly spiritual, means we have to reengaged with
this connection, this personal connection to god…no longer should
we have the connection to god being once a week for a couple of hours
being our spiritual connection to god…the focus needs to be, must be
a connection to god, every day, every hour and in reality, every minute…
and we have lost this and in doing so, we have lost one of our moorings, one
of our anchors in life…

you want to heal America, heal thyself by becoming connected to god
with internal dialogues and meaningful conversations with god…
silently and within oneself… that is how you heal a person and that is
how we heal America, or one way to heal America… make religion a
personal connection to god… not as a means to get political results
that favor the Christian, but by a personal and meaningful and
spiritual connection to god

take religion out of the world, out of politics, out of our cultural
wars and turn it inwards and an engagement with who we are and
what it is we are trying to become…

this personal engagement is part of the attempt to improve the soul…
to fix the soul…because part of our soul sickness is our loss of an personal engagement
with god… so to cure that, we must return to god as a personal
engagement with a daily dialogue to and from god…

Kropotkin

and one might argue, that by taking religion out of the state, we might,
might allow sin and inequality to engage Americans… and I say, so the fuck what?

It is not your mission to engage others in what they hold to be religious or
what it means to be spiritual…you job is to engage with your
spiritual and religious engagement with god… what other people do isn’t
your problem… if they go to hell, that is not your problem… you have bigger
fish to fry… what does it take for me to go to heaven? what is my issues
and what are my spiritual and religious needs and how does a personal dialogue
with god answer these questions… that is your concern…not if people do
or can or might go to heaven or hell…what do you care?

the effort to turn America or any other country for that matter, into
a theocracy, be it Christian or Islamic, doesn’t change the fact that
the only real concern for the religious or the spiritual is their
relationship or connection to god… that is the ONLY matter before
the religious or the spiritual… what is my connection or relationship
to god? and that is the only question before those who are religious/spiritual
be it Christian or Islamic or hindu or Buddhist or Catholic or Jain…

what is my personal connection with and to god…

you want to heal yourself and in that path, heal America is
the path to true spiritual/religious connection to god…
via a personal and internal connection/dialogue with god…
that is one of the paths to heal us and the nation…

Kropotkin

let us continue on in this idea…

why is it that the conservative and the religious demand,
demand that every one hold the exact same view on the
political and religious as they do?

we can see this effect in UR and observe… they demand that
everyone engages in the state, religion, the culture and society
with the exact same beliefs they hold about the state, religion, the
culture and the society…but the question becomes why? why must
we engage with society, the state, religion and culture the exact same way
they do?

I hold certain philosophical beliefs… now if I was insecure about my beliefs
and want some security to them, what would I do? I would do exactly as the
religious right and the conservative do? which is demand that everyone hold
my own beliefs… I cannot backtrack or be “weak” about my beliefs if everyone
held those beliefs…so the reason that the religious wants everyone to hold their
exact same religious beliefs is the insecurity of those religious people…

now do demand that others hold my beliefs? no and why?
because I am very secure about my beliefs…I don’t need other
people to hold my beliefs to validate them… and this validation is what
drives people to force others into compliance into their own personal religious
and political beliefs…if others hold my beliefs, then I am validated as to
holding my own beliefs… and the more people hold onto my beliefs, the more
validation I gain for my own beliefs…so in other words, if more people hold on
to my beliefs then Kropotkin, then my beliefs have more validation then Kropotkin’s…

it is from personal weakness that drives the religious and the politically
conservative to demand others hold their political, religious, social and
philosophical beliefs…I don’t need others to hold my beliefs to find
validation in them…hence the personal venom of UR and observe and
other conservatives around here…they are insecure and feeling weak about
their own personal beliefs and to secure better faith in them, they demand that
everyone holds those beliefs… it is weakness that drives them, not strength…
whereas I couldn’t care less if anyone other then myself holds to or maintain
my beliefs… It is a matter of indifference to me if one or more people believe
in my beliefs…

it is from weakness that drives the Islamic nations to devoutly hold people
to the Islamic faith… it is from weakness that keeps people demanding
a theocracy, and not from strength…

it is of no difference to me if you believe in god, be it the Islamic, the Christian,
the Jewish or the Buddhist god… I just don’t care…
it doesn’t change my own beliefs or their impact upon my own beliefs

I am secure in my own atheism… I don’t need external validation for me
to hold my beliefs… thus I am not demanding that everyone becomes
an atheist… believe in what you want, what do I care?
until, until from weakness you demand that I hold your religious
and/or political, social, historical or philosophical beliefs
then I say no… and a thousand times no…
and it is from weakness that you make such a demand, not from
strength… and I will always say no…

Kropotkin

and we continue thinking about how we are to “heal”
American…

we should be able to call a time-out in our life and be able, without
any type of penalty… to spend a year or even two years engaged in
contemplation… in other words, we should have, not a religious mediation of
the world but a secular mediation of the world… into the questions of
existence… “What am I to do?” “What ought I hope for” " What should we spend
our energy on?" “What values should I hold?”… and of course if any wish too,
“what is the point of, the meaning of our collective and or our personal existence?”

the focus or the energy in this period of meditation should be a library…
and the person in question refers to the books that might lead one to an answer,
be it religious, educational, philosophical, social, historical, or psychological…

so a huge library… filled with millions of books…
and surrounding the library, simple homes and small shops that cater to
the truth seeker…I would personally hope for an Ice cream shop, but
hay that’s me…

I can see all kinds of people with all kinds of reasons taking up residence inside
this place of contemplation…not worship, but contemplation…

we are so busy engaged in our daily busy work, that we don’t find the time
to think about what it means to be human…we have to carve out time in
our lives to think about what it means to live that live…

what is it that we should be doing instead of spending our time, as we do now,
like a chicken with its head cut off… running around like crazy people
without any idea as to why, why should we engage in our lives in the way we do…

the truth is we are on autopilot virtually our entire lives…and we never
get a chance to ask, is this it? is this all there is to life? can we do better?

you know the path of existence that goes on, we are born, we are indoctrinated
for our first dozen years between the family, the state, the church, the media…
all spend immense amount of time indoctrinating us into the habits, superstitions,
biases, prejudices and training of that culture/society…

we are “educated” for decades to hold and continue onwards the beliefs
and habits, bias, prejudices of that culture/state/culture…
and via these indoctrinations, we hold certain societal beliefs that I hold
to be detrimental to us as Americans and as human beings…

but should we engage in these values or should we engage with other values…
and that is the question and we should be able to seek out our answers
in this year long engagement with the questions of existence…

we should be able take time out of our lives and meditate on what it means to be
alive and human…and right now, we don’t have that… even in collage or the university,
the engagement is not with, why these values instead of other values… no, even
in collage the question is one of, how do you get the skills to get a job or a career…

but that is a slight, minor consideration in our lives… I hold that more important,
far more important question are the questions of existence… “what am I to do?”
and so on…

Kropotkin

heal america by sending all the Q people to reeducation camps. it’s ugly, and it’s not what anyone wants, but something really has to happen with them before they start infecting our govt more than they already have. we just have to pull the bandaid off, squinch our eyes and get it over with with these people.

K: the problem with that solution is it makes us no better then they are…
they would happily send every single liberal into concentration camps with
ovens and everything, so if they want to do that, we should think about
other options…

Kropotkin

The victimhood of the libtarded is all the libtarded can fixate upon. Slavery happened the world over and still persists in Africa. All races, meaning everyone’s ancestors, have been made slaves throughout different points in history. All of your ancestors were enslaved by conquering tribes, dum dums.

As people we stop doing wrong reflected in our laws and the laws apply to everyone so everyone has a fair shake at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but for some reason libtards only hang onto the enslavement of Africans as if it is still actively problematic, as if the laws are not equal and equally applied to everyone and blacks are still slighted by what they currently have never been, slaves.

If the left wants to pay reparations to slave’s decendents, then remove the money from your wallets at home. Stop trying to penalize hundreds of millions of Americans who had nothing to do with slavey, their families hadn’t even immigrated to the US until after slavery ended. Only libtarded logic says it makes sense to penalize hundreds of millions of innocent Americans for the wrong doings of thousands one hundred and fifty years ago. Freakin dum dums!

Women deserve reparations too then, since we were treated as the property of men and had no rights. And I demand reparations for the slavery suffered by my ancestors in Europe from every invading country. Freaking dum dums pay up!

K: and had you actually read my thread/post, you would know that I don’t, DON’T approve of
reparations to African-Americans and I explained why…

and some of my arguments were in part, based exactly upon what you said…
but reading comprehension isn’t a strength of yours or anyone on the right to think
about it…

Kropotkin