a new understanding of today, time and space.

We moderns think of ourselves as superior or above other times
and their cultures and why? Because we have couches and large screen
TV’s and fancy cars and smartphones…We have all the luxuries of
our modern times and who needs the past when all they were concerned
about were such unimportant matters as truth and art and love…

What do we moderns need with such unessential matters of beauty
and truth when we have the highest religion of all, materialism…

Our all consuming pursuit of profits/money has made such things
as any search for knowledge or wisdom or truth or beauty, nonessential
or superfluous……………
it is wasteful to pursuit unneeded idea’s that cannot create profits…
we have one value and one value only and that is the creation of profits…

Knowledge or wisdom or truth cannot, is not a means for creating profit…

we moderns have no need of such things as for example, beauty…
unless said beauty creates profits…

Art for example, has no place in the modern world… we have removed
any need for art and it pursuit of beauty and truth…for those less advanced
cultures that failed to understand the meaning of life which is the pursuit
of profits, they failed because they foolishly thought that the pursuit was the
really a pursuit of beauty and beauty was truth… and truth was beauty…

we moderns have no need of such foolishness… truth is bought and paid for
and beauty is bought and paid for and to think such foolishness that beauty
might actually lead to the truth, such naïve nonsense isn’t tolerated
in our modern age… we who view everything in light of what can
be bought and sold… truth has its price and beauty has its price…
that is all that matter to us moderns……. what is beauty is determined
by the market forces that creates our wages and determines the price of everything
and that is all that matters… we moderns who know the price of everything
and those foolish ancients like Voltaire who thought that beauty was truth
and truth was beauty but they failed to price anything…… if it can’t be bought
or sold, what is it value?

For how can truth or beauty have value if it can’t be bought or sold?
what value has honor or peace or love if it can’t be bought or sold?
We moderns have removed the foolishness of the ancients because
we no longer believe in love or peace or beauty because those
ideals will not bring us any profits/money………

We moderns clearly are so much more advance over past civilizations,
past cultures because we can buy and sell trinkets and gadgets and whatchamacallit
like our cars and phones and TV’s sets…who needs such worthless
idea’s like beauty and love and truth and justice and art?

clearly we are at the height of civilization when we can purchase
a 65 inch TV…and what does it matter that we don’t pursue
such trivial matters love or beauty or art or truth……

indeed, what does it matter?

Kropotkin

The question of the day…

What is your relationship to Art?

and you might say:

Art? Art? what the hell are you talking about? No one talks about art…
Art is dead, man… didn’t you know that… Art my ass…

so what is your relationship with Art?

Kropotkin

Let us take a look at Art……

take the Mona Lisa… probably the most famous painting in the world…
I saw it when I was in Paris a couple of years ago… It is a small painting…
that surprised me…Many millions of words have been used to describe
the Mona Lisa…… Many theories have been put forward about it…
I can see it in my mind’s eye… quite clearly as you most likely can see
it in your mind’s eye…

The Mona Lisa cannot be understood scientifically or mathematically
or philosophically… it cannot be weighed or measured or understood
by any known scientific or philosophic method…….

It is…… simple as that… and as we cannot purchase it, it cannot be used
to buy or sell, so in essence, from a modern standpoint, the Mona Lisa is
worthless…… it has no value in our modern society because it cannot
be understood scientifically or philosophically or be sold…so how else
would one begin to understand the Mona Lisa?

As a work of art, but what does that mean? I would even question the notion
that the Mona Lisa is a “beautiful” painting… so what is the “value” of the
Mona Lisa?

One might answer, we moderns don’t bother with such primitive ideas like
art and what art means………… It is beneath us…so why the fascination
with such artwork like the Mona Lisa?

Art is all around us… we hear music all the time, in fact I am listening to
Mozart right now… and we hear music all the time, on the radio and on TV
and in movies and yet do we consider that music that we hear all the time,
to be Art?

We see plays and TV shows and movies all the time and they are ART,
plays and TV shows and movies… one might even consider ads as
just another aspect of Art…Let us take a popular TV show, one I
have never seen, NCIS… very popular and has been on TV for what seems
like forever… and yet, it by its very definition is ART…….NCIS is ART…

And what does that mean? It is Art just the same way we consider the
plays of Sophocles to be Art… and if not, what exactly is the difference
between NCIS and the play of Sophocles? We know that a problem,
perhaps the greatest problem of modernity is the fragmentation of
man and we still feel those effects to this very day… so what does our
understanding of art mean to the greatest problem of our modern times?
the fragmentation of human beings…….and how can art become the possible
solution to that fragmentation? We are broken… mentally, physically, emotionally…
and we are also fragmented in body and soul…… how do we repair the damage
to our bodies and our souls? We can use ART to begin, to begin the unification
of body and mind. We can use Art to reunite and fix our broken bodies, broken
souls and our broken emotional states.

How? How can ART begin to heal our bodies, our soul, our emotions?

How does one begin to solve any problem? First by knowing thyself…
an understanding of who we are… then second, by overcoming…
then third, by becoming who we are…………Art is the means by which
we can begin to understand who we are… it can create the means by which
we begin to see who we really are… then and only then can we begin to
long process of overcoming and then we can become who we are…….

For me personally, I am terrible at Art… even my mother says I was born
without a gene for Art… and yet, I create, I create every single day
when I sit down at the kitchen table and open up my computer and I begin
to type……. My name is Kropotkin… and I am creating…

and by this process of speaking my voice, I am creating and I am healing my soul
at the same time… Recall the process of psychoanalysis whereby
we heal ourselves by confessing our sins… philosophy is nothing more then
confessing ones sins………and Art too is the act of confessing ones sins,
among the other functions of ART………and the Mona Lisa? what is
Da Vinci confessing there? Art as with any aspect of human existence,
is partly mystery… and what mystery does ART present us with?

and mystery itself cannot be weighed or measure or understood
scientifically or philosophically…… so we might be able to
classify Art and mystery as being the same thing?

So does Art answer the question or, or is ART the question/mystery?

So how does art answer the eternal questions of human existence?

The Kantian/Kropotkin questions of life… what can we know?
what can I hope for? What should we do? What values should we hold?
what can we affirm, not negate? And that is the point of Art…
It affirms… it is not nihilistic like our modern world…Art
doens’t negate human beings and their values… Art affirms
human beings and their values…And that is why we attempt
to minimize ART… because it flys in the face of our modern age
which is to negate… to be nihilistic whereas ART affirms and
that is the answer to the question… how are we to escape our
nihilistic age? By ART…

Kropotkin

think about the connection between the rise of psychology
and the rise of modern Art. Both begin to bubble up
in the 1870’s and 1880’s and were pretty well on their way
by the turn of the century, 1900…several interesting papers
could be written about the connection between the rise
of psychology and modern art. And both began as a reaction
to the fragmentation of mind, body, soul that was begun
by the industrial revolution………… without the industrial revolution
you don’t have modern art nor do you have modern psychology because
you don’t have the fragmentation of man that was created by
the industrial revolution.

Art with its turn to the various ism’s within Art like Impressionism
and cubism are really just responses to the what has happened.

See also philosophy whereas modern philosophy began to fragment
into various philosophical schools of Marxism and logical positivism and
rationalism and existentialism among other schools…we have yet
to see philosophy reunite due to the pressures of the fragmentation
of modern man by the industrial revolution…and by fragmentation,
we can also use the word, nihilism, for it is the nihilism of
the modern age that created the fragmentation of man…
for we have no basis upon which to unite and become one when
all we have is the ongoing nihilism of our political and economic
systems………

Kropotkin

Think of Russell’s and A.N. Whitehead attempt at
unification with their “Principia Mathematica”.

That was the point of the Principia….to unite
mathematically the fragmentation of man, in body, soul
and emotionally……. it failed, but that is the starting point,
not the conclusion of our attempts to unite ourselves against
the nihilism of our modern age…….

Kropotkin

Take the above 4 post and do the modern thing, which is
to dismiss them as having nothing to do with your life…
for to dismiss is to negate and to negate is the “modern”
way, method of dealing with inconvenient truths…

dismiss them… negate them……. save yourself the trouble
of having to think what Art means in your life and what ART
means to our modern society, our modern culture…

dismiss and be a modern man…

negate…

Kropotkin

How are we to understand, how do we
explain experience as experience?

by what method do we understand experience?

do we understand experience by experience or by a method,
philosophically, psychologically, emotionally, artistically?

How do we experience… experience?

Kropotkin

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo9pU1q8sy8[/youtube]

it is often said that “man is with nature”
but the reality is, “man is nature”…….
how do we experience this?

Kropotkin

Ok one may ask, what is philosophy?
or one may ask, what is history?
or one may ask, what is the state?
or perhaps one might ask, what is man?

Ok, so I ask, what is man? However, I don’t get much
by asking that question. So I ask, what is the state?
and I don’t get much there……

but, but if I ask, what is the relationship between man
and the state? Now we’re talking………

and what is philosophy? It is the word between two idea’s.
the word is relationship…philosophy is simply trying to understand
what is the relationship between man and the state or man and god
or god and the state? Relationships all… and that is all history is,
a question of the relationship between two idea’s…
and political science is the relationship between two idea’s…
and religion is the relationship between man and god…
everything we ask about, is asking, what is the relationship between…

so if you want to understand philosophy, try to understand the relationship
between two separate idea’s and you are a philosopher…

it is the relationships we spend our lives asking about, not the specific
idea’s themselves…….

Kropotkin

What I am about to write is a whole, it just looks like parts…

We have art… and what is art? Many, many definitions of art exists…

We know that art changed in nature from 1880 through 1900…

and I have surmised that Art changed beginning in 1880 because of
the industrial revolution… because of the industrial revolution,
we were atomized, fragmented… we no longer existed as part
of a whole……. the industrial revolution in conjunction with
its ism/ideology, capitalism… tore human beings from
their connection to other people, to the state, to religion…

to atomized means it separated human beings from its
connection to other human beings, connections which ranged
from religion to nationality to families…… recall that
families were being driven from farms to factories in
massive, record numbers and that changed was part of
the atomization of man…… when we live on the land, we
are connected to the earth, we are connected to the seasons,
in ways that is impossible in our modern industrialize world…

You cannot, cannot understand the modern world without understanding
this alienation of human beings from their rural, farming life that has
lasted for 10 thousand years and was being uprooted in a generation.

To atomized means to separate human beings from a life that they had
always known to being a single atom in the modern world.

Now am I glorifying the rural farming life? Not at all, I am pointed out
you cannot go home again. Am I a farmer at heart? not in the least…

I am pointing out what the results were when we transported millions
of human beings from being farmers to our modern industrial world of
nihilism and despair…

We are and will continue to be alienated and disconnected until we
finally adapt to our new found conditions.

Art…… we practice art… the ancients didn’t practice art in the way we do…
You didn’t have individuals who painted or sewed or wrote music just because
it wasn’t necessary for the average person to engage in ART in the ancient world, Why?

Because the ancient world could engage in its act of creation by the timeless act
of farming, of growing fruits and tree’s and vegetables in one’s field…….

We no longer have that luxury……. we engage in Art because we no longer
have another outlet for us to engage with……. but why is it important to
have an outlet to engage in?

We have another dualism…… we have the conscience mind
and we have another aspect of the mind, the subconscious mind…
Art comes from the subconscious mind…Art is a way to engage
the subconscious mind……. and that is why Art changed from the 1880’s
to the 1st world war……… Because the exterior of the human being changed
from a rural, farming, seasonal person to the modern factory working human being
and the subconscious mind too must adapt in the way it adapted to the world…

Art is one way, means for the subconscious mind to process the massive changes
from its prior rural existence to the modern factory life…….Art is an means to
adapt, a means to accommodate the new atomized, disconnected life we now
lead…and Art in all forms changed to acknowledge our new existence…
and Art is driven by the subconscious…….

And so what is the solution to our problem of us having a atomized, disconnected
life that we lead today? Art, art is the solution but we no longer react to Art
in the same way we once did… Art is dead… or so we are told… Art isn’t dead,
Art is trying to adjust to the new conditions of modern man and the subconscious
mind that is so important to all of us, is trying to adjust to the everchanging
conditions we find ourselves in…

and that is the new modern world, the everchanging world… for that was
one of the hallmarks of the world before 1880. The lack of change…
Caesar could have walked the streets of Paris in 1800 and he would not
have felt that out of place outside of the new “uniforms” that modern
people feel compelled to wear……. Rome of 45BC isn’t that different
than the streets of Paris in 1800… but Paris by 1900 had completely
changed… we find all the modern conveniences starting to come into play…

the world has changed more in the last 200 years more then it did in
the previous 2000 years and we must adjust and the subconscious
mind must adjust……… Thus we have the crime and serial murders
and violent attacks we see every day as a consequence of the rapid
change from the rural, farming world of 1800 to our modern world…

Our current alienation and disconnection from ourselves and each other
is from that rapid change in our historical situation…

Think of the events of the 20th century, the two world wars and the Holocaust
and the cold war… events that was impossible before 1900 and why?

Because the wars and the Holocaust were reactions to our rapidly changing
world… and Art? Art is not only thing that changed, but Art is one possible
solution to the problem of our adaptation to this everchanging world……

we must find a way to allow the subconscious mind to adapt and change, to
understand its place in the world…we are adrift because the subconscious mind
hasn’t yet come to terms with the new reality of modern times……… and we will
remain alienated and disconnected until we come to grips with the new reality,
come to grips both in the conscious AND subconsious mind…

Kropotkin

all the above is meant to say is simple, Art is a psychological
event…and once again we return to psychology…just
as philosophy can be connected to and in fact, might be
the same as psychology, Art may be not just art, but
psychology…

Kropotkin

Agree, to the extent that there is a lot psychology in art, and maybe a lot of art in psychology, but the divide(sub conscious) is great and a lot of it goes into the Pearls garbage can.

Peter , this why I thin psychoanalysis became dysfunctional because the patterns of holism is becoming unavailable to the average museum-goer. Who can understand pointillusm nowadays, unless they understand the principles of aesthetics, of the proper distance to st and to the piece, whereby most museum attendies just breeze through so as to cover the most inn the minimum time so that they cam hurry over to McDonald’s for lunch and after which see a movie?

Farm pictures are great , and there is no need to contemplate it forever since they cam represent the simple life with authenticity
Georgia O’keef is so pleasant and breezy, so is a lot of American art, even Western Art, it’s so relaxing to view it, and it’s worth maybe hours of psychotherapy.

and once again Meno, I am not ignoring you, I just have
other fish to fry today…

I have been studying German idealism for some time now…
I am starting to understand it… what my problem with it is simple,
German idealism begins with the assumption that there is a god…
or as some idealist have put it, the “unconditioned”
or the “absolute” and some like Hegel, have tried to make philosophy
and religion the exact same thing.

‘the eternal truth in its objectivity, god and nothing but god and the unfolding
of god’ and this…‘Philosophy unfolds only itself when it unfolds religion
and when it unfolds itself, it unfolds religion’…

This concept that philosophy is religion is quite new…

but the heart of the question for philosophers like Hegel is that
there is a god and he is called absolute and being and unconditioned…
that is where German idealism begins and where it is heading for…
the unification of the subjective and the objective in god…….
for much of German idealism is concerned with this question
of the subjective and the objective… for them, they thought
that Kant was far too subjective and they were trying to
bring back the objective and then unite the two……

to unite the subjective and the objective is a very worthy goal,
but you can’t make that unification in the person of god,
as the German idealists tried to do…

Kropotkin

When we think about god and humans need for god,
we think that theology/religion is really psychology need…
we need to believe in god to fulfill some emotional or psychological need…
to believe that our fate, our person is watched over by some all powerful
being… to believe in a personal god of Christianity is to fulfill some
psychological need we humans have……… let us carry that to other religions,
we contemplate say, Buddhism for example, and we wonder about
this idea that the point of life is to escape suffering…as there is no
evidence of reincarnation, we then must understand this need to escape
suffering, (in life, we all suffer in some fashion or another) this need to escape
suffering becomes a psychological need…… theology/religion is an
manifestation of some psychological need to overcome…….

feel the psychological oppression of guilt, we have an religion for you…
feel the need to escape suffering, we have a religion for you…
feel the need to follow the law, we have a religion for you…
feel the need for obedience, we have the religion for you…
feel the need to look backwards, we have a religion for you

all the psychological needs of human beings are matched
by a religion whose point is to alleviate those psychological needs…

let us take a look at human beings who were “relatively”
psychological “normal”… let us look at several people who
were outstanding/ normal human beings and we note that
most of them were not religion at all or lightly held their religion or held highly
unusual religious beliefs…
Goethe, Shakespeare, George Washington, Lincoln, Socrates,
Tolstoy, Einstein, Spinoza, Hegel, Tom Jefferson, Locke,
Ben Franklin, FDR, Beethoven, Hawkins among others…….

We can see from this list that quite often the most capable among us
the most talented, the “genius” among us, is the least religious…

we should take note of this…….

Kropotkin

much of philosophy and religious thought like Buddhism revolves
around this idea of desires, of wanting, of fulfilling needs…

The stoics for example believed that the path for happiness for
human beings is found in accepting the moment as is, by not
allowing oneself to be controlled by the desire of pleasure of
the fear of pain…the Buddha also believed that by removing
desires, we can learn to become the Buddha and escape
the ongoing reincarnations that plague human beings…

as much philosophical and religious thought revolves around the
escaping of or controlling the desires, then we can accept
the fact that much of philosophy and religion is about the
psychology need of dealing with and controlling desires…

Philosophy and religion is quite often the rational explanation
of the ways we understand the psychological needs of human beings.

Must we remove psychology from philosophy or, or should we
simply incorporate psychology into philosophy?

Kropotkin

in our understanding of philosophy, then the question
arises…… is our questioning of certain parts of philosophy
psychological driven? in other words, is the part of
philosophy that is engaged in metaphysics, which is of course
one of the main drivers of philosophy, is the search into
metaphysics really just a psychological drive? Is metaphysics
nothing more then psychology driving us to an answer about
the beginning of or the nature of reality………

Why need to know what is reality or what is at the heart of
reality, is it god? and this need to know what is at the heart
of reality itself, really just a psychological need?

My answer seems to be clear, but what is your answer?

the need for certainty, be it certainty about the nature of reality or
the existence of god or the certainty of religion……

this drive for certainty is a psychological need…
and the basis of religious thought…

Kropotkin

we see ourselves as human beings, in terms of god or of the state
or of ism’s or ideologies or in terms of those pesky childhood indoctrinations,
but do we see ourselves in terms of us? In other words, do I see myself,
Peter Kropotkin, as I am… not in light of any sort of ism or ideology or
childhood indoctrination? but as I am? I am kind and smart
and gaining in wisdom, not so much in knowledge, and I am very funny…
now the question arises, once I have understood myself as I am, as I
truly am, now what? Recall I wrote a bit ago about how we must
understand things in terms of relationships… how do I, Kropotkin,
stand in relationship to the state, for example? Or how do I stand
in relationship with god or with philosophy or with knowledge?
or of the any 5 million ways I can stand in relationship to something…

I must understand myself both as an individual and, AND in relationship
to something…

and have noted, much of philosophy is psychological driven, so
how do I understand myself psychologically? as I don’t need
certainty as other people do, what does this say about me?

I am quite happy with myself… I don’t require friends nor do I need god
nor do I need certainty… I am self reliant in regards to outside
needs and psychological needs… I am not very social, I don’t need
the certainty that many other people need……

I do need the physical needs that all living beings need, food, water,
clothing, shelter, love… even someone as self reliant as myself, needs
love and I get love from my family……….

is my quest for wisdom which comes from the doubt I feel, is
that a psychological need I have? perhaps, is doubt itself
a psychological need? probably…I don’t subscribe to the Greeks
understanding of philosophy as being from wonder and I don’t see
the desire for knowledge to of much value and I certainly don’t need
to loved by god… but as know, if we become aware of our psychological
needs, as to our need to be certain or the need for our understanding
the basis of reality which is metaphysics, we can overcome our
psychological needs if, if we can become aware of them…
for example, we can overcome any addictions we have if we become
aware of our addictions… it might be hard, but we can do it…

the same can be said for our philosophical/psychological needs…
by awareness, we can overcome… and thus we arrive at what
the Buddha said about desires, if we become aware of our desires,
we can overcome them and become the Buddha and thus no longer
be reincarnated…or if we can overcome our desires as the Stoics
said…all roads lead to the same place…….

so what road are you on? What philosophical/psychological need must
you fulfill? what desires/needs do you need to have, that must be answered?

wonder/desire/doubt/escaping suffering/to become obedient/
or some other psychological need/needs, do you have that leads you to philosophy?

Kropotkin

how much of our behavior or actions, the result of
deprivations of our needs? in other words, if we didn’t get enough
love, for example, then how much of our behavior and actions are
a result of us not getting enough love as children?

I suspect that much of our behavior and actions are driven
by deprivations in our childhood of certain needs and wants
that we had……………

and is our “philosophy” an attempt to meet those unfulfilled
needs and wants as children?

Kropotkin

and what of the critic who says, Kropotkin,
your “way” of turning everything into psychology means
that we have nothing solid to base our theories upon because
everything is psychologized including political theory,
history, economics and of course, philosophy…

We have no such thing as disciplines because
we have turned all disciplines into psychology…
and that is true to a certain extent anyway…
but and this is important to understand,
whereas everything is turned into psychology in
the beginning, it doesn’t end up as psychology…

let us understand the point of psychology…
we are trying to understand ourselves in terms
of actions and behavior with an understanding
of the psychologically drives and deprivations that
drive so much of our behavior…

In other words, if we cure ourselves of our psychological issues,
if we understand the forces and drives that lead to our actions
and behavior, then we have overcome, moved past those forces
and drives that dictate how we act and behave…

If I understand why I act the way I do or why I am driven to
do something, then I have overcome it, I have conquered it…
it no longer haunts me as some silent motivation that I don’t
know about or understand………I understand what that motivation
is and can overcome it by conscious decisions and actions…

let us say, for example, (this didn’t happen but is simply an
example of what would happen if this happened) for example,
I was molested as child… but I “forgot” or I drove it out of my mind
as too painful to bear as an adult, I have this tremendous weight on
my subconscious mind… it subconsciously drives all my actions even
though I am not consciously aware of it…If I become aware of it,
I can begin to do the work to overcome it…the key is to become aware
of the issue… a psychology issue that has plagued me and my actions
and behavior for a long time is resolved… I am free now…… I have cured
myself…as I am no longer bounded by this issue of the molestation,
I no longer am driven by unseen and unnoticed subconscious issues…
as I am no longer driven by this event, I have become aware of and
now in control of who I am and what are my possibilities…

the molestation has prevented me fully becoming aware
of who I was… I was a child molested and because I was not
aware of it, it had control over my actions… but because I am
now aware of it, now I am in control of my thoughts and my actions
and my behavior…

the question becomes what is next? and that is where because
we have cured ourselves we can begin the positive understanding
of who we are… we are no longer in the grips of the psychological
issues that plagued us and we can come to grips with the real philosophy
that we must engage with to become fully human…

that is not to say that being molested is the only psychological issue
that we are faced with, but the most obvious… we can have many
difficult and troubling issues psychological issues that we must face
and overcome to become ready to begin the process of real philosophical
progress……….to overcome our psychological issues is just the first step
toward being able to become who we are… the first step to being able
to understand life in a real philosophical way…………it begins with
the psychological but once we overcome that we can begin to
understand and overcome other issues like who are we and what
are our possibilities…….

the psychological is part of us, of that we cannot deny, but as we come
to an awareness and understanding it becomes a smaller and smaller
part of who we are… and it will never go away, but it can be processed
to become something we can manage or control…….and it as always, begins
with becoming aware… that is the start of everything… become aware…

everything is a process and that process never ends but it can be used to
allow progress in other area’s… we are simply a work in progress and the
progress/process goes on until the day we die…

Kropotkin